Well, I survived a four-day, three-night excursion to Fabulous Las Vegas only to be stymied on the day after my return by food poisoning; I “ran for the border” for lunch on Friday only to be stopped by the INS, with the consumed food being deported whence it came via three explosive episodes over five hours.  Ugh.

The trip itself was delightful.  I went to Tony’s apartment in Lansing on Sunday night, since our flight was allegedly scheduled for take-off at 5:45 a.m. from Detroit Metro.  In fact, the flight was actually scheduled for 6:45, which was good, because we were running late anyway.  T-Bone captured himself a potential child-custody client, a third-shift waitress at the Denny’s in Novi who wants to be a police officer because “all the hot men are cops,” and she wants to meet a man to be a substitute baby-daddy.  Not to fear, though; the real baby-daddy is an illegal who may be deported at any minute.  Jerry Springer, Where Art Thou?

Of course, I do have issues with Spirit Airlines.  I booked our tickets on Friday, but the Spirit Web site told me as the transaction completed that the seats I requested were no longer available at the price advertised.  So, I did it again — only to discover, a few minutes later, that both transactions took.  I was charged $1,100 for two pairs of tickets on the very same flight.  When I called Spirit, however, I got India — and India told me that they couldn’t process a refund for the second set of tix, that they could only give me a voucher for future travel.  This did not sit well with me, but they refused to budge, so now I’m disputing the transaction with my bank.  Which is not a fun process, even though my bank is being cool about the whole thing.

Anyway, we arrived around 7 a.m. Pacific at McCarran International.  Our trip to our first hotel, Bally’s, was uneventful, and we checked in without difficulty.  Most of the first day was spent sight-seeing; Tony took me through the hotel-casinos along the Strip, and we ended up the day with buffet and gambling.

Tuesday was spent gambling, mostly.  The bulk of our gaming was done at Bally’s, although we did drop a few dollars at various casinos, including Wynn and the Flamingo.  Tuesday evening featured karaoke at Imperial Palace followed by chatting and light gaming at O’Shea’s.  The highlight of karaoke — apart from watching Tony do a remarkably well-done rendition of Piano Man, We Didn’t Start the Fire, and Viva Las Vegas — was dancing with the wedding party from Malta; their style was retro, their English broken, but they were full of energy … even the drunk one who told me she wanted to sleep with Tony as she was grinding her ample busom into my chest.  During the combined Imperial Palace/O’Shea stint, we met a delightful British trio — two female traveling companions from southern England, and a chap from northern England they had met a few days prior and who had latched onto them.  They were a really fun group.  I also had a long chat with a young man from Australia who was on his backpacking year; his goal in the U.S. was to bed as many American women as he could, but he was having trouble finding them, so he was going from Las Vegas to Boulder, Colo.  I wish him, and the Brits and Maltese, well.

Wednesday, after a bit of gaming and going to The Price Is Right Live, we moved from Bally’s to Rio.  Wednesday was a bit more relaxed, including allocating more time for sleep.  We spent several hours at one of the “local” casinos across from Rio, smoking cigars and playing video poker at the bar.  At least that casino offered full-pay on Jacks-or-Better.

Thursday featured a late start; after going to the Rio buffet, we trudged back to the airport and flew back to Detroit.  The flight was pretty quiet, despite passing through a few weather fronts.  The only item of note was me getting aggressively hit on by a male baggage handler in the restroom at McCarran.  It was odd.  Oh, and the great chat and massage we had from Crystal at the oxygen bar on concourse C.

Overall, it was a great experience.  The food was scrumptious — especially the seafood buffet at Rio and the Paris dinner buffet — and the people were delightful.  Even Tony’s host, who refused to throw him a bone on getting things comped off of his bill, screwed him with a smile.

There’s a lot to see and do in Las Vegas, but it takes a fair amount of discipline not to lose your shirt, or to succumb to all the alcohol. 

Definitely worth a return visit next year.

Few are as pitiable as the person who sets aside his dreams too quickly, acquiescing to anonymous mediocrity with total, if wistful, submission.  We all know the type; the big dreamer who, in the face of adversity, merely gives up — surrendering to the life of a normal person in a normal suburb with a normal wife and normal children, looking forward to a drab middle-class existence.

I’ve previously noted the delightfully wicked Demotivator from Despair, Inc., that observes that not everyone gets to be an astronaut when he grows up.  This is, in some ways, a commonplace.  But what delineates the astronauts from the ground crew is merely vision augmented by a bit of discipline.

