Public Service Announcement

Post office, FedEx to see busiest day today - wtop.com: "The U.S. Postal service says 97 million customers will come to the post office, while 41 million will take advantage of convenient online shipping from home or office.

The post office recommends you send your packages by the following dates:

Dec. 16 - Parcel Post
Dec. 21 - First-Class Mail
Dec. 21 - Priority Mail
Dec. 23 - Express Mail"

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009:

The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was held on Sunday, December 6. The devotional featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. Members of the First Presidency were the speakers. Audio and video from the devotional are available in English below. Archives of the devotional are also available in many additional languages."

Another excellent Christmas Devotional.

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009

First Presidency Christmas Devotional 2009:
The First Presidency Christmas Devotional was held on Sunday, December 6. The devotional featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square. Members of the First Presidency were the speakers. Audio and video from the devotional are available in English below. Archives of the devotional are also available in many additional languages."

Another excellent Christmas Devotional.

Interesting Idea

Saw this over at Millennial Star. New tradition, blending my families' heritages?

My daughter is in the MTC. I made her a Hanukkah celebration that revolves around the light of the restoration.

I sent her a paper menorah to put up. The shamash is labelled “Light of the Restoration”. Each day she opens an envelope with a different theme of the restoration. For example, the first day is “The First Vision”. The envelope for this day contains a paper candle labelled “The 1st Vision” and readings about the first vision. The readings are approved materials for missionaries, such as Preach My Gospel, the scriptures, conference addresses, etc. Then there is a section on “Missionary Application and Personal Dedication”. After all Hanukkah is the festival of dedication. On the first day the reader is asked to “consider your testimony. What should you be doing to strengthen it? What do you need to do to better maintain it? How can you best share it?”

The candles are:
1. The First Vision
2. The Book of Mormon
3. Restoration of the Priesthood
4. Restoration of Christ’s Church
5. The Creation
6. The Fall
7. The Atonement
8. The Temple Ordinances

Of course there are gifts. And we’ve sent enough for her whole district. The first day they will get the traditional dredels and gelt. I was concerned that they get presents that wouldn’t be a problem to transport to their mission and would be semi-useful to missionaries. One day is blank cards on a ring for vocabulary words. The last day is Plan of Salvation cut-outs.

I also sent a tiny Hanukkah bush with silver and blue ornaments and a star of David on top.

Source: Friday Forum

Dear Mr. Erb

Upon the recommendation of the Admissions Committee, I am pleased to approve your admission to the Certificate in Homeland Security Studies program, effective with the Spring 2010 Semester.

[...]

Congratulations and best wishes on your admission. We look forward to working with you in the fulfillment of your educational and professional objectives.

Sincerely,

Dean
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Georgetown University
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

ISO: Contact Info

To my faithful blog readers.

yes, all 3 of you ;-)

I have a request. It's that time of year again: we're making our list and checking it twice. Because we're getting ready to send out the Erb Annual Report.

Make sure you're included on the email distro by emailing me (to confirm I have your best email address), or sending me a message with your email address some other way (I accept SMS text, Twitter @jedci, Facebook, and snail mail).

We look forward to sharing our holiday message with you!

We've been busy!

We had a great trip to California -- a big thanks to everyone who made out trip fun, tasty, memorable, and possible.

We were able to get some good (quick) visits in with both grandparents and the extended families. For some of the cousins, it was the first time in 10 years we had seen each other! Too long, if you ask me.

We felt like we took a lot of photos, but apparently not so much... but here are the shots from our camera:


Thankfully, others took pictures as well.
Photos courtesy of our "family photographer":
Thanksgiving at the Goldstein's

We had a blast.

(I'm hoping Jill is going to post more on her blog about all the fun things we did. If she doesn't, I'll come back here and fill in.)

We flew back on Saturday, had a quick detour at a nearby Wal-Mart when our poor, tired battery -- on its very last legs -- had enough juice to turn over (after several attempts to crank and multiple bad clicking noises) and get us to the store. Thankfully, the Auto Center was still open, and we were able to get the battery tested (yes, it was bad) and a new one installed.

Got back in time to review some things for Jill's Sunday School lesson, then went to bed. Jill taught a great lesson in gospel doctrine, and we had another great lesson from the Bangerters in a combined priesthood/relief society meeting.

Monday came and it was back to the grind. It was a pretty quiet day at work -- except for all of the technical support I provided pretty much everyone in the office (ok, so maybe 2 or 3 people; but it felt like everyone).

And now it's Tuesday. With today being the first day of December and all, we decided to get out some of our Christmas decorations that we have with us. (Most of our decorations are sitting in the Walker basement back in Rexburg...).
(I forgot to get a picture of the yummy cinnamon smelling pine cones that Jill got for me.)

Now I sit here writing this all up while I back-up some of our photos to my SkyDrive and listen to the Vince Guaraldi Trio rendition of O Tannenbaum, streaming on my laptop from AccuHolidays: Holiday Jazz channel. Ah, technology. Wonderful.

This day in history

November 23

On this day in history:
1887 Boris Karloff born
1889 Jukebox debut
1936 Life magazine hit newsstands
1940 Romania signs Tripartite Pact
1955 UK transfers Cocos Islands to Australia
1971 UN seats People's Republic of China representatives

1981 Sunrise: 7:00 am EDT, Sunset 4:50 PM EDT, Waning crescent moon
         And the love of my life was born =)


Happy Birthday!


(oh, and then in 1985 EgyptAir Flight 648 was hijacked...)


Compiled from WolframAlpha
External links from Wikipedia
Image from PimpMySpace

Music is cool

I used to listen to "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" on my Rio mp3 player back in the day. It was cool then; it's cool now (and cooler with my iPod - but maybe even cooler if I had the newest Apple product...). The fiddle playing is quick and fun.

Then, Jill rocks my world tonight and shows me the following clip. Fiddle = awesome. Speed = faster than the recording I have. Guitar solo = new twist to the song; watch/listen to the end.

Google Alert - "Jeremy L. Erb"

Apparently, I bought some property in South Carolina ...
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device
-------------------------------------------------
From: Google Alerts
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:46:34 +0000
To:
Subject: Google Alert - "Jeremy L. Erb"

Google News Alert for: "Jeremy L. Erb"
Real Estate Transactions
Charleston Post Courier - Charleston,SC,USA
Foxbank Ventures LLC sold 270 Killarney Trail, Foxbank Plantation to Jeremy L. Erb for $183440. Beazer Homes Corp. sold 408 Lakewind Drive, ...

Google Web Alert for: "Jeremy L. Erb"
The Erb Report - Politics: November 2009

This once a week Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

This Veterans Day

This Veterans Day, if you're in the DC-area, join Amy Grant and the American Red Cross for a morning of service. If you're not in the DC-area, you can still help!

For the past few years, the American Red Cross -- along with partner, Pitney Bowes, has gathered, screened, sorted, and delivered millions of holiday cards to our men and women in the armed forces. Here's what the Red Cross press release has to say about this event:

In this season of hope and giving, the American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes Inc. have joined forces again to invite the public to “send a touch of home” to United States service members and veterans across the country and abroad through the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign.

