New Blog Title

Well now that my "10 MOnths in AmeriCorps" are over I've decided that it's time for a new title for the blog.
Growing up as a small child in rural Eastern Washington, I spent many a day contemplating the fame I would gain in my adult life. The lights. The cameras. The tabloid covers. But most importantly I spent a lot of time thinking about the name of my future memoirs that my screaming fans would be understandably begging me to release. Early on I had decided upon the name Robsessed for obvious reasons. For one thing it sounds awesome and it's basically my whole name minus the R. Clever right? So you can can imagine my horror the day i get a facebook post from my friend Jess Miller alerting me to the fact that freakin Robert Pattinson must have gained access to my childhood diary labeled 1994 and stolen my title! It's a sick sick world we live in folks. But I've persevered. The show must go on. And so in spite of copy right infringement and the looming possibility of being eaten alive by the Cullen family I have decided to stand my ground and claim what is rightfully mine. Therefore, from this day forward my blog shall be known as: ROBSESSED......... go team Jacob!

First day in San Francisco!

Well here I am. Living it up in one of the coolest cities. EVER. Now this isn't the first time I've been here but i don't think the past encounters really count because both times were under 3 hours and gave me enough time to run through the men's floor at H&M and eat a crab at the fisherman's warf.

So I'm pretty sure my love of San Fran came from all the movies I've seen that are set in this city and the fact that there literally aren't any that I haven't liked. Movies such as:

Vertigo: Amazing. One of my favorite movies of all time. Jimmy Stewart? Bernard Herrmann score? Give it to me all day long.

Pursuit of Happiness: Gets the tears running everytime.

Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco: This one clearly speaks for itself.

Milk: Inspiring

The Princess Diaries: Anything with Julie Andrews is pure gold.

Herbie Rides Again: Well ok actually this was a pretty terrible movie. As if having a Volkswagon Bug with human emotions wasn't weird enough, at one point i vaguely remember Herbie driving up to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was probably 7 at the time and even I knew that was just plain silly.

Superdad: One of my families favorite movies and a very underrated Disney comedy from the 70's. I even learned how to play the theme song on piano... Disney big notes of course.

Now as previously mentioned I am slightly obsessed with the movie Vertigo. Jimmy. Hitchcock. Great music. Beautiful shots of the city. Drama. Drama. AND MORE Drama. So my goal for this trip has been to retrace Jimmy Stewart's steps and thanks to google they were kind enough to supply me with addresses for my first Vertigo pilgrimage. Last night was quite the thrill because my sister and I walked all the way from Ghiradelli Square up the squiggly part of Lombard St. where in the movie Jimmy lived! (900 Lombard if you care to know). So there I am awkwardly standing outside someones apartment (cuz Jimmy don't live there no mo) staring like a deer caught in the headlights at the steps that Kim and Jimmy once stepped upon. I would liken the experience to the viewing of the cloak of Jesus by young peasants during the early days of the Catholic Church. Life changing.

So today I decided I was going to hit the city hard. See as much as i could see and for some stupid reason i decided it would be nice to walk as much as possible as a way to become accustomed to my new surroundings. It would not be an understatement to say that i walked close to 7 miles today around the city and by the end of the day i finally caved and decided public transportation was necessary. Although i did have a frustrating incident with a man who got incredibly angry when i sat down in one of the seats near the front of the bus and yelled "THIS IS FOR ELDERLY AND DISABLED PEOPLE. WHY DON'T U MOVE!?!?!" But how was I to know the rules of bus etiquette? Do i look like someone who regularly rides public transportation!!?!?! The correct answer would be no. I don't. After telling him to can it I decided it would be polite to stand. I cave in so easily.

