Hi, I'd Like to Write a Blog Post

Having just recently polished off lunch, my brain is filled with a topic I have to share, hopefully flushing it from my brain in the process. I had a pita sandwich from a local place that I've been patronizing for well over 10 years now. When I started going there, they only had the one little store, and they were only open from 8 AM - 3 PM on workdays. They've grown over the years, adding a couple of other stores, one of which is even open part of the day on Saturdays now. Anyway, the first location is the one that I go to most of the time because it's closest to the office. It's just a little building with no place to sit down or anything. You pretty much walk in, wait in line, place your order, move around for a little while to get out of everyone else's way that you are constantly in while waiting for your order to be prepared, pick up your order when they call your name, and get the heck out to go eat. That's one way of doing it.

The preferred method of interacting with the place, though, is to call ahead and place your order, which they prepare before you get there. That way, you can just go to the special call-ahead register to quickly pay, pick up, and leave. I used the preferred method today, but the start of that call got me thinking about how it's a bit awkward. Obviously, when they answer, they're not expecting small talk about their health or the weather or anything. They're busy people, and they have a job to do and they don't want to talk to you just now. However, I feel some compulsion to announce my intention to them: "Hi, I'd like to place an order for pick up," is something you might hear me say if you were around me when I called to place an order for pick up.

And maybe that's fine, but it seems silly to me. First of all, of course I want to place an order for pick up. It's not like they deliver. And it's not like I can place an order to dine in. Really, the only option I have is to place an order for pick up. Has ordering pizzas so conditioned me that I'm inflexible in the way I start a food order call? Why can't I just launch into my order? Why do I need the preamble? Do I somehow think they might not be ready to write it down, sort of like the protocol where you ask people if they're ready to write down a phone number when you give it to them over the phone? Do I worry they might not know I'm calling to make an order, that maybe I want to know when they close or whether they sell things other than pita sandwiches or where my socks are or some such nonsense? Am I concerned that they can't process my order without the preamble?

I mean, what would you do if I called you and said, "Hi, I'd like to talk to you on the phone now?" I'd like to think that you would either hang up or say something to the effect of, "Duh." but I guess that reaction would cure me of such things. Sigh. I'll probably keep doing it until they respond with a "Duh."

I'm going to stop writing this post now.

Not Just Me

In some sort of strange me-too-ism, Fj told me last weekend that he saw the same sign as I did (he was in Mexico for the same wedding I attended), and he also thought it said "No Tire Trash." I'm not quite sure what that says about either of us, but there you have it.

People Send Me Things, Part Dos

Non-somnolent reader FJ has pointed out to me that Ron Cherry wasn't citing an abstruse and esoteric NFL rule, he was merely providing a case citation for precedent, referring to the case of Kelly v. Lyons, 1986, Justice Dreith presiding. For completeness, FJ even provided a video link, which I happily share with you now.

No Tire Trash

As I alluded to briefly not long ago, the Girl and I recently traveled to Mexico for a wedding. I know you're wondering where we went and thinking about places like Cancun, Cabo, or ... other places in Mexico that are kind of tropical and/or resort-y. However, we went to San Pancho. Never heard of it? I hadn't either. Upon hearing that we were going there, a friend pointed out to me that San Francisco, Mexico is quite the up-and-comer as far as Mexican destinations go. I had no idea why she was telling me that when we were going to San Pancho, but I didn't correct her, since none of it particularly mattered to me. I have since learned that it's the same place. Apparently, Pancho is a nickname for Francisco, I assume in much the same way that Peggy is a nickname for Margaret, by which I mean "in a stupid way." Apparently, that is just one of many things that I didn't understand about names and words down there. That said, we had quite the good time, the wedding went off without real issues (even though it was really a poser wedding, as the couple had already been married by a JOP in the states a week or so prior), and none of the scorpions or lizards in our villa attacked us.

It was quite the whirlwind tour, though. We left our home at butt-early on a Thursday, making use of three flights and four airports (cursing the chaos and uncertainty in the Mexico City airport along the way) to get to Puerto Vallarta. Those of you who are very observant will have noted by now that Puerto Vallarta was not our final destination. From there, after just barely surviving the onslaught of questions from people about whether we needed a taxi or had some sort of voucher, we took an hour-long cab ride to San Pancho (confusingly -- at the time --following the signs to San Francisco to get there) and exhaustedly trekked down the mountain from our villa to a cocktail party. [Aside: if you can glean from the website for the villa that we rented that it's on the side of a mountain, please explain how. Otherwise, my tip is that you specifically ask that question of the rental agent, lest you be doomed to walking down and, much, much worse, up the side of a mountain to get from and to your temporary domicile. Looking at it again makes me think one should be very wary of the word "hillside," which I didn't see until just now.] Sleeping quickly if not thoroughly, I got up at 5:45 the next morning to take the trip back to Puerto Vallarta for a golf outing. On the way, I noticed a road sign through my morning brain fog that told people not to throw tires out. And then the morning brain was off, lumbering along on that train of thought. Is that how they do it in Mexico? Do they just chuck old tires out on the side of the road? And is the problem so rampant that they have to post signs up along the highway saying "no tire trash?" Or is it just that somehow some damned kids made it into a tradition to throw tires out in that particular place? (Having not been on any other roads, I couldn't really know whether this particular sign was on any others.) Either way, it's definitely not a very eco-friendly practice, and it seems like a very odd sign to have on the side of the highway.

A couple of days later, I saw the same sign while in a cab on the way to the airport to head home. And I couldn't help but marvel at it again. But my morning brain wasn't in full effect at the time, and I had no choice to laugh at my idiocy. See, for some reason I know that the Spanish word for trash is basura. And I know that the Spanish word for no is no. So what I read on that sign through my groggy and confused view of the world was "NO TIRE BASURA," which obviously translated into "NO TIRE TRASH." However, the second time around, I realized that road signs in Mexico are probably written entirely in Spanish, rather than in Spanglish, and certainly not in Spanglish wherein the Spanish part is limited to the 4 Spanish words I know. So what the sign actually said was "NO TIRE BASURA." A little Googling leads me to believe that tire is a form of the verb tirar, which, in the context of basura, means "to throw away." So the sign wasn't telling people "no tire trash;" it was telling people "no littering." Remember that next time you're in Mexico and exceedingly tired while traveling on the highway. It will save you a lot of unnecessary thinking.

Hasta Pasta.

People Send Me Things

And I have no choice but to share them. I think football rules are myriad and confusing, and I think I know most of them. Throw in the fact that the NFL and college football have several subtle differences in the details and enforcement of those rules, and it's hard to keep track of all of them when watching games. However, this video shows ACC ref Ron Cherry coming up with one I have never heard of before. Just listen to his explanation of the penalty.

Bottom Up!

I was recently relaxing next to the pool, listening to the pleasant crashing of the Pacific on the beach nearby, and chatting with a couple of friends when -- what? You want to know when the hell I got a pool, how the hell the Pacific can be considered "nearby", and what idiot would allow himself to be counted among my friends? I'll go ahead and ingnore that last slight and say that the pool and Pacific were the result of a trip to Mexico for a wedding last weekend (a topic on which I feel sure I'll have more to write later).

Now, back to what what I was saying. Those of us doing our lounging got around to discussing the ins and outs of co-habitating, and the Girl and I were willing to say that we liked it pretty well. I told everyone I thought the biggest reason that we liked it is that we were enacting advice from a Dave Barry book (I believe it was from Dave Barry's Guide to Marriage and/or Sex) that I read when I was in middle school. Yes, yes. It sounds scandalous, but the advice was that males and females living in the same house should have separate bathrooms. And that's what we do. It's not so much that I'm concerned about the awkwardness I would endure from being in close proximity (not that one ever hears about being in far proximity) to ... girl things. It's not that we would be subjected to dealing with foreign hairs that would end up littering the bathroom. It's not that we would have to constantly fight for all-important real estate in which to store our varied number of items in the shower. And it's not that I'm concerned one of us would endlessly be living out the title seen from that elementary school/ early teen classic, Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush? Sure, those are all valid and serious concerns, but the biggest issue is toothpaste. As far as my friends and I could work out, there are two types of people in this world: those who squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube up, and those who squeeze the tube somewhere right in the middle of the tube. As it turns out, those two types of people can't stand to deal with each other's method. The Bottom Ups think their way is efficient and neat, if perhaps a tad anal, in that their toothpaste is all at the top of the tube when they're trying to get the last vestiges of paste out, and it makes for a more pleasant squeezing experience. The Middle Squeezers like the feel of finger indentations in their tubes, and they think there's really no difference in how the toothpaste is squeezed.

