So, all this for $8 — roughly the price of a hamburger and fries. And how did the launch go? Well, the first day was pretty unexciting — as I expected. How are you supposed to get the word out to people? Apparently, by submitting it to the Apple downloads page. Because on the second day, it racked in FOURTY FIVE (45) downloads, and its first joyful purchase. And by the third day, I received my 2nd payment of $8, and the downloads count climbed to… 100? Nope. 200? Still nope. 515 downloads.

So as you can imagine, I’m pretty excited right now. If all works as according to my almighty plan, I’ll get enough sales from this to call it a Real Job™. And it will be one I enjoy mightily.

If you have a Mac running Leopard, you can download Sleep Blaster from the website.

But at least I’m blogging!

As you may be aware, last Friday was the 4th of July here in the USA. We had some Bearcat people over and went swimming/boating in the lake, then made a campfire and roasted s’mores. After a while we went inside and everyone participated in a ping-pong tournament, while Sammi and I jammed on my Les Paul.
It was a smaller party than we usually have here, but nice and relaxed.

—-

The next day I had to get up brutally early (for a 5th of July morning), because I had track racing state championships that day. So we headed to Alpenrose velodrome in Portland, and as soon as we got there it started pouring rain! Now, because the track is so steep, it’s impossible to ride around the banks without imitating an amateur skier, so they had to postpone everything until the track was dry.
Two hours and 500 towels later (not really) Alpenrose was dry, and people started zooming around the track. We soon discovered that my 17-18 year-old age category consisted of myself and Richie Suditu, an unfairly fast 18 year-old national-caliber racer.
We both did two matched sprints at the beginning. This happened to be the very first time I did a matched sprint at an actual race (yes, at the state championships). Of course Richie beat me both times, but the second one was by less than the first. Matched sprints are about 90% strategy and 10% legs, and I used better strategy my second try.
Our other races were a 1k time trial and a 20-lap points race. The points race was interesting — every 5th lap there would be a sprint, and the first four finishers would get points. The race basically consisted of myself, a couple unattached guys, and four riders from team BBC. Three of the BBC guys worked together for the whole race and I hung with them most of the time, drafting here, bridging a gap there… I came in 4th in each of the sprint laps, and I finished 4th at the end of the race.

I ended up getting a silver medal for the overall, because Richie and I were the only 17-18 year-olds (even though I am, in fact, 16). This (state championships) was a fun little break from swimming, and an opportunity to try out my new track racing skills.

A few weeks ago I got to see some of my high school friends again, because Sarah was having a party at the neighborhood pool. Morning practice that day had cured me almost completely of the urge to swim, but the heat of the day and the blue water prevailed over my will.
After a while we were all starting to freeze, so we got out and sat around a fire eating hamburgers and roasting s’mores. I tried to break my previous record of two hamburgers and seven s’mores in a row, but I only made it to six s’mores this time, because — thank goodness — after some time they took away the s’more materials.

When it was dark, we were all sitting around trying to think of scary stories to tell each other, but didn’t progress much farther than, “Somebody should say something scary!” — that is, until Troyce suddenly exclaimed, “Did Eamon bring the Mercedes?!” And before I knew it, Troyce, Joe, and somebody I didn’t know were marching out to go “sit” in my car.

As we were all sitting in the dark car blasting Franz Ferdinand through the speakers, somebody had the idea that “we should go to 7-Eleven and get a slurpy to pour on Sarah!” So we drove half a mile to the 7-Eleven to complete this mission. When we got back, we responded to Sarah’s “can I have a sip?” with, “of course!” *pssssshshhhhhh*.
It was a great success.

But soon afterwards, I discovered my cell phone had gone missing from my pocket. We looked for it all over the car, but unfortunately it was on vibrate mode, so calling it didn’t do any good. I figured it would turn up eventually, so I borrowed someone’s phone to let my parents and Iza know I didn’t have my own with me.
Later, some of my friends started calling (on the other phone) to say they’d been getting constant foul messages from my phone. At first I thought someone from the party must have taken it as a joke, but after further investigation nobody seemed to have it. It then dawned on me that it might have fallen out of my pocket at the 7-Eleven and somebody took it.

I won’t take the time to explain the steps we took in trying to figure out if somebody at the 7-Eleven did indeed take it, but unfortunately that was the case and I’m currently (partially) phoneless. So until an iPhone finds its way magically into my hands, should you need to contact me, call my old number but with a 6 instead of a 3 at the end. (The number of my sister’s phone, which I stole BORROWED for an extended period of time).

