Travel – Lutfey.com

Assuming that I am not going to get hit by a meteorite or trampled to death in some freak Y2K riot, I have made it through another year to write my fifth Christmas letter. I’m quite impressed with my ability to stick with the program for five years now. I can’t really think of anything else off the top of my head that has involved such a level of commitment. I left my “Tamaguchi” in a restaurant a day after it hatched, college only took four years, and my longest romantic relationship was wrapped up in a little more than three years. What does all this mean? Not a thing. Now that I think about it, I took care of my dog for more than a decade, and I have stood by the Denver Broncos for even longer than that. Heck, I’m still waiting for that Haley’s comet thing to come back again. Perhaps my level of commitment is not as underdeveloped as I first imagined.

In any case, it’s been a rather eventful year for me. As you may or may not know, I spent the first six months of the year working and playing in various parts of Europe. I wrote a letter about that way back in June, so feel free to read “Six Months in Amsterdam” if you haven’t done so already.

Getting back to Boulder was an interesting affair. For some reason that I don’t quite understand, it takes roughly 5 times longer to fly from Europe to the US than the other way around. I think it has something to do with the fact that the pilots have to convert all of their calculations from the metric system back to our way of doing things. I walked by the cockpit during the flight where one of the crew members was asking “Now how many gallons are there in a kilogram? I always get that mixed up.” Regardless of the reason, I have to say that I have never had the chance to watch four complete movies in an uninterrupted 16 hour period. It really wouldn’t have been so bad, except that United Airlines picks out all the movies they show during the flight from the “Goober Bin” at the local video store. You would think that with all the money they spend on in flight video equipment they could find something more interesting to show than sappy B movies and old episodes of “Home Improvement.”

Coming back to Boulder was a mixed blessing. I can’t really say that I like one city over the other, so I made two top ten lists about what I miss and don’t miss now that I am back in Boulder.

Top 10 reasons for coming back:

I’m afraid of the Euro.
Electrical outlets are all weird.
Company apartment has temperamental hot water heater.
No 24-hour supermarkets in Holland
I hated the “revolving door of death” at the Amsterdam office.
You think parking is bad in Boulder!
Cricket is just too hard to figure out.
I like seeing the sun every now and then.
No Taco Bell in Holland.
Poor news coverage of the ongoing Ramsey investigation.

Top 10 reasons for staying in Amsterdam:

I was just starting to get the hang of snooker.
Everyone sounds so smart on those BBC channels.
Chocolate eggs with the toys inside.
Eurodisney!
Nobody cares when you urinate in the canals.
Color coated money and coins that are actually worth something.
The novelty condom shops.
Numerous bars within walking distance of the apartment.
The Chunnel.
Public Transportation that doesn’t suck!!!

After watching various Initial Public Offerings increase the value of a select few individuals by a couple of billion dollars (give or take a few hundred million), I’ve decided to form my own company with the intention of taking it public in the future. In order to capitalize on both the current Internet craze and the recent success of Martha Stewart’s IPO, my new company is going to center around a web site devoted to food recipes that focus primarily on the wants and needs of men. Feel free to check it out at www.boxostuff.com. My personal favorite recipe: Box o’ Cheeze Its.

Well, every year I comment on my increasingly pathetic attempts at working toward my Master’s degree. I am proud to announce that this year I spent an all-time low three weeks attending classes. While still living and working in Amsterdam, I went through all of the trouble of applying to the Graduate Business program at CU. I started my Financial Accounting and Numerical Analysis night classes in late August. By early September I realized that neither subjects are very interesting in my own little world. I also discovered that as a reward for throwing in the towel quickly, the University gives back most of your money when you drop your classes in the first couple of weeks. At this rate, the only hope that I have of actually finishing a Masters degree is if scientists develop a computer chip that I can plug into my brain with all the relevant knowledge that I would have otherwise gained from sitting in class for two years.

December has been a pretty busy for me as I have been feverishly preparing for any and all Y2K issues that might arise at the end of the year. While most people are checking flashlight batteries and chopping firewood, I am busy watching a lot of TV. I don’t know what the future will hold in the brave new world of the upcoming millennium, but I want to start it off with the reassuring feeling that I have committed every episode of “Charles In Charge” to memory. OK, in all honesty, I have bought into the hype just a little bit by going to the grocery store and buying an extra box of “Cheeze Its.”

I’ve decided to start a new tradition of bestowing “Web Site of the Year” to the corner of the Internet that has arbitrarily provided me with the most laughs over the past year. This award goes to www.witcity.com. One section, called “The Lying Game” asks a new question every day and the top 10 most entertaining, insightful, or otherwise unique answers are posted the next day. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but in the past couple of weeks I have gotten five or six of my entries published the next day. I am not exactly sure why, but I’ve developed a knack for making fun of Sony’s latest high tech toy, the “Robotic Dog.” Here are some of the questions along with my winning entries:

Q: What features are part of Sony’s new Robotic Dog?
A: Docking procedure no longer requires human leg.

Q: What are some of the merchandise spin-offs from “Toy Story 2?”
A: “Toy Story 3” trailer: It’s Buzz Lightyear vs. Sony’s Robotic Dog.

Q: What’s the most appropriate holiday gift to get for your boss?
A: That Sony Robotic Dog, set to “Evil.”

Q: In the Year 3000, what will be remembered about New Year’s 2000?
A: Who would have imagined those Sony Robotic Dogs were going to evolve and enslave the human race?