Naturally, the Middle Squeezers are wrong.

I happen to be a Bottom Up, and it drives me batty when a Middle Squeezer (like the Girl) gets his or her hands on my tube of toothpaste. In fact, when my mom rented out my big brother's room to two girls after he went off to college (true story, but one of them was my cousin, and they paid $0 in rent), I was able to handle the choking fog of hairspray they left in our bathroom after spending hours building up their towers of state fair hair, and I could deal with the fact that I often had to use another bathroom because they spent at least 93% of their waking hours in there (together), and I could handle the fact that when their mountains of state fair hair were subjected to water they deposited remnants all over the bathtub like all the needles from Charlie Brown's Christmas tree (albeit disturbingly long, clingy needles). BUT, I couldn't handle the fact that they squeezed that toothpaste in the middle. I even thought of teaching them a lesson by sliding a lit match under the door to ignite all the hairspray in that enclosed space, thus teaching them a lesson, but that response seemed a bit disproportionate. Instead, I used to fart in their room a lot when they weren't home.

It's not just me, though. One of my friends felt exactly the same way I did, and his wife happened to be a Middle Squeezer. That made me think that maybe this is a gender-based preference, until I remembered telling my mom and Granny about the issues I had with the afore-mentioned girls living in my brother's room. They listened as I ticked off the list of things I didn't like, repeatedly telling me to get over it. But when Granny heard about the Middle Squeezing, she expectorated, "Well, that's just rude! That's ridiculous!" The intensity of her response was something I would normally think should be reserved for Nazis, or at least for people who club baby harp seals.

I don't have the heart to tell the Girl that scientific studies have proven that Bottom Ups are smarter, stronger, and generally better people than Middle Squeezers. So don't you tell her, either.

And if you're a Middle Squeezer, stay the hell away from my toothpaste.

Back to School Shopping

OK, I realize that the time for back to school shopping is well past, but it's definitely too early for Commercialmas shopping at this point. Work with me here. Given that no fewer than 3 different people have emailed this to me, I just had to share. Of course, since that many people have emailed it, there's a good chance you've already seen it. But I can't help that. It's worth seeing. It's a blog about pictures from a recently discovered JC Penney catalog. From 1977. It's marvelous. Check it out.

I have a couple of things to say:

• My aunt had the shag toilet covering in her bathroom when I was a kid (although in a pale blue, nothing so tacky as the displayed green), and even then my engineering tendencies were showing, and I always thought that a) shag carpet belonged on the floor and not on the toilet, but b) even in bathrooms, carpet doesn't belong on the floor because urination and shag carpet go together about as well as peas and ... something that doesn't go with peas ... like urination.
• The kid with the Ed Grimley pants and the big belt oddly reminds me of my childhood. I can't recall ever having that big of a belt, but I'm pretty sure I wore some disturbing clothes. Nothing so tasteful as Garanimals. But I never wore any of those red jeans. The strongest memory I have of one of Lawton's college fraternity brothers is that he was wearing red pants when I met him, and I don't think he could blame it on his mom.
• I've never seen anyone wearing any kind of jumpsuit on a golf course, except for caddies at the Masters. But I may next year, if I can find one of those things. It's the peak of style.
• LOVE the "In case of chest hair emergency..." It's excellent.

Who Put the Goat In There?

A co-worker sent me this, and I had to say that ... I don't even know what to say about it. It's marvelous.



(If the embedded version isn't working, try this link.)

Time Off For Golf: All Good Things Must End

And so it came to pass that my little stint of time off between jobs had to come to an end. It was a beautiful run, though. Sure, I got a little sick during my time off, but there's nothing to be done about that. Since I last posted here, when I claimed to have the secret to breaking 90, I played 3 rounds, shooting a 98, a 102, and a 97. Sigh. However, I did play all three rounds at somewhat more difficult courses, and none of them were rounds played with one college buddy. So I may still have the secret.

I did set a goal, though. I claimed that I wanted to make a birdie. And make a birdie I did, the very next time I played. In fact, for good measure, I made another one in my last round of retirement golf. That was good, good stuff. That last round started out sort of well, in that I managed to par the first hole I played. That's only sort of good, because a par on the first hole inexplicably almost always leads to a bad round for me. I tried to put that out of my head, though, and I broke completely new ground when I birdied the second hole. I had definitely never been one under through two holes before. I was at even par through three holes when I bogeyed the third. There was pretty much only one way to go from there for me, though, and I limped through the first nine with a 44. I was pretty happy with it, though. That's pretty good for me on a tough course. However, with the sickness I was fighting off, I just didn't have the energy to play while walking the course, and I pretty much stumbled my way through the back nine with a 53, and there's nothing good to say about that.

But hey, I managed to play 11 rounds during my mini, retirement. I broke 100 all but 2 times, and I broke 90 3 times, when my goal was only to break 90 once. My second goal was to get a birdie, and I managed to get two of them. So I'd say there's something to be said for this goal-making thing. That said, in case anyone is paying attention, my goal during the next couple of months is to become fortuitously, inexplicably, and absurdly rich, at which point I'll go back to playing a lot of golf.

So I've come back out of retirement, and today was a day of orientations and meetings. But it was nice, since it was seeing lots of old friends at my new/old company. I'm not going to be too hasty about things, though. So to ease my way back into things, my second day on the job will be at the company golf tournament.

Now that retirement golf is over, I'll probably go back to writing about the normal random garbage that the 2.3 of you reading this originally got used to. Until then, may your drives be long and straight, and may your putts roll true.

Time Off For Golf: I Have the Secret

When I set out to play a lot of golf whilst in between jobs, I hoped to break 90 before it was all said and done. And I started out decently well, breaking 100 2 out of my first three rounds while playing some pretty tough courses. Last Thursday, I headed down to Charlottesville to play a round with my college roomie. We played a very short, easy course. Plus, it was only a part 70, whereas the courses I had played before had been pars 71 and 72. I had played it before a few times, but the best I had shot was a 91. Last Thursday, though, despite not being able to drive the ball or do much of anything very well, I managed to shoot an 87. I even left quite a few strokes in the bag. I was pretty happy with that round, though. I wasn't as happy as I was on Sunday, when I played another short course with another college friend and shot another 87. That one wasn't long, but it wasn't quite easy, either, and I was completely ecstatic with that one. I played again with the same college buddy on Monday, on another short course, but I put up a 47 on the front. However, I put together a personal best string of 6 consecutive 4's to finish of the back 9 and ended up with an 89. So that was 3 rounds in a row in the 80's. I rule!

I took Tuesday off from golf due to some other plans, but I got back out today and walked the course I shot a 95 or 96 on last week. After waiting on 4 holes to start out, the slow foursome in front of me finally waved me through, and it was smooth sailing from there on. However, I only managed to put together a 95.

So it would seem that the secret to breaking 90 is 1) play with a college buddy and 2) play a short course. We'll see if we have a chance to test that before I go back to work.

The main goal now is to get a birdie. I haven't had one in a long time, and I'd like to think I'm due. I've had at least 5 birdie putts lip out in my last two round, so maybe I'm getting dialed in.

Time Off For Golf: Round 3, More of the Same

It was a little foggy and muggy when I teed off this morning, but I figured I could handle it just fine. Besides, I generally prefer overcast skies to sunny ones when I play. I decided to ride rather than walk today, as I figured my legs might actually fall off of my body when I played softball tonight if I walked this morning. I managed to tee off by myself, although only 9 of the holes were going to be familiar during this round. Potomac Ridge has 27 holes, and they kind of send you out on whichever ones they like. The ones I'm most familiar with are the Meadows and the Hollow, and I played those yesterday, but today I was supposed to play the Meadows and the Ridge. I had only ever played that Ridge once before, and I didn't particularly like it. I sure was glad I didn't try to walk it yesterday, though, as it has a lot of up and down that would not have been very agreeable to a walker.

