On The Road

This really has nothing to do with my traveling but it certainly was an event.

It’s kinda gross so read on at your own risk. (more…)

Um, Christmas came and went. It was cool. I gots me some new hiking boots, a new water bottle for my adventures, and a few other things. Since my family does a lot of traveling we decided to go to New York City on Christmas afternoon. The trip was, um, interesting. Somehow a family of travelers became slower and less efficient than a bunch of non-English speaking tourists. Anyway, we wandered around and saw stuff. Then it was back to Pittsburgh. I decided not to stow all of my personal belongings and didn’t turn off my approved electronic devices and took some pictures on approach. It was a typical overcast day but the sun’s rays look kinda cool.

When I got back I helped my friend Katie make some cookies on Wednesday night and they turned out pretty sweet. She’s a real chef (like schooled and what not) so we wore her chef hats (improperly) and it was fun and then I got to keep mine. I’ve actually worn it since, just wandering around the house with it on.

Marky Mark is also in town so I went and picked him up and we went around Pittsburgh taking pictures. We went to a few overlooks and then down to Oakland. We saw the home plate and old outfield wall of Forbes Field and ate at the “O”.  We tried to got to the top of the Cathedral of Learning but we could only get to the 36th floor. From there on up it was locked. Crappy. I thought it was cool though after going to all the cathedrals in Europe and then seeing this school building that looks the same.

Ok, fine, I guess I have taken some pictures that I could post so here they are.

First of all, I’ve discovered through repeated testing that camera flashes in a dark room startle Little Jake. Here are the results:

And here’s the family (minus one) at the Hunan Restaurant.

And here’s the guys working on the Karman Ghia.

Um, nothing’s going on.  I’m in Pittsburgh and it’s cool enough I guess, but not for long.  I don’t have any money to spend anymore and I don’t really feel like hanging out here for much longer.  I’ll probably be leaving for good sooner rather than later and heading off to Utah where hopefully I’ll find a job.

It’s been a week since the last post so here’s the update on what I’ve been doing for the past week.

The short and skinny of it is that I’ve been hanging out. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, and sometimes with no one (people here have jobs and school and finals so sometimes there is nothing to do during the day).

The stuff I’ve been doing ranges from somewhat interesting to extraordinary. The uninteresting stuff would just bore you so I won’t tell you about it. The other stuff is stuff like I’ve hung out with friends, helped my old boss put up his Christmas lights, hung out with a girl who actually called me back when I left her a message and agreed to hang out again (yeah, I’m just as shocked), made a painting for a friend, decorated little shortbread cookies (some people decorated them in politically incorrect ways), babysat my nephew, looked for jobs, stayed up till five dancing in the kitchen and being attacked by ninjas, eaten at Beto’s, and played Christmas songs downtown Salt Lake with my brother-in-laws and one of their brothers. Playing downtown was a ton of fun and we made a bit of money too. Linwood (brother-in-law) and Miles (his brother) played guitars and sang, Ian (other brother-in-law) played a mean harmonica, the jingle bells and sang, and I played percussion (a snare and hi-hat using wire brushes). We played for four hours straight.

So yeah, that mostly sums up the past week. (And no that’s not the flash making Sam’s eyes red, he’s just demonic.)

Yesterday Jonathan and I set off for Provo with a brief stop in Sandy to see Borat. Carter met us up there too because for some reason it’s not playing in Utah County. I thought it was funny, but overall most of the funny stuff was shown in the previews. After the movie Jonathan and I set out on a quest: to find the Jones Soda dessert pack. What is that you may ask, well let me tell you. Every year Jones Soda comes out with a holiday feast. It’s five sodas (bottles of pop for some) that are the flavors of different parts of a holiday feast. Last year it was turkey and gravy, wild herb stuffing, cranberry, brussels sprouts, and pumpkin pie. I almost threw up when I drank the brussels sprouts. This year they expanded and put the dessert flavors in a separate pack. We went to three Targets with no luck. Oh well. The feast flavors for this year are turkey and gravy, sweet potatoes, dinner roll, pea, and antacid. Last year there were four of us doing this and this year we got a group of seven of us to foolishly drink this crap.

Before the festivities could begin we had to finish Sam’s car. Basically he’s putting a computer in his car with a 7″ touch screen in the front. It’s really cool and so I helped him finish up the wiring, well, make the wiring work, it’s not in a state that you would want to leave it for very long, but it was cold and we wanted to finish. So after finishing that and blowing a fuse in one part and setting out on an epic quest to find a new fuse we finally got it working (and I got to wear a super cool hat the whole time). (more…)

After two and a half days in Pittsburgh I decided to keep moving. I got a little bit of work done on the electrical system of the car that I’m helping my brother restore but other than that I didn’t do too much while I was there. (I did enjoy the weather though: 65 degrees!)

My first flight yesterday was from PIT to JFK. I don’t know why I always come up with weird flight attendant stories, but I do. There’s always something up with the flight attendants on my flights. Sometimes they’re just overly super fabulous and say ridiculous things over the p.a. and other times they figure out I’m non-rev and start offering me free alcohol. Well this flight was no exception and I had to snap a picture. I’m sure this flight attendant is very nice but her appearance caught me off guard. Her hair was an interesting porcupine style and her makeup was, well, clownish. Her voice was mousey and she raised the pitch in her voice at the end of every sentence. It was amusing.

I also snapped a picture of the NYC skyline at night on approach but of course the plane wasn’t going to be still enough for it to work, but it still looks kinda cool. (The plane was seriously moving around and we hit the runway fairly hard left side first then slammed the right wheels, not the greatest landing.)

I hung around for a few hours waiting for my connection to SLC and I found out during that time that I had been listed as a jetBlue crew member and not a dependent. So besides the fact that there were a ton of seats available I now had better priority than I should so I was sure I was getting on.

After waiting forever on the ground at JFK we finally took off for a somewhat bumpy ride and made it to SLC at 1 a.m. When I got off the plane this guy in the terminal walked over to me and asked if my name was Jacob Haglund. First of all, no one really calls me Jacob except family, I never introduce myself as such. And second, who was this guy? I took a step back and looked at him and realized it was my trainer from my mission. I don’t know when he saw me or how he recognized me cause it’s been almost seven years. But he lives in NYC now so I’ll probably run into him again next I’m there.

So here I am in Utah again. Hanging out with friends and family for a few days and then maybe on to Los Angeles.