Astoria

Earlier in October, GF and I decided to take a Sunday trip to Astoria. See, I've been hyping the crap out of that place for as long as I can remember. I've wanted to visit there ever since seeing Kindergarten Cop back in the early 90's (it might have had something to do with hoping that Penelope Ann Miller lived there, I don't know). And then after seeing The Ring 2 I knew I just had to go.


I had a chance to go there around the year 2000 when I was living in Portland, but it was one of those whirlwind trips where we went for a few hours with my sister and her husband, so we didn't really spend a whole lot of time in one place and never really felt like I was able to soak up anything for long enough to make any kind of impression. Seriously, the main thing I remember was stopping at a Walmart or some similar kind of place on our way back home. See, that's where we actually spent the longest amount of time, while buying snacks and using the restrooms.


I wanted to take GF there to show her how awesome it might be as a potential place to live one day. I mean come on, The Ring 2 was filmed and took place there. Couldn't be more perfect to me.


We roll into town at about 10:30am or something, and after stopping in at a McDonald's for a much needed pee break and purchasing of coffee-like beverages, we headed straight for the Astoria Column.

Astoria Column

Last time I was there, you couldn't have paid me enough to climb up that thing. But this time, GF and I went straight up to check out the views.

Downtown Astoria. Yeah, that's all of it.

The weather, by the way, was freaking perfect. It rained a little on the drive up, but by the time we got there it was a perfect shade of overcast. The Column is perched on top of a hill and you can pretty much see forever in all directions. When we first got there, there was a guy up on top talking to his daughter on the ground who was apparently too skittish to make the trek to the top. We went on about how he was pretty sure he could see Japan from his vantage point and that she was going to regret not being able to see Japan for herself. I don't know, it struck me as infinitely funny. But while he was up there I was amazed at how well I could hear him, even when he was obviously speaking in a relatively normal voice.

Facing west. Weird huge island thing in the distance.

The overcastness and foggness that was happening all over the place was pretty awesome. It made everything seem kind of spooky in a bad-ass kind of way. I love spooky. This was like a down-home spookiness.

Close up of huge island/peninsula. I like thinking it was biological in origin.

Oh and by the way, there were more trees visible from the top of this column thing than I have ever seen anywhere ever. Brazilian rain forest? You can have it. I'll take Northwest Ball Rocking Awesomeness any day of the week.

From the top, people looked like human-sized bipedal well-accessorized ants.

I really thought I'd be freaking out more up there, but it was relatively calm. I didn't really have any problems up there. Getting up there on the other hand was a bit of a workout for my old, tired legs and gasping, wheezing lungs. And don't even get me started on the trek down the steps. There were something like 700,000 stairs or some crap. Ridiculous. And uncalled for. If you're going to make something retardedly tall, try not to be such a douche and at least put an elevator in it or something. Rude.

GF is mighty.

I don't know why I didn't upload any pictures facing in other directions, since looking east was pretty cool too. Lots of trees and stuff. And clouds. They were being all epic and bad ass too. Oh wait...

Fifty thousand shades of grey in one sky. Thanks, nature!

This is a shot facing kind of southeast. See? Trees, right? Buttlodes of them. And sky as far as the eye could see. And I'm guessing even further than that, since there was a pretty thick cloud cover and all. Yup.

Our next stop was backtracking a bit to some beach where there was a shipwreck or something. On our way there we saw a sign for a military cemetary and just had to find out what that was all about. We ended up driving through some backwoods military housing dump with lots of houses with car parts in their yards and such crap. When we finally got to the "cemetary, it was at the end of a cul de sac (if you can actually have a cul de sac on a dirt road) and locked up. It looked like it had about 20 graves in it, none of them particularly interesting at all. I couldn't get over why they would even advertise it around town if a) you had to drive through a horror movie neighborhood to get to it, and b) you couldn't get into it at all anyway. Oh well, whatever.

So we bailed that failure and headed for the beach. It was GF's first time back to the ocean since March, and after living right up the street from it for forever back in San Diego, she kinda missed it a smidge.

Now when I hear the word "shipwreck," I'm expecting something the size of the Empire State Building laying on the beach. I had no idea what to expect. Apparently this thing has been sitting on the beach for literally over a hundred years. Seriously. Like I'm not even being funny. It's been there for over a hundred years. Let's just say that there's not a whole crap of a lot left of it anymore. But we saw pictures of it just after it happened, and it was pretty impressive and intimidating. I love history.

GF is a giant.

I love that picture more than most things ever. I have no idea where that little man came from, or what he wanted from us Earthlings at the beach. Maybe it was a midget Bigfoot. Midgetfoot.

