Thursday on The Tundra

After my latest post the irregular readers of my blogs may have been a little shocked. "That cheepskate finally shelled out pictures with his written up nonsense" you might have thought. I may not agree, actually I don't believe in a picture being worth a 1,000 words, but at least I am closer to proving that I'm not making this all up. Plus I've done my share of 1,000-word posts, so maybe it's easier. I don't find myself to be a very photogenic person (OK, that's a lie. I'm so hot and handsome that every camera that takes a picture of me implodes. And I don't want to break my cell phone/camera/rally game.) so to raise the street cred level of me and my blog I stay away from the pictures I take.

Today's picture tally isn't that great. Then again there weren't many photo shooting opportunities. You'll see.

Today I woke up a couple of times after 7 and finally headed to the shower a few minutes before 9. My mom was off to Wisconsin Rapids thanks to a car pool ride early in the morning so I had the BMW. Corn Pops did the trick for breakfast and I pretty soon I was off. I drove approximately 20 minutes South on 41 to West DePere back to Connie's house. The plan was to go to Tundra Lodge, a hotel slash waterpark with Connie's two sons, Ryan and Justin.

Justin called ahead and secured us three tickets to the waterpark part of the lodge and some time after ten in the morning we were on our way there. I drove, all the while 16 year-old Ryan naturally could have driven too. The Tundra Lodge was situated in Green Bay on Lobardi, the same street as the home of the Green Bay Packers, Lambeau Field. We passed Lambeau and if you want to, you can look at some of last post's (Sunday's) pictures to see it.

Tundra Lodge itself looked just like one. It looked like a lodge you could find in somewhere on the tundra. Kind of like a hotel on a Finnish downhill skiing resort like Levi. Hence Tundra Lodge.

The inside of Tundra Lodge was pretty different. For $21 and tax a person could use Tundra Lodge's waterpark for a day. Said waterpark consists of two pretty cool waterslides, several pools, a hot tub, a "wild river" etc. and an arcade. So me and the guys spent the next four hours going through most of the water attractions and in between we even hit the arcade. It was a whole lot of fun but there are no pictures since, well, I don't usually put my cell phone in the pocket of my swimming shorts. But believe me, we were there and it was a fun day, nice variation to what I've normally been doing, mainly watching movies on DVD.

So then we got back to their (the boys') place and after some wrestling with their annoying dog, Sandy, we were finally able to find something that both I and Justin wanted to do. So we watched a movie... Yeah, I know. But before we could finish watching the movie Ryan was off to a soccer game, Justin went to his dad's for the night and Connie had to go to Neenah. But I was allowed to loan the Lemony Snicket DVD and headed home on the X3.


I thought the clowds looked cool so I took a picture. I had to open the driver's side window to take this one. The previous picture I took from above the car thanks to the roof on the window. But that wasn't a very good picture, probably cause I was scared, a lot, that I'd drop my camera on the 41 at 70 mph. So I didn't post that.

So I got home, surfed the net for a while, ate a healthy meal with Mom, fucked around at the computer connecting various apparati to it, my iPod, my phone and my mom's camera. There's been some good shows on TV tonight like South Park and Seinfeld. The commercials are starting to piss me off though. I fucking hate cranberries! Why does every juice that I'm not allergic to have to have cranberries in them. They suck!

Next on the program is finishing the Lemony Snicket's movie, watching USA's game 2 of the FIBA Americas Tournament and going to sleep before departing to Chicago for the weekend. So tomorrow at 2 P.M. the search party of two (me and Mom) starts on the three to four hour drive to the Second City, Chicago, IL. It'll be greeeat. See you soon!

One Wild Week

7 Days Ago

So eventually I did get my plane tickets and happily traveled to Appleton, WI via Amsterdam and Chicago. As I wrote some of the 24 pages about my stupidity in to my notebook trusted Mickey Mouse notebook I almost missed the beauty that was the airport in Amsterdam. The place was clean as hell and even though I was in bit of a hurry some people were even able to relax.


