Episode VI: Return of the Flinkster

Hello world! Flink here. It has been exactly 3 years, 1 month, and 24 days since my last post. A lot has happened to Sir Flink a Lot in the last 1,148 days! It would be impossible to write about all of the great things that have happened in the past 164 weeks, so I'll cover the highlights.

Here is a list of the top 10 things that happened to Flinkasorous in the past 99,187,200 seconds.

1. Shortly after the last post, Flink and his friend Travis decided they wanted to meet Jon Stewart. They built a bamboo bike, hacked their way to the top of a competition, won thus competition, met a former President of the US, asked Craig about his list, and got rejected by Neil deGrasse Tyson on television. After all that, they did meet Jon Stewart, who called them a bunch of mother******s on his show. Don't believe me? Proof here.

2. Flink and Wibbitz went on a Eurotrip. Not too many lies were told on this trip, but Wibbitz got asked if she wanted to go Salsa dancing with our waiter in Barcelona. I don't know what it is about this girl and European waitstaff, but they certainly do love her (attn: Hugo from previous post). We also ate a lot of Paella.

3. What happens when the Flink family, Pants, and Hans Gruber ride bikes around NY, lie about Hans Gruber being the son of German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, drink buckets of margaritas, and steal hats off of people's heads? BT12, that's what happens. Nuff said.

4. Flink and his friend Tink (short for Tinkerbell, but he gets a little embarrassed, so we will just call him Tink) go puddle jumping to visit Hans Gruber in the land of Momma Merkel. Within 12 hours, Tink is lost in Germany with no means of communication and a language barrier between all Merkelettes he meets. Four hours later, he turns up at Hans Gruber's apartment, several miles away from his last sighting, shirtless and covered in rain. A little bit of fairy dust goes a long way working miracles (note: make sure it is the correct fairy dust. There are many people on the streets of Germany claiming to have fairy dust. This is not what you are looking for.)

5. Pants got a year older. Flink and the Flinkstones through him a surprise party. He sang a song. It got weird. There were then another 17 surprise parties.

6. Flink went to brunch with Tink and the Flinkstones for Tink's birthday. This one wasn't a surprise party. The service was impeccable. Flink started dating Wendy the Waitress, or WW.

7. Flink and WW drove to Florida, stayed with DJ Ablation, went to Harry Potter World, and saw where they filmed the end of Men In Black 3. Will Smith wasn't there, but some guy that looked like Boris the Destroyer was. We also got a great photo of an asian tourist's finger.

8. Flink became Uncle Flink! I-Money and Woodrow had a beautiful baby girl, Bailey. She knows all the animal noises! Her favorite are birds (they go tweet tweet tweet).

9. Flink also became Professor Flink. Not really sure how that one happened. Fake it until you make it?

10. Justin Beiber still sucks, the New England Patriots are world champions, Flink's middle school basketball teammate pitches for the New York Mets, they are still making Fast and Furious movies and they are still awesome, The Avengers saved all of humanity despite Thor not having the horse that he needed, Shaq is still relevant, and you still cannot have lunch with a Rhinoceros.

Well, that pretty much covers everything that happened in the past desk of cheese 82 fortnight.

Keep spreading the jam.
Flinkey out.

From Olive Trees to Expertise: The James Bond Story

Shalom my friends! It has been months since my last check-in, but I am happy to say that The Flink is back! So much has happened since my last post. Steve Jobs has passed, Wall Street has been occupied, LeBron James proposed to his girlfriend (she has more rings than him!), and somehow, Eli Manning is being called the best quarterback in the Manning family. Today, I would like to share about an amazing experience I had this past January. But first, some context...


As many of you know, Flink was raised in a Jewish household. He went to Hebrew school (where he perfected his card playing skills in the bathroom), he had a Bar-Mitzvah (it was awesome), and he celebrates Jewish holidays with his family. Several years ago, Flink's older sister Wibbitz traveled to Israel with one of her friends on Birthright. Despite spending a day in the hospital (that's kind of her style), Wibbitz had the time of her life and highly reccommended that Flink should take advantage of the experience. Like Wibbitz, I wanted to travel with a friend. Last year, I applied with my friend Mensch. I was lucky enough to have been accepted to the trip through GW, however Mensch was not as lucky. I decided not to accept and re-apply next year. The next year when I saw GW was hosting another trip, I decided to ask about bringing Mensch and our other good friend, Humpty Dumpty. The trip leaders were kind enough to accept both me and my friends. Looks like we are going to Israel!