Now in its third year, the Holiday Mail for Heroes program provides Americans with the opportunity to extend holiday greetings and thanks to service members and veterans. Last year the program received more than 1.4 million cards for military men and women, their families and veterans.

The public can participate in the campaign by sending holiday cards with personal messages to a special post office box from Monday, November 2 through Monday, December 7. The Red Cross and Pitney Bowes will then screen cards for hazardous materials, sort and package the cards, and deliver them to military bases and hospitals, veteran’s hospitals and other locations in the U.S. and abroad during the holidays. [...]

Joining the campaign this year as spokesperson is contemporary music artist and American Red Cross celebrity cabinet member Amy Grant. [...]

Grant will celebrate the campaign’s official launch with the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes at a Veteran’s Day event in Washington where she will join military and public guests in signing holiday cards for the program.

Jill and I attended both efforts last year: we signed cards in the tent in front of the historic Red Cross, then we joined then-First Lady Mrs. Bush for an afternoon of sorting the holiday cards that had been received. [[I'm not sure where our photos are, but we were at the table kitty-corner to the First Lady's table. There's a pic on the ARC website that might have us barely in the corner, lol.]]

If you're not in the area, or can't make it down, you can still send cards now through December 7th. Holiday cards should be addressed and sent to:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456.

• Please be sure to affix adequate postage.
• Cards must be received no later than December 7. Cards received after this date will be returned to senders.
• For reasons of processing and safety, participants are asked to refrain from sending “care packages,” monetary gifts, using glitter or including any inserts with the cards.

For more information and card requirements, please visit www.redcross.org/holidaymail.

Our Weekend

This weekend, Jill cashed in some of the coupons that she has been saving since her birthday last year. One of the things she wanted to do was drive out to Wal-Mart. We needed a few things from this retail giant - which made the 16 mile trek out to it worth it.

A friend of ours posted some pictures a little while back that she had taken while visiting Rexburg. [[Aside: had to add "Rexburg" to Chrome's spell-check]] We really loved lots of her shots, and Jill asked if we could get some of her shots in high-resolution.

We printed off six of the pictures at Wal-Mart's one-hour photo, then drove out later in the day to pick them up and find frames. We found some really great frames for just a few dollars. We also got some larger frames for some antiqued replicas of documents from our nation's history.

I was in charge of making a date of the rest of trip, and so I found a fun place nearby where we could eat dinner: Logan's Roadhouse. The mushroom appetizer was so good. And I had one of the best rib-eye steaks that I've had in a while. We ended up bringing most of our entrees home -- it ended up being two breakfasts and a lunch. (Yay for steak and eggs, all rolled up in a tortilla!) We also got these mini desserts that came in tiny pails.

When we got home, we put all the pictures and documents in frames and Jill hung them on the wall. I supervised. Jill's done a lot to make our house look nice, and feel like a home. I took some photos with my Bb camera, so they're not great, but I wanted to show you what she did. Our house is coming together quite nicely =)

Looking Back (or, in other words, a peek into how my mind words - sometimes)

Warning: Long Post. But, IMHO, worth the read.

I was reading a friend's second blog this morning and saw a post about the book, The Scarlet Pimpernel. The post noted that this was also a play.

But not just any play -- a thrilling musical, if I might say so.

Not long after I started my freshman year at UC Irvine, I had the opportunity of seeing the play performed live at UC Riverside (if I remember correctly). All because of high school.

Why high school, you ask?

During high school, I had the awesome "job" of being the accompanist for a small (20 member?) audition-only, all-girls show choir. I believe it counted as a music/fine arts credit. In any event, it was after school, and the group did some fun numbers. For half of the year, they were "Show Choir" -- performing songs like "Build Me Up, Buttercup," "Hey, Big Spender," "Lollipop," and more. For the rest of the year, they were "Bella Voce," performing songs like "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day" (John Gardner), "Rain on Rahoon," "Adoramus Te," (Palestrina), and this hauntingly beautiful song -- the name of which, I cannot, for the life of me, remember -- that was in several parts. I believe it had to do with Mary, Queen of Scots. And it was made up of three or four parts. Ugh. I can see the sheet music in my mind, but cannot make out the name of the piece. There was one part that had this incredible double soprano portion (this put the hauntingly in the beautiful piece). I can still hear the two sopranos who normally sang it in my "mind's ear" -- I'm pretty sure it was Erin B. (now V.) and Cathy G. The lyrics are taken from a poem by Lionel Johnson called "Cadgwith":

My windows open to the autumn night,
In vain I watched for sleep to visit me :
How should sleep dull mine ears, and dim my sight,
Who saw the stars, and listened to the sea ?
Ah, how the City of our God is fair !
If, without sea, and starless though it be,
For joy of the majestic beauty there,
Men shall not miss the stars, nor mourn the sea.

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling now.

[[UPDATE: After holding onto this post for a few days, I finally figured this out, with the help of friends. The song I was thinking about is called "The Three Meditations."]]

Besides learning how to accompany a choir, I developed other useful skills such as how to set up mics to record, how to use a huge mixing board (and the portable one we had), how to perform with a group, and how to avoid blushing when being mercilessly teased by a gaggle of high school girls (ok, so I never actually figured this part out -- and I think I mostly enjoyed the teasing).

Over those few years, I also developed a real friendship with the choir director, "Chaz". He taught me a lot about music, about being a musician, how to produce a concert, and about life, in general. We'd have our favorite burritos on the day of the show and talk about all sorts of things. His wife, "S", was great, also. She taught music as well. I visited their home out on the coast several times. If I remember right, they had two dogs at the time, and I think one was named Rachmaninoff =) They had their first child before I left the area -- and I remember being afraid to hold her. (This fear of breaking small babies has largely continued to the present).

I'm sure he didn't know it at the time, but his friendship really meant a lot to me, especially during those weird years we call high school. And our friendship continued beyond that. He convinced me that I could learn how to sing. Ok, more like tricked me: he had me come out one summer to help with a choir camp he was involved with out on the CA coast. I was to play the piano and otherwise help out; kind of like a counselor, but I wasn't quite granted that "rank" (since I think the counselors were largely in college). Anyway, turns out that that they did need my help playing the piano, but they didn't need me all the time. I ended up joining in and learning to sing. This came in handy later, when I was accompanying the choir at UC Irvine and our director (Professor Huszti) decided that the accompanist would sing with the choir when not playing.

Beyond high school and summer camp, "Chaz" and "S" continued to include me in different things. When I'd return to the town of my high school I'd often try to drop in on a Show Choir rehearsal, or grab a burrito and meet up with "Chaz" for lunch.

The year I was at UC Irvine, for "Chaz's" birthday, he and "S" came down to Riverside with some other friends to see UC Riverside perform The Scarlet Pimpernel. And they invited me to go along.

I was very excited, and nervous about getting there on time. We were to meet for dinner beforehand, then go to the play. I drove out to Riverside, found the restaurant, and realized I was probably 30-40 minutes early. It didn't take me quite as long as I anticipated.... (Jill will tell you I still overestimate our travel time, and try to arrive plenty early, whenever possible). In any case, I was trying to decide what to do. I sat out in the car outside the restaurant for a while, then eventually went in when it was a little closer to when we were supposed to be there.

