Instead of turkey and stuffing… I much rather prefer Mexican pizza and popcorn chicken.  Well… maybe not.  But I do prefer low-key activities on holidays rather than making big productions of them.  It’s nice getting together with family every once in a while, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make Thanksgiving an event.  I was invited by a few co-workers to partake in their holiday feasts, but I was like, “can we talk about this later?” and then I forgot to bring it up again.  I appreciate the hospitality, but that kind of forced socializing is really painful.  It’s early afternoon, and I’ve already done a lot i.e. slept in, worked-out, tried to resolve my license issue (unsuccessfully), did some research, and a couple other items.  Not to mention, Green Bay and Detroit play in a couple hours

I took four years of Spanish in high school.  I consider myself good with languages although I don’t speak anything but English fluently.  And I guess that’s even debatable.  Anyways, I decided that a good way to multitask and force myself to study would be to listen to Spanish podcasts as I’m working out.  I found a couple which interested me, but I ended up going with something called Notes in Spanish.  They offer beginner, intermediate, and advanced podcasts for free which I found on iTunes.  I went to the site to try to get transcripts, but found that you have to pay for the worksheets.  So I did it.  The price was un poco alto, but I have a choice: I can scrounge around for something free over the next couple of weeks, or I can just suck it up now, pay, and get started immediately.  It took two seconds to download them, and now I just have to find a printer somewhere.  Plus, they’re sending the worksheets to me in the mail… and you know I like to get mail! 

It’s been almost a week since I wrote anything.  I’m not an excuse-maker; it’s unacceptable because I told myself I’d be writing everyday and publishing at least twice a week.  However, I have been busy with work and trying to get all of the paperwork and money stuff organized for moving into my apartment this weekend.  I’ve hit a bit of a wall, I guess.  It won’t last.  I’ll overcome, but the fact that I won’t be able to get my bike out of the lot until March really took the wind out of my sails.  Add to that the fact that this whole Web 2.0 thing that I have a vision for is really intimidating and you come out with a lot of frustration.  I’ve been good about reading everyday and thinking about different directions I want to go in for my travelling, but success revolves around an even mix of action and planning, and right now I’m doing more planning than acting.  At times, it’s more fantasizing than planning.  I have yet to make a video podcast, even if just for practice.  I still have yet to make a single mash-up.  I’m getting decent pictures, but I want them displayed like ‘wow’ on MotoHippie.  The programming can be a bit overwhelming.  It’s a lot of different disciplines, and I’m just having trouble putting them all together.  Additionally, the fact that Technorati isn’t indexing and updating my site is annoying.  I believe it’s because my site isn’t XHTML compliant yet, but who knows?  And it’ll be weeks or months before I figure out how to comply with that standard.  Anyways… BORING!  I’ve been thinking about how to isolate the road vibrations from a camera as I’m riding.  There’s all kinds of solutions out there for mounting, the most popular being Ram Mounts.  I’ve never used any of these, so I figured I’d give Ram Mounts a try before trying to build my own.  My concern is that hard-mounting a video camera to my handle bars or chassis will cause the camera to bounce along with the bike.  I’ve seen some good-looking video shot from a hard-mount like this, and I’m curious to find what my experience will be.  At first, I felt sure that I’d have to build some sort of gyro-stabilized/gimbaled rig, but shoot… I’m not sure if I want to spend my time doing that.  I may have to, but let’s start easy. 

I’ve been flip-flopping back and forth on whether I want to buy a little bike to ride while waiting for my license to come through.  I know this for sure: I can’t buy a new one.  I’ve looked around and found a few that interest me, but new Yamaha XT125X/Rs cost +3500E.  That’s about 6000USD.  Rieju 125s cost about 3000E.  Wow!  I bought the Hornet in Japan for about $1500, and that was perfect.  AND twice the size of these things.  So I need to be stingy these days… getting a new little bike would not be a thrifty move on my part.  I’m going to have to find a used bike some way or another.  If there are any Spaniards reading this trying to hand off a 125cc dual-sport, drop me a line.  But I do need to get a bike.  I can’t get away with buying a car or renting or whatever.  I’m afraid that if I don’t get a bike, I won’t be much of an explorer.  I need some mobility!  I’ve barely gotten out of my hotel over the past few weeks.

Go Rangers!  Kickin’ ass.  Wish I could be back there watching a couple games.