Spies.

These two people were apparently hovering around us at the Column. GF noticed them atop a sand dune not far from us at the beach, and when I grabbed my camera and pointed it at them, the acted like they were paying attention to something else. I think they wanted my awesome hoodie. No, spies!! My hoodie!!

Sky being awesome.

The whole trip, the sky was rocking all kinds of sky balls.

The Pacific Ocean. The bully of the large bodies of water.

For the most part, the water was well-behaved. But every once in a while it would get a big kick out of chasing us up the beach because it thought it was funny. Very Jr High School there, sir. Not funny.

Weird Monkey-People Rock/Wood.

I was following behind GF (she liked to take off up the beach without warning, which I'm sure was fun for her) when I noticed a weird thing sitting on the beach in front of her. I waited to see what her reaction would be, but she never had one, so I decided to snap a pic just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

Monkey People Wood Rock (highlighted)

Seriously, click on the picture so it blows up to the size of New Hampshire and tell me what the freak I'm looking at!

Saving Private Crabby

There were all kinds of animal casualties on the beach. There were even multiple dead birds. I took pics, but GF thought they were "gross" so I'm trying to show good judgement and not put them here. You're welcome.

More crab carnage: Crabby head-head.

As I mentioned before, one of GF's favorite past times is to take off while I'm staring at something. Case in point: As I was taking a fantastic picture of the above crabby head, I had no idea where she was, other than the fact that before I looked down to take said pic, she was standing  right beside me. I snap 2 pictures, look up to say "Hey, got another pic of another crabby head," (there had been several at this point) and she was nowhere to be seen. I look waaay up the beach and see this...

She's actually about a half mile away.

Another thing we've started to notice along the beach are these weird small jelly balls. They totally didn't look bilogical, but I had no idea. I figured that all the fake whores with implants somehow knew when their implants were going to spit the implants out, so they instinctively headed for the sea to expel their fakeness only to have them all wash up here on this one beach just outside of Astoria. Oceans currents are weird, as we all well know. My other hypothesis, while far less logical, was just as entertaining to me in my own mind. It takes the form of a conversation between two of the jelly balls out at sea (in this scenario, they actually are biological creatures, and as a point of reference, really freaking dumb)...

jelly1 - Hey, I got an idea. Let's go to the beach!

jelly2 - Hey, yeah! Sounds awesome! Where should we go?

jelly1 - I hear Astoria is pretty awesome. Let's go check it out!

jelly2 -Yeah, let's go check it out! Come on everyone!

jellys3-infinity - Okay! Let's go!

After which they all wind up stuck on the beach...

jelly2 - Um, now what?

jelly1 - I don't know. I forgot that we're aquatic.

At which point, they all died. Sad, I know.

Baby jelly ball. About the size of my pinkie-nail. Dead.

Seriously, these things were everywhere. Some really freaking small, some not so small. I think the biggest one we noticed was about the size of a baby. Just kidding. It was a baby. Just kidding. It was about the size of a baby's hand.

Not the big one the size of a baby or it's hand.

GF did some research as to what the crap they were, and it turns out they actually were creatures. But they were clear. Those of you who know me know that I have this weird thing about clear stuff. But this stuff was completely clear and it was creatures. Not just kind of clear like a jellyfish, but completely clear, like bags of water. Weird. Here's a link to what they actually were:

http://www.oceanlight.com/cyclosalpa_affinis_photo.html

And no, I have no idea why they light up at sea and not on beaches. Modesty, I'm guessing.

GF also provided me with another link about them:

http://www.msc.ucla.edu/oceanglobe/pdf/beach_debris_guide.pdf

... and then followed it with the info that Salps is at the end.

Next stop, the Flavel house. People seem to love this place because it was in the Goonies or something (I still haven't seen it). It was built by George Flavel, a bar pilot, who became the first millionaire in the region or something. Nice house. Lots of history. Read more about him online somewhere, and definitely go to this house if you're ever in Astoria.

The back of the Flavel House/Museum.

My favorite part of the house/museum was the lady in the gift shop, which used to be the stables on the southwest corner of the property. She was full of all kinds of trivia, and posed it all in the form of a quiz. "Which member of the Flavel family was on the Titanic?" How the crap should I know? I wasn't even sure of George's first name until a few days later when I was reading through the brochure. She was funny though. And helpful.

Facing northeast, with boats in the background.

