Our Piper Heidsieck who art in Kevin

Blogger announces Hindi transliteration? The hell? I'm just not down with that. Sorry.

What I am down with right now is some tasty Piper Heidsieck that I'm enjoying with my spouse before checking out on this final day of 2007.

At the time of this writing it's just a little before 10:30, which means the missuz and I will be retiring a good hour and a half before midnight. Oh well. I'm old and fat and can't stay up as late as I used to, nor can I remember the last time I was up at midnight on New Year's Eve. Call it Jungenheimer's Disease. I don't care.

What?

Actually I do remember that New Year's Eve that I was up at midnight. My wife and I were in the emergency room at the Naples Community Hospital in Naples, FL because she had ingested nuts . She's allergic to almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, basically all nuts other than peanuts -- they're not really a nut -- kinda like a fauxnad. She's not allergic to that either.

Oh yeh!

There is little sadder than some overworked orderlies counting down the last seconds of the year before they start their twelfth hour of a fourteen-hour shift. Even the noisemaker I heard that night sounded weak. No New Year's Rockin' Eve in the ward less traveled, let me tell you.

Anyway, I've made my resolutions and have found peace with the poured so I won't be long.

If you've stumbled my way in the year 2007, close out your browser, find someone to kiss and enjoy the final moments of the year. If you've found me on the first day of 2008, let me congratulate you on having pried yourself off that toilet and found your way to the site that's home of champagne wishes and White Trash caviar dreams. Indeed there will be a recipe for my sister-in-law's White Trash Caviar, but I'm just not up to it right now.

Did I mention that I'm old and fat? And it's after ten.

Happy New Year.

Insomnial musings

Earlier today I was dead tired and couldn't wait for my daughter to lie down for a nap so I could do the same. Unfortunately our evil cat (his picture on mycathatesyou.com) foiled that plan by constantly trying to either curl up on my neck or, after I attempted to avoid him all together by pulling the covers up over my head, wriggle his way under said covers to stick his nose in my ear. Most annoying.

Now for whatever reason it's 11 o'clock at night and I can't sleep. Funnily enough my wife doesn't respond positively when I roll over and whisper in her ear all the random thoughts that I'm having when I can't sleep, so I'll just humor you with them. Lean closer.

Closer still.

I make no promises as to any rhyme or reason to all this. These are truly just some things I was thinking of as I was lying in bed.

First a quick thanks to my sister-in-law and mother, both of whom took pity on my feet after reading my blog and gave me foot scrub and gel socks respectively for Christmas. The scrub is nice because it doesn't have a girly smell, and the gel socks rock because when I walk around with them on I feel like I'm stepping in goo only its a good feeling goo. Plus, the socks aren't made to cover your entire foot, just the heel and around your ankle. In spite of the fact that my toddler referred to them as tights when she saw me putting these on, they really are a unisex item. They're a bit macho in fact. Kinda like that super hero who wore the wrist bracelets. Who was that? Oh yeh, Wonder Woman. Well, never mind. They're not really like those bracelets. They're way cooler.

In the meantime, I've thrown away the foot shaver not because I won't ever use it again but because my old one's rusted. I'll probably use some Christmas monies to go get another one. Even as hardcore as I am, I won't bring myself to use rusted gear.

I had a most bizarre dream last night. In it I was supposed to go meet someone I used to know about a real estate deal. This particular someone died almost ten years ago, which incidentally was long before I started doing real estate. I wasn't sure where the house was and I was driving through this neighborhood at night and couldn't see the houses very well. I finally came across a 70s looking split-level with wooden stairs leading up to the front porch. I knew this was the house because a blown up copy of the picture I used for my business card (it's on the Flickr badge on the right side of the page) was hanging on the mailbox.

When I got in, the guy wasn't there but his roommate was. The roommate was a kid who lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. These two people most likely wouldn't have known each other in real life, but in my dream, which ended rather abruptly, they were roommates. Just weird.

On a somber note, it just occurred to me while I was typing this out that while I do know for certain of only one person who died since I got into real estate five or so years ago, there is likely at least one other if not two or even three people I worked with who may have also died. One person I'm thinking of was terminally ill at the time I met with her and her husband to talk about selling their home, and the other two were an elderly couple. When I say elderly I mean elderly as in he was 87 and she was 93. Whenever I stopped in to visit with them the ninety-three-year-old woman would refer to me as her ray of sunshine. On two occasions the husband fell asleep while I was over there chatting with them. Not really surprising I guess, huh?

My wife and I enjoyed a movie from Netflix this evening which we watched in bed on the laptop. The movie was Flannel Pajamas and it got very mixed reviews from other viewers so I didn't know what to expect. I really liked the film but my wife wasn't at all crazy about it.

Netflix allows you to rate movies you've seen with anywhere from one to five stars. This movie had an average customer rating of 2.6 stars but of "viewers like me" it got 3.5. That Netflix keeps a profile of me that is detailed to the extent that they feel they can compare me to strangers is a little bit creepy and often I find the "viewers like you" ratings are way off base, but in this case I agreed. In fact, I'd give the movie four stars.

I do face a small dilemma though because my wife most likely would have given the movie only two or maybe even just one star. Since she and I generally watch movies together part of me feels like I should give the movie a crappy rating, or at the very least compromise and rate it three stars. In all honesty though, I'm not likely to do either of those things. I'll probably give it the four stars I think it deserves. That's what I usually do. If I write a review of it though, I'll make note of the fact that my wife thought it sucked.

On a side note, of all the 1311 movies I've rated with Netflix I've only given 131 five out of five stars. That's perfectly ten percent. Weird huh? That it's exactly ten percent I mean. Weird kinda like that dream I mentioned earlier.

Here are a few of my favorite five-star movies to add to your rental list:

Little Children
The Mudge Boy
The Corndog Man
Hard Candy
Everything is Illuminated
The Chumscrubber
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Fat Girl
Dummy
The Station Agent

Some of those are funny; some are dark; some are more mood pieces. A good portion of them my wife would think are crap. But I don't feel guilty because also rated five stars in our cue is Sex in the City: Season 4. Whaaaaatttt? It was a good show and all, but five stars?

Miranda was my favorite character, but I was disappointed when the actress who played her came out of the closet. Same goes for Jodie Foster. The fantasy was just ruined. I guess I still have a chance with Sarah Jessica Parker though.

Really, what's with those three-name celebrities? Anthony Michael Hall? Edward James Olmos? Nat King Cole? Julia Louis Dreyfuss? Please, celebrities, pick two names and stick with them. Unless the name has Spears in it. Then just please do us all a favor and fade away.

In the last three weeks, a 16-year-old coattail riding celebrity gets knocked up by her nineteen-year-old boyfriend and the first woman elected to lead a Muslim nation state was murdered. Which one of these two women will the American public remember two weeks from today?

We did not put up a Christmas tree this year because we feared fragile ornaments and hooks would be too tempting for a toddler. My wife did a great arrangement of some Christmas things on the mantle though and we also have an indoor-outdoor resin cast of Buddha that we like to put a Santa hat on this time of year. We're not Buddhists or anything, not that it should matter to you. I just happened to see the thing at Target one day and thought it'd look cool in our living room. Santa Buddha comin' down the chimbley tonight.

Other religious articles we have in our home are a replica of the infant Jesus of Prague, a novena of same and a lunch box with Gonesh on it.

Oh yeh, and the Sesame Street Giggle and Go Garage.

Resolutions for the next solar revolution

I foster enough guilt throughout my daily life without piling on the self loathing that comes from not having achieved hastily made resolutions for a new year, but since tradition dictates such behavior, and frankly, last year I made so such undertakings and have come to regret the decision, I’ll humble you the reader with a few promises I have made to myself for the upcoming 2008.

Please note that these are not decisions I’ve made to you per se. As such these are not things to be thrown back in my face when, if again I am struck by tradition, I choose to forego these pursuits because other more pressing responsibilities take priority (other responsibilities may include but are not limited to: husbandry, fatherhood, and la joie de vivre.) I am but one man and am at times stretched thin by the multiple and sometimes contending roles that I play throughout my life so I can’t promise to anyone including myself that I will respect any of these declarations for any longer than perhaps – oh, I don’t know – let’s just say the night of January 16^th.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I want more than anything to do a better job of telling those around me how much better my life is because of them. That’s resolution numero uno, say thanks to people who rightly deserve it. While I fancy myself a very thankful person, I don’t do a sufficient job of telling those to whom I’m thankful that I’m thankful. Family and friends alone account for the majority of my gratitude and yet while I am quick to tell my spouse at the end of the day how someone in our social circle helped make my life better, I seldom tell that particular person. That’s wrong. Our being thankful falls on deaf ears if we don’t tell the people for whom we’re thankful that we’re thankful. On the other hand, if we tell them we’re thankful, they’re more likely to continue to do our bidding. And isn’t that what life’s all about?

I’m not schmaltzy, I’m not syrupy, and I’m not generally the type people would refer to as sentimental, but what if everyone who read this blog entry took it upon themselves to stop and say thanks to someone -- one person, mind you -- who makes life on Planet Earth just a little bit more tolerable? I’m not saying to do it. I don’t care if you do or if you don’t. I’m just asking that you contemplate what goodness would come about if you were to take the time to express gratitude to someone who deserves it. Again, my life does not revolve around your expression of gratitude. I’m just throwing that out there for all of cyberdom.

