The Road to Wussville

I live in Wussville in great state of Wussington. No, actually I live in the Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. Snow was predicted for today and at that prognostication, schools began to announce closings. When I woke up this morning expecting to find the inches predicted there was nothing but winter grass on the ground. The morning television still scrolled the names of churches and schools that would not meet. On the clear drive in to work I passed school buses, not picking up but returning kids from the schools that let out early. By noon a few flakes began to fall. By two most of the office had cleared out to brave their ways home. It is now seven in the p.m. and snow has stopped and the warm roads are mostly clear of snow.

A forecast of snow in the South brings either joy or dread. School kids here like those everywhere look forward to announcements of a day off from school. Their parents, especially working ones, for the most part dread it and have to scramble to make arrangements for someone to look after their kids. In the workforce as well there are those for whom snow upsets their planned activities and travel itineraries and those who look forward to having an excuse not to come into the office. Several feet of snow and treacherous roads would be a valid reason to stay off the highways and warm in front of a home fire. But here a whisper of snow brings things to a solid halt.

"Oh, but Southerners don't know how to drive in snow" we are told. True, but half the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina moved here from upstate New York. These Northern transplants have become as wussified concerning snow as their Dixie neighbors. I think it's a kind of "snow malingering" where they exaggerate the treachery of the roads to avoid coming to work. Before the first flake fell today I was reading emails from coworkers saying they would be working from home tomorrow. I hope they keep the fire warm.

Pocket Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for most Christians. Lent is the 40 day period before Easter in which some Christians will fast and or abstain from certain things to contemplate the upcoming holiest Christian holiday. Looking at the calendar I wondered how the 40 days worked when there was a leap year and I counted a lot more than 40 days between the two dates. Turns out from my research Lent is actually 46 or 47 days long, depending on the leap year, but the Sundays are not counted.

I am not a religious person but I remember growing up Catholic with the meatless Fridays and the Lenten abstinence of candy or gum. On "Live with Regis and Kelly" this morning they were pondering what they would give up for Lent and both decided it would be cheese, something they both enjoyed. Thinking back I remember how I would be chewing a stick of gum someone casually offered me and I took without thinking and then my mother or someone would say "Ah! You gave up gum for Lent!" Chewing would stop immediately as I tried to figure out how to remove the gum from my mouth in the least sinful way and then make amends for my lapse. It occurred to me today that these Lenten rites almost call more attention to the thing that is given up since one has to think constantly about avoiding it than the reason it is being given up.

At work they occasionally have “fun events” to lighten the company atmosphere. I don’t find them very fun so I don’t go. The events are usually just drinks and chips in a conference room in the middle of the day. Today they had one called “Mardi Gras + One”. Since I’m not religious and am not easily offended I was not, but it does seem odd to me to have a Mardi Gras party on Ash Wednesday. The whole idea behind Mardi Gras and Carnival is to overindulge before the period of fasting and strict moral lockdown. Would they have a Ramadan Plus One Party or a Yom Kippur Blowout? It always seems odd to me that I as someone who isn’t devout take certain religious teachings more seriously than those supposedly believe in them.

Bull Shopping For China

My home thermostat is broken. It still works I guess but this morning it lay in pieces on the floor. The beige plastic cover was cracked, lying next to the clear plastic face. I broke it putting on my shirt.

I didn't mean to do it and the fact it is broken and my hand has a gash across it still puzzles me. The thermostat is mounted on the wall in the middle of my fairly narrow hallway. Every morning I dress there as a I peek into the living room to watch the Today show. Today I just pulled my sweater over my head and swung my arm to pull it through and WAM! I heard a crack and then pieces of something hitting the floor. "What the ...?" I noticed the innards of my thermostats were visible on the wall, then looked down and saw a clear flat piece of plastic. "Ow!" The pain finally made its way from my hand to my brain. I looked at my hand and saw a little blood and a triangular cut. A few seconds of searching passed before I found the main front piece hiding under my ironing board. It half-way snapped back into place but one of the clips was broken. A little nudging of the switches and it seemed to be working again.

