Yourself In Five Years

Life Imitates Blog

2009-05-13T17:35:00.000-07:00

Well hello there. I told you I was going to blog more this week. Twice in one week > no times in two weeks. Unfortunately I've only left the house once in the past 72 hours. I've gone for a couple of runs, but that doesn't really count. Although I did see a lady on the trail walking her birds. While they were in their cages. That's probably blogworthy. Maybe next time. Anyway, my hermit lifestyle (Kate is traveling this week) makes it very difficult to find material for a 'random stuff that happens in the day' blog. But lucky for you I did leave the house yesterday to buy oatmeal and dishwasher detergent. And even luckier for you, I went during peak hours at the grocery store, so I had plenty of time to read (or scan the cover) of Us Weekly.

It has been well documented that I love celebrity gossip as much as the next girl. I have even developed a trustworthiness hierarchy for my celebrity gossip. For print gossip, it goes something like this:

National Enquirer - Most likely not true, but who doesn't love pictures of 200lb babies?

OK/Star - 20% Chance for Truth

Us Weekly and People - Some truth to whatever they are saying

Time/Newsweek/Other Grown Up Magazines - Probably accurate, but only going to read it at a doctors office or when I'm visiting my parents.

Most of my online sources (Perez, TMZ) probably fall into the same category as OK/Star.

So while I was buying my oats and Cascade, I had some extra time to read the cover of Us Weekly. The cover story was something about Jon from Jon and Kate Plus Eight allegedly having an affair. Long time readers will remember a post that I did about spinoffs for reality shows. I think the one that I came up for Jon and Kate Plus Eight was going to be Jon Minus Nine - where it was him running away from his wife who clearly hates him, and sitting alone in a dark one bedroom apartment. Based on the fact that this story has gone up the gossip magazine food chain from the OK/Star level to the Us Weekly level, I feel like my spinoff might become a reality show reality (hence the post title). Does that make me a prophet or just someone who watches too much reality television?

Anyway, when Kate called me today, the majority of our phone conversation was about Jon Minus Nine. She also asked me about Gilbert and whether or not I have been bathing since she left. Then we started talking about all of the other reality show couples that didn't end so well. There was a streak there a few years back when everyone who had an MTV reality show ended up divorced..

Nick and Jessica on Newlyweds - Great while it lasted. Everyone loves a train wreck.

Travis and Shanna on Meet the Barkers - I met them, then they got divorced.

Carmen Elektra and Dave Navarro on Til Death Do Us Part - Probably not the best title.

And that doesn't even count the Osbournes. I'm pretty sure Ozzy had an affair with Charles Shaw for during season 3.

So I'm not sure if the story with Jon and Kate is true or not. I'll have to wait and see if it shows up in a grown up magazine. And for that, I'll have to wait until I go to visit my parents or go to a Barnes and Noble. All I know is that Kate and I decided not to have a reality show about our marriage. This blog will have to do.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2009-05-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends,

I have to apologize. I have been neglecting you. 2 weeks without posting is not cool. Not cool at all. My blogging friends sometimes say that their blog is like their baby, and it needs constant attention. Apparently I think this blog is like a cat, and I can just throw some food out and go on vacation. 2 weeks is even long by cat standards. But then again, I don't really like cats, so there you go. I'll try to do better now. Maybe something like three posts a week. We'll see how that goes.

I should have a couple posts lined up in my head. I just got back from a road trip to Tampa. For those of you who aren't so good with geography, Tampa and Charlotte are not very close to each other. I drove about 19 hours this weekend. By myself. In addition to singing along with every Taylor Swift song and watching the televisions in the minivans in front of me, I probably came up with a few things that are YIFY-worthy. The first one should be pretty easy...

Why did I drive 19 hours this weekend?

It was my friend Natalie's 30th birthday. Natalie is one of our really good friends from when we lived in Jacksonville. Her husband Joe threw her a party, so that's what I was doing down there. And if you're wondering why the unnecessary name-dropping - Natalie told me that she likes it when she and Joe are featured on the blog, so there ya go.

But 30 is a big deal. Maybe it's just because I am fast-approaching my own 30th, but it seems like it is worth a long drive. I also drove back to Indianapolis for RJ's birthday, so this isn't a first time thing for me.

I'm not going to lie. One of the reasons why I made the drive is because I got an Evite. I don't know what it is about those things, but I just can't say no. It doesn't matter where it is or what it is. If there is an Evite, I am probably going to show up. So from Columbia to Hilton Head, I came up with my reasons why I respond 'yes' to 98% of Evites that I receive.

1. It shows some level of effort. If someone takes the time to send out an Evite, it means there is almost no chance that the party is going to fall through. I have yet to have an Evite party cancelled. Also, if they put in the required effort to send out the Evite, there is a high probability that the other necessary party plans will receive attention. The food is usually better, the games more enjoyable, and the beer more plentiful when there is an Evite - as opposed to parties that rely on word of mouth or random email invite. This was certainly the case at Natalie's party - there were steak tacos, cornhole, and even leftover beer at the end of the night.

2. You can screen the potential guest list and make an informed decision. So if you don't like a particular friend of the host, then you can wait to see if s/he is invited/accepts before making your decision. In most cases, said person is a non-responder, or responds with maybe. Then it's sort of a judgement call, but it's still nice to know the guest list before committing.

3. There just isn't really a good way to respond no. I think Evite responses should be 5 words or less. Anything more than that, you're either going into too much detail about why you can't come, you're trying too hard to be funny, or you're responding with some inside joke that most of the other Evitees aren't going to understand. Keeping a yes response to five words or less is pretty easy. I usually stick with "looking forward to it" or "wouldn't miss it." Nothing too original or creative, but it gets the point across. It's more difficult with 'no' responses - so maybe that's why I can't decline an Evite. The most common no response (As I approach 30) is something like "sorry, got the kids" or something like that. Which is basically another way of saying "attending your party is not worth the cost of a babysitter to me." Other people frequently respond with their other plans. Something like "sorry we can't make it, it's date night with me and (insert spouse name)." I don't know if it's because they want to 'prove' that they have other plans, or just think that the only person who can read the response is the Eviter. And if you just respond with something like "sorry...can't make it" you just sound like a dick. This is what goes through my head every time I get an Evite. I can't say no because I don't think there's a good way to say no.

And don't even get me started on the 'maybe' response option. Maybe can only mean one of two things:

1. I might show up if nothing better comes up between now and then

2. I can't think of a good excuse right now

So there you go. It was a pretty long drive, so I should have more to write about later this week. I won't treat you guys like cats anymore. Unless I find a laser pointer.

This Week In Blogs, Volume V

2009-04-24T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hey - this week's roundup is posted on my new blog: http://www.theblogstalker.com/. So go check it out, and add that blog to your RSS Feeds, or Google reader, or whatever the kids are doing these days.

YIFY Fans Not Interested in Food Blogs: We will return to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. Or whenever I get around to thinking of something somewhat funny. YIFY will not go away, just the food blog content that has been dominating this blog for the last month or so.

That is all.

Vote Here

2009-04-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends. Exciting news here. My friend Jennifer gave me a late birthday present and nominated me for a Blogger's Choice Award today. You can (and should) vote for me here. Now I could do what most bloggers do, which is to act like it's not a big deal, sort of passively ask people to vote for them, and then put the little logo on their blog. I'm not going to do this. First, I'm not quite sure how to put the little logo on my blog, so that's out. Second, I'm taking this very seriously. Instead of just mentioning it in passing, I'm writing an entire post about my nomination and eventual victory.

You see, I'm not going to treat this like an awards show. There's no "it's just an honor to be nominated" bullshit like it's an Oscar nomination, or perhaps a Source award or Kid's Choice Award. Nope - not going to do that. Instead, I'm treating this like a political campaign. I will be openly campaigning for your vote. Which is why you should vote for my blog here.

I have my own platform. I'm against several things, including domestic violence, international violence, animal cruelty and meth abuse. I'm also in favor of several things, including world peace, clean air, women's rights, and tort reform. So there you go. Vote for me, unless you're a fan of animal cruelty and a hater of tort reform. And did I mention you can vote here?

This is a big step for me. I haven't run for public office since my freshman year of high school. I ran for Freshman Class Secretary back in 1994. I'm trying to remember why. I think it's because elections were a couple weeks before Secretary's Day. That was back before they called it Administrative Assistant's Day. So I thought that if I was elected Freshman Class Secretary, then maybe I'd get some free stuff on Secretary's Day. If you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a theme developing here. Getting free stuff seems to be a motivating factor for most of the decisions I make. Oh, and I got my ass kicked in that battle for Freshman Class Secretary. The competition gave away mini snickers bars after his speech. How the hell can I compete with that? No poster board or catchy slogan can overcome free candy. It's still painful. Click here to help ease the pain.

So in the made up blog awards, I'm coming from behind. At time of post, I'm holding steady with two votes (me and Jennifer). That puts me 235 votes behind the current leader. But I think we can do it. If every YIFY reader votes (multiple times) and then my other blog personas (Marci, Marge, etc) decide to vote, I can win this thing going away. Mostly because the current leader is a blog about cakes. That's right. It is basically just pictures of funny cakes. I can't lose to a blog about funny cakes. So you should vote here to make sure that doesn't happen.

Editor's note: I actually clicked on the cake blog earlier today and it was pretty funny. Not as funny as this blog, but pretty damn funny. I mean, there was a cake in the shape of a dong. That's pretty much always funny?

So that's all I've got. Yep, I just wrote an entire post about the made up blog awards and why you should vote for me. Perhaps this was disappointing. Perhaps you're thinking, "I've been waiting four days for a YIFY post, and this is what I get?"

Sorry about that, if you're upset about this post, then you can just post your feedback here.

This Week in Blogs, Volume IV

2009-04-17T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Welcome to the fourth and final edition of the food blog roundup. It’s not the last one ever, just the last one on this blog. The new blog should be ready to go next week. I could’ve had it ready to go this week, but I had to watch The Masters all weekend, then I was sick, then it was my birthday, and then I had to catch up and read all of the blogs. So hopefully I’ll get around to it in time for next week. I’ll keep y’all posted. I think it has been an excited week in blogworld. There have been fires, free Garmins, and most importantly, my birthday. Sadly, my mailbox was blondie-free on my 29^th. Alright, enough about that. Here. We. Go.

Mara at What’s for Dinner had a busy week. The week started with a nice post for her fiance’s birthday. Yes, I realize that there is an accent mark at some point in that word, but I don’t feel like digging around for special characters in the blogger editor. Anyway, it was a somewhat sappy but nice ode to fiance. My only criticism is that she used the phrase “my stomach flipped with joy.” Now while this might be accurate, when ‘stomach ‘and ‘flip’ are used together, I just start thinking about the end of Marley and Me (both book and movie). And then I think of the 100+ people openly sobbing around me when we were at the theatre. So I don’t really know how Mara’s fiance love post ends because I started thinking about Marley and got distracted.

Mara also had a blogger playdate with Jenn from Eating Bender. It was an action-packed date, filled with everything that a food blogger meet-up should include: overpriced organic grocery store, uncooked Asian foods, specialty cooking stores, and ice cream. I bet there’s a lot of pressure when two food bloggers meet for the first time. If I was the food blogger responsible for coming up with the agenda, I think I’d probably just schedule a bunch of out of character activities. Well, out of character for healthy food bloggers, at least. I’d use a theme, like ‘buckets.’ My Chicago food blog meet up would probably start in one of the neighborhoods around U.S. Cellular Field. We'd make enough wrong turns that we would end up near a Harold's Chicken and enjoy a bucket of legs, wings, thighs, and grease. Then we'd head south for a couple buckets of beers at Bourbon Street on 115^th, and then downtown for a big Bucket of Garrett’s Carmel and Cheese Popcorn. It would probably be our last meeting and the pictures wouldn’t make the interweb.

Speaking of Eating Bender, I was going to devote an entire paragraph to Jen, but then I noticed that she’s doing the P90X workout. If she is able to make it through one session of that, then she can officially kick my ass, so I’m going to watch what I say. For those of you that don’t know what P90X is, apparently you don’t have cable or sleeping issues. It’s a workout program that only advertises on basic cable between 2:00-6:00 AM. I feel sore after watching one of the infomercials. It looks like Level XIV of Jillian’s 30 Day Shred, and the ‘after’ spokespeople look like Brad Pitt in fight club. Good luck with that.

Caitlin Tipping Point (seems easier than writing out Caitlin, at The Healthy Tipping Point) had some excitement this week when her apartment complex caught on fire. My only critique of this is that there was only one post devoted to The Great Fire of 2009. It was comprehensive coverage within that post, but I would’ve dragged it out over a few days. It was sort of like in the last season of The O.C. when Marissa Cooper started hooking up with the chick that’s now playing 13 on House. There was one episode of The O.C. devoted to their torrid love affair, and then by the next episode Marissa was back to dating Ryan Atwood and hating her mother. Or am I the only one who compares food blogs to Teen Drama plot lines? All I’m saying is that you missed an opportunity to turn this into fire prevention week on HTP, with instructional videos for fire extinguisher usage, and more pictures of the dreamy firefighters. Also, I’m not really a black helicopter guy, but I find it quite a coincidence that there was a fire at the apartment during the same week that Caitlin announced her running hiatus. I’m just saying that maybe someone in the running industry might not be happy about this decision and may have had something to do with the fire. Because ‘fire’ is the #2 cause of spontaneous running, just behind ‘someone chasing you.’

