I almost never look through my friends' journals anymore. Sure if I go to your page to leave you a message, I will read your journal out of courtesy, but that's about the only way I see it. It makes me feel less guilty if I neglect everyone equally.

However on the rare occasions that I do, particularly the old ones, the ones that haven't been updated in months or years, I'm reminded of the wonderful people I've met through this site over the years. And then I get a little sad, because I've lost touch with almost all of them. I guess that's just how life is.

I've long since stopped updating mine with any amount of regularity for much the same reason. There just aren't that many people I think are interested, or that I'm interested in being interested, and those that are I speak with individually. So I guess that's that.

Yesterday...

Got a minute? I know you do. Go to Google Maps and type in "Andy Mesa". Then click on "Terrain". Or alternatively, click here.

I'm so awesome they named a summit after me. And not some whimpy one either, this thing is 8,543 feet tall. Where's your summit? Yeah, thought so.

It's funny because it's (almost) true.



♠  In renewed planning for my globe trotting I've found I'm pretty shit outta luck. I no longer qualify for youth discounts, and the US dollar has dropped 30% in the last year against the Euro. Even if I stay at the crappiest hostels, never eat out, and forego commercial museums entirely, it'll still cost me about $50/day to trek through Europe.

So even though I've met my original savings goal, it's only about 70% of what I need. And yes I can forego Europe entirely, but that's the primary reason for the trip. I've always wanted to go, I even learned Italian in high school with the hopes I would eventually spend some time in Italy. And I know it's not going anywhere, but I also know the situation isn't going to get any better.

♠ My mother called today to tell me she finally got a job, after 2 months of searching and being laid off from her previous job of 20 years. She now makes almost half what she was making before. She also checked her 401k and found that she lost $13,000 in the last quarter alone due to failing stocks.

♠ My sister arrives today, she's planning on moving here for the next 4-5 months. Don't ask me why, I'm not quite sure, though this e-card pretty well explains it.



She surprisingly found a job already, or rather she simply transferred from the one she already had. Which is probably good for her. I recommended she check out Starbucks, since there's one on every corner here and they offer health insurance to even their part time workers. Except I just read they're shuttering 600 stores and laying off 12,000 employees. If that isn't a dead canary in the mine, I don't know what is.

Edit: My sister has been a Portland resident for less than 24 hours and she's already found a place to live in a really nice neighborhood for a ridiculously small amount of money. Never underestimate the power of being a 20 year old girl.

Not as well as I'd have hoped past self, the money and logistics weren't quite there last summer. A lot has happened since then though. I've traveled quite a bit domestically, and I've saved almost enough money to live off of for at least a year, so globe trotting is entirely possible now.

But I have to tell you past self, I'm still struggling with the same thoughts as you, except even more so. My feet aren't as itchy as yours, I kind of really like it here, and thoughts of settling are becoming more pronounced than they used to be.

Also, my sister might be moving here soon, and my parents aren't doing so well financially, so I may need to use the money for other things. I haven't given up on this goal though, I really have had some of the best times of my life traveling over the last couple years, and I think it can only get better when I expand my horizons.

So I'm gonna ask future self the same question, and hopefully he'll have a better answer than me. Thanks for the swift kick in the ass though, I needed that.

Addendum:

It seems I'm getting it from all angles recently. Matt's original video inspired my globe trotting plans in 2006 and I've been saving up ever since. Two days after I first posted this journal he released his new video, 14 months in the making.

This story hits closer to home than I'm willing to admit. It saddens me how people can be so horrible.

I'm busy.

I recently spent two ridiculously fun weeks in Miami and Austin where I met The Internet.

I was in Miami for the Future of Web Apps. There's not much to be said there, other than we spent most of our time here...



...a place generally reserved for the type of people that frequent South Beach, and if you've ever been to South Beach or hell even heard of South Beach you know what I'm talking about. Now imagine a bunch of pasty white web nerds in the same place, attempting to play beach volleyball, drinking too much, and generally being awesome.

Then I spent some time in Key Largo with family, which isn't a bad place to spend some time.



From there I flew to Austin for SXSW Interactive. I won't go into huge detail about it because unless you're as super nerdy as I am you don't really care who I met and what I did. But to give you a general idea of what it was like I'll talk about the first night.

After the first day of panels, a bunch of folks decided to go climbing at the Austin Rock Gym. Afterwards we were looking for a way to get back into town, and no cabs would come to pick us up. So an enterprising individual decided to call the RVIP Lounge, and an epic journey was upon us.



When this RV showed up, with booze, food, and a karaoke machine, within minutes the music was playing, people were heating up Tillamook cheese to put on their nachos, other people were mixing drinks, and we were all riding around town in style.

To get a general idea of the atmosphere feel free to read about it in the LA Times or Valleywag (which has a particularly apt video of actual karaoking taking place).

So after a bit of that, the RVIP Lounge took us to the Enchanted Forest. The best way to describe this dystopic vision is a PG rated version of Burning Man.



We perused the installations for a bit, I rode a unicorn...



...and shopped for affordable housing ("it's not a cardboard house, it's a cardboard home").



Then huddled for warmth with bear helmets...



...and saw a show by a pretty good band that included a lightsaber. And if you've never heard a band play while someone swings a lightsaber around, then you're really missing out.



Afterwards we boarded the RVIP Lounge and partied some more...



...until it was time for bed.



Oh, and somewhere in there I rode an 80 foot snake bike.



So yeah, it was a lot of that.

Really though I met pretty much everyone I've ever wanted to meet, and a ton of people I didn't know I wanted to meet but I'm glad I did, and had a lot of moments where I just thought to myself, "hey, this is pretty neat". Ultimately I think Caitlin Hill's tweet said it best.

I went to Macworld. I met people. If you know who any of them are, congratulations, you're a nerd.

Busy week.