To quote Bullwinkle, "Whoo, don't know my own strength."

Things

My kitchen has most everything I need. There may be one or two things I still want but overall I am very satisfied. A gas stove would be great but I am renting so e major appliances I will be content with for now.

I do not own a microwave. It's not that I am opposed to them but I just would only use it to reheat and defrost and I can get around that if I plan accordingly. There is also no room for one.

I find that I am getting rid of things from my kitchen utensils, trying to simplify and break things down to what I use all the time and things I almost never touch. At one time I really loved my Zyliss garlic press since it was the first garlic press I found that actually worked. Almost the entire clove squeezed through its wholes leaving the papery skins behind. Now I never use it, reason being I learned how to peel and chop garlic quicker with a chef's knife. I have lots of pots and pans, all really good ones that I've saved up for and acquired over the years. But in fact I regularly only use about three pans: my 12 qt All-Clad pasta pot, my 12 inch Vikingware nonstick frying pan and my All-Clad 2 quart sauce pan. My cast iron skillet comes out every weekend and is so perfect for everything from frying bacon to making tarte tatin that I would hate to see it go. Though I use others now and then I could probably get by without them.

I am going to buy a new pepper mill though. Mine is a small one that I will still use on the table but for the kitchen I'd like a beefy model. My research into pepper mills has pointed me toward the "Unicorn Magnum". It has the highest rating of all the reviewed models. Large capacity. Easy refilling. High output. It is not cheap so I will wait for a sale.

Every few weeks I receive in the mail a Linens-n-Things 20% off coupon. When I need something in the way of linens or things I wait for this mailing before heading out to shop. This means that I buy most of my kitchen gear there if they carry what I want. It also means that I almost never pay full price for anything I buy from them. I wonder how that works out for them? I checked once and I don't think they carry the pepper mill I want. Places that do carry it have it for full price. I'll wait.

Tolls

The mother of one of my best friends died this weekend. The funeral was Tuesday. I don't go to many funerals, thank goodness, but I went to this one. It reminded me what I disliked most about many of these services.

I have no problem in dealing with the thoughts of mortality that come along with funerals. We all will pass from this world and not to acknowledge that fact is simple denial of the inevitable. I can accept the grief and sadness that one feels with the loss of someone beloved. These feelings are even more appropriate when that someone dies unexpectedly. What I dislike most is attending what should be a celebration and remembrance of someone's time here on earth but it turns into a sales pitch for the one and only way of achieving eternal life. It could have been an Amway meeting (or an "I Am the Way (the Truth and the Light) meeting") with its similarity to a sales rally. The majority of the service was not spent celebrating the life of a hardworking and caring mother. We were told outright during the service that this life is inconsequential. Only the life of the world to come has any importance. There we will find candy and sunshine, a life like this one but without pain, without suffering, without bills as we walk in the shadow of the Lord. Death is a great thing for someone who knows Jesus, we were told.

I do not subscribe to this point of view. Life is not necessarily a veil of tears. Life is not a blip on the radar of eternity. The one and only thing we know for certain is that we are here, now. To live life as if it is but the doormat to a mysterious castle in the clouds with rooms full of virgins and other third century metaphors seems a great waste. Life can be hard. For some it is sheer misery. It is comforting to imagine that in the next world everything will be better for those who have lived as we have. All religions, all humans try to answer the question, "What happens when we die?" We are not good at leaving questions unanswered. We cannot answer questions with ideas we do not know, that are beyond our own experience, so our answer is either a description of something here on earth or those things used as metaphors.

But I have found that I am content in leaving blank the answers to the questions we cannot know. We can search and find what may be clues along the way but sometimes the key is in the experience of the thing itself. This is most true for death which will come to us as it has to all who have breathed on this planet and all who breathe after us. I will take that journey when it comes and focus on the journey in front of me. This life is all that I know I have and may be all that there is. What a waste I would feel if I squandered it, spending all the energy of my existence at the bus stop to the next world. When that bus comes I will get on it and go where it takes me

Tivo, Tivas, Tivat*

My life is better off with my Tivo.