Am I the only one that’s a little jealous of all of the free stuff that Kath gets? She got a freaking Garmin? Kath is my friend so I should be happy for her (and I should realize that maybe I can borrow some of her free stuff sometime) but I want to understand the secret to getting free stuff. I mean, this blog is read by literally DOZENS of people every week, but I guess that isn’t enough. So far I've got

Step 1: Create Blog
Step 2:
Step 3: Free Stuff

Maybe I should drop some subtle hints…

The check engine light is on in my Toyota Highlander. I just love my Highlander and I hear that the new Hybrid model is fantastic. I sure would like to drive one of those.

My Kenmore washing machine is one of my favorite appliances, but the spin cycle seems to be acting up. I’m just not sure where I could find a replacement.

If I haven’t made this clear yet, let me say one more time: I am willing to sell out this blog (and my new blog) for free stuff. I’ll take almost anything. Except maybe the WWII era cereal that Kath got this week, with the picture of a kid that looks like a cross between Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story and one of the Children of the Corn kids. I don’t think I could eat breakfast with this kid staring at me.

Alright, back to the blog review now

There was some excitement on Hangry Pants this week. There was finally a ‘he said’ post! For those who do not read Hangry, each post starts with either “He Says” or “She Says” depending on who is the author of the post. Sort of a clever idea for a shared male/female shared blog. Only problem is that there isn’t an even balance between he says and she says. Specifically, we’ve gone entire weeks recently without a single he says post. So going to the blog and looking for a “he says” post is sort of like Where’s Waldo or one of those magic eye posters. You know, those things that you stare at for 30 seconds and then you see a panda that says I love you emerge from the trippy design.. Now I know that Daddy is very busy at work, but we stay up late to wait for him to come home, and then he doesn’t talk to us kids out in blogland. We need more "he says" posts – the last one introduced me to new salad toppings, including Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and Honey Wheat Kix. That is food blog gold, and I want more.

Diana at The Chic Life broke the all time food blog record of excessive use of the word ‘sammy.’ Now there has been some discussion and debate on the correct spelling (is it Sammie or Sammy). My official answer is that it is neither, as the word should not be used. Ever. Problem solved.. Now Diana is a friend and loyal reader. She knows how I feel about the use of the word Sammy. Yet she managed to use Sammy four times in one post. And it’s not like she was describing four different sandwiches – it was just one sandwich. And this isn’t the first time. I did a quick control + F and found no less than 13 instances of Sammy on one page of The Chic Life. And I double checked, and none of them were about Sammy Davis Jr. or Sammy Hagar. Diana, we need to talk about this. We might just turn my birthday party tonight into a Sammy usage intervention for you. All of your blogging friends and family will be here to help you through this.

Oh, and to fill out our list of places that spinach should not be:

3. Pancakes
4. Brownies

Thanks to Heather (from Heat the Salmon Butt) and Jennifer (from Blogger Profile Not Available Error Page) for submitting these winning entries.

Stock Up

Salad Challenge – I was going to participate until I found out that chicken salad, taco salad, and potato salad would not count as my daily salad.

Getting Free Stuff from Companies – Unless you are me.

Soups that look like baby food - bleh

Obscure Nut Butters – I don’t think there are any nuts left that have not been made into a peanut butter substitute. Also, 'Obscure Nut Butters' would be an awesome band name

Peep Art and Peep Consumption – Peep Utilization in food blogs was up almost 24% from last year

Stock Down

Cooked Food (or whatever the opposite of ‘raw’ is) – This means that natural gas and electricity are both stock down this week

Cadbury Cream Eggs – I looked at least 50 food blogs on Sunday and didn’t see a single one. I saw lots of Cadbury mini eggs, but not their goo filled big brother.

Pirate Attacks – Although I don’t want to call them Pirates

Alright. That’s all for this week. I’ll put next week’s post here and on the new blog. Let me know if there are any blogs that y’all want me to talk about. I gotta get going. Only a few hours until My SpongeBob Birthday Party/Diana’s Sammy Intervention. Talk to you later.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-04-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hello, and greetings from a man in his late, late, late 20s. Today is my 29th birthday. It's not really a landmark birthday, but leaves me 365 days in my 20s. I'm going to talk about birthdays a bit today. I don't really have any major theme or thesis, so this is probably going to come off like an Andy Rooney segment on 60 Minutes. Just picture me with really bushy eyebrows.

I just thought about it, and in about two months, my 'days alive' will pass my 'days left on mortgage'. I should celebrate that day.

I always had fun birthday parties growing up. Since my dad was a P.E. Teacher, he could just unlock the gym and the party would be pizza on the gym floor, then dunking basketballs off of mini trampolines. That's a pretty awesome birthday party for a 10 year old.

Having an April birthday was always pretty good. It happened during the school year, which is a plus. I was so happy I wasn't one of the summer birthday kids that had to do the group birthday celebration during the last week of school. I also always felt sorry for the kids who had birthdays over Christmas break. Not only did they get shafted in terms of parties, but also I'm sure that Uncles and Aunts probably went with the one gift for two events method. Poor kids. The only downside of an April birthday is that every so often your birthday falls on Easter which makes it difficult to get pizza and beer.

I've had to travel for work on my birthday the last few years. I decided that I wasn't going to do that this year. I also took it one step further and made my work schedule today more 'birthday-friendly.' I just strategically scheduled calls and meetings that I knew would be enjoyable for today, and pushed others to tomorrow. Because Dammit, it's my birthday.

It's been a good birthday so far. I talked to my parents this morning. Kate and I had an extended breakfast with good oatmeal and good discussion of blogs and the Today Show. Then Gilbert and I had a good walk.Work was good.. I mowed my lawn during my lunch break. Thanks to Facebook, lots of people that I haven't talked to in many years wished me a happy birthday, so I feel more popular. I went for a run after work. Then we went to a beer tasting with our friends.Now I'm watching The Office and drinking a beer. This has been a pretty fantastic day by my standards.

And it doesn't end today. Kate had a pretty brilliant idea. Since I act like a 10 year old boy sometimes, we're having a little kid birthday party tomorrow. It is SpongeBob themed. There are SpongeBob invitations. We have the paper cone hats and party favors, and cupcakes. It's just like a little kid birthday party. Except there will also be drinking games. I have a dream that the 'little kid birthday party' will catch on in the same way that the 'ugly holiday sweater' party has caught on in recent years. We might take pictures, but this is a picture-free blog, but maybe other bloggers will post pictures of the event.

So there's my birthday post. Sorry for the unconnected thoughts. I probably could've spent more time on this one, but it's my birthday.

Pirates?

2009-04-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

Hi Everyone. Sorry for the delay. I actually have a good excuse this time. I've been pretty sick for the last few days. I've been trying to self diagnose on WebMD since Friday. I've narrowed it down to SARS, Bird Flu, or Mad Cow. I was going to pick one of those three, but then I started feeling better. At least I think I'm feeling better, because Kate is no longer:

A: Calling me Typhoid Mary

B:Banishing me to the bonus room above the garage

C: Wearing one of our construction masks when she comes up to talk to me.

Since none of those things are happening anymore, I must be healthy enough to blog.

Since I've been confined to my bonus room bubble for the past three days, I've had plenty of time to watch television. Huge surprise, right? Anyway, my television viewing - from CNN to the Today Show - has been saturated with coverage of this Somali Pirate standoff. Now don't get me wrong, it was a great story. It was almost like an episode of 24. Except that it went on for like three days, so I guess it was more like three seasons of 24. Anyway, the one thing that bothers me is the use of the title 'pirate.' I've read the definition of pirate, and it is technically accurate in this situation. The problem is that I've got a list of things that I think of in my head when I hear the word pirate, and none of the hundred or so things that I think of is remotely close to a 2009 Somali man with guns and a a cell phone and a boat with an engine. Here are some of the things that enter my head when I hear the word pirate:

In no particular order...

1. Traits/Attributes: Wooden leg, birds on shoulders, hooks for hands, curly mustaches, incoherent accents, gold, treasure chests, there are others that fit here. I think Kate mentioned vitamin deficient diets and women in puffy dresses when we discussed this topic this evening.

2. Pop Culture References: Disney World, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom (so dreamy), Spiced Rum, Paula Dean's husband, some musical from junior year of high school, and Rufio from Hook.

Question for the Group - Were Rufio and the rest of the lost boys in Hook/Peter Pan technically pirates or mini pirates in training? If not, why do I always think about Rufio when people talk about pirates?

Clarification - Trust me - Paula Dean's husband sort of looks like a pirate. If you catch one of the 'Paula Cooks with the Family' episodes, you'll totally know what I'm talking about.

3. Goonies References - I know that these could probably roll up into the 'pop culture' category, but there are literally dozens of them, so I think they get their own category. So when someone talks about pirates, I think about: Chunk, One-Eyed Willy, Ma Fratelli, Fifty Dollar Bills, Mouth's Soliloquy in the Wishing Well, Mikey's Marble Bag, Rocky Road, the Truffle Shuffle, Hey You Guys, Rosalita, and Chester Copperpot (to name a few).

So clearly I have enough mental images of pirates. I don't need these modern day Somali guys jumping into my brain and pushing Rufio and Paula Dean's husband back. So we need to come up with something else other than pirates to call these jackasses. I don't have all of the answers here, but I've given it some thought. Here's what I thought about on my run today. And yes, I'm now healthy enough to run again, which rules out SARS:

Boat Stealers - A little too easy and doesn't really account for all of the people on board or the size of the ship.

Boatjackers - I like using jackers - it modernizes it like carjackers and hijackers, but boat isn't quite right.

Shipjackers - Close, but not quite. And what if it is technically a boat and not a ship.

Vesseljackers - It's perfect! It uses 'jackers' when sounds more serious than robber, thief or stealer. Also, when you combine vessel and jacker, it sounds pretty inappropriate. So it'll make me smile and laugh when Brian Williams and Matt Lauer talk about it, even though it's a very serious situation.

So there you go. They will now be known as Somali VesselJackers. Please adjust your water cooler discussions accordingly. Come to think of it, that's another term we need to change. Nobody really stands around a water cooler anymore, right? Another day.

This Week In Blogs, Volume III

2009-04-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Welcome to week 3 of the food blog review. Hopefully just one more post on this blog and then I’ll have a new one ready to go.

I have to confess that I didn’t spend too much time reading food blogs this week. Well, that’s sort of a lie…I didn’t spend as much time as I usually do reading food blogs this week (still would probably qualify as ‘too much’ depending on who you ask). So this week I relied on my lovely assistant, Kate, to take some blog notes for me. Here’s how it worked-Kate would scribble something down that said “Heather Spinach Oats” and then I would have to decipher what that means and come up with something funny to write about it. Her notes sort of remind me of Russell Crowe’s crazy thoughts and paper scraps during ‘A Beautiful Mind.’ Here. We. Go.

It was a very exciting week for Tina at Carrots ‘n’ Cake. Tina caught Mr. Mal eating Wendy’s in their apartment. Judging by the picture and my knowledge of the Wendy’s value menu, it looks like Mal went with the 5 piece chicken nugget, a junior bacon cheeseburger, and medium fries. Some excellent choices for sure. Unfortunately Mal made some poor decisions with the consumption strategy. First of all, you just can’t bring the food home. At home you have to worry about disposing of the evidence, as well the fast food smell that will linger for at least 24 hours. I’d recommend eating in the car. Now if you must eat at home, then I suggest adding a large chili to your order, which would make clean-up a little easier. You could stick the Nugget holder in the fries holder. The paper wrapper from the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger will fit in the nugget holder, and then the holders will fit nicely in the empty Chili container. You put the lid back on and then you’re good to go. Then even if you get busted and someone spots the evidence in the trash can, all she’ll see is the Chili cup, which isn’t so bad. Not that I’ve ever done that before, but I have a feeling that might work.

Heather at Heather Eats Almond Butter is getting a little carried away with the oatmeal toppings. Avocado? Raw Spinach? I just don’t think I can support these toppings in oats. This recent proliferation of spinach usage in the food blog world is reaching epidemic proportions. I’ve come up with the follow chart to assist food bloggers who aren’t sure when or where they should use spinach.

Places Where Spinach Should Be:

1. In a salad

2. In a dip with artichokes and cheese. Ideally at a casual dining establishment, complimented with pita chips and a large beer

3. At the grocery store

4. In a tin can in Popeye’s hand. So he can squeeze it into his mouth and get big and strong.

Places Where Spinach Should NOT Be:

1. In Smoothies

2. In Oatmeal

Spots 3 and 4 are reserved for next week. I’m sure someone will try to put spinach into something new.

I don’t think I can talk about spinach in oatmeal anymore without losing my appetite, so I’m going to change the topic now...

One thing that I like to do for fun is to see how many words I can spell with Heather's URL (www.heathereatsalmondbutter.com) without rearranging the letters. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

First there are the easy ones: Heather, eats, almond, butter.

But if you look closely, you’ll also see: wheat, heat, heath, at, the, there, salmon, alm, but, and butt.

So if we just removed a few letters, it could actually be “Heat The Salmon Butt” which would be a pretty awesome blog name.

Graduate Meghann held her online blogging bake sale this week. Now I know it was for a good cause or whatever, but I gotta say, those better be some damn good baked goods. When there were bake sales at my elementary school, I could get a couple cookies for a quarter or fifty cents. Whoa, that just made me sound really old, didn’t it? Like some kind of “back in my day” story from Grandpa Simpson or anyone over the age of 80 talking about walking in the snow (uphill both ways). Also, the legacy of the YIFY blog roundup is now complete, now that Derek’s 'Easter Bunny' label seems to have stuck. Better yet, he has gone from being THE Easter Bunny, to MY Easter Bunny. My work here is done. Oh, and VeggieGirl’s blondies went for $85/batch. Just think how much I could’ve driven up the bidding if only I would’ve received some samples.

