My Mind: Lifesized

Am sitting at the office this Sunday morning and am feeling a little disappointed in myself. I bailed on my Frisbee team today and am now back in Missoula. This may or may not influence my ability to play with them later this summer. I have tons of excuses for decisions I make and that's probably what disappoints me the most. Yesterday morning I got up at 6:15 AM and hit the road for Bozeman: It's about 240 miles(386KM)from Missoula and even on the highway it is one of the prettier drives you'll ever see, as you go through mountain ranges, buttes and rolling hills. There is a very good Ultimate Frisbee tourney over there in its 19th year called Bozofest . Some of the best coed (mixed) Ultimate teams in the western US and Canada attend. Two years ago I went with a new team out of Missoula and we got beat in the quarter-finals. Last year, despite my gut feeling, Rick Simmons and I abandoned the Missoula B team to play with Jackson Hole. The team wasn't very good a...

Something very nice was waiting for me when I got back to the office....BMG was having a 70% off and no Shipping & Handling charges two day sale (the only time I ever buy anything from them is during sales like this). The package arrived while I was out of the office. Here's what I picked up for between $4.99 and $9.99USD: Nitty Griity Dirt Band - Will the Circle Be Unbroken (2002 remaster of 1972 release) Prince - 1999 Alejandro Escovedo - By the Hand of the Father Duran Duran - Greatest Mel Torme - Ole Torme Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Beastie Boys - Chewck Your Head Olu Dara - In the World From Natchez to New York John Coltrane/Cannonball Adderley - Cannonball & Coltrane Shostakovich - Plays Shostakovich Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico Chucho Valdes - Solo Live In New York Glenn Miller - Platinum Tricky - Maxinquaye Ray Price - The Essential Ray Price ...

I added another cool blogger feature to my blog...you can now comment on my posts and become part of Johnny O's mind. After each post you'll see a little section with a "comments" link, click it and comment.

You may have been wondering just where the heck I have been all week...I mean, even in San Francisco I managed to post almost daily while still attending my conference and having a grand time. Truth be told, this week I paid the price for my San Francisco adventure. Oh sure, last weekend I recovered from 8 days away, even getting to go to the Missoula Farmer's Market Saturday morning (one of the true joys Missoula has to offer). But I was slammed with work all week, which included 2 1/2 days in Helena at the annual Montana Medical Group Management Association's legislative and business meeting. I arrive back to a wet and rainy Missoula this afternoon. My meetings in Helena were actually very informative, educational and "fun". I learned some very incredible things about Medicare legislation (no yawning allowed) that simply astounded me and I also picked up more than a few jewels to use in my job. Last night we had a nice meal and entertainment provided by magi...

Another new look for my blog..I like this skin quite a bit. When I decide to make it a priority, I might actually learn to make my own skin with all the stuff I really want. But for now, Blogger is giving me some nice resources in addition to letting me rant on and on about not much. Today I got to spend about an hour instant messaging with Pete in Bangkok. I'm hoping he'll send me some recent photos of him and his girlfriend Kung. Pete and I were roommates at Purdue and are lucky enough to have each other as close friends still after (gulp) 22 years with lots of great times together. Bangkok is far enough ahead of Montana time wise so that we don't really get alot of good time to chat, but today we had a great talk. He is starting a couple of new businesses with some friends and they sound very positive. But the big news is that he and Kung are seriously talking about marriage. They've been dated for 2 1/2 years now and been living together for something like a ...

My summer is starting to heat up. After two years of spending my vacation time traveling back to Indiana (6 times last year), I had a quiet winter and spring with little travel. Now I'm following up on my San Francisco trip with an exciting adventure trip to France. I'm pretty stoked. The lovely Annie and I will be heading to to the continent next month, sandwiching a whirlwind off-the-beaten-path adventure around the wedding of Gildas Plouhinec, the infamous brother of the lucky girl, Gwen Plouhinec Roscoe. The wedding will be in a small town in the Loire Valley called Ennordres, which is near Bourges. The whole village will be there and the wedding will last two days! Annie is game for traveling my way, which involves a lot of research using the rough guides resources and getting tips from other like minded travelers and then shooting from the hip once we get there. I definitely want to see the D-Day beaches, monuments and cities of Normandy and want to get into the count...

Catching Up: I'm finally able to write about the rest of my stay in San Francisco. It should be obvious by now that I thoroughly enjoyed my 8 days there so it should not be a surprise to anyone when I say that San Francisco is now my favorite big city anywhere. Thursday night I got to hang out with me friend Trina again. That really made me happy. Trina is one of those people who is so smart and interesting that she almost makes you jealous. She recently got to spend a month traveling to Australia and New Zealand and is hoping to spend a good portion of the summer doing the same. We were supposed to get together again on Wednesday night but I was still on a ferry between Marin County and the Embarcadero at 8:30 PM so we scratched for Thursday. As luck would have it, one of the areas I still hadn't eaten my way through also happens to house one of Trina's favorite spots, Tommaso's. North Beach, the Italian enclave of San Francisco that also houses the famous Cit...