It isn't really a Tivo. It is the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that integrates with my Dish Network Satellite system. I don't so much call the system a Tivo as much as use the word as a verb: to tivo. I guess it is similar to how xerox was used as a verb meaning "to photocopy" back when most photocopiers were made by Xerox. Now I never use xerox as a verb but always say photocopy or just copy. Tape doesn't really do the task justice anymore and record is just too plain. I would almost say 'I PVRed "Survivor" last night' but acronyms used as verbs are dreadful things. So for now Tivo exists in my lexicon as a generic verb.

It really is great live a life unbound by the television schedule without missing the few hours of good television I enjoy. Skipping commercials alone saves hours over the course of a week.

Still the biggest bane of my television viewing is network programming. Primetime shows for the most part are aired once during a week and then you have to wait for reruns if you missed them. With "cable" t.v. (another generic word that also applies to satellite television) if I miss a show at 8:00 central I can probably catch it three hours later or a repeat that weekend. Networks are getting savvier about this. The Apprentice on NBC is on Thursdays and then repeated the following Wednesday. Since it bumps up against CSI the first go around I catch it on the second.

The one area where my PVR runs into problems is professional sports, again on network television. I don't watch sports on television but I frequently watch what comes after them. The one thing the PVR can't accommodate currently is overtime. However long the game runs I miss that part of the show that follows. Everyone I know missed the entire last half of CSI that aired at 1:00am due to a Carolina basketball game. Once the PVR can keep track of long running shows and adjust accordingly, entertainment life will be near perfect.

I, iTunes

I have been making great use of Apple's iTunes lately. ITunes is their music download store with 99 cent song downloads. It is an awful lot of fun to just follow a trail of links at the iTunes store starting at the welcome page and just clicking and listening to things that look interesting. What a great way to discover music I've never heard of before. During the Grammy awards show I checked a couple of times for songs I heard and liked. I downloaded a couple Outkast songs, a Warren Zevon and some Cold Play. When I heard a cool song by Wilco that I didn't know the name of I just browsed through their albums listening to snippets until I found the one I wanted.

I was able to track down the exact movement of Bach's Partita no.3 that has been one of my favorite pieces since I heard it on the Cosmos soundtrack ages ago (for the record "Partita no. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006: Gavotte en Rondeau"). I now have three versions of it but the Itzhak Perlman is my definite favorite. This piece of music is one included on the Voyager space probe’s gold disk of songs and images from earth. If some other life forms are ever able to hear it they will surely think came from the gods with such sublime beauty. (Also for the record, a ‘gavotte’ is "a dance of French peasant origin marked by the raising rather than sliding of the feet" and a ‘rondeau’ or ‘rondo’ is "an instrumental composition typically with a refrain recurring four times in the tonic and with three couplets in contrasting keys". BWV stands for "Bach Werke Verzeichnis" or the Index of Bach's Works.)

The iTunes collection is far from complete and it can be disappointing to not find music I'm specifically looking for. There is also something slightly unfulfilling in paying for music and not having an actual CD to hold in your hand. Another feature I don't like is not being able to download my purchased songs more than once. I listened to music at home and work so if I want to have my music in both places I have to burn CDs of my iTunes music and bring them back and forth. Audible.com's audio books allow you to access you online library from any computer and stream or download any audio you have purchased. A wishlist at the store would be a nice touch too, to be able to keep track of music I might want to buy later. It is nice though with iTunes to be able to search and download music where people spell songs and artists correctly unlike my old outlaw Napster and Kazaa finds.

An iPod is tempting me. I don’t own one and can really see the benefit one would have in my life but at $300 for the cheapest one I am stopped from rushing out to buy one. There are other mp3 players out there but for only slightly less money and when price isn’t much difference why not go with best? I’ll start saving up. Maybe in a few months I’ll be plugged in.

