All But Erased from Google

Amidst searching the web for jobs, trying to find dog breeds that fit my style, and just general playing around on the internet, I did a search for "Brendan Beal" on Google. Now I have done this plenty of times in the past and it has mostly come up with the same results. Besides my champion wrestling status, involvement with an old internship at FSU, and a mention on someone's blog or something, I didn't have many genuine hits. It seems now, however, that I have been all but obliterated from a Google search. This is all thanks to Brendan Beal from New Jersey.

Apparently, this guy stole my name, played a little football at Roxbury High School, ran the 40 in 4.55 seconds, and now a ton of top college teams want him to play for them. This is great for him sure, but did he ever think of the consequences of getting hundreds of tackles during games??

Now that "Mr. Beal" is such a hot shot you barely even find a mention of the real me on a Google search. Nothing but pages and pages of "Football prospect has a 4.3 grade point average" and "Beal to look at Notre Dame this weekend". Sheesh. I had above a 4.3 grade point average and no one was putting me in all the big web sites.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make my mark elsewhere and regain the "Most Mentions of Brendan Beal on the Internet" award. Maybe I could start robbing banks...

A Whole New Side to Harry Potter

So Erika and I went to go see the theatre production of "Equus" last night. For those of you not familiar with the newly released London play, it's about a boy who is kind of crazy and ends up blinding 6 horses with a metal pick. Most of the play is about his interactions with his new psychologist. Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe plays the boy. If you're not familiar with Harry Potter than where the hell have you been for the last decade?

Anyway, the play ended up being pretty good regardless of Harry Potter and the play's way of romanticizing mental illness was very cool to me. There was also the whole naked scene...

Yep, that's right boys and girls, the innocent little wizard gets buck naked in the final scene (along with his naked female costar) and prances around the stage like a Centaur in the Forbidden Forest. And lemme tell ya people, Harry Potter was indeed "hairy"! Man, it was like he had his own forbidden forest down there.

Surprisingly enough, no one yelled "Accio Erectus!" (Gabe gets props for that one) when the Hogwarts soon-to-be graduate stripped down. In fact, everyone actually seemed to be paying attention to the play. I know they were just pretending though because earlier I had heard more than one remark of: "I wonder how big his willy is?" coming from daft old British women. Perverts!

Anyway, the play was well worth the money we spent and we had pretty good seats for it. If anyone ever comes to London in the next few months while it's still running - go see Equus. You may never get another chance to see this horse-love themed production in quite the same way.

On a Lighter Note...Amsterdam pictures!

So when I actually did have a passport Erika and I went to Amsterdam. We flew on EasyJet airlines for only about £45 and stayed in a cool hostel for two nights. Overall the trip was awesome. We ended up meeting a lot of people: A group of American girls, a couple from Argentina and a couple from Italy, a group of Ohio boys, and these two guys from Australia - one of which moved to London last week and now we're all talking about possibly sharing a flat when Erika and I move out. Crazy, huh?

We did loads of stuff and I got to spend time in one of my favorite places in the world (Tokyo and Hawaii edge it out...barely). I had so much fun I'm already planning a return trip sometime this summer! If anyone has nothing to do for a weekend, please contact me. :)


We finally got the pictures uploaded although as it turns out, we didn't really have the camera at the most fun moments of the trip. Oh well, you can still see some of the city below:

The stairs to our hostel - they were sooooooo steep. I hit my head multiple times.

Erika standing by the huge "amsterdam" sign near the Van Gogh Museum

Me pointing at something across the canal (probably at a woman in the Red Light District)

Erika and I went ice skating

See the little kid falling right beside me? I pushed him! HaHa!

We had just left the Heineken Brewery when I spotted this gem of a bar: Palladium!

Loss

This weekend was a bit sad. Never have I been so close to wanting to leave this country and run home to my family.

My grandmother died last week and they buried her on Friday. I wanted so much to fly to Pennsylvania and be with my family but the cards were just stacked too high against me. I guess I just felt it would have been too much trouble to get there and now I'm kind of regretting my decision. It's so sad to know that my dad doesn't have any parents alive now and it's sad that I'll never get to see my Nanny again. She was a good woman with a good heart and she was always very nice to me. Her loving ways will never be forgotten.

I also experienced a loss of a different kind this weekend. It wasn't as devastating as the death of a family member but it was still damn stressful to deal with.

I had my passport stolen on Friday. To make matters worse, I had my drivers license, work visa, and birth certificate stolen as well. I had given these documents to Erika to scan at her work that day in order to complete my application for a British social worker certificate (I have to have this certification in order to work here more permanently). Unfortunately Erika's purse got stolen later that day (she's alright, don't worry) with all those delicate documents inside it (not to mention Erika's ipod, £100, and all her credit/debit cards). Overall, it was a pretty bad Friday.

It's Sunday now and we both feel better about everything now that we have our lives back on track a little bit. I'll go to the American Embassy tomorrow and hopefully get a new passport soon. Luckily, I have perfect scans of the documents so that should speed the process along.

I also talked to my mom, dad, and brother who all attended the funeral. It was nice to hear from them their thoughts on the ceremony. I don't feel quite as bad about not flying back as I did.

When it rains it pours, huh? Oh well, I guess when life throws something at you, you just have to deal with it in whatever way you can. I'm sure everyone will get through all this stuff and life will go on like it always has.