The McDonalds Lesson

So I've been back in the States for a couple of days now immersing myself in all the Americana I can.

Tonight I decided to go for a stroll and have dinner at the McDonald's near the Rosslyn Metro station.

The crowd waiting at the counters was the usual mixture of blue collar and office workers.

In comes a man wearing what can only be described as rags. He was talking loudly, to himself, ranting endlessly on many subjects, fortunately no obscenities. Everyone gave him a wide berth as expected. The counter people gave him dirty looks. Everyone else tried to avoid looking at him.

When there was no one waiting in line he walked up, gained a minute of normalcy, turned around and asked if anyone was waiting. With no reply he placed his order of Dollar Menu items.

Just then a young girl wearing a hijab (head scarf that Muslim women wear) walked up to the counter, gave the counter woman some money and told her something. She in turn said something to the homeless man and he turned around and said "Thank you ma'am, thank you, thank you, God bless you!"

Life's little lessons in the strangest of places.

Found the jetty on Google maps

Yes the water is brown :  (

A nice place or two

I found some really neat places today. One I've known about the other I
stumbled upon. The one I stumbled upon was a concrete jeddy that
extended out to some big boulders. I walked out to the end, it was
windy and the waves were crashing all about. Very peaceful, nice views
of the sailboats and ships.
I'll try to pull up a Google maps photo.

The other place is near my home at the engineering school parking lot.
There is a very short wall, well more of a bench. Nice view of the
beach and sunset. I sat down just in time to watch a big cruise ship
pull out of port, probably on it's way to Buenos Aires.

I also went to the Saturday ferria (Open market). There was some people
dressed in native Indian outfits doing traditional native Indian
dances. They were also selling CD's of the music which is probably how
they make their livelihood. My best guess if that they were Peruvian.

The song of Montevideo

What song whispers through the air of Montevideo more than any other?
Home and car alarms! Where I live it's apartment alarms, wailing away,
any hour of the day or night. People just learn to live with it.

Get to know Doc - The Doc tattoo

The famous "Doc" tattoo on my right forearm. Whats the story behind that you ask? Was it some seedy tattoo parlor in Jacksonville NC when you were a Marine?
Maybe he got it at a tattoo parlor in some exotic far off land? It really looks like a jail house tattoo...

Nope, none of that. The year 1981, I had just signed up for the Marines and was waiting to ship out. I had been spending lots of time with my friends, one of them Ken. We go back probably to 1979. Guess whats on his right forearm? A tattoo that says "Ken" that a friend of his gave him before he left Massachusetts (Yes I had to use spell check) for Virginia. I thought, what better way to remember my best friend? I asked him if he could give me a like tattoo on my arm. No problem.

We went to a arts and supply store and bought some India ink, somehow, I don't know I had a bottle of Southern Comfort (I know, horrible nasty stuff).

I thought it was necessary to get pretty tanked up for this hard core tattoo.

Ken proceeded to outline the tattoo with a pen, wrapped some thread around a sewing needle, dipped the needle in the India ink and the fun began.

I got sick from the Southern Comfort and of course wasn't necessary.

Here is a picture of me and Ken before I left for Uruguay.

Caved in

Although not officially my first attempt at blogging, this is to announce that I have finally caved in. I realized that I do have lots of thoughts that I wanted to email on my Doc Reports but they slipped by the wayside.

Anyways, be looking here!