Another undertaking I need to look into is doing a better job of watching what I eat. While I’m not at my fattest, I’m certainly not at my thinnest, but more pressing is the fact that I’m approaching the age when calories (especially the empty variety found in wine) aren’t burned as quickly and tend to hang around in the body for longer periods of time until they can be joined by more of their friends and come together to make fat. I remember the days when I could sit and down worthless foodstuffs by the metric butt load with little repercussion, but those days are long gone. The times they are a-changin’.

Just as my waistline seems to fluctuate back and forth between too much and way too much, so goes my spending money from comfortably cush to a small fraction of my average daily balance if you catch my drift. While I’ve struggled at times, I’ve never been destitute. Likewise there have been times when financially I was sitting pretty. But it’s always been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. You’d think by 35 I would have learned to spend and save more stably but for whatever reason I’ve always laughed in the face of moderation like a former Buddhist monk with a dishonorable discharge. Dining out is both a money pit and a calorie pit, so if I can curb that one, I’ll be in good shape.

You know, I’ve never made resolutions before, so I’m not quite sure how it’s done. Am I supposed to come up with several pages of resolutions or are these three enough? It seems to me like the more I come up with the harder a time I would have keeping track of them and the more likely I’d be to let them each fall to the wayside, so maybe I should just stick with these three. Yeh, I’m gonna just stick with these three.

And another thing, I know that the first day of Qwahhhnzuh (I always opt for the more traditional spelling) isn’t generally when people make resolutions for the New Year but when it comes to self improvement what good does it do for us to limit ourselves to the Gregorian calendar? What does a sixteenth century pope know about my hectic schedule anyway? I give that a gyahh and an oh brother!

Merry Crimmas

Time is a precious thing on a day that demands traveling over the meadow and through the woods to both parents and in-laws with a dog, new tube of badly needed foot scrub and ample amounts of stuff in tow, so I'll make this brief. Merry Christmas to all including those who have not yet accepted Santa as their lord and savior. My yuletide celebration is only half over and already it's been wonderful. The only thing that beats celebrating Christmas at the parents' is Christmas as a parent. Meryl, thanks to you and your mom for making Dad's Christmas incredibly merry and bright. To everyone else, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

What became of Grandpa George?

Last night around four in the morning, I awoke from some weird dreams in which I went to bed with several of our friends. I don't mean I had sex with them (if you're a friend reading, sorry for the suggested visualization.) I mean sort of like a camping trip or a slumber party or something, Elaine and I crawled into bed with some of our friends and went to sleep. The friend next to me was wearing a frumpy nightgown. Weird.

Anyway, the first image that popped into my head of several people in the same bed was from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie's grandparents are all bedridden in the living room of their humble pauper's apartment. Actually all the grandparents weren't in the same bed. One set of grandparents slept in one tiny bed as I recall and the other slept in another. These people ate cabbage stew for dinner. It's not like they had a Wamsutta king size or knew their sleep numbers or anything.

There was Grandpa Joe of course, who ends up going to the chocolate factory with Charlie, and Grandpa Joe's wife was Grandma Josephine. I don't know for certain, but something tells me these were Charlie's mom's parents. Then there was Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Likewise I think these were Charlie's dad's parents though I'm not sure. It's been forever since I've seen the movie and, as best as I can remember, it doesn't really go into a lot of backstory about Charlie's life.

Did Grandpa George ever have any lines? I know it's an odd question and all, but this is what I laid awake trying to remember. Did Grandpa George . . . have any lines? I honestly can't remember if he did or not, and while I did manage to eventually fall asleep without resolving the issue, the question still weighs on my mind. Was it a speaking role? Or did he simply lie there in the bed and just re-act to the other actors?

Aside from Grandpa Joe who we see in almost the whole movie, I don't think we see the grandparents except in a couple of scenes, do we? Let's see -- there's that scene where Charlie gets home from school, then there's that scene where the old folks are listening in on the wireless and hear that all the golden tickets have been found and then there's that scene where Charlie comes bounding in like his mom forgot to give him his hyper medicine or something saying he found the last golden ticket and that it's not bootleg. If there were lines written for Grandpa George it would have likely been during one of these last two scenes I think.

The Internet Movie Database claims that the role was played by Ernst Ziegler and that sadly it was his last role before dying of emphysema in 1974. Sadder still is that his name apparently didn't even appear in the credits of the film. He doesn't have much of a rap sheet with IMDB either so he'll likely best be known to most for his roles in such gems as The Naked Countess and Naughty Knickers, both German movies that came out in 1971 and 1970 respectively.

It really only just dawned on me that of all the things I could lay awake thinking about (predeterminism vs. free will, life on other planets, Cousin Oliver's disappearance from The Brady Bunch) whether an uncredited actor had any lines or not in a film is probably one of the most obscure. But did he have any lines? I don't know that I'm going to clog up my Netflix queue with some 1970s dwarfsploitation to find out, so someone is just going to have to tell me.

Besides, those Oompa Loompas? A little on the scary side.

Too much stuff

For the most part, I do not find happiness in stuff. Sure, I own things that bring me pleasure. I just don't like stuff for stuff's sake. I think that stuff equals stress. The more stuff you have; the more stressful your life becomes.

Think about it. If you have a lot of stuff, you then have to find a place to put the stuff. If you have too much, you have to step around the stuff. When people come over you have to say to them Careful, don't break my stuff. The momentary happiness that comes when acquiring new stuff quickly fades when it is overtaken by the desire to have yet more stuff. And there is always more stuff to be had.

I hold these truths to be self-evident regardless of the season but Yuletide seems to always be the time of year when I think about them most. Some people give gifts at Christmas; others just give presents. To me a gift is something the receiver wants or at least likes once he has it whereas a present is merely something the giver wants to give. He just presents it. Really, I don't think the giver wants to give it so much as he feels like he has to give it.

Here ya go! Here's some stuff. Not sure if you really want the stuff or not, but now I can check your name off the list of people I gotta get stuff for. Thanks for alleviating my guilt by receiving this stuff.

I know there are some people out there who love stuff. They simply adore stuff. When asked what they want for Christmas they'll reply with a big grin More stuff please! Many feel the one with the most toys wins and no amount of stuff is good enough if you can point to someone who has newer, better or just more stuff than you. Let the stuff race begin!

Another thing that gripes me is this rampant commercialism in the air this time of year. So many people suffer from C.C.S. or Constant Consumer Syndrome. It's not just adults. It's kids too.

In my late teens I worked at a major toy store chain over three Christmas seasons. During that time I saw holiday consumerism at its most evident. The mania usually starts with some craptacular television commercial advertising a toy that's equally lame. Because the kids depicted in the commercial smile like they've just been given a lifetime supply of kiddie crack, child viewers think they simply must have the product in order to go on living. They convey this misthought to their parents who further validate the falsehood by vying to secure the item for their kid.

On more than one occasion I saw a parent who was driven to tears because they were faced with not being able to provide for their kid the latest fad toy. Can you imagine a grown man crying because he can't get his hands on a Tickle-Me Elmo or a Cabbage Patch or a Baby-Poops-Herself doll. I've seen it, and it ain't pretty.

I kid you not when I say that one December I received a phone call from a woman who said to me Where are the Baby Oopsie Daisies? I know you people have them hidden in that store somewhere. Where are they? You should have heard the venom in this woman's voice. She didn't even preface with hello. What's more, Baby Oopsie Daisy was a piece of crap. Most of them got returned defective by the end of January.

Teddy Ruxpin was another holiday ripoff. Remember him? He came out back when parents first started relying on animatronics to read to their children. His price tag fell from $99 to $25 within a year. Why? Because when it came time for storytime, Teddy Ruxpin, that late-80s reason for the season, failed to deliver. He looked good in the commercial though.

I am not a Negative Nelson. I do enjoy receiving gifts, and I enjoy giving gifts even more. I just have a few cardinal rules when it comes to spreading the Christmas cheer via brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my most pertinent things:

Generally speaking, I feel uncomfortable telling someone what I want for Christmas. If I want something for myself I buy it. If I don't buy something I want, it's because I can't afford to buy it, and if I can't afford to buy it, I really don't feel comfortable asking you to buy it for me.

Often I think the most prized gifts are those where the giver said at the time I just thought of you when I saw it in the store. These aren't things a person would pick out for himself, but they hold meaning because whenever the receiver looks at them, he knows someone thought of him when they were purchased. Clothes often fall into this category. For this reason, I seldom return gifts unless they happen to be the wrong size. For me, cashing in a gift to get something else takes away from the joy of receiving it.

I am fortunate in that I was born into a family of great gift givers and later married into a family of great gift givers. If you are reading this and are from either of these families, please keep the gifts coming. If you are not related to me and are reading this blog (by the way, I think you people now number into the high single digits) cash is always welcome. I like to invest in coal this time of year.

For another view on stuff, click here. I found that after googling "more stuff."