Get ready for it…here’s the first ever discussion of a non food blog. My friend Pinque is having her first every blog giveaway. She thinks her blog name is pronounced “Pink” but I’ve decided that it is ‘Pinky’ so that’s what I call her now. I’d like this nickname to stick, so if you comment on her blog, please start each comment by saying “Dear Pinky”. Thank you for your support. Anyway, Pinky is giving away a Vera Bradley purse. If you want to win, you better go register. If you’re reading this on Saturday or later, then you already missed it. But you should still go visit Pinky’s blog.

Here’s my commentary on Vera Bradley. Kate had a stretch from 2005-2007 when she was convinced that she liked Vera Bradley stuff, but not enough to actually buy something. So for two years, every time we saw a store that sold Vera Bradley stuff, we had to stop so she could look at the exact same purses that she looked at last time. So I made at least 150 visits to a Vera Bradley retailer without a single purchase. Now I knew that she didn’t really like Vera Bradley stuff enough that she’d actually carry one of their purses, but I really, really didn’t want to ever go into another store. So I bought her the one for Christmas, knowing that she wouldn’t like it and would probably return it. That is exactly what happened. I haven’t had to go into another Vera Bradley store since. I consider this one of my finest moments.

Kath reported yesterday that she contacted the tempeh people and that they confirmed that tempeh is safe to eat raw. Well that’s great, but she offered me raw tempeh two weeks ago. And there was no warning like “I’m not sure if this is safe to eat or not.”

So I guess there were two steps in finding out if tempeh is safe to eat raw:

1. Feed it to Nate and see if he dies

2. Email the company and ask them

Am I wrong for thinking that we should switch those two steps around?

Stock Up

Wishing VeggieGirl a happy birthday. Were there any food blogs that did NOT give VeggieGirl a happy 21st? My birthday is next Thursday and I’m expecting the same level of bloglove

Raising Money for Charity. Between Meghann’s bake sale, Zesty’s shirts, and Jenna’s cookbook, the blogworld is really coming together – sort of “We are the world” style. So I think I should do my part. For every dozen baked goods that you send to my house, at least six will be donated to a local charity. I think we all know where the other six are going to go. Now if only Zesty’s shirt had a picture of his glorious bald head on it…

Foodbuzz Ads with Pictures of Chocolate. This one is a complete mixed signal. I mean the food blog is all about Kombucha and Spinach and FlaxWheySoyTempeh whatever, but then there’s an advertisement for chocolate. I’m confused.

Stock Down

Actually couldn’t think of any stock down this week, so I replaced it with the following segment…

Blog Names that Sort of Sound Like Porn

Making Love in the Kitchen

Tales of Expansion

Apples and Twigs

Cream Puffs in Venice

Get Sconed

In a Pickle and a Jam

Two Peas and Their Pod

That’s all for this week. I wanted to write about The Chic Life, Hangry Pants and Eating Bender, but I went on too many tangents so those will be in next week’s roundup for sure. We’ll do better next time

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY VEGGIE GIRL!!!! :)

Play Ball!

2009-04-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends. Welcome to the first YIFY post that I have ever written out by hand prior to typing. I'm writing this from 30,000 feet on my way from Charlotte to Boston. By the time I post this (and you read this) I'll be in Beantown. I'm going there for work, but today just happens to be the first day of the baseball season for the Boston Red Sox. So as soon as I get off of this plane, I'm heading to Fenway Park and should make it just in time for the first pitch. Forgive me if you aren't a sports fan, but I figured since I'm going to a baseball game in a couple of hours I'd write the first sports-related YIFY post about our national pastime.

It's hard to believe that this is my first YIFY sports post because sports have always been a big part of my life. My dad was a P.E. and Health teacher, so I always played sports. Growing up I played pretty much every sport. I landed on golf as the one sport that I would play competitively in high school and college. I don't really know if that's because of natural talent or because I outgrew (width-wise) every other sport by the time I was a junior in high school.

Even though I stopped playing baseball competitively long ago I've always loved watching the game. So the official opening night of the baseball season was on Sunday. I made a date with my television to watch the game. Kate looked up from her monitor's warm glow to ask "Why do you like this stupid game?" So I decided to give it a little thought.

I like the numbers. Baseball is all about numbers and math. My Rain Man-esque habit of counting pretty much everything works well with baseball. Sure there are stats in every other sport, but baseball is by far the most stats-obsessed sport. They continue to make them up.

It puts on a great live show. Just like there are bands that suck live, there are also sports that are fun to watch on TV but are lame in person. Baseball is great in person because it is played outdoors, played in the summer when it's nice to be outdoors, allows for public drinking, and has super passionate fans. I'm about to go to Fenway and I'll be surrounded by 20,000 people who could've easily been cast as "drunk Boston guy #4" in Good Will Hunting and I can't wait. Whenever I travel to a city for work in the Spring/Summer, I always check the schedule and try to catch a game.

There's a paternal/nostalgic quality to the game. Maybe it's a guy thing, but when you're sitting in the stands for three hours, it's impossible not to think of playing catch with your dad or going to a game. How else can you explain that I still cheer for the Cincinnati Reds? I've never lived in Cincy and there were always teams that were closer to our house, but my dad was a Reds fan, so I am too.

Baseball absolutely has its flaws. I might have to take out a second mortgage for a ticket tonight, the game lasts a really long time (at least one Oklahoma! in most cases), and the players seem to have a penchant for sticking needles in their ass so they can hit the ball farther. I tend to overlook these flaws and focus on the positives which is so not me.

So I guess this is my public service announcement post. Try to get to a baseball game this summer. Whether it is major league, minor league, or your nephew's Tee Ball game. Give it a shot. If nothing else, you can drink a beer and work on your tan. Although drinking at a tee ball game probably isn't a good idea.

Editor's Note: Sox won 5-3. Just a typical game. There will be 161 more this year, but I'm going to remember this one for a long time.

Oh, and I really need to work on my handwriting.

And Cut!

2009-04-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

Today's post title is a relatively obscure reference to one of my favorite stand-up comedians, Jim Gaffigan. He has a bit where he talks about how he likes to walk around and act like he's a movie director during his everyday life. Basically when something happens that he doesn't like, he just likes to say "And Cut" and then everyone has to stop doing what they are doing, like it's the end of a take.

I bring this up because I've had a few "and cut" moments in the past couple of weeks. Basically just stuff that has dragged on way longer than it should. I thought I'd share some of these experiences/my thoughts with you guys.

Scenario 1 - Oklahoma!

A couple of weeks ago, somebody thought it would be a good idea to spend a perfectly good Saturday night going to a high school musical. Not an awesome movie starring the dreamy Zac Effron, but an actual, high school musical at a real high school. Come to think of it, it wasn't just a perfectly good Saturday night...it was a better than average Saturday night. There were NCAA basketball games on and I was still alive in my brackets at this point. But I was peer pressured to go to the local high school and watch Oklahoma! instead. During the next THREE HOURS, here's what I learned:

1. High school kids don't shower everyday and sort of smell like b.o. (Kate's observation)

2. This high school really needs a wealthy alum to park his/her ass in one of those wooden chairs for three hours. Then s/he would donate some seat cushions or money for padded seats.

3. The exclamation point at the end of Oklahoma is a complete tease. This isn't exciting at all. They just added that so people would think it's an exciting play.

4. The entire first act of Oklahoma! can be removed. Seriously, they spend the entire first hour and a half talking/singing about who is going to take whom to the box social. Don't they realize that the Box Social is actually being held in Aunt Eller's backyard. It's like 10 feet away from where they are doing the dancing and singing...does it really matter who goes with whom?

5. I can download a whole lot of iPhone apps in three hours.

Editor's Note: I'm not really a fan of the arts. The arts really haven't done anything for me. Actually, the arts were the only blemishes on an otherwise stellar report card for years. Unless Movies and Television and Blogs can be considered 'the arts.' If that's the case, then I love the arts.

Scenario 2 - Beerfest

So this one was actually pretty fun. We went to a brewery on Saturday and took the brewery tour. Exactly the kind of thing that I would like, right? Here's the deal...

1. With the tour comes 5 complimentary tastes - each about 6 ounces

2. I crunched some numbers in the back, and the only way that 5, six ounce tastes would have the desired effect is if I do the drinking of all five in quick succession

3. There is a tour in the middle, so I pretty much need the tour to happen fast so I can finish up my tastes and have beer do what it is supposed to do

4. The tour took a long time because somebody kept asking a bunch of questions. I understand that it's sort of research for his blog, but some of us really don't care what temperature the water is when they add the yeast, as long as the beer tastes good, right? Nerd.

Oh, and the brewery was like an hour drive from our house. I know that doesn't sound like it's very far away, but since I started working from home, I really don't drive at all. Like I'll go a week where the only driving I do is to and from the airport. Now my ass starts to hurt on an hour drive because of the whole sitting on the wallet thing. That didn't used to happen until after a few hours. Hmm, both scenarios 1 and 2 have included something about my butt hurting...I'll try to work on that for scenario 3.

Scenario 3 - Dessert Bar

This one is a good idea gone bad. Charlotte added a dessert bar downtown a couple of weeks ago. What's that saying about arranging the deckchairs on the titanic? Don't these people know that we're in a recession? Anyway, whatever. Dessert is good, so I'm cool with it. Somebody thought we should go, and it didn't take much arm twisting. Now I'm usually a pretty patient person at restaurants. I'm used to big fancy client dinners where I have to sit in the same place for three hours. Also, my dad is the least patient person in the world (like he has to walk around if it takes more than five minutes for his food to be brought out, or he'll take his empty glass up back to the kitchen to find the server for a refill) and I try not to do that. But this is a dessert only place. So it's just one course. Or you could say two courses, if you want to count a cocktail as it's own course.

Somehow this process takes 2.5 hours. This is .83 Oklahomas. The Oklahoma is my new unit of measurement of time. 1 Oklahoma = 3 hours. The Oklahoma has replaced Braveheart as my unit of measurement for time. During that 2.5 hours, we had one drink. We ordered three desserts, and received zero desserts. Orders 1 and 2 were out of stock. Order #3 was prepared incorrectly. So we went to a dessert bar for 2.5 hours and didn't get any dessert. During this 2.5 hours, I thought about how many Steak'n'Shake Milkshakes I could drink in that amount of time, or if I could walk to a McDonalds, order an apple pie, then run a 10k, write a blog post, walk the dog, and still be done in less than 2.5 hours. At least the booth was comfortable.

Now I didn't start out to write a bitter rant of a blog post, but that seems to be what this has become. All of the scenarios above were fun (especially beerfest) because we were with friends. I think I started 1,000 words ago with a Jim Gaffigan reference. Maybe I should take my own advice.....And Cut!

This Week in Blogs, Volume II

2009-04-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

Greetings, and welcome to the second weekly food blog roundup. Thanks for coming back. It’s been an exciting week in Food Blog World, and I’ll do my best to take you around in the next 1000 words or so. I’ve decided to change it up a bit and go for more short reviews, instead of a handful of really long ones. We’ll see how that goes. I usually just start rambling, so that might not work. Here. We. Go.

Kelsey at Bites + Bowls had a very busy week. In addition to wearing some Flashdance-style leggings, she also tried on 17 different colors of nail polish and took about 15 inappropriate pictures of fruit and veggies. Since Kelsey doesn’t eat mammal, there is usually fruit and/or veggies with every meal. This means three opportunities per day for phallic fruit and veggie placement. Oh, and she also became the first food blogger to take a picture of her dirty laundry. Congrats, Kelsey. Bites and Bowls was also under attack this week by a Negative Nancy commentor. There were like five consecutive posts when the same person kept writing nastygrams about pretty much everything. So I had to put on my disguise as my blog commentor alter ego/sassy middle-aged woman (this time I was named Marge) and come to the rescue. Marge saved the day and once again stopped the advances of Negative Nancy.

VeggieGirl – I hope your VeggieCameraman/VeggieDad is feeling better. He didn’t sound too good on your last video. I could send you some Robitussin or maybe some Sucrets or something. I’m hoping it’s just a springtime cold, and not a ventilation problem in the VeggieGirl kitchen/VGTV Studios. Oh, and VeggieGirl, my blondies have not arrived yet. What does a girl have to do to get some VeggieGirl blondies? Everyone else in Blogland seems to have received their VeggieGirl Blondies, and mine are nowhere to be found. Did you lose my address already? And why doesn’t my cable package come with VeggieGirl TV? I get Starz 8 in HD and four shopping channels, but no VeggieGirl TV. That ain’t right. Time Warner - If you're listening, can you please add VeggieGirl TV to my channel lineup?

Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point is considering a move to Charlotte. I am 100% in favor of this move. If it helps make your decision, I'll let you refer to me as “Replacement Meghann” after you move. I’m cool with it, really. Caitlin had the first food blog night that I could actually relate to on Saturday. It involved onion rings, watching basketball, and drinking beers. Not just A beer, but beers plural. Then you had to ruin it by running 10 miles while listing to the Twilight Soundtrack. Why must you torment me like this? You can move here if you want, but you better leave those damn vampire friends in Florida. Caitlin also finished her 30 day shred. Finally! I was exhausted just from reading about it.

On a Lobster Placemat. Okay, so I haven’t started reading this one yet, but I really dig the name and Kate likes your blog. Most of these food blogs seem to follow a pretty consistent naming convention of [Name/Nickname] + [What I like to Do] OR [ Name + What I like to Eat] OR [Some Noun and Verb Combo]. And then out of nowhere comes this fantastic abstract blog name that I really don’t understand. This is the food blog equivalent of Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” in a sea of one word song titles like Daughter, Jeremy, Alive, and Black. I will start reading your blog, just because of the name. And because you play with your food.