January had come, the wait was over. Humpty Dumpty, Mensch, and myself drove from my house in New York first to Jim's Steaks for cheesesteaks (a great, kosher, pre-Israel trip snack) and then to the Philadelphia Airport where we met the rest of our group. On the plane, I had a middle seat next to a junior from UPenn going on another Birthright trip, and an Aretha Franklin clone. Turns out Aretha works in the US Embassy in Tel-Aviv. She told me if I lost my passport, she would "hook me up." Thanks Aretha. I then slept like a baby for the next 11 hours.


Before I continue, I would like to note that throughout my 12 days in Israel, I did not tell a single lie (except that I had 12 big brothers, but that doesn't count). No, it wasn't because I was afraid that I should be on my best behavior in "The Holy Land." It was because I traveled with mostly GW students. This means I will most likely see these people again. Flinkey's golden rule: Always lie when you travel if you know you will most likely never see these people again. No lying for the Flink here. I regress...


Once we got off the plane, I finally met our entire group. Our group was unbelievable. I have never been in an environment where so many people got along so well with each other. There are so many stories that I can tell about the next 12 days. I can share a story about a man named Avraham we met in Svat who a few years ago was a man named Robert in Michigan. I can tell stories of raves in Beduin tents. I can tell you the courageous story about a camel named Moose who knew he didn't belong. I can tell tales of 8 Israeli soldiers who had no idea what they got themselves into. I can tell of moving moments at the Western Wall. There is one story that I would like to share, and that is the story of our tour guide.


In keeping with the anonymous theme of the blog, I shall refer to our tour guide as James Bond, but that name does not really do him justice. We met Bond, James Bond, at the airport and he stayed with us until the very end of our trip. When he introduced himself to us, he called himself a farmer. He worked in the olive oil industry for many years, and even introduced us to some of his olive oil friends during our trip. Bond was born in modern day Israeli and considers himself very religious. He walks around with a prayer book in his pocket, and although sometimes it is with a Charlotte Hornets hat, he always keeps his head covered. Whether we were hiking through the woods, at a historic site, or driving through geological wonders, Bond knew all the facts. I have never met a more knowledgable person. He really knew it all. One day he told us about the life cycle of an almond tree, then explained the multiple layers of Jerusalem, and finally ended with explaining how electromagnetic waves travel a greater distance from the sun to the dead sea, so attenuation is lower. I had to test my theory that he knew everything. One day on the trip, I went up to Bond and asked him about something pretty normal in my life, biophysics. I asked him one of the questions on my biophysics practice final: why is the sky blue? He explained the phenomenon in physical terms exactly how I had learned it in class. He spoke about wavelength thresholds and bending of visible light. He even went on to use this idea to explain the Northern Lights. This guy really does know it all. It wasn't until we went to Mount Herzl, the Arlington Cemetery of Israel, that I learned how truly amazing Bond was.


James Bond, with the help of our AMAZING eight Israeli soliders (I miss you!), toured us around Mount Herzl telling us stories as we would pass gravestones. When we passed the gravestone of Yoni Netanyahu, older brother of current Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bond told us about how Yoni was a good friend of his. I then learned the amazing story of Operation Entebbe.


In 1976, an Air France plane flying from Tel-Aviv was hijacked and brought to Entebbe, Uganda. For a week, over 200 passengers were held hostage by terrorists. A week after the hijacking, the IDF sent a group of 100 Special Forces agents to rescue to hostages. Our guide, a mere oliver farmer who traveled with us for 12 days, James Bond, was one of those agents. The operation is widely considered one of the greatest and most daring special forces operations in history. All terrorists were killed, along with the death of four hostages, and one member of IDF Special Forces, the Commander of the unit: Yoni Netanyahu. 


I want to personally thank James Bond for making this trip as amazing of an experience as possible. Although sometimes I was just tired and wanted to sleep, his never ending knowledge (if you we're on my trip, you know what I mean by never ending) made the trip not only fun, but educational. I learned so much in Israel and can't wait to go back. So thank you, James Bond. 


Moral of the story: Go to Israel. You will meet some pretty amazing people.