For a long time, I’ve sat on the sidelines, watching life’s astronauts climb happily upon their rockets while I remained in the gallery.  It seemed that the path to Mission Control was blocked by insurmountable obstacles largely of my own design, so comfortable inaction seemed the only viable approach.

I think people, especially single young males, struggle with whether they’re willing to admit that they’re really nothing special.  As kids, and as college students, we believe we’re invincible, with the world at our fingertips.  Then we hit the “real world” and have to adjust to living within three standard deviations of the mean along the normal curve.  The test of maturity is in how we respond to the realization that we’re not possessed of infinite potential.

Some people just give up.  They closet their dreams and opt instead for the safety of a comfortable, if faceless, existence.  Others cannot quite achieve greatness, but they also cannot bow their heads; they devolve into unhappiness and despair and emotional instability and find novel ways of refusing to accept responsibility for the disaffection they impose upon themselves.

There is a third path, though — the path I’ve chosen to walk, the path of rejecting the idea that barriers to the launch pad really exist.  We actually can be an astronaut, every one of us, if we just identify our dreams and then work to make them a reality.

My dream is to write and to travel.  I want to sail the world, paying my way through writing novels and freelance trade-mag articles, while seeing the wonders of this big blue marble for myself, unhurried by airline itineraries or mass-market sightseeing programs.

A pipe dream, one might say.  And as I’ve shared this with people, more than one has suggested as much.  (Others have been more supportive, and I love them for that.  Stacie in particular.)  Yet there’s more substance to this than many think — it’s not as if I’ve failed to do my research!

So, how to live this dream?  How to move from being a shorebound hospital analyst to living on a 40-foot cutter, sailing the Carribbean and writing from the aft deck?

I have a two-year plan:

1. Learn to sail.  There are courses that are offered through schools in Holland, Mich., and elsewhere, that provide the requisite certifications.  Plus, I may have guidance from my uncle Doug, who has sailed small craft for many years.  Between this, and crewing larger vessels over the next two summers, I should be able to develop the skills to handle my own boat between the Great Lakes and the Carribbean.  After a few years of experience, I will venture progressively farther out, until I believe I’m ready to tackle a circumnavigation.  At some point, captaincy certification by the U.S. Coast Guard will be in order, as well.

   UPDATE, 9/08 … I’ve settled on a first-pass goal of starting with weekend and week-long voyages in the Great Lakes, to be augmented at some point by the completion of the Great Loop.
   

2. Learn auxiliary skills.  I intend to be certified as a wilderness first responder and as a scuba diver.  I also will continue with my karate training, which will be augmented later with some study of kendo (Japanese swordsmanship).  I’m also, optionally, considering a simple pilot’s license (single-engine, VFR) and some form of survivalist training next summer — but that depends on funding.  It always pays to keep one’s options open.

   UPDATE, 9/08 … Open-water diver certification, check.  Karate work, check.  Kendo has been substituted with escrima, study of which continues at the dojo.
   

3. Manage the money.  The goal is to sail away with no debt, owning my boat outright.  This will require more income than I presently earn from the hospital, so I’m going to start my own consultancy.  In fact, I’ve already registered an LLC with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth and the IRS, and I recently leased office space in downtown Grand Rapids.  This consultancy will focus on quality improvement, evaluation, ethics, communications, and systems development — all areas where I have skills sufficient to be a consultant, especially in the local market.

   UPDATE, 9/08 … Gillikin Consulting Group LLC formed.  Infrastructure work complete.  Several near-misses on the acquisition of a boat.  A lot of inappropriate spending habits have been curtailed.
   

4. Lay the writing foundation.  The consultancy will include ample writing opportunity; I already have signed a contract to contribute a submission to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Survey Research Statistics.  Plus, I have professional opportunities to write in the healthcare quality improvement realm, as a new member of the editorial team of the Journal of Healthcare Quality, and as the new publications officer-elect of the Quality and Productivity section of the American Statistical Association.  Now, to capitalize on it!  One’s clips list is the way into more lucrative writing assignments, and I’m positioned in a fast-growing niche writing market.

   UPDATE, 9/08 … Presentation slated at the Fall Technical Conference of the American Statistical Association/American Society for Quality in October.  Need to be more aggressive in writing for publication, though.
   

