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."
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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/
http://www.gnmparents.com/food-allergies-are-serious-business/
Sunday, November 25, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, November 23, 2007
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!!!
Meryl poses mid-dip for the camera:
Mmm, Mexican cheese dip!!!
Monday, November 19, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
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
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
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