Kevin' Bootleg Peppermint Patties

When I first blended belongings with the woman who is now my wife, I found myself surrounded by new kitchen toys I had never before played with. I'm talking about a vegetable peeler, an apple corer, a basting brush, a nice mixer, a cheese grater, parchment paper, and cutting boards just to name a few. In return she got a collection of 1980s Smurf figurines and a tattered chair from Rooms to Go. Isn't cohabitation grand?

With all these new accouterments I took to baking. I especially enjoy making cookies or cakes or pies or brownies or any other confection that I can polish off while sitting on the couch and watching the Tyra show. Just kidding. I hate that show, but I could maybe turn the sound down and still eat the cookies. She is kinda hot. And Kevvie Monster loves cookies.

My mother made candy when I was growing up, but for the most part my family was not a baking family. I do recall my sister baking once when she was about six. Of course, this would have been when she made a yellow cake in her EasyBake oven, which incidentally ran off a regular light bulb as best as I can remember. I think she was nine by the time it was finished cooking.

Yesterday I popped into my parents' house to see if they had any Crisco. When I told them I found a recipe on joyofbaking.com for peppermint patties, my father said, "Why don't you just go out and buy a bag?" Whatever. That's like telling somebody who likes to fish Why don't you just run out to the Kroger and pick up some fillets? Clearly my father did not know the joy of baking.

My mother thought for a second and then said, "We have some, but it might be kinda old."

"Like how old?" I asked.

"Well, remember when your sister had that EasyBake oven?" she said.

Anyway, I trekked to Kroger to get a new can of Crisco.

I have mixed success with recipes I get off the internet. All too often I find a recipe that for the necessary ingredients might list only flour, eggs, sugar and butter and then go on to say in the directions Now gradually fold in the creme fraiche and the pumpkin puree. Where do these mystery ingredients come from?

Other times the person submitting the recipe has the math skills of a three-year-old. If the recipe calls for one cup of sugar, the directions will say to use half the sugar for the dough, half for the filling and then sprinkle the remaining three tablespoons over the dessert before putting it in the oven. Unfortunately I never discover these discrepancies until I'm elbow-deep in flour and egg white so I spend the next hour trying to look up alternative formulas on the internet to figure out what the correct ingredients and proportions are. Very frustrated.

Also sometimes people who upload recipes to the internet do so hoping when you read the ingredients you'll be impressed with the contents of their pantry. If you've ever pulled up recipes online you know what I'm talking about. Knowing full well you don't keep this stuff in your kitchen, they'll list obscure ingredients just hoping you'll run out to a specialty store and buy them. I'm not going to drive out of my way and spend half my paycheck so I can get olallieberry extract or flaxseed paste, much less ask the guy at the meat counter if he can special order for me some eye of newt. That's just plain dumb.

Another problem I face when making food -- something I have no one but myself to blame for -- is that I either toss the recipe or file it away in some place I can never find it. My wife is good about keeping track of what cookbook a particular recipe is in or where she wrote it down on a recipe card. I'm just not good at that, so I've decided when I make something that tastes half-way decent I'm going to post it here. I don't care if you make it, but this way it'll be easy for me to find the secret formula when it comes time to whip up another confection.

So to start, here's my doctored up recipe for the joyofbaking.com's peppermint patties. I call them Kevin's Bootleg Peppermint Patties. Let it be said that I fully believe you should never follow a recipe exactly as it's written, so in the event you do make these, don't be afraid to substitute ingredients, use different amounts of something or whatever.

You need:

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons soft butter (salted or un- doesn't matter)

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract (the joyofbaking recipe says you should use peppermint oil instead but readily admits that it can't be found in a grocery store -- Again, no thank you pretentious ingredients.)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons evaporated milk (if you don't have it, just simmer two cups milk over low heat until it reduces to one cup and use three tablespoons of that.)

a 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate (or dark or milk or bitter or whatever)

one tablespoon of shortening

Mix together the powdered sugar, the butter, the vanilla extract, the peppermint extract and the evaporated milk until it forms a moist sticky dough. If it seems too moist to work with, chill it in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Line a cookie sheet (or two) with parchment paper. Again, if you don't have parchment just use aluminum foil, wax paper or the Sports section.

Now pinch off small balls the size of a marble and lay them out on the cookie sheet. I think in my best batch I fit about 60 of those buggers on there. Next flatten them so they're about the same circumference and thickness as two quarters stacked on top of each other. Put these in the freezer to chill for an hour or so.

Melt the chocolate and shortening in a double boiler over low to medium heat. If you're the type that likes to live on the edge, you can melt chocolate in a microwave but I don't advise you put it in there for more than twenty seconds at a time before stirring. Once you burn chocolate the entire batch of it is ruined.

Retrieve the flattened peppermint balls from the freezer and dip them individually into the chocolate making sure they're coated. Use forks to lift them out and put them back on the parchment-lined cookie sheet. Put them back in the freezer for thirty minutes or so to get them to harden and then dip them again in the chocolate. Then put them back in the fridge to set.

These candies freeze well or you can keep them in the fridge. My wife liked them just left out at room temperature.

I joked earlier about eating a whole batch of something during the Tyra show, but if you don't watch it, these could easily be gone by the first commercial break.

Enjoy.

Food allergies for thought

I am not one to adopt causes and then try and convince others to hop on my band wagon. I especially despise these ax-grinding awareness ribbons that are still littering people's bumpers. For the most part, I prefer to stay unaware. That having been said, I just came across and left a comment in response to a blog post dealing with food allergies, something my family deals with, and thought I'd share. I won't preach. This blogger says it better than I could. Just click if you care. If not, I'll be back to my regularly scheduled banter shortly.

http://www.gnmparents.com/food-allergies-are-serious-business/

Attack of the foot shaver

I am slowly recovering from an injury I sustained last week. I have been limping since the day after Thanksgiving because I managed to wound myself with a foot shaver. Twice. Dangerous things, those foot shavers.

If you've never seen one they work kinda like a vegetable peeler only for the soles of your feet. Ideally they're to be used to remove dead skin cells from around the heel or big toe or wherever else extra poundage and footwear friction have turned soft skin into alligator scales. The trouble is that because the tool is basically a razor blade on a stick, one wrong move and otherwise happy feet soon become butchered bloody feet.

I use the foot shaver often. My wife thinks I am addicted to it. I'm not though. I could quit at any time. Besides I have to foot shave in order to maintain my personally groomed existence. And this just isn't a good time to stop foot shaving. Not to mention I'm a funnier person when I foot shave. If she really wanted me to stop she'd throw it away and not leave it there in the soap dish. Such the enabler.

When I first bought the device I was briefly admonished by the saleslady at the beauty supply store. Notice it's called the beauty supply store and not the addiction supply store.

"Do you use that on your feet?" the woman asked with a scolding look, her eyes peering out over the rims of her eyeglasses.

"Yes."

"You know that's very bad for your feet, don't you?"

"Is it?"

"All you're doing is creating scar tissue on your feet every time you use it," she said.

"What do you recommend then?" I asked.

With this she smiled and went to try and find the products on the shelf she deemed appropriate for my feet as she explained each one. "You should start out with a foot moisturizer, " she said, "and then use a pumice stone and then finish with a foot buffer."

After she couldn't find the foot buffer she claimed they were out of them and told me that I should come back in a week. Frankly, the moisturizer alone cost more than I wanted to spend, and besides, her prescription didn't look like it would have done the job. Snaky saleslady always trying to upsell to the unwitting customer.

I wanted to ask her who she took me for. I'm not some queenie metrosexual type. I don't do moisturizers or even buffers for that matter. I want something just short of a weapon. Part of me wanted to tell her I'm hard core lady. There are things about me you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand. Instead I just asked her to ring me up so I could get out of the beauty supply store before someone I knew walked in and saw me. The woman reluctantly sold me the shaver and blades.

Once outside I couldn't wait to break out my new gear. How strange would it be, I wondered, if I were to take my shoes off once I got to the car and get started? Nah, that nosy saleslady might spy on me through the store window and come harangue me on the appropriate techniques of proper foot grooming. Like she knows anything.

I could always drive around the back of the strip mall and hide out behind a dumpster and footshave. It wouldn't take me long to get a few good strokes in, I thought. Then again, that same buzzkill might step out back for a smoke break or something and catch me foot shaving. You know she probably smokes. Stupid gateway druggies. Come back in a week, my ass. That was probably just some trick to get me to come to one of her dumb meetings.

So I waited until I got home. That's how come I know I'm not addicted because I could wait until I got home. You see, I'm in control of my foot shaving.

Oddly enough, I never cared about what the bottoms of my feet looked like until I went through chemotherapy. One of the side effects of something they pumped into me was that the soles of my feet became extra soft. I don't know if it was one of the drugs I got or simply because of the amount of saline solution they put into me. I swear, when you undergo chemotherapy, they pump you so full of saline solution that you feel like getting Bausch and Lomb tattooed across your chest. For some people the extra soft feet are a hindrance. In extreme cases it hurts to walk or even put on shoes. Personally, I just basked in knowing my feet were baby smooth. Unfortunately, once the hair on my head grew back, so did the callouses on my feet.

Since that time, I've always yearned to have those same soft feet back. So now I foot shave. Is that so bad? It doesn't affect anyone but me.