Keep spreading the jam. 
Flinkey out.

A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Dollar Bail

Buonasera world. I am currently writing from seat 10B on a Delta A330 Airbus (I asked the flight attendant what type of equipment she was using). I am flying from Rome to New York, as the Flinkey Family adventure has ended. I am about seven hours into the flight and have not had a pleasant experience. Wibbitz and myself are sitting in row 10 on this airbus, and as those of you in “the business” know, row 10 on an A330 is the first row in coach, and an emergency exit. The flight was grounded for about an hour (big surprise when I’m traveling), but finally we were airborne. At the point when electronic devices are cleared for use, I pulled up my TV from the armrest and tried to play a movie. To my surprise, when I hit play all I saw was a black screen. I then asked Wibbitz to give it a shot. Same problem. Turns out that nearly every entertainment system on the plane was not functional. However, Wibbitz and I do have the privilege due to the location of our seats to watch everyone in first-class sitting comfortable in their pods with fully functional 20-inch flat screen entertainment systems. Shortly after notifying the flight attendants of our problem, we were told that there was nothing they could do but try and reset our systems. No luck. Great, now we need to sit through an almost nine hour flight with nothing to do. To make the matter even worse, unlike most other rows on the plane, row 10 does not have seats CDE and F. This means than rather than having four people sitting next to me to lie to, I have a plain, grey wall. To make things EVEN worse, there is a giant grizzly bear sitting two rows behind me snoring comically loud. So loud, in fact, that the people sitting behind me (pretty weird people, not worth my time to lie to) complained to the flight crew about the noise. That noise complaint was the last time that any member of the flight crew was ever seen.

 About two hours later in the flight, I experienced The Great Purge of 2011. People on the plane became thirsty and the flight crew was nowhere to be found. One person got so fed up that he walked up to the beverage storage area, also conveniently located directly next to my and Wibbitz’s seats, and took a soda from the cart for himself. Following the leadership of that brave soldier, at least 25 people (including Wibbitz and Q-Tip) did the same, crowding my and Wibbitz’s leg room. Those beverages did not stand a chance. For those wondering, just like Farty McFartpants from my previous train ride, Grizzly continued to disrupt the entire plane with his bodily noises.

In addition to no TV, the location of our seats, The Great Purge, and the absence of the flight crew, the plane was an icebox, and the bathroom (which is a half an hour hike from our seats) was covered in garbage (not to worry, there was a clean bathroom six feet away from my seat in first class, but I got yelled at when I tried to use it). What a lovely flight. It is such a pleasant experience that I wanted to take a picture to remember it. When I pulled out my iPhone to take a picture of the happy people in first-class, a flight attendant decided to reappear from nowhere to tell me not to disturb the first class passengers. Sure, now you show up. This is not the first time this trip that I got in trouble for simply trying to document my travels with my iPhone…

On one of our first days in Italy, we went to Vatican City to visit The Holy Father (he was on vacation but will be back in September, just in time for Rosh Hashanah!). The same day that I attempted to smuggle nutella into the Vatican, I tried my luck at taking a picture of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. There is a very strict no photo rule in the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Police enforce it. Men were taken out of the chapel for taking pictures with their cameras. Luckily, I don’t have a camera; I have an iPhone.

As you can see, it was a success, and Jesus must be very upset with me. Oh well, good thing I’m Jewish…

The next day, the Flinkey Family traveled to Rome’s ancient Jewish Ghetto. The entire ghetto is fenced in and a security guard searches your bags when you enter. Apparently there was an attempted terrorist attack in the 1970s, and ever since cameras are prohibited. Again, it’s a good thing I don’t have a camera.

As you can see, it looks like I’m screwed. Now both the Jewish god and the Catholic god hate me. I’m converting to Islam.

A few days later, the Flinkeys drove from Rome to Amalfi. On the way, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up food for a week in our villa. The grocery store was huge, and I-Money and Wibbitz wanted to document its immense size. The second that they pulled out their cameras, two Italian policemen ran at them screaming in Italian. I’m not sure what they said, but I’m starting to think that you are not allowed to take pictures anywhere in Italy. My suspicions grew as the week progressed.