I entered the restaurant alone and explained that I was meeting some friends (and hoped they were there early, too). They hadn't arrived yet, so they suggested I grab a seat at the bar. I sat down at the bar and ordered some ice water. I was a little apprehensive because they didn't ask to see my license. Mind you, at this time during my freshman year, I hadn't even turned 18 yet. Apparently, I looked older than I actually was, because no one questioned me sitting there. (Or, it wasn't busy enough for them to care yet). In any case, the attractive girl behind the bar kept talking to me and offering to get me something else to drink, because surely I didn't want just water. I told her I was waiting for friends. She told me she'd mix me something. Eventually, we settled on her showing me how to cut lemons and limes in such a way that they have a natural cut/split in the middle (instead of requiring an additional cut with the knife) so they can sit on the edge of the glass. We chatted a little while longer, and eventually my friends arrived.

It was a pretty fancy Italian restaurant. I'm pretty sure it was here that I had bruschetta for the first time in a restaurant.

We went over to the theater and finished the rest of our enjoyable evening by watching a musical production of The Scarlet Pimpernel. I remember it being awesome. Costumes, cast, acting, orchestra, music, ... everything was great.

I came away from the show with several favorite songs.

• Act 1: Madame Guillotine
• Act 1: Into the Fire
• Act 2: They Seek Him Here

Back to the first part about reading a friend's post. The song that always comes to mind when I think of this play is "Madame Guillotine." Jill thinks I'm weird. I love to sing parts of it. I think the rhythm is catchy, the words are excellent descriptions of the subject, and -- it's just awesome.

"Broadway's Most Intriguing Musical" - see if there's a show near you.
And check out some clips from the music.

ASIDE: Apparently, someone else is a huge fan. Check out the site.

Anyway.

I've tried to find a video recording of Madame Guillotine to show Jill -- to try to convince her just how amazingly awesome the song is. I haven't been able to find anything on YouTube. That is, until recently.

Either my YouTube searching skills have improved, or everyone and their brother uploaded some Madame Guillotine videos since I last attempted to find a video with decent audio.

I couldn't decide which video to post--so I'm going to link to a few videos. Some are high school groups; others look like college productions. In any event, clicking through some of these will give you a feel for just how cool "Madame Guillotine" is. IMHO.

• From a regional production, Somewhere, CA
• From a 2009 production, Unknown
• From Coral Springs Charter School, Coral Springs, FL(likely)
• From a 2008 PTC production, Unknown
• Century High School, Aloha, OR: Part 1
  Century High School, Aloha, OR: Part 2
• High School Jazz Choir, Unknown

I included the two-parter Century High School one in part because I used to ride my bike around there daily for several months when I was a missionary in the Oregon Portland Mission.

To close:
- Despite the craziness that was much a part of my high school years, I have some great memories.
- A big "thank you!" to "Chaz" and "S" for the music and The Scarlet Pimpernel (and burritos!)
- I still travel for shows
- Slice! Dice! Come Paradise! I still love "Madame Guillotine"
- I need to find my Bella Voce CD and see if (1) Mary, Queen of Scots, on her execution, (2) The City of Our God, or (3) Most Glorious Lord of Life, are on it.

Some writing prompts for your comments:
- Do you have a favorite video of "Madame Guillotine"?
- Do you have a favorite song from a musical?
- Have you ever [seen / read / heard of] The Scarlet Pimpernel?
- Have you seen a good musical lately?
- Who influenced your [musical / theater / art] taste?

Pictures from Halloween 2009

No-Mess Pumpkin Carving

Check it out: http://www.primepuzzle.com/maxproject/pumpkin_sim.swf

I tried my hand at copying a template I found online. Leave a comment if you can recognize what I carved.

Last-minute costume ideas

Stumbled across this the other day:
Get your Halloween costume from the Internet!

This site has 21 different Internet memes with accompanying "recipes" for making the costume. This has ideas for solo, couple, and group costumes.

Go ahead, look around. The Internet just might provide your costume this year, after all.

"Happy Hallo-meme!"

Humkeyducken

A new twist on the turducken

Quotables

We've had some good talks the past few weeks at Church. Below are two poems and some excerpts taken from several of the talks. (Speaking of poems, one brother gave his entire talk as a poem. Unique.)

<b>POEM #1<b>

Good Timber
by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.

<b>POEM #2<b>

[Title?]
by George Blair

In Nazareth, the narrow road,
That tires the feet and steals the breath,
Passes the place where once abode
The Carpenter of Nazareth.

And up and down the dusty way
The village folk would often wend;
And on the bench, beside Him, lay
Their broken things for Him to mend.

The maiden with the doll she broke,
The woman with the broken chair,
The man with broken plough, or yoke,
Said, "Can you mend it, Carpenter?"

And each received the thing he sought,
In yoke, or plough, or chair, or doll;
The broken thing which each had brought
Returned again a perfect whole.

So, up the hill the long years through,
With heavy step and wistful eye,
The burdened souls their way pursue,
Uttering each the plaintive cry:

"O Carpenter of Nazareth,
This heart, that's broken past repair,
This life, that's shattered nigh to death,
Oh, can You mend them, Carpenter?"

And by His kind and ready hand,
His own sweet life is woven through
Our broken lives, until they stand
A New Creation—"all things new."

"The shattered [substance] of [the] heart,
Desire, ambition, hope, and faith,
Mould Thou into the perfect part,
O, Carpenter of Nazareth!"

<b>EXCERPT #1<b>

"Un-label" your neighbor. Who is my neighbor? The speaker put words to each letter of neighbor (mabe you would make a similar list?)

N - next door neighbor (the one you see daily and often share a drivay or a laundry room or a neighborhood bbq with)

E - everone at the grocery store (even the shopper who forgets about a coupon until after being rung up at the register, or who forgets the wallet in the car)

I - individual who didn't recycle (this would be me, sometimes - but I'm being better about my bottles)

G - guy who cuts you off while you're driving (I'm sure that's <i>never<i> happened to you)

H - "Helen," the co-worker who is always late on projects, or doesn't show when you have something due/to present

B - boy behind you on the airplane kicking your seat (not me, trying tocate you've recline so far as to push my tay table into my stomach...)

O - our family (of course we always get along...)

R - rubberneckers (the people on the opposite side of the freeway who gawk at the unfortunate and significantly alter the traffic flow)

Needless to say, I've been trying to be more patient in my driving.

<b>EXCERPT #2<b>

Explorers have long since sought for the Fountain of Youth. We should instead seek for Truth:

"The search for the Fountain of Truth begins at the doors of the temple."

Happy Monday morning!

Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

Road Closed

If you look closely, you can see flashing lights where the local police closed down the road a few blocks from where I ate lunch outside today. Word on the street is that a suspicous package was reported and the bomb squad called out. Beautiful day in the 'hood.
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

Now when was that due?

This was forwarded to me. I typically don't pass them on, but I thought this was funny enough to merit a post.