I was first turned on to it by some woman in a nail salon that gave me a pedicure. Yeh, I've had a pedicure. So what! For twenty dollars it's the most socially acceptable way for a married man to peer down at the cleavage of a total stranger for ten minutes. Anyway, it was she who first taught me the steps to foot shaving. Turns out there are twelve of them. No correlation though. There just happen to be twelve steps.

Step one is soaking your feet. The second step is making sure you have a fresh clean blade on the foot shaver. That's important otherwise you end up with bloody butchered feet. Step three was . . . well, come to think of it I never did quite catch the last nine steps. The nail tech's English wasn't all that good. Come to think of it neither was her cleavage.

Regardless I now have two wounds on the heel of my right foot. Sadly one is on the right while the other is on the left, so I can't walk on one side of my arch and maintain a semi-normal gait. Instead I have to raise up and walk on the balls of my right foot and put my left foot firmly on the ground. I guess I could walk on the balls of both feet in order to stay parallel but then instead of hobbling I'd just be mincing. Which is worse?

In case you didn't know, the heel of your foot bleeds like a stuck pig. After I cut myself, I had to hop one legged around the house to fetch a couple of Band-Aids, leaving a trail of crimson dots on the tile floor. When I quickly bled through those I replaced them with more Band-Aids. I eventually put on a sock over them but it too soon became blood stained. Yuck.

The blood did stop after I covered it with enough Band-Aids and raised my foot above my chest. Like I said, I'm on the mend now. I'm fine. I know what some of you are thinking though. I can just hear it. You were lucky this time, Kevin. You've got to stop doing this to yourself. Find help. Don't wait to check off all the boxes.

Yeh yeh, blah blah blah . . . You people don't know me . . . You don't know how hard my life is right now . . . All I want is . . . a little something to keep my . . . feet . . . smooth at the end of the day . . . What's so wrong about that? Whatevah, whatevah . . . I do what I want.

Ouch!

Great, now it's my left heel.

Dining out with a baby

Meryl shows us how to use a lemon wedge as a utensil:














Meryl poses mid-dip for the camera:














Mmm, Mexican cheese dip!!!

Commodore 64, my old friend

Have you ever thought about how much we use the innerweb, a modern technological tool, for satiating our hunger for nostalgia? You really need not click much further before you stumble onto sites that allow you to find a lost love, look up information on childhood tv shows, or even listen to your favorite song dating back to 8th grade year. Aside from corresponding with family, catching up on news stories, and ridding my inbox of pleas from financially displaced Nigerians, I spend a lot of my online time looking for information on people or things that were around long before there ever was an internet.

My recent walk down memory lane led me back to that old chestnut, the Commodore 64.

My first real introduction to personal computing came at a time when War Games was showing on HBO and Hall and Oates' Private Eyes was playing on Atlanta's Top 40 radio station, Power 99. Ronald Reagan was president, and the Tonight Show starred Johnny Carson. I knew people who greased up Rubik's Cubes with Vaseline in order to more quickly come up with the solution. Sadly, Ronald Reagan , Johnny Carson and Power 99 are now dead. The Rubik's Cube still lives on thanks to some partnered marketing between Target stores and Dustin Hoffman's expected box office flop, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a.k.a. Willy Ishtar and the Toy Factory. We still got Vaseline too. I was 12 years old at the time. The year was 1984. How Orwellian!

While my family boasted a personal computer at this time, we wouldn't get an actual monitor for another two or three years. In the meantime, our Commodore was hooked up to an old black and white television set. A disk drive was another luxury we did without, instead making do with a tape drive that used standard audio cassettes to store data. Often I'd wait for almost an hour for a program to fully load from one of those tapes. Sometimes it worked; other times my patience was rewarded with that daunting message LOAD ERROR followed by a READY prompt and a blinking cursor. In other words, no program.

Each month we got a copy of Compute's Gazette and it was from the back pages of one issue that I ordered my first modem. 300 baud and that was big time back in the day, kids. With a modem the Commodore 64 served as a portal into the world beyond where you could find bootlegged software, MIDI music and my first introduction to cyber pr0n, much of which consisted of naughty pictures made up of ASCII characters. Mind you, this was back in the day before we had cool terms like pr0n or even cyber for that matter.

BBS's (or bulletin board services for those not in the know) were community run. Some guy who was geekier and more computer savvy than you dedicated one of his terminals to man the calls coming in from people throughout the area. Members exchanged messages, programs and text files. Because it tied up the phone line, the middle of the night was the best time to log on. I dreaded call waiting because an incoming call would bump you off right in the middle of a huge file transfer.

Fast forward to modern times and the innerweb is riddled with sites dedicated to everything dealing with the Commodore, from the synthetic tinny music it produced to the pixellated pictures featured in the most popular games. Some people still have one of the old terminals around and use it to run a model train layout or operate an amateur radio. You can even download an emulator that turns your bells and whistles Y2K compliant machine into a replica of a Commodore 64.

Careful with this last one though. This isn't the first time I've fallen prey to the Commodore 64 nostalgia, and the last time I took a stroll down this stretch of memory lane, I downloaded a similar program onto a work computer that wouldn't terminate. Like something from a Dr. Who episode my IBM classroom computer refused to display anything other than the welcome screen from a Commodore 64. I even tried turning the computer on and off a few times. Same thing. I was stuck in 1984.

I eventually had to confess my misdoings to the technology coordinator who in turn had to get a guy from the county level to come in and fix my computer. The guy who fixed it looked like he was probably too young to have ever seen a Commodore 64. He made the repair in a matter of 20 seconds and I felt stupid. Oh well, I was back to downloading non-work-related software that afternoon.

The Commodore came from a golden age and a quick perusal of eBay shows that for a mere $25 you can get one of the original antiques complete with a disk drive, a modem, a joystick and lots of software to boot. Or for $35 you can get a tshirt that says Commodore 64 whiz kid. I gotta confess that although the Commodore held a fond place in my heart for many years, I wouldn't want to go back to the days of only 64K ram and 38911 basic bytes free whatever that meant. I like my high-speed innerweb and streaming video.

I might get that Commodore 64 whiz kid tshirt though.

Cyber pilgrims seek fashion advice and enlightenment

Every blogger can tell you that one of the simple pleasures to be had when you have a site meter at the bottom of your blog is to click and see how various readers found you on search engines. Because of the way search engines work, a site that contains a lot of text, such as the one you see before you now, might come up as a result of searching on any number of word combinations. Obviously because of the name of my blog, people who search for COCKTAILS along with any other number of words often find their way here, probably to their dismay as I generally do not provide cocktails recipes on my blog. More often though, people come here because they googled something that I have written about only in passing. Again, they're probably a little disappointed because I do not proclaim to be an expert on any of those subjects either and information on those subjects is usually sparse. For that reason, I decided I'd tip my hat to those cyber pilgrims and offer up some 411 on topics about which, according to my site meter, they're hungering for more information.

HOW TO WEAR SWEATPANTS - Indeed someone googled this one in just the time I was typing the above paragraph. I get a lot of these sweatpant requests because I once wrote about running into an ex while I was wearing them. How does one wear sweatpants, you ask? You don't. Unless you're with a bunch of your girlfriends and you're doing each other's nails and throwing pillows and administering magazine quizzes to each other, sweatpants should not be the garment of choice.

SWEAT PANTS IN SPANISH - Chica, please! Putting on even your best pair of sweatpants is no way to become the rose in Spanish Harlem or anywhere else for that matter. No one lives la vida loca in sweats. If you've been invited to a Quinceanera party at least you will certainly not outshine the young debutante if you're sporting even your best polyester fleece blend. If on the other hand you're wondering how to say sweatpants in Spanish, I should hope the Spaniards or their Spanish speaking cousins south of the border don't have a word for them. Somehow I doubt these are all the rage in Barcelona, and I'm also guessing there were no sweatpants at the Alamo.

HOW TO WEAR SWEATPANTS - I know what you're thinking, gentle reader. You suspect these first three are also from the same person. Nope. While they all happened within the same ten-minute interval, one searcher was from Illinois, one from Washington, and one from Oregon. Sadly, there are just that many people out there who want permission to model the elastic waistband outside the privacy of their own home. Just not good.

HAVE A BLESSED DAY WHAT DOES THAT MEAN - I wondered the same thing when I posed the question here. That entry received a new response as recently as yesterday evening when someone chimed in with their own answer. Sadly they used that opportunity not so much as a way of offering up additional information but instead to spew some xenophobic pablum which consisted largely of ethnic slurring and touting their own false and greatly misguided sense of superiority. I found it good for a chuckle though, so don't be afraid to indulge your funny bone by reading the response of someone who likely attends worship service with David Duke and Dog the Bounty Hunter.


CHARTER SUCKS - Admittedly I have on a few occasions written about a company that has pissed me off hoping that other people looking for information on that company will google them, hear my tales of woe and take them into advisement before doing business with the company. Charter Communications is one of these companies. While I've written extensibly about it here, words cannot convey the frustration I repeatedly felt when dealing with Charter. Firing them and hiring AT&T was one of the best consumer decisions I ever made. Whenever I click on my site meter and see that someone found me by searching Charter sucks I do a little jig.