San Fran: Day 7 At this exact moment I am connected via the Triton's wireless in-room internet connection. Leave it to me to find out I have in-room free wireless access tonight, the last night I'm here. For the past 5 days I've paid $1 each time I connected to the net (or each time Rick and Karl connected, which is about 5 times a day). I am an idiot to say the least. I have so much to write about and so little time to do it in. Karl, Rick and I are meeting Trina at 7:30 PM in the North Beach section of town (only about 7 hilly blocks from here) for dinner at a place called Tomasu (sp?)...highly recommended by sweet Suzann at the Triton's front desk (so far all of her recommendations have been right on the money). I'll give you a teaser to what I'll write about later. In the past two days we've been to Fisherman's wharf, Coit Tower, Russian Hill, Muir Woods, Stinson Beach, San Rafael, Sausalito, Tiburon, Union Square, the Embarcadero and we...

Cool, cool Trina: Tonight I walked down to the Powell street BART station and took the BART down to the Mission District where Trina met me. We walked over to a sweet place called Luna Park on Valencia street. It was so much fun. The food was super, but the company was what made the night. Trina is such a wonderful person and I was so happy to just sit and listen to her stories about traveling, work and the things going on in her life. For all you Hollanders out there, Trina won't get to come to Holladougatuck this year after all, which is our loss. She is going to get to take a National Geographic photography course in Santa Fe though, sort of around the same time so we can expect even more cool photography on her website . I still love San Francisco but I must admit tonight the panhandlers got to me. There are a tremendous number of homeless people in this town...and I mean tremendous; they are everywhere and they are persistent in their attempts to get money. I bought ...

I am now entering a dangerous stage of my blogging life...I snuck over to the AUA Web Station and am posting online in real time. Freaky and crazy all at the same time! This portion of the conference is the "main" portion, where the over 15,000 attendees gather at the hub to go through the massive exhibit hall and high-tech message center (seriously, all you techie geeks would be in heaven...the use of technology to identify attendee's, allow attendees to interact with each other, vendors, exhibitors, presenters and just about everyone else is unbelievable). Anyway, as I've said numerous times now, San Francisco is a real treat and this conference is the pinnacle of these types of events. I'm spending my afternoon cruising the exhibit hall to identify vendors I want to meet with and those I want to bring Karl & Rick in to meet. From a business perspective, I love this sort of thing...and the "deals" can be struck here that you can't strik...

Holy smokes, San Francisco is amazing. It's almost too much. I've spent most of my time inside the conference thinking about what I'm going to do next once the sessions are over! Our hotel is unbelievable. The amazing Jody Flowers hooked us up, as the Hotel Triton is about 30 steps from the gates of Chinatown and all that it offers, is about three blocks from some of the best shopping and people watching I've ever experienced and is surrounded by incredible restaurants, art galleries and stores of all types. Friday night Rick, Karl and I headed into Chinatown for some very tasty food followed by a Boddington's at a lively Irish Pub. Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Every break I'd rush outside to take in the feel of the city. On my way back to the hotel I took Punk Asses advice and detoured to Union Square. There was an amazing art show going on...and I'm not talking street art, I'm talking collector quality art on display and for sale. Of cours...

I wrote this yesterday, while sitting on a plane..... We just passed over Salmon, Idaho on our way down to Salt Lake City. This morning was a breeze; up and at the office by 6:15 I managed to get all my work done (or at least the work I set out to do), get the tax payments taken care of, design a flyer for our nurses upcoming incontinence seminar (woo-hoo!, as Homer Simpson would say) and burn a sweet "San Francisco 04" CD for the road. I put some David Bowie, Merle Haggard, The Police, Modest Mouse, Lefty Drizzell, The La's, Los Lobos, Joe Henry, Lambchop, Lee Scratch Perry, Aretha Franklin, Bootsy Collins, Tosca, the New Cajun All-Stars and a few other surprises on the disc, so I should be good to go in my hotel room. Anyway, I walked out of the office at 9:45 AM, my co-worker Melanie picked me up at m house at 9:50 AM and we got to the airport at 10:00 AM (ahh, that is an advantage to living in a small town). I checked in, got an exit seat confirmed all the wa...

Man oh man, monsieur la Hopedaddy has done it again. Click on the link to the right for the very cool Mark Need to get two more great reviews for Los Lobos and The Beastie Boys . He also updated his playlist on radio Hopedaddy for those wanting to jam out.