 

And all I got was

I think Jill mentioned her recent experience hosting some students from the BYU Marriott School - Romney Institute for Public Administration. They gave her this little portfolio to commemorate the trip, I guess. It has a pocket on the inside, a pen holder, and a spot to slip a small memo pad, and it zips closed.
<br>
I thought it was pretty cool: our first grad school swag that we've received* =)
<br>
<br>
<br>
Hopefully it was a good trip for the MPA students.
<br>
<br>
<br>
* directly. We "inherited" some JHU business school stuff last year.
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

Little birdie

Why do you fly upside down?

I had (have?) a (Wynton?) Marsallis CD called, "Joe Cool's Blues." Ok, I don't really remember if that what it's called, but I think that's right.

Anyway, it has Peanuts-themed tracks. One of them is about that little yellow bird that perches on Snoopy's dog house. Woodstock, right?

The fun jazz number has a chorus that says:

"Little birdie / Why do you fly upside down?"

I thought of that song today because of the little visitor I had while eating lunch outside today.
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

layout update

Finally went "pro" with my new template from Our Blog Templates.

Still some minor tweaks needed, but I figured I'd wasted spent enough time today messing around with Blogger.

Issues I'd like to fix:
* ShareThis doesn't work any longer. I tried to load new code, but it still doesn't show up in my post footers. It must be the custom template.
* Couldn't get a "Tweet this" footer feature to work, either. Again, must be the custom template.
* Some gadgets are squished in the new column widths. May have to play around with that.

Anyway - enjoy. One day, I'll upgrade my other blogs. For now, they show up as "tabs" in the link bar just below the header.

Birthday Blog

We spent a day (10 October 2009) in New York City for my birthday.

Summary
* Bus ride there
* Museum
* Times Square
* Dinner
* Show (includes a link to my exclusive write-up)
* Bus ride home
* Photos
* Music Bonus
For those of you who might not read the whole thing, I'd say the Museum, Show notes, and Photos are the highlights, the meat-and-potatoes, if you will. Everything else is a vegetable side, parsley garnish, or dessert. I guess you can decide what's what for you...

oh-dark-thirty
We arrived at 6:30 am to catch the 7:30 am Greyhound bus to New York City / Port Authority. The lady taking tickets wasn't very nice in the morning; she ended up also being the bus driver. At first, I thought it was just us. But several people who got on the bus after us commented on how grumpy they thought she was.

11:30 am
Arrived in New York! We immediately walked down to Pier 86 and grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor. It was ok; we probably should have scouted around for some different hot dog options, but it hit the spot. (Especially because I forgot to eat breakfast).

12:00 pm
Picked up our passes and went to the USS Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. We toured the USS Growler -- a cruise missile submarine that is now a floating museum. We squeezed through its narrow passageways and looked into the officer wardrooms, the mess, the bathing areas, the sonar rooms, the navigational and missile control rooms, and the torpedo rooms. It was fun to wander through; I wish they would have had more guides along the way to explain. Thankfully, I remembered some of the stuff I heard when I went on the USS Blueback tour at OMSI in Portland, OR. There were some tight spots on the tour to navigate - especially wearing the backpack we brought with our stuff. I really can't imagine living on this with dozens of other people; I bet they ran into each other all the time.

Next, we went onto the USS Intrepid herself. We wandered the flight deck and looked at the different airplanes they had there. There were US planes (F-4N, Huey, Cobra, and the A-12, among others. Check out the museum's virtual Air tour page here.)

As I've posted before, I love the Blackbird and think it is still one of the most incredible airplanes ever. For new airplanes, it's probably the Raptor, which I wrote about briefly here from our visit to the air show.

We climbed up the "island" (the command and control tower), saw the map rooms, radar stuff, and met some veterans who actually served on the Intrepid during World War II. One gentleman was an airplane mechanic. He told us how the average age aboard ship was 19 years old, and that he was 17 when he got on the ship. They didn't have "tours" back then -- you were on the ship until the war was over. He talked about the friends he made, and how he tries to keep in touch with those who are still living. Jill asked a question and he referred to her later as "the young lady" =)

We went to the side of the ship where we saw some big guns. Then inside the ship to the hangar where there were more airplanes, a demonstration of the "meatball" used for landing on the carrier, old instruction manuals, photos, a climbing net, and -- of course -- a flight simulator. We did this one -- although we both agreed we liked the one at the Smithsonian museum better. I almost forgot, they had a replica of one of the capsules from the US space program. It looked really tiny... I can't believe they fit two people in it and then dropped them back from space into the ocean inside it. The USS Intrepid fished one or two of these capsules out of the ocean.

Then, we did a quick walk through a Concorde jet that the museum had on the pier. It pretty much looked like a normal plane inside (although the cockpit seemed much larger than that of other passenger planes), but it was the outside that was neat. Another beautiful plane; sadly not in service any longer.

We wandered through the museum's gift shop on the way out, and saw the usual assortment of model airplanes, ships, military hats, space ice cream, and the like. They also had dog tags you could customize for purchase and some fancy collectibles.

3:30 pm
I think it was around 3:30 or 4 pm when we started the walk back towards Times Square. We wanted a snack, so we bought some bagels and shmear right across the street from the museum at a place called H & H Bagels. We knew it sounded familiar as we were walking over to it, and then realized when we came home (and looked it up) that H&H had been featured in You've Got Mail, Seinfeld, and How I Met Your Mother. We walked the bagels up to Times Square and ate them at a little red table while watching a production crew film a Bollywood movie. My bagel was very light and yummy.

4:00 pm
We went into the huge Toys'R'Us store in Times Square. It had a ferris wheel inside! We saw huge Lego sculptures (Empire State Building, Yankees hat, knights, hot dog vendors), T-Rex in the Jurassic Park section, a big Transformer, and tons and tons of toys. Pretty much all the toys you could imagine. The little kids were very excited. Oh, wait - so was I. Lego has some cool new lines =)

Then we went to the M&Ms World. We thought about getting Lindz something with the sassy green M&M on it, like this

or this

We ended up getting just a few dark chocolate peanut M&Ms from the huge wall of chocolate.


4:30 pm
We decided to start wandering closer to our eventual destination, which was over on The Avenue of the Americas. They had the whole street blocked off for a street fair. Vendors were selling hats, shirts, jewelry, bags, food, and other random things. We walked up and down several blocks of this, and I began to notice that some of the stalls appeared to be "franchised" -- for lack of a better word: same signage, same prices, same wares/food, etc. So, basically, we didn't need to walk up and down all the blocks, haha. There were a few "unique" stalls scattered around, although for the life of me the only one I remember was this reggae stall pumping out tunes...

We grabbed a kebab from a Greek Gyro stall manned by hombres hablando espanol. Thought about getting a smoothie or trying some chicken-on-a-stick, but decided that we just wanted to sit down for a bit.

5:00 pm (ish)
So we went to the most "New York" sit-down restaurant we could think of: Applebee's at 50th/Broadway. I know, I know, we should have tried to find something else. But at this point we were pretty tired and hungry, were looking for sit-down places, and remembered that we walked past this about a block away. The decor was very New York, haha, with Broadway and movie posters and decor.

Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, chain restaurants (from fast food to sit-downs) post calorie information on the menu. I'm not sure what had more of an impact -- (1) the fact that Applebee's in NYC was more expensive than eating at The Capital Grille in DC (ok, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but not by much), or (2) seeing calorie information on the menu options, or (3) having snacked at the street fair just a little bit earlier -- but we ended up sharing a Santa Fe chicken salad. It was good to sit down for a bit.

