My last day in Milwaukee

Posted in Uncategorized on January 26, 2012 by jeffbedel

It’s 4:30 AM. I haven’t slept yet. The local news is coming on. I need to start loading my truck in a few hours and I know once I wake up I have to face the agony of placing my ‘life’ into a truck and getting it ready to transport to a new place.

It’s not easy physically or mentally to wrap my head around this at the moment. Physically, it’s down the stairs, into the truck, boxes and bags of memories of the past, especially those of the past four years. Bikes, audio equipment, and even a few food items that are truly Milwaukee.

But mentally? Wow. I cried tonight. More about who was there tonight, and less for who was not. Love brings you back, and by that I mean I’ll be back to visit. Part of me didn’t think I’d have nothing to come back to. Boy was I wrong.

In essence I moved to Milwaukee to test the love of my family and love is inevitably bring me back towards Cincinnati. But  love was tested tonight and I have ties here I had no idea that were so strong. Damn I feel kinda foolish right now for leaving some things behind here.

I tend to always do what’s best in the short-term. This move today is a long-term decision. I guess growing up is hard to do.

I’ll miss you MKE. :’(

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Local woman gives endangered pandas a bright future.

Posted in community, world, writings on January 19, 2012 by jeffbedel

A JEFFBEDEL.COM EXCLUSIVE!

After decades of the bamboo industry depleting nearly every last acre of bamboo in China for the needs of cheap crafty homemakers, and the like, the panda’s demise is almost certain without the help of scientists and volunteers to meet the growing needs of keeping America’s need for cute alive.

Despite tireless hours of practice of ‘grooming children’ at a state budget strapped school, and wearing scrubs nightly for low paying fashion shows, Milwaukeean Amanda Walker still finds time to travel to her socialist, ‘commie’, run panda farm in China to mostly smuggle bamboo from local Michael’s stores in the area back to where it belongs, in the mouths of hungry China-men, er, pandas.

“I tried to convince them (the pandas) that discarded christmas trees are a delicacy, but them bears are pretty damn smart”, Walker notes. “Turns out that anything that tinsel has come in contact with makes their eyes turn black”. It’s kinda cute, but I found that burning the trees much more favorable than transporting all those trees by a slow boat to China.

She attributes most of her financing as ‘confidential’, though it’s rumored that she made out big before the Nigerian bank account bubble burst. “The economy is really bad out there” she claims “but I’ll keep the fire burning here and carry a big bamboo stick!”

Currently the panda farm has three young pandas (give or take a screw) that has playground equipment and a deal with several internet stock photo sites for the desktop wallpaper industry to assure it’s financing.

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Yuengling surpasses Boston Brewing Company

Posted in Archive, beer on January 13, 2012 by jeffbedel

“They spill more beer than we make all year.” That was the first piece of marketing I can recall that swayed me to leave the megabrewers behind and look elsewhere for my beer drinking edification. That was one of the early Boston Beer Company’s ads for Sam Adams. I drank Sam Adams for awhile. They make some decent beers that perhaps is more of a gateway to delve into the depths of craft brew like I have. I totally respect and gave them props for being America’s largest owned brewer till an old dog took them down. Yuengling!

Yuengling becomes largest U.S.-owned brewery.

Ok, so I’m not a super fan of the beer, but I’m excited for their achievement since they’ve been around longer than anyone else. I read about Yuengling long before I ever had it since it wasn’t available here anywhere in the midwest. Much to my excitement a few years ago my brother-in-law got a few cases delivered to him via a friend and shared a few with me. Eh, pretty typical American style lager, but certainly I appreciated the novelty aspect of how it was acquired and that here was a beer that was older than any other in the States.

My most exciting experience was when I took a flight from Chicago to Cincinnati last Spring on a small Pennsylvania “vacation” airline called USA3000 (which I just read will serve their last flight this month). I never had a beer on the plane before because it’s always mega-crap that’s available, but low and behold they offered only Yuengling and Yuengling Light! For $5 I had to have one. That was a long day, but that is one of my favorite stories having a Yuengling a mile up from where I had it the first time.

