Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Too Busy To Think

    There are so many things I want to say about India, but I’m back at work and have been thrown into a huge project with a tight deadline, and all thinking will have to wait.\
    But, I have watched Veronica Mars and Jen was right about all of it. I’m sure she’ll post later and gloat. Oh, and I was wrong about who the murderer was – but so was Jen, so I don’t feel so bad.

  • Bite Me!

    Brian, the cutie that he is, is a biter. Ouch. I don’t know how to get him to stop. Whenever I try, he just giggles. I understand that he thinks we are playing a game and he is doing it for the fun and attention. Max laughs heartily in the background and that doesn’t help the situation. So, if any of you have suggestions on how to get him to stop, I would appreciate you sharing them with us.

  • Another Veronica Mars Spiel

    Another Veronica Mars spiel – watch it Wed at 9pm on UPN\
    I finally got Kevin to watch the first five episodes of “Veronica Mars” and he admitted he really liked it and “it wasn’t what [he] thought it would be.” While the show is set in high school, it is not a high school show. It is definitely an adult show. (I don’t mean an “Oz” or “Sex and the City” type adult show). I mean that the show is not a teen soap opera.\
    Tonight’s episode is #6 “Return of the Kane.” Prepare to be amazed by Harry Hamlin, Jason Dohring, and the ofttimes subtle writing. Again, for new viewers check out the recaps at Television Without Pity for the skipped episodes only (you don’t want to be spoiled.) Also UPN is rerunning the episode during the weekend, so check your local listings if you are a Wednesday night partier and can’t make it home in time to watch Veronica Mars.

  • All The India Pics

    Since I’ve been awake at 4 AM the past two days, I’ve gotten all my India photos up on Flickr. Here they are:

    • In And Around Bangalore
    • On the road to Mysore
    • The Banyan Tree
    • Bird Sanctuary
    • St. Anthony’s and Mysore
    • The Temple
    • The Bull and Monkeys\
      I have very conflicted thoughts about my week in India. I need some more time to get them all together and reconciled before I try to write about them. If I tried to go into it now, I don’t think it would make any sense (not that anything I write ever makes any sense). I met some fascinating and amazing people, saw poverty beyond my comprehension, and had experiences I never thought I’d have (crocodiles… come on!). Pulling it all together into something coherent is going to take some time. Either way, I’m really glad to be home.

  • The World’s Largest Banyan Tree

    The second set of photos from Saturday are up. This set contains the first pictures of monkeys!!

    update: I’ve put up the stuff from the bird sanctuary as well. This one has the crocodile photos in it!

  • Watch Veronica Mars

    Tomorrow night, Tuesday, June 14, on UPN the Veronica Mars pilot you have all been waiting for – check it out!! Set your TIVOs, DVRs, VCRs, or just mark it on the calendar. It is a great show, one not to be missed.\
    The following night, Wednesday, June 15, UPN will air another episode. Wheeeeeeeee. Enjoy the ride, folks!

  • Home, Safe and Exhausted

    I can’t go into it now, because I can’t think straight, much less describe the past (what is it) 36 hours. But, we made it home safe and sound. 18 hours in the air, 4 or 5 more in airports, and some time in cars, and we made it back halfway around the world to our homes and families.\
    I’ll tell you all about it after 18 hours of sleep, a couple showers and a pizza. In the meantime, you can check out the first set of photos from Saturday. There are a ton more. That’s just on the way to the first stop… the world’s largest banyan tree. I won’t even start with the crocodiles until after I get pizza and sleep.\
    G’night. I’m glad to be home.

  • Dear Indian Megaphone Guy

    It’s 11:20pm. Enough with the megaphone already. Whatever it is, it can wait till morning. And last night? That was no fun either. I mean, can I come to your house with a megaphone tomorrow night? Would you like that? People are trying to sleep here. Did I mention is was 11:20 (now 11:21)?\
    Yeah, I’m running out of travel-juice. Training folks takes a lot of energy. Sitting, white-knuckled, while our fighter pilot driver takes us 45 minutes each way every morning and every night through the craziest traffic I have ever seen or heard of really takes it out of me too. Breathing in the exhaust from motor rickshaws that illegally mix kerosene into their gas to save money isn’t helping my asthma. Did you know that there are 80 times more traffic fatalities in India than in the US? I do, and now I know why.\
    Ok, enough with the complaining. The Indian people are great. They’re fun, nice and smart. They’ve made this trip enjoyable, even with the deathrace every morning.\
    I still just want to go home. It’s been two weeks. That’s long enough to be away.

  • Welcome to India

    We got to India early Sunday morning (1am), after nine and a half hours from Frankfurt. We made our way through customs, then out to the hotel’s car through a downpour. It was hard to get a sense of the place at night, other than after the sun goes down, apparently all the traffic laws go away (along with the stoplights).\
    The hotel is very nice, although I’m still not used to a place where you can’t drink the water. The room is stocked with bottled water, and I’m sure I’m paying for every drop of it.\
    This morning (Monday), we made our way to the office by taxi. I have never seen a place where lanes and lights are almost completely ignored. The roads are jammed with smoke-belching three wheeled rickshaws, scooters, buses and taxis. It’s a mess, and I’m surprised we didn’t see any accidents.\
    Crossing the street is also an adventure… you have about 15 seconds to make it across a lane before the oncoming smoke-belchers run you down. There are no lights, no warnings, and no crosswalk. It’s everyone for themselves.\
    Unfortunately, it’s that way on the sidewalks as well. I tripped in a pothole on the way to the office, and I think I’ve sprained my right ankle pretty good.\
    Some interesting tidbits:

    • Washington D.C. (76 degrees west) is almost exactly on the other side of the world from Bangalore (77 degrees west).
    • Geographically, we’re about even with Panama, The Sudan and Ethiopia
    • This is my first trip to Asia.
    • This is the farthest south I’ve ever been (we’re at 13 degrees north, D.C. is at 39).
    • We’re farther south that Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
    • We’re in Karnataka.
    • There were 80,000 traffic deaths in India in 2000, compared with 1,093 in the U.S.
    • You can read more about Bangalore at Wikipedia\
      So yeah, I think I can say at this point that I’d much rather be in France.

  • Jen Joins The Fun

    Now that I’ve kind of got Jen to join the fun here, I figured I needed to find a way to show when a post was written by Jen, and one that was written by me. I’ve always had the “posted by Kevin” thing at the bottom, but that’s at the bottom. So, I’ve added a class to the entry body, so posts by Jen are orange, and posts by me are blue. I may change that, and do it in a less-obtrusive way (I don’t really like background colors other than white for text, but I’m going to try this out for a little while).\
    In other news, avoid malaria pills and the typhoid oral vaccine if you can. I don’t know which one is to blame (and it could be something else entirely), but I’m not feeling so hot at the moment. I’ll spare you the details.