5:50 pm
Started the walk back towards Radio City Music Hall to get in line for when the doors opened for our show -- The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring: Howard Shore's Complete Score Performed Live to Film.

Here are some of the websites about it:

• RCMH - LOTR Page
• LOTR in NY Main Page
• Doug Adams - Music of the LOTR - Official Blog

Basically, they had a huge movie screen that took up the whole stage at Radio City Music Hall. They projected the movie onto the screen and played the audio and FX tracks through the speakers in the hall. The music track was removed, and the music of the LOTR was performed live by what I believe was around 600 performing artists.

Performance by:
- 21st Century Symphony Orchestra (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page),
- The Collegiate Chorale (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page,
- Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page,
- Kaitlyn Lusk (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page),
- conducted by Ludwig Wicki (Wikipedia Page [Google translated from German to English]/Ludwig Wicki

The awesome thing was that before the shot started, Howard Shore and Doug Adams (author of the soon-to-be released book, The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films) spent some time talking about the music, the themes, the instruments, and things to listen for during the show. It was so cool.

Click HERE for some of my notes from the concert.

We had some pretty decent seats, and really loved the show. The doors opened at 6pm, the pre-show talk started around 6:30, and the film began around 7:30. There was an intermission, and the show ended around 11pm.

a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

We wandered back through Times Square and hung out there for a little while while we waited for our bus back to Washington, DC. Took some photos of the Square at night.

Here are some pictures from the trip:


12:00 am
We were tired and done hanging out at Times Square, and figured that we'd be okay spending the next hour in the NY/Port Authority bus station. We were anticipating a 1:30am bus ride back to Washington, DC. You're supposed to arrive an hour early (for what reason, I have no idea, since it's not quite like getting into an airport and on an airplane...). We got there and some people were in line already. They were anticipating a 12:30am bus, but we were pretty sure they read the schedule wrong. (Although we secretly hoped there was an earlier bus).

Jill sat on a bag and closed her eyes for a bit while we waited. This was probably the longest hour and a half of the trip.

1:30 am
Boarded the bus and started the drive back to Washington, DC. I had napped most of the way to New York this morning, and ended up waking up around 3am. I alternated between looking out the window at the darkness, fidgeting, and trying to go back to sleep.

5:15 am
Arrived back at the Greyhound station in Washington, DC. Walked outside just as a cab drove by; flagged it down and took the quick trip over to Union Station where we had left the car in 24/hour-access parking. We're pretty sure the cab driver charged us an extra dollar or two that didn't seem to be justified on the fare card ... but we were too tired to argue.

5:30 am
Picked up our car and drove home

6:00 am
Went to bed.

11:00 am
Got up to get ready for Church.

12:15 pm
Got to Church to practice the organ before Sacrament meeting.

What a fun trip!

### (Random) Music Bonus ###
To sign off, I figured I'd follow-up my Billy Joel "New York State of Mind" post with some other New York-related songs. Here's what I found with a [[+song +lyric +"new york city"]] Google search:

• "New York City / Such a beautiful disease" (Norah Jones, "New York City")
• "Start spreadin' the news, I'm leaving today / I want to be a part of it: New York, New York." ("New York, New York")
• "I'm sittin' in this New York City... / Cause I don't know no New York City song" (Tanya Tucker, "New York City Song")
• Another rainy day in New York City / Softly sweet, so silently it falls / As crosstown traffic crawls / Memories [on] my way in New York City (Chicago, "Another Rainy Day in New York City")
• "Standing on the corner, just me and yoko ono, / ... / New York City! / New York City! / New York City! / Que pasa, new york? / Que pasa, new york? / Hey! hey!" (Yoko Ono, "New York City")
  
• And this was just in my head because of our Saturday trip: "Saturday in the park / I think it was the Fourth of July / People dancing, people laughing / A man selling ice cream / Singing italian songs / (fake italian lyric) / Can you dig it (yes, I can) / And I’ve been waiting such a long time / For Saturday ..." (Chicago, "Saturday in the Park")

Quote of the Day

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.” — Robert A. Heinlein

(Quoted in "Top 10 Modern Human Addiction")

A day that will live in ...

... infamy?

• NASA "dropped some bombs" on the moon
• President Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• Jill's office was warned to not go out the front door (but not evacuated?) because of a bomb threat at the White House.
• It was my birthday
• Went to work
• Had a fun lunch with co-workers; talked about the President's award, life "back in the day," and an upcoming symposium a few of us are attending
• Jill surprised me by getting off work early, putting away lots of stuff, and getting our house straightened up [I was so surprised - it looked like I was in a new house!]
• We tried a new Chinese place just down the road from us (Grand Hunan) - my beef chow fun was excellent.
• My fortune cookie read: "(-: Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. :-)" -- strange fortune, eh?
• Then went to bed early because we had a big trip planned for Saturday

A compilation

I've had a bunch of pictures on my Blackberry, some of which have previously been sent to Twitpic, and others of which have been added individually to one of my several blogs, and some which have never before been released...

I stuck them all in this album, complete with comments. Enjoy.

New York State ... of mind

Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood
Hop a flight to miami beach or hollywood.
Im taking a greyhound on the hudson river line-
Im in a New York state of mind.
[...]

Mission Memories

As some of you know, we're in the process of moving this month. (For those of you in the Arlington ward, don't worry - we're moving within the ward boundaries!) We signed on our new place on the 14th and could be moving stuff in, but this month is kind of crazy.

On top of generally being amazing (pretty much the story of her life), Jill is (1) preparing for the LSAT (less than one week away!), (2) teaching early morning seminary, (3) giving her last hurrah for singing time in Primary tomorrow, (4) workin' workin' workin' for the American Red Cross, (5) serving with me in the temple on Friday nights, and (5) putting up with my stress/angst/procrastination as I work on my grad school application and trying to get us packed and ready to move by the end of the month.

She's great, and I love her.

Our house, on the other hand, is showing signs of moving preparations. And, this post obviously shows that I am not really focusing (read: am procrastinating) on what I should really be doing. Jill is in the kitchen taking a practice LSAT test, and I'm about to share with you some things that I find fun and nostalgic.

I was going through stuff in the office and found the old 2.4 GHz cordless phone that I bought while as a missionary in the Oregon Portland Mission. Since we pretty much have only had a land line once since we've been married (it came with our cable Internet subscription from the local ISP we used in Boston), I figured we should donate it to the garage sale a member of our church is having. I plugged it into the wall to see if still worked. The machine still had a bunch of messages saved on it--all from my mission. If you've seen our house (and my in-law's basement), you know I have a hard time letting go of things. Not wanting to hand over the phone with my messages still on it, I created a "technology nexus" and decided to share some of the messages with you. [[I put the geek details at the bottom, if you're curious.]]