After walking pretty much through the whole Amsterdam airport I boarded my United Airlines flight to Chicago almost an hour before take-off. Time still flew, pardon the pun, as I finished the first part of my traveling chronicles, which have hindered my blog updating capabalities. That's being corrected now. If my first flight was almost ruined by three drunk Fins sitting in front of me, there was no such fear on this flight. I was seated in seat 5F, on the first row of business class, with no one sitting next to me and no one in front of me.


Nice. I missed the first rotation of movies so I had to settle for watching two of the offered 6 movies. First I watched Shrek the Third which was albeit hilarious, too much of the same and I fell asleep during the part where Shrek and Arthur voiced by Justin Timberlake were having a love tiff or something. It's possible that I fell asleep cause I had slept 4 hours the previous night and been sitting for the whole day. After a couple of minutes sleep I was able to watch the end of the movie. After the movie I had a brief business class bathroom break before watching Edgar Wright's much anticipated (by me) follow up to Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz. The movie didn't disappoint and jumped straight to my To Buy list at Imdb.com. As of today I haven't bought it.

Eventually the 8 hr 36 minute flight ended without me being able to see the new Sandra Bullock thriller Premontion. When the plane landed I was barely able to see the skyline but I was welcomed to Chicago.


Tervetulea indeed. I had to take that picture without airport staff seeing me cause it was prohibited to take pictures in the custom's area of the airport. That led me to a LOOOOooong corridor where I got a super fast quick lesson to Chicago's history. Without any problem's I got to the proper gate at the airport but my flight to Appleton got delayed buy over an hour eventually because. The pilot wasn't in Chicago when the aeroplane was supposed to leave. His previous flight was delayed and a full plane waited for one man (pretty important one too) for almost an hour.

My mom picked me up at the airport and gave me a quick tour of the city in her BMW X3. We also shopped for some groceries before settling at her apartment. After an exhausting day I fell asleep on the couch before 8 p.m. and moved downstairs to the guest room quickly thereafter.


6 Days Ago

I woke up at 5 a.m. on Thursday morning. I scanned through the various TV channels and at 7 took my mom to work. Then I went shopping at the Fox River Mall where my mom had taken me the day before. My first day tally of shopping was one red Volcom T-Shirt that would've probably cost 50 euros in Finland if it was even available. I payed 20$ plus 5% taxes. I also bought my first DVDs: The Prestige, Million Dollar Baby and Flags of Our Fathers, which I have yet to watch/see.

A medium sized Pizza Hut pepperoni lover's pizza kick started the American junkfood experience and served as my first lunch in America. Four hours later I picked up my mom from work and we headed to a Mexican restaurant, El Azteca to be exact, to dine with Mom's friend Connie, Mom's secretary Christie and Mom's co-worker Linley and her family headed by husband Wayne. I am hesitant to mention El Azteca but it really was a poor restaurant. The mexican waiter was barely awake (I know it's a stereotype but this guy probably gave birth to it) and the food wasn't all that great. I've had better "mexican" food closer to the arctic circle than to Mexico.

The company was pretty good. Connie and mom had arranged so that I would hang out with her kids, Justin, 11 and Ryan, 16, and she asked me a bunch of questions of what I like and dislike to get my tongue untied.


5 Days Ago

There was no time for shopping on Friday and I didn't even have to take my mom to work. So I watched one of many classic NBA games on ESPN Classic and showered before my mom brought the car home. We didn't need the car because we were car pooling and went to Wisconsin Rapids some 90 minutes away. The true reason of our trip was unbeknownst to me, all I knew was that we were going there to play golf.


That's my mom. She didn't golf. Our company in the car included Larry, one of the bosses at my Mom's office, Michael who has a 25 year-old daughter and Petri another Finnish co-worker of Mom's. After a 90 minute drive and lunch at Cousins Subs we arrived at Wisconsin Rapids where we met by a Finnish guy simply called Teve. Teuvo was his real name but that's impossible to pronounce if you're a Wisconsininan.

