Hey!! It must be the money!! Right Nelly?!

Hello. I am currently in St. Louis in the Crown Plaza Clayton outside the seminar room listening to a piano upstairs play the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera over and over again. The only problem is that the person playing it isnt a person at all. Its a ghost. The keys play themselves. Some of the songs sound good, but seriously some of the songs sound like crap, with missed key hits and all types of ridiculousness. Okay, I know its not a ghost, but somebody needs to fix the computer program running that thing. Its missing notes and sounds worse than a homeless man farting into a tuba. (Why a homeless man you might ask? I dont know... Lets move on) Maybe it could be like in the movies where there is like a mid..... sorry, dwarf in a small cabinet behind it playing a small piano, with string attached to the keys so people think its a "magic" piano...... sorta like how they did R2D2 in Star Wars. Man, someone needs to give that dwarf some piano lessons. Whatever. Anyways, I love this hotel. They have a concierge room with free dinner and free breaky-brek (term a la the skeeziest skeez of the seven seas.... Stephen Kamnetz) and they wait on me hand and foot. It also has an awesome workout room. Huge flat screen with tons of weights and machines. Its great.

Okay so I will continue from the last blog update. After flying out of San Jose, Costa Rica, I flew into Austin, TX to see my friends Ashley Walker and Amie Geister. I flew into Austin airport where they greeted me with a shot of Jack Daniels from the bar. I liked that welcome. I grabbed my smelly backpack full of sandy shirts, smelly shoes and shit-filled underwear ....wait what? No, but honestly my clothes were filthy and rank. Good thing I thought ahead and put a box full of clothes in the mail to send to Ashley so I had some fresh ones when I arrived. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, "Man Matt you are fucking intelligent!" Yeah I know, but unfortunately it was Terry's idea. So Amie and Ashley have T-Dawg to thank for my presentable appearance in Austin. What a mommas boy. So we grabbed my stuff and headed straight to Austin City Limits where we enjoyed man cans of Lone Star, Tecate, and Bud Light for several hours while listening to Citizen Cope, a lil bit of Mos Def, a lil bit of Bon Iver, and the headliner, Dave Matthews Band. We did this six to seven hour activity while it was DUMPING rain the whole time. Check out the pictures on facebook, Amie and Ashley wore flip flops. It looks like watered down monkey mess on their feet. It wasnt till a couple days later that a story on the news revealed it might have been more like watered down human mess.....true story, but for another time. Anyways, we woke up the next morning and Amie and I took a tour of the State capital of Texas and got to see Sixth St. up-close and personal while watching the Seahawk game. Sixth street is comparable to Bourbon St. in New Orleans with bar after bar after bar for several blocks. Its pretty cool. After that we found tickets for the Bon Iver concert, got drinks, saw an amazing Bon Iver concert in an cool retro theatre and went home. The next day day we went to Juan in a Million, (a Man vs Food restaurant) had a shitload de comida para pequeno dinero, and explored a bit more of the outskirts of Austin. It really is an eccentric city and it was a fun vacation. Before we left, we hit up Stubbs BBQ, which was needless to say, amazing. Some of the guys from the band Snow Patrol were eating downstairs and sound checking outside for their concert there tonight....I thought that would be the closest I would get to main stream music fame that weekend....nope it got better...

At the airport Amie and I are walking through the airport after having a beer and these two men dressed in all black clothing walk past us at a leisurely pace. Amie looks over at the tall really pale one and says "Gees. Jack White much??" Referring of course to Jack White from the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and presently, The Dead Weather. Too which I replay,"Yeah and Elvis Costello much?" because the guy next to him looked like Elvis Costello. Small, black hair, dark clothing, thin beard, fedora....ya know. Then I say," Amie, I think thats him." Then a small Japanese girl runs up with her camera and says,"Pweese takah pictaw Jak!!".

Grinning from ear to ear. Then me, being a music lover myself, and apparently a 15 year old japanese girl seeing a music icon for the first time, I say,"Froget it. Amie, I need to get a picture with Jack White." So being the prepubescent Asian girl I am, i grinned from ear to ear, walked up to him and said "Jack I need a picture man." He said "Totally man". I asked him a few questions and he was totally casual and a nice guy. I basically kissed his ass for 25 to 30 seconds. It was great. Afterwards I was pretty star struck. That was a good way to end a three week trip in Costa Rica and an awesome weekend in Austin.

After a week of preparing myself for this ridiculous job, I began my training at BER again. This is my second year of having my first week of training and was expected to help a little as we prepped the newbies for the road. This year, the people doing the job are older. We have PMs this year who range from being 22 to 32. Usually the age range of the managers tends to be between 23 and 26 years, being kids just out of college. I guess with the swinging economy, its desirable to everyone. SOOOOOOO the week went by and we flew to Chicago with our Logistics group. We were there for two days where we meet up with another group and put on the seminar and let the new people get a hands on first time at these seminars. In Chicago, we went to Giordano's, a Chicago style pizza place that has been mentioned in past blogs. One slice will fill you up, seriously. The next night we went to an awesome bar/restaurant called Goose Island that was a block away from Wrigley Field. It had awesome food. Fried pickles, some of the nest wings on the road, amazing nachos and a killer pork sandwich. After that dinner, all the PMs went out and had a few beers (OR 70!!!! AHAHAHAHAH). The scene around Wrigley Field is awesome. If I were to go down there for tickets, and by chance couldn't get any, I wouldn't be disappointed with hunkering down in one of the bars around the field. Cool part of town. After that night, there isnt much else to describe about the week.... except...

