Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 128

The Art of Being Furiously Happy

My wish for today is that everyone watches this, and gets inspired:

The Bloggess is amazing.

"There's only one rule that I know of, babies: Goddamn it, you've got to be kind."

The list of Stuff I Need to Write About just keeps getting bigger and bigger ... so instead of trying to tackle it right now, I give you this, from my Twittersbox a little bit ago:

When you're fortunate enough to have success and love what you do, you have a choice: Be kind and grateful, or be a dick. I choose the first.

When I see someone who is successful, whose work I enjoy, treat other people badly, it just makes me sick inside, and sad for them.

So I do my best to live by example, treat everyone with kindness, and never lose perspective on how lucky I am. Okay, thanks for listening.

It's easy to be a dick, to never be happy with what you have, and to treat someone else's success as your failure ... but how does that make you happier? How does that make you feel good about yourself? Every single day, we have hundreds of opportunities to make a choice: Kindess or Cruelty, Gratitude or Bitterness, Generosity or Selfishness ... the list goes on and on forever.

Our lives are the result of our choices, and every choice we make affects another person, often in ways we can't even imagine.

...so what kind of life do you choose to live?

(title quote from Kurt Vonnegut)

In which my son and I make our own beer

Ryan is going to be 22 at the end of the month. For those of you who have been here since I wrote the 13 on 31 post, you now know how I feel every single day. The rest of you can get off my lawn before I call your parents.

So the other day, he and I were having a beer together, and Ryan said, "We should make our own beer while I'm home this summer."

I tried homebrewing once when I was about Ryan's age, and it ended ... poorly ... I've wanted to try again, but I've always been intimidated by what I remembered was a complex and peril-fraught process. When Ryan suggested that we do this, though, the excitement and joy of doing something together gave me a natural 20 on my Save Versus Fear. Besides, even if it's a spectacular failure, it's still something we did together, something we can bond over, and something that will stay with us -- success or failure -- for the rest of our lives.

"That would be the most awesome father/son activity, ever," I said. "Plus, we get beer when we're finished!"

The next morning, we did a little research online, and the entire process actually looked a lot simpler and more straightforward that I remembered it being coughmumble years ago when I was 22. As long as we could follow a recipe and do our fermentation in a place that was temperature-controlled, we'd probably be able to make some beer that didn't suck.

We found a local homebrewing supply store, and went there yesterday to get our kit and ingredients.

The late afternoon had given way to early evening, but it was still 90 degrees as we parked the car and walked up the sidewalk toward the shop.

"I'm really excited about this," I said, partially because it was true, and partially because I needed to calm the nerves that were working themselves up. What if they laughed at us when we walked in? What if whoever worked there wasn't interested in helping a couple of noobs get started? What if I said something stupid and embarrassed my son?

"Yep," Ryan said.

'Yep'? That's it? 'Yep'? Not "Me too dad this will be awesome!" Not "Yeah, I'm looking forward to this, too." Not even, "Don't embarrass me, dude." Just 'yep'. Okay, Wil, don't blow this.

We walked into the store. It was cool inside, and smelled delightful from all the different types of grain that were in tubs along the walls. A man sat behind a counter at the far side of the room, reading a computer screen. I took a breath, and decided that it was go time.

"Hi," I said, "I tried homebreaing once about 15 years ago, and it was a disaster. My son's home for the summer, though, and we wanted to make our own beer together. Can you help us get started?"

He looked up at me, and smiled. "Sure, just give me one minute."

Awesome.

For the next twenty minutes or so, he literally and figuratively walked us through the entire process, showing us equipment and ingredients, and explaining in simple and precise terms exactly how the whole thing worked. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this guy could cast Dispel Fear as a free action, because by the time he was done, I felt like I was ready to go home and start brewing right away.

"Is there one type of beer that's more difficult than another?"

"Not really," he said. "Most of the beers you're going to make are pretty simple and forgiving. The hardest thing to make, honestly, is something like Budweiser."

Before I could say, "I said beer," he continued: "That's a very pale lager that doesn't leave much margin for error."

So they make that shit taste that way on purpose? And it's difficult? Wow, I learned something today.

"What about a California-style Pale Ale?" I asked, hopefully.