Super Caloric Chalk Dust is also a pretty fantastic blog name. I also feel like SCCD must live in one of those cities where companies test out all of their new products before launching them across the country. That's the only theory I can come up with, because I spend a lot of time at the grocery store, and I’ve never seen half of the products that you’ve tried this week. Doritos Collisions? Jelly Belly Pudding? Aloe Juice? Where do you find these treasures, and have they been approved by the FDA? I get scared when you go a couple of days without posting. I start to think that maybe one of these experimental/only available wherever the heck you live foods caused some significant health issue that is keeping you from your blogging responsibilities. Or maybe you just have other stuff to do.

ZestyCook – So I finally started reading this one so I have more to talk about than his beautiful bald head, but then I got sidetracked. I saw that you made a chocolate cake and used a Skor Bar as a topping. They still make Skor bars? I thought those went the way of the Rollerblade. Maybe they just started selling them in Canada and stopped U.S. distribution. Which reminds me – do they still sell Clearly Canadian in Canada? Because that stuff kicked ass. So if you can get your hands on some Clearly Canadian, you can send it my way. It would go really well with VeggieGirl’s blondies (which should totally be here by now).

The Fitnessista got a shout-out in one of her favorite (and my favorite) magazines this week – Glamour. My favorite part of Glamour (and Cosmo) is taking their little quizzes. It always comes back with results like "you really need to work on pleasing your man" or "you are a strong independent woman." I'm starting to think that maybe those quizzes aren't designed for men who are just killing time at the grocery store checkout. Anyway, Fitnessista's Glamour quote had something to do with healthy living and loving your body. I didn’t really read it. But I did see that she said something about doing Zumba. Kate and I tried doing Zumba once in South Beach with my Uncle Joe and Aunt Rolando. It was not pretty. My uncles were Zumba professionals and we were not. I think Kate and I were both two entire songs behind the rest of the class. I also like Fitnessista because Kate can’t even come close to pronouncing her blog’s name correctly. So I like to ask Kate what she’s looking at (while I know she’s looking at Fitnessista) just to hear the pronunciation. Kate’s version includes about 12 S’s and 6 I’s.

Matt at Brew and Bake just posted his 7th step in his how to home brew series. 7 steps and we can’t even drink the beer yet! I’ve decided that if anything takes more than three steps to explain, I’m probably just going to buy it instead. Or, I’ll just hang out in Matt’s garage when he gets to the ‘bottling’ step. And when he goes in to type out his blog post, I’ll just take the beer. Probably shouldn’t have written that plan down – there goes the element of surprise.

Stock Up/Stock Down – With Commentary. Sometimes.

Stock Up

Green Smoothies – Yeah, somebody thought it was a good idea to put spinach or kale in a smoothie. I’m sure it’s pretty healthy. It’s been a great weight loss tool for me. No, I haven’t tried one of these, but Kate has jumped on the bandwagon, and every time I see the post-Green Smoothie Blender in my kitchen I start to throw up in my mouth and skip my next meal. Thanks ladies!

Kombucha – So it costs like $3.50 and tastes like garbage water…what’s not to love? Oh, and it’s the only drink I’ve found that still doesn't taste good, even after you mix it with alcohol.

April Fools Jokes – Seriously... saying you ate something fried or had fast food is not enough. Ladies, this is your one day out of the year when you can lie and nobody can get mad at you. Go out on more of a limb. Next year I’m expecting a food blogger to say they were coked out with Lindsay Lohan or huffed gasoline for breakfast with an Olson twin.

Breakfast Cookies - I stopped getting excited when I found it they weren't talking about Oreos

Stock Down

Pistachio Nuts - This latest recall hit the food blogging community very hard. We're going to pull through this. I promise.

Exercise-related injuries - Everyone seems to be magically healed now.

30 Day Shred – Level II - That was so last week.

Using the terms 'sammie' and 'brekkie' - Specifically for sandwich and breakfast. Actually stock is way up on these two. I just really want it to stop. So I thought maybe putting them in the stock down category would lead to their demise - at least on this side of the Atlantic.

That’s all for this week. I should be back next Friday. Give me a couple weeks and this food blog roundup will have its own blog. It'll probably have a weekly long post and then some shorter stuff on a daily basis. The new design will be fun, flirty, and feminine with a spunky edge. Not really. I actually just stole that from a food blog. A free VeggieGirl blondie to the first person who can tell me where I stole that last line. I'm lying about the blondie too, but curious if anyone can name that blog.

Alright, time to go. See y'all next week.

Summer Plans

2009-04-02T12:40:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again (check local listings). There are leaves on the trees, the birds are chirping, and there are lots of door to door people trying to get me to buy everything from gutter cleaning to tree trimming to lawn care.

The lawn care guy came to our door today. He was from the TruGreen -ChemLawn company, I think. And why the hell would they include "ChemLawn" in their name? I think I'd try to downplay the use of chemicals, but what do I know. Anyway, TruGreen guy is warmly greeted by Kate (never really interested in dealing with a door to door salesman) and Gilbert (who was already in a bad mood because it was raining outside and he couldn't go to the bark park). So the doorbell rings and Gilbert starts barking like crazy. Kate gets the door because I'm lazy and don't feel like leaving my couch and Martha Stewart for five minutes. I know I didn't enter Publisher's Clearing House this month so there's no chance it's the prize patrol. Kate answers, realizes it's the lawn chemical guy, and responds with a firm (but polite) "no thank you, my husband takes care of the lawn." I loved it. It was delivered with the right amount of voice inflection, and had the undertone of traditional gender roles that are so not us. It could've only been better if she would've finished it off with "now if you'll excuse me, I have a roast in the oven to attend to. I said good day sir."

Anyway, chemical man didn't stop there. The rejection before his pitch and the barking dog did not stop this guy from delivering his killer close-the-deal line of "what are your plans for your lawn this summer?" Kate responded with a quick "to mow it" and that was that. It was short and just enough smartass to get him to go away.

After Chemlawn man left, the four of us (Kate, Me, Gilbert, and Martha) sat around and discussed how we could've answered that question better. Well, it was basically just Kate and I discussing it, but Martha and Gil were both there too. Anyway, how the hell are you supposed to respond to a question like "What are your plans for your lawn this summer?" We came up with several options. Feel free to borrow any of these if the TruGreen guy comes to your door:

TruGreen Man: What are your plans for your lawn this summer?

You: I'm not sure. We were thinking of taking the lawn to see my folks up in Wisconsin. But probably only the front lawn, because the back lawn gets car sick.

You: Well, we're going to enroll the lawn in a summer reading program at the public library. We want it to stay sharp and to keep on learning even during the summer months. Oh, and lawn is on the waiting list for swimming lessons at the YMCA, so keep your fingers crossed!

You: We've got a lot of things lined up for the lawn this summer. Including, but not limited to: letting the dog pee on it. Pounding some metal stakes into it and throwing some horses shoes back and forth, and probably digging some holes in it at some point.

You: We're probably going to take it easy this summer. Lawn had a big year last year (with the trip to Europe and all) so we'll probably just stay around here. I mean, lawn will grow and get cut and then grow and get cut, but that's about it. We'll probably do that every week or so.

You: We're planning on digging up the entire lawn, donating the grass to science, and then paving the entire yard.

That's all we could come up with. Then Martha butted in with something about making your own honey or something like that so we stopped thinking about the TruGreen guy and his silly question. Again, feel free to borrow these, or share your own suggestions as comments.

Blog Housekeeping and House Hunters

2009-04-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Sorry for the delay. I've been doing some YIFY soul-searching this week. Lots of trust falls and ropes courses with me and my blog.

So I'll start with a little blog housekeeping. This food blog week in review thing seemed to work pretty well, so I should probably do some more of that. That being said, the food blog critic thing really doesn't fit into the strict charter of this blog - nor is it entirely interesting to people who don't spend their free time blogstalking (except reading mine). So the master plan now is to create a new blog where I just talk about other blogs. I'll start working on that one of these days with a new domain, new design, and all of the other things that go along with starting a new blog. Once that happens, YIFY will go back to just being a random collection of my thoughts about nothing in particular. Oh, and the new food blogstalker blog (yet to be named or created) will have pictures and graphics and all of the things that a blog should have. YIFY will remain in its current (ugly) format. So for the next couple of weeks, I'll continue doing the food blog posting thing here until I get motivated and make the pretty blog.

Okay, that's enough housekeeping for one day. Now I'll make the smooth transition from blog details to cable television...

As many of you know, I spend a significant amount of my life watching television. I can't spend all of my free time stalking food blogs, and television is more than happy to fill this need. There are really three categories of television shows that Kate and I watch:

1. Shows that only Kate likes (about 15 shows - mostly those on HGTV or TLC)

2. Shows that only I like (about 100 shows - pretty much everything)

3. Shows that we both like (4 shows that I can think of)

I can think of about four shows that we both like off the top of my head: The Office, The Biggest Loser, Barefoot Contessa, and The Today Show. Of course, The Today Show should count as more than one show, since it's literally on for 24 hours per week (two hours on Saturdays and Sundays, and 4 hours each weekday). That's ridiculous, but that's for another post. This one is about House Hunters. It used to be one of the shows that we both like, but I recently made the decision to move it into the 'Shows that only Kate likes' bucket.

I'm not entirely sure why I broke up with House Hunters, but I can think of a couple possible reasons - I could be burned out from doing actual house hunting not very long ago and the thought of house hunting again just is not appealing at all. Or (more likely) I've finally realized that every single episode of House Hunters is exactly the same. Since it's still in the "shows that Kate likes" category, I still have to sit through my share of episodes. So I've decided to come up with a list of things that will likely happen in an episode, and then rate the episode based on how many of these things actually happens. Every episode has at least 2 of these things happen, if you're lucky, you'll see an episode with four or more of the following:

1. [Wife/Girlfriend] - Steps into walk in closet and makes some stupid joke about "Well, this is big enough for my wardrobe, but I don't know where he'll put his clothes" ha ha ha

2. [Husband/Boyfriend] - Sees dishwasher and makes dumb joke about "not having dishpan hands anymore" ha ha ha

3. [Wife/Girlfriend] - shows some apprehension about the backyard. Usually something about "I don't know if a pool is really safe with the kids" or "what if a bear comes in from that wooded area and eats the kids." Okay, that second one never happens, but the first one is pretty common.

4. [Husband/Boyfriend] - expresses some interest in turning the basement, shed, or bonus room into a 'men's den'. Bonus point if he uses the term 'man cave' and acts like he's the first person to ever use the term.

5. [Wife/Girlfriend] - dismisses one of the houses because of something stupid like "I just don't know about the paint color in the baby's room." This is usually when Kate starts talking to them through the TV and says something about how easy it would be to change the color of the baby's room.

6. [Realtor] Ends up showing houses that are not in the couple's price range. Bonus point if they end up buying a home that was not in their original price range.

So next time you watch House Hunters, see how many of these you can check off your list. Or, next time you lose control of the remote try to come up with a your own episode cliche scavenger hunt. It helps pass the time.

This Week in Food (Blogs)

2009-03-27T08:23:00.001-07:00

Hello, and welcome to the first (and potentially last) edition of the YIFY Food Blog Roundup. This could probably go in a couple of directions from here. Either it could become wildly popular and create it's own spin-off blog, or I could offend a bunch of people that I don't even know, feel guilty about it, and then go back to blogging about my dog or hard alcohol. Only time will tell. A few of the ground rules:

1. Blogs were selected at random. And by random I mean I'm commenting on the handful that I read regularly, or those that seem to be popular because they get frequent shout-outs in the blogs that I read.

2. If you have your own food blog that you want to be included, or, if there's one that you read and you want me to comment on it, just leave it as a comment. No promises here - remember that this might be the last edition.

3. I'm not trying to be an ass. Really. This is about as edited/filtered as I get. Sorry if it is still in some way offensive. This is the first post where Kate actually has editorial control. Mostly because she's the nicest person that I know.

4. If I write something about you and you don't like it, you can email me and I'll edit the post, print a retraction, or apologize profusely - your pick. But if you don't think it's too painful, I'd say just laugh it off. There may be some symbiosis here eventually. If we hit the big time, then maybe we can help drive traffic your way.

Alright, now that we've got that our of the way, here's your roundup

Blog: Kath Eats Real Food

Blogger: Kath

Kath returned from Africa last week and got back to her normal blogging schedule. I'm not going to lie...life was a little more difficult when Kath was in Africa. Posts were inconsistent. Matt did his best to fill the Kath shaped hole that was left in blogworld, but it was hard on all of us. And when Kath did post, there were comment battles popping up everywhere. It was very difficult.

But now Kath is back and all is right in blogworld. She had a bunch of contests in the past week. I think it might be related to her trip to Africa. I have a feeling that next week she's going to announce that she's actually a Nigerian princess, and if you make a small deposit (of barney butter) into her account, then she can access all of the riches of her motherland and shower you with gold and ivory and probably some oatmeal. Be on the lookout for that, as I think it might be a scam.

Speaking of oatmeal, Kath and Oatmeal were fighting earlier this week. And by fighting, I mean that she chose other breakfast treats for a few days. It was difficult to watch. I felt like I was sitting in the back of the minivan and plugging my ears and saying la la la to myself to drown out the noise of Mom (Kath) and Dad (Oatmeal) fighting. I was worried that I would have to pick sides if they split up for good. I mean, we really like hanging out with Kath and Matt, but Oatmeal and I have such history together. Fortunately, it didn't come to that. Kath and her oats are reunited once again.

Did I really just write an entire paragraph about someone else's relationship with oatmeal?

[Leaving the United States. Driving North. Going through Customs. Welcome to Canada]

Blog: Oh She Glows

Blogger: Angela

OSG just launched a "Bikini Body Bootcamp" contest. Basically she's having her readers send in some 'before' pictures in bikinis (along with their measurements) and then they'll have a winner at the end of the thing. I'm trying to figure out how I can show my support. Which of these would be the least creepy?