It’s much easier to acquire now that Ohio distributes the brew as of last fall. My sister actually went to seek a keg while I was home over Christmas. If I do move to Cincinnati in the upcoming weeks it will be readily available all the time. It’s a minor win given all the loss of access I’ll have to the many Wisconsin beers now. Maybe I can start a New Glarus/Yuengling exchange program.

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Beginning My 9th (2012) Biking Season

Posted in biking on January 5, 2012 by jeffbedel

One wish with leaving Milwaukee on the horizon was to finally have one mild winter here since the other four were quite brutal. Thus far this has been a very unusual winter in Milwaukee with not having a significant snowfall yet along with above average temperatures. I was able not only ride on New Years Eve, but today went out on January 5th where the temperatures nearly reached 50 degrees! Got a nice little 14 mile ride out for some shopping and hoping for a bit more in the next few days. Happy New Year!

Counties by state I’ve biked in:

INDIANA
Franklin
Decatur
Marion
Hamilton
Boone
Shelby
Johnson
Hancock
Brown
Madison
Delaware
Rush
Ripley
Dearborn
Fayette

WISCONSIN
Milwaukee
Ozaukee
Waukesha
Racine
Kenosha
Washington
Sheboygan
Marinette
Dodge
Walworth
La Crosse
Crawford
Vernon
Jefferson
Manitowoc
Kewaunee
Door

ILLINOIS
Lake

MICHIGAN
Menominee

MINNESOTA
Houston
Winona
Rice
Goodhue
Dakota
Scott
La Sueur
Sibley

IOWA
Allamakee

OHIO
Hamilton

KENTUCKY
Boone
Kenton
Campbell

Other COUNTRIES I’ve biked in:

GERMANY

Bavaria (Munich, Rothenberg de Tauber)

*2012

Proposed counties in 2012:
OH- Clermont, Butler

2012 Goal – None
2012 running total – 32
Best one day total – 104.6 (6/20/09)

Past annual totals

2011 – 2,300**
2010 – 5,280
2009 – 4,022
2008 – 1,080
2007 – 1,418
2006 – 2,520
2005 – 1,876
2004 – ~1,000

** 2,280 recorded miles + ~20 miles in Germany.

(1/5/2012) I’m within 500 miles of 20,000 miles!

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The Kitten Covers

Posted in Archive on January 2, 2012 by jeffbedel

Holy crap these are great!!

The Kitten Covers

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Trader Joe’s

Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2012 by jeffbedel

I love Trader Joe’s even though they have discontinued several of my favorite products in the past. This is a great article.

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Driving has lost its cool for young Americans

Posted in Archive on December 29, 2011 by jeffbedel

Oh, I’m so trendy. I’ve been car-free for 7.5 years. There are a lot of great tidbits in this article. Maybe there is hope for a cleaner, less car dependent society in ‘Merica.

Driving has lost its cool for young Americans

In 2008, just 31 percent of American 16-year-olds had their driver’s licenses, down from 46 percent in 1983, according to a new study in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention. The numbers were down for 18-year-olds too, from 80 percent in 1983 to 65 percent in 2008, and the percentage of twenty- and thirtysomethings with driver’s licenses fell as well. And even those with driver’s licenses are trying to drive less; a new survey by car-sharing company Zipcar found that more than half of drivers under the age of 44 are making efforts to reduce the time they spend packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes.

This is mostly about the $8,500.

You can buy a lot of gadgets for just a fraction of the $8,500 the average American spends each year to maintain a car, not to mention the average cost of buying the car in the first place – more than $29,000 for a new car, or more than $18,000for a used one.

Fucking suburbs aren’t even good enough for people these days. I had to look up exurb. What, there is even an exurb magazine?! Exurb Google search.

Millennials want to live in walkable urban cores instead of suburbs and exurbs that require residents to drive everywhere.