On the 6th hole, I had hammered a drive right down the middle and had about a 150 yard uphill approach left, when the two guys in front of me waved me up. Things were moving pretty slowly, and I didn't think I'd be able to play through anyway, but I went ahead and stepped up to hit my second shot. I promptly chunked it about 30 yeards down the fairway. I guess I couldn't handle the pressure of an audience. I then hit the third shot on and three-putted for a double bogey 6. The guys, whom we'll call Mike and Alan (because those were there names), invited me to play with them for the rest of the round. I think maybe they wanted to be able to watch my bumbling to make themselves feel better. So I finished out with them, and they were very pleasant and helpful, in that they were able to tell me where to aim on some of the trickier Ridge holes. They didn't try to tell me what I did wrong when I screwed up, either. And they had plenty of opportunities.

Despite hitting the first fairway, I really didn't drive the ball very well today, although the numbers say I somehow managed to hit 7 of 14 fairways, which isn't bad for me. Still, I mostly managed to keep the ball on the course. I still couldn't hit my approach shots worth a damn, either, and I really need to get those going if I hope to break 90 before going back to work. But I did chip it a little better today (albeit not well), and my putting might not have been quite as bad as the last two days. The round broke down like so:

• Birdies: 0
• Pars: 5
• Bogeys: 7
• Double Bogeys: 3
• Triple Bogeys (or worse): 3
• Fairways hit: 7
• Greens in Regulation: 3
• Bunkers hit: 2 (I got up and down for par from one of them)
• Putts: 34
• Total score: 95

I'll take it, too. A tiny bit better this round was, if only because I had one more bogey or better. I'm headed down to Charlottesville to play with my college roomie. We'll see what happens down there.

Things I'm Sure I Shouldn't Hear

I'm sitting here watching the pilot episode of the new show, Life (I'm not quite sure what I think of it yet, but I reckon I'll watch at least one more episode), and I happened to catch the tail end of a commercial for Friday Night Lights, which said, "Friday Night Lights: finally on Friday ..." I just don't know what to say about that commercial other than, regardless of whether it should have ever been written, I'm quite sure I shouldn't have ever had to hear it. Ridiculous.

Time Off For Golf: Round 2, Gasp

I played the blue tees at Potomac Ridge today. It was a bit warmer and a bit more humid today, but it was still pretty nice out. I walked the course today, and even with my super cool bag cart in play, I had forgotten how ... aerobic an activity it can be. Huffing and puffing my way up to my ball on the 15th hole, a course marshall stopped to admire my cart. He told me that he needed to get one of them because they're cool. Completely drenched in sweat as I was I pointed to his normal, powered golf cart and suggested that I needed to get one of THOSE. Despite the effort involved, I got around in just over 3 hours, and that was much faster than the 5 it took me yesterday.

Once again, I was pretty solid off the tee, managing to hit 7 of 14 fairways, and I only lost one tee shot all day. Unfortunately, I still couldn't putt or chip, and my approach shots were, on average ... shitty. The round broke down like this:

• Birdies: 0
• Pars: 6
• Bogeys: 5
• Double Bogeys: 4
• Triple Bogeys (or worse): 3
• Fairways hit: 7
• Greens in Regulation: 6
• Bunkers hit: 0 (!)
• Putts: 34
• Total score: 96

While my actual score was better than yesterday, the weird math of handicapping golf courses makes yesterday's round statistically better than this one. But I'll take this round over that one any day.

I was cruising on the second half of the front nine, having parred a par 4, bogeyed a par 3, and parred a par 5 to make a nice 3-hole stretch, when I came to an par three that was 160 yards uphill into the wind. I wanted to stay away from the bunkers and schmutz in front of the green, so I pulled a 5-iron and hit it better than I've ever hit a 5-iron before. It looked great. I kept tracing the line with my eyes, and it was just right of the flag, with a gentle draw. I was thinking that shot was going to be knocked absolutely stiff, and then it came down on an up slope some 20 yards behind the green and one-hopped into the woods. That hole that was looking like a par at the worst turned into a quadruple bogey 7. It's a humbling game. I'll just have to try it again tomorrow.

Time Off For Golf: Round 1, Room for Improvement

It was a good day to play golf. It was sunny and 75-ish with low humidity. Nice, nice, nice. I headed down to Old Hickory to begin my whirlwind golfing tour. That's a somewhat fancy course, but they always have coupons for cheaper play available via clickit, and it works out being a good deal in my estimation.

I should probably mention that my plan for all this golfing includes attempting to get some exercise by actually walking while I play most of the time. I even used some of my Amex points to get myself a sweet little collapsible cart to push my bag around on. It's made by Clicgear, and it's super cool. (The Girl, who thinks she is funny keeps claiming it looks like one of those jogging baby strollers. Naturally, I think that is far less amusing than she does.) Anyway, I was paired up with three other guys today, and Old Hickory has a lot of distance between some of the holes, and I didn't want to slow them down. So I ended up riding.

I was riding with an older guy named Steve. Steve is apparently a pretty good golfer, but he hasn't played much lately. At least that's what he kept telling me. He also decided that a couple of other guys needed explanations of what they did wrong when they hit a couple of bad shots. I don't know how I avoided his advice, but I don't think I would have received it very well.

Since the course is awfully tough, with sand all over the place and trees on most holes, I usually play from the white tees when I play with my boys, even though it's awfully short from there. Today, I played one set back with everyone else from the golds, and it's definitely a different course from there. Still, my driver, which is absolutely locked in on finding and flying over almost any out of bounds marker on the course, got confused today and managed to hit 9 of the 14 fairways. I even managed to put together a run of 4 pars in a row on the front 9 and shoot 47 on the outward set of holes, but the tougher back nine beat me up, and I shot 54 on them, for a grand total of 101. I couldn't putt or chip worth a damn today. So there's plenty of room for improvement in the next couple of weeks.

The shot of the day for me was absolutely plastering a 350 -360 yard drive on the third hole. It's nice to tee off to a downhill fairway with a tailwind.

Change of Pace/ Fore!

Things have been shaken up a bit for the Kid lately. See, I'm changing jobs. My old company encouraged me to come back and join them, and I've decided to do so. I've had a good run at my current company, but this was a good opportunity that I just couldn't pass up.

In my thoroughly extensive experience with accepting job offers (this is the third time I've done it), the new company always wants you to start right away. Things are happening. We need you to get in here and hit the ground running. The world is going to explode in 24 hours, and ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT! You know what I'm talking about. And, while you may be Jack Bauer, I am not, and I think the urgency, by and large, is a bunch of hooey. Since I got out of college last century, I haven't been off of work for more than a week in one stretch. OK, maybe about 10 calendar days. Either way, it's not a very long time, and I want a break. So, what with some vacation time at my current job and not starting right away at the new/old company, I'm not going to start until the 17th. I'm VERY excited about that.

People keep asking me what I'm going to do with my time off, and the question is positively pregnant with expectations. Am I going to travel the world? Build an addition on the house? Finally solve the mystery that is Amelia Earhart's disappearance? In a word, no, no, no. (Yes, that's one word. It's just repeated three times.) What I am going to do is relax. I don't want to go on trips or do anything particularly strenuous. I'm staying at home and chilling out.

I do have one thing I want to do with my time, though. I'm going to try to play golf at least every weekday until I start the new gig unless my body can't handle that much golf in such a concentrated dose. Or unless I just decide that I want to stay in bed or something. I broke 90 for the second time ever earlier this year, and I'm hoping that I might manage to do it one more time during the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted. Seriously, I will. I've decided that I'm going to write something about all the rounds I play before I start the new job. So if your eyes glaze over and you end up face down and drooling on your keyboard when I start talking about golf, you might want to stay away for a while. Otherwise, I'll be talking at you again soon.

Providing a marvelous segue (Look at that word. Don't you just love to see it in print? I certainly do. It's very cool, as far as words go. "Segue." There it is again! But I digress.) between working and my golf-filled time off, my last "working" day at the current gig was playing a round of golf in an outing that I had set up with the clients. It was marvelous, and we even played at a course that is one that I would almost never pay to play because it is too expensive. We played at Westfields. I had played there once before when I first started playing, and I shot a 75. On the front 9. So you could say that I got my money's worth if you think of it in terms of dollars per stroke. But I loved the course, which is just lovely, if quite challenging. So I was excited to play there again. This time I shot a 95 for all 18 holes. My normally wild driver did a good job of keeping the ball on the course off the tee, and I had three blow up holes that kept me from breaking 90. It was a marvelous Fall day, and ... well ... I'm looking forward to getting back out on the links tomorrow.