P.S.
Happy Birthday to my (older) brother Brad!

Membership Has Its Privileges

I've joined Netflix again. I was a member of it when it first started and had mixed success with it. The main problem was it seemed to take forever for me to get my DVDs in the mail.. Granted I live out in the country of suburban North Carolina, but most times it took a week to get a new movie. That really cut down on the number of movies I got in a month for the set price. I also never seemed to get the movies I really wanted like Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue. It was at the top of my list for several months but they never seemed to have it in. Another reason I stopped was I was paying an awful lot for my satellite TV at the time and needed to cut down on my entertainment budget.

But I have cut back my satellite TV package, haven't rented a video from the store in over a year and thought I'd give NetFlix another chance. I'll try for a few months and see how it goes.

I have canceled my monthly membership at Audible.com. They have a great service and I think very reasonable pricing, two audio books each month for $19.00. But I have a slue of ones I haven't listened to. This is mainly due to not having a CD player in my car. So I've cut back on that, I'll save up for a new car stero, listen to the books I have, then join again later.

Lately I've been giving companies second chances. The local Best Buy had just been awful at customer service a few years ago so I boycotted them. Then a friend at work kept telling me about how well he had been treated at his local store. I decided to give them another try. Not mind-lowing phenomenal service but pretty good. They tool back an answering machine that didn't work with no hassle.

Friends and I often will boycott restaurants after bad meals or bad service. Sometimes we will try a restaurant that others have raved about and not enjoy it at all. Well I've decided to be less stringent about this and boycott my boycotting. I will still reward great companies with my business by I will also give less than great companies opportunities to win me back.

Self-Portraits

I've been told by several people that I don't have enough photos of myself on this site. Since I think I am a better photographer than model I thought I'd try both at the same time. I took some photos of me tonight with my tripod, remote, flash and the bathroom mirror (not pictured). These were my favorites.
As I work on my self-portrait photography skills I will post more down the road.

Schwitzkrieg

I used the sauna at the gym yesterday. As I entered two men were having a conversation about Martha Stewart. Silver haired straight men don't usually have conversations about her but since she is on trial that lends her to topics that more men might find interesting. One of the men was exiting the room and trying to wrap up the discussion. He closed the door. I threw some water on the rocks to make up for the heat that had escaped through the opened door. I jumped up on the cedar bench. Not more than five seconds passed before the remaining gentleman asked me, "So what do you think about this Martha Stewart trial?"

"I'm not too interested in it."

He then started throwing out names like Faneuil and Bacanovic and talking about the "thread of deception" and efforts she made to cover her tracks and then uncover them again, talk of "attack of conscience" and special ink used to distinguish notes taken at different times.

"It just doesn't have anything to do with my day to day life," I replied. "Is she guilty? Probably. Should she go to jail? I don't think so. Should she pay a huge fine and never serve on a corporate board again? Sure."

"But you have to agree that the charge of perjury is a serious offense, a felony. And with crimes come punishments. There is right and there is wrong. Any school child should be taught that. "

I had been in the sauna about long enough at this point but I answered, "I don't have to agree. There are far greater criminals walking around whose victims have suffered great loss. If the government went after them and prosecuted them to the same extent and justice were blind in its distribution then I could see you argument. But the trial seems to me to be a showcase to advance the careers of prosecutors and entertainment television. Society will not be bettered by sending her to prison." I then got up to leave because the conversation was not to interesting and I had sweated about a gallon in the ninety degree room.

The gentleman kept trying to convince me as I left. "Every Sunday school teaches right and wrong and a person has to know the difference and the consequences for infractions."