Of course there is a lot more to me than an endless string of Robotic Dog jokes. For example, here is the very first Lying Game Entry of mine that was published:

Q: What is the plot of the new film, “Charlie’s Angels: The Movie?”
A: Instead of working for the mysterious man on speaker phone, the Angels start a new job investigating questions submitted to the “Ask Jeeves” web site.

That pretty much wraps things up for this year. All that is left to do is to wait and see how life is going to be different now that the year odometer is making the big flip. I’ve done extensive testing and I am cautiously optimistic that my lava lamp and drinking bird are both going to operate correctly come January 1st. I don’t think anything bad is going to happen, but if it does I’ll be able to relax a little bit knowing that even though I didn’t send out my Christmas letter until after December 25th, all of my friends will have gotten at least one good laugh before the world comes to an end.

Wow, it is that time of year again. It seems like just yesterday I started my first attempt to write my 2011 Christmas letter. Maybe it was, or maybe that was three months ago. You see I have two kiddos now, so I’ve kind of lost track of time for anything less pressing than someone screaming right next to my ears at the top of their lungs for reasons sometimes totally unapparent to me. And now that includes several people besides myself.

So the first place to start is the birth of my second daughter, Samantha Rose Lutfey. Born May 24, 2011, Samantha came into this world with 25% more hair than I had that day. The surgical team had to rush her off to the neonatal barbershop before they would let Katherine hold her newborn child. As was the case with Isabel’s birth, I looked stunning in the white sterile body suit I wore during the birthing procedure. To be honest, I think my perfect figure was a bit of a distraction to some of the nurses. Either that or they were worried I was going to pass out and topple over some vital and expensive piece of medical equipment. Who can know for sure? And for the record I came close to passing out zero times that day, which is one less than my first time around.

The next thing I can remember is competing in the annual Kinetics race. Held at Longmont’s Union reservoir, my team was named “The Prime Contenders.” The craft was a slight modification from previous attempts with Styrofoam wheels connected to a bicycle frame. This year marked a personal milestone in that I actually finished the race. And I had the support of pretty much nobody in the crowd. About 79% of the crowd didn’t think my craft would even float in the water. The remaining crowd watched me in the water and thought my right front wheel (which, to be honest, was hanging on to the rest of the craft in a rather precarious manner) was going to fall off any second now. And, really, the highlight of the event is witnessing a hastily assembled craft half sink in the middle of the water section. So to all of those people who keep telling me that PVC pipe is not a good structural material for a kinetics craft, I can now proudly yell out “PVC pipe can be a MARGINALLY ACCEPTABLE structural material, PROVIDED that I don’t hit any unexpected rocks, AND that I don’t make any sudden movements out of the exact center of gravity of the vehicle, AND, WELL OF COURSE IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING that the Kinetics Wizard doesn’t cast any spells of random destruction on any part of my team.” Or, in short, “Bite me– I made it!”

So I either had a very strange dream and/or was visited by aliens a few weeks back. To the best of my recollection, here is what went down.

So I’m standing around in a field for no particular reason, and a traditionally shaped alien saucer ship lands nearby. Two green creatures get out and move towards me.

“Greetings Omar,” one of the aliens proclaims. “We have some information which could be immensely useful to your spices regarding the nature of what you understand to be the cosmos.”

“Hold on,” I replied, “Should I be writing this down or recording this all on video?”

“No need for that, our message will be brief.” the other visitor explained. “First of all, your scientific community still can’t decide on the nature of light. Is it a particle or is it a wave? Nobody has come up with a good explanation that is consistent with real world observations. So here is the answer: Light is a particle that travels in a corkscrew pattern. Technically it is spinning around four dimensions– electical, magnetic, one space dimension, and another dimension you haven’t quite discovered yet.”

“OK, I’ll get the word out.” I answered. “Anything else?”

“One more thing,” the first alien spoke. “Most people in your scientific community believe in the Big Bang theory based on red shift patterns observed from extra-terrastial light sources. Did you ever think that the particles are getting slowed down by all the dark matter in the universe instead of everything expanding in every direction?”

“So why are you telling me all this?” I asked, “There are plenty of other humans who would be better equipped to pass on this information. I’m just a UPS driver.”

“We know– won’t it be funny that you know the truth about the nature of the universe but nobody will believe you due to your chosen vocation?” the first alien explained. They both started laughing uncontrollably as they moved back into their spaceship and flew away.

Maybe this is what I get for watching the Simpsons’ “Tree House of Horror” and “How the Universe Was Made” right before going to bed.

So now that I think about it, I did get quite a bit done this year. So here is a list of things I didn’t finish:

Steet performance: Rounded to the nearest integer, I can safely say I achieved 0% of my goal to create a trumpet, baritone, and tuba comedy street performing group. Besides a lot of random ideas floating around in my head I still need to acquire all the musical instruments and at least two musically inclined individuals for my team. And, of course someone who can arrange music would be helpful. Maybe I’ll make more progress on this in the future.

My 2024 run for congress is another area in which I did not make much progress. The first step I’m going to take is to shoot Botox into one side of my forehead so that I can do that cool eyebrow raising thing just like Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report.” The next item on the list is to decide my stance on critical issues such as deceptive bacon packaging, Tupperware lid standardization, and, of course, synchronizing with the rest of the world by switching over to the metric system and possibly Esperanto.

So that is about it for 2011. I’ll leave you with the age old saying from my favorite novelty Christmas song: What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb)?

Category: Travel