So the four men golfed the first nine (I did the 3rd hole instead of Michael. I probably got a quintuple bogey, at least) and it was a beautiful day. Couple of hours later the real golfing started as approximately 60 engineers and customers played a 9-hole 5-man scramble on the more challenging back nine. I was able to play a couple more holes and almost hit a long shot from the "beach" straight in to the hole. It was just a great day, but I couldn't take anymore pictures cause my phone was running low on battery. After golf there was the joint dinner with pretty good grilled chicken and an awards ceremony where every attendee got something be it golf related or paper engineering related. The drunk guys at our table were hilarious and my new rolemodel, a 30 year-old paper engineer from Wisconsin Rapids, kept up the mood through the whole ceremony. He, for example, like the hero he was yelled out "schtick!" everytime a jewish sounding name was announced.

Larry the Boss drove us back home and weekend was there.


4 Days Ago

Saturday arrived and it was officially shopping day. After a breakfast consisting of delicious but allergy symptoms generating Apple Jacks, the team of me and my Mom took off to nearby Oshkosh. Or to be exact an outlet mall on the far side of Oshkosh. Lunch was a 1/3 pound cheeseburger with curly fries at Hardee's, a first for me.


Dee-lish. The outlet mall wasn't that big, but the parking lot was.


My mom used another fortune on clothes with "Oshkosh" on huge lettering in front for her granddaughter and her too cousins, while I spent the first half hour in a shoe store searching for, falling in love and trying on a pair of shoes I didn't even buy.


Snazzy, huh? That was the worst $40 I ever saved. Oh, well. The trek continued and the mall even offered my new favorite clothing store, Pac Sun. My mom bought me a Volcom hoodie after I had picked up a $.53 "I would like to make a romance inside of you" T-shirt from a rue21 nearby.

The day concluded with a visit to Wal-Mart near the Fox River Mall in Appleton. The DVD's that made their way to my collection from there were Haute Tension, Princess Bride, Letters from Iwo Jima, Shaun of the Dead and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collection (I-III), probably the best trilogy featuring reptiles ever. The day concluded with a visit to Hollywood Videos where we rented 6 movies for 5 days. Alongside The Break-Up, which I had already seen, we also rented Sandra Bullock's already mentioned Premonition, Korean monster movie Gwoemul, or The Host, Children of Men, Blood Diamond and Babel.


3 Days Ago

On Sunday our travels took us to Green Bay and the home of the Green Bay Packers, Lambeau Field. Lambeau field was pretty huge but we didn't want to shell $10 dollars a piece to see the Packer Hall of Fame. Still it was a pretty good experience. Here's some pictures:

The center of Green Bay was pathetic and so we headed back to Appleton to find the nearest Burger King. We found one basically at the last exit before Appleton. A Whopper with cheese was the day's lunch. After that we made our first visit to the local Best Buy where I was able to secure some more DVDs into my fastly growing collection. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cinderella Man, Pi and Donnie Darko's Director's Cut.

Dinner was my mom's speciality, steak and spaghetti with shrimp. We were joined at dinner by a young co-worker of Mom's, Niko who talked a great deal about work, Chicago and Wisconsin with my mom. He also tried to repair the crappy F-Secure program on my mom's Windows Vista while my Mom dosed off in the background. After Niko left we watched another rental movie and Mom went to sleep.


2 Days Ago

Monday began at 7 a.m., again, and included another early classic NBA game. Corn Pops had become the breakfast of choice and after hours of watching movies like The Princess Bride, I headed out to the Mall. First I visited Dick's Sporting Goods in search of good Basketball shoes. What I found was something completely different.


After a failed attempt to find any shoes fit for my fragile ankles I walked over to the Best Buy next door. The view between the two stores was something of cross between Shawshank and Mooby's.


I scoured through every movie at Best Buy setting a $10 price limit. My clerk was the same ultra thin girl from day before and she commented on I Heart Huckabees, one of the six DVDs I bought this time. The others were This is Spinal Tap, Dark City, Lawrence of Arabia, The Warriors and Alien.

