Mike Leotta || Blog

Spontaneous memory recovery

I often have spontaneous memory recoveries from many years ago that pop into my head for no apparent reason. I had one today.

This one took me back to high school. I believe sophomore year chemistry. Mr. McKewen was lecturing on some wacky chemistry concept. My friend Mark had a question, so he raised his hand.

Upon noticing Mark’s hand in the air, Mr. McKewen calmly asked, “Question, Mark?”

I burst out laughing. Question, Mark? Question mark! Ha! He said a punctuation!

Yes I know, it’s not funny. It’s not even close to being funny. But at the time I sure thought I was. And of course, no one knew what the hell I was laughing at. Slouching low in my chair, I let the awkward moment run its course.

I told Mark after class why I was laughing. He was actually more amused than I thought he would be and decided that if it ever occurred again, he would promptly jump to his feet and yell out “exclamation point!” It sure would have been awesome for him and I. Alas, the situation never came up again, which is probably a good thing.

I also worked with Mark at McDonald’s for a while during high school. I once convinced him to say to every customer coming through the drive-thru speaker during his shift, “Hi welcome to McDonald’s! My favorite band is Van Halen! What’s yours?”

He was later fired for a different, non-related infraction that I would prefer not to disclose here.

The end.

Posted in pointless | No Comments »

For one minute, McCain won California

It was quite interesting to see all of the interactive election maps that news websites had created for last night’s election. I spent most of my night following CNN on tv at Nelson’s house while monitoring 4 or 5 other interactive maps on my laptop.

Of course I also had to follow the Fox News map. I didn’t notice any bias in their state projections throughout the night, except for one huge exception:

At about 7:50pm, just before the California polls closed, I loaded up the Fox News map. To my surprise California was colored red! Woah! 

I hovered over the state and John McCain’s name was also highlighted and checked! At this time last night, the only chance McCain had to win was some sort of a miracle. Something like, oh, him winning California…

However, even if McCain did win California in Fox News land, he still would have have come up short.

I took this screenshot since I knew it was probably an error and sure enough upon page reload it was back to uncalled.

Still funny though.

Posted in politics | 1 Comment »

Shifting focus.

All of this thinking about getting out of California lately has been consuming my life, and the Red Sox in the playoffs again isn’t helping.

I need to shift my focus elsewhere, especially since I don’t think I’ll be able to make the move anytime soon.

So what should I focus on now? What to be for Halloween? How to pay off my massive pile of student loans? The upcoming election? The forgotten honey bee crisis? The new Knight Rider series?

All viable options, but it’s October and that can mean only one thing — it’s time to focus on the Red Sox in the playoffs.

Which means I’ll be seeing a lot of coverage of Fenway Park and the city of Boston — a glorious city located on the east coast.

sigh….it’s an endless cycle.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Vote, dammit!

The video told me to tell 5 people. That’s about the number of people that read my blog. Works out pretty well.

Seriously, register to vote, and then vote in November. Or vote by mail if you’re lazy like me.

Posted in politics | 5 Comments »

East coast visit

After a crazy couple of weeks at work, I was lucky enough to have a short trip planned to head back to the east coast for my cousin’s wedding.

Normally I wouldn’t be all that excited about taking a red eye flight across the country only to turn around and fly back less than three days later, but as you may have noticed, I’ve been missing the east coast quite a bit lately.

It rained the entire weekend. I didn’t see the sun once. It was cold and damp. And I loved it.

I also got to spend some quality time with the Irish half of my family in combination with an open bar at a wedding. Needless to say, it was a good time.

My mom switched over to extreme cooking and baking mode the following day. She does that a lot. The level of extremity increases exponentially with the number of sons she has in the house. All three of us were home this time. As much as I love her food, I’d love to see her relax for once.

I’m already looking forward to my next voyage to the east coast, which will last an entire week and begin in New York City.

I like California, I swear, I really do. I just happen to like other parts of the US a little more.

Posted in pointless | 2 Comments »