I’m going to continue biking.

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Reinforcing a mission

Posted in Uncategorized on December 19, 2011 by jeffbedel

I’ve been un(der)employed for so long that I seemed to have lost sight of my original mission upon returning to the “workforce”. The thing is after having an informal interview with a “workforce solutions provider” that those ideas came rushing back into my head. What I didn’t tell (and I likely a good thing I didn’t perhaps) them is that I’m stubborn and unconventional in regards to my terms to retuning to what we have come think of our mindset of “working”.

Call me unrealistic but I’m not one that wants to work to death by continually being sleep deprived and deprived of the things that mean so much to me. The past year was an eye opener to what I’ve missed and what is important in regards to life. Knowing that it wasn’t impossible to go to Germany was enlightening. It’s not been money that has stopped me in the past, but this system that the workforce culture in the US of vacation days.  We need those vacation days so bad to reset or do short term travel for holidays and such that we really have no way of saving them up (if we even get them) that we are held prisoner (slaves) to our employers.

Fortunately I’m only working for me, not for a significant other, not for a family. I’d prefer to keep it that way and do what I can to find flexibility in my next employers. Why can’t I build a schedule to fit my to my life instead of adapting to yours? For example, one of the jobs I was seeking (which is part-time) would likely not hire me because I don’t want to start at 8 because I prefer to put my health before a “standard”. Is that work you’re behind on different if it’s done at 8AM than it is at 10AM? How many times in my last job did I have nothing to do but be “available from 8-5″? In my last job I was a bit more in an indispensable position and something I want to get away from. Our work culture is so messed up and I hope to find a way to buck the system, but of course, most of us put ourselves in the position of being desperate and we are in desperate times. I do hope to work like a dog in the upcoming months, but as I look forward and settle down in Cincinnati I do hope I can find jobs that I love that allows me to save money for travel and just whisk myself away from this so called life to see our world outside of this country.

I never want to own a house, car, or other material possessions that require me to have to live and die at the hands of a corporation that only cares about the top’s bottom line. I want to live, travel, and be happy.

The days ahead are looking a bit grim for me, but I must remember my mission. I will do what it takes to survive, but I don’t need much more beyond that.

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Tuesday

Posted in world, writings on December 13, 2011 by jeffbedel

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-december-12-2011/war-on-christmas—historical-fact-checking?xrs=share_copy

Today my only motivation to go out (after my workout) was just to go have coffee. Usually when I go out to get coffee I have a multitude of things I need to do while sipping away at my cup ‘ joe; job search, tax course homework, trivia show, among other things. This morning, I’m just kinda surfing the net and not much else but reflecting a bit more (oh dear) while having my coffee.

Yesterday I took my final for the tax course I’ve been taking over the past few months. It was open book, but I didn’t use it; I didn’t need to. Though I made a few minor errors I hunkered down and did my best impersonation of a tax preparer and it went really well; five painstaking hours of parsing imaginary tax information into the right forms. Done. At the end I signed my I-9 and other employment forms for the first time in a long time. I start in January. Accomplishment is good.

This morning I don’t have much else rattling around in my brain except some stupid shit planted in my head by marketers. This mostly comes in the form of the commercials I have to endure while watching TV while working out. I try to run away from them but when you’re jogging in one place I unknowingly step up my pace. This morning I actually hit the maximum speed and had to up my resistance. Anywho.. here is a small part of my summary about the commercials:

- Evidently my generation thinks it’s still cool to have a(n) (expensive) watch like we did in school (long before cell phones). I spend enough on my phone and it has the time. Why do I need a watch?

- The 1% watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Because why else would they have several car commercials about giving a car to somebody else?

- Radio Shack sucks. Well, we knew that already.

- Evidently people who need a celebrity spokesperson to buy something are the same suckers who still think they need a credit card. Suckers.

- Having a really bad Britney Spears lookalike (with matching bad music) is how we motivate viewers to go (back) to school.

- The elliptical machine obviously needs a mute button.