I am starting to get giddy with excitement about my trip to San Francisco. Except for the pain (which has subsided into sort of a dull ache...not a good sign) in my knee, all I want to think about right now are all the recommendations my friends Dave & Claire and Trina have given me. I'll be leaving Missoula tomorrow morning at 10:45 AM and arriving in San Francisco via Salt Lake City at around 1:50 PM. My friend Dave (aka Punk Ass) is picking me up at the airport and dropping me off at The exceedingly groovy Hotel Triton , after which I have to boogie over to register at my conference. Later, Dave will go back to the airport to pickup his brother, Rick and another friend and fellow Urologist Karl Westenfelder. Karl, Rick and I are sharing a hotel room. The Triton is located at the gates of Chinatown and I can't wait to get my mouth around some of the great culinary offerings to be had. The Extended forecast looks flipping awesome, with the weather just getting bett...

Today I bought my first song off of iTunes, the highly successful Apple music store. You can buy songs for just $.99 each or, in many cases, whole albums. I bought David Bowie's, "Bring Me the Disco King" from his latest offering, Reality. The song came through clear as a whistle and was purchased with two clicks...pretty damn nifty. I've tried several other services like audiogalaxy and MusicMatch and I liked them both, but the ease of use iTunes provides is going to be pretty hard to beat. On another note, don't let yourself get sucked into the BMG online "60% off sale" going on today and tomorrow. They still add $3.95 or more per disc for shipping & handling bringing the price right back up to anywhere between $11 - $15 per disc. I added 23 selections (including classical, hip hop, jazz and rock) only to find the S & H made the sale a joke.

Today is Mel Puckett's 40th Birthday: You go Mel!!!!!!!!! Last night at Ultimate Frisbee we surprised Mel with a cake and some beer. She wore her hair in tight pigtails for the game to celebrate the end of her thirties...she was very cute. And she continued her great play, throwing for a score. I hurt my knee during the game; my bad knee. I can't hardly move today without a sever and sharp pain along the meniscus line (I think). I think I did something bad but I'll try to see if it goes away. Our team is now 4-1 and tied for the lead in the league, despite losing our two tallest and most athletic players (Colin "retired" and Rick decided out of the blue to have surgery). We've got a fun group. More later.

Can not believe it is Tuesday already, nope can't believe it. I arrived back in Missoula last night and to give you an idea of how off my mental clock is, I thought we were 50 minutes early not 10 minutes late. I was so shocked that Karl (my ride) was at the airport and expressed my amazement with his ability to know my flight had arrived. He looked at me puzzled but I guess he assumed it was just another odd comment in a stream of odd comments that bubble from my mouth. Only later did I discover the plane landed at 11:10 PM, not 10:10 PM and that I was an hour off. I Got to bed at about midnight but couldn't sleep for this odd smell that I couldn't shake from my nose. At about 1:30 AM, after digging through the garbage, smelling my drains and looking on my front porch I realized it was the smell of pizza cardboard coming from my courier bag at the end of the bed. You see, I grabbed the last Godfather's pizza from under the heat lamp in the Minneapolis airport at ...

Not only did my good friend Bruce point out that I need to explain a litle bit about live365.com but he also made me realize I need to add a link to his website. If you're one of the scant few who visit this blog and don't know Bruce, he is part of a strong group of friends who I get to share time with each year in Holland, Michigan (and surrounding environs). He's also a brainiac, a musician, a producer, a computer guru and one who enjoys a good debate about life and al that encompasses. So, I added a link to the very cool Bruce Burdick for your pleasure. Here's what I posted about live365.com: There is a site out there called live365.com A buddy of mine created his own, legal, radio station called hopedaddy. He writes reviews for several music industry rags and, as such, gets free copies of new releases before they are released so he has music posted to his station the day it comes out. He is more into the Wilco, Joe Henry, alt.countrty rock scene but also lik...

Oh, I thought I'd show you how goofy and fun my family is. This is my super sweet . Tara she's 10 and is a balst to hang out with. And this is my Mom, Adelle More later. Gotta go shower.

Whew...what a fun but hectic trip we are having in Indianapolis. Got in late last night after some mechanical delays in Minneapolis. My brother Chris stopped in and hung out until 11:00 PM and that was awesome. Today it is very gloomy and wet, but that didn't keep us from having fun. This morning, my nieces Tara (10) and Brooke (3) came over to Mom 7 Dad's around 9:00 AM with my sister, Leslie. Leslie had to work, but she got to have a bit of the awesome breakkie Mom whipped up for us all, with loads of fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, biscuits & jelly, doughnut holes, sausage and juice. After breakfast, while Annie got to know Tara and Brooke a little better, Mom gave me my first real hair cut since Christmas... let's just say it's pretty short right now. So then it was off to Galyan's to pick up a couple of swim suits...unfortunately the weather was poopy, so no Ultimate frisbee for me with my local chums. Instead, Mom, Annie, Tara, Brooke, Leslie and me went...