The first message that greeted my ears was from Sister Chambers. Her husband was a member of the Stake Presidency, and, if I remember correctly, had signed up (or been signed up?) to go on exchanges with us. It sounds like we had called to confirm that he'd be coming (or called because he hadn't shown up yet), and had this great message from his wife on our answering machine. I loved serving in their ward, and was able to interact with them frequently during my 7 1/2 months there. Anyway- I still find this hilarious:


I can't remember when this message was from, but I'm pretty sure I was Elder Simmons' District or Zone Leader at the time. I wasn't around Elder Simmons very much, but I remember his quick smile and great sense of humor. This is what he left us when we were out:


Speaking of smiling faces, one of my first Zone Leaders left this message on my answering machine. Your music selections are limited as a missionary, but apparently his family was in the habit of recording and sending him tapes with messages from them. This tape must have been something else in a previous life (awesome mix tape?), and a portion of a James Taylor song made it out to my Zone Leader. (I cannot assess with any degree of certainty whether or not the inclusion of some verboten music was part of some conscious plan his family had).


I had some other funny messages left on my machine. In my second area, we worked closely with the Relief Society President and her husband as we got to know the ward, find, and reactivate in the area. Wendell and Cindy are another great couple; I loved being in their home. In a previous life, he built and raced some fast cars. They had a neat picture of the Savior in their home, and I brought my mom by to visit when she came to Oregon to pick me up. Despite the fun we had (and there was always lots of fun to be had with Wendell), every visit to their home was a spiritual experience. That being said, here's a voicemail from Wendell:


Not only did The Wild One grace me with a voicemail, but I had some contact from a cast member of The Princess Bride:


You heard earlier from the Singing Elder Simmons; here's a voicemail from some Sisters in a Zone where I served briefly as Zone Leader. These Sisters definitely kept my companion and I on our toes:

I'll have to see if I can scrounge up a picture of the ugly gourds...

On my second birthday in the mission field, many members of the Zone I was serving in helped to make it a special day. I was greeted by a decorated apartment, treated with a freshly baked cake, and had this wonderful ditty on my answering machine:


Our Zone was so caring. A few of us seemed to like to share this white noise machine, and to pass it back and forth. I'm not sure if it actually helped me sleep any better ;-), but I can say that I think I'm pretty oblivious to the sounds of much white noise when I hear it now. Perhaps the creator of this white noise maker was a big EA Poe fan - hide the thing in the floorboards (or ceiling...) and you have yourself your very own Tell Tale Heart:


I also saved a message from one of our investigators in NE Portland. Steve was introduced to us by his neighbor, a member of our ward. Steve didn't look like who you'd think a "normal" (is there such a thing?) investigator would look like, but I remember how sincere he was, and how much he needed the Gospel. Steve spent the previous few years before we met him in and out of treatment centers, first for opiates, then for the methadone they used to get him off the opiates. He had family in the area, but was living on his own at the time. After a haircut Elder Fagerwold gave him and some new clothes, he cleaned up well and surprised everyone at church, who had seen him "pre-makeover". He was someone that I remembered seeing a physical change in his countenance when he began to pray and read the Book of Mormon. Despite his rough life, in some ways he was very childlike, and I remember his prayers when we taught him about repentance. He enjoyed church services and would tell us how he felt like being in church with everyone was "burning all the bad stuff out." Right before I left the area, he was admitted to the hospital for some other complications (liver?). I don't know what happened to Steve. But I remember hoping and praying so hard with Elder Fagerwold that he would have the strength to keep turning his life right, which was no easy task. We told him to call any time he felt like he was tempted (he had been clean from the hard stuff for a month or so at this time, if I remember correctly). This voicemail is pretty typical of the messages he would leave for us.

I wish we could have done more to help him.

This last message that I had saved was a "thank you" call from some of the Sisters. Without sharing too much here, I'll just say that I received a lot of packages from my mom--which I loved. She was always very thoughtful and including things like bookmarks and stickers to give our investigators and their children. I knew that a some Sisters were going through a hard time (one in particular), and suggested that my mom send some anonymous packages to them. After that, I didn't really know what happened. Apparently, she sent them several (many?) packages incognito (I think she even drove to other post offices, haha), but at some point decided to send one as herself. This voicemail was a thank you from the Sisters when they found out it was my mom. I sent it my mom today and made her cry (a good cry), as she thought about the bond she was able to form with these Sisters at that time in their lives.


Listening to these messages brought back memories, along with many of the feelings and spiritual impressions that I had formed those many years ago. I better understand the counsel to read the scriptures daily (even when you've "already read the book before"), to attend the temple frequently, and to keep a journal. Although I haven't been as consistent with some of these as I would have liked, I have felt--for lack of a better term--the "power of remembrance". Hearing those messages again reminded me of past spiritual moments, and brought back those same feelings. The same thing happens as I "remember, remember" the experiences that I've recorded in my journal. Or turn to the scriptures, or attend the temple. I have many wonderful memories from my mission. When time and the craziness of life seem to make some of them fade, I'm grateful for opportunities like this--finding a phone in the bottom of a box--that bring them back to mind.






[[The Geek Stuff: Ok, it's not that geeky. My "nexus" was playing the answering machine back while recording individual voicenotes on my Blackberry. Then, I downloaded the files from my Bb and converted them from the .amr format to .mp3 format with a free program called QuickMediaConverter. Then, they got uploaded to my Google Pages site, and I used the Apple QuickTime embed code to add the player. The HTML code I used was:

<embed src="YOUR FILE'S HOSTED HTTP:// ADDRESS HERE" embed height="17" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" type="video/quicktime" width="300" controller="true" autoplay="false" /></embed>

Notice the autoplay is false so it won't start playing automatically. That's another thing I'd add to the list of things that bug me -- music or other audio that starts playing automatically on someone's blog...

Wanna play cops and robbers?

The Washington Post had an awesome article earlier this week about playing cops and robbers.

I'm serious.

They called it "threat theater." Basically, some federal law enforcement and protective agencies in the area hire actors to help them train new recruits in near real-life scenarios. Sometimes, it's in a controlled environment. Other times, it's out in public. They call it "interactive behavioral simulations." (That's a fancy way of saying "role playing.")

Here's a good intro from the article, titled "For Security Trainees, a Threat Theater":

Every day, as Washingtonians go about their overt lives, the FBI, CIA, Capitol Police, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals Service stage covert dramas in and around the capital where they train. Officials say the scenarios help agents and officers integrate the intellectual, physical and emotional aspects of classroom instruction. Most exercises are performed inside restricted compounds. But they also unfold in public parks, suburban golf clubs and downtown transit stations.

Curtain up on threat theater -- a growing, clandestine art form. Joseph Persichini, Jr., assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office, says, "What better way to adapt agents or analysts to cultural idiosyncrasies than role play?"

The article is HERE--you have to click through a few pages, but it has pictures. A one-page print view is HERE.

The article has a video from one of the psychotherapists:

(Link to video on the WaPo website)

Interesting, eh? Now it makes me wonder if the bust I blogged about earlier was real or not....

What's buggin' you?

So I'm sitting here waiting to pick Jill up from work so that we can head to the temple, and I figured I'd post a quick blog.

Ya'll liked my "when bugs attack" post, so I figured I'd find out "what's buggin' you?"

This insect (6-legs, right?) was just chillaxin' on the screen slider this morning (outside thankfully!). It was the biggest fly I think I've ever seen. Mutant!