Although it was at the time still Winter here in Oregon, I spent the last weekend at the beach in Waldport with Iza, her family, and Mark’s cop friend with his two (younger) boys.
The ocean water being about -200°, we didn’t go wading past about two inches, but we roasted marshmallows on a camp fire and made (many) s’mores.

On the way back, I got a few rather frightening photos when we stopped at a friend’s house for a barbecue…

Last Friday, my dad and I made our triumphant return to the Alpenrose Velodrome, which I hadn’t seen since track season last summer. Alpenrose is one of the steepest velodromes in the country, with banks sloped at 43°. It was scary going around the track for the first time in so long, but I quickly got used to it.
This was also the first time I was able to try out my new track bike, which I got last December for Christmas, but hadn’t been able to ride until now! Track season lasts only in the summer, so I’ve been eagerly waiting to try it for five months.
The bike is amazingly light, and I can accelerate really fast. Part of the reason for this is the pedals we put on: your shoes lock in like with any normal clip pedals, but to release your foot, you have to pull a little lever on the back of the pedal. Now, remember that this is a fixed-gear bike — so you can’t stop pedaling to pull said lever! It takes some getting used to, but after a while I could do it without any trouble.

I had three races: a ten lap scratch race (which is just a regular race), a 15 lap point-a-lap race (where the winner of each lap gets one point, but nobody else does), and a 15 lap points race (every fifth lap, the top four people get points).
Having been away from the track since last year, the best way to describe my first two races is with the word “pwned”. The last one went a little better though… I didn’t get any points, but then again most of the racers didn’t, and I finished in the middle of the pack, even though most of them were fast 30 year-olds. I probably would have come in a few places farther ahead, but somewhere in the middle of the race a guy wiped out directly in front of me — all I saw was him cartwheeling in the air and his bike flying, but he miraculously landed on his feet, and the race continued. He was surrounded by other riders when it happened, but somehow nobody hit him, although I had to swerve up-track to avoid the crash, which cost me some speed.

It was fun racing at Alpenrose again and getting back into the track culture. And I didn’t even have to face my worst fear: not being able to clip out, and tipping over in the grass!

Although I neither go to school, nor would I be a Junior if I did, last Saturday was Prom. Because Iza, being an exchange student, has certain superpowers here, we went as sophomores.

I met up with Iza and Allison at Iza’s house for Photos Round I. After that we drove over to Trevor’s house (Allison’s date) for italian sodas and then Photos Round II.

After this, we rode in a Cadillac to Corvallis where we had dinner at The Gables, then we went back to Salem where the dance was.
The McNary school regulations were comical. There were teachers wearing identical blue shirts stationed every 10ft on the wall, with the principle standing on a chair (of authority?). There was a rule that the lights had to stay on, but that rule was broken after about 45 minutes. At one point the principal actually went up to the microphone and demanded that everyone “spread out”!
Despite these factors, it was still a lot of fun. At about 10:30 we went back to Trevor’s house to watch a movie before splitting up, and then we all desperately avoided the Keizer cops until safely home (well past curfew).

The next morning we had to get up early for a swim meet in Corvallis, but the last night was worth the 15 second add in my race…

Last week I did my first triathlon since last year: The Gator Grinder. It was a 500y swim, 12mi bike, and 5k run. Unfortunately I don’t have time to post a full race report, but for the record I won my age group and the next two up (up to 35), with 1:08:27.

Enough of this folly. You see what happens when I don’t write for a while? “Creative” things. To write is to vent one’s thoughts, which is to expel one’s madness. I just expelled two weeks’ worth.

Life after the cruise took some getting used to. Not only is the ground violently still, but we have to do everything for ourselves: cooking (well, I guess I don’t have to do that), laundry (OK, so I don’t have to do that either), room cleaning (hey, just because I don’t - ! )… But besides all this, The Homework is back. Fortunately I still remembered how to speak Latin, but as for the other subjects… well, I couldn’t even remember how Zygotes are produced differently from members of Basidiomycota and other fungi!
But besides all that, it was tough getting back to swim practice. My first day back was an OhNoDoubleTroubleTwoPracticesInOneDay day (ONDTTPIODD for short), and I found it challenging just to swim a 300 straight.

However, after two weeks of fighting to survive each practice (which builds character!), I’m almost back to normal now. From this we can deduce the most probable result of my recent productivity throughput which predicts that you will soon be reading more of my Wonderful blog posts — if this one hasn’t driven you away completely.