"That's very easy," he told us, "it's one of the most popular styles." He gave us a recipe to follow, and helped us pick out the various ingredients to make it. I thought it was really cool that he didn't just show us where things were, but also explained to us what made each specialty grain unique, how different types yeast worked, and the benefits and risks associated with each one. I never felt like he was trying to sell us anything, but that he was educating and truly helping us. It was really great.

Ryan and I gathered up all our individual ingredients, including Caramel 10L, Caramel 40L, and Columbus and Cascade hops. We paid for everything, and I thanked the guy on our way out.

The whole way home, we talked about what we'd just learned, and I may have repeated several times that I was excited to get started and do this together.

We're going to do our brewing on Sunday, so we can continue to research and learn about the proper way to make it go. I asked Twitter for advice on forums, and here are the most frequently-recommended sites:

Homebrewtalk, especially the beginner's forum.
/r/homebrewing at Reddit.
Midwest Homebrewing.
Hopville.
Alton Brown on Homebrewing. (For the record, I

this is really gross. you have been warned.

There is a tree near my house, that has probably been there for years, just doing its tree thing, watching patiently as families come and go, empires rise and fall, and Isengard is flooded. I'm sure it's a beautiful tree, cheerfully trading carbon dioxide for oxygen, providing shade, and most likely supporting several birds and squirrels. It's a lovely tree, I'm sure ... but I hate that motherfucker because I am super allergic to whatever pollen or voodoo or evil waves of itching sneezing bullshit it emits. I've seen doctors and witch doctors and oracles and psychics* about it, and all anyone's been able to do for me is suggest I take an antihistimine (Oh? Really? Thanks, medical professionals! I never would have thought of that on my own!) and ... well, that's just about all I can do, so just pay the receptionist on your way out, Wil.

In the course of your life, you have probably come across someone with allergies. It's possible that this person has told you that having allergies is awesome**. That person is a liar.

You see, in addition to the itching all over my skin, the sneezing and coughing all the time, and the general annoyance that accompanies being constantly under assault from a fucking tree***, I have a severe case of what a specialist calls "allergic rhinitis." Translated into English: I snore like a beast, and there's nothing I can do about it.

It's warm and humid right now, which apparently makes the trees really horny, because I've just been dying the last couple of days. I'm snoring so badly, I've temporarily relocated myself to the pull out sofa in my office, so that Anne can get a good night's sleep, and I don't have to wake up every time she does because I can't stop snoring godammit.

The thing is, the cats have their litter box and their food and stuff in my office, and over the last couple of days, I've found out that my cat Watson likes to eat dry food right about 5am, and then take a giant toxic nuclear shit as soon as he's done.

Yeah, you're probably going "eeeewwww gross" right now, but at least you haven't been woken up twice in two days by the suffocating Cloud of Cat Shit Stench**** like I have, so maybe keep a little perspective, gang.

Anyway, the whole point of this sordid tale is this: when Watson woke me up this morning by punching me in the face from inside my nose, I thought this would be pretty funny: "Me: Dude, come on, cat. Your toxic shit is suffocating me over here! Cat: I CAN HAZ-MAT? Me: Yes. Yes you can."

I know, it's a long way to go for a silly joke that isn't even that funny four hours later in the cold light of day, but the important thing is that I just wrote about 500 words for the sole purpose of joking about cat poop.

 

*Not really. Psychics are bullshit con artists who prey on vulnerable people.

** I don't know why someone would say that, but I also don't know why someone would go see a Michael Bay movie on purpose, so maybe I'm not exactly making a whole lot of sense right now.

*** Get it? Fucking tree? Because the pollenating tree is, literally, a "fucking" tree, but it's also just a fucking tree because I hate it. Like I said, I'm not making a whole lot of sense right now.

**** That's a level 4 monster from Monster Manual II, though having encountered it I think it should have been in the Fiend Folio

 

tamed by the purr of a jaguar

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. I had no idea so many new readers were visiting my blog; I'd just assumed that the Internet had gotten bored with me, moved on to whatever the new hotness is, and I was writing for the few, the proud, the geeky who had been here forever.

Knowing that there are a significant number of you who are new to my words is incredibly inspiring to me, and I woke up early this morning (not my choice - more on that in a second) feeling pretty excited to fire up Typepad and write in my blog. I haven't felt like that in a long, long time. So thank you to those of you who have been here for a while, and thank you to those of you who are recent arrivals. I hope to make it worth your while to spend some of your time with me.