Due to budget cuts, BER program managers are now, on certain weeks, taking out two presenters at a time. Doubling the paperwork, doubling the orders, doubling the wake-up time, doubling the work overall. Not to mention the fact that if you are driving with these two presenters and they don't get along (what happened to me the last two days of last week), its a bitch. Most of the presenters are real sweethearts and fun to be with, but every now and then you get one that has an ego and thinks everything is about them. Part of my job is to sit next to those ego-maniacs and listen to them talk about themselves for three and a half hours until we get to our next destination. I can name the car rides where I had to do that. I would purposely stop at a random Starbucks or a gas station just to have a few minutes away. Im sure those speakers wrote in their notes about me...... I think Matt has IBS cuz all he did was want to stop at some random restaurant or coffee stand every 30 minutes on the road to do something. Some of them have even made like deep confessions or told me about family troubles and its like I play therapist/psychologist for an hour or two. Not necessarily giving advice, but just zoning out and drive and pipe in with an "uh-huh" or "yeah". When presenters butt heads with somebody in a conference, its one thing. They bitch about it and move on. When a presenter bitches about another speaker they have to travel with for a week, welcome to a dramatic fifth graders gab session whenever they have exclusive time with me. It wares on a person. Honestly, after two days of that shit....It was the Beatles who sang 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' right? Now THATS over dramatic. In all honesty, I try not to talk about presenters, cuz there a few I really like, and one of them last week was awesome, but some can honestly shove it up there ass. Okay, rant done.

Well, yesterday I was in Minneapolis at a beautiful hotel, and the hotel staff loved me. Not sure if it was cuz I was putting on a seminar that would give them business, but I got a lot of free stuff and upgrades. God Bless the Marriott Minneapolis West. Right now I just got done with my seminar and am typing in my room which has a 42 inch flat screen, a mini bar/fridge that I wont dare touch, an incredibly comfortable bed, and ample space to throw my crap everywhere. They also gave me a key to their hospitality room where I can get free drinks at night with a free meal. Last night I had Thai Chicken Noodles with veggies and swedish meatballs (IKEA good?? I think not) and a glass of milk. No, no beer or liquor. I am trying to watch my alcohol consumption during the days on the road. Trust me, passing up a free drink is hard when the restaurant downstairs serves the same drink for 10 buck, but its easier on the gut. They also gave me free breakfast. The Crowne Plaza Clayton is pretty solid. Its amazing. I stay here again tonight and go to Phoenix tomorrow. We will see what that trip brings.

Hope all is well in the chair youre in.

Deuces from the Crowne Plaza Clayton in St Lunatic Louis.....

Again?!? Another year?? Masochistic much??

Well Hello. Yes folks, I am at it again. Another 9 month season of me traveling 6 days a week to places around the nation to give teachers the much needed CEUs, PDP, CDUs, STDs, and CDPDUs they need to keep their teaching licenses. Did ya catch it? Yea I said STDs. Im pretty immature. As a second year of doing this, I might be a little more experienced at my job and understand a lot more, but due to the pathetic economy I unfortunately have picked up ALOT more work. Some blogs might deal with weekends in the Bahamas paid for by my company.... (that request took some serious convincing and persuasion) Some weekends might include me just going home and crashing in my bed, which is just as equally as awesome after a LONG week on the road. The possibilities are endless and I look forward to it...

Alright, lets get to the bitching....

Here I am. Shit. A 2 1/2 hour layover in SeaTac. Due to "airtraffic control issues" (which gives me the mental picture of some assholes standing around in a 200 foot tall tower in Minneapolis/St. Paul airport playing with themselves instead of directing planes in....Im pretty sure its not that) my speaker and I will be residing in the Alaska Airlines Boardroom for the time being. No Worries tho. My speaker is super nice, sarcastic, funny, mid-thirties, and pretty damn cute. I think the next two days, needless to say, will be easy as pie.