I made another forced trek through Fox River Mall but was unable to buy anything besides an Arby's sub combo. Another fast food place to cross off my imaginary list. I retreated back to my Mom's house after filling the X3's gas tank at Exxon and watched a couple Seinfeld episodes before going to pick up my mom from work.

We were supposed to go eat out before heading out to DeBere to visit Connie and her kids, but I was full with Arby's so we skipped dinner and took off. When we arrived at Connie's house in a very nice area, we were greeted by Connie and the family's pets. A cat that scared the bezeeses out of me by jumping to the table in front of me without warning and a dog that just couldn't get enough of me.

After some chicken and caffeine free Mountain Dew we were joined by Justin, Connie's 11 year old son who had spent the day at day camp and was pretty tired. It didn't take long for him to show me his Legos and to show me his favorite movie scenes from Star Wars III and it's counterpart Fun with Dick And Jane.

Soon thereafter we were joined by Ryan and the night's main event could start. We played Guitar Hero II and had a blast. Even Connie and her boyfriend played one song, but my Mom wouldn't humor us with a go. Tired mom and I went back home and spent another regular evening in front of the TV set.


Yesterday


Yesterday the only place I went to after taking my mom to work at 7 am.m was Domino's Pizza from where I took home a medium sized Pepperoni feast pizza. After a pretty long day of movie watching and several days of coke drinking and junk food eating I crashed at 4 p.m. Meanwhile at 5:30 I was supposed to pick up my mom from work and go to the gym with her. Alas, I couldn't as I was asleep. My mom fortunately got a lift from Niko and found me sleeping in bed instead of, wherever she feared I could be. After a refreshing shower and a healthy home cooked meal everything was okay again. So I could start drinking sodas again.


Today

7 a.m. take mom to work. Watch classic NBA. Watch The Warriors. Watch Babel. Surf the Net, a lot. Watch Independence Day while writing this blog. Now I'm leaving to pick my mom up at six and then we're going to the mall. No junk food today. Bye.

Karma is nobody's bitch

This story begins a lot of time before he even packed his bags. Plus it does make for, if not a good, then at least a better story.

There once was a boy named Sakari who slowly but gradually grew up to be a young man named Sakari. As a boy Sakari was parts super organized drill sergeant and parts absent minded thinker at once. These traits forced him to line up pieces of toast in a straight line in order from biggest to smallest, on his parent's bed of all places. His traits forced Sakari to lose stuff and misplace stuff and forget stuff. Like keys to his home and when to come home or what time it was. Still when he grew up to be the young man named Sakari and the young man who people called Spede those traits were strongly in him although he had found ways to control them. Unfortunately sometimes one's inner child can't be repressed and it takes over.

So this story begins sometimes in the early stages of the year 2007. Don't ask Sakari what month exactly, he tends to to forget some stuff completely. Let's not bother him and jump forward to what he can remember, today. About for hours before he is to wake up and shower in time to leave to the airport on August 14th of that year, Sakari has finally gathered and packed all the stuff he needs for a trip to his mother's current residence in Appleton Wisconsin in the great big United States of America. Or so he thinks...

Four hours later Sakari wakes up, showers, finishes packing and gets a lift from his dad to the Airport. Sakari had talked to his mother in Wiscons twice in the past two days and they agreed that everything was in order for Sakari's trip to America. Or so they thought...

Sakari and his dad arrive at the airport approximately one and a half hours before Sakari first flight of three departs. He grabs his two half empty suitcases and his backpack and waves goodbye to dad, who goes cruising off to work. If you can call a 59 year-old man driving a Citroen C4 cruising. As the experienced, intelligent and savvy air traveller that he is Sakari quickly finds the right check-in counter at Helsinki-Vantaa airport's T2 terminal. He gives his home printed ticket to the female clerk at Lufthansa's business class counter. Sakari's ticket was bought from Lufthansa with Mom's frequent flyer miles. Skari gets his first warning sign when the lady at the counter informs him that Sakari's flight is with Blue 1, not Lufthansa. It's okay Sakari, that can happen to the best of us. The lady weighs Sakari's suitcases and prints out the stickers which will guide the luggage all the way to Appleton.