Anyways many sights and sounds i did indeed see today. City Hall. Union Square. Harvey Milk's and Scott's camera shop. :'(. RIP. Amazing vintage shops on Haight Street. Sunset over Golden Gate Bridge. And most importantly Mission Dolores. And why you ask would I visit the oldest existing building in San Francisco and the oldest Mission in all of California?? Because Jimmy went there. Duh?! In the movie he follows Kim into the mission where he finds her staring at Carlotta Valdez's gravestone. And for 5 whole dollars I got to see the whole thing. I may or may not have been playing the films soundrack on my ipod as I walked through the chapel where Jimmy once tread and I may or may not have tried to find Carlotta's gravestone. Turns out she wasn't a real person but it was still well worth my time.

Blonde Moment of the Day

Today in my oh so exciting life I was working at a volunteer center for people who call in to sign up to help patrol beaches and look for signs of the oil spill. Not a lot of people had called in, and when i say not a lot i mean 2 people had called in and i hadn't had to answer either call. So lucky caller number 3 phones in and the phone is in front of me so i figure its my turn to pick up and I'm doing a fairly descent job telling her about ways she could help and when the trainings are taking place. Out of nowhere she asks me the address and i start to panic and i'm frantically looking for the business card that has that info but i can't find it. By that point i had probably said the word umm at least 3o times before someone brought me the card and I'm like "oh the address is P.O. Box 2128........"Awkward silence ensued and the woman on the other end of the phone is asks, "How the hell do you expect me to meet you at a P.O. Box!?"

Boy did i feel dumb.

Waking Up in Biloxi!!!

Well once again the good Lord has blessed me with another month in the South, which means I am just another step closer to meeting Anderson. These days I’m kickin it in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It’s probably safe to say that none of you have heard of it because it’s a pretty small beach town. Now the reason we’re down here is because instead of moving on to our next project which would have been back in Iowa where we would have been landscaping and tutoring emotionally traumatized children, which could have been scary, we got called to do disaster relief. You know that whole oil spill thing that’s going on in the gulf. Hopefully you’ve heard of it by now. Thank God none of the oil has washed ashore yet, because for one thing it would just suck for the ocean life and the local economy, and most importantly I can still get my tan on at the beach and swim around in the water. Yaaaaaaaah! Although experts are still debating on whether or not it’s a good idea to be in the water but I figure that if it does give me cancer someday down the road I could easily sue BP and become filthy rich. Bwahahaha! Everything is going according to plan…..

The nearest big town to us is Biloxi which is viewed as the Las Vegas of Mississippi. Now I’ve never been to Vegas but I did see The Hangover and this place has nothing on Vegas. However, Biloxi is the birthplace of my favorite soda ever, well besides diet Coke……it’s Barq’s Rootbeer!!! So for that I am eternally grateful. I had never been to a casino before so I was very excited to see what they were like and possibly win a few bucks. So about 7 of us get all dolled up and made our way to the Hard Rock casino cuz we don’t mess around. So of course they ID you before you walk in and they’re checking all my friends and its almost my turn and I have my card ready and I’m about to hand it to the bouncer and he glances at me and just waves me through. Now maybe the man was just tired and didn’t care but I took it has him saying, “Let’s be real. You look ancient. Here’s some fresh tennis balls for the walker your caregiver will be bringing you shortly.” The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that I had recently had a high school girl wrongly guess my age. She was off by ten years. And just to give you a hint, she didn’t think I was 14.

So I had told myself I would only spend 5 bucks but once I got inside the casino I realized I had 8 in my pocket and why not live it up. So I had absolutely NO idea of what to do and how the machines work and even after spending two hours on the nickel slots I’m still fairly confused. Basically I was just pushing buttons to see what could happen. Now although it turned out to be a great night with friends there were several disappointments. Firstly, I was slightly disappointed when I got there and found out that money doesn’t come pouring out of the slots like in the old days. Everything is digital and all your money gets put on a card, which makes a win very anticlimactic. Secondly, contrary to popular belief, lemons do not come flowing out of the slots when you line up all 3 lemons on the machine. I felt so lied to. Thirdly, the Sex and the City 2 slot machines were occupied by two middle aged woman who spent at least the whole time I was there spending away their retirement money trying to match up screen shots of Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda. Grrr…should have been me. And lastly I didn’t get a free drink from the cocktail waitress even after following her around, changing seating locations, and waiting at one machine for at least half an hour betting one penny at a time just as a way of stalling and making it look like I was a big spender. I was perturbed.