Anyway. So, people who stand on the (clearly marked) walk side of escalators or those moving airport walkways "bug me."

What bugs you?
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

When Insects Attack

This guy landed on the car while I was riding with our elders quorum president to stake priesthood leadership meeting this afternoon. I thought it was going to try to carry the Honda away!

Ok, I cannot tell a lie. The bug just looks huge because I had the camera zoomed in and up close. Jill thought it was gross.
Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

Labor Day Holiday Weekend

Friday (04 September 2009) got off to a good start. Some government agencies had an early release day -- and the deputy and the chief strategy guy where I spend most of my days now were part of that group. Instead of going home early, we opted to have a "working lunch" (like those ever really work) that lasted from about noon until 1600 (that's 4:00 PM to those of you on 12-hr time).

I had arrived at work around 0700 that morning to get a few things done at my home office (i.e., the building where my company's headquarters is actually located). Then, I had a mid-year review with my Division Director. That went well (I thought); we talked about what I was working on, my plans for work and for school, etc. He offered to write a letter of recommendation for grad school; I took him up on that offer.

Hurried over to my off-site office. In some ways, it's nicer. I have two (and soon, three) huge (24" ?) LCD monitors, a bigger desk with more storage space, and my own office. No windows, though. But there's candy. The "guvvie" deputy brought back some Lindt and Toblerone chocolates from a recent trip overseas to share with the four (became five today) of us who are there. I miss being able to see the other people I work with, and having lunch in a lunch room, and a fridge to keep my lunch from home in. And JB's jokes. Anyway. Prepped for a meeting that started before lunch and lasted until I had to run that afternoon to pick up Jill.

Picked up Jill, went to the Distribution Center, got some new shoes, ate a quick dinner (courtesy of some leftovers from Jill's work), then started our first shift as ordinance workers at the Washington, DC Temple. It was a great experience, and the night went by so much faster than I anticipated (we're on the 1830-2230 shift).

Saturday was my day of labor on this Labor Day Holiday Weekend. A friend of mine has been involved in a family business ever since he was about 12. He even put himself through college with it, and still does some of the manual labor occasionally. Years ago, his family bought into a high-end wooden play set business, called Cedar Works. The structures use 100% northern white cedar harvested in Maine -- this wood was selected because of its natural long-lasting and splinter-free qualities. These things can be quite large, impressive, and expensive -- going for many tens of thousands of dollars.

However, they recently spun off a "Toyota" line to expand into a different market that their typical "Lexus" line wouldn't reach. This line, called Play-A-Round swingsets, comes in three standard configurations. [If you go to the website, you'll see better pictures than what I took after construction.]

Anyway, my friend picked me up at 0830 and we went to the first home in Arlington, VA, and built a Lookout structure, with the addition of the nicer tire swing and two child chairs. That took us until about 1230. We drove out to the next place in Laurel, MD, and grabbed some fast food on the way.

From Play Around

Thankfully, it wasn't as hot as it has been this summer. But, thanks to my genes and the general lack of exercise that's currently a part of my life, I was still sweating pretty good most of the day.

At our second (and final) stop, we built the Frontier Fort structure. This one is the biggest of the three Play-A-Round sets. This home also purchased an A-Frame swing to stand alone on the side. We finally finished this one up around 1930 or so. It was a little harder because the ground wasn't leveled off for us.

From Play Around

Got back home about 2030, nearly 12 hours later. I was so tired and sore - and a little bug-bitten. What a wimp, huh? And thus ended my Satur-day-of-labor.

Sunday is a day of rest and worship. For some, it's also a day of meetings. I participated in an elders quorum district leader training, a committee chair meeting, the typical Church block, and a Seminary kick-off fireside with Jill. She was able to meet all the freshmen she'll have in her class. They're in for a great experience; Jill is a wonderful teacher and has this way of connecting with the youth. After the fireside, Jill was set apart by a member of the High Council and a member of the Stake Presidency. It was a really touching setting apart. (Come to think of it, she's had three really good settings-apart lately, with Primary Chorister, ordinance worker, and Seminary teacher.)

We ended up playing Pinochle and enjoying some break-the-fast desserts and munchies with some friends. We're excited because we'll be moving very close to them soon. (Don't worry, it's just across town. No big moves here!) Thus ended our Sunday.

Monday was a real labor-free day / holiday. We slept in - yay! Then we got ready to head into the District to go on a tour of the Washington Monument. It was great - we got on-street parking right on 14th St NW, walked around a bit before our tour time, and were numbers 3 and 4 in line for our 1000 tour time. We read the Wikipedia article while we waited, and learned about how the walls were 15 feet thick at the base and 18 inches thick at the observation deck level. We learned how the project ran out of money and eventually became a government-funded operation. They weren't able to find the same quarry of stone to complete the monument with later, so the color changes about 150 feet up the 550 foot structure.

From Washington Monument Tour

We rode the 70-second elevator ride with a car full of other visitors and listened to one of the rangers tell us about the monument. Then, we were free to wander around the observation deck and look out the windows. There were two windows in each of the four sides for viewing. I thought the display by the window was neat because it not only identified the structures for you (so you know what you were looking out at), but had photos from the 1800s, early- and mid-1900s to show you what the District used to look like from the Washington Monument.

From Washington Monument Tour

(Us waiting for the elevator)

From Washington Monument Tour

The picture below is a good shot because you can see Jill's work (off to the left of the circle at about the halfway point, the small rectangular building with the half-circle driveway) and the White House:

From Washington Monument Tour

It was a little hazy still (some light rain throughout the day), but you could still see down to the Capitol building.

From Washington Monument Tour

This is where we went on the pedal boats the other day:

From Washington Monument Tour

Us at 500 feet up on the observation level:

From Washington Monument Tour

We weren't quick enough with the cameras, but Marine 1 (and its decoy) flew past the Monument as we walked back to the car.

From Washington Monument Tour

It was a fun activity. We walked back to the car (past a whole bunch of fat birds that were hanging around the popcorn stand!) and headed home. We spent the rest of the day doing chores and getting ready for Seminary. We made a yummy taco salad for dinner and watched some 30 Rock. Then, it was time for our holiday to be over.

It was fun to spend time with Jill (especially because I hadn't seen her pretty much all of Saturday). We've had some neat adventures around town =)

Enjoy some more pictures!

All the photos I took from building the swingsets:

All the photos from our Washington Monument tour:

Update

As you can see (for the 2 of you who consistently read my blog), it's been a while since I've written here. There will probably be some more gaps - as we're preparing to move mid-month, applying to grad school (me), getting ready for the LSAT (Jill), and serving in our various church callings. Oh yeah, and work. Despite some interesting things about my present task, I'm having a lot of fun at work and feel like I'm doing good stuff. I work with a bunch of nice, great, smart people.

Got to speak wth most of my family today. =) they need to come out and visit more -- but once things calm down!

Jeremy L. Erb
Sent from my mobile device

Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!

I can finally visit blogger.com from my computer. More Erb goodness to come.
the end
###

Self-Smart Yourself

I'm sure you've seen the self-smarted video - you know, the guy who doesn't need books or things, but is just self-smarted by himself...