This seems like an opportune moment to change the subject or to take a look back at something happening earlier which would have significant relevance to the story being told. You know, to squeeze every little drop of suspense from this tale. Unfortunately, such story doesn't exist. Neither is what follows all that surprising.

The lady at the Lufthansa check-in counter informs Sakari that his ticket is the old fashioned kind of paper kind, not some fancy schmancy internet print out and that he should have his paper ticket with him. So apparently Sakari's memory had failed him after a long period of almost perfect performance. If you don't count in the fact that he left behind at his summer job a very important gift he had received only a few days earlier. But that's not even close to how well and fast Sakari can forget stuff. Especially if forgetting it can make him look less of a fool.

The Lufthansa woman informs Sakari that he'll have to try to get himself a new old fashioned crummy paper ticket that costs 25 euros from the Blue1/Star Alliance counter nearby. Finland where Helsinki-Vantaa is situated to be quite a large country for European standards with not too much population so things are smartly spread out. Fortunately that doesn't apply to the country's biggest international airport where all the counters are located very close to each other. In much less time than it took you to read the last drawn out sentence, Sakari moves with his luggage from the check-in counte accross a long line of Star Alliance tourist customers and to the proper ticket counter. Sakari grabs himself a queue number for the fast lane aka. "Gold Member Card/Business Class" as the text next to the button says.

The male and probably gay guy (Gay as in homo. Why would a straight man work at an airport ticket counter?) asks Sakari for his Gold Card. Sakari naturally won't show the clerk his non-existant goldmember. Or card. Nonetheless Sakari insists that he is a business traveller and that the person who secured his tickets is infact a Gold Member. So Sakari is naturally a spokesperson for that person and for himself. After using his computer for a measly 10 seconds the gay clerk rudely informs Sakari that the only people that can get him a new ticket are Lufthansa. Sakari is now truly baffled and wonders how the laws of Karma could have ever forsaken such a nice person as he is. He also wonders how a gay guy could be so frank. Sakari goes to a back up plan which includes considering the distant possibility that his memory has played a trick on itself and falsely assured itself that no paper ticket was ever received by the unlucky hero of our story.

So first Sakari calls his dad and asks him to make sure that there aren't any plane tickets at Sakari's aparment in the back of the top drawer of his computer desk where he hadn't bothered to look for one since he knew that he didn't have any crummy old-fashioned paper tickets. The whereabouts of Dad who cruised off a mere 12 minutes earlier heading who knows where and as fast as a 59 year-old mand cruing in a Citroen C4 are unclear. Still, private Dad is on the mission which includes grabbing the keys to Sakari's flat from Mom and Dad's house near by, driving to said flat, opening the top drawer of the computer desk, putting one hand all the way to the ticketless back of the drawer and informing his son that there infact never were any tickets.

Meanwhile Sakari does what any 25 year-old civilized male would do in his situation. He calls his mother. It's not even 11 pm the day before where Mom is, but she's already asleep and wakes up to answer the phone. Ms. Liisa Pelkonen, or Sakari mother, gives Sakari a number to Lufthansa for him to call. After hanging up with drowsy Mom, Sakari dials the easy to remember number 020 358358 without realizing that he almost had given his mom a heart attack.

A voice on the phone informs Sakari in Finnish, his native language, that he is on hold. All he can think of is, are there other schmucks around Europe like him trying to get "new" tickets for flights leaving in just over an hour. The beeping sound on the phone changes and after that a male voice answers in english. To make matters worse, neither of the two participants of the phone call speak english as their native language as one is Finnish and the other is a sucky Austrian, German, a kraut or whatever. To make everything more difficult the phone is crackly since people having the conversation are probably some some thousand miles apart, talking in different countries. The many sounds of a busy airport at seven in the morning definitely don't help the comprehension of the call. After six minutes of weak communication Sakari knows one more thing. Lufthansa can't help him now. Lufthansa also claims that some crummy paper tickets have been sent to Sakari's Mom's address in Helsinki some 6 months earlier.

To be continued...