I opened the door and left. I don't know if he thought he could try to change my mind about something I really didn't care about. Was this really important to him? He seemed like the type of upstanding, church-going citizens who makes the same mistakes in life as everyone else but will never admit those failings to himself or anyone else. Of course I can understand if Martha changed her phone record because she didn't want to be caught and then changed it back when she realized that it was wrong or that she could be in greater trouble if it was found out. Seems perfectly human to me. And if we can't understand our humanity and own weaknesses how can anyone sit in judgment?

They'll Have Theirs, You'll Have Yours and I'll Have Mine

So Quimby came up to me this morning and asked, "What are you humming?"
"Diff'rent Strokes. Theme to Diff'rent Strokes."
"Ah."
"Yeah I was watching The David Chapelle Show last night on Comedy Central..."
"The David Chapelle Show isn't on Comedy Central," he interrupted.
"No, I was watching Comedy Central."
"Yes, you may have been. But that program is 'Chapelle's Show'. The Chris Rock Show was on HBO. You are probably confusing the titles."
"It wouldn't be the first time," I said. "I realized while watching David Chapelle that I had been singing the words to Diff'rent Strokes wrong all these years."
"Really?"
"Yeah. The part that goes 'then along come two they got nothin' but their...' well I always heard it as 'nothin' but their jeans'. Kind of a play on 'jeans/genes', only the clothes on their backs. But Dave was singing it last night and he said 'nothin' but their dreams'. So I've been singing it wrong all these years."
"But it is 'jeans'."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. I used to run an Alan Thicke fan page in Toronto and he of course wrote the theme song. It is definitely 'jeans' though I can't valdiate your gentic theory."
"Well well well. Mister Chapelle got it wrong. Or maybe he's just trying to make up for all his skits based on racial stereotypes."
"I doubt it," answered Quimby.
"Yeah I doubt it too. Maybe I just misheard him."

Click Click

I needed to post some photos so here are two I took over at Ray and Claudia's tonight. This first is Patrick and Luca and the second is Ray. Claudia wouldn't let me take her picture.

Naked Aggression

Well it's been a whole week since Janet Jackson's boob was flashed to the world as Justin ripped her bodice and as Justin said at the Grammy’s, "it's been a rough week on everybody" (“everybody” of course meaning him). But the world hasn't come to an end and American children are still running around only half-naked listening to bad music (aesthetically bad, not morally) by people who have renounced last names. So we should just get over this incident though it wasn’t really an unplanned accident but admitting the truth would hurt the teenie-bopper Wal-Mart sales of at least one performer. And if we just came to accept public nudity and sexuality as matter of fact then how would kids be able to shock society? Dancing around with heroin needles in their arms like they do in France and Germany? (Editor’s Note: heroin needles in the arms of dancing people has not been documented in Europe but sales of David Hasselhoff albums and songs by four year-old chain-smoking French rappers have.)

I have been seeing lots of naked people recently. No, I haven’t been watching Showtime at two in the morning (I record those programs to watch at a more reasonable hour). I joined a gym. Men’s locker rooms are a strange place. I for one don’t mind being naked around others but I don’t like looking at naked men. I told the management of the gym about this and asked if I could change in the women’s changing area because of the better view. They flatly refused.

The gym is close to work which is a good thing in allowing me to go at lunch time if I want or easily after work. It is bad in that my bosses also go there. I don't know what would be worse: seeing them naked in the locker room or them seeing me naked. Neither sounds too good to me. Then again maybe the reason some of my co-workers have stayed on so long is they know intimate details about the bosses that are best left unknown to the world at large and have leveraged this for lifetime easy-going employment. Maybe they have photos. That would explain a lot.