The only thing I didn't like about this house were the spiders. Seriously, they were freaking everywhere!! You couldn't turn around without coming face to... when we walked back to the car we had to walk in the middle of the street because they were all over all the bushes. And they weren't the easily ignorable kind, either. Oh no, they had to be the weird, tiger-striped kind that were all twitchy and freaking gross. Good gog, why, lord, why?

After the Flavel house (which, by the way, is pronounced "fluh-VELL" - being a tard, I was pronouncing it "FLA-vl" where the FLA kind of rhymed with the "a" sound in "slap". And by the way, Astoria is pronounced "A-storia" where the "A" rhymes with, well, "ass". It's like "ASS-toria", not like "uh-STOR-ia" which is what I've been doing. Anyway...) we wandered over to the Maritime Museum. I was expecting all kinds of kick ass stuff about the Cloumbia river like all the creatures that lived there and junk, but the whole thing was about boats. I'm not that into boats and neither is GF, so we bailed after about 30 minutes. It was cool, but just not our thing. If you're into boats, go. You'll dig it.

After that we decided to grub it up a bit. We had decided to go to this place called Baked Alaska, so we go there and park. The menu seemed promising. We weren't really all that hungry yet, so we walked around for a bit. The people there are a hoot. OH! And we heard sea lions under the pier so we went to investigate. We were standing there trying to peer under the pier, when all of a sudden, one of them popped his head up right in front of us. Cute as balls, fo sho.

So we go back to the restaurant and are seated with a nice view of the river. GF immediately gets the impression that our waitress doesn't like her. I try to reassure her that the waitress probably has no opinions of us one way or another, as we are merely there to eat. But over the course of the meal GF keeps assuring me that there is indeed weirdness. At one point after we were finished with our entrees, the waitress comes out and says to GF, "are you finished there, because we were back there watching you and didn't think you'd finish your pasta." Weird, right? They were watching her? Weird. The food wasn't good enough for that kind of weirdness. But we decided that since we were in a place called Baked Alaska that we would be remiss of didn't have the baked alaska they had named themselves after. The chef himself brings this thing out, was very kind and cheerful and lays this thing down between us, and holy frog water, this thing was amazing. I need to have it at least once a year. More. MORE.

Our weird dining experience behind us and the sun setting further and further, we decide to take one last trek back up to the Column to see it all lit up and night and junk.

Lit up at night and junk.

There was no way I was going to climb that thing at night, so we walked around and took pics from the hill. Really, we just needed a bathroom before the 2 hour drive home.

Astoria at night. Quaint!!

The later it got, the more things lit up and became more awesome. Because it gets darker when it gets later, or so I'm told. Plus when it gets darker they light things up to make them noticeable and awesome.

Noticeable and awesome.

We never found the Kindergarten Cop school or the Ring 2 locations, but it's not like we're not going back. I want to live in Naomi Watt's house from the Ring. It's not a great house, but it's the Ring 2 house. I think I need to watch the Ring 2 again. Not even because of the Astoria trip, I just love that movie.

Yay, Astoria!

Close Encounters of the Sleepy Kind

In case I've never mentioned it, GF is kinda skittish as far as aliens are concerned. She loves stuff about aliens and all that... she owns Fire in the Sky, but refuses to watch it again. But actual alien stuff freaks her right the crap out.

The other night we were watching Ancient Aliens.

Later that night after having been in bed and sleeping for, oh I don't know, 4 hours, I was laying there about 9% awake, probably because the one cat was being a little dick about something, when all of a sudden GF gasps and bolts partially upright. Of course, this kinda startled me.

"What's wrong?"

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'what's wrong?'."

"No, before that."

"I didn't say anything."

"Sounded like a whisper."

"What did I say?"

"Bug."

That was it. Just "bug." I had no idea how to continue that conversation, since I'm about 99% percent sure that I didn't roll over from my original position of facing away from her, prop myself up onto my elbow, lean over and whisper "bug" into her ear, lay back down, roll back away from her, and completely forget about all of that only to return to my exact original position and 91% asleepness rate. But there is that 1% I suppose.

I just had nowhere to go with the conversation after "bug" so I rolled back over and went back to sleep. Now that I type that out, it seems dismissive. My bad.

Yankee Doodle Neighbor

So we had this neighbor...

Our first encounter with this guy was probably within 5 minutes of the property manager letting us into our new apartment. We acquired said apartment online through a series of phone calls and had never actually seen it before, aside from the generic pictures that are always posted on rental property pages which usually consist of hand scribbled floor plans and evocative pictures of the rental office.

