There’s a sta­tis­tic float­ing around out there in the sphere of exis­tence that says that for every one bad teacher it takes 3 years to recover.

Ask any­one that knows me and they’ll tell you that I’m not as knowl­edgable in the intri­c­as­ies of math­e­mat­ics. On the con­trary, I’m on the oppo­site side of the spec­trum, more right-brained and imag­i­na­tive then left-brained and orga­nized. My wife some­times can’t under­stand why I can’t think log­i­cally like she can and I have to remind her that we all have our quirks, tal­ents and stigmas.

My own per­sonal inflic­tion of dis­dain and embarass­ment is the four-letter word known as Math. For as long as I can remem­ber I’ve had issues with sequences of logic and I believe it all stems from the slew of hor­rific teach­ers I had in my grade school years. It seems that between 5^th and 7^th grade I lost any sort of inter­est in Math pre­tend­ing that it wasn’t a cru­cial part of my life, not real­iz­ing of course at the time that it would have an impor­tant effect on my adulthood.

For the past few years I’ve got­ten by with­out hav­ing to resort to using Math­e­mat­ics in my daily life. I’ve worked retail posi­tions where cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion is the dri­ving force for sales but in this day and age most cash reg­is­ters have been replaced with com­put­ers that resem­ble cash reg­is­ters. Most of the time it’s just a mat­ter of remem­ber­ing a spe­cific pat­tern or uti­liz­ing a bit of com­mon sense to avoid using Math but in cer­tain instances it’s a great asset. Which is why I’ve embarked on a quest to re-learn some­thing I had detested for half of my entire life and for this rea­son I’ve come to real­ize that things that dis­cour­age us will always be over­come at some point in our life­times. The sim­ple route is to exit stage left and focus rather on what we know and what we’re com­fort­able with.

Had I known this 10 years ago I think I’d be in a dif­fer­ent point in my life right now. In fact I might have even decided to become a Math teacher to teach kids who strug­gle with addi­tion, sub­trac­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion. My own per­sonal bat­tle with Math isn’t over, no, it’s just begun but at least I took the first step towards real­iz­ing I had an issue and over­com­ing it, one baby step at a time.

We arrived in Cal­i­for­nia eight days ago, wel­comed by our best friends at the air­port. With my arm out­stretched my friend gen­tly tugged it and we hugged shar­ing that moment where two friends who haven’t seen eachother in a long time just soak in the moment, soak in the mem­o­ries. Our friends give us the news that just a ter­mi­nal away a movie crew is film­ing a movie with “one of the girls from Lind­say Lohan’s Mean Girls” called Red­eye, no doubt a teen com­edy about air­lines or traveling.

After spend­ing a day in River­side, Cal­i­for­nia my father, brother, wife, daugh­ter and I made the 4-hour trek to Bishop, Cal­i­for­nia which sits just an hour away from Mam­moth (the famed loca­tion of the WB’s The Moun­tain). It’s cold here and snow­ing and we’re try­ing to fully real­ize the sit­u­a­tion because we left New York to get away from the snow and yet here in Cal­i­for­nia they are expe­ri­enc­ing frigid conditions.

I’ve spent the last cou­ple of hours (at least) cleans­ing this site of spam which seemed to hit hard over the span of a few days. I’m amazed at how per­sis­tent these mouth­breathers are (sorry Greg) and why they insist in mak­ing it that much more dif­fi­cult to main­tain Word­press and this site respec­tively. I’ve tried a hand­ful of spam­i­na­tors out there but as Michael has expressed they have a ten­dency of get­ting rid of legit­i­mate com­ments in addi­tion to vile com­ment spam. It’s a topic I could rant about for a few years but for now I’ll just do my best to remove it.

As I sit here writ­ing this I can hear the pat­ter of rain­drops pound­ing the snow and it sounds sur­real for where I am but it’s a wel­comed change in some respects. In other irrel­e­vant news I finally pro-ified my Flickr account which means I can dump a boat­load of pho­tos into the Flickr sys­tem and enjoy the full expe­ri­ence as a Pro user, which I had expe­ri­enced tem­porar­ily sev­eral weeks ago. Ludi­corp has cre­ated some­thing spe­cial and as each week goes by it seems they imple­ment new func­tion­al­ity into an already superb photo-sharing and community-powered lifeforce.

I plan on mak­ing a few updates here and there as this vaca­tion pro­gresses. In the mean time I hope every­one is hav­ing a pleas­ant new year and hope­fully your res­o­lu­tions come true if you’ve made any that is. I’ve been upload­ing a slew of pho­tos from this trip to my Flickr account so if you’re inter­ested feel free to browse.

See you in a week or so.