For those of you who have never had the privilege of traveling to the Amalfi coast, it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Giant green mountains right on the beautiful blue-green Mediterranean. The coast is famous for lemon groves and ceramics (lots of places to buy plates). When we were there, I saw the largest lemon I had ever seen. This thing was the size of my face. Obviously, I had to take a picture of it. As Wibbitz took the picture, the owner of the market yelled me at in Italian. Do you recognize a theme?  

Amalfi is also famous for their roads. The roads are barely large enough to fit two smart cars side by side, but somehow city buses manage to navigate up and down the mountains without crashing into the Mediterranean. Our vehicle of choice for our drive from Rome to Amalfi was what is commonly referred to as a short bus: A huge 9 seater with room for all of our luggage and groceries. I am not sure how Momma Bear managed to navigate the roads, but she made it to our villa without killing the Flinkeys or damaging any cars [too badly]. After almost wetting myself in the car ride, I decided to take the city bus to get around for the rest of the week.

On one of our last nights we hopped on the bus to get back to our villa from town. I looked in front of me and saw something truly amazing. There was a small Italian kid, probably around five years old, sitting next to his mom wearing a red shirt with black writing on the back. Over his neck, his shirt read “Flinky”. Although it was spelled wrong, I had to document this moment. I pulled out my iPhone and took a picture of his shirt. The flash wasn’t on. As I turned the flash on and took another picture of this young boy, the man sitting across from me began yelling at me in Italian. Turns out it was the little boy’s father wondering why some strange American tourist was taking pictures of his five-year-old son. He was violently yelling in Italian, scared his son’s picture will end up all over the internet. Well, sorry Italian Dad, but here it is:

I thought about how I would feel if some Asian tourist was taking a picture of my son on the NYC subway, and completely regret that I was unable to justify the innocence of my photo. Italian man, if you are out there and happen upon my blog, I am deeply sorry for taking a picture of your son. I am not a pedophile, nor do I intend to use the photograph of your little boy for anything but this blog. As you may have guessed, I ended up taking a different bus.

Also, there is a strict no blue and no trombones law in Italy, so don’t even try it.

 

That’s it for now. Time to watch people be pampered in first class while I soak in a pool of garbage in my icebox.

Keep spreading the jam. Flinkey out.

When in Rome eat as the Romans do

Buon giorno! Flink checking in from Rome. I am not going to tell you all about how great Italy is, or all the fun things I have done so far (trust me, there are lots!), but instead I am going to describe the most important aspect of my travels... food.

I suppose the logical place to start would be on the airplane. A little background first. I am on an Italian vacation with Pappa Bear, Momma Bear, I-Money, Woodrow, Wibbitz, Little Red, and Q-Tip. The entire Flinkey family met at LR and Q's place to meet our limo (Momma Bear had a groupon!). We took the limo to the airport and got on our plane. Of course I made friends on the plane. The entire flight crew knew me by the end of the flight, as well as all of the people around me. The four people sitting in between Wibbitz and myself and Woodrow and I-Money were a couple (around Mamma and Pappa Bear's age) that met in college at Pitt and were taking their parents on vacation. When my friends on the flight crew brought around dinner, we had the choice of pasta or chicken, and beer or wine. I decided to go with the chicken, which apparently was a good move. Although it was pretty crappy, from what Q-Tip told me the spaghetti was some of the worst food he's eaten in his almost 80 years of life. I am not sure what my friends next to me ate, but it couldn't have been good...

About three hours into our flight, I-Money saw the daughter in my group of friends jump up like she had to pee real bad. Great, someone is going to pee their pants (haha). Surprisingly, she came back seconds later with four flight attendants. Apparently, moments before Mom passed out and began seizing. Yes, you read that correctly. She was seizing on an airplane. Apparently my friend's mom had a motion sickness patch on AND drank alcohol on the plane while eating lousy airplane food. After half of first class came to assist with their medical expertise (I was tempted to lie about my credentials and help, but a life was on the line) my friend's mom survived and we did not have to make an emergency landing in the middle of the Atlantic. Moral of the story, don't drink and fly.

That same day we went for our first Italian dinner in a very crowded and touristy street. We sat down and gave our order to the waiter, who told us we couldn’t order eight different dishes because the chef cannot handle the order. What type of a restaurant was this? We eventually all decided on a few dishes to share (not me, I got my own dish) and ate a pretty mediocre dinner. I will not be returning there. 

