My Right Foot (guffaw! Daniel Day-Lewis joke!)

Here's my foot today. I don't have to wear the velcro-boot, and I don't have to tape it up. I can't run yet, but soon.

Search for a Teacher: Mike Mattke, Sioux Falls SD

Hello there. I'm looking for Mike Mattke. He was a teacher at Lincoln High School in the TV/Radio department. He also helped run OWL-TV, the old public access channel for the high schools. (OWL = O'Gorman, Washington, Lincoln. I always thought about the need to change it to ROWL-TV for Roosevelt, and then SCROWL for Sioux Falls Christian...but it started to get silly.)

The reason why I want to reach him is simply to thank him. Finally, I'm getting back into the field of study that I should have gotten into in, oh, 1994 when I went to college. TV and Radio production is one of maybe 3 things that I truly enjoyed doing when it was supposed to be "work". I don't know if I can recapture that feeling ever again, but I have to give it a shot.

I'd like to thank the guy for giving me the shot to begin with, to leaving the feeling of accomplishment within me all these years. I hope to be able to live up to that ideal, to make something of myself in this field of study.

So, if you know him, please let me know. I'm Aaron Burman at aarona1c@gmail.com. Thanks.

-Aaron

Back To School

Yes, I'm finally heading back to school after 11 years of partying...and working, being in the Air Force, and to a large extent, spinning my wheels.

I will be going to the Connecticut School of Broadcasting. It's a sort of tech school, only lasting from now until October. However, I'll be heading back for an associates in addition to this program, starting Spring 2009.

Wish me luck, and see you in Sioux Falls next week! -Aaron

PS: I keep meaning to do a "real" post regarding this, but my good-good friend Jason Heath is publishing his first book! Be sure to go to the Library branch near Washington High School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota this Thursday at 3:30pm!

Goodnight!

It's all good until you get lyme disease...

I went out geocaching today, trying to find "Fallen In Flatlick", and "The Cache With 9 Lives". Fallen was very difficult, and after over 1 hour, I gave up. I attacked that one from the 4 points of the compass with no luck. I'll head back there sometime this fall when the foliage has died off. That was when the cache was originally planted, so I may have better luck.

The other cache, as I said, was "The Cache With Nine Lives". I cruised out, ducking out of the way of swallows and dodging around a sizable marsh/lake. Upon finding it, I discovered the container was cracked, and everything inside was damp. I couldn't log my visit since the log book was ruined. I didn't bother to leave my travelbug there either. Like I said in another post, I'll probably take that back to South Dakota and leave it there.

While I was checking out the cache, I found 4 ticks and a couple inchworms all over me. I always wear a hat when I go adventuring, so thankfully I didn't get any ticks in my scalp. I showered immediately when I got home, and I'm crossing my fingers.

I can't help but think how cute the little guys are. Ticks, I mean. I was pulling one off my leg, and I had him trapped between my thumb and forefinger, and the way he squirmed was very funny. His pain, my pleasure. I let him go soon after. I'd feel worse, but it was a tick.

I like bugs. I have grown very fond of them in the last year or so. Just thought I'd say...

Nothing Reall-e

So...not much to say, but I'm trying (hard) to post every day or two. My wife and I went to Wall-E the other day, and I had a very lukewarm reaction to it. The jokes were kind of obvious, and the "message" was really crammed down the audience's throats. Yeah, alright, Internet bad, Real World good. Whatever.

I've been geocaching a lot, and I got my first Travel Bug. See, a travel bug is a metal keychain the size (and plink-sound) of a military dogtag. The object of the game is to pick it up from one geocache and drop it off at another one.......and I feel like I told you about this in the previous post. Whatever, no going back now.

I got into a conversation with a member of the cleaning crew where I work. She doesn't sound local, sounding more like someone south of the border. She mentioned that her husband and herself don't celebrate the Fourth of July. And I guess that doesn't surprise me much. My wife and I barely get to celebrate, because of her crazy retail-manager hours, and my wish to work on more holidays to get better pay. In the end...I'm not huge on the 4th anymore. It's more of a holiday for kids and/or pyromaniacs. I like fire, and I like seeing things burn. Unfortunately my conscience, my need to avoid jail-time, and my overall need to live a long, boring life prevent me from lighting things on fire. But little green army guys always burnt the best, and the smell! Whew, to DIE for! Calvin Klein has nuttin on those guys.

