AtomJohnson Blog

Nat got me an amazing pocket-sized camera for my 30th birthday.  Ever since I received it, I have absolutely been loving it.  It is something I can throw in my jacket pocket when I don’t want to haul out my full-sized Nikon.  A few weeks ago, I managed to dance the camera out of my suit pocket and onto a wooden dance floor.  The LCD cracked and the metering got all messed up so that it was overexposing every shot.

I sent the camera in for repair and just got it back from servicing.  The LCD is brand new and the camera looks great.  However, the metereing seemed to still be off.  It looked fine when you were framing a shot, but once you press the button, it overexposes the shot terribly.  So, I spent 30 minutes today on the phone getting another repair order ready.  Well, upon showing the camera to my co-worker, she says, ‘why does it say +2 on the display’?  Apparently it is because it was set to overexpose shots by 2 stops.  So, I checked the book, set the metering back to zero, and everything works perfectly.  For someone who prides himself on solving technical problems for other people, I had to swallow my pride and just be grateful that it works.

It is Sunday night and I am exhausted. After the Open House, I hopped on my road bike for a ride down to Mt. Vernon and back. The Mt. Vernon trail runs along the Potomac the entire way, so it is a really beautiful ride. Unfortunately, I am so competitive that every time I see another biker, the race is on. Today I beat a 74 year old man on a beach cruiser and a 12 year old, fat Mexican kid on a huffy.

The ride was spectacular. When I wasn’t sucking allergy-induced snot globs back into my nose, the smell of honeysuckle was incredible. The sun was setting on the way back into Old Town, which gave everything an amazing orange glow. My gut-wrenching hunger did not appreciate the smell of hamburgers and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Old Town, but I knew that there was spinach and a hard boiled egg waiting for me when I got home…..yummmmmy.

I had the opportunity to go sailing in the Chesapeake Bay yesterday for my buddy Steve’s surprise 30th birthday party. Of course, I did not pay much attention to the word ’surprise’ in the eVite and called his wife Angie yesterday morning to see if they wanted to car pool to Annapolis. Seeing as how that probably would have ruined the surprise, I drove my own car. The weather could not have been better….blue skies, big fluffy clouds, sun, breeze….and plenty of cold beer. The beer they served was 8% alcohol, which got most of up 98% drunk. The captain let many of us drive the boat, which was incredibly intimidating, but ridiculously fun all at the same time. I was the first to drive and everyone thought I was going to capsize the boat. I did not capsize the boat….nobody did. Afterwards we walked over to a small Italian restaurant for dinner. I don’t love Italian food, so I got a spinach salad for one. It was tiny. Everyone felt sorry for me and kept offering me portions of their own dish. Steve prepared me an entire bowl of parmesan cheese with a piece of bread. (His cooking skills have not improved since college. Whenever he used to make ‘dinner’, I’d welcome everyone to the Sidedish Cafe, because it was usually something like rice with peas and carrots. The main course always seemed to be missing.)

Please enjoy the rest of the sailing pics here.

Today I played the part of realtor. My agent could not sit in on today’s Open House and could not find a replacement, so we agreed that I should do my own Open House. It was a very eye-opening experience. It is interesting to see how people react to your house when you’re trying to sell it. The themes that came clear today were that my house is gorgeous, we are way underpriced, and they can’t believe it hasn’t sold yet. There is a house about five up from mine for $25,000 more than mine that people say is not nearly as nice. There is another house nearby for $75,000 more than mine that people describe as a giant crap salad. I guess none of this really matters until one of these people is willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Another theme that became clear today is that everyone loves Portland, OR. When I mention South Dakota, people look at me like I have two heads. When I mention Denver, they kind of nod, as if to say ‘hmmm…not bad’. The moment Portland is mentioned, its like they just tasted the most delicious cake (or perhaps cheese) in the universe. Their eyes roll back and they say, ‘mmmm, Portland….’.

I’m definately looking forward to visiting both Portland and South Dakota. Who knows, I could have the delicious cake reaction to Spearfish, South Dakota. First lets get the house sold, then we’ll talk more seriously about next steps.

I love music! I listen to the stuff all the time…in the car…on the computer…when my cell phone rings… In my eyes, there is nothing better than discovering a new artist who just blows you away. I had this experience most recently with Josh Ritter. OK, go ahead and giggle, and think….’gee, that sounds alot like John Ritter’…compose yourself….now go out and buy the album. Start with The Animal Years and then buy Hello Starling. Or, just listen to this story on NPR.

Yesteday, a friend at work pointed me to Pandora. Pandora is a web application put together by The Music Genome Project that allows you to enter an artist that you like and then proceeds to suggests other artists that have a similar musical genetic structure. What do they mean? The Music Genome project is a group of musicians and technologist who came together in order to break music down to its genetic structure. From their website:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

So, please check out Pandora. It promises to put an smile on your face and an echo in your wallet.

