Where Is Hawkins?Where travel is cheaper than psychotherapy.

What’s weird is that I’m the #1 search on Google for Mary Frances Bragiel from WBBM-Chicago. She’s a dying breed of journalist versus a pretty face that they stick on camera who doesn’t know anything (Hey Fox News Chicago, I’m talking about you.) She’s also super gorgeous as well and doesn’t get nearly enough props. Sadly, there’s a lack of stuff on her other than her byline, which is kinda weird. It’s weird how an offhand blog comment I made a long time ago could ascend the Google rankings past legitimate work stuff.

One of the things that I enjoy about being single in a big city is that dating provides its own level of entertainment, generally with a bit of pathos attached. You can go from riding elation of being asked to come over for dinner by someone you like and in 24 hours, have it come crashing to a halt when they stand you up. It’s dating through attrition.

But I suppose I can’t complain too much. I’m going to China in a few days, which should prove to be pretty fun and exciting so it will drown out the suck known as courting. Most of my stuff is packed already, and I’m amazed at how much camera stuff I am bringing along. It’s way too much and I’m trying to go fast and light. But I should have really good pictures to bring back.

I just wanted to say hi to the reader(s) from Leo Burnett and Ford.

Somehow I missed out on my two great claims to Interweb fame unlike my friend Jeff. Good ideas always seem to come up and laziness sets in but I somehow manage to Forrest Gump my way through life.

Anyway, here are two sites that I wish I would have thought of coming up with:

• Hot Chicks with Douchebags blog. Scott and I noticed this when we were in Africa – a disporpotionate amount of couples who had a hot woman and a douchebag looking guy. This is a pretty funny site and make me laugh because somehow these douches can get pictures with hot chicks.
• Secure Singles. This is awesome. Now I can send myself text messages/pages at predefined times to bail on shitty dates or if she kills me and disposes of my body in a burlap sack in the Chicago River, they can notify my friends and post blog entries.

Happy Monday!

For everyone and their mother that uses Google Mail, they’ve added their Google Calendar service, which is pretty nice. Like Gmail, it’s AJAX driven and pretty quick. You can do SMS notification/reminders, but for some reason not on Verizon.

I’m starting to get better about keeping a personal calendar versus just my work calendar. The suckitude is that I can’t really use it unless I can sync my Treo, and I guess I can but it’ll be a pain in the ass doing the Google Calendar -> Outlook -> Treo via Hotsync. I guess if you’re used to a Blackberry and calendar entry showing up automagically it kinda sucks that it doesn’t happen.

I like it because there’s a degree of calendar sharing that you can make, as well as import .ics files.

Here’s a list of all the fun stuff that I’ve been able to dig up on this:

• Google Calendar SMS Tricks.
• Other calendar entries to add- “The Best Calendars”
• Interesting Google Calendars.
• Cool Google Calendars.
• Google Calendar API.
• Sync Google Calendar with your iPod
• Sync between Google Calendar and Outlook.
• another Outlook Calendar plug-in.

Having said that, it’s still a pain in the ass to keep two calendars. Google Calendar is a good start, but as of right now it’s about even with my post-it notes.

There are some times where I should have considered a career in psychology versus what I do now. Somehow, David Holmes from Manchester Metropolitan University managed to derive a mathematical formula for describing a woman’s ass.

The magical figures are (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V. Though the equation looks rather complicated, it is, according to the scientist, simple.

It assesses shape, bounce, firmness and symmetry – all factors that add up to the bottom line.

S is the overall shape or droopiness of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.

V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures the skin texture and presence of cellulite.

Kylie Minogue, of course, was close to perfect according to this arbitrary scale. J-Lo and Charlotte Church are up there as well.

Like any trip that I have, I offer to send out postcards to all 3 of my readers. If you’ve received more than 3 postcards from me in the past it’s fair to assume that you’ll get one. If you want to make sure that I send one, drop me a note at nick at whereishawkins.com with your address and I will send one from China. Whether it’s from Beijing, Shanghai or just a generic postcard from China with a Panda, a Communist or the Great Wall of China – you’ll just have to wait to find out.

On Saturday, Tadahito Iguchi, the White Sox second baseman, made one of the best plays I’ve ever seen to get a runner out at first.

You have to watch this to believe it. Holy crap.

What does the Easter Bunny do the other 364 days of the year?

The downside of being a pasty white guy is that once the weather gets above 50 degrees, I turn into a tubby itchy mess because of allergies. Sure, I take meds for it, but there are days (like right now) where my ass is kicked and I am spending more time than I should sprawled out on the couch moaning and bitching about the state of my body.

I had to make a 2am run to Walgreens, which is always fun at that time of night. What bothers me is that every allergy medicine is labeled as “non-drowsy,” which is rather disppointing when I’m unable to sleep and NEED something to put me down. That led me to looking for sleep aids. Tylenol PM, for example, makes it a point to put out the fact that it’s not habit-forming. Another downer. Where are the extra drowsy habit forming medicines when you need them?

The China trip is coming along pretty well. I actually am feeling better since I’ve got a lot of it roadmapped out. The only thing that’s unsure as of today is the fact that I can’t prebook the rail tickets back to Shanghai from Beijing because the site that I was booking it through sucks. So I’m thinking we’ll just have our trusty hotel concierge take care of it while in Beijing. 18 days to go. I can’t believe it.