Have a great Monday. Hit 'em straight.

P.S. If you'd like to join me for a round in the next couple of weeks, let me know. I'm probably up for it.

Ahoy, maties!

Arrrrrrrr! In case you didn't know it (and really even if you did know it), today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I fully expect you all to toss lots of arrrrrrrrr's in for the rest of the day, along with ... other pirate-like patterns of speech.

P.S. Notice they seem to have written a book about me on that link? Maybe I can sue them...

You Have to Read the Whole Thing

I just noticed this post over at Consumerist. The thing is that I only saw the first two sentences in the headline in my feed reader:

"Do It Yourself: Annoyed with Toy Companies Trying to Poison Your
Kids?"

I immediately thought it was odd that this site would post a DIY article about how to poison your own kids once and for all, since those toy companies can't quite seem to do anything right.

What's on TV: Mysterious Annoyance

Now that the Girl and I are co-habitating (for those of you who didn't know, the Girl and I are now co-habitating), I find the differences in day-to-day life are subtle. We still stick to mostly different diets, she still sleeps more than would seem humanly possible whenever she has time, and I still try to play golf as often as I can. There are certain obvious differences, but what stands out to me so far is the TV.

I probably consume a somewhat standard diet of TV shows for a sports fan/geek. I like to watch football and college hoops just about as much as I can. I like 24, Lost, Heroes, The Office, etc. I stay the hell away from reality TV because I think it is the worst thing to happen to television since the first lower corner pop-over ad showed up on one of those damned Turner networks. I have actually seen a few of them, and their formulaic nature is downright disturbing to me. I just don't understand how people can watch more than one of them in a year. It's do some stuff, have a Challenge to win Immunity, someone faces Elimination, Take a Maudlin/Funny Look into Contestant Q's Life Outside the Show, find out Who's Going Home ... when we come back. Rinse and Repeat. Seriously, how anyone can stand to watch those hour-long results shows live is beyond me, given that there's a grand total of about five minutes of actual new information. It seems like a Tivo would allow a motivated person to watch those in no more than 10 minutes.

All of that said, the thing is that we are still in midst of the Sports Doldrums (although college football has officially started now, and not a minute too soon, but the Doldrums don't officially end until the NFL season starts), and none of the shows I like to watch are new. So the Big Ass HDTV is often tuned to things that the Girl wants to watch, as they are new. And the Girl like reality shows, be it American Idol, Big Brother 765, or ... whatever. As things would work out, I've seen a few of these shows. In fact, I don't mind Last Comic Standing too much, because it's about being funny (but I'm still irked that they had a "challenge round" in that show). The show that's on my mind, though, is VH1's the Pick Up Artist.

I've mentioned more than once before that I'm not so smooth when it comes to attempting to get my schwerve on with random chicks of the female persuasion, but this show is supposedly about helping guys who seem hopeless. I have to admit that parts of it are interesting, and they do suggest some useful things. For instance, they pointed out to the guys, that having two guys approach two girls is a near-ideal situation. However, the thing is that, in trying to make the tips they give seem more exclusive or rare, the guy who runs the show (and has a business helping losers pick up chicks) has invented a whole vocabulary with arcane terms like "set," "IOI," "high-value individual," "IOD," blah, blah, blah. It annoys the ass out of me. More than that, though, is that the guy calls himself Mystery and wears top hats with huge goggles wrapped around them. I have no idea why. Nonetheless, the Girl loves that show because she enjoys watching those awkward or anti-social guys try to be smooth. (Of course she loves that; otherwise, she wouldn't be dating me.) And I can't claim to quite hate it, as much as I want to smack that Mystery dude and tell him to stop wearing fuzzy, wide-brimmed hats.

Thankfully, the NFL will come calling next weekend, and good TV shows will be back on the air before the month is out. I definitely can't recommend this show over real TV, but you might get a chuckle out of it before that goodness comes back on.

Have a great holiday weekend.

Super Useful / Cool Orienteering Tip

I just ran across this tip for using your watch as a compass over on Lifehacker, and I thought it was just neato. I thought it was the sort of thing MacGyver might make use of when he was lost in the woods. But thinking about it made me wonder just how useful the tip was.

First of all, you get into the whole "this tip is opposite if you're in the southern hemisphere" thing. Not really a big deal, since I'm pretty much never in that half of the world, and I kind of expected it, having learned at a strangely young age that clocks only go clockwise because they are built to mimic sundials and were developed in the northern hemisphere. Had they been created south of the equator, they would go counter-clockwise. Or, I guess, they would still go clockwise because saying that a clock goes counter-clockwise in normal operation would be stupid, but clockwise would be the opposite of what it is now. ANYway, ruminations aside, I'm thinking that the hemisphere caveat makes the tip a little more complex, and tips ought to be simple in order to be memorable and, thus, useful.

Even more complex is that you're supposed to subtract an hour if you're in daylight savings time. Originally hailing from Indiana, where they absolutely ignored daylight savings time until a year ago (I always thought that TV stations just moved their schedules up for the warm part of the year), since I moved to the land of changing clocks, I have always had to be told when daylight savings time started and ended because I just never had a good grasp of those dates. Then, last year, They went and changed the dates on me just as I was starting to get an idea of when to expect them. So I'm all sorts of confused, and that doesn't help me make use of this tip.

I'm imagining being lost in the woods somewhere, wondering which way is North, finding a clearing (so I can see the sun ... duh), pulling my watch off and orienting it with the 12 to the left, aligning the hour hand with the sun, and thinking ... lessee, it's March 2nd ... has daylight savings started yet ... dammit! I don't know! How can I find which way is South, so that I can then deduce which way is North?!

And what if I happened to be in the southern hemisphere? Do they even use daylight savings time down there? And, if so, do they do it opposite of when we do? How can I possibly figure all this out?!

Of course, that example is ridiculous, in that there is no way I'd be anywhere near the woods on March 2nd because it's difficult to watch absurd amounts of college hoops from the woods. But let's not focus on that right now.

Still, maybe this whole discussion is moot because my cell phone has become a modern day pocket watch, and my wristwatch has been sitting in the console of my car for 2 years wanting a new battery and a better clasp on its band. (Strangely, it has not managed to procure those things from the console of my car, even though it has had two years to do so. I thought putting it there might make it get out and help itself if I ever ventured near a mall. That was not so smart, though, because how can it possibly get out and help itself when its battery is dead?) Sure, I could go to the car and pull out my watch, then go through the placing, orienting, and kvetching, but if I'm at the car anyway, I might as well just turn it on and look at the nav system. That's why I bought the damned thing. (Fine, I bought it because it's a cool gadget, and I like cool gadgets, but I did think it might be useful if I ever wanted to know which direction was North.)

So while this tip may be neato, I'm thinking it's not particularly useful to me, except for breaking my writer's block. Namaste!

What Did the Birds Do?

I was in a meeting this morning, and someone mentioned that if we did a certain thing, we could "kill two birds with one stone." Now, I realize this expression is a commonly used one, but for some reason it gave me pause this morning. I just couldn't help but wonder 1) why people are always wanting to kill birds and 2) why it is that stones are so bloody valuable that we need to be sure to get that extra bang for our proverbial buck. Seriously, what did birds in general do? I suppose they could be the type of garage-dwelling birds that are forever shitting on otherwise sheltered cars, but I would think even those birds would be worthy of their own individual Stones of Death.

Feel free to enlighten me. Otherwise, go in peace, and, if you must kill birds, at least give them the dignity of using separate stones for each of them.