So, to prevent you from reading books (which for to be can make you dead) to learn some more stuff about the world around you, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the blog - and maybe just blow your mind. But don't worry - I'll save some room for oxygen and, like, stuff.

One episode of the West Wing (WW) was recently brought to my rememberance - it was one of the "big block of cheese day" (BBOCD) episodes. On the BBOCD, as Leo likes to explain it, the White House (WH) opens its doors to those groups who typically would not get an audience with members of the WH Staff. Several WW fan sites report the following information:

Big Block of Cheese Day is a fictional workday on the television program The West Wing. On Big Block of Cheese Day, the White House Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry, encourages his staff to take meetings with fringe special interest groups that normally would not get attention from the White House. Big Block of Cheese Day is "celebrated" in episodes 105 and 216.

White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler refers to it as "Throw Open Our Office Doors To People Who Want To Discuss Things That We Could Care Less About Day," and Deputy Communications Director Josh Lyman refers to it as "Total Crackpot Day".

Get the idea?

I was reading my morning slice of knowledge from my company's library team and skimming for recent reports or articles that were of interest to me. One of the proffered articles included a discussion of events in a different part of the world, and included an image showing a map of the area with other details.

It was looking at this map that reminded me of this discussion that C.J. Cregg has with a [fictional] group called the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality (OCSE).

Now, you're probably used to seeing a map that looks like this:

The US is on the left-hand side, Greenland takes up a good chunk of the top-middle, and then the former Soviet Union stretches out across most of the rest of the map. This map is a Mercator projection map, based on "a cylindrical map projection presented by the [...] cartographer Gerardus Mercator, in 1569. It became the standard map projection for nautical purposes because of its ability to represent lines of constant course [...], as straight segments."

Well, that's good, right? We want to be able to travel around and sail the high seas! However, the encyclopedia article points out some drawbacks to this method: "While the linear scale is constant in all directions around any point, thus preserving the angles and the shapes of small objects (which makes the projection conformal), the Mercator projection distorts the size and shape of large objects, as the scale increases from the Equator to the poles, where it becomes infinite."

The challenge with making maps is that the Earth is a sphere,

(although slightly "smushed" [yes, that's an appropriate term to use when self-smarting yourself], which is why some individuals got together and created a system to help locate yourself on the Earth and navigate around it accurately, since the shape was more ellipsoid that spheroid. In the 1950s, the US Department of Defense (DoD) "began to develop the needed world system to which geodetic datums could be referred and compatibility established between the coordinates of widely separated sites of interest". This led to the creation of the World Geodetic System (WGS), which has updated and modified since by the DoD, going through several revisions (WGS-1966, -1972) to get to where it is today -- WGS 84. This system, like several others, was developed by the military, but benefits you as a citizen today [what would life be like without checking out the world through satellite photos incorporated into Google Earth, or without being able to plug in an address to your GPS unit and get directions to somewhere new?].)

and maps are obviously flat. You probably did the hands-on lesson in school, trying to peel and orange and lay the peel out flat...

But there are other ways to depict the Earth's spheroid surface on a two-dimensional plane. Diversophy has a great article about map projections, focusing on the Peters World Map. It too starts off by showing a Mercator map:

and then by presenting this discussion relating to the distorted proportions mentioned earlier as a drawback:

The Mercator is also a "conformal" map projection. This means that it shows shapes pretty much the way they appear on the globe. The mapmaker's dilemma is that you cannot show both shape and size accurately. If you want a true shape for the land masses you will necessarily sacrifice proportionality, i.e., the relative sizes will be distorted.

Africa: 11.6 million square miles

Greenland: 0.8 million square miles

Do you see that? Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, but is actually a fraction of the size when you compare land mass (million square miles).

Diversophy continues:

The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator projection as "the Greenland Problem." Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa's land mass is actually fourteen times larger (see figure below right). Because the Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map, diminishing the size and importance of the developing countries.

This was convenient, psychologically and practically, through the eras of colonial domination when most of the world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an image of the world with Europe at the center and looking much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world view. When there are so many other projections to chose from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still such a widely recognized image used to represent the globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit. The inertia of habit is a powerful force.

A different type of projection is an "Equal-Area" projection. This shows sizes in proportion while sacrificing true shape. The Peters Projection is one type of equal area map. Is it the only one? No, there are hundreds of others, but only a handful of others are in common use. The Mollweide projection, developed in 1805, is commonly used for displaying distributions (people, telecommunications equipment, the world's religions, etc). Karl B. Mollweide (1774-1825) specifically sought to improve upon the weaknesses of the Mercator projection. The Eckert IV is another equal area projection developed in the 1920's by Max Eckert (1868-1938). This has the advantage of less shape distortion near the equator and the poles. A fourth equal-area map is Goode's Homolosine created in 1921 by J. Paul Goode (1862-1932). This interrupted map looks like an orange peel (see figure below) and has less shape distortion than the other equal area maps.

Is one projection "better" than another? No! There are simply different ones for different purposes. The Peters projection is commonly used in contrast to a Mercator projection, and is visually engaging because it is so jarringly different. At ODT, Inc. we prefer it above other equal area projections because it shocks viewers into questioning their assumptions, about maps specifically and about life in general. It helps people to "think outside of the box" by exploring how what they see is predicated on what they expect to see.

So let's look at some of these other projections mentioned:

Peters

Mollweide

Eckert IV

Goode's Homolosine

Continuing the Diversophy discussion:

Other projections in use today include "Compromise" ones: projections that try to show shapes more or less as they are on the globe without distorting relative sizes too badly. The Van der Grinten projection was developed in 1904 and was the official projection of the National Geographic Society from 1922 to 1988. From 1988 to 1998 the National Geographic Society used the Robinson projection (created in 1963 by Arthur H. Robinson). Recently the National Geographic Society adopted the Winkel Tripel projection. Oswald Winkel developed this projection in 1921, and it has the advantage of minimizing shape distortion in the polar areas.

Here's a Van der Grintern:


I'm sure you're aware of the power of images. The 1960 debates between Nixon and Kennedy highlighted the power of the television image. According to the CNN AllPolitics website, "What everyone remembers is the first debate, where the telegenic Kennedy won the image battle over Nixon who, recovering from the flu, appeared pale and refused make-up."

What we see and what we believe are interconnected. A book I read in college, called Ways of Seeing by John Berger, begins:

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.

But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. The Surrealist painter Magritte commented on this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.

The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages, when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today.

Our minds and our eyes are interesting organs. Here's another example -- maybe you've seen this in your inbox:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

So - where am I going with all of this?

Have you ever thought about your "place" in the world? What if your world was flipped upside-down?
Like this,

or this:

This second map is a Peter's projection map that has been rotated 180-degrees. It shows the positions and the relative sizes of the continents more accurately than the Mercator map from the beginning. With the world upside (and some countries less "in the spotlight"), how do you think about the world now? Why should North be "up"? Isn't the person standing at the South Pole "on top" of the Earth, since his feet point towards the center?

Deep stuff.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, watch C.J. meet OCSE, and ask, "Why are we changing maps?" Pretty much everything I wrote above, summed up in about 3 minutes 49 seconds.