UtterlyBoring.com

I’ll break this up a bit for those folks who really don’t give a rip about the trip. If you’re interested in things at all, read on (’tis a bit long). But I’ve been writing this, and catching up on things from being gone, which is why you don’t have any regular blogging (and it’s still probably incomplete, but it’s at least there).

Anywho…

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I made it back late last night after a lot of travelling. It was a long weekend, a bit crazy, a bit annoying, a bit fun, etc… . I’ll post some stories (and hopefully photos) later, after I go through my gobs of e-mail.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m heading out of town this weekend to go to my brother’s wedding in Fort Collins, Colorado. Unfortunately, it’s a solo trip as we couldn’t afford to fly my wife and kids down there, and I’m bumming off my dad’s frequent flyer miles for my ticket. Going to weddings is already not-so-fun, going without your wife is even worse.

Just the same, it’s been a long time since I’ve been back to Colorado. Anybody who knows me (just read my resume, if you want) knows I went to Colorado State University (which is in Fort Collins) for a semester — basically lived there for five months. I originally went to school there as they had one of the few ADA accredited dietetics programs, which is what I wanted to study before I started my senior year in high school. The reality was though that as I got into my senior year of high school, I was starting to like journalism more and more, but I’d already committed to going to Colorado State (and was hoping to get on a track scholarship). The track scholarship never panned out as the distance coach and I had a big falling out. He wrote my time down wrong at a 5K race, and railed into me about how slow my time was, even though I had actually run a full minute faster. He didn’t seem to give a rip.

That, and out-of-state tuition is frickin’ expensive.

So I transferred back to Oregon to study journalism and technology. But I do have fond memories of my time at Fort Collins. And while my running career is all but over thanks to my messed up back, it’ll be nice to check out the campus, the track house, and the town and see how much it’s changed in the nine years it’s taken me to get back there. I’ll be borrowing the work camera and will see if I can get some pictures posted over there (I’ll have my laptop). I just need to steal some WiFi from somebody (can anybody hook me up with the VPN client and profiles for the CSU campus’ WiFi network?). I’m sure I can come up with an open signal near our hotel. CSU is also in session, so I can probably just find an open ethernet jack at the library (at least it was that simple at UO — have no idea if it’ll be that easy at CSU).

This will also be a new experience for me as well as I haven’t flown since before 9/11 (I was in New York about two months before the towers came down). Obviously, things are a little different at the airports now, and I plan on just carrying on my laptop and digital camera — and wearing sandals that I can take on and off easily. I also need to get one of those TSA-approved locks so they don’t have to trash my bag getting into it if they need to inspect it.

So I’ll be back in town on Sunday night. Hopefully I’ll be able to post something from the various places I’ll be at. I know PDX has free WiFi, though it appears to cost money at DIA, which sucks. Everybody play nice while I’m gone, there is plenty of good reading here and anybody is welcome to start a thread over at Bend Forums (which I really need to market and get some features implemented that I’ve been wanting to — someday it’ll happen, God willing).

Update on 9/7 at 1:20PM: Just like to say that PDX’s free WiFi kicks ass. Downloading all my e-mail and RSS feeds to give me something to read on the flight.

Getting through security is always fun when you’re carrying a laptop, requiring me to open up my bag and prove to them that yes, indeed, this is a laptop. I thought I was being smart by wearing sandals to the airport to avoid having to take off my shoes, but I guess because of the heightened alert status all footwear has to come off.

I had to check my brother’s wedding gift. It was a small box, but they only allowed me to carry on my laptop and camera bag — everything else had to be checked. So my brother’s gift is going to have a bunch of United Airlines tape all over it, along with my baggage tracking tape. He’ll probably get a kick out of it. At least he’ll know it’s from me.

Anyway, flight’s taking off here in an hour or so. Hopefully I’ll be able to update from Colorado somewhere.

If you’re wondering where I’ve been hiding, I’ve been in Portland at yet another wedding (this after doing more damage to my bathroom). This was my third wedding of the summer, with another one coming this weekend in Colorado (my brother’s), and then one more in October (a local one, thankfully). This was an interesting wedding with the groom being a Catholic and the bride a Hindu. So the ceremony actually had a bit of both worlds, primarily the Hindu world, and the ceremony was nearly two hours long. I was so exhausted after all of it (and after the four hour drive to get there) that we didn’t even both staying for what would’ve been a great reception (sorry, Nick — we had to drive home). It was a nice location at the Portland Art Museum, and the programs’ paper and scroll-like design probably cost a pretty penny as well.

But let me tell ya — after this Summer, I don’t care who gets married: I’m past my quota of wedding attendance for the decade, so you won’t see me there.