1. I could take my picture wearing a women's bikini

2. I could go with imitation being the most sincere form of flattery, and also ask my blog readers to send in bikini pictures

3. I could send in my picture wearing a speedo and an "I Glo" baby tee

I think all of the above are pretty creepy, so maybe I'll just send in a celebrity bathing suit picture and say its me. I'd probably go with the famous Tyra Banks or Jennifer Love Hewitt pictures or something like that.

But best of luck to OSG and the rest of the contestants. I know that bikini season is only about three days long in Canada, so hopefully they've got the scheduling figured out.

Blog: Zestycook

Blogger: Hmm, Zesty, I guess. Mind if I call you that? Perhaps Zest for short...

I have to admit that I don't really read this blog. I'm going to start, I just haven't gotten around to it. But it seems popular and fancy enough so I thought I'd write about it. Also, Zesty is successful in a female-dominated space, and I applaud that. I compare it to my success on the Taylor Swift Karaoke circuit, where it's usually just me and a bunch of women. But since I don't read his blog (yet) this is probably going to be a fairly superficial roundup.

I love Zesty's beautiful bald head - and I don't care who knows it. Have y'all seen his head? It can be seen in all its glory on the "About Zesty" page. It looks so damn smooth. It's probably good that we haven't met yet. I'm 97% sure that I'd start the conversation with "is it cool if I feel your head?" I used to think to myself that I'd much rather have gray hair than go bald, but a couple of things have changed my mind on that topic:

1. I started getting gray hair. And it seems to be coming in on the sides faster than the top. That was not part of the plan. I was hoping for George Clooney, but I'm worried it's going to be more like Grandpa Munster.

2. I saw Zesty's glorious bald head, and thought, yeah, that's definitely better than the Grandpa Munster look that I'm working on right now.

I promise I'll stop talking about Zesty's head soon, but one more thing on that topic. When I was 14 and had to go to the dermatologist, there was a picture hanging on the wall. It was a side by side comparison of a 50-something plains Indian woman, and a 90-something Tibetan monk. The plains Indian woman spent all of her time in the sun so her face looked like an old catcher's mitt. The Tibetan monk spent all of his time protected from the sun and his bald head looked flawless. For the last 14 years I have been looking for a bald head as flawless as the monk head, and now we have found it...This concludes the somewhat-creepy section of this post where I describe another man's head.

I promise I'll actually read the blog next week so I can actually talk about it instead of Zesty's head.

[Leaving Canada. Stopping briefly at Duty Free to buy some booze. Next stop = Florida]

Blog: The Inner Workings of a College Graduate

Blogger: Meghann

It's been a very exciting week for Graduate Meghann readers. At long last, Meghann addressed her relationship status. For those of you who haven't been following along (shame on you), Meghann has been spotted out with this guy named Derek, since the Valentine's day time frame, but he has not yet received a title on the blog. So every time Derek and Meghann do something, there are usually a handful of comments saying something like "are you and Derek dating" or "is Derek your boyfriend."

Well, Meghann finally cleared this up for us. Sort of. In a recent post, Meghann stated:

"Truth is Derek and I discussed it this weekend and we both honestly do not know what to label each other. We both know that we enjoy each other’s company and that we are just seeing how things move from here. There is no rush to produce labels, so one day at a time people! LOL"

Well, that might be good enough for you two, but those of us in blogworld need a label. It doesn't even have to be an accurate label, as long as it is used consistently. So if you don't want to go with 'Boyfriend' or 'Dating', that's fine, but give us something. You can call him the Easter Bunny or the Pope or whatever you want - just give the guy/relationship a title. It can be like a game of blog Mad Libs.

In other Graduate Meghann news, Meghann and her Easter Bunny, Derek went rollerblading this week. Wait, what? How did they do that? Did they get into a DeLorian with Michael J. Fox, get it up to 88 miles an hour and set the flux capacitor for 1996? I can't remember the last time I saw rollerblades, but I'm pretty sure Clinton was in office. I'm not really sure why Rollerblades disappeared. It wasn't like a better technology came along like with the Zach Morris cell phone or the Betamax or laser disc player. People just stopped using them. But maybe Meghann and her Easter Bunny are bringing them back, and I support that. BTW, spellcheck doesn't even recognize 'rollerblades' as a word anymore.

Blog: Eat, Live, Run

Blogger: Jenna

Alright, this will be a short one...mostly because this post is already too long. I don't know what happened here. I went out of town last week and Jenna was like the queen of yoga and every post had something to do with yoga. Then I came back and now every post talks about swimming. What the hell did I miss? It's like someone did a big 'search and replace' on the entire blog and took out Yoga and replaced it with Swimming. I'll get over it, but I feel like it was all really abrupt. It's a good thing that this isn't a 'Single White Female' scenario, otherwise I would've already invested in my own yoga mat and personal Yogi, only to have to switch it up and buy goggles now.

In other ELR news, Jenna and her BF were at the beach, and apparently Jenna's BF is friends with Albert Haynesworth and other professional football players. Now I don't doubt that it's true, but it would be an amazingly funny inside joke if it wasn't. Like he could just give her another random celebrity every week and she would have to weave that person into the blog. Almost like a Barbara Walters-style namedropping (I was horseback riding with the King of Jordan just last week...I was in a hot tub with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck). Also, I'd really like to see a photo of Jenna with Albert Haynesworth. And yes, he's the one stomping on the other dude's head. If I was decent with photoshop, I'd make that happen...instead you'll all just have to imagine it in your mind.

Blogging Trends or Stock up/Stock Down (not sure what to call it yet)

Stock Up

Barney Butter

Tempeh

Commenting with ALL CAPS and plenty of !!!!

Fake signatures at the end of posts

30 Day Shred Level II

Stock Down

Yoga

Protein Powder

Labels for boyfriends

Black tar heroin

30 Day Shred Level I

Stay tuned for next week (or next time that I get around to this) when I'll review Brew and Bake, Healthy Tipping Point, Bites and Bowls, and whatever other blogs y'all tell me to write about.

That's all. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think.

The Real Housewives of Facebook

2009-03-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

This should probably be titled "My Digital Friends, Volume IV," but the real housewives total came to me when I was running yesterday, and I just couldn't help myself.

So of my 387 facebook friends, there are probably 20 or so that are stay at home moms (SAHMs). A couple of these are family members. I promise this post isn't about you. Hopefully that'll stop my sister from being mad at me. Most of my SAHM friends are from high school or college who have recently followed the traditional progression of: graduated from school, got married, had kid, stay at home and raise kid. The new last step in this progression is apparently "spend all of my time on facebook." Stay at home moms are great people, and they have the hardest job in the world (other than coal miners, probably) but I know this much is true:

Stay at home moms are the worst facebook friends. Ever.

Most of this revolves around the status update. Specifically:

They Update Their Status All the time: I expect status updates at specific times of the day: Early risers update their status in the morning. 8-5ers update their status after lunch (something like "back in the office and ready for a nap") and then there are the ready to leave work, and just got home from work status updates. Finally, there are the 'I have nothing better to do tonight so I'll update my facebook status' updates. With SAHMs, they just update their status all day. Now I only know this because I'm on Facebook all day, but it's damn annoying.

They Update Their Status with Stuff that Doesn't Interest Me: I go onto Facebook to be entertained. This does not happen with your SAHM friends. You get Facebook status updates like:

"Life is good when [insert rugrat name] sleeps through the night"

"Shopping for Minivans, and recommendations?"

"Taking [rugrat] to Target. He's still trying to get over his cold. Darn that daycare"

"What does it mean when [rugrat] has green spitup?"

Again, I'm looking for an enjoyable distraction with my facebook status updates. I'm looking for an obscure movie quote or song lyric, or some interesting detail of your life. Maybe even something unintentionally funny after being overserved on a Friday or Saturday night. Not this mom stuff about minivans or gerber products.

Their Mom Friends have Full Conversations on Facebook: So I usually judge Facebook status updates based on two criteria: 1. Does it make me laugh, 2. Did lots of other people comment on it. Usually these two are pretty consistent. If I find something funny or entertaining, I'm probably not alone. With my SAHM friends, they post the lamest status updates (see examples above) yet still get a handful of responses that are just as lame. It's like there is this vast network of moms on facebook that go from watching noggin to hitting refresh on their computer to commenting on their status and then repeat. Oh, and I know I could call them a Momtourage, but I really don't want that term to takeoff, so I'm not going to use it. Damn, I guess I just did. So if some SAHM asks for input about a minivan, there will be five recommendations up there an hour later. Maybe I'm just jealous, who knows.

I think it all comes back to my fear that one day all of the cool kids are going to wake up and realize that everyone is using facebook, and then they'll close out their accounts and start doing something else instead. Then it'll just be me and the SAHMs left on Facebook and my only entertainment will be status updates about the Honda Odessey and Go Diego Go.

My Digital Friends, Volume III

2009-03-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

How about this...three days in a row. This will be your third and final installment in the "My Digital Friends" series. This one is about how having blogging friends really changes your interaction and relationships with these people.

I'll start with our friend Kath, who is sort of our Charlotte Kevin Bacon. Every friend that we have in Charlotte can be traced back to Kath (and her husband, Matt) in some way. We've met some other people (not through Kath) but usually they just try to get us to go to church with them. Kate likes to remind me of the six degrees of Kath whenever I make fun of her for excessive blogstalking. Usually something along the lines of "we wouldn't even know Kath and Matt if I didn't do this" like she's some kind of martyr or something. Gotta love it. Anyway, we met Kath and Matt because of Kate's blogstalking and then setting up a double date. At the time of this double date, I wasn't really a follower of Kath's blog, but since we were going to meet them, I took a couple of hours to do research on her blog. The blog was like a full couples eHarmony profile or something, except most of it was about oatmeal and yoga. Matt's blog focuses more on my interests (bread and beer), but that wasn't launched until after our first date. So that's one plus of having blogging friends...you feel like you know them before you actually know them.

One thing to watch out for when you have blogging friends is to not freak out their blog's recurring characters the first time you meet them. So the first time I met Matt's mom, I think I led with "So how is Spanish class going?" Matt's mom is auditing a Spanish class at a local university, but I only know this because I read the blog. Think how creepy that must sound coming from some guy you haven't met before. I think I followed that one up with something like "Why do you always order white wine when the meal absolutely calls for a full-bodied red?" Another one that I only knew because of my freakish memory and creepy blogstalking habits. Should've probably kept those to myself and just gone with something like "Nice to meet you, do you live around here?"

You also have to watch out and make sure that someones blog persona doesn't trump what you actually know about them. My friends Al and Kate are both bloggers. They got married a few months ago and actually announced it on their respective blogs. I saw them for the first time since the wedding, and even though my Kate instructed me to "congratulate them on their wedding" I think I led with "Hey Kate, congrats on your 1000th post" which was a detail that I had picked up from reading her blog. I quickly recovered with "oh, and congrats on getting married, too."

Having blogger friends can also get you reading things that you normally wouldn't read. My friend Michelle blogs about fashion. Now I enjoyed Sex and the City (the show and movie) as much as the next guy (actually, probably more than the next guy), but I probably wouldn't read a blog about women's fashion if I wasn't friends with the author. Then again, I doubt all of my friends would really be interested in some gem that I write that amounts to 1000 words about the best mixers for Gin, but they muddle through because they know and/or like me. So I guess it all works out. And now when we hang out with Michelle and her husband I can say things like "oh, those are your 7 for all mankind jeans, aren't they? I loved those with the Express Cardi."

Commenting on friend blogs is also fun. I usually do one of two things. I either comment with some kind of off-topic inside joke, or come up with a fake name and defend my friend blogger, if someone is being mean via comments. I usually select a woman's name. And this fake woman persona of mine (usually named Marge, or Marci, or Doris) is pretty sassy. I think if I was a woman, I'd be a little feisty. Like the kind of woman who gets into fights - usually over her man. You know, the one with the really thin eyebrows that you see at the mall or at the fair. Yeah, so I'll comment as Marci and defend my friends. Could that be a bumper sticker? "My Blog Persona is a feisty middle-aged woman."

Commenting on my friend Kelsey's blog is fun too. Before I met Kelsey, I saw her blog and she had (either intentionally or unintentionally) posted a rather inappropriate looking picture of a couple of apples and a banana. If you don't know what I'm talking about, give a 12 year old boy two apples and a banana and see how he arranges them. So Kelsey was just taking a picture of her lunch or something, and I really really wanted to know if the fruit placement was intentionally in the twig and berries formation, or if it was random produce chance. Kate told me that I couldn't ask via comments, because I hadn't met Kelsey yet, and it's already creepy enough that a guy is reading food blogs. But now that Kelsey is one of my blogfriends, I'm entirely comfortable asking - and can do so without worrying about getting blocked from posting comments.

So there it is, folks. The end of my three volume series on digital friends. Tomorrow we'll have something on The Real Housewives of Facebook. That should be fun and will probably offend plenty of readers.

Speaking of offending readers, I'm going to give the whole 'food blog critic' thing a shot on Saturday. We'll try it once and see how it goes. Depends on whether I can be funny without being a complete ass. Maybe I'll turn it into a weekly roundup or something. I was going to ask the food bloggers for permission first, but decided that I'll just ask for forgiveness later, instead. So stay tuned for that. Should be fun.

My Digital Friends, Volume II

2009-03-24T17:54:00.001-07:00

Two days in a row. Yeah, I know. I'm awesome. So here's Volume II of our three (or more) part series on my digital friends. This one is about my facebook friends.