My Mama Didn't Raise No Fool

A co-worker told me this week that she has to have surgery on her pinky this Friday because she broke it when she "tripped" and "fell" while "running." I wasn't buying that for a minute, though. You can't fool me that easily. Oh, sure it's plausible and all. She does run all the time, probably just so she has a ready excuse, but I told her I knew the real story. See, I reckon she's really an international spy who typically executes her missions on weekends. She can't always confine it to the weekends, though, which is why she does "vacations" to Thailand and Mexico and the like for a couple of weeks a year. The way I figure it, this past weekend, her mission went awry, and she got captured. They bad guys were just starting to interrogate her ["You don't know ze answer, fraulein? Vell, let's see vot you know ven I break your fingers ... one at a time ... starting vif zees peenky!" snap] when her partner busted in and rescued her.

Tripped. Fell. Ha! I may have been born yesterday, but I've been up all day today, and I'm not buying that. Still, I don't want to blow her cover. So don't tell anyone, OK?

Mr. Yuk Would Not Approve

I saw this scene on the top shelf of the fridge in the office when I was in there the other day, and I had to take a picture. You think someone has had some trouble with sodas disappearing?

It does have 23 flavors after all. Still, if it's not a false label, Mr. Yuk would never approve of this material being stored in the fridge next to the water and the ... mildly disgusting-looking container of a milky-colored substance.

... And Carry a Big Shtick

For some reason or another this tale has been rattling around my brain lately. So I thought I would share it with you. Aren't you lucky?

When the Girl and I went on our first date, we hardly knew each other at all. We had just met randomly and had about 1.3 phone conversations. Such strangers were we that I didn't even know her last name. So I suppose that meant that we shouldn't struggle for things to talk about. We met at a decent-but-not-overly-nice resaurant and sat down to have some dinner. We were both clearly pretty nervous in that "I don't know this person" sort of way. So we concentrated on the menus and exchanged some chitchat about food and such. Once that was out of the way, I thought we were in desperate need of an ice breaker. So I said, "Look, I know I don't know you all that well, but I feel like I really need to ask you a very personal question. I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable, and you don't have to answer if you don't want, but I just have to ask."

"Umm. OK, I guess. That sounds scary. Should I be scared?" she asked.

"I'll leave that up to you to decide, but I feel like I really need to ask," I replied.

"OK."

"What's your last name?"

Now, you may be absolutely rolling your eyes into the middle of next week and groaning. Or you may be smiling and thinking about how disarming and charming that would be. That second reaction is more of what I was shooting for, but I would have taken the first one. I just wanted to calm some nerves. Luckily for me, the Girl leaned more toward the charming response, laughed, and told me the answer. It seemed to work, too, because we seemed to have a much easier time of it after that. That particular exchange might not really have been the key, but this is my story, and that's how I'm calling it.

Recently, the Girl and I attended a vow renewal ceremony for the main particpants of the first post-college wedding I attended, in celebration of their first 10 years of marriage. (That may deserve a story of its own at some point, but not right now. Suffice it to say that you know a relationship has strong underpinnings when, upon receiving a single red rose from the guy in question after one of their first outings together -- not a date, though -- the girl in question said, "You are nauseatingly sweet.") My college roomie, who knows me as well as perhaps anyone on the planet, was also at this ceremony, and it was the first time he and the Girl met each other. While he was chatting her up and getting to know her, it somehow came out that I didn't know her last name when we went on our first date. Upon hearing that, he looked at me and immediately said, "You asked her a very personal question." It was half statement, half question. He was pretty sure of the answer, but he needed to verify it.

So apparently I have a shtick. Are you really surprised?

Public Service Announcement

Given that my gums are holding their ground about as well as the French hold Paris in wartime, I decided to give Crest Pro Health toothpaste a try based on my dentist's recommendation. The dentist suggested it would fight against any unpleasant sensitivity while still doing a good job battling the nasties that lead to other dental problems. I looked at the stuff's packaging, and it read pretty well. The box stopped just sort of suggesting that it would give me the power to save the world while pleasuring multiple women at the same time. So I bought it in preparation for the day my old tube of normal Crest toothpaste ran out.

Today was that day. So I busted out the tasty-sounding Clean Mint paste and prepared for a heretofore never-experienced session of teeth cleaning. And I have to say that it was most certainly like nothing I had ever experienced before. That toothpaste may very well kick the ass of any tartar-, plaque-, halitosis-, or gingivitis-causing bacteria while whitening my teeth and eliminating all traces of sensitivity. Hell, it might very well just push those gums back to the front lines. I'll never know, though, because of one important piece of information that is suspiciously absent from the box or the website: the stuff tastes like lukewarm ass. Slathered in hot sick. Sandwiched between two pieces of chilled ear wax. So I think I'll be making a run to the store today to buy some of the old toothpaste. I'd rather risk the sensitive teeth (which I really haven't experienced much yet) than have a twice daily lukewarm ass and hot sick on ear wax sandwich.

I just thought you should know. That is all.

Your 2 Cents

As Steven Wright (or perhaps it was George Carlin) once said, "It's a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in. Somebody's making a penny." Well, you may have more trouble living up to your end of the bargain starting Monday, May 14th, as the U.S. Postal Service will be raising the price of stamps by two cents. [Aside: I love this statement from their website: " The new price structure will create a more efficient mail system so that the overall cost of using the mail is as low as possible." What a bunch of twaddle! What the new price structure will do, among other things, is make first class stamps more expensive.]

As far as I'm concerned, they're bitches. Not because the price of stamps is going up. That kind of makes sense. Things get more expensive all the time, and, to be fair, we can send a letter anywhere in the country for very little money. Not that we want to, because, being fair yet again, who the hell sends letters anymore, aside from grandmothers giving their grandchildren $12 birthday checks?

Still, once in a great while, I have to mail something, and a book of stamps typically lasts me more than a year. What I don't like is that the new price structure will require me to buy a strange number of two cent stamps that I will then have to remember to put on mailings. I should totally be able to trade my stamps in for some sort of non-priced first class stamp. Sure I would still have to go to the post office to get them, but at least I wouldn't have to remember to put on two different stamps to get the right total postage. Or, there should be some sort of grace period in which my old 39 cent stamps are still recognized as valid. Hmm. I guess that would mean that the same problem would crop up at the end of the grace period. So the trading in is better.

Really, they should just not print stamps with prices on them. They should all just be first class letter, postcard, etc., and they should be valid until the end of time. Apparently, someone actually came up with this idea and implemented: forever stamps. That doesn't really help me with my old stamps, but yadambetcha that I'm not buying any other types of stamps from now on.

You have a good day. I'm going to count out a bunch of pennies to pay for my new two cent stamps.

Technically Accurate

Someone at work just sent this to me, and I had to share it. Take a look at Google's directions from NYC to Paris. While you're looking, take a look at look at instructions 23 and 24. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Even you Iron Man types out there might have trouble with this one. However, I have to admit that, if you can follow them, these directions will certainly get you there.

Safety First

I know I haven't posted here in a very long time, and I have no real excuse. I had intended to write a detailed follow up to talk more about my experience at the Masters, but I never got around to it. It seems a bit late to do so now. However, I know I need to get back on the horse here, and I reckon, if Jen can do it after about 4 years of not posting, I can, too.

In the car on Saturday morning, I had a bit of a blast from the past in hearing "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. I've always felt a strong sense of affection for that song. Maybe it's because of the video, in which the singer is wandering around a countryside that is remindful of feudal England, singing this song with the word "dance" in the title and hinting strongly, if perhaps not quite proving, that he is completely incapable of dancing. On top of that, the song itself doesn't seem particularly danceable. (Yes, I said "danceable." It's early, and I don't want to hear any shit about it.) In general, I'd say the song is deliciously atrocious, like so many 80's songs. Also, the video prominently features a midget. What's not to like?

But I didn't start this post just to laud a delightfully crappy song. Instead, I wanted to draw your attention to its lyrics. I had to look them up because of one particular phrase: "We can dance, we can dance / Everybody look at your hands / We can dance, we can dance / Everybody's taking the chance." Can someone please tell me why we need to look at our hands and what the fuck that has to do with dancing? Also, what chance is everybody taking here? Does this song come from some strange parallel universe where it's extremely dangerous for a person to let his gaze come to rest on his hands?

These are the questions that fill my brain after hearing that song. Have a good Tuesday.

A Cinderella Story ...