So let's talk about this morning, shall we? Last night, I celebrated the 4th of July the way the founding fathers intended: I went to the Hollywood Bowl with my wife, our son, his girlfriend and our good friend BURNS! (his actual name, with the ! and everything) to see Hall & Oates perform with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

It was a very short concert, because of the 10pm noise curfew, but it was still a whole lot of fun. Initially, Ryan and I thought that Darryl Hall looked like Hasselhoff, but we later decided that he actually looks sort of like Thor, if Thor were a rocker. Oates doesn't have his epic moustache, and I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: a little bit of me died inside when I saw that.

But then I was clapping along with Private Eyes (CLAP!)* and I didn't seem to mind all that much.

Even though we took the Red Line to Hollywood like intelligent people who don't want to spend an extra fifty hours** waiting to get the hell out of Hollywood, we still didn't get home until almost 11. We were all pretty amped up from the fireworks and clapping along with Hall & Oates, so we were all awake well after midnight. I actually ended up reading comic books in bed until almost 2, before drifting off to sleep to dream of maneaters and the M-E-T-H-O-D-O-F-L-O-V-E.

Four hours later, at six fucking o fucking clock in the fucking morning, my asshole cat decided that he was going to chase a ping pong ball around my bedroom, jump up onto my bed and attack my feet, and then make that one particular sound all cat -- I almost said "owners" but we all know the correct term is "staff" -- hear when the cat wants to go outside. So I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door for him to go do whatever the hell a cat does at six fucking o fucking clock in the fucking morning ... which, as it turns out, is make that same noise again ten minutes later until I let him back into the house.

And that's the story of how I only got six four*** hours of sleep last night, but don't really care because I woke up feeling energized and excited, knowing that writing silly stuff in my blog is actually worth the effort, because you -- yes, you -- are still coming around to read it, even if it's only a stupid story about my cat.****

* They're watching you (CLAPCLAP!)

** Duration possibly exaggerated for comedic and editorial effect.

*** Okay, maybe I'm a little more tired than I originally thought. Also, math is hard.

**** But the writing is the thing, even if it's something stupid about my cat. I have to get this stuff out of the way so I can write the good stuff.

Because it's become a yearly tradition, here's a story about fireworks

I've written hundreds of thousands of words over the years, but this remains one of my all-time favorites, so I like to revisit it every year. It was originally written and published on July 5, 2002, which usually feels like years and days ago all at once, but this year actually feels like a lifetime away.

If this is your first time reading this story, leave me a comment, if you don't mind. I'm curious to know if you're a longtime reader, or a relatively new one. Thanks!

Fireworks

When I was growing up, we always spent Fourth of July with my father's aunt and uncle, at their fabulous house in Toluca Lake.

It was always a grand affair and I looked forward to spending each Independence Day listening to Sousa marches, swimming in their enormous pool and watching a fireworks show on the back patio.

This fireworks display was always exciting because we were in the middle of LA County, where even the most banal of fireworks – the glow worms – are highly illegal and carried severe fines and the threat of imprisonment, should we be discovered by LA's finest. The excitement of watching the beautiful cascade of sparks and color pouring out of a Happy Flower With Report was enhanced  by the knowledge that we were doing something forbidden and subversive.

Yes, even as a child I was already on my way to being a dangerous subversive. Feel free to talk to any of my middle-school teachers if you doubt me.

Each year, the older children, usually teenagers and college-aged, would be chosen to light the fireworks and create the display for the rest of the family.

I was Chosen in 1987, three weeks before my fifteenth birthday.

The younger cousins, with whom I'd sat for so many years, would now watch me the way we'd watched Tommy, Bobby, Richard and Crazy Cousin Bruce, who always brought highly illegal firecrackers up from Mexico.

I was going to be a man in the eyes of my family.

This particular 4th of July was also memorable because it was the first 4th that was celebrated post-Stand By Me and at the time I had become something of a mini-celebrity around the family. Uncles who had never talked to me before were asking me to sign autographs for people at work, older cousins who had bullied me for years were proclaiming me "cool," and I was the recipient of a lot of unexpected attention.