If this topic seems familiar to some of you, then you've been reading this blog for way too long. I did something on 'Social Networking Rules of Engagement' way back in the day. Like back when I had a blogmate. But this is a little bit different. This one is about evaluating your current friend list and making difficult cuts. Sort of like trying to cut the budget deficit (yeah, I'm watching the president's press conference right now).

So Burger King ran some kind of contest a few weeks ago when they'd give you a free cheeseburger if you defriended 10 people. I didn't go for that for a couple of reasons: 1. I wasn't really hungry for a cheeseburger, and 2. I like to avoid conflict at all costs. But it got me thinking about my friend list, and who I would cut if I had to cut people off. Like if Burger King offered me one of those creepy oversized 'King' masks and suits for cutting friends, who would I choose?Here's the math:

Starting Number: 387. This is the total number of facebook 'friends' that I have. To someone new to facebook, this might seem like a lot. To someone who just graduated college, this is nothing. To someone who doesn't use facebook, I'm surprised you made it this far. Anyway, I don't think I have 387 actual friends. That seems like too many. I don't get 387 birthday cards and there certainly aren't 387 people who I could call to help me move or bail me out of jail. 200 sounds better, so that's our goal. In my make believe world, Burger King will give me the creepy King head if I get down under 200 friends. So let's start cutting...

Subtract People Who I don't Know (14). So I have to admit that I'm a huge nerd. I started this exercise by going through my entire friend list and typing every name into an excel file. This list of 14 people is basically the list of people that led me to say "who the hell is that" when I typed their name. So those people are gone. I'm not really sure how I became friends with these people. Maybe they were former coworkers who friended me during new employee orientation and then didn't make it to week two. Or maybe I went to college or high school with them and they got married and I don't recognize their married name. Whatever. They're gone now. We're down to 372.

Subtract People Who I haven't talked to in at least three years (212). Whoa. that's a lot. And to clarify, talking on facebook doesn't count. So this means phone, in person, or email communication. So we could be done (we'd be down to 160 friends), but that wouldn't be much fun, so let's add some people back in.

Add in People who I haven't talked to in three years, BUT I have had some facebook communication with them in the past year (45). Try fitting that column heading on an excel file. So these are your facebook success stories. They write funny status updates or post inappropriate pictures. They are your no strings, facebook friends. So we have to add them back. Damn, now we're up to 205.

Add back people who meet previous subtraction criteria but are somehow related to you (2). So if you're following, these are family members that I haven't talked to in over three years. I know, I'm a bad cousin. But of the 16 total family members among my friends, I have talked to 14 of them, which isn't bad. But we've got to add these two back to avoid family reunion drama. So now we're back to 207.

Add back people who meet previous subtraction criteria but have the ability to get you fired if they wanted to (1). Of my 387 current friends, I came up with 20 who could probably get me fired if they wanted to (without trying too hard). So these twenty represent current clients and people who have rectangles above my rectangle on the org chart. Note: there are lots of rectangles above my rectangle. But I talk to most of these people pretty often, so most did not meet the aforementioned exclusion criteria. Only one person to add back in. So now we're at 208.

Subtract your potential liability list (10). So these are people that are on your list. Your list that you'd hand your PR person if you were ever running for office. Not people that you need to disappear, but people that could cause issues in the future, either because 1. you've done ridiculous things around them or 2. they tend to say ridiculous things. So these are people that would respond to your facebook status with some hilarious inside joke that is just blatantly offensive to people who don't know this person. Yeah, they shouldn't be your facebook friends, even though they are probably your best friends in real life. Keep in mind that you have people in the 'could get you fired' category above. They don't get along well with the personal liability group. So these actual friends are off the list. We're down to 198. Give me my creepy looking King head now.

Editor's Note - There are a couple of other groups that I started counting, but left out of this post:

1. People who have seen me naked. This list was way too long. No, not because of that. Get your mind out of the gutter. You try playing high school sports or living in a fraternity. Would it really cost that much more to put in individual shower stalls? If I ever donate money to my high school or college, I'm going to have individual shower stalls put in with doors or curtains. Some freshman will thank me.

2. Stay at home moms. I love you all, but your facebook status updates just aren't very exciting. I could go on here, but instead stay tuned for a full post on this. Something like "The Real Housewives of Facebook." Maybe Thursday-ish, if 'yall are free.

Alright, that's all for tonight. Volume III tomorrow night.

My Digital Friends, Volume I

2009-03-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. Sorry that it has been six days since my last post. That's really poor form on my part. So I decided that I should do something about it. I thought maybe if I start a multi-part post, then that'll keep me on the hook to post on consecutive days. So this is Volume I (of three) about my digital friends. So this one is about how Kate and I are registered blogstalkers. Volume II will provide tips on how to audit your Facebook friends to determine if they are really your friends. Volume III will have something to do with how human interaction is different with someone once you become a fan of their blog. After that I might go another six days without blogging, who knows. Anyway, here's Volume I...

Kate's affinity for blogs and bloggers has been well documented. Again, 'well documented' means that I wrote a post once about how she liked to use the little 'next blog' button at the top of the screen and randomly surf the interweb for blogs. She has sharpened her blogstalking focus recently: honing in on 50 or so blogs that she now has bookmarked and checks on a regular basis.

Editor's Tangent: Yeah, she uses bookmarks for all of these. And there's no organization to them at all, so even the bookmark list requires scrolling. I've tried to get her to use delicious or google reader or pretty much anything other than a laundry list of bookmarks, but have not been successful. Oh, and she doesn't even bookmark the homepage - she'll bookmark the 'about me' page or something, so she'll still have to navigate to the homepage, even after finding her bookmark. I've concluded that spousal computer skills and navigation preferences are the 's/he never picks up her/his clothes' of our generation.

And were back. So she's got this list of fifty or so blogs that she checks all the time. I used to make fun of her for this. I didn't quite understand how she could pay attention to the details of a complete stranger's life. Especially since most of these are like food or healthy eating blogs. So they basically just take pictures of the food that they eat and then talk about it a little bit. There are some exceptions (if you're reading this, just assume you're one of the exceptions). And then for some reason I started reading these damn things too. I think my blogstalking picked up when Kate moved back to Indy...it was basically something else that my pen pal and I could talk about, other than the uneventful 'how was your day' conversation...especially since neither of us were doing anything too exciting at the time. So instead of 'how was your day' the conversation would start with something like 'can you believe what [insert blogger name here] ate for dinner?'

A few things to keep in mind:

1. We don't know these people. We've never met them. Probably never will.

2. Most of these bloggers are pretty ordinary. Other than the fact that they take pictures of their food, they are pretty normal. They have ordinary jobs and ordinary lives. Except you, you're an exception, remember? And we don't talk about you.

3. Not related to 1 and 2, but I should also add that I think I'm the only man who frequents these blogs.

So our digital friends are now a major topic of conversation at our house. Instead of awkward spousal silence or picking a stupid fight for the sport of it, we'll have exchanges like this:

Kate: So when do you think [insert blogger name] and [blogger's boyfriend] are going to get married?

Me: I'm not sure. I don't think he's ready yet, and she's still in school, right? And this isn't really the best market for [boyfriend] to sell his condo.

Kate: Yeah, I guess you're right. I bet they'll get married next Spring, she seems to really like the Spring.

Again, we've never met these people - we've just created our own little soap opera. There are also times when Kate knows what blog I'm reading because of my behavior.

Me [singing] - I had some dreams/they were clouds in my coffee/clouds in my coffee

Kate: You're reading [insert blogger name here] again, aren't you?

Me: Yep, how'd you guess?

Kate: Because you always sing Carley Simon when you read that blog. Did she post another glamour shot of herself?

Me: Yup, a blatant ass picture for no apparent reason

I'm thinking about starting a new blog where I'm some sort of food blog critic. I'd channel this (unhealthy) obsession and do a daily roundup of what all of the food bloggers are writing about on a given day. Sort of like Perez Hilton but without the inappropriate doodles or actual celebrities.

I think it's a good idea, but since I'm currently lacking the motivation to keep one blog up and running, it's probably not the best idea to start another.

Stay tuned for Volume II tomorrow (or whenever I get around to it). It'll have something to do with auditing your Facebook friend list. Should be fun. Oh, and Volume III is about the bloggers that I know and how reading a friend's blog changes your interaction with that person. So if you're a blogger and you're reading this, you'll have to stay tuned for Volume III. In other news, don't the Roman Numerals make this multi-part post seem like a big deal? Yeah, I thought so too.

Holiday Utility Curves

2009-03-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone. I decided to mark the occasion with a Guinness and a post about holidays.

I've decided that different holidays bring varying levels of joy or utility, depending on one's age. I don't think this is really rocket science...nobody would argue with the statement that most people are super excited about Christmas when they are a little kid, and less excited about it when they are in their 40s. What I've decided is that this utility curve is not the same for all holidays.

So in by messed up brain, the level of enjoyment or utility is on the Y axis (the one that goes up and down) and your age is on the X axis (side to side). So holidays like Christmas sort of look like a Ski Jump. They are at their peak early in life, and then go sharply downhill for the rest of your life. That one is sort of obvious (and also sort of depressing). I promise they'll get better.

There are some holidays that follow a normal distribution. I would put most drinking holidays into this category (St. Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve, Valentines Day if you're single). These holidays are of little to no importance during your early years, then become increasingly important in your late teens to mid 20s, and then fall back into obscurity. And by important, I mean they are a convenient excuse to drink too much.

Editor's Note: This isn't entirely the case for everyone for St. Patrick's Day. If you're legitimately Irish (not Bennigan's Irish), then it is sort of important for your entire life. I know this because Kate is legit Irish. Like South Side of Chicago Irish. With a super Irish-sounding maiden name. Honestly, if I had a pet leprechaun, and the pet leprechaun happened to be female, I would probably give it Kate's maiden name. Damn this blog would be better if I could use last names. Oh well. Oh, and I pretty much swiped the Bennigan's Irish thing from Mike Birbiglia who has a whole bit about being Olive Garden Italian.

Editor's Note #2 - Kate says I can use her maiden name. So it's Katie Kerrigan...doesn't that sound like a good leprechaun name?

Some holidays are only important when you're in school, and then you forget about them when you grow up. I guess they sort of have the same ski jump distribution as Christmas. I'd put some obscure holidays that schools get off in this category. In Illinois we got Casimir Pulaski day off. Don't ask why. I wouldn't even know who that is if it wasn't for Wikipedia. We probably would've studied him in school, but we got the day off instead. I'd also put President's Day and Parent Teacher Conference Day in this category. And don't try to tell me that Parent Teacher Conference Day isn't a real holiday.

Some holidays seem to have two peaks that resemble, well, boobs, I guess. Sorry...you try coming up with something else that can be described as having two peaks. Not so easy, huh?Anyway, examples of this would be holidays like Halloween, where it's fun when you're a little kid, and then you don't care about it until you get to college and then it just becomes an excuse for people to dress inappropriately. Then it goes back to not being that important or fun.

A couple of Nike Swoosh shaped holidays would be Labor Day and Memorial Day. Labor Day pretty much sucks when you're a kid because it means that the swimming pool is closed for the year (check local listings). But it's pretty fantastic when you get older and you get a three day weekend for no particular reason. Same pretty much goes for Memorial Day...utility seems to grow as you get older.

That leaves us with Birthdays. I've been thinking about it for awhile, and I finally have it figured out. I think that the birthday utility curve sort of looks like any level from Super Mario Brothers. It's pretty flat most of the time, then every five years it gets exciting and goes up and you get to hit your head against the flashing question mark and grab the coin. This would be on your 5th birthday, 15, 25, etc. Your utility goes up a little bit, but nothing too crazy. Then it gets really fun every 10 years - like when you're zero, 10, 20, 30. These would be those big tubes on Mario Brothers - you can jump up on top and be at the highest levels of utility on these birthdays, or you can jump into the tube and go beneath the surface. That seems to be what people do when they get super depressed on their 30th, 40th, 50th birthdays. Maybe I took the Mario analogy a little too far.

Alright, that's all I've got. Enjoy your corned beef and soda bread. And if anyone has an old school Nintendo that they want to get rid of, let me know. For some reason I really want to play Mario right now.

True Colors

2009-03-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned this at one point or another on here, but I'm not very good with colors. Another way to put it is unless something is super bright, I probably have no clue what color it is. Another was to say it is red/green colorblindness, but that's a pretty dumb name. First, it makes it seem like it's just red and green (it isn't) and the 'blindness' part makes it seem like a big deal, and it really isn't. So that's why I just like to say I'm not really good with colors. Like it's calculus or driving or something.

Not being good with colors is a big deal when you're a kid. For some reason, there's a great deal of emphasis on the color spectrum in school from ages 5-10. I really don't understand this. Everyone says that we're falling behind the rest of the world in math and science. Nobody says we don't know our colors. I happened to go to one of the few elementary schools that had an art program. My art teacher thought I should be held back due to my inability to distinguish between primary colors. Well, that, and I think I was pretty bad at making clay pots too.

Once the other kids found out that I can't distinguish between one color and another, the natural response was to point to pretty much everything and say "what color is this?" Now, if I was smart, I would've said something along the lines of 'dumbass, I clearly don't know...how is this a fun game?" but since I was younger and less cynical, I'd just say red or blue or something like that. It was usually wrong.