Just like Bill Murray's character in Caddyshack discussed, "It's a Cinderella story ... at Augusta." That's right, I'm at the Masters. No, seriously. See, I even have a tournament badge. Look:

See? The short version is that the Pretty Boy and I know someone whose family has tickets to the Masters every year, and they're not going there, so they let us go. Score!

Anyway, today was the first day that I have ever been to a pro golf tournament, and it was a good one to start out with. It might not be fair to all the other tournaments in the future, but that's not the point right now. The point is that I have a few thoughts to share on it, and I thought I would share them with you.

Doleros
This surprise started when I found out the price that's on that badge: $175. Sure, that's not chump change or anything, but it's really not bad for 4 days of admission to one of the premiere golf tournaments in the world. Plus, our admission came with a parking pass that allowed us to park -- at no additional charge -- right next to the course. That's just crazy, and it's certainly in direct contrast to all of my other professional sports experiences. So it's not expensive to get in and out of there for face value, but there just aren't many tickets. I don't think they've sold any new tickets for more than 20 years.

But that's not all. While we were spectating and walking around the course, we needed sustenance. So we headed to the concession and prepared to drop some serious coin. The price list didn't look right to us, but we might not have seen it correctly as we quickly moved through the line. We gathered the following items:

• 3 beers (in commemorative Masters plastic cups that we could take home with us)
• 2 bottles of water (in Masters-branded bottles of water, which we decided not to take home with us)
• 2 sandwiches in unusual-to-us green wrapping (that we didn't even consider taking home)
• 1 package of peanut butter & crackers, in standard packaging (please)

The total cost of that feast? $11.50. We were downright gleeful, and those beers were just marvelous. Really, the sandwiches were quite good, too. The Pretty Boy has been to a U.S. Open and a PGA Championship, and he thought we would spend a pretty penny on food and drink at the course each day.

Unfortunately, the stuff in the golf shop wasn't ridiculously cheap, too.

Cool Watching
The weather was beautiful, if a bit cool for early April in Georgia. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I am talking about is that there are roped off areas all over the course (definitely at each green, and in some other places) where patrons can put little chairs down to sit and watch. What's cooler is that one can set down a chair, go wander around the golf course for a while, and come back find his chair sitting, empty, in exactly the same place. No one will bother it! It's amazing to me. Naturally, one has to label his chair, but it's still pretty cool.

Pretty!
I have often pondered on whether watching many sporting events on TV isn't as good as or, in the case of HDTV, better than being there in person. And I have even claimed that seeing the splendor of Augusta National in HD is better than being on a golf course in person. Well, having seen Augusta National in person now, I say that's a bunch of hooey. The course is amazing. Everything is green. Except for the flowers, which are all blooming. It's just ... wow.

180
I'm not talking about an about-face, that's the minimum score I think I'd shoot if I tried to play this course. It's long and everything, but having been out there and seen the angles and difficulty of different shots and the undulations of the greens -- which are things that I've never quite been able to grasp on TV -- I can say for sure that this course would soundly kick my ass.

Stay Away From the Tiger Cage
Everyone knows that Tiger Woods has the biggest galleries on the course, but I didn't know how much bigger they are. We spent a large part of the day walking the course and watching Ernie Els, Fred Couples, and Geoff Ogilvy play. Els and Couples are both incredibly popular, and Ogilvy is one of the better young golfers in the world. All 3 have won major championships. There was a pretty good crowd following them, but as they finished up, we watched Tiger tee off on one par 3. The crush of humanity around his group was ridiculous. We waited at the tee box before he got to the green on the previous hole, and we still didn't have a great angle. Not to mention that the caddies stood right between us and the green anyway. We decided it's just not worth fighting through the people to try to watch the best in the world play. His gallery was at least 3 times as large as any other we saw today.

I hope you all enjoyed a good day of golf, be it playing or watching, today.

Goat Status

Off.

Free Broadband From Google!

It looks like Google is ready to pay off on the idea of free WiFi broadband for everyone. Check out their new TiSP program. Check out the details of how it works and the FAQ. A toilet- and sewer-based network is GENIUS!!

Good times, although methinks you should remember the date of this post (and theirs).

Not Lions But ...

Once upon a time, I gave you a small but perhaps disturbing look into the collective thinking of Abs and Lawton. It was ludicrous, I know, that whole thing with terrorists using lions as weapons and trying to hide them under their coats. Or was it? Lawton sent me this, and I'm wondering if mayhap those crocodiles were just a test run. At least the "woman's shape raised suspicions." I say goodonya to those border guards for being so alert.

My Kind of Town

I often wonder what's going to be on TV on any given night, or what channel a game I want to watch will be on, or whether The Office is new this week. I usually wonder these things when I'm not in front of my TV. That doesn't really matter all that much, though, as my cable company DVR isn't particularly adept at speedily answering those questions for me. So, as is my wont, I turn to these internets for some good and speedy info. But I have rarely been satisfied with the solutions there. Sites that will show me stuff are all the time requiring me to refresh the page to go to a new day, then a new time, then a new page of channels. Then, to see more than just the title of a show, I have to battle with their weird show info pop-over to get the full dilly. It irks me. I don't want to go through several pages. I want to see the info NOW. I am petulant about this, and I realize that's not a good thing. Still, I am gratified by the new-to-me Beta of Couchville. With it, you can quickly jump to a day on the calendar, or a channel, or the current time. But more impressively, you can move up and down the channel list or forward and backward in time just by dragging the grid in your browser. It's simple, clean, and it's marvelous. I love it.

Besides, how can I not love a place called Couchville? I feel like I live there already.

Question of the Day

I like to think of myself as pretty decent at coming up with plausible explanations for things that seem silly, even though I still like to think of them as silly. For example, after giving it some thought, I was even able to come up with some explanation for why the drive-through ATM at the bank has braille options.

Still, some things persist in puzzling me.

Today, I was walking back into the building from the parking garage after lunch, and I was struck by a puzzling situation. Near the garage's exit, there were numerous spacious and well-marked handicap spots. That's not the puzzling part. Naturally, I understand that. On the other side of the entrance, there were a whole mess of places reserved for expecting mothers. Still not the puzzling part, in that I kind of understand it, although I'm skeptical of just how many expecting mothers are ... expected ... to be in this particular building at any given time. Still, I can see how reasonable people might want to make it less of an effort for these to-be moms to get to and from their cars and offices.

What puzzled me, though, was that between the expecting mother spots and the garage exit were a number of spots designated for motorcycles. It was pretty much 2 motorcycle parking spots per normal car spot. I can see why it's good to designate spots for motorcycles. You probably don't want them taking up an entire parking space and all, but why the hell do they need to be right next to the building? Wouldn't it be just as good to put them on the other side of the garage? Why should those who ride motorcycles get to park closer to the building than the handicapped or women with buns in their ovens?

Please explain it to me. These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night.

The Lengths People Will Go

OK, I know it's been a long time since I've put anything up here, but I've been a bit preoccupied lately. There's this little thing called the NCAA Tournament going on, and it takes up a lot of my time. I had to watch ridiculous amounts of basketball last weekend, and I had to handle the tourney pool Lawton and I run as we led up to it. So that's what I've been doing, and I haven't had much to write about.

Luckily for me, though, other people keep coming up with things worth sharing. For example, my buddy Doc sent me a link to this article showing that people will go to any lengths these days to avoid riding coach.

I just thought you might want to see that.

Beware the Dangers of the Elephant Johnson

No, I'm not talking about a pachyderm named Johnson. A co-worker sent this to me, and I laughed out loud. While there is some serious stuff going on that this article mentions, what really stood out to me was this:

"One guy I know got a black eye from being hit by an elephant’s
penis."

These are things you just don't hear often enough! It's marvelous. Along the same lines, next time you have the chance to go to the National Zoo, check out the video of their baby elephant being born. Sadly, I couldn't quickly find this video online because it's fascinating, if a little disturbing. The zoo didn't have the great quotes that the linked article did, though. So remember, next time you're in such a situation ...

"When you touch an elephant there it starts to flick backwards and forwards
and it’s so strong it can knock you off your feet. It’s such a strong
movement."

Have a great weekend.

Go Team!