BURGER KING CZECH - To be perfectly honest, I don't know if His Royal Highness is Czechoslovakian or not. The thought never really occurred to me until now. I guess he could be. I was in Prague, they eat hamburgers there too. I regret I can't even pretend to speak with any authority on this matter. If you're wondering whether there are Burger Kings in the Czech Republic, yes, there are. As to what they call a Royale with Cheese, I don't know. I never ate at a Burger King there. Sadly, my wife did snap some pictures of me eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on the Prague subway. At least I didn't have sweatpants on.

WHAT TO WEAR WITH SWEATPANTS - Do you people not get it? A bag over your head. Even then the bag would be the better wardrobe choice.

TRICHOTILLOMANIA - I've actually mentioned this odd a few times on here. It's the desire to pull out one's own hair. I'm always impressed when the people spell it correctly. Good job! In the meantime, call 1-800-DON'T PULL.

POWERFUL COCKTAILS - Like I said, I don't know enough cocktail recipes, powerful or otherwise, to list them on this site. Though when I was an exchange student in France, a fellow Yank I had a crush on suggested we buy a bottle of champagne and head out to a park to imbibe. When that didn't give me the courage I needed, she and I went back to buy a bottle of rum and some Cokes and polish those off. This combination did in fact make me overly courageous, but it also rendered me overly nauseous. Even if you've got your hand up someone's shirt, coming to in a puddle of your own vomit with a semi-circle of gawking Frenchmen looking at you is not the ideal way to broaden your horizons. It was powerful though.

KEVIN - With as broad a search as this yielded and as common a name as Kevin is (34th most common first name in the U.S. according to howmanyofme.com) I was surprised to see my sight come up on page 5 of this AOL search. To whoever did the searching, you're going to have to come up with a little more information for the search engine to go on if you really want to find your one true Kevin. Is it Kevin Bacon, Kevin Costner, Kevin Kubusheskie, or Saint Kevin of Glendalough? So many Kevins.

"RUE MCLANAHAN" DADS - Again, not an expert on this golden girl but I suspect she only had one father. As to the television preview she starred in of the show Dads that never made it on the airwaves, just be glad you haven't seen it. I got a copy in the mail from a research company that wanted me to watch it and answer some questions about the commercials I saw. That show was just plain bad.

RESTAURANTS SERVING THANKSGIVING DINNER IN NORFOLK, VA - Yes, I'm pretty sure they are.

HAD SEX WITH SOMEONE THAT HAD KELOIDS - What do you want? A medal? I once had sex with someone who had dandruff. You don't see me telling everyone on the innerwebs.

FREE MY SOUL GONNA GET LOST IN YOUR ROCK AND ROLL - And drift away, my friend. Drift away.

Clearly though the one that takes the cake is this one:

MY WIFE TEASES MY BECAUSE SHE HAS MUCH MORE PUBIC HAIR THAN I DO.

I can't make this stuff up people.

Further amended as of 11/25/07:
WHO SINGS THE SONG WHERE HE IS DANCING AROUND THE PURPLE ELEPHANT
PHILADELPHIA DERMATOLOGISTS WHO TREAT GENITAL WARTS
ARE BABY WALKERS ILLEGAL IN THE USA
COLLEGE WEAR SWEATPANTS
VENERAL[sic] WARTS
DOES AMOXICILLIN CHANGE YOUR POOP
FLICKR PHOTOS TAGGED WITH ASS GIRLS KLM
WEARING SWEATPANTS THANKSGIVING
PRETEND AND PLAY DOCTOR EXAM ROOM
SALESGIRL PICKED OUT MY PANTIES
COLLEGE CHEERLEADERS PICS SHOWING PUBIC HAIR DURING ROUTINES

Mousetrap: a mystery blog entry in one act

Today I spent a large portion of my day chasing down a mouse, only this wasn't one of those pesky rodents that the cat drags in and drops at your feet. I was looking for the mouse to the computer. We have a wireless optical mouse for the desktop and the table it sits on is just the right height for my daughter to reach up and grab things off of. I know this sounds cute, and I guess it is if you're not the owner of the mouse, but crawling around the house on your hands and knees looking for a pointing device is no way to spend an afternoon.

After rescuing a feisty non-napping Meryl from her crib I went to go check my email. Alas, the mouse was nowhere in sight. I looked under the desk, around it, in the closet next to it and still no mouse. Meryl, who was watching me he whole time, finally said one of the new words in her growing vocabulary.

Mouse.

OK, so she knew what I was looking for, which I assumed to mean she also knew where I could find it. So I asked her, "Meryl, where's the mouse?"

Mouse.

"Yes, Sweetie, the mouse. For Dad's computer? Where is it?"

Mouse? This time she says it with an upward inflection as though she's asking me where it is.

I then proceded to wander throughout the house trying to put myself in the mind of a toddler so as to figure out where she might have deposited it. Because I, myself, am absent minded I soon start to wonder if in fact it was I who removed it from its regular spot. Would I have accidentally picked it up when I was looking for something else maybe? I quickly decided that even as scatter brained as I sometimes am, I'm not the type to have just carried a computer mouse around while doing my household bidness. A real mouse maybe but not a computer mouse.

I resorted to crawling around the floors of various rooms looking under beds and behind couches. All this time Meryl followed close behind taunting me by just saying over and over mouse mouse mouse mouse. I couldn't tell if she was implying that she too was looking for the mouse or if she remembered having the mouse or was she thinking of Goodnight Moon's young mouse in the little toyhouse [sic]? Then another time she quit saying mouse and instead said Chris, apparently claiming the mouse was taken by our termite guy whose name she learned earlier that day when she supervised him as he crawled behind our couch looking for bugs.

Cute as she was, she wasn't being much help. And to top things off this was moments before my wife was due to come home. This time is usually set aside for madly running around the house cleaning slash straightening slash kicking things under the beds and sweeping things under the rugs.

Then I had this fleeting sense of dread. You know that scene in Poltergeist where the parents are looking for little Carol Anne after her disappearance and the mom gets this contorted look on her face just before saying in this eerily quiet panick-stricken voice the swimming pool . . . oh my God . . . she's in the swimming pool ? Then Craig T. Nelson has to dive into that preconstruction mud pit that was to eventually become their pool in order to find his kid. While I wasn't concerned Meryl had fallen into a swimming pool or worse yet that I was going to have to swim around in mud with the skeletal remains of bewildered souls because someone only moved the headstones, I probably did have that same contorted look on my face.

THE POTTY!!! OH MY GOD, SHE THREW IT IN THE POTTY!!!

I dashed to the master bathroom where Meryl generally sits on the potty and I lifted the lid. Nothing but water and a bowl that I probably was supposed to have scrubbed clean before Elaine got home. I looked around the toilet thinking maybe Meryl just dunked the mouse in the potty a few times before throwing it down on the floor the way she likes to do with her rubber ducky, her socks or my toothbrush. Still no mouse.

I checked the other two bathrooms in the house. More toilets to clean but still no mouse. I looked in the shower and the bathtub. I opened bathroom cabinets, pulled open drawers, looked under folded washcloths. Nothing. Finally I gave up because time was running short and there was a bed to be made, dinner to plan for and stuff to sweep under the rug.

Once I checked the cursory house straightening off my list I went back into the room with the computer to check yet again to see if I could find the mouse. Apparently as I was tidying Meryl had taken it upon herself to bang on the keyboard just enough to bring up several blank search windows. Just seeing them made me all the more frustrated. I had no mouse to close them out. A motionless cursor poised in the upper right corner of the screen just sat their adding insult to injury. The screensaver came on but I still knew those unwanted windows were lurking behind it. I briefly tried remembering the ALT-key combinations that would work the various menus on the screen before giving up and just turning the damn thing off.

Elaine arrived home happy to see a smiling baby and the beginnings of Shrimp Scampi laid out on the kitchen counter. I explained to her that Meryl had run off with the mouse and I had looked everywhere for it to no avail. "It'll turn up," she said.

It did.

Elaine found it in Meryl's toy basket that we keep in the living room. I guess I should be happy she's the kind of kid who puts things up when she's through playing with them. She gets that from her mom. As much time as I spend playing on the computer it would make sense that my daughter saw it fit to put the mouse in the toybox. After all, that basket serves as one of my old standbys for an easy place to quickly get rid of something. Oh well.

Shrimp scampi was good. Meryl spent the evening playing and laughing in spite of not having napped. My wife and I enjoyed a good bottle of Australian Outback backseat wine and I can point and click again.

This house. Is clean.

Georgia governor praying for rain?

I had vowed to myself that I would try and make my blog more uplifting from now on and not be such a Negative Nelson. I will revisit that ideal at some time in the near future, but I just can't go without sharing my views on this new hullabaloo going on at the Georgia Capitol building. Governor Sonny Perdue and some other muckety mucks along with a number of bible thumpers who have cashed in their common sense in exchange for piety are gathering together in order to pray for rain. Sadly, I am not making this up.

Many protesters have shown up claiming this is a violation of the First Amendment. I don't know that I buy that either. The governor's not establishing a religion. Whose to say he's not on his lunch break? If he wants to pray, that's no sweat off my back. I just think praying for rain is just plain silly.

