The Agrinautica

   Leaving here in a few hours for New York City (Brooklyn -- land of boxes of rain!). Will be there until Thursday.
   Thursday (the 14th), my friend Kerri and I are flying to Barcelona. We'll lurk around there until the 21st, and then we take the train to Zaragoza* until the 25th. Back to Barcelona and from there back to New York on the 26th. Returning to Southern California on the 30th.
   Also hopefully during one of the New York portions I'll be able to rent a car (I hear they have "zip cars" like in SF that are easy to rent?) and convey myself up to Rochester, NY. It's an eight hour drive but it's pleasant, and while I'm over there it seems like a small price to pay to see relatives I often don't see for years.


   * it's got nothing to do with why we chose to go to Zaragoza, but I find it amusing that the one location in continental Europe I set an entry in for LJ Idol is Zaragoza and now I'm going there.


Picture of the Day

Kerri, wearing my jaunty cap in a Flagstaff train station

   After spending only one full day back in OC since the last adventure, last Saturday I trotted down to the local train station and purchased a train ticket.
   "4:37 to Flagstaff please" I said. "THATS IN TEN MINUTES!!" exclaimed the ticket agent. He complained that the train was "99% full" and that he was getting me the last ticket availalbe and that next time I should book a week in advance (psh if I wanted to do that I'd FLY), but I got a ticket and hopped on the train.
   13 hours later I stepped off the train into the snowey pre-dawn air of 7,000 feet in Flagstaff. Its a good thing I chose to take the train, since the highway in and the local airport were both snowed in! 120 trains a day doesn't give the tracks enough time to build up snow between trains though.

   We got another foot of snow in Flagstaff the next day. I think it'd been three years since I'd last been in snow! So there was the making of snowmen and snow angels and such. Got to see many of my friends in Flagstaff, and Vern, one of my favourite people, even drove up from Phoenix to hang out with all of us Friday evening.
   Once the road and cleared a bit later in the week Kerri & I drove down the mountain to the town of Sedona where there was no snow so we could hike about.

   Altogether, it was an excellent adventure.

   This past weekend (Saturday to Tuesday morning) was the Amwest Model UN conference in Las Vegas. This year I went as a delegate .. with the Northern Arizona University (NAU) delegation.
   I knew it was going to be a good conference when by the first morning I had to search three different rooms and STILL couldn't for the life a me find my pants.


   But starting at the beginning, I did in fact end up driving up there Friday Evening. I'd barely been there probably half an hour before the whole NAU delegation was dancing on tables at the Octoberfest themed Hofbrau House restaurant (their leader was even wearing lederhosen). It was good times.
   While I knew a lot of the NAU delegation already, one might expect it might be awkward to be thrown in as an outsider with a group of people who all go to school together and such ... not so at all! I felt totally at home in the group as if they really were my own delegation, they're great.

   Anyway, later that evening we all ended up hanging out in the hot tub for awhile. And so, the reason I couldnt' find my pants the next (Monday) morning was because I had changed into my swim trunks at some point you see. Still it was mysterious and I didn't find them until the devious miss Kerri White thought to call the my phone, which was in the pants' pocket.

   Also I gotta mention right off that I totally am in love with the breakfast the Embassy Suites always has ... their made-to-order omelettes never disappoint! and is definitely the only conference where I'm without fail out of bed an hour before committee starts (though I might still be late if I'm savouring my omelette).

   Anyway, I was Finland in Human Rights. Committee was pretty good. A lot of good people but no one really dominating, which made it a healthy competition for everyone else. Actually Indonesia looked like a shoe-in for an award early on but shot himself in the foot by vehemently calling another delegate retarded (in fact, you could say he blew his foot right off).
   Our chairs was pretty decent. They just took a ridiculouly long time to review resolutions and get them back to us, thus causing the entire committee to have nothing to do for about two hours one of the evenings. The "problems" they identified in resolutions and required us to change were frequently rather ridiculous.
   For example, with ten minutes left of committee on that last day they told us we HAD to change "Noting that in addition to being clear and direct, discrimination can be the indirect, unintended consequence of language or other policies," to "Noting that in addition to being clear and direct, discrimination can be the unintended and indirect consequence of language or other policies," so that the two clauses would be parallel. Thats a great thing to worry about if you're writing a poem or some crap, but its not even an actual grammer RULE, its just a concept of literary aesthetics!! And personally, I prefer it the original way since "unintended consequence" is an established phrase (and "clear and direct" sounds better than "direct and clear").

   Most evenings much of NAU (including myself) could be found in the hot tub after committee, and then people would go maraud the strip. Now I actually have a pretty good record of not going to the strip at all for the last several Amwests, but Miss White and an army interrogator managed to get me down there one evening. Also I accompanied a friend from Saddleback to the Hard Rock Cafe Casino which was across the street from our hotel, and literally after being tehre for five minutes and putting $20 in the slot machine, she won $1,140!!! That was pretty awesome. (Knowing she wasn't going to beat THAT we both immediately left the casino)


   Amwest is put on by an organization called PAXMUN. PAXMUN puts on a number of other conferences. The staff for the other conferences largely have a high level of overlap, which I think is extremely healthy in terms of the staff having a sense of community and being very experienced at how things are done in PAXMUN. AMWEST however, has nearly zero overlap with any of the other PAXMUN conference staffs. In particular, a weirdly high proportion of their staff seems to come from Chico. Many regular PAXMUN staffers were already rather suspicious of this prior to this conference's awards.
   Chico State got 12 of 17 research awards (and they added ten more research awards than are normally given out, which my sources tell me was an attempt to hide the fact that Chico got so many awards) and BOTH the "Delegation" Awards (which go to the country that had the best delegates representing it. Effectively and usually seen as a school-wide award, two of Chico's countries were awarded which is totally fubar). After awards everyone was talking about how ridiculous they were, and some people were vowing their school would never return to this joke of a Chico-love-fest.
   The only upshot in that is I'm hoping that this fiasco will cause the Board to mandate that they involve more of the regular PAXMUN staff in the conference.

   Anyway, it was great to see everyone again. Vern, I don't know what I would have done without you. (=
   I won an award for NAU, which I feel justified my existence a little bit. (=

   Driving back I ran into Pasedena City College at a random gas station in the middle of nowhere near Baker ("hey, this is NOT the way to NAU" -Professor Harris "I'm um, lost." -Me), and then again while I was eatign at the Mad Greek Restaurant in Baker they came in. Also communicated with the UCI group a bit about traffic since they were sixty miles ahead of me on the same route (Saddleback presumably was on the same route as well).


Back in the Law Mines
   Wednesday I started my first day at this new law firm. They put me in a huge corner office! ...only because its occupent was gone for the weekend already and they wanted somewhere they could close the door and not disturb people to train me. Anyway, it was a half day because of the impending holiday, and half the office was gone for the weekend already, so it was super chill there, which made it an excellent time to ease into the new job.


   And today is Thanksgiving. I think I'm going to have dinner with Bob from Beebusters, and tomorrow I'll catch up with my family at the cabin in Tweedy. Happy Tryptophane Day everyone.