I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but I didn't manage to pull the pictures off of my phone until now. It turns out that I'm not the only one who felt the need to evaluate things and set some goals at the beginning of this year. In fact, I guess it's pretty normal. Two days a week or so, I travel to the offices of a big company to do work there, rather than tooling from home in a virtual kind of way. Early in January, I found the evidence that someone in the big company had done some evaluation and wanted to set some goals. However, as is often the case in a big company, this evaluator couldn't achieve this goal alone. To solicit help, this person posted a nicely printed, laminated sign in all the kitchens. (Really, I only know that it was posted in one kitchen, as I didn't check any of the others, but it would really not make sense to put it the others. So we'll just assume it was put all over the place.) Here's a picture of the sign they posted:

Now, I think we can probably agree that this message conveys a serious, noble, and worthwhile message. Using fewer napkins seems somehow eco-friendly, and it's pretty easy for most people to get behind eco-friendly. However, it's even easier for me to get behind funny, and I enjoyed seeing that there are other people who think funny beats most things, including eco-friendly. This funny person posted a sign in response:

I love it! And I'm glad I snapped some pics, as the second sign was removed quite speedily. The first one remains, though. I still chuckle when I see it, just thinking of the second one.

GO TEAM!

What Dookies Do During a Down Year

When I lived at the Lodge back in the day, my roomies and I used to talk a lot about the ways that Mini Fridge could be improved to make it more convenient for us to retrieve beer without getting up off of Soft Couch. You can make all the arguments you want that it's ridiculous to improve on the convenience of a refrigerator that sits right next to the couch. We heard it all, and it didn't faze us. If you're making such arguements, you obviously haven't thought of the inconvenience to someone sitting in the Ass Magnet, as Mini Fridge's door opened toward that person, and he had to perform some pretty tricky feats of flexibility to get a beer without leaving his seat. Or maybe you didn't consider the people seated at the opposite end of Soft Couch, as they couldn't possibly reach the fridge. A person sitting in Brown Chair had much the same problem. Besides, this was before we had a Tivo, and we had to do something during commercials. So we discussed how we could make Mini Fridge better.

Some people aren't content with discussion, though. Showing the type of ingenuity and can-do spirit that made this country great (not to mention fat and lazy), this guy from Duke built a solution. You should totally check it out. It's simply marvelous.

And for those of you who don't want to check it, go ahead and watch this video.


Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator

Luck be the AbsPod

Here's a follow-up on yesterday's post explaining once again that not only am I an idiot, but allowing myself to be irritated only leads to bad things.

All day yesterday I was wondering what the possibilities were that I would get my iPod back. When I filled out the Lost Item Form at the airport on Sunday night, I asked the woman working there what she thought my chances were of me getting the AbsPod back. She said, "Well, if it's still there and our people find it, they'll send it back. But if someone else found it, it's pretty much gone." That was an impressive non-prediction from her. So I calmly fretted about it for much of the day yesterday, willing myself not to call early and often. Instead, I waited until about 3:30 to call, at which point no one answered. I got a voice mail box indicating that I could leave a message. So I did, but I felt very sure that no one would call me back.

The hours crawled by without a return call, and I tried to decide whether that meant that they didn't find it in Michigan, or whether they just didn't have it back at DCA yet. Surprisingly, I wasn't able to work that out, but I thought about it any way. After 3 hours, I decided they weren't going to call me back at all. Still, I decided that I would not inundate them with phone calls, as that would drove both them and me crazy. So I waited.

I was talking with the Girl around 7:40, and I got another call from a phone number I didn't recognize it. I quickly answered to find that it was the woman from Northwest Baggage Services, and she said, "You know we got your iPod back." What?! HELL NO I DIDN'T! "You can pick it up whenever you like."

So I scooted over there and picked it up without much trouble. Rather than having to replace it, I had to worry for a day, make two trips to the airport, and pay $4 for parking. That's not a bad reclamation fee.

I happily left the airport without even asking if I would be credited with frequent flier miles for the round trip to Grand Rapids.

Good, Bad, and Ugly

This weekend, the Girl and I jetted off to Indiana. Sure, some people like to get away to someplace warm during a February cold snap, but we went someplace even colder. And I know that some people like to go someplace that might be considered hip, where things are happening. However, we had a very specific goal on this trip: to watch our beloved Hoosiers play in person in the Assembly Hall in Bloomington, IN. And watch we did.

We flew into Indy on Friday (going direct and being sure to avoid Atlanta), and managed to borrow a vehicle from my folks that had neither a flat tire nor a cracked windshield, and we headed down to B-town. We saw some friends, had some meals, went to some bars, and watched the Hoosiers eke out a closer-than-we-hoped-but-very-exciting-all-the-same victory against the Illini. Good times. There was snow, I ate a breaded pork tenderloin, and we tooled around in a pickup truck. It was a very Hoosier weekend as far as I was concerned. It was, without question, Good.

While driving back and forth, we used the AbsPod (which is my shiny, relatively new, black 80GB iPod with video) and an iTrip to listen to the tunes we liked on the truck's radio. On the way back to Indy, the battery in the AbsPod just gave out, which was a bummer, since we had a plane trip coming up, and I might need to use it to watch or listen to something to entertain myself while the Girl slept (she typically falls asleep on planes well before take off). Luckily, we had some time to visit with my folks in Indy before heading to the airport, and I took advantage of that time to give the AbsPod a bit of a charge, asking everyone around to help me remember it before I left. They all obliged, and I remembered the AbsPod when we went off to the airport.

At the airport, I got to experience a couple of the ways in which the TSA hates me. There was only a short line at security, but it seemed to be growing rapidly. While we were waiting, one woman just offered a bit of an "excuse me" and ignored everyone's complaints as she weaved through all the would-be travelers in line and eased through the machines. As we were discussing how rude that was, another woman began lifting the barricade ropes and escorting a man to the front of the line. Noticing annoyed looks, she said, "We have a Clear passenger." You could hear the capital letter. "Oh, well, in that case, of course. Go right ahead." I was irked. On her way back, she stopped to tell me that I should pick up their brocure. Rather than punch her in the kneecap for trying to sell me something while being condescending at the same time, I asked if it cost money and sent her on her way when she said it was about $100/year. Now, I know about this program where people pay to have background checks and do biometric identification to get through security faster, but I think has to be a better way to handle it than making everyone who's already in line move out of the way for the royalty to get through. I almost went all Monty Python and hollered, "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!"

But I'm sure I wasn't being fair to these people skipping past all of us waiting our turn in line. I was already predisposed to annoyance because I could see that this security line was making everyone go through a Puffer. For those of you who haven't experienced one, the Puffer is the most irritating fake security measure the TSA has come up with yet. I can't get into a rant about that right here, because neither you nor I have the time, but suffice it to say that these devices make me think that a little monkeying with things would be a good idea. It also makes me think that the TSA is trying to make the airways safe by annoying travelers enough so that they will just not fly anywhere. Planes without passengers are inherently safe from terrorists. Even more irritating is that the Puffer, in conjunction with people constantly cutting through the line, had backed things up so much that they opened a second, non-puffer security line just as I got to the front of the more irritating one. However, since my blood pressure is rising just thinking about all of this, let's move on.

Our plane was a regional jet, and we took off only a few minutes late after the ground crew added some ballast to the cargo hold to help balance the plane. I'm all for the plane being balanced, so that slight delay didn't bother me even a little bit. We also landed on time, but we had to sit on the tarmac for 30 minutes because there was another plane in our gate. Pretty much everyone on the plane thought it was ridiculously annoying, but there was nothing we could do about it. I kept myself entertained by alternately reading and laughing at the flight attndant, who repeatedly marched up and down the aisle insisting that anyone who had unbuckled his seat belt put it back on. I'm not making this up. She was very concerned about those seat belts staying on and told several people that they "needed" to put their belts back on. Every time she heard the click of a seat belt, she raised her head and marched down the aisle to find the offender. By the time we got to a gate, I was pretty irritated, and I grabbed my bag, coat, and book and deplaned as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quickly given that the Girl and I were seated in the very last row. Security irritation and sitting on the tarmac for a half hour: Bad.