Sailing the Apprentice Ship

After going to sleep at the end of NBC’s reality show “The Apprentice” I had this dream:
I was the “Project Manager” of the week and expected to lead my team to victory or face the board room, the Donald and the possibility of hearing the words “You’re Fired!”. Instead of the usual instructions for the weekly assignment I was handed a note in blue ballpoint on glossy paper. I couldn’t make out what it said. “Is this the Donald’s handwriting?” I thought out loud. “What is this? Is this some kind of test?” Meanwhile my team was getting anxious.
“What’s the task? What are we supposed to do?” they all asked.
Omarosa was starting to circle. “My god, you can’t even figure out what the task is?” she moaned.
I was starting to get nervous. Then I decided to forget about the game and just handle it like a problem in real life. “I want everyone to take a look at this and tell me what it says,” I exclaimed. “I can’t make anything of it. Omarosa, you first.”
She took the paper but hesitated. “The sweat from your hands has SMEARED the ink! How can I be expected to read it now, Project Manager?”
“Pass it around,” I replied calmly. The others took turns reading but couldn’t understand it either. “Well, then I’m going to ask Mr. Trump” I calmly stated. “Are you out of your mind!” exclaimed Omarosa. “We will look like fools!” “We’re bigger fools if we do nothing. No great thing was ever achieved without risk of losing one’s life or of looking foolish.” I marched to the Donald’s office alone. When I told his assistant why I wanted to see him she handed me an envelope with the real, typewritten instructions. It had been a test.
The dream pretty much ended there but I assume that the other team either never asked or came much later to ask and we ended up winning handedly. Or maybe if I had been reading Kafka recently, the new instructions were also incomprehensible and I kept going back and kept be handed new envelopes filled with instructions I could never understand.

What good is a preposition to end a sentence up with for?

I came across a sentence in the book I'm reading Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian that makes great use of ending a sentence with prepositions.
The sentence ends "...to pass him yonder book, which would answer admirably for them to read to out of from."
Four brilliant prepositions in a row. If you're going to break the rules, rob Fort Knox.
According to an old Guinness Book of World Records the sentence in English with the most final prepositions comes in the following paragraph:
"In an effort to coerce his young son to bed, a dedicated father told the boy to go upstairs, to his bedroom, promising him to follow shortly with a book. The father would then read to his son in bed. When his father arrived, with his son's least favorite book, one about Australia, the boy said: 'What did you bring that book, that I don't want to be read to from out of about Down Under up for?'. "
But in this case Down Under is acting as a proper noun not propositionally and without the phrase "about Down Under" there are only five prepositions left. Interesting that both sentences deal with books.
We have five prepositions. Do I hear six? Anyone?

The Mice in the Hall

I noticed today that I could play the theme song for "The Kids in the Hall" with the scroll wheel of my mouse.
In a related story I have always felt that the plural for the mouse used on a computer should be "mouses" not mice. Although I have adopted "mouses" into my everyday lexicon or at least whenever the situation arises it has been slow to catch on.

How Much Ground Would a Groundhog Hog if a Groundhog Could Hog Ground?

or
How much hog has groundhog ground when a groundhog has ground pork?
If you see your shadow, run!
Happy Groundhog Day.

Sauer Grapes

I am two weeks into a four week long recipe for sauerkraut and it doesn't look promising. But I've learned with unfamiliar recipes to just wait it out and let things go as described. Changes can happen down the road that set things right.
I am not too hopeful though. Sauerkraut in itself consists of two ingredients, cabbage and salt. In searching for comparative recipes online I came across many whose first ingredient was sauerkraut. Those were things like choucroute or sauerkraut flavored with bacon or juniper berries. When I first researched the dish I found only one that told how to make the fermented cabbage itself.
Shred cabbage. Add salt. Put it glass container and press down with a plate topped with heavy cans. Store in refrigerator. Wait four weeks.
The first problem with this recipe is first word. Shredding cabbage makes cabbage suitable for coleslaw not kraut. Slicing the cabbage is the way to go.
After two weeks most of the cabbage looks the same with its pale green color. Only the very top layer has begun to get that faded hay hue. But that looks dry and a bit amiss. I'll let it go and see what another two weeks brings to it.
I have since found another recipe from some farmers coop that talks about the proper temperature for creating sauerkraut and pickles. The refrigerator may be too cold and the kraut may not ferment. I may have to try a batch stored in the pantry.