The next few meals were some of the best of my life. Breakfast is included in our hotel, but unlike The Hampton Inn, this breakfast was magnificent (I-Money may disagree, she loves the Hampton Inn). Eggs, Italian meats, pastries, and blood orange juice. Yum. It was so good that we stole some snacks for the rest of the day. Later that day, we went to the Vatican to have a guided tour. Once you enter the Vatican, you need to go through a metal detector so they know you are not carrying anything you shouldn't be carrying. I was stopped not once, but twice walking through the metal detector. On my third try, I took out 20+ nutella packets from my pocket and walked through the detector beep free. Pro Tip: Nutella packets have metallic labels and can be mistaken for guns by the Vatican police.

Lunch every day has been a pizzeria, and I have found pizza better than NY pizza. There, I said it. Thin crusts and delicious sauce. Great pizza. Well done Italy, well done. The other constant from every day has been gelati. I have never tasted anything as delicious as the gelati from the shop next to our hotel. I can easily say it is the best thing I have ever eaten, and will deeply miss it when we leave.  

For dinner last night and tonight, we went to a restaurant on the same street as our hotel. I-Money and Woodrow went there during their honeymoon and recommended it to us. Boy was it good. If any of you are ever in Italy and want to be respected by your wait staff, order oxtail. Not only was it delicious, but every waiter came up to me and told me I was a real man, and that oxtail will put hair on your chest (little did they know I already have hair on my chest). I felt like a god amongst men. Good feeling, you should try it some time. 

I failed to mention that at every restaurant, Wibbitz has befriended a waiter who wants her to stay in Rome and live with them. My favorite was Hugo, he made great pizza, but he kind of looked like someone sat on his face (sorry Hugo). Who she will choose I have no idea, but I am looking forward to returning to Rome for the wedding.

In summary, someone almost died on my plane, I made a fool out of myself in the Vatican, Wibbitz is getting married, and we ate some pretty amazing food. Italy is pretty, pretty good.

Flinkey out.

PS: Sorry for no longer having flinkey fish on right side of the blog. Flinkey.com got mad that I illegally stole their logo and told Google on me so I had to take it down.

Flinkey out, again.  

Wabbit Season

Remember in the Looney Tunes when Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck would argue in front of Elmer Fudd on whether or not it is duck season or rabbit season? Well in the world of Flink, July is most certainly wabbit season. For those of you who do not know about my summer job (shame on you, I've posted about it at least twice), I work in a lab where we study the electrophisiology of the heart. In order to do so, we need to acquire live hearts to study. Since I started working in December, we would extract hearts from rats and study the electrical propagation through them. In essence, we are mass murderers of rats. Since December, we have studied hundreds, if not thousands, of rats. Here is how the extraction process goes...

Step 1: Acquire rat from vararium.

Step 2: Spin rat in circles to make him dizzy

Step 3: Inject rat with drug to make him "happy"

Step 4: Inject rat with lethal dose of chemical

Step 5: Rip his heart out

Step 6: Play with heart

Step 7: Quit playing games with rat's heart

In my mind, I have no problem going through this six or seven step process (that was for you, Alvin) on rats. Rats are horrible animals that caused the death of an estimated 75 million people during the black plague. In fact, we are doing the world a favor by eliminating the rat population. My logic can not be matched, killing rats is good! This was my mindset until we killed out first rat pups. 

Rat pups look exactly like Stuart Little. I can live with being a mass murderer of adult rats, but I cannot kill Stuart Little. Luckily, I am not Dr. Death, and I can just look the other way when the execution of the youngest of the Little clan is murdered. RIP Stuart.

This bring me to July, month of the rabbit. This July, my lab continued our studies on rabbit hearts. The rabbits that we use for our studies are not the grey bunny rabbits you see running around in your backyard. They are the white fuzzy rabbits that your little sister has as a pet. July has been a rough month for the Flink. RIP Thumper.

As I blog, I think it is important to point out that I am yet again blogging from the train. I am en route to NY to meet the Flinkey family for our Italian vacation (WOOHOOO!!). To your entertainment, my luck with amtrak has not run out (why do I continue to travel with them??). I board my 7:10 train (yes, I made it to the train station this time) and find a window seat. This ride is going to be perfect. When my train hadn't left the station at 7:15, I knew something was up. Apparently the engine had stalled and had to be replaced. Fantastic. I then spent the next hour sitting in a non air conditioned train with the lights out waiting for the train to start. Little did I know what would happen in that hour...