Still, we'd had a good trip and a good weekend, and our bags came out of the baggage return very quickly. After a short cab ride, I was back at home sort of unpacking. It was at that point that i realized that the AbsPod was nowhere to be found. In my annoyance, I had departed the plane without retrieving my iPod from the seat back pouch I had put it in when I first sat down. I did some googling to figure out what to do, and it wasn't very clear. So I called Northwest reservations who told me he wasn't sure, but he thought I would have to call the ticket counter at the aiport. Unfortunately, they don't have a number one can call (what?!), so I would just have to go there the next day (they were naturally closed at 9 PM on a Sunday). Instead, I drove to the airport. I figured maybe the plane was still there, maybe I could get someone to get it for me, assuming the cleaning crew hadn't found and kept it. After asking around about what to do, I went to Northwest's baggage services office and explained my plight. The very nice and efficient woman there told me that the plane had already left for Grand Rapids. As I filled out a form, she called the Grand Rapids airport and asked someone there to check my seat back pouch -- the plane had just landed here -- for the AbsPod and to send it back to DCA if they found it. She gave me a number to call this afternoon and no predictions on whether I would get the device back. So I trudged back to my car contemplating the Ugly thought that I might have to replace the AbsPod and that I have once again proven that I am, without question, an idiot.

Bad or Worse: You Make the Call

I've been contemplating two hypothetical situations and the impact they might have on one's day, and I just can't decide which one would move the needle more. So I figured I'd toss it out there so you could make the call.

Situation 1
You're working from home, and you realize as you pour your first soda of the day that you have foolishly allowed your soda supply to be depleted. However, you're doing some work and such, and you don't really feel like making a special trip to the store just for the soda. So you do nothing. As the day goes on, you decide that it's really not appropriate for your first soda of the day to be your only soda of the day, and you decide to rectify the situation.

The exercise room in your complex has a soda machine in it. Granted a 20 oz. bottle of that which you desire costs a whopping $1.25, but such is your yen for that carbonated NutraSweet-y goodness that you are willing to deal with the extra moolah involved. So you bundle up (it's cold out there), grab a dollar bill and a quarter, and trudge to the exercise room, using the few moments of travel time to ponder a) why there isn't a soda machine in your building or perhaps even your apartment and b) just what it says about you that you are going to the exercise room for the specific purpose of buying a soda. Arriving at your destination, you brush those thoughts away like so many gnats flitting around your head (there are some benefits to the cold, you reckon). You feed the greedy machine the paper and metal money and consider a new quandary: there are two buttons with Diet Coke labels; which one to push? This question doesn't slow you down much, and you punch the top Diet Coke button. The machine responds with the normal whirrings and plunks and you bend down to pull out ... a gahdamned Fanta Orange Soda.

You don't drink Fanta Orange soda. You don't want Fanta Orange soda. If you did, you would have pushed its button, which is at the very bottom of the array of buttons, nowhere near the second one from the top that you pushed. Quick! Use the other button! Nope, sorry. You only brought enough money to buy one soda. It looks like you're going without another soda for a while. Now go back out in the cold and walk home. Take that soda with you, though.

Situation 2
It's early in the morning. Just how early, you're not sure, as you are doing what ought to be done early in the morning: sleeping. Suffice it to say, though, that it is nowhere near an hour when any reasonable person would desire to be awake. You might be engaged in a dream. You might be chewing up the REM cycles. You might be caught in the comfy warm bliss of the dreamless. You might be rolling over. You know not because, as mentioned before, you are asleep.

OW! All of a sudden you wake up because you just bit the ass out of your tongue.

Bad or Worse: You make the call. And my sincerest condolences for any poor soul who suffers both fates on the same day.

I Sit Resolved

Well, what the hell ... I'll go ahead and stand resolved, although that sounds like a lot of work. Besides, it fits better with the year ahead (more on that later).

While I haven't yet written a by-the-numbers (or any other) type of look back at 2006 (but I likely will), I wanted to go ahead and talk about 2007. As I've mentioned before, in general, I'm against making resolutions to start the new year. Maybe it's because everyone does it, and I think I'm unique and counter-cultural and such (says the Kid in his friggin' blog). Maybe it's because it's exhausting to hear people talk about them. Maybe it's because it's harder to fail to live to up to resolutions you don't make. Maybe it's because I think they're for namby-pamby, touchy-feely types who decide they're going to be funnier (they aren't) or happier (it's a 50-50 shot) or smarter (no chance) or better to the environment (possibly). (Remind me to tell you more about that environment one another time.) But maybe, just maybe my real issue here is with the connotation I've attached to the word "resolution." So I've decided to not make any resolutions for 2007.

I can make some goals, though. That would clearly be a very different thing. Goals are good, right? Everyone needs goals. So without more of this nomadic preamble, I present to you Abs's Major Initiatives 2007.

Because, dammit!
This cleverly-named initiative could more clearly be called "Procrastinate Less," But I like cleverly-named things, and "Be Less Annoyingly Snarky and Obtuse" didn't make the cut this year. The truth is that the ability to procrastinate runs strong in my family. My granny had it. (Perhaps that's the real reason that her ashes are still attending Christmas gatherings.) My father has it. My mother has it. My brother has it. And I have it.

In college, a couple of guys in my dorm and I considered ourselves to be the Pillars of the Dorm Procrastination Team. Any one of the three who actually tried to study was absolutely ridiculed by the other two. Twisting the Nike catch phrase of the day, our slogan was "Why Do It?" Amazingly, we all managed to stick around and graduate, but we never stopped mildly reveling in our tendency and ability to put things off. And that's fine, but I'm hoping to do it less this year.

In case you're wondering whether I see the irony in stating my goal to procrastinate less this year at the beginning of the second month of the year, I do. And I think you should shut the hell up about it. First, this isn't your post. More importantly, I said I was going to do it less, not eliminate it entirely.

More than anything, though, I think this goal feeds directly into the second initiative ...

Clean Apartment 2007
My apartment is generally a mess. It's not a crazy mess that you can't walk through or see table tops or get attacked by mutant killer bacteria or anything, but it is generally cluttered and just messy. I honestly like the apartment better when it's clean, but I don't at all like cleaning it. Really, it's just that I put off things like putting away clean clothes, putting books back on the shelves, putting dirty clothes in the laundry nook, taking the trash or recycling out, dealing with my mail, and generally getting rid of the dead bodies. So you see that procrastination plays a big part here. Really, I'm thinking the "Because, dammit!" initiative will mostly take care of this one. That way, I get two goals for the price of one, and that's just good sense.

Neither of these really have much to do with the third and most important initiative ...

Find a Better Hiding Place
No, I don't have a bunch of jam-handed, ankle-biting youngsters around who are better at playing Hide and Seek than I am. This is another obscurely but perhaps cleverly named initiative. The one I'm playing Hide and Seek with is Death. He's "it," though.

The key here is to be healthier. My family tree shows many a wound from heart attacks and strokes and diabetes and loquacity. (At least it would if someone put together my family tree. And if family trees had wounds from the entrants' health and other problems.) Since I'm not likely to do anything about the wordiness, I thought I'd concentrate more on the health problems. At this point, I haven't really suffered from anything worse than some allergies and bad ankles, but I reckon I have to try to get out of the way of those more major issues now rather than when they come knocking on the door because they keep you from finding good hiding places. Having one of those things is akin to hiding in the middle of a brightly lit room. That robe-wearin', scythe-carryin' bitch called Death has no trouble at all finding those types of people. I reckon being healthier helps one find a better hiding place.

If you want a more entertaining explanation of the reasoning behind such an initiative, take a gander at Kevin Smith's blog. I share several of his reasons, and he writes them better. Besides, Silent Bob speaking is a good thing.

How do I plan on being healthier? By the magic plan of eating things I don't love and doing things I'd rather not do. Don't eat pizza or chips and queso quite as often. Eat some damned vegatables. Get off the couch and go to the gym once in a while. Eat better and exercise more. I heard somewhere that it's good for you.

Still, that's a bunch of hand waving. In this particular case, I need to be able to quantify things. So, recognizing that this ought to be a long-haul type of goal, I'm setting the relatively modest aim of weighing 10% less than I do now on December 31, 2007. Really, it's 10% less than when I actively started this initiative, which was two whole days ago, but you get the idea. I don't know if that sounds like a lot to you, but I think it's pretty daggone modest when you look at what some people do.

That's about it. I could have come up with more, but I think that I have quite enough to be going on with this year. Besides, I can do those others next year.