If you believe there's a higher power that's all knowing and all powerful, doesn't said higher power already know you wish it would rain without you making a show of it? Furthermore, if the higher power (let's just call it H.P. from now on so as not to offend anyone) changes its mind and causes it to rain simply because a few political clowns down here on earth want it to, is H.P. really all powerful? Sure, H.P. could make it rain and that's a pretty neat and powerful trick, but if his opinion was swayed by Earthling petitioners, that's not evidence of omnipotence. That's evidence to the fact that others have power over H.P. You follow me?

I also am amused at the request in this case. Rain. Let's face it. It's gonna rain here in Georgia someday. We're not sure when. No one knows that. Not even WSB Channel 2 meteorologist David Chandley. But it's gonna rain. Now once it happens Governor Perdue and all his friends can take credit. Can't you just hear them all now?

It rained!
Huzzah!
Thanks to our prayer.
Glory be to Sonny and H.P. and WSB Channel 2 meteorologist David Chandley.

Praying for rain is like praying for nightfall.

Because the conservatives in this country have bedded down with the mindless theocrats, and both Democrats and Republicans often prefer shooting down the other's views as opposed to standing up for their own, I can't help but wonder if this will now become a party issue. Will Democrats encourage us to pray for continued drought simply to oppose their neighbors to the right? Or better yet, will those rebel flag-waving hayseeds crawl out of their doublewides to further share their dismay for a governor who said he'd let them vote on getting the Dukes of Hazzard emblem put back on the state flag and then reneged? They can carry signs that say SONNY LIED! SHOUT FOR DROUGHT!

Will it end up like the opening of a high school football game where two teams are each praying for their own win? Parenthetically, how does H.P. rectify that one? Is it whichever team has the most skilled players? Best looking cheerleaders? What?

This whole pray-for-rain business is just such a bunch of rubbish. Here's an idea: Instead of meeting up at the Capitol to pray for rain, head further up Peachtree St. to the Federal Reserve Bank and just lollygag around the flagpole there a while. When security comes out and asks you what you're doing, tell them you're praying for $20.
In H.P. we trust.

Reading is fundamental

My 18-month-old daughter loves to be read to. This is reason to rejoice of course because it means that instead of turning on the television to entertain her, she brings me books to read , climbing up into my lap while wearing a big smile across her face. Sometimes she likes to be read the same books over and over several times in a row.

If you've not had the occasion to read children's books recently, specifically those geared toward toddlers, I can assure you that there are some old favorites from way back when that still remain. Margaret Wise-Brown must have a cult following with Goodnight Moon. I don't even know if she's still alive but I can assure you the three bears sitting in chairs are. So is the young mouse. Incidentally, where does the author get off making toy house one word as in "a young mouse and a little toyhouse [sic]"? I'm not passing judgment; I just think she should quote a source.

Meryl also is a fan of Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi. Really though, if you're a toddler, what's there not to like about a book that features illustrations of people pooping? Whenever I turn the page to the picture of the man pooping on the potty as he smokes a pipe and reads a newspaper, Meryl points to the picture and says Dada Dada. For the record I don't smoke a pipe.

I love the line that says, "Some poop and pay no attention." According to the picture hippopotamuses are in this category. Who knew?

There are of course other books in my kid's collection that make me cringe when she hands them to me. This may come as a surprise to many, but baby books aren't always what I would classify as page turners. This is especially true for the lift-the-flap books which without fail seem to evolve into rip-the-flap books. The books must be well written for the intended audience though because Meryl continues to bring them to me. I have to confess I'm really getting tired of Karen Katz's Where is Baby's Belly Button?

First of all, does this really qualify as a brainteaser? My kid's not two years old and she knows where her belly button is. She also likes to lift my shirt and show me where mine is. The girl knows her belly buttons. And even if she didn't, reading this book more than once seems like rereading a mystery novel over and over. I don't mean to spoil it for anyone who hasn't yet read the book but it's UNDER HER SHIRT! You find out on the last page if in fact your last page of the book still has a shirt. For us, the shirt is one of the ripped flaps, having been long retired to the trash can.

Where is Baby's Mommy? is by the same author and offers an equally intriguing storyline. When I first saw this book I thought it looked like something you might pick up off the table in the waiting room at the Department of Family and Children's Services. Turns out the baby's mommy hasn't abandoned the baby or anything; she's just playing hide-and-seek. The reader follows baby through several rooms of the house looking for Mommy. Where's Mommy? Behind the plant? No, the ball is behind the plant. Is Mommy in the closet? No, the wagon is in the closet. Yadda yadda yadda. The book has similar looking characters to those you find in Where is Baby's Belly Button? They all have gigantic baby foreheads and look a little like poorly drawn Japanime stills. Yawn.

That being said, Meryl loves it.

Personally I'm still waiting for the Montelesque heart-warming sequel Who is Baby's Daddy?

Now that's one to grown on.

Rome and Tuscany: an outsider's perspective

Still caught up in the last throws of jetlag, wife and I have returned from a ten-day sojourn to the birthplace of Western civilization. When I say Western I don't mean like Bonanza. I mean like people whose ways aren't backward and strange.

Anyway we went to Italy, and as you can possibly imagine, my stories are many. Because I could go on for days about how wonderful the trip was, I'll try and limit myself to only a brief epistle and hit the highlights.

Our journey started with Alitalia. I wanted to like this airline. Really I did, but the cabins were in various stages of disrepair depending on what seat you were in, and the flight attendants were some surly bitches. The women flight attendants weren't any better. At one point I walked back to their secret hiding area behind the curtain to return my meal tray and utensils. One stewardess just looked at me abruptly and said NO before returning her attention to her own piss-poor airline food. Oh well, at least they got us to our destination and then stepped in to help when those lazy Air France people went on strike.

A few days in Rome proved to be a remarkable experience. I'm not normally one for monuments and museums, but this city has relics older than any I'd ever seen. It wasn't out of the ordinary to see modern buildings constructed around two thousand-year-old pillars that still remain. As I stood in the Colosseum gazing out into the arena I thought to myself you're in a building that dates back 30 years after the death of Christ.

Speaking of Rabbi Jesus, I did add yet another country to my list of places that have welcomed me with open arms, namely Vatican City. I opted against going into St. Peter's Basilica as the line was almost as long as the one at the airline ticket counter in the Rome airport thanks to those anti-work numbnuts at Air France (my wife had to wait in line eleven hours).

I did make it into the Vatican museum though. Individual artworks in this place were incredible and even the gardens it overlooks were beautiful, but a travelling friend of mine put it well when he said, "It's no wonder they had a Protestant Reformation." In just fifteen minutes the Vatican museum starts to get a little overwhelming. So much stuff. Too many notes.

In Florence I did little other than pick up a rental car and buy a few clothing items (our suitcase would not arrive for another three days). I did end up going to the large market in the center of town where I had a yummy panini and Coke Zero, or as they say in Italian Coke Zero but that was on the return trip. Florence was an easy train ride up from Rome and made for a great jumping off point for the trip through Tuscany.

Not enough wonderful things could be said about Montestigliano, the site of the restored farm house we stayed in for the bulk of our stay. Same goes for Susan Pennington who, in addition to running the place, went to great lengths to help us retrieve our suitcase from Alitalia. Because she was a native English speaker (the Queen's though; not W's) she was able to share her passion for the area with us and help us drum up some wonderful ways to spend our holiday. If you've stumbled across my innerweb site by googling Montestigliano, please oh please feel free to email me at cocktailswithkevin@hotmail.com and I'll tell you all the wonderful things about it. Better yet, just go ahead and book the place. There are eleven guest homes in all and of the people we met during our stay, everyone loved where he was staying.

In the days that followed I visited (not necessarily in this order) Chianti, Assisi, Pisa, Perugia, Sovana, Orbitello, Ercolo, Porto San Stefano, Pitigliano and You Mixed Up Sicialiano. Just kidding. I never went to Sicily. Maybe next trip.

The Chocolate Festival in Perugia was like nothing I had ever seen. For those who have never ventured beyond Hershey and Nestle, Perugia chocolate is akin to Lindt, Cadbury or Ghirardelli in that it tastes yummy and costs a pretty penny. Each year the town of Perugia hosts a chocolate festival where you can buy anything and everything so long as it contains chocolate. I got a chocolate panini complete with cocoa-laden salami and bread.

Words cannot describe the mayhem that was this festival. The entire downtown was closed off to traffic so that pedestrians could roam freely and eat their weight in chocolate. It was just surreal.

The Strada Panoramica around the coast of Porto San Stefano lead us to a frightful knuckle whitening journey bordering both the sea and our own deaths. Views were spectacular but so were our lives flashing before our eyes. If we weren't staring down a quarter mile into a watery abyss we were trying to maneuever a Mercedez A class across dangerously rough terrain without getting stuck in no-man's land without any way to call for help other than honking at passing ships.

Castelina in Chianti is a quaint little town to stop in and have a glass of its namesake, but interestingly enough the SR222, or Chianti Highway as it's affectionately known, on the way from Siena to Florence is lined with hookers. It's weird because the beautifully scenic drive is essentially desolate of people with the exception of a lone woman in tight fitting clothes and an ill fitting wig at every other pull-off. We passed.

In Assisi I saw the Cathedral of St. Francis. Now I wasn't raised Catholic so my knowledge of St. Francis before this trip was limited to what I had learned about him at Pike Nursery. He's made of indoor outdoor resin and likes birds. I do know the story of how he had preached to birds and animals, but if you think about it televangelists across the country preach to flocks of mindless sheep everyday so what's the big deal.