We had just driven for something like 18 hours in a 24 hour period and it rained the entire way. Not just rain, but R-A-I-N. Like, the kind when you're on a winding mountain road and have no idea where the edge of the road is, or even if what is just off the asphalt is a cliff or a mountain face. It was a horrible drive and our nerves were well shot. So we pull into our new digs, park the car, have the nice office lady show us which one is ours, and wait for our friend to arrive in the rental truck with all of our stuff. the nice office lady leaves, friend shows up, and immediately we notice that our direct upstairs neighbor is running up and down the stairs. He confronts GF about something (I later find out that aside from his telling her of a supposed "awful ex-wife," one of the things he asked her was whether or not she was a "zoner") and it freaks her the crap out. Apparently it was the ramblings of a madman. We decide that he has done way too much amphetamines this morning and try to load in as quickly as possible so as not to disrupt this dork's mania any further.

At one point, GF and I are in the back of the rental truck trying to figure out what to haul in next, when the friend comes up and informs us that Neighbortard has just WALKED INTO our apartment and started babbling at him. Ladies and gentlemen, GF is N-O-T  A-T  A-L-L  P-L-E-A-S-E-D. I call the office and speak with the guy I've been dealing with, and he informs me that this isn;t the first complaint that he has received about this guy. Really? Seriously? And you thought the way to make the best possible impression on the new imports is to house them under a psychopath? Gee thanks.

He gives us the number of the police, but we decide to clear our heads and maybe see if this is normal behavior for him. It was, and it wasn't.

Over the course of the next 7 months, things were up and down. Some days we hardly heard him, some days he was fit to be tied. Literally. He had someone living with him who seemed to take care of him, but even she bailed after about 5 months. Then there was the guy we referred to as "Stompy Grandpa" who lived up to his name, I can tell you.

But over the course of those 7 months I had come to the conclusion that he was not, in fact, some kind of meth-head, but someone who... I still have problems putting this delicately... The guy was autistic, or shellshocked, or some kind of brain-screwy, that's all I know. I mean, you could totally tell the days when he wasn't taking his meds. And I don't say these things to be insensitive, but good gravy that guy needed a leash and a muzzle on his bad days. Seriously. He would scream (literally scream) these repetitive phrases and slam cabinets and doors, and very often he would just run from one end of his apartment to the other and back again, and again, and again. Seriously, the things this guy would yell were amazing. "Get out of my office," "shoot the papa' (or, "chupacabra." Seriously.). Bear in mind that he never said anything just once. Oh no. It was always repeated once, then twice, then in rapid fire succession. And always at the top of his lungs. Always.

It had gotten to the point to where when I was trying to describe him, all I could do was start yelling "yankee doodle, yankee doodle, yankee doodle," and pretend to slap myself in the face. Not my most PC moment ever, but you have to realize the level of frustration we're talking about here. We didn't sleep a full night in over a month because of his yelling. But I have to admit that in my head, his yankee-doodling was pretty damn funny. He would stand in one spot, slapping himself square in the face while quickly yelling "YANKEEDOODLE-YANKEEDOODLE-YANKEEDOODLE," and spinning in place with the occasional hard foot stomp to accentuate his specialness. Like this...

fig. 1 - Yankee Doodle 

fig. 2 - Yankee Doodle

fig. 3 - Yankee Doodle

The bathroom was an interesting place for this guy. GF decided he had a case of the "angry poops" as she calls them. He would be in there, rocking back and forth somehow, screaming profanities like a porn director, then flush, slam and stomp away. But man did he love swearing and slamming cabinets in the bathroom.

Something else he did which just astounds me... he would do these weird fake laughs. Sometimes it would sound like the Penguin, others I could swear he was imitating the aliens from Mars Attacks. Seriously. No, seriously.

Finally, I just couldn't take it anymore. His caretaker had been MIA for several weeks and his outbursts were becoming more violent and more frequent. We went into our rental office and told the lady there that we weren't digging the lack of consideration. She said she knew who we were talking about, and that he was scheduled to be out by the next day. The next day? Are you freaking serious?!?! Hells YES!!!! She apologized for any inconvenience, but really all GF and I wanted to do at that moment was jump up and down and scream out praises and happiness.

Of course, we still had one more night to go.

On his last night, he watched tv at ungodly volumes and yelled and clapped at whatever he was watching. "WOOOOO!!!" CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP CLOP. But this only lasted until around 9pm. Then he was strangely quiet.

The next morning I got up and left for work, so I didn't have the pleasure of being a part of his glorious swan song. Apparently, at around 9am he declared in a rather loud voice while rummaging through crap in his bedroom (which was, of course, right above ours) "I gotta get rid of all the fucking shit." Which was, of course, followed by, "fucking shit. Fucking Shit. FUCKING SHIT!  FUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHITFUCKINGSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The rest of the morning and afternoon were filled with lots of just flat out swearing and tons of slamming. Then without warning, a truck arrived. And then he was gone. And I missed it because I was at work.