So last time I posted it was a few days before I left to Costa Rica, and had a hell of a time. I flew down with my good friend Mackenzie and met up with Eric and Candice (brother and sister Gobel, once again, great friends) in San Jose. Flying into Costa Rica is amazing. Although much of the housing is a little run down, the scenery is outstanding, and getting an overview of a different society/culture is pretty interesting. Soon Lisa's plane flew in and we were on our way the next morning. We had a Rental Car a Garmin (Garmond, Lisa thought it was ACTUALLY called that, so the name stuck) We went to La Fortuna, where we stayed in a town in the shadow of a massive volcano. For some reason the Volcano name escapes me right now and it was great. Stayed in a Robinson Caruso-esque (sp?) hostel for 5 bucks a night for each of us. There we met some cool people, and one unsavory older Australian man who we have several run-ins with. We swim in the La Fortuna Waterfall.... absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life. We had some decent food and made a good friend at the lava lounge bar at the end of town. Waking up in the morning after a night of drinking, Im not sure what it was, but I never got a hangover down there. It might be the fact that during the night, the extreme humidity caused me to sweat out all the toxins I had consumed into my body. Anytime I had the chance to take a shower, the feeling of being clean and fresh would fade quickly due to the absurd temperatures and thick blanket of humidity that wrapped around me after I walked outside. I didn't care about sweating, or my clothes smelling like complete shit. I was just glad to be in a paradise with friends to enjoy the moment. You are totally thinking; "God, what a fuckin cheesedick." In all honesty, 99% of the time, I was on cloud nine. The other 1% was the confusion of having 4 other people to make decisions with and figure out plans. Even then tho, I was pretty happy to be where I was. After that we went to Montezuma which was set up as a tourist town, but was pretty dead for the time there. We had a massive private beach to ourselves. Sat, drank, watched dramatic thunderstorms in the distance at night, sat and stared at lizards fighting on the ceiling (anytime they fought we called it the "Battle of Montezuma".... just fucking dumb I know) and had awesome food. Fried plantains with guacamole on top is one of my new favorite dishes. We did canopy tours here as well. It was sooo rad. We swam in small waterfall pools with rope swings, jumped off cliffs with waterfalls and got up-close and personal with monkeys. After a few days in Montezuma and completely demolishing our hotel (clogging toilets.... a la Dessert "El bano es no bueno!"... losing 2 sets of room keys, running over a pipe in there parking lot that connected to there restaurant and causing all types of damage while managing pissing almost everyone off in town, we left) we went to a small town called Dominical. This town was my favorite. Although it was filled with gringos and we stayed at a kinda crappy hotel, waking up (super early, like around 630 or 700), getting a tall cup of coffee, I would lay in my hammock outside our place and gre

et the friends we had made next door from Florida who came to surf. They lent us their boards and Mackenzie and I surfed one day. On that same day we surfed, we did a pretty intense ocean-kayaking tour where we went to a private beach and yelled at howler monkeys, say some sloths and paddled through caves. It was great. Holy shit was a I tired and soar the next day. After our amazing day in the ocean, Lisa and Candice needed to head out to San Jose so that they could catch their flights home. Candice was shitting her pants to be traveling home after 3 months away. After that, Mackenzie and I made our way to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica.

Okay so let me fill you in on Costa Rica attitudes and culture. Pura Vida....Pure Life

.... is their "saying". What I would say is a more just saying, "Tranquillo" which means "be calm"/"chillout". I have never been told in Spanish or English to chill out so much in my life. Now I understand I can sometimes be a high strung guy or a lil intense, but these people were like the most relaxed ever. On the Pacific side, people were relaxed, but on the Caribbean side, it was magnified times 3. It might be all the ganja they were inhaling into there lungs, but everyone was sooooooo laid back. so anyways....

Mackenzie and I hopped on a bus the day after Lisa left and made our way to Cahuita where there was a beautiful national park beach walk and great Argentina food. We stayed there for 3 days and walked all around Cahuita. Small town but a little too quiet and filled with a few crazies. Some quotes..... "Hey you guys want some good cocaine?? Actually its not that good, its mixed....AHAHAH" (Crazy drug dealer living out of shanty in middle of town)..... "Praise be to the Prophet, for I am him. I have never been a F@gg$t".... (crazy american who got dragged away by police and would hold a fifth in the middle of town and scream. I am so glad he

clarified he had never been gay. It made it SOOO much more believable that he was god.... that thick sarcasm for those of you who dont know me. After leaving the peaceful, interesting town of Cahuita, we headed to Puerto Viejo for a few days. Puerto Viejo seemed like it was a bit more "Americanized" than other cities and was the biggest city on the Caribbean side. It had great restaurants and awesome beaches. We had lobster and this amazing fruit bowl parfait for breakfast. It was massive. We got gifts and headed to Los Volcanes which was our "homebase" and had a NICE warm shower with pressure, awesome beds and great service. It was nice. We ended it nicely. We had the same flight up to Houston, where we split off. Mackenzie continued onto Seattle while I made my way to Austin for Austin City Limits and a fun tour of Austin with Ashley and Amie.

Well after a long post, I will save the Austin story for another time, and my delayed plane is about to board. Overall, my 2 1/2 week experience in Costa Rica was a blast. It was relaxing and helped me get ready for a long 9 months of working on the road. Hopefully this year I will work on posting more about my adventures and will take advantage of my unique employment opportunities in different cities. Deuces from the SeaTac Alaska Airlines......