I was initially excited to get all this newfound attention, because I'd always wanted to impress my dad's family and make my dad proud, but deep down I felt like it was all a sham. I was the same awkward kid I'd always been and they were treating me differently because of celebrity, which I had already realized was fleeting and bullshit.

Looking back on it now, I think the invitation to light fireworks may have had less to do with my age than it had to do with my growing fame . . . but I didn't care. Fame is fleeting . . . but it can get a guy some cool stuff from time to time, you know? I allowed myself to believe that it was just a coincidence.

The day passed as it always did. There were sack races, basket ball games and water balloon tosses, all of which I participated in, but with a certain impatience. These yearly events were always fun, to be sure, but they were standing directly between me and the glorious excitement of pyrotechnic bliss.

Finally, the sun began to set. Lawn chairs were arranged around the patio, wet swimsuits were traded for warm, dry clothes, and I bid my brother and sister farewell as I joined my fellow firework lighters near the corner of the house. I walked casually, like someone who had done this hundreds of times before.

As the sun sank lower and lower, sparklers were passed out to everyone, even the younger children. I politely declined, my mind absolutely focused on the coming display. I wanted to make a big impression on the family. I was going to start out with something amazing, which would really grab their attention. I'd start with some groundflowers, then a Piccolo Pete and a sparkling cone. From then on, I'd just improvise with the older cousins, following their lead as we worked together to weave a spectacular tapestry of burning phosphor and gunpowder for five generations of family.

Dusk arrived, the family was seated, and the great display began. Some of the veteran fireworks lighters went first, setting off some cascading fountains and a pinwheel. The assembled audience cheered and gasped its collective approval, and it was my turn.

I steeled myself and walked to the center of the large patio, casually kicking aside the still-hot remains of just-fired fountains. Casually, like someone who had done this hundreds of times before.

My hands trembled slightly, as I picked up three ground flowers that I'd wound together. My thumb struck flint and released flaming butane. I lit the fuse and became a man. The sparkling fire raced toward the ignition point and rather than following the directions to "LIGHT FUSE, PUT ON GROUND AND GET AWAY," I did something incredibly stupid: I casually tossed the now-flaming bundle of pyrotechnics on the ground. Casually, like someone who'd done this hundreds of times before.

The bundle of flowers rolled quickly across the patio, toward my captive and appreciative audience.

Two of the flowers ignited and began their magical dance of colorful fire on the cement, while the third continued to roll, coming to rest in the grass beneath the chair of a particularly old and close-to-death great-great-great aunt.

The colored flame which was creating such a beautiful and harmless display on the patio was spraying directly at this particular matriarch, the jet of flame licking obscenely at the bottom of the chair.

The world was instantly reduced to a few sounds: My own heartbeat in my ears, the screams of the children seated near my great-great-great aunt and the unmistakable zip of the now-dying flowers on the patio.

I don't know what happened, but somehow my great-great-great aunt, who'd managed to survive every war of the 20th century, managed to also survive this great mistake of mine. She was helped to her feet and she laughed.

Unfortunately, she was the only one who was laughing. One of my dad's cousins, who was well into his 20s and never attended family gatherings accompanied by the same date, sternly ripped the lighter from my hand and ordered me back to the lawn, to sit with the other children. Maybe I could try again next year, when I was "more responsible and not such a careless idiot."

I was crushed. My moment in the family spotlight was over before it had even begun and not even the glow of pseudocelebrity could save me.

I carefully avoided eye contact, as I walked slowly, humiliated and embarrassed, back to the lawn, where I tried not to cry. I know the rest of the show unfolded before me, but I don't remember it. All I could see was a mental replay of the bundle of ground flowers rolling across the patio. If that one rogue firework hadn't split off from its brothers, I thought, I would still be up there for the finale, which always featured numerous pinwheels and a Chinese lantern.

When the show was over, I was too embarrassed to apologize and I raced away before the patio lights could come on. I spent the rest of the evening in the front yard, waiting to go home.

The following year I was firmly within the grip of sullen teenage angst and spent most of the festivities with my face planted firmly in a book -Foundation or something, most likely- and I watched the fireworks show with the calculated disinterest of a 15-year-old.

That teenage angst held me in its grasp for the next few years and I even skipped a year or two, opting to attend some parties where there were girls who I looked at, but never had the courage to talk to.

By the time I had achieved escape velocity from my petulant teenage years, Aunt Betty and Uncle Dick had sold the house and 4th of July would never happen with them again.