After elementary school, colors are less important. People think that matching clothes would be the hard part, but that's not really that difficult. During high school I'd just buy what the manikin/catalog model was wearing. Then I just started asking the people in the stores. Most people who work in retail hate their job, but think that they know something about clothes. So I just say, what would you wear with this? That works pretty well. After watching a few years of what not to wear I've found that it really doesn't matter what colors you wear. Here is my fashion proof, based on this research:

If you're attractive and you wear matching clothes = Classic Style. Elegant, Old Hollywood

If you're attractive and you wear clashing clothes = Fashion Forward or Bold fashion choices

If you're unattractive and you wear matching clothes = not a risk taker

If you're unattractive and wear clashing clothes = fashion disaster or hot mess

Based on this research of E!, Us Weekly, and What Not To Wear, it seems like being attractive can make up for bad color choices, so I'll just focus on that from now on.

There are some benefits to being bad with colors. Well, really only one that I can think of. Kate is currently painting a couple of rooms. Because I can't tell the difference in any of the color finalists, I get to sit out of the vote. I got to pick out a color once at our old house. I chose Spongebob Blue (from the Nickelodeon Collection) for the 1/2 bath. Based on this decision, I'm no longer included in paint color decisions. Kate does keep saying "what do you think" with each wall/coat of paint. I've just been saying that it looks great. I'm not sure what the hell color it is, but it looks great.

The People on the Trail

2009-03-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Our house backs up to a bike trail. Actually, people here call it 'the greenway' but I think that's a dumb name. So I'll continue to call it a bike trail. Whatever you call it, you get the picture, right? It's a trail, where people run, and bike and walk their dogs. I spend a good deal of time on the trail. On most days, I'm probably out there 4-5 times. Usually a couple walks with Gilbert, a bike ride with Kate, and then a run by myself. I usually spend between 2-3 hours/day on the trail, which might sound excessive, but I used to spend that much time commuting. Anyway, my trail time gives me ample people watching time.

People watching on the trail is perfect, especially when Kate's around. You get a good glimpse of someone, but since you're most likely traveling at different speeds or in different directions, it's just a quick glimpse. This is a really good thing for Kate, who likes to people watch as much as I do, but with her it usually turns into people staring. Like it's some kind of sociological study, but she doesn't realize that there isn't any of that two-way mirror glass between her and her subject. So the general movement of people on the trail means that you get a good enough look, but can't get caught staring. All of this time out on the trail has led me to classify all of my fellow trail people into one of the following six categories:

Creepy Guys - So I don't want to start out by scaring y'all. There aren't a whole lot of these. It's rare to see more than one on a given day. There's the guy who is always wearing jeans and a rugby shirt and carrying a baseball. Then there's the guy with the beard who talks to himself. I'd also put the people who have their own one of a kind workout equipment here. You know, people who are working out on something that looks like some kind of concept vehicle. I'm not sure if they bought it off of an infomercial or built it in their garage. Oh, and I'd probably put myself in this category as well. Not that I'm a dirt ball, but I certainly look the part. As mentioned earlier, I'm out there 4-5 times per day. It's pretty much the only time I leave the house, so in the morning, I'm usually rocking the plaid pajama pants, hoodie, white man afro, and quasi-beard. It's a good look.

The Moms - Usually in their 30s. Either pushing kids in a stroller or walking their dogs. They never travel alone. I've found that there are usually 3 of them in a group. They always manage to take up the ENTIRE width of the trail. They only do this between 10 AM - 2 PM. I think they consider this to be Mom time on the trail. If you're out exercising during these hours during the week, then you're on their turf. From what I can hear (I listen to their conversations while trying to get past their human wall) they spend most of their time talking about other women.

The Spandex Crew - These are people who are actually using the trail for actual exercise. They don't all wear spandex, but many of them do. I guess I could fit into this group for 20-25% of my trail time. They rarely talk to other trail people, and get pretty annoyed at most of the other groups for doing things like the mom wall described above.

The Rockwells - These are the perfect families. You see more of them on the weekends. I actually don't mind having the Rockwells out there, with their awesome jogging strollers or little pull behind the bike buggy thing that sort of looks like a tent. My only knock on the Rockwells is that little kids are really bad at riding their bikes in a straight line. Their mom and dad are usually up ahead with the little baby in the pull behind thing, but the 4 year old is swaying from side to side, running into a creepy guy here and a group of moms there. Oh, and the Rockwell parents (Mom and Dad Rockwell) always make the same light deflecting accessory decisions. If Mom Rockwell is wearing a baseball hat, then Dad Rockwell is too. Same thing goes with sunglasses.

Editor's Note - I think I'm going to start doing some charity work where I teach little kids how to bike in a straight line. They already know how to ride their bikes by the time they get to my clinic, but I want to get them to stop swaying back and forth like a drunk cyclist.

First Timers - It's probably not their first time ever on a bike path/greenway, but it's also not something that they do four times a day (or even four times a year). You can usually spot them based on their attire (running in Khakis, a bike with visible dust on it, rollerblades because they didn't realize there are gravel parts of the trail). They are also the most likely to do a walk/run. Mostly just walking, but then running when someone that they know or think they know is approaching. These are usually the best for people watching, and most likely to be by the side of the trail nursing some injury after you make the turnaround.

Old People - Old people on the trail are awesome. They usually aren't out there for any particular reason. They aren't trying to get from point A to point B. They just don't have anything else to do. Lots of them have binoculars and look at birds. They stop and talk to me and Gilbert when we approach. Sometimes they have dog treats in their pocket. Yes, you heard me correctly...they don't have a dog but carry dog treats in their pocket...how awesome is that? I guess that's sort of a life goal for me. Once I can walk down the trail with dog treats (and no dog) but be viewed as a harmless old person instead of a creepy guy, then I know I've made it. Old people on the trail always travel in groups of two or groups of 10+. Actually, I guess that could be said about old people in general. It seems like it's always a couple, or a massive tour group. Except for when you pass a Buick on the interstate. There are always two big white perms in the backseat. Nevermind. That theory about either 2 or 10+ isn't very good.

So those are the people that I spend all of my time with these days. Next time you're on a bike trail, you can try to put people into each of my categories as they walk by. Or, if I missed some, please let me know.

Feeling My Oats

2009-03-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

I've had an on again, off again relationship with Oatmeal. If Oatmeal and I had a relationship on Facebook, it would probably be classified as 'it's complicated'. That's saying something, because I really hate that relationship status. I actually de-friend people who list their status as such. Anyway, back to my complicated relationship with Oatmeal.

This relationship began early in life. I think it had something to do with me really liking Wilford Brimley. So because of my affinity for Cocoon, warm breakfast, and all things Brimley, I began spending time with Quaker Instant Oats in elementary school. Typically it was the Cinnamon and Spice flavor. I don't really know what 'spice' it was. They weren't really specific about that, but I didn't care. Then I found Cap'n Crunch, so Oatmeal and I were on a break. The Captain was fun and exciting, and I was young and stupid. Sure, Oatmeal and I would still talk every once in a while, but it just wasn't the same. We weren't really exclusive, so we just sort of drifted apart.

Oatmeal came back into my life in 2003. I discovered 'Oatmeal For Women' by Quaker and fell in love instantly. It was Vanilla Cinnamon, and it was beautiful. I loved everything about this Oatmeal makeover, and it was like we had never been apart. Now I'm not really sure what made it 'for women' to begin with. I convinced myself that it was just some marketing ploy, and eating it every morning wouldn't actually turn me into a woman. I actually started eating my lady oats right around the time that I met Kate, and it didn't scare her away, which was something. She didn't get jealous either.

And then something terrible happened. My blue boxes with the feminine font stopped showing up in the breakfast cereal aisle at my local grocery store. So then I thought it was just my grocery store. I traveled to other grocery stores, but it was nowhere to be found. Just like that, they were gone. No note. No phone call. Nothing. I just looked online and some guy (or, more likely, some woman) is selling a box of lady oats for $24 on Amazon. I'm thinking about it.

So after getting abandoned like this by my lady oats, Oatmeal and I broke up again. This time I thought it was for good. Oatmeal had it's chance, and then left me. So I ran back to the Captain and found comfort in his delicious crunch berries.

Then we moved to Charlotte and began hanging out with Matt and Kath. My friend Kath is sort of an Oatmeal evangelist. She is single handily bringing back this breakfast treat. Not the instant kind, but old school, cooked on the stove with water AND milk (and plenty of other stuff). Her blog even has a 'Tribute to Oatmeal' section. I wonder what the YIFY 'tribute' page could be. Probably something about television.

Anyway, I was skeptical at first about this whole cooked Oatmeal thing, mostly because I don't really cook. I do grill stuff, but I don't think I can grill Oatmeal. So that's strike one. Also, Oatmeal (done right) takes a little bit more prep time than my Cap'n Crunch. Two strikes. Throw in my complicated history with its instant cousin, and I thought that was that. But Kath was persistent. She's all, 'oh, you should really try it' which sounded a lot like 'you should meet my friend, and I'm not going to let it go until you go on at least one date.' So I decided to give it a shot.

My first date with this new Oatmeal was a double date. Matt and Kath came over to my house to help me through the awkward first encounter. Kath cooked and I paid attention. Sort of. Me and the new Oatmeal really hit it off. I stayed sort of full until noon and I could mix in enough ingredients to make it taste good. I'm trying to come up with a dating analogy for that last sentence, but all I can come up with is something about Oatmeal looking pretty hot after a few beers, and that just sounds inappropriate. So forget that I even said that. Next it was time for our first date together. I wasn't completely ready to be alone with Oatmeal, so I brought my laptop with me. Kath has an instructional video on her blog about how to cook Oatmeal, so I put that on one of the burners, while I made my oats on the other burner. Did I mention that I'm a huge nerd? Oatmeal didn't care. She doesn't judge me.

So now Oatmeal and I have a date every morning. Oatmeal and I have gone on vacation in six states in the past couple of months. We'll even rendezvous in the hotel restaurant or the airport food court. I'm not ashamed of this relationship anymore. Kate is very accepting of this relationship. She's not quite as head over heals with Oatmeal as I am, but she rarely turns down a bowl as long as I'm doing the cooking.

Now it's only been a couple of months, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. I've had my heart broken by Oatmeal in the past, and I don't know if I can go through that again. But I feel like we're in a really good place right now and hopefully we'll be spending many more mornings together.

Mo Technology, Mo Problems

2009-03-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Charlotte now, and back in a blogging mood. Coming back from Indy (and actually not being in my house for about a week) gave me tonight's topic.

My family always traveled quite a bit when I was growing up. Both of my parents were teachers, so we'd have nice breaks for summers, holidays, and random fake holidays. These were usually hardcore road trips across the country in a minivan. I'll always remember the feeling of pulling back into the driveway after vacation. I was always bummed to be back home (because it usually meant going back to school the next day), but I'd always find the silver lining of "oh, at least we can check the mail and the answering machine." It was like catching up on a week's worth of life in about five minutes.

I was reminded of this when I came back to Charlotte. I had been gone for six nights, spent the night in five different hotels, flew 6,000 miles, drove 600 more and there was really nothing to check. We don't have an answering machine. We actually haven't had a land line in five years. Aside from Netflix, there's never anything in the mailbox that needs our immediate attention. Bills are paid online automatically. News is on the internet. Email is on my phone. So now there's no really potential positive excitement feeling when we're coming back from a trip. Which means all we're left with is 'man, it would really suck if our house burned down.' I'd really like to balance that irrational fear out with something like 'maybe Ed McMahon left a message on my answering machine.'

So I guess that's my long-winded way of saying there seems to be both good and bad that comes from pretty much every technological advance. I'm by no means a ludite, but I can find a downside to pretty much every technological advance. Maybe that makes me a pessimist. Oh well. Here are a few others:

Social Networking

Pros - Great time waster. Good way to share pictures. Fantastic way to keep in touch without really talking to someone else.

Cons - Highly addictive, stalking potential, not good when you're looking for a job

DVR

Pros - Watch more TV in less time - what's not to love?

Cons - Makes watching 'regular speed' television pretty much impossible. Also miss some pretty fantastic commercials

iPod/MP3/Kindle

Pros - Allows for mass quantities of music or books to be portable

Cons - You sort of forget about the tactile qualities of books and music. Both when you're buying something, and then after you buy and really like something. It just isn't the same.

Garmin

Pro - You're never really lost, which is pretty fantastic

Con - I'm not only a worse driver since getting a GPS system, but my sense of direction has also regressed. I've lived in Charlotte for six months or so, and I still turn the damn thing on when I'm driving downtown. It's a complete crutch.

That's all I have time for this evening. If you can think of some more technological advances and want to list some pros and cons, go for it. I think pretty much every new gadget or communication channel has some downside. Except Email. Oh, and blogs. No downside with either of those.

Mad as Hell

2009-03-02T19:05:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not mad. It seems like everyone around me was mad today, so I just thought I'd write about people getting upset and loud for stupid reasons.

See, it was a YIFY travel day. San Francisco to Indianapolis by way of Charlotte. That might not make much sense to anyone with a grasp of US Geography, but there is a method to my madness. The second half of Kate's Valentine's Day gift was that she wouldn't have to drive back from her winter home in Indianapolis with all of her worldly possessions (I'd do it for her). So we flew from San Francisco to Charlotte, then she got off the plane in Charlotte and I continued on to Indy to pack up her independent senior apartment and haul her stuff across the country. I think that Kate secretly likes this half of her gift better than Napa.

Editor's Note - I'm guessing the front desk at the Senior Center will be getting some calls later tonight when a large man starts packing up one of the senior apartments at about 11:00 PM. Oh, the ladies are going to have a field day with this one at bingo tomorrow night. Maybe they'll think that the nice lady in the apartment got evicted or something. I'm gonna miss this place.

So today had all the makings of a travel day that would make people freak out. A nice winter snowstorm all along the East Coast, including places like Charlotte where people don't know how to deal with bad weather. Tons of flight delays and cancellations. Here are a few of my favorite airport freakouts.