The cathedral, though Gothic in style, had a more modern appearance than many in the country perhaps because it underwent major restoration after an earthquake in 1997. The patron saint of animals, birds and the environment is buried in a tomb that is accessible via a double staircase going down from the nave. We saw a monk on his knees praying while he extended one hand through the grating onto the tomb. Upstairs a priest with a North American accent was giving mass in English. Again we passed.

All in all, Italy was a country I had not been particularly crazy about visiting and yet I'm so glad I took the opportunity to go. I had assumed it would be like many other Western European countries in that it has the major items on the checklist: cathedrals, castles, a famous bridge slash monument and pricey food and accomodations. Indeed Italy does have all those things, but there's something magical about the country in a way there isn't about many others. From the time of the Etruscans to the Romans to the early Church there's just a vibrancy about the place. It's like its own Mesopotamia for what we like to think of as the modern world.

Belgium is a country I've been to and won't necessarily feel the need to revisit. Same goes for Chile. They're fun places and all; I've just put a check mark by them and that's that. Italy is a country I hope to go back to. This time Elaine and I will take our kid. Hopefully she won't want to climb that bell tower in Siena. Rarely have I ever felt so sick.

Chocolate panini on its second time around is not a pretty sight.

Language lessons for travelling abroad

In less than a week now my wife and I take off to Italy. As with any international trip I try and learn a few key phrases before I go so that I don't come across as a dumbass to everyone under the Tuscan sun. With a little practice anybody can learn to fake a few phrases well enough to get what he wants provided expectations are kept to a minimum. Czech and Hungarian were each a real doozie , but Italian seemsto me to be less problematic.

When I was teaching French I once had a band director come up to me and ask what tape series he could use to become fluent in Spanish. I held back my guffaw but I did let him know that language learning wasn't something that generally takes place through audiocassettes. To a good listener the tapes can provide a sampling of what the individual phonemes of the language sound like, but that's about it. To someone who already has a vague idea what the language sounds like, I think phrase books are more useful, but even they are quite limited.

The Berlitz phrasebook I picked up for instance has translations for Where is the passport control?; I'm here alone; and artificial sweetener. Let's just take these three for example:

No one really needs to know how to ask where passport control is. If you don't find passport control shortly after going through the customs line, passport control will most likely find you. That's if the country you're going to even cares that you've entered. On more than one occasion I've entered Europe without going through passport control. One time passport control consisted of four kepi-wearing Frogs who had their feet propped up on a table. Three of them apparently just studied the travel fashion trends of American tourists while the fourth guy just kept waving us all through the corridor with his hand. If no one asks to stamp your passport, just enjoy living off the grid.

The phrase about being here alone is found in the Romance section of the book. I'm sure there are people who venture overseas and start a budding romance, but something tells me their language skills would be above that of phrasebook level. If not, I'd fear the romance I was starting was going to end with me waking up alone and penniless in some third-rate motel or worse yet a back alley. And then there'd be that lasting itch. Yuck.

Artificial sweetener? Don' get me wrong. I use artificial sweetener too. Hell, I've already had cancer. What's the worst thats going to happen? But traveling abroad is a time to throw caution to the wind and leave some petty comfort slash obsessions at home. I'm sorry, but for me going to Italy and asking for artificial sweetener is like going to Italy and saying, "Hey, do y'all have any grits?" Until you get back home, let that shit go.

Here's what you need to know before going to a country where they speak another kind of talk. You won't likely be invited to join in on any conversations dealing with international politics or nuclear physics. You probably won't have too many conversations with locals period other than the short routine service-oriented discussions. So keep it simple.

Figure out how to say these things:

Hello (there's usually only about fourteen different ways to say this depending on time of day)
Thank you, Sir
Thank you, Ma'am
Please

Those biggies will get you much further than you think because most Americans won't even bother to learn those. You will stand out among your tennis shoe and sweatpant wearing comrades because you made an effort to be polite. Politesse always goes a long way in Europe because they frankly don't always expect it of Americans,. Of course the definition of polite varies from culture to culture but that's a whole 'nother issue.

Once you've got those phrases down you can pick up a phrasebook or look on the innerwebs to find out how to say the things you'll most likely want or need. Here are a few suggestions:

room, bed, and shower (that takes care of the hotel);
water, wine list, menu, Coke, Diet Coke (everything else will be listed on the menu once you get it)
Check please? (if you don't get this one down, just practice that fake scribbling on your hand -- as stupid as it looks this is an internationally recognized symbol.)

Other than a few other nouns that might come in handy, those are all you really need. You can always ask a question by saying the thing it is you want and tacking on please at the end. I'll be visiting the Vatican so I'll probably also try and learn The street will flow with the blood of the nonbelievers. Just kidding.

Passenger watch list, here I come.

mbick said...

First off, hello from a reader/lurker who has enjoyed your blog the past few weeks.

I agree with you that learning the most basic phrases of a foreign language will put you great lengths ahead of most Americans abroad.

I have to say, though, that when I was visiting in Rome and browsing a shop of sundries, the shopkeeper and I conducted our entire transaction of my purchase of a lighter with several nods and smiles. I think I probably was able to choke out Italian "Good morning" and "thank you." I treasure that lighter now more for the way we transacted our business that the lighter itself for function or beauty.

5:44 PM

karen said...

Haven't you been on the watch list for, like, years now?

8:28 PM

Anonymous said...

give the pope a shout out for those you are leaving in the BC to watch your baby!!

11:33 AM

Nanaonwales screwed me over

More on this later.

Toddler speak: repeatedly saying the same thing twice again over and over

Parenting a toddler is no easy chore, and now that words have started to come out of little Meryl's mouth, I find myself somehow devolving into a monosyllabic caveman whose vocabulary bank has been robbed. Yesterday I dropped my wife off at the airport and the conversation in the car on the ride home with Meryl went something like this:

Mama?

Mama's going out of town?

Mama?

Mom's getting on her plane, Sweetie.

Dada?

Dad's driving.

Mama?

Mama's going to Washington D.C.

Shoes?

Yep, you've got your shoes on.

Mama?

Going out of town.

Dada?

Driving.

Pizza?

No pizza today.

Mama?

Plane.

Dada?

Dad's in the car.

Car?

Car.

Mama?

Plane.

We went on like this for roughly twenty miles. We made a brief detour into Little Five Points to eat lunch and walk around, partially so Meryl could stretch her legs after being in a car seat for so long but mainly because I needed to break the monotony before being driven insane.

We parked in a meter that thankfully still had time left from the previous parker who was obviously either more paranoid of being towed than I usually am or at least less cheap. I almost never put money in parking meters. For one thing, I don't carry change and secondly I'm a scofflaw.

I learned the trick years ago from my driving instructor who came from the Taggart Driving School. He said that in the event I got a parking ticket I shouldn't pay it because it would only be $1o and if the city of Atlanta had to ever track me down to get their money it would only increase to $25 and they weren't likely to go that route. The only parking ticket I ever got was in Belgium so I don't know if the instructor's theory was correct or not. Incidentally I didn't pay the ticket I got in Belgium either.

As I open the back car door, Meryl says to me, "Car?" And thus the conversation continued:
Yes, Dad's getting you out of the car.

Shoes? Yep, you've still got both shoes on.

Mama?

Mom's out of town now. We're going to eat lunch.

[Meryl makes a smacking sound to show me she understands lunch] Pizza?

No, we had pizza yesterday.

Pizza. No.

That's right. No pizza.

Mama?

No, mom is not here. It's just you and Dad.

Little Five Points, one of Atlanta's more esoteric and nouveau hippy neighborhoods, was just opening up about the time we pulled in. Meryl and I tooled around and found ourselves hanging out among some heavily inked longhairs, one of whom had apparently just been to Starbucks. The coffee drinker just looked so hypocritically dichotomous to me. Who comes to a neighborhood as avant garde as Little Five Points so they can order something so suburbanly vanilla as Starbucks? Oh well. Who am I to judge?

Cup?

Yes, he's got a cup.

Hot?

[At this point the local chimed in.] Yeh, it's hot.

Shoes?

Yep, he's got shoes on.

[Again the guy humors Meryl with a response.] Yeh, they're flip-flops.

Someone with a key showed up and unlocked the door to a tattoo parlor slash tchotchke boutique and all the longhairs went in. Even with all the tattoos they had between them, it hadn't occurred to me that they were artists themselves. Come to think of it, it hadn't occurred to me any of them even had jobs. I'm judgmental that way. Sue me.

Meryl and I walked around some more, ate lunch at a corner tavern where she subjected fellow diners to volume ten screams and happy squeals before moving to a secluded corner table in a back room. There she littered the floor with hummus, roasted asparagas, and goat cheese pita wrap.

Yes, I'm one of those parents who isn't afraid to take his kid into a place that doesn't generally cater to children, but I try and always leave extra generous gratuity to make up for the extra work a good server is willing to do. Besides, if the restaurant has highchairs (and this one did), I take it to mean a baby's welcome.