In regards to Christmas, and all of the advertising spent on the importance of it, I hope everyone gets the electronic/car of their choice. Me, all I hope for is to get home and back without much drama, to hug my family, watch Rudolph with my nieces and nephews, have some egg nog, and fall asleep by the glow of the christmas tree. I don’t ask for much. I’ll await to wish you a Merry/Happy Holiday whichever when the day comes around. Seems to me christmas day is the day we’re all glad it’s over. Chew on that.

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Changes in Motivation: A Summary of my 2011.

Posted in writings on December 10, 2011 by jeffbedel

Granted there are about 20 days left in this year, but when reminiscing hits you better take care to let the words flow.

The biggest change of the year hit me this past week. I’ve been presented over and over again for the past several weeks/months to begin DJ’ing an all 80′s throwback show on Thursday nights at Vintage. Finally it came to fruition (I think) and I wasn’t interested any longer. Why? Drinking really isn’t a motivation for me any longer. Yeah, I still like to do it, especially when it’s free, but to remain in my current jean size (barely) I needed to find motivation to get my big ass back in the gym. So, since I don’t have cable, but the gym does, and my love for The Daily Show and the Colbert Report have only been sufficed at times through the occasional link via Facebook I figured, wah-lah, there is my reason to spend an hour in the gym. Well, I checked the times and fortunately/unfortunately the only time that seems feasible is at 8AM. Crap, you mean I have to set an alarm? Damnit! My other choices are the evenings when the gym is packed, and lastly 11PM and 1AM. Hell nah. So there we go. 8AM. But, drinking late at the bar (including trivia night) throws a wrench in this schedule. So I strangely find the importance in being in bed well before midnight instead of sucking down brews and playing music to some people I really don’t give a crap about anymore.

I haven’t been on a craft beer odyssey this year either. I haven’t purchased beer to take home in over two months. This is probably a direct result of learning how to actually save money in the past year.  A year ago I purchased tickets to go to Germany and had one hell of an odyssey there. It also changed my life but in indirect ways that I never expected. To be vague I brought a lot of eggs over in my basket when I flew over, and I didn’t really come back with anything but shells on my way back. This kinda threw me into a frenzy and I hope it wasn’t my last one. It was a good one, but with really bad timing.

Crazy me decided though I was unemployed, and greatly unstable in many ways, to seek out a sitcom style concept of dating that would make TV execs/writers cringe. I dated about a dozen women in a matter of a few weeks and though I knew nobody (including me) would be left standing after the dust settled and felt after, and still now, like it was a last hurrah. A month or so after this debacle I went on one more date, a great one actually, and yet it produced nothing else. I quit. It was shortly after that moment I decided to stop trying to make something “happen” here and start rebuilding elsewhere closer to “home”. It was the final straw and I decided to move to Cincinnati. Yes ladies, you can  have a life changing effect on a guy from one date.

Since then, it’s been a rather hard and lonely time. When you have nothing left to give in your place anymore it’s pointless to date and build friendships. What’s the motivation to go out? I really don’t even want to do the trivia show anymore because what’s the use is trying to build and maintain when it’s going to end, but I need the money. I do still like going out to watch the Packers, but even that seems disheartening going out pretty much alone. So yeah, it’s weird. My only motivation left right now is money which has never been a motivation for me before. I can’t wait to start working as a tax preparer in January. I hope I’ll be working 60+ hours a week. I hope I don’t have time for anything else but work. I hope I leave with a bundle of money so I can move comfortably to Cincinnati and actually do what I said without much thought to someone recently.

Settle down.

Ah, no…not like married or buying real estate stuff crazy shit settling down. Come on! :-P

More like relating to a place that I want to build the rest of my future in. A comfortable place close to my family (like I had posted previously). The next 5-6 months awaiting to date and build relationships again in a new place is going to be really hard for me during the rest of my tenure here in Milwaukee. All these words basically is to say one thing.

I feel really damn lonely.

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