But I can’t really complain because I did end up winning 11 dollars which sent me in to some loud screaming and jumping up and down fits which in turn caused one of the workers to come over and ask if everything was ok. I then proceeded to cash out and leave. Always leave while you’re ahead.

I'm on the NEWS!

http://greenopolis.com/videos/volunteers-taking-charge-gulf

Here's my 15 minutes of fame...well it's more like 30 seconds and it wasn't exactly Barbara Walters asking the questions... 
but I'll take it.

Another Fake Out By Anderson Cooper

Life these past few days has been a whole lot of crazy. First off, as some of you might know, I went through a phase last summer where I was SLIGHTLY obsessed with Anderson Cooper. I blame it mainly on the fact that I had an internship that left me with nothing better in the afternoons then to spend hours reading basically every CNN.com story ever posted. And my obsession peaked when I got to go to Atlanta where I stayed at a hotel adjacent to the CNN headquarters. My main objective for the whole trip was to somehow meet Anderson but it turns out his office is in New York so all my efforts and wasted time taking the CNN NEWS TOUR were all in vain.

So this past Saturday I’m walking around downtown New Orleans having a little personal time while the rest of my team is working on a community service project. As part of the project they put hair into panty hose, that were primarily donated from a group of Transvestites in San Francisco, with the intention that they would be used to be taken out to sea to soak up oil from this little mishap some of you may have heard about. Anyways I had just bought some real hot boating shoes when my teammate Maddie calls and is like “Rob, the press is eating this up, we were just filmed making these hair booms and they want to take us all down to a marina where the oil is to have us put them in the water…….AND ANDERSON COOPER IS THERE!” Needless to say I took off running to the Ritz Carlton Hotel, which is where this whole thing was taking place, because there was no way that my team was meeting Anderson without me…even if I was wearing glasses, a tank top, and cut off jeans. Long story short, a news team from Los Angeles drove us down to the marina, which was 1.5 hours away. I felt so VIP. We got out and the journalist was like “ok , there’s lots of reporters here looking for a story so as long as you don’t say a word to anybody we’ll buy you dinner." So who got a free shrimp dinner for keeping his big mouth shut? This guy. But the sad thing was that by the time we got there Anderson was long gone and was probably back in New York tossing back gin and tonics with Kathy Griffin. So jealous. Mark my words Anderson we will meet someday and become besties whether you like it or not. But it was still pretty sweet to get interviewed by the news team. Plus our chauffer, who’s name was George and supposedly was going to be drafted into the NFL before he blew out his knee, bought me a ruby red grapefruit drink for the ride back. It was loverly.

In other more disturbing news, last Friday I woke up with a layer of skin missing from underneath my nose and it kind of had me concerned because I figured that either I had been bitten by a cockroach, a mouse had used my nose as a punching bag, or I had slept walked into a boiling pot of tea. Needless to say it hurt like hell and had puss coming out like there was no tomorrow. So today I go into the walk in clinic because I have a slight chest cold and I’m chatting it up with the doctor and I’m like, "oh yeah in case you hadn’t noticed the ginormous crusty mess on my face I think I burned myself in my sleep." To which he replied, "how would you have burned yourself in your sleep? That is clearly bacteria growing on your face." Yep. Bacteria. Chilling under my nose because apparently sometimes bacteria can grow under the hair follicles in a beard and the area beneath the nostril provides a cool, wet, and dark environment for it to grow and flourish. WHO KNEW!!!!!!? I guess thinking back on it it’s a good thing I didn’t meet Anderson this weekend because he might have been slightly alarmed by the sight of the bacteria; which I will soon be applying vigorously the cream the doctor prescribed. That is once the Wal-Mart Pharmacy gets their ish together and orders the cream that go figure they were out of. I mean seriously Wal-Mart, with all the money I’ve spent in your store you could’ve had the courtesy to have my Bactrum cream waiting for me in my lowest hour of need.