5. Cultivate my personal growth.  I very much need to hit the weight bench; I joke, but I’m not far off when I say that I have all the upper-body strength of a six-year-old girl.  At least I’m in great shape, cardio-wise.  Plus, I want to continue with my singing education and my piano study, because it brings me joy, and to finally hammer out that life-long reading list.  And just for fun, I want to dabble in Spanish and German and be certified as a professional parliamentarian, and get the basic A-license in skydiving from the U.S. Parachute Association.  On the water, under the water, over the water — a civilian variant of a U.S. Navy SEAL. 🙂

   UPDATE, 9/08 … I continue to dabble with piano.  Have a plan for strength training, which will commence when I’m satisfied with my body-composition ratio.

This sounds like a fantasy, but it’s more realistic than I imagined when I first began my research.  There are already people — including people in my age bracket, not merely retirees — who relish the “liveaboard” lifestyle and do exactly what I am intending:  to travel and to work from their boats.  With phones and e-mail, a fixed office is increasingly irrelevant.  Plus, overall costs of the sailing life can be substantially less than buying a house in the suburbs and have to deal with mortgages, taxes, automobiles, and such.  In fact, in purely financial terms, a reasonably prudent person can life much more cost-effectively on a sailboat than in a large house or condo.

I’ve got a little more than two years to make this work; hence the code-word “Project 810” (810 referring to the number of days from idea inception to 12/31/09).  It’ll take work, but the prospect of this plan — my private notes are much more detailed than what I’ve outlined above — and the ultimate goal, have filled me with a happiness and a motivation I haven’t felt in a very long time.

Let’s pray for fair winds and calm seas.

Few are as pitiable as the person who sets aside his dreams too quickly, acquiescing to anonymous mediocrity with total, if wistful, submission.  We all know the type; the big dreamer who, in the face of adversity, merely gives up — surrendering to the life of a normal person in a normal suburb with a normal wife and normal children, looking forward to a drab middle-class existence.
I’ve previously noted the delightfully wicked Demotivator from Despair, Inc., that observes that not everyone gets to be an astronaut when he grows up.  This is, in some ways, a commonplace.  But what delineates the astronauts from the ground crew is merely vision augmented by a bit of discipline.
For a long time, I’ve sat on the sidelines, watching life’s astronauts climb happily upon their rockets while I remained in the gallery.  It seemed that the path to Mission Control was blocked by insurmountable obstacles largely of my own design, so comfortable inaction seemed the only viable approach.
I think people, especially single young males, struggle with whether they’re willing to admit that they’re really nothing special.  As kids, and as college students, we believe we’re invincible, with the world at our fingertips.  Then we hit the “real world” and have to adjust to living within three standard deviations of the mean along the normal curve.  The test of maturity is in how we respond to the realization that we’re not possessed of infinite potential.
Some people just give up.  They closet their dreams and opt instead for the safety of a comfortable, if faceless, existence.  Others cannot quite achieve greatness, but they also cannot bow their heads; they devolve into unhappiness and despair and emotional instability and find novel ways of refusing to accept responsibility for the disaffection they impose upon themselves.
There is a third path, though — the path I’ve chosen to walk, the path of rejecting the idea that barriers to the launch pad really exist.  We actually can be an astronaut, every one of us, if we just identify our dreams and then work to make them a reality.
My dream is to write and to travel.  I want to sail the world, paying my way through writing novels and freelance trade-mag articles, while seeing the wonders of this big blue marble for myself, unhurried by airline itineraries or mass-market sightseeing programs.
A pipe dream, one might say.  And as I’ve shared this with people, more than one has suggested as much.  (Others have been more supportive, and I love them for that.  Stacie in particular.)  Yet there’s more substance to this than many think — it’s not as if I’ve failed to do my research!
So, how to live this dream?  How to move from being a shorebound hospital analyst to living on a 40-foot cutter, sailing the Carribbean and writing from the aft deck?
I have a two-year plan:

1. Learn to sail.  There are courses that are offered through schools in Holland, Mich., and elsewhere, that provide the requisite certifications.  Plus, I may have guidance from my uncle Doug, who has sailed small craft for many years.  Between this, and crewing larger vessels over the next two summers, I should be able to develop the skills to handle my own boat between the Great Lakes and the Carribbean.  After a few years of experience, I will venture progressively farther out, until I believe I’m ready to tackle a circumnavigation.  At some point, captaincy certification by the U.S. Coast Guard will be in order, as well.
   UPDATE, 9/08 … I’ve settled on a first-pass goal of starting with weekend and week-long voyages in the Great Lakes, to be augmented at some point by the completion of the Great Loop.
   