Whatever, I don't care, I'm just glad that asshole's gone.

This is not meant in any way to belittle those with mental handicaps. Not at all. The way I see it, if this guy was at a level of functionality to where he could not only apparently live on his own, but he might have even had a job (he would leave for several hours at a time most days), then he freaking knew better than to scream in his apartment, slam things as hard as he could, stomp around (and I mean he was stomping with purpose) and yell profanities at the top of his lungs when there are children all over this complex. Whenever we saw him outside of his apartment, he was quiet and withdrawn. Well, except for that first day, anyway. No, he might have had some issues he had to deal with, but the bottom line is this guy was an asshole. An inconsiderate and rude asshole. Period.

Every once in a while I wonder what his deal really was, but then I remember... I don't fucking care. He's someone else's sleepless nights now.

Full Title Below...

I'm a closing song from the debut album by Canadian progressive rock band Rush

Okay, so I know I've been meaning to write about this for a bit, but I've been really tired lately because I've been WORKING!!! That means "yay" by the way. Yay as in I finally have a freaking job and can write about it now.

So yeah, I have a job. Well, "job" in quotes because I'm still technically a temp, but I'm in that cool "temp-to-hire" phase where they could very well let me go at the end of my 3 month trial period, but considering that my three month trial period ends on December 1st and this Christmas season is expected to be freaking insane, I'm thinking they'll be better off just hiring my stupid ass. It's either that or they will be contractually obligated to just let me go, and that would kind of be screwing themselves in the face. So here's to me! Yay!

It's a warehouse job, which is what I'm good at, so that's a plus. It's this company that distributes stuff for other companies. Being a temp I have no idea about their policies of disclosure, so let's just say that if you buy something online (like a boat motor, or a gas grill) from an online store (like "Boat Motors R Us" or "Ghetto Family SuperStore") then you're actually buying it through us. We have it in stock, we pack it up, we ship it out, all while pretending to actually be who we say we are on the invoice. Now it has to be a specific item from a specific place, but for these particular items from these particular stores, if you buy it then chances are around 90% that I'll have taken part in getting it to you. You're welcome.

So I actually started there back in August or something, maybe even July, but it was just for a week or two here and there to help out. But they dug me so much that when they got word that they could hire on another person, they called my temp agency and asked for me specifically. It was still just a regular temp assignment for a while, but then I had a meeting with my supervisor and he said that word had come down from the top for them to get me on the temp-to-hire thing and have my first official day as a regular employee be December 1st (as stated above).

The pay is adequate, the people are awesome, and the work is good and plentiful. Pretty much from the get-go they have been teaching me things and getting me familiar with all kinds of stuff, like they have been anticipating me becoming a full member at some point since pretty early on. Really, it's just standard warehousey stuff... stocking, packing, shipping, that kind of thing. I'm not doing any receiving yet, but it has been hinted at that it will be taught to me in the near future. I've made it very clear that I want to learn as much as I can, because a few of the guys that work there are kind of the MCPs of their regions. That means that if they get laid up for some reason, then it would be kind of catastrophic. If I can at least become familiar with what goes on in every department then it would kind of ease the burden of some of these guys. Plus I just like knowing stuff.

The biggest thing I've had to get used to is the music that gets played there. First of all, there is ONE GUY in charge of the music. I don't know how that came to be, maybe it's his radio, I don't know. But if you mess with the radio while he's around, it is game ON. He'll take requests every now and then, and he's even let me choose the music a few times, but he has ultimate veto power. I got really spoiled at my last job... we would listen to anything. It was not uncommon to go from Michael Bolton to The Shins to Journey to Debbie Gibson, and we dug it all. This guy's favorite forms of music are... surf and reggae. Seriously, two of my least favorite forms of music ever. But I'll give the guy credit, he knows his stuff. It's not just "any music that I can get high to" or anything. It's all really authentic stuff. I've actually come to appreciate a few reggae artists. a FEW. And I like the more spy-movie sounding surf music. Daikaiju. That's all I'm gonna say. But he also likes a lot of punk and heavy stuff too. We trade music back and forth every so often. It's not uncommon to hear Isis or Torche or Queens of the Stone Age mixed in with Satan's Pilgrims or some reggae. It's diverse, but it's his diversity, and that's fine. I can tolerate it.

Um, that's about it as far as work goes I guess. I'm getting a headache so I'll leave it at that for now.

Yay!