Besides that, I'm writing again. I'm taking it very, very slow, so I don't lose my will to write this story. It's about my Junior High School years, with some fiction thrown in. I had a very rough time of it, and for a while I didn't think I was going to be able to go on, literally. I obviously did, but there were some almost comedically sad moments here and there. I want to basically write a rough account of the goings on back then, and maybe write a couple things to end differently. My main influence is actually the movie Superbad. I didn't entirely care for the movie, mainly because it's a little too close to my life back then, as far as the embarrassment and self-conscious life I had back then.

Annnyhow, that's about all there is to say for the moment. Take care youtze.

Geocache: Friday Morning Staff Meeting (on Tuesday Evening)

This was a fun little geocache. Located about 1/2 mile along a trail twisting into the woods in the Ellanor C. Lawrence park. I started off pretty frustrated, for I had intended on doing the "A Walk Through Time" geocache. However, the crucial piece to that jaunt was access to the visitor's center, which is closed only on Tuesdays. Instead, I flipped through my small stack of choices, found this little gem, and took off.

My busted toe is still causing me some problems, creating a stiffness in my right foot. I took it easy, while not allowing it to slow me down too much.

The cache was an ammunition cannister, a little larger than a toaster. I entered my record, and dug through the loot.

There was an awful lot of kids toys inside, which tells me that not enough people are bringing their kids to this cache. I noted this in my comments on the cache.

This took the better part of an hour to reach, look inside the cache, and return. Upon returning to the visitor's center, 3 young deer were poking around on the edge of the woods. I watched them for a few minutes, but I felt like I was intruding on the privacy of an African American couple, so I left. On the way back to the car, I told a couple of women in their 40's or 50's about the same deer, which really made their day.

All this on the same day I started a new job. Funny part is that the job doesn't seem nearly as cool as this little hour jaunt into the woods.

The Toe

So, yeah, here's my broken toe. The picture on the right is the clearest. I must say it's healed an awful lot more since this picture was taken. I was able to walk several miles on the Washington DC mall last Saturday.

It's subtle (unless you have actually looked at more than a half-dozen x-rays in your life, unlike myself). In the right picture, look for the point extruding from the larger bone connecting to the base of my foot (what I think is the proximal phalanx of the big toe). There's a darkened smudge, in the shape of a right triangle with a little dongle added to the right portion. That's my break.

Remember that the right foot is used for the gas pedal. And that I drove about 1/2 of the distance from Nebraska to Virginia, or about 500 miles of the 1000 mile trip.

I don't care what you think, for I Rule. (heh)

Besides this little smattering of toe related stuff, I've taken up geocaching. I finally found the cache that's roughly 500 feet from my hotel room. It was hidden a little better than I thought it would be. Sarah and I found some "virtual caches" tucked in around Washington DC. One of them forced me to go inside the Smithsonian Castle, which I otherwise would have simply looked at from the outside.

If you have a GPS, I highly recommend this fun activity.

Geocaching - First Shot

Wwwwwell, I haven't posted in a while. Not that I've been that busy, but just that I haven't had much to report. I've been doing a lot of posting on www.criticker.com, and my ultimate goal there is to list a review with every movie I have ranked. So far, of the 2500+ movies I've ranked, I have reviewed fewer than 100.

Anyhow, I was looking up various geocaching locations, and one of the sites is, oh, about 300 paces from my hotel room. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. However, I'm going to put a sticker on the back of one of the signs, and essentially do my "own" geocache...or just modify the other guy's cache.

Besides this, Sarah and I are going to ride the Metro for the first time tomorrow. Wheee!! I'll tell you how it goes. Take care, and say hi if you see me on the train. I'll probably have my black "FUL" hat on.

- Aaron

Science in Urination

Not For Air

Oh, how I love these. They're not bad...it's just a normal cartoon with a bleeper.

1980's cartoon montages, yet again.

Weird Soundtrack

There's an eclectic mix of songs that have sort of come to me recently that would make a strange soundtrack. Here they are:





I'll woolgather a while.

Da Da Da (Latin version)

Live in 1982


And the Pepsi commercial

Bad Tattoos