The irony is not lost on me, that I wanted so badly to show them all how grown up I was, only to behave more childishly than ever the following years.

This 4th of July, I sat on the roof of my friend Darin's house with Anne and the boys and watched fireworks from the high school. Nolan held my hand and Ryan leaned against me as we watched the Chamber of Commerce create magic in the sky over La Crescenta.

I thought back to that day, 15 years ago and once again I saw the groundflower roll under that chair and try to ignite great-great-great aunt whatever her name was.

Then I looked down at Nolan's smiling face, illuminated in flashes of color.

"This is so cool, Wil!" he declared, "Thanks for bringing us to watch this."

"Just be glad you're on a roof and not in a lawn chair," I told him.

"Why?"

"Well . . . " I began to tell him the story, but we were distracted by a particularly spectacular aerial flower of light and sparks.

In that moment, I realized that no matter how hard I try, I will never get back that day in 1987, nor will I get to relive the sullen years afterward . . . but I do get to sit on the roof with my wife and her boys now and enjoy 4th of July as a step-dad . . . at least until the kids hit the sullen years themselves.

Then I'm going to sit them in lawn chairs and force them to watch me light groundflowers.

Is this something you can share with the rest of us Amazing Larry?!

Anne went to bed before I was tired last night. Being a good husband who doesn't want to get The Wrath, I opted to head into my office on the other side of the house to watch a little TV before I went to sleep, instead of sitting in our bed and watching TV there. (Yes, we live in a house that is filled with televisions; it's part of the new cruelty.)

As I scrolled through the channel guide, I wondered, as I so often do, how it's possible to fill up almost 800 channels with nothing but absolute dogshit ... and then I saw it, on HDNet: Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

I love this movie so much, I wish I could marry it (and then go into the other room to watch The Three Amigos when it goes to sleep before I'm tired.) It is one of the very rare perfect movies. The score is perfect. The cinematography is perfect. The script is perfect. The acting, editing, and directing are all perfect. I can't think of many movies from 1985 (holy shit, 1985) that hold up at all today, let alone hold up as perfectly as this one, that, we have established, is perfect.

While I watched the movie, I Twittered about it a little bit, because that's the way we do things here in the year 2525. When I woke up this morning and checked my e-mail, I saw that my friend Joel had seen my Twittering, and was inspired -- nay, compelled -- to create this:

 

I told him that the Internet needed to see this right away ... and he responded that, while I was sleeping, it had already become today's comic, as if by magic.

The kids seem to enjoy the Fighting Time Lords T-shirt we made, so I told Joel that I thought it should be a T-shirt. What do you think?

the value of a quarter

Last week, I took my car to one of those car washes at the gas station. When I was waiting to pull in, I saw that for the low low price of one dollar more, I could upgrade my wash options from four useless things to seven useless things.

Obviously, I reached into my change box (some of you may know it by its other name: the ashtray) and pulled out four quarters. The instant those quarters hit my hand, nostalgia took over, and those four quarters were much more than a dollar. I held, in my hand, a ticket to the year 2084, a summons to save the galaxy from Space Invaders, a map to an endless dungeon where shots do not hurt other players (yet), and the keys to a car that was one weapons van away from kicking serious ass.

I looked into the change box and counted at least a dozen quarters. There were probably more buried beneath them.

12 year-old me would have wet his pants by now, if he had access to this many quarters at once, I thought. Once again, I resolved to earn The Fuck You Money, so I can one day open my very own classic 80s arcade, where quarters matter and the jukebox doesn't play anything released after 1987.

I couldn't bring myself to drop those four quarters into the car wash. On the way home, I could feel the disdainful looks from other drivers who had put seven usless things into their car wash ... but I didn't care. I'm certainly not going to be judged by someone who doesn't know the value of a quarter.

i've got one more silver dollar

I'm taking a break from my online traffic school (shorter traffic school: Don't be a dick, and slow the fuck down).

I got a ticket recently when I misunderstood some confusing lane lines in Burbank. I thought they were telling me I could turn right from the two right-most lanes, but the friendly police officer who pulled me over told me that they were telling me the second-to-right lane could only go straight. I probably could have fought it in court, but I'm so goddamn busy these days, I just opted to do traffic school (I haven't been pulled over, much less gotten a ticket, in over 10 years).