Today, which marks three weeks of this trip, was our last day in Rome. We didn’t have time to see the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum Romanum like I said we would, but we saw a lot of other things. To be able to see all of Rome, I think the ideal amount of time to spend there would be, maybe… 78 years.

We walked to the Vatican (where the nearest bus stop is) and then rode one of those good ol’ Hop-On buses to the Piazza del Populo. The Piazza del Populo is a big plaza surrounded by buildings (including two churches), with an 80-foot obelisk in the middle.
Here we witnessed a situation that can only be unique to Europe: a man selling roasted chestnuts on the corner, with two people playing an accordion duet on the other side of the street, while a horse and carriage passed through the middle. If you ever catch a scene like this in Oregon, call me and I just might award you a sock monkey.

From the Piazzo, we walked a few blocks to the Spanish Steps, which is, in actuality, just a big set of stairs lined by flowers with a sign that says “Do Not Defecate”. But apparently it’s famous for the fact that it has been featured many times in movies as a meeting place in Rome.

A short walk from this was the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain is also a famous monument — it’s even been copied by Las Vegas. It is a huge stone fountain adorned by sculptures of deities, and legend has it that if you throw a coin in, you’ll return to Rome someday. (We threw in a coin.)

Our next stop was another well-known ancient landmark: the Pantheon. You probably know what the Pantheon is, but let me refresh your memory just in case:
Pantheon is Greek for “many gods”. As the name suggests, it was a temple for the worship of many gods. It is a large, round, stone building, with well-recognizable stone pillars outside the front supporting the entrance. The ceiling is dome-shaped, but there’s a big round hole right in the middle! When it rains, you don’t want to stand under the hole, but water will drain through smaller holes in the floor.
Although the Pantheon used to be a place to worship many gods, it has now been converted into a church. It’s strange seeing statues of saints and Roman gods in the same room…

After poking around the Pantheon for a while, we headed over to the Vatican to look through the Musei Vaticani — a huge museum containing ancient artifacts spanning thousands of years.
The first few rooms were full of ancient Roman statues. It was fun looking through these, because some of them we had seen before in pictures and textbooks — and these were the originals. There was one sculpture of Laocoon and his sons being dragged down by serpents, which Isa and I recognized immediately because there’s a picture of it in our Latin books!
It was also fun looking at all the busts of Roman noblemen, because you could tell whether or not the sculptor liked his model… Some looked like Greek gods, whereas others resembled primates.
Another cool thing we saw here was a very large, intricately carved sarcophagus, which turned out to be the tomb of St. Helena — Emperor Constantine’s mother.

After looking at these we went through the Etruscan-Italic room, which contained pre-Roman artifacts from the Etruscans — most of which were from around 700 BC. There was a lot of weaponry and armor, and even some ancient action-figures. One thing we noticed was that many of the helmets had some form of gruesome sword-shaped dent or terrible puncture hole on the back!

One of the most amazing things we saw at the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was built in the 15th century, and is famous because the whole ceiling is intricately painted by Michelangelo, and one wall contains his fresco The Last Judgement.
Because flashes of light can eventually destroy frescos, no photography at all is allowed in the Sistine Chapel. But every two minutes or so, some tourist who couldn’t follow rules would take an illegal photo, and all the guards would shout, “NO PHOTO!”. I was one of these tourists. Come on, if something says not to take photos, it must be really good, right? Well it was, and I wasn’t about to sacrifice a photo like this. At least I didn’t use flash, and I didn’t get caught!

We were at the Vatican for hours and hours trying to see everything there was to see, and by the end my legs were cramping up just from walking. When we came out, we trekked through the rain to a gelateria and then a buffet restaurant, to have our last supper in Rome.

Thus concluded our last day of this Mediterranean voyage. Rome was definitely my favorite place in the whole trip, with Casablanca second. I hope to come back here sometime (sooner, rather than later), and see the other 95% of Rome we didn’t even get to yet.
Since we’ve reached the end of this trip, I’m ready to disclose how many photos I took in the last three weeks: 1001. No, wait, that was the last three days!
OK, how many total? 4,230 photos and videos. I’m not kidding — that’s how much we saw in three weeks.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this travelogue series, because I sure had fun writing it. It’s going to be hard to get used to The Real World now… sort of like trying to get used to solid ground after being at sea for five days (I almost fell over several times, thinking the ground was still moving). But I suppose a few 5am swim practices will pound it back into me (should I walk out alive).
So, thank you for putting up with this ridiculously long posting, and I hope you’ll excuse me to go play Caesar III finish my Latin homework…