Nic's Wild European Adventure: Visiting the Motherland

The next weekend I decided to quit the whole sight-seeing deal, and get down to brass-tacks. Time to update the agenda and readjust priorities so we can concentrate on what's really important: relaxing. And what better place to do that than the beautiful beaches of Greece?


For this weekend I took a plane with some co-workers down to our beachhouse in Halkidiki, where we relaxed and had ourselves a loooong weekend (Thank you, vacation days!). We met up with my mom, who proceeded to play the role of the entertaining host, charming my fellow travelers the whole time. We spent our days relaxing at the beach or traveling up and down the coasts and taking in the beautiful scenery, and then went out at night to indulge in fresh fish and other fine Greek cuisine. You just can't beat a weekend like that.


It was during this weekend I began to ruminate some serious philosophical shit, as the kids say, and compare American versus Greek attitudes toward work. Which is better--working like a dog to achieve modest productivity gains and maybe getting a bigger tv, or working enough during the week and then piling into a car and driving to the beach to enjoy the weekend? I'm beginning to lean toward the latter. It was then that I realized that I already had what people spend their life working for (Thanks Dad!). Makes the rat race seem all the more pointless, and my decision to not engage in Early Interview Week shenanigans all the wiser.

Now sit back and enjoy the pictures.

Nic Ouzo Visits The Motherland

As I alluded to yesterday, you may have noticed my absence from the pages of WDR. I mean, I'm not just calling attention to myself when I say that my lack of activity was noticeable. There are hard numbers (and perhaps soft numbers, who is to say) that back me up on this. Not that any of you care, it seems--our visit count stayed right around average during my absence, and not one of you wrote a comment asking "what the hell happened to Nic Ouzo?" or "I need more vital information like this in my life". You're all assholes.

To answer your non-questions about my absence, the title pretty much explains it all. You may ask, "what's the motherland?", and I'd smack you in the mouth, you petulant little shit, haven't you looked at my name? That's right, I spent the last two weeks relaxing in the country known for its olives and its startling lack of anything of value in the past 2500 years. We just bought a new house/condo/apartment/dwelling out there (I wasn't entirely sure what it was exactly--turns out the proper term may be "villa", but the Italians may sue over the use of that one), and I had to take a visit out there. Which meant I had to immediately drop my schedule of Not Doing A Fucking Thing, and instead go to a country where I speak 8 words (mainly, "please", "thank you", "cat", and "watermelon"--surprisingly, this helps in hundreds of conversations), and do all my nothing over there, on a beautiful secluded beach.



Unsurprisingly, that meant pretty much a total lack of internet, and therefore no words from The Nic Ouzo, Himself. I had to travel to the nearest two-goat village to be able to check my e-mail, and twenty kilometer treks by donkey are no walk in the park (they are in fact worse than 16 kilometer treks done via donkey). At some point in the trip, I was at the point where my thoughts consisted of "No TV and No Internet Make Nic Ouzo Something Something", but I managed. And despite assurances by my co-authors that either things would go smoothly here at WDR/they'd go nuts, I instead get a drunken post about a Cypress Hill cover, and that pretty much was it. Kudos you guys, you really earned your bonus this year.

In the end, I had a great time, and have a wealth of stories that I can share for the blog. I mean, what's not to like about beautiful mountains, fantastically clear blue water, awe-inspiring beaches, and...that German tourist is taking his girlfriend out from behind. Lovely.

I Don't Think I Understood More Than Three Words Of That Last Post

There are times in your life when a concept suddenly hits you. Like being blindsided by a car at highway speed (not the speed limit, mind you, but actual driving speed) or that damned burst of sunlight as soon as you step out of a movie theater in the day, it's as if the whole world is different in the blink of an eye. Often you feel quite stupid for not having realized this revelation previously. I can think of several occasions for myself: Discovering what the word "porn" meant after years of rhetorically asking my parents and any passengers in our car what the sign that always read "no child porn here" referred to, realizing that the Pythagorean theorem applies to the sides of a triangle rather than its angles... it gets pretty nerdy from there on out so I'll just leave it at that.

My point here is this - There is an equal and opposite phenomena that abounds as well. I like to call this opposite-effect "Overous Headious". Clever, I know. The term describes the long-term sinking in of the realization that you have not caught on, and will never catch on, to something. In my case, sports are a subject of Overous Headious. I have never understood sports. I am incapable of remembering the rules, I cannot keep track of scoring systems, and titles of field positions and the like are absolutely Greek to me.



This is ironic, as I had a rather successful (though short-lived) career in elementary basketball and soccer teams as a kid. You would think that in several years of playing the games, I would remember some of the basic concepts. Granted, I do know the difference between 2-point and 3-point shots in basketball, but that's about it. In soccer, I was praised because I could score a goal from any location on the field; even as a goalie. However, I could not tell you anything about the sport other than "you have to get the ball into the other team's net, and you can't use your hands." Similarly with basketball - "you have to get the ball into your net, and you can't use your feet." ... Maybe it is the inherent similarities to these concepts that makes them memorable. That, or I could be declared legally retarded for not understanding that much about sports that I have personally played.

My point here, is that sports have always been beyond me. I do not mean I am physically incapable of playing sports, but rather I simply have a mental block on understanding sports. I will never be able to play for the sole reason of being unable to remember the rules, positions, scoring systems, and other fundamentals of any sport. This goes doubly so for football, which uses so many plays and terms that I actually become dizzy thinking about even trying to commit it all to memory. So, for all you readers out there that saw that last post and thought "I don't think I understood more than three words of that post", know that you are not alone.



Adios, Muchachos.