I think traffic school is kind of a scam, just another way to suck even more money out of us when we make a stupid mistake while driving, but I'm glad the option is there, especially after I asked my insurance company how much my rates would go up if I didn't use it. The entire experience is much better now than it was when I last did it. Sitting in my office, listening to as many live recordings of the Allman Brothers Band I can get from Rhapsody, next to an open window that lets in the warm summer breeze is certainly better than the old way of doing things.

Most of the things it tells me are pure common sense, and I appreciate that whoever wrote this particular course seems to be aware of this, so it isn't condescending or insulting. The stock photos from the 1970s are pretty sweet, too.

===

Before I get back to online traffic school, here are a couple things from today:

Some douche took Ruth's free Lovecraft book, stripped out her introduction, and is selling it in the Kindle store without attribution. Things like this make me all kinds of stabby. Someone on Tumblr thinks she should just be happy that someone thought her work was good enough to steal and sell. I don't even know what to say to that, because I find that idea so profoundly stupid and wrong, I get ranty.

Twitter is rolling out its new photo integration, in partnership with Photobucket. Considering the recent TwitPic fiasco, I wondered what Twittter said about copyright and ownership. It appears that Twitter is unambiguous about it (we own the rights the way we own our  Tweets), but what Twitter is saying is pretty clearly contradicted in Photobucket's TOS. I'm not sure what rights situation would take precedence, but common sense makes me think it would be Photobucket's, since they're hosting. If that's the case, it's another non-starter for me. That's a bummer.

-- THE ICE CREAM MAN IS DRIVING UP MY STREET RIGHT NOW!! --

Sorry. Pavlovian response that is as old as time for me.

I wonder why more photo/video hosting sites don't just give users the ability to choose a Creative Commons license (the way Flickr does), because I think that would eliminate the entire issue. Probably because it gets in the way of those sites making money, and the rule of thumb these days is that any service that is cool and free is actually treating its users as products instead of customers. I get that, and as long as we're going in with our eyes wide open, we can all make our own decisions. Still, I'd like to apply the Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike license to all my uploaded pictures, and I hope Twitter will work out something like that.

Alternatively, Twitter integration with imgur would be pretty rad.

I'm back from my blogging vacation, and I have a list of things to post about this week, so it should be fun. I've enjoyed the break, but I also miss the writing.

Okay, time to go back to learning stuff I already know so I can pass the test (here's how much of a geek I am: I know that I can pass with 80%, but I'm determined to get 100%. Some things never change.)

all dressed up with nowhere to go

The audiobook I performed last week is called Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. I don't know how many of you reading this today were around in the old days of WWdN (lots, I hope!), but if you were, you may remember when I linked to Ernie's spoken world on Fark. Ernie told me in an e-mail that he was so overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response, it gave him the courage to start the outline that would eventually become Ready Player One.

So that's kind of awesome.

Ernie wrote on his blog about the process of choosing me to perform the book, which says so many nice things about me, I can't quote it without feeling weird ... but I'll happily link to it, in the hopes that at least some of you will explore the rest of his website, because it's full of really great stuff. And, hey, Hipsters? You want to familiarize yourself with Ernie's going to blow up when this book comes out in August, so you can tell everyone that you were into him before that happened. Also, his work is just fucking brilliant.

===

I wanted to take a moment and thank the guys at UPS in Phoenix who worked so hard to find my books when they were lost during Phoenix Comicon. A bunch of drivers stayed after hours to dig though packages looking for it, and the shipping manager there worked when he wasn't on the clock to track them down. A lot of people put in a lot of effort to correct an epic failure, and I didn't find out until after the fact that they weren't in there because I was some guy with a blog, or some guy who is on TV; they were in there because I'm some guy who does a lot of work with the Child's Play charity, and one of them (who probably wants to remain anonymous) has a child who directly benefited from the things Child's Play does.

I'm sure corporate and the UPS PR department wanted this to be resolved, and I'm not going to pretend that that didn't matter, but I also know that the guys who dug through trucks in the Arizona heat on a holiday weekend were the ones who eventually got it done.

So I wanted to publicly say THANK YOU to all of them.

===

One last thing before I go (I'm supposed to be on Internet-vacation until next Saturday): my brother is frakking hilarious.