2. Learn auxiliary skills.  I intend to be certified as a wilderness first responder and as a scuba diver.  I also will continue with my karate training, which will be augmented later with some study of kendo (Japanese swordsmanship).  I’m also, optionally, considering a simple pilot’s license (single-engine, VFR) and some form of survivalist training next summer — but that depends on funding.  It always pays to keep one’s options open.
   UPDATE, 9/08 … Open-water diver certification, check.  Karate work, check.  Kendo has been substituted with escrima, study of which continues at the dojo.
   
3. Manage the money.  The goal is to sail away with no debt, owning my boat outright.  This will require more income than I presently earn from the hospital, so I’m going to start my own consultancy.  In fact, I’ve already registered an LLC with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth and the IRS, and I recently leased office space in downtown Grand Rapids.  This consultancy will focus on quality improvement, evaluation, ethics, communications, and systems development — all areas where I have skills sufficient to be a consultant, especially in the local market.
   UPDATE, 9/08 … Gillikin Consulting Group LLC formed.  Infrastructure work complete.  Several near-misses on the acquisition of a boat.  A lot of inappropriate spending habits have been curtailed.
   
4. Lay the writing foundation.  The consultancy will include ample writing opportunity; I already have signed a contract to contribute a submission to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Survey Research Statistics.  Plus, I have professional opportunities to write in the healthcare quality improvement realm, as a new member of the editorial team of the Journal of Healthcare Quality, and as the new publications officer-elect of the Quality and Productivity section of the American Statistical Association.  Now, to capitalize on it!  One’s clips list is the way into more lucrative writing assignments, and I’m positioned in a fast-growing niche writing market.
   UPDATE, 9/08 … Presentation slated at the Fall Technical Conference of the American Statistical Association/American Society for Quality in October.  Need to be more aggressive in writing for publication, though.
   
5. Cultivate my personal growth.  I very much need to hit the weight bench; I joke, but I’m not far off when I say that I have all the upper-body strength of a six-year-old girl.  At least I’m in great shape, cardio-wise.  Plus, I want to continue with my singing education and my piano study, because it brings me joy, and to finally hammer out that life-long reading list.  And just for fun, I want to dabble in Spanish and German and be certified as a professional parliamentarian, and get the basic A-license in skydiving from the U.S. Parachute Association.  On the water, under the water, over the water — a civilian variant of a U.S. Navy SEAL. 🙂
   UPDATE, 9/08 … I continue to dabble with piano.  Have a plan for strength training, which will commence when I’m satisfied with my body-composition ratio.

This sounds like a fantasy, but it’s more realistic than I imagined when I first began my research.  There are already people — including people in my age bracket, not merely retirees — who relish the “liveaboard” lifestyle and do exactly what I am intending:  to travel and to work from their boats.  With phones and e-mail, a fixed office is increasingly irrelevant.  Plus, overall costs of the sailing life can be substantially less than buying a house in the suburbs and have to deal with mortgages, taxes, automobiles, and such.  In fact, in purely financial terms, a reasonably prudent person can life much more cost-effectively on a sailboat than in a large house or condo.
I’ve got a little more than two years to make this work; hence the code-word “Project 810” (810 referring to the number of days from idea inception to 12/31/09).  It’ll take work, but the prospect of this plan — my private notes are much more detailed than what I’ve outlined above — and the ultimate goal, have filled me with a happiness and a motivation I haven’t felt in a very long time.
Let’s pray for fair winds and calm seas.

Had to return a day early from the ASA/ASQ Fall Technical Conference to attend to strange housing problems.  Ugh.  I did, however, meet all of my objectives, and visiting Jacksonville was nice.  And Natalie and I were able to have lunch with some of America’s leading living statisticians — they just happened to sit at the table we were at for the first-day luncheon.

On a side note, I ended up getting double-charged for the plane tickets to Las Vegas … grr.  Spirit Airlines will not refund the second booking, despite that it’s obviously an error (the same two people, the same two flights, booked mere minutes apart) resulting from a faulty timeout on Spirit’s Web site.  And the mean lady from India would only give me a travel voucher, not a refund.  The nice lady from America who works at my bank, however, cleared the auth hold and gave me advice for initiating a chargeback should the actual transaction hit my account.  Grrrrrrr.