The hour began as any other would on a train. Silence. Everyone looking at their blackberries texting their sisters (just me?) that their train is late. The silence was broken a few minutes later by a small girl, no older than three, sitting in the seat in front of me. If I am not mistaken, it was at that very moment that she first learned that when she presses her tongue against her lips and blows, it sounds like a fart. I remember my first mouth fart. What a glorious day in that young girls life. She then practiced for the next half hour. No exaggeration.

After I broke out in laughter from Farty McFartpants sitting in front of me, I look to my left to see the woman next to me also in tears. We then began to talk... This is going to be fun. Nia Dale, a name she chose for herself after I explained that real names cannot be used in my blog, is an attorney in her early thirties on her way to visit her friends in NYC. She grew up in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. As most of my followers know, I HAVE BEEN THERE! I began to talk about places, such as the waffle house (I learned that before it was a waffle house it was a dairy queen) that I have been to in her hometown. In case you were wondering, the fart noises continued. 

Nia Dale and I discussed important issues, such as Duke Basketball (she's an alum). As we were talking about how tall basketball players were, Nia asked me if I thought they took any drugs to get so tall. As soon as I responded "Hmm... Maybe human growth hormone?", the entire cast of Little People, Big World walked by. Of course they did.

Nia and I continued to discuss important topics, such as my brother-in-law completing the bar exam (proud of ya Woodrow), me being a division I athlete (sorry Nia, I like to lie), and my upcoming trip to Italy. Nia is now working on her fun lawyer buyer security paperwork.. looks riveting.

This just in.... as our train arrived in Philadelphia, we were greeted by the Amtrak police and a Philadelphia Police K-9 unit. Not really sure what just happened, but the police officer searched a man a few rows behind me, and then spoke into his walkie talkie saying "train 496 is clean". Is someone smuggling cocaine on Amtrak trains? Is Washington DC the new Mexico? Have I been watching too many episodes of Weeds? I have no idea what just happened, but I have a pretty good guess. Based on the eagle tattoos on this man's arm, I am guessing that he is celebrating Nnamdi Asomugha's decision to stay with the Eagles by using and smuggling illegal drugs on the train...Just a guess. Got a better one?


Cowabunga Dudes!

Flinkey out. 

I'm on the Road to Rhode Island

Hello world. Flink checking in. Today I am going to tell you about my trip to Rhode Island. Let's start with a little background...

Last week I got a text from one of my best friends at school. To keep with the anonymous theme, I shall call him Chris Wok, or CW for short. CW texted me saying "come visit me." Now ordinarily I'd say no, but CW will be studying in London for the next semester so I probably would not see him until December. I decided to check to see how much it would cost to get to him. CW lives 10 minutes outside of Providence, on the Massachusetts side. Flying would cost $400. Sorry CW, don't need to see you that badly. After checking Amtrak, I found that if I took the 10 PM train on Friday night, it would get me in at 7 AM Saturday morning. The redeye in the train world. This would cost me $150 round trip. Now we're talking. I decided to buy my train ticket to Rhode Island. A train to Rhode Island... this will be just like that Family Guy episode when Brian and Stewie are Rhode Island bound. There will be a talking dog and a singing baby on my train (Road to Rhode Island). Sounds wonderful. My excitement grew throughout the week.

It was finally Friday. The wait was over. I had decided to prepare myself for the overnight journey by going to happy hour with some friends. We had a lovely time, and I was tired by the time I had to leave for the train station. Perfect. I will get on my train and sleep for the next 9 hours.

At this point in the story you may be wondering, what happens to Flink!? Does he fall asleep and miss his train? Was there really a talking dog and singing baby on his train?! Relax, I will get there.

At 9:10, I hailed a cab and began my journey to Rhode Island. At 9:21, I received and email on my iPhone from Amtrak. It read:

Apparently some alcoholic skipper decided to play slalom with power lines in his truck, damaging a power system in New Haven Connecticut leading to the cancelation of all trains between New York and Boston. Thanks skipper.