As I write this there are supposedly several interested parties out there shuffling money into various accounts to ‘make it happen’. When I say ‘make it happen’, I mean ‘make me casa (insert Spanish word for their) casa’. My realtor says that the lady who came by twice to see the house has a contract drawn up, earnest money in hand, all papers signed, but is sleeping on it one more night before she makes a decision. We put word out to two other interested parties and they are trying to pull together funding before Monday. I don’t know who can just ‘pull together funding’, but I’ll be psyched if they can pull it off. In the end, I just want a good, solid offer around my asking price. With three contracts, I’m not necessarily interested in bidding people up to a ridiculous price, I just want the leverage to tell them not to monkey around and demand that I build a pool in the backyard and reroute the train tracks as part of the ‘inspection clause’. (Please note that all words in ‘quotes’ are written that way because I have no idea what they mean…but i think they sound cool).

I just read a great article called ‘The Four Day Challenge’.  The challenge is to fit your current five day work week into four days and spend the other three days enjoying life.  The author and his wife are extremely busy people.  They each have their hands in so many different jobs that it was near impossible to get everything done in a week…even with work weekends.  I find that I’m the same way.  I work from 7am to 7pm some days and then come home and have more that I need to do.  While I love what I do, there is definately a side of life that I am neglecting.

So, I may try out the challenge.  I’m not sure if my employer would dig on the four day work week, but I’m definately going to try limiting my work schedule.  Perhaps it is a very intentional 8 hour day and then no more than 1 hour on freelance per night.  It really helps you determine what you can take on as far as work.  I find myself taking on more and more figuring that I can make time to get it done.  If I knew I only had 5 hours per week to work on freelance…I’d pick and choose much more carefully what I took on.

It is a great article.  You can read the entire article here.

Its a rainy night here in Virginia.  The dogs and I are just chillin’ out in the living room listening to Richard Buckner bootlegs and alternating between Heinekin and Vitamin Water.  There is still a ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard and a few areas of the house that are still clean from the Open House.  We’ve had a few people come by, but our housing market here in Northern VA is incredibly quiet.  I for one am ready to get the house sold, move out West, and try something new.  My time here has been great.  I’ve reconnected with old friends and made many new friends that I hope I’ll know for a lifetime.  The pace around here is way too fast though.  Its nothing that you can put your finger directly on, its just in the air…maybe its in the water…who knows.  In any case, I’m one foot out the door…just waiting to sell the door.  Who wants to buy a door?  I’ll throw in a house with the deal.

Like everyone else who attended public school, I learned to say the Pledge of Allegiance early in life and continued to say it every morning until they day I finished primary school. I’m not sure that I’ve said the pledge since that day. I know there is alot of controversy and debate about whether the pledge should be part of our school day. My father just sent me the following story from Senator John McCain in an email. It really makes you think about what the Pledge means and why it is important for us to ‘pledge our allegience’.

As you may know, I spent five and one half years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. In the early years of our imprisonment, the NVA kept us in solitary confinement or two or three to a cell. In 1971 the NVA moved us from these conditions of isolation into large rooms with as many as 30 to 40 men to a room. (more…)

Everything that was wrong with the house is now right and we ‘go live’ tomorrow with the Open House. After the emergency ceiling repair, I spent today putting the house back together. After hauling the rest of the living room and dining room from the upstairs, I made a trip to Lowe’s for some fresh flowers to plant in the backyard planter boxes. About 80% of the flowers at Lowe’s were already dead, so that saves me from the guilt of having killed another batch of Spring flowers. I came away with enough decent ones for a ‘festive’ Open House tomorrow. All I can do now is think postive thoughts and hope that someone puts in a contract soon.

Right now our belongings are scheduled to be moved on May 15th. We are trying to get that pushed back to June. If we cannot get it pushed back, I guess some guys will show up in a week and haul all of our stuff away. It is facts like that which make this whole situation very ‘real’. Hopefully the house sells soon so that we can follow our stuff out West.

I think we’ve narrowed the field of places to call home to Oregon, Colorado and South Dakota. I’m really pushing for the Portland area, while Nat is really pushing for Spearfish, South Dakota. If the house sells soon, we’ll probably take the month of June off of work so that we can go visit Oregon and South Dakota to gather data for the ‘decision’. The data gathering conveniently falls at the exact same time as the World Cup, so it’ll be interesting trying to schedule our travels around the games. Surprisingly, missing World Cup games is the only thing that is really stressing me about about the whole situation.

In any case, it’ll be a very interesting next couple of months. As of right now, I have no idea how it will all end up, but I’m sure whatever happens, it will be great. Stay tuned to find out what the heck happens.