I just got home after having another 90-minute session with the “Catholic guys” in prison.  I chose to speak to them tonight about modes of prayer (contemplative, meditative, verbal) and the types of verbal prayer (supplication, thanksgiving, praise), with an eye toward challenging them to “shake it up” in terms of their daily prayer life.

Interesting thing, though.  It’s axiomatic that you find bibles at the jailhouse gate — tossed aside by so-called men of faith as soon as they secure their release.  I have no doubt that once the men in my group serve their sentence or are paroled, many of them will have little or no contact with organized religion, and will quickly grow out of the habit of daily prayer.

Yet … I couldn’t help but be impressed by the spiritual sophistication of many of the men in this group.  They already experiment with varied modes of prayer, and their understanding of prayer not only as an encounter with the divine, but also as a window into themselves, was impressive.  I dare say that these men “get it” better than most of the people I encounter in my parish.

An upbeat, and somewhat humbling, experience.

I saw a link in USGS to an online personality profile.  Seemed fun enough.  My results are HERE.

Picture it:  I’m sitting in my bathtub, soaking in the hot water to unwind some tense back muscles, when it hits me — I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

By that, I mean that some of the tough decision-making I’ve been contemplating has been marked by a series of false dilemmas.  As I consider questions about where I wish to live, what career I wish to focus upon, and related matter, I was originally thinking in very linear and exclusive terms:  I can do A, or B.  But why not A *and* B?

Part of this was illuminated in a conversation with T-Bone regarding the Briefly Noted venture.  Sure, it’s a great idea, albeit something of a gamble.  But then I did the same thing I did in my undergraduate days, which is do a little bit of everything with bare-bones competency, while excelling at nothing in particular.  Which is how I ended up with a dual major/triple minor and none of it especially marketable.

So, I’m a bit enthusiastic about doing One Grand Thing that is a fusion of most of the little things that have interested me.  It helps crystalize the goal-setting I’ve been doing lately.

No fracture, but the doctor urges restraint anyway.

Funny thing — my X-ray tech was someone I hadn’t seen in 17 years, the younger sister of a guy I went to junior-high with. 

I drafted a personals post, for fun, for Craigslist, but it keeps being rejected.  So, I’ll post it here for my five loyal readers to see, since I did enjoy putting it together.

** DATING QUIZ **

NAME:  ___________________________  SCORE:  _________
Please indicate which answer best matches your attitude/response to the question.  At the end of this quiz, tally your results and submit your scores to the proctor; individual response point values are noted in parentheses after each answer option.

If you score +100 or more points, congratulations!  You might land the a date with the man of your dreams, a handsome and well-adjusted 31-year-old single white male.  (See below for important considerations and exclusions.)

01  What is your age range?

02  Where do you reside?

03  What is the highest level of education you’ve attained?

04  Which statement best describes your political perspective?

05  Which statement best captures your attitude toward risk-taking?

06  What is your body-mass index?

07  What is your religious tradition?

08  How often do you read?

09  What are your thoughts about children?

10  Are you batshit crazy? (NOTE: I’m not asking if you like guano.)

11  Which list of activities best captures your preference for a night on the town?

12  Do you like to travel?

13  Which adjective best describes your sense of humor?

14  Which statement best captures your social demeanor?

15  What type of rationality do you typically demonstrate?

16  Where do you want to end up, in terms of domicile?

17  Which statement best describes your physical health?

18  What is your expectation of how a relationship should function?

19  What is your opinion of premarital sex? [No points on this question.]

20  If I said, “Pack your bags, we’re leaving tomorrow for Las Vegas,” you’d reply:

21  How do you wish to be pursued?

22  What best describes your taste in music?

23  Which aphorism best captures your attitude toward life?

24  I think traditional gender roles …

25  With regard to public displays of affection:

If you score well, you may be eligible for:  ONE prime 31-year-old single white male, no dependents.  About 5’10”, 160#, with a solid career and a college degree.  Tends to be a bit more rational, calm, good-natured, laid back.  Leans intellectual in attitude and in preferred activities.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS:  OK, this is a bit much, I know.  But it’s a darn sight better than those other ads that basically say, “Hi, I’m so-and-so, and I like to have fun!”  I hope you appreciate the light-hearted nature of this ad, and read between the lines of the questions to get a good idea of who I am and what I’m looking for.  If you wish, I can forward a link to my blog, to help you learn a bit more.  Just let me know. 🙂