Roaming, Settling, and Tweakers

I've been reading my sister's latest posts (esinick.blogspot.com) and realized that her life seems much more entertaining than mine as of late. Actually a lot of my friends' lives seem very entertaining as of late. Reading about their latest adventures and thrilling escapades is probably the reason that I always want to take off and go explore somewhere new. I get the urge to have adventures of my own.

My sister just got back from traveling in a car for three weeks with a crazy author/actor/meat-eating-vegan/yoga-wanna-be/ex-alky nut and a weird/eccentric/stoic/minion cameraman, filming a documentary about why the former can't find love. If you've got spare time I'd suggest checking it out.

Then you've got one of my best friends, Jana, who snuck into Tibet to get to the Mount Everest base camp. She got there through a series of mis-directions, hitchhiking, guards that thought her quest was funny, tons of hiking, a lot of spirit and spunk, and much luck.

I've got friends that just started back to grad school, med school, law school, and into the working world. It seems like everyone is finding their little niche (at least for the next three or four years) and I'm happy for everyone.

I'm finally starting to settle into life in Santa Barbara. I can see the beautiful sky finally now that the Zaca fire that started on July 4th has finally left good ole Santa Barbara County and started to deposit its ash, smoke, and dark skies on the inhabitants of Ventura County.

The people that I work with are great. They're a bunch of old-ball-true-blue-army/police-runs-in-their-veins guys and some pretty chill girls too. It makes for entertaining moments when you bounce around from deciding who gets to Photoshop the detective's face onto the Neanderthal's body to dart gunning the Gunny's birthday balloon. We have our serious moments too. When we're called out everyone turns into prefect professionals and we get down to business.

I kind of wish that we would get called out a little more often though as it's more entertaining than reading dry and extra dry textbooks (I think that those are the only flavors that they come in...really is it that hard to convey information in a manner that doesn't put the reader into a coma or kill more brain cells than one gains through the context of the text?). So far I've learned that the majority of cases we deal with are related to Tweakers on the fritz. Seriously, Tweakers are perfect for the Darwin awards. They are great at attempting (and in many cases succeeding) in doing some stunt or other that takes them out of the gene poll permanently. One of my favorites is the Tweaker that decided to play Frogger on the 101. And the Tweaker that decided to take himself out of the world by taking out a fuel truck with his car. I realize don't sound so funny when you consider that someone died, but you've got to admit that there are easier ways to go about some of this stuff or a couple of standard thought processes that would save your live if you just thought them through. I think that working in this field gives me a darker sense of humor (wait, I think I've always had a dark sense of humor, working in this profession just allows me to share it with others of the same persuasion). Sorry if I offended anyone.

Other than work, I decided to join a Dojo (Karate center) and due to the lack of anything else currently happening in my life, I go for three hours a day five days a week. That's crazy, but I enjoy it. The center is set up like a gym in that there are classes all the time and you can come and go as you please. You just show up for what you want. I'm currently taking Kung Fu, Jujitsu (which in this Dojo is really wrestling), and kickboxing (aka conditioning from hell). Maybe I'll see some sort of improvement in my skills if I keep this crazy schedule up. Softball starts in a few weeks, so my schedule may change a bit.

So that's about it for this update. Nothing too exciting, but I thought I'd let people know that I hadn't completely retreated back into the wood works now that I'm settled in one place (it still gives me goosebumps to think that I'm stationary....even if it's only for a few years).