Flink was not going to let this slide. After paying the cab driver a $10 fare to essentially drive in a giant circle, I called up Amtrak. Tomorrow was my brother's wedding and I was the best man. I needed to get there before 11 AM or I would miss the wedding. The best the "helpful" man with customer service could do for me was put my on a train that got in at 3 PM, with no guarantee trains would be running by then. I got a full refund, but still had to pay for my cab ride. Thanks a lot Amtrak.

In short, I'm now free this weekend. Anyone want to hang out?

Flinkey out.

Mischief Managed

Hola amigos. Flinkster here. I regret to inform you that I have no witty story about a lie I told to a stranger or a polish girl I tried to marry to tell you. Instead, today I am here to summarize July 14, 2011: the greatest day in the history of the earth.

The day began just like any other day. I woke up (always a good way to start the day), went to 7-11 to grab my morning drink, and went to work. For those of you who do not know, I work in a lab where I play  with rat hearts. Work was as ordinary as playing with rat hearts can be, but as you may have guessed it wasn't my day at work that made July 14 so extraordinary. After work, I had a date with "my girl"(as the professor I work for calls her). Since Flinkey does not want to reveal his true identity, and to keep consistant with previous blog posts, I shall not use her real name, but instead call her Carmen Sandiego. In her travels, Carmen had acquired a coupon for $60 worth of food at Kinkheads, a fancy seafood restaurant, for only $5. With that being said, after work we went for seafood. I ate what could have been the best dinner in my life. Clams on the half shell, lobster medallions, sesame crusted tuna, and soft shell crab. Heaven.

Following the greatest meal of my life, Carmen and myself went back to my house to prepare for the rest of the night. The night of July 14, 2011 was in fact a historic night. At 12:01 AM on July 15, 2011 (I know, technically it's a new day but to me it was all one day), part 2 of the epic finale of the Harry Potter series premiered. Carmen bought us tickets weeks in advance, and we decided we would dress up as characters in order to honor the ending of not only one of the greatest book series ever written, but more importantly marking the end of an era. Flink was a mere 8 years old when the first Harry Potter book was released, and now, over 12 years later, it was over. No more books. No more movies. The snitch had opened at the close, and no amount of magic can change that. Sorry for the rant, I get emotional when I think about this. Back to dressing up... I need not describe the costumes, for I have recently learned how to upload pictures to the blog.

 

There you have it: Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley. I know, we're awesome.

I need not go into how great the movie was, or how many times I cried (at least 3), but instead I feel as if I can share two tales of misfortune that occurred at the Lowes in Georgetown on the night of the premier.

Tale 1:

Following dinner, Carmen and myself (before transforming into Harry and Ginny) went to the movie theatre to pick up our tickets and try and avoid the midnight crowd. To our surprise, we saw people already lining up to get into the theaters. Mind you, this was at 7 PM for a 12:01 AM showing. What a bunch of lunatics, I thought. However, amongst the lunatics was a friend of mine, who in honor of the event we shall call Remus. Remus was one of the first people in line, playing cards with friends passing the time. The dedication (or insanity) displayed by Remus in order to get good seats at this movie astounds me. He sat for five hours to insure that he would not be sitting in the front row with a soar neck by the end of the movie. Carmen and I did not share the same dedication. We left at 11 PM in order to insure that we would have time to show off our costumes, while still getting two seats together. In the end, we sat two seats away from Remus. Jokes on you.

Tale 2:

Once in the theater, I saw multiple fans with the exact same Harry Potter
glasses. I knew there was a big cult following, but these glasses looked too similar to each other for it to be a coincidence. As it turns out, the movie theater gave away Harry Potter 3D glasses (yes, we saw it in 3D) to the first few people in the theater. I saw them and I needed them. I was Harry Potter. How could I let all these mere muggles outshine me by wearing my glasses?! I had to be proactive. At that point, I yelled "who wants to give me their cool Harry Potter glasses?" To my amazement, the muggle sitting in front of me turned around and offered his glasses for some of my Swedish fish. I will trade Scandinavian snacks for Harry Potter 3D glasses any day of the week! You
 got a deal muggle. About five minutes after giving away an entire school of Swedish fish, an usher walks through the isles giving Harry Potter 3D glasses to anyone who asks for it, for 3D glasses will always be given at Lowes to those who ask for them. I enjoyed my movie snack free. Jokes on me.

That's the story of how my childhood ended. All is well.

Flinkey out.