On the drive from Little Five Points home Meryl's mood started to dwindle. Her talking turned into whining and eventually that tearless cry that denotes extreme discontent. As loud as it was, it was somewhat of a relief not to have to carry on a conversation about Mom being out of town, me driving and Meryl having both shoes on.

Just when I was about to carry her into her room and lay her in her crib she said, "Pot." We are toilet training and this means she has to go to the potty.

You wanna go sit on the potty?

Pot?

OK, Dad'll put you on the potty.

Mama?

Mom's at work. Out of town. In Washington. Dad can put you on the potty.

Pot?

Yep, here we go.

She successfully uses the potty and then looks at me with her arms up in the air.

Up?

You want up?

Up.

OK, Dad'll get you up.

Another successful bathroom visit. As we flush she looks into the swirling water and waves.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Project961.com

I suppose since I watch a minimal amount of television and listen mainly to AM radio that it should be acceptable for an FM station to try and target their advertising to me via a mailed postcard, but come on -- at least make it appealing to the reader. A local station is apparently running a promotion where they're giving away fully restored muscle cars to their listeners. Huzzah!


On the front of the postcard are three cars deemed "muscle cars" by the ad folks at Atlanta's WKLS 96.1. Recognizable to me is the 60-something-model Mustang, mainly because in college I dated a girl who drove one. She always complained about having to change the spark plugs. Lucky for me she wasn't one of those chicks who expected her beau to be car-savvy. This may surprise some of you who know me, but my knowledge about automobiles extends only to cranking them and filling them up with gas. I don't know a sparkplug from a mucus plug.


What gets me is the youngspeak language used on the card. Get this:


Nothing says "guy card" like owning a fully restored American Muscle Car!


What does it mean to be a "guy card" holder? Isn't guy too broad of a term to merit cardship? It just sounds too much like saying "human card" or "omnivore card" to me. Or am I wrong to assume by guy they mean male?

Here's another one:

Plus, we're hookin a brotha up for the Fall race weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Call it narrow minded on my part, but I think the term brotha should be reserved for men who have at least some degree of sub-Saharan African ancestry. You know what else? I've never been to the Atlanta Motor Speedway, but something tells me the aforementioned brothas aren't in high number at a venue known primarily for offering beer-swilling White guys a place to watch souped up racecars crash into each other. The postcard may as well say Plus, we're hookin a brotha up with full hockey gear and two backstage passes to Barry Manilow.

Those folks at WKLS 96.1 sure know how to help a brotha out, don't they?

Oh well. Guess I have to cash in my guy card.

County Seat presents The Philadelphia Story at the Aurora Theater

My feet are of clay. Do you know it?

Or shall I say Do you know what having feet of clay means? I didn't, so I axed the Google.

Having feet of clay means to have some weakness that your admirers weren't aware of before but have only recently come to discover. One innerweb reference sites James Joyce, that dead Irishman, as the source but I think somehow the expression dates back to the Bible. I don't know for sure that it came from the Bible. I'm just guessing. Hell, I went to public school.

I don't get to say the line; the lead actress does. Lead actresses get all the best lines but the question is: Who gets the girl in the end? I know already.

So there!

Another favorite line of mine is You! All of you! And your damned sophisticated ideas! I know this sounds a bit antiquated, but the play takes place in the post-depression thirties. Why don't people talk like this anymore? Hell, I don't know. I went to public school.

Come to think of it, I'm 35 and my 20s were a nightmare. Am I in my post-depression thirties?

Anyway, back at the ranch . . .

Community theater is like a drug for me. I know when I sign up to be in a show that I really shouldn't take the time and energy away from my family, but somehow the altered state of consciousness known as the stage beckons to me in an impelling voice that somehow can't be ignored. So I take that first hit, enjoy that momentary euphoria felt while on stage, and then I crash and burn when it's time to take down the set at the end of a run.

I can't very well knock community theater though. I met my wife that way. And as far as lead actresses go, she's the tops. The absolute tops, my dear.

More theatrical banter from me -- sorry.

For those unfamiliar with community theater, let me briefly summarize. A bunch of people come together to prance around on stage pretending to be people they're not. They do this for no reward other than the intrinsic value of escaping reality even if only for a few stolen hours of a few Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Almost always, there's some egotistic jamoke of mediocre talent who shows up and gets a part.

In our production, that someone is me. I will continue to belt out my lines and hog the spotlight for as long as they'll have me. My view on acting is summed up thusly:

blah blah blah MY LINE blah blah blah MY LINE blah blah blah MY LINE

That's what real life's really about, isn't it? What is it Shakespeare said?

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
who can't remember their lines.

Okay, now I'm just projecting, but you get the idea.

In case you were wondering, our little gem of a show runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00 PM from Sept 20^th through the 29^th and at 2:30 PM on Sundays Sept 23^rd and 30^th. Tickets can be purchased by clicking hither. Yes, you'll have to register if you don't already have an online presence with the Aurora Theater in Lawrenceville, GA but that's just one of those cyber hoops we have to occasionally jump through. Ya dig? Alternatively you can give them a ring at 770-476-7926 .


Furthermore, I realize that the Aurora (like many other theatrical groups out there) likes to refer to themselves as a "theatre" with an R-E as opposed to an E-R, but guess what?

I don't roll that way.

So booyah!

My feet are of clay. Do you know it?

Zoo Atlanta panda turns one; Human baby not amused.

Meryl and I went to her first marsupial birthday party today. Oh, sure, she's been to a human birthday party, but today was the day that Atlanta-born panda, Mei Lan, celebrated her first trip around the sun at our zoo. There was much ado.

The guest list included such dignitaries as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Georgia's lieutenant governor, and various muckety mucks from Delta Airlines, the city of Chengdu in China and Zoo Atlanta.

To make a long story short, Meryl, who recently turned sixteen months old herself, started to break down shortly after we got to the event. To her defense, I must say the party's opening ceremonies were anything but kid friendly. I basically spent thirty minutes trying to hold a struggling baby while listening to some suits from far and wide drone on about Chinese-American relations, direct flights from Atlanta to China and whatnot.

To paraphrase it went something like this:

Mei Lan's parents came to us from China applause applause applause It is important that Atlanta maintain good relations with the Chinese applause applause applause The panda is a symbol of peace applause applause applause.

When the vice mayor of Chengdu finished speaking in his native Mandarin I thought it only polite to applaud for him as well. I was one of the few. Then his interpreter went up to the mic and translated into English what he had said. I forget her exact words but it was something about the research center and artificial insemination. I felt kinda dumb having applauded but hey, who doesn't like panda husbandry?

The line of vacant strollers outside the tent had led me to believe that taking one inside would be frowned upon. Again, I was in the minority with my assumption. For every stroller left outside there were three or four inside. Only, the strollers inside were occupied by sippy-cup wielding panda seekers, some of whom had already started to cry.

When I tired of trying to hold a baby that obviously didn't want to be held, I made a brief retreat outside in order to reclaim our stroller. Meryl refused to be strapped in, so I held one handle while she pushed the thing around in circles. This game entertained her for a few short minutes until she ran into an important looking Chinese guy in a designer suit and man purse. He quickly braced her so as not to let her fall backwards and then smiled at me. Meryl did not feel the love however and shrieked at him, I imagine, simply for being in her way. I said thank you in Chinese, one of the few expressions I know and whisked her and the stroller away.

Some kids and parents had made their way to a second tent where birthday cake was to be served. Meryl and I headed there but found the crowd to be too close-knit and not conducive to a now overly-tired baby with a bad case of stroller rage. So instead I let her push the stroller around the zoo.

I tried to point out a small-clawed otter but she paid it no mind. A kimodo dragon also proved to be no competition for pushing a stroller along the pavement. Not even an elephant phased her.

Then she fell. This is when all baby hell broke loose.

Meryl starts to get clumsy when she gets tired. When she falls this only aggravates the crankiness. After righting her and trying again to put her in the stroller I ended up just standing under the awning of the tiger exhibit and watched as she screamed. It wasn't her hurt scream either. It was just the scream she uses when she tries to get the attention of anyone around. We are still trying to decipher her toddler babble but I think in her blood curdling voice she was shouting something like everyone please look at my inept father!

Oh, the joys of parenthood.

I finally hog tied my kid into the stroller and quickly tried to find the exit. Never in my life have I wanted to leave a zoo faster than I did today. To add to my frustration, I could not find the way out for anything, so I just pushed a screaming baby through the serpentine maze we call the zoo while captive animal after captive animal retreated to their respective hidey holes to get away from the piercing noise. It was bad. I briefly pictured my daughter being raised by a nice leopard family.

The only thing that calmed Meryl down was the rhythm of street musicians outside the zoo in Grant Park. I briefly pictured my daughter being raised by a nice couple of bongo-playing Rastafareans.

I'm only joking.

They could have been Episcopalian for all I know.

When we encountered a man playing blues on the guitar Meryl stopped crying for a moment and looked up at him as though to say I feel your pain. When he finished one song I thanked him and explained that she too had been singing the blues ever since we left the zoo.

"I'll play a little somethin' nice for her," he said before strumming a few chords.

Meryl started crying again so I thanked the musician again and pushed Meryl quickly to the car. As I was strapping her into the seat I could still here him singing Summertime and the livin' is easy.

We never did see any panda, much less birthday cake.

Oh well.

Happy birthday, Mei Lan.