Rob the Firefighter

Well the impossible has happened. Little Robbie James is officially a trained Wildland Firefighter. I know I know, pretty hard to believe and if someone had told me this would happen a year ago I wouldn’t have believed it. But after a week of really boring classes where I sat and watched videos depicting every worse possible situation of a fire and after passing the pack test where you have to walk 3 miles in under 45 minutes while carrying a forty pound pack. Not to brag but I did it in 43 minutes (please save your applause for later). It been pretty awesome and I could totally dig having a job where all I do is walk around with a drip torch lighting things on fire all day. My inner pyro has definitely been unleashed. Oh and by the way, my team is already talking about releasing a calendar because isn’t that what all the real firefighters do? I’m already claiming November and I’m envisioning lots of flames, sweat, mesh tank top, and Dalmatian puppies all over me. Its gonna real classy.

The other day we were doing a prescribed burn on about 100 acres of prairie and my teammate Stephon and I got quite the rush of adrenaline from this whole fire thing. We had just lit a huge fire line across a field when our crew boss drove up and was signaling at us to get in the ranger to move farther down the line. I of course being the sensible of the two told Stephon that we should walk down further where the fire hadn’t touched in order to get to the ranger. He of course was like well let’s just jump over it. Seeing as my nickname on the team has become old man Sesser I wasn’t about to let this young whipper snapper show me up so we both started running towards the fire line and once our feet left the ground to jump over it I swear the flames grew twice in size which pushed a rush of adrenaline through my body like I’ve never experienced. Within seconds my body was drenched in sweat from the heat. In the moment I seriously felt like I was in the Gladiator movie when Russell Crowe is fighting in the battle and he yells “UNLEASH HELL!” Then out the dark smoke and flames you see this huge wolf fly out of it and attack. Basically that’s how it probably would have looked if you had been standing there…minus the wolf…and insert me and Stephon with a touch of slow motion for dramatic effect. All I’m sayin is that it was pretty “bad a”. And my asthma didn’t flare up due to all the smoke inhalation, which was also a big plus.

Now speaking of me, Stephon, wild dogs, adrenaline rush, feeling like your life is a movie, etc….Last weekend we thought it would be a great thing to go spend some time volunteering at the local Humane Society and it was all going just peachy until Stephon decided two put the 3 yr. old St. Bernard in the play area. I don’t really know how but Stephon was playing with the dog in the pen but “Jesse” was apparently feeling a little claustrophobic. So out of nowhere the dog bolts for the gate where he jumps up and body slams it thus opening the gate. Everything after that seriously could have been the new script for the seventh sequel to Beethoven. So the dog just takes off and I was standing close by with my dog who was some sort of large terrier who coincidentally has a knack for squeezing it head out of a collar and running after large St. Bernards. So then we had two dogs on the loose and I’m running like crazy seeing as we’re right next to a busy road and I’m screaming “JESSE! JESSE! STOP! BAD DOG! BAD DOG!” I was so flustered I couldn’t even remember the other dogs name so I had to refer to him as HEY YOU! STOP! Those dogs really could have cared less as Stephon and I chased them for probably a good quarter mile before they finally stopped. And seeing as I probably ran the fastest quarter mile of my life while wearing a parka I was about two steps away from a collapsed lung. So I go up to Jesse and grab him by the collar and surprisingly he’s really happy to see me and figures I would love a good lick. So he gives me those innocent puppy dog eyes and proceeds to lick the entire length of my arm and covers it all in nasty white foamy drool that had all been built up from the run. And go figure my parka was dry clean only. And you have no idea how hard it is to find a good dry clean in rural Iowa.