1. Guy who just bought a $5 coffee before going through the security line. I really enjoy watching people who stop at the Starbucks right outside of the terminal area and then proceed to the security line without even taking a sip. Apparently they haven't flown for the last eight years and don't realize that you can't bring any liquids through security. I intentionally get behind these people in line because it's a cheap form of entertainment that goes something like this:

TSA Agent: Sir, you're going to have to get rid of that before you come through security

Idiot [looking shocked]: What? What do you mean?

TSA Agent: Sir, you're not allowed to bring beverages through the security checkpoint

Idiot [looking disgusted]: But. I just bought it.

TSA Agent: I'm sorry sir

Idiot [under his breath]: Why do they put a Starbucks there if I can't take it with me?

2. Guy behind me [behind idiot] in security line. Since I always try to get behind this guy in the security line, I know that I'm in for an extra two minute wait before my x-ray/security striptease. Both because of the coffee discussion that I know is coming, as well as the fact that the guy who didn't get the memo about no liquids probably also doesn't know to take off his shoes, belt, and laptop before going through security. And if he does know this, then he probably left his boarding pass in one of the articles of clothing that he just removed, so he'll have to go through the metal detector twice. Now this doesn't really bother me. I mean, I basically got behind him just for the entertainment value, so I knew it was coming. But this does always piss someone off...usually the guy behind me. Guy behind me just can't believe that anyone wouldn't know the current rules and regulations. He sees me as a confidant, since I've got the security striptease down to a science, so he usually shares his frustrations with me:

Guy Behind Me [annoyed]: Ugh, can you believe this?

Me [playing along]: What's that?

Guy: This idiot in front of you...has he ever flown before

Me [still playing along]: Why is that?

Guy: Well he didn't know you had to [insert TSA requirement here] before going through security

Me [lying]: That's my uncle

Guy: Oh, well. Sorry.

3. Family whose flight has been delayed. Now I'll admit that flight delays can be annoying. But I can guarantee that there is not a single person at the airport who can do anything about your flight delay, so it really doesn't do any good to get cranky at the lady at the desk. Missing connections does indeed suck, but it happens. Also, if your 5:00 PM flight from Charlotte to Indy gets delayed until 6:30, what do you have to get upset about? If you're flying to Indy, you clearly don't have a connection. Nobody is juy flying through Indy. So you're going to get there at 8:00 instead of 6:30. I'm sorry that you missed Jeopardy, but you'll still be home in time for The Bachelor. As long as you don't have to spend the night in an airport, just calm down. Or let me know if you're going to freak out, because I'd like to watch. After the misguided freakout to the lady at the gate, I usually like to go up and say something nice to her. Just because it must really suck to have people complain about something you have no control over and not be able to provide anything close to a satisfactory answer. Either that, or I tell the freaking out family some made up story that makes them embarrassed about their tirade. Usually something like:

"Yeah, I know what you mean, I was supposed to be on the flight at 6:00 AM, and I've been here for the last 12 hours."

"Well, now I've already missed my connecting flight. I was supposed to go to Moscow tonight, and now I'll be stuck in the states for an extra two days."

The latter only works if it's the type of person who doesn't realize that you can't fly from Indianapolis to Moscow, so it works about 75% of the time.

Honorable Mention Travel Freakouts:

A. Person who gets upset when the flight lands but has to wait on the tarmac for 5 minutes while the previous flight clears the gate.

B. Person who boards flight late (usually with McDonald's bag in tow) only to find that there isn't room for their massive carry-on right above their seat

C. Person who tries to use the bathroom during takeoff only to get sent back to their seat by the flight attendant

I really enjoy C. There are few things more demeaning than being told that you have to hold it. Makes you feel like you're back in Kindergarten.

So there you have it. Most of you who know me probably know that I don't really freakout very often. I usually just turn into a bigger smartass than I already am. Or, if I feel that I have been slighted and need some form of retribution, I usually just tell the service person that because of reason X, I don't think I'm going to pay for Y. You'd be amazed how often that works. If you're at a hotel and you don't have hot water in your shower, when you check out, just say that you just don't think you're going to pay the 'resort fee' on account of there not being hot water. Or if a waitress screws up your order, just say that a beer on the house will help you forget the mix-up. Most hospitality type workers are just trying to avoid conflict, so giving them an easy out usually works. Sure, you could demand to speak to a manager or something like that, but then you're talking to someone who only hears people complain all day. So I just like to suggest that I won't pay for something to the front line employee and then go on my way. They get the feeling of successfully avoiding conflict and you get the feeling that you won the argument without having to argue.

Alright, time to pack up the senior apartment and go to bed. Cohabitation begins again tomorrow, which should provide plenty of BlogFodder.

YIFY Goes Sideways

2009-02-28T20:24:00.000-08:00

Hi friends. Sorry that it's been like a week since I've posted. I bet some of you thought this blog was going to take another six month sabbatical, didn't you? I'll never do that to you again, I promise.

So your friends at YIFY are now in Napa Valley. We're about a day and a half and ten wineries into our wine country experience, so Kate is asleep for the night. I don't really know what to write about tonight, so I guess I'll just write about wineries and some other things that are going on here. First for the other things:

Virgin America - The best airline in the history of the world. Ever. Yes, this includes Pan Am back in the day when Leo from Catch Me if You Can was flying for free. I'm telling you, there is no better travel experience than Virgin America. The flight attendants actually have fun. Not just acting like they're having fun (Southwest). I think it has something to do with everyone on the plane being incredibly happy. Probably because they're on a Virgin America flight - equipped with fancy technology console, seat that reclines all the way back, and sort of techno dance music. I encourage all friends of YIFY to go to one of the five or so cities that have Virgin America flights, and book a flight to one of their other destinations - just to enjoy the flight.

Okay. Enough for the Virgin America sales pitch. Now, my insights about Wine Country and Wine People.

1. Everyone who has ever been to Napa Valley has recommendations. For those of you who haven't been there, you may not know that there are like 200 wineries in about a 20-mile area. You basically can't go down the highway without running into a winery every quarter mile (or less). So it can be a little overwhelming to a first timer. This isn't my first time here, but I wasn't really in a note-taking mood the last time I came here. And by that I mean that I went golfing before wine tasting and was overserved before setting foot in a winery. I'm classy like that. Anyway, whenever I'd tell someone that I was coming out here, they'd get super excited (if they have been here) and then say something like, "You HAVE to go to [winery 1], [winery 2], and maybe [winery 3] if you have time. I have to admit that I did ask a bunch of friends for recommendations, basically to see if there was any overlap.

2. These Recommendations are Sometimes Good. So Kate and I went to about 6 or 7 wineries today and a few others last night. Most of these were ones that one of our friends had recommended. Now's the part of the post where I thank my friends for their help:

Ami - nice work on Rubicon (although I probably should've remembered going there previously).

Annette - good call on St. Supery.

Natalie - good call on Sterling.

If you gave me recommendations and don't see your name listed above, you should really think about what you did. Just kidding. I'm sure whatever you recommended was great and I loved it. Yeah, we'll go with that.

3. These recommendations rarely have anything to do with wine. Since there are a couple hundred wineries in the area, and most people are only here for a couple of days, I don't think anyone has actually been to every winery here. Even the guy who was pouring my wine said he had been here for twenty years but still hasn't been to every winery. So for most people, they are recommending some subset of what they have been to. Probably about the top 40-60% of the wineries that they went to when they visited. So if someone went to five wineries when they were here, they'll probably list their favorite two or three wineries as 'must see.' Well that's great, but their sample size isn't quite large enough for them to be considered an expert. Oh well.

4. It doesn't tell how much wine I drink, I still don't know anything about it. So the guy pouring the wine always says really obscure things to me and I don't know what he's talking about. Something like "this chardonnay spent 16 months in oak barrels, and then four months in stainless barrels." How the hell am I supposed to respond to that? "Oh, I can tell" or, "man that sucks for the wine, I bet it didn't like being in the barrel for all that time."

Oh, and then they come up with a bunch of flavors that I'm supposed to be able to taste. Like 'think dark chocolate and raspberry when it's on the front of your tongue, and then prime rib when it's on the back of your tongue.' What the hell does that mean? It tastes like wine to me. Not chocolate or steak. Although I like those too. Anyway, all I really know about wine is whether or not I like it (based on taste). I don't know why I like something, or whether or not I'll like it before I try it, but I can tell after a drink. Years of wine drinking, and that's all I've got.

5. Wine makes Kate sleepy. Come to think of it, it sort of makes me sleepy too. So we're done here. Have a good night, and thanks for those recommendations. You know who you are.

Mr. [insert last name] Goes To Washington

2009-02-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that title would've been better if I was allowed to use my last name on the blog. Dammit, Kate. Anyway...I'm thinking about Washington quite a bit tonight. Couple of reasons for that. I'm leaving for Seattle tomorrow morning, and I was watching the state of the union earlier tonight. Yes, I realize that those are two different Washingtons, but whatever. Tonight I'm thinking about what I wouldn't do if I was in congress, specifically at those State of the Union things. How depressing is that? Instead of coming up with a list of stuff that I would do if I was a Senator/Congressman (health care, education, whatever), I'm instead thinking about what I wouldn't do so that I wouldn't look like an ass on national television. Here we go

1. I wouldn't get the president's autograph after his speech. Nobody over the age of 17 should ever ask another adult for an autograph. Don't care who it is. Ever. I've thought this for quite some time. I think the first time I thought this was at a Reds Spring Training game in Plant City, Florida. I was probably 12 and some old guy cut in front of me to get Eric Davis' autograph. I've thought of this guy and the way that he cut in front of me every time that I see an adult asking another adult for an autograph. For like the last 16 years. And then tonight I saw a bunch of Congressman/Senators asking the President for his autograph. If I am so honored to represent you, I promise to not be an old guy asking another man for his autograph.

Editor's Note: I don't really care what your politics are here. This is a safe place for everyone. I'm not really sure if the autograph seekers were Democrats, Republicans, or otherwise. They were a bunch of old white men, but that doesn't really narrow it down.

2. I wouldn't be the first to stand a clap. I don't see any real benefit in being the first one at these things to stand up and clap for what the President says. There's not much of an upside here, but plenty of downside. If you stand and clap at the wrong time (i.e. you're the only one) you pretty much look like an idiot. I'd follow the same rule that I use for standing at concerts or sporting events. I don't stand unless the person or people in front of me stands up.

3. I wouldn't wear a Sweater Dress. This one is sort of a no-brainer, since I don't even have a sweater dress. I just wanted to highlight the fact that Nancy Pelosi was wearing a sweater dress tonight. Well, maybe she wasn't, but it sure looked like it. I promise I wouldn't do this. This is sort of like the autograph thing. I don't really think a sweater dress is age appropriate. I'm going to run this one by my friend who has a fashion blog, but I'm pretty sure about this one. I probably wouldn't wear a sweater either. I think I'd probably just wear a suit.

4. I wouldn't give the opposition response speech after the State of the Union. This is another no-win situation. If the president gives a good speech, then the opposition speech always seems like a real debbie downer. If the president gives a bad speech, then everyone has already changed the channel to a network that isn't covering the speech, so nobody is going to hear you anyway. Also, the fact that the opposition response speech is immediately after the actual state of the union, the knee-jerk response of the viewing public is 'hey, this guy probably didn't even pay attention...he was thinking about/writing his speech." So there's no way this could end well, so I wouldn't do it.

Editor's Tangent - For those of you who watch 30 Rock and watched the Republican response tonight, the best observation that I heard is that Bobby Jindal sounded like Kenneth the Page during his response speech. Anytime you compare someone to Kenneth the Page, it's an awesome comparison.

5. I wouldn't fall asleep during the speech. They always cut away to the Senator/Congressman that dozes off during these things. Dude, the speech is like an hour long. How the hell do you fall asleep. I'm laying on a couch during this thing and I can stay awake. You're actually there. You know the camera is going to zoom in on you if you sleep. Honestly. Speaking of sleep, boarding starts in about 6 hours, so I should probably go to bed.

The Envelope Please

2009-02-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Thought I'd do an Oscars blog post, because:

1. I couldn't think of anything else to write about

2. Having a running blog is the only way I'm gonna make it to the end of this thing

3. I've always been fascinated with those running blog post things during events, and didn't really know how people do it, so I'm gonna give it a shot.

Opening Number. I'm a big fan of this one. At first, I was a little bummed about Hugh Jackman hosting. Mostly because I was pissed that he won 'Sexiest Man Alive.' I take that award very seriously, and I don't find him all that attractive. Anyway, that opening number was pretty damn funny. And he's a really good dancer. Now I feel better about the Sexist Man Alive title. In three minutes I just became a Hugh Jackman fan.

Best Actress. Penelope Cruz? Of the five nominees, she was the only one that I didn't want to win. Mostly because it was also the only movie (of those nominated) that I haven't seen. She's fine, I guess. I really thought that any of the other nominees should've won, because:

Viola Davis - Best performance of the year. Pretty good reason why she should've won.

Amy Adams - Cute as a button. I know it's a grandpa expression, but I can't think of any other way to describe her.

Marisa Tomei - I just say The Wrestler today, and she was pretty good. Plus, she had to put up with Mickey Rourke's crazy ass during awards season and during filming.

Taraji P. Henson - I didn't think she was all that great, but I do a pretty awesome impression of her character in Benjamin Button. If she won an Oscar, it wouldn't be such a damn obscure impression.

Screenplay (Original and Adapted). Sorry, I missed these two. I was typing the previous paragraph during that one. It took me awhile to figure out how to spell 'Taraji'. I don't think spell check would catch that one. Squiggly line for sure. Maybe I should only type during commercials or something. I did enjoy the Tina Fey and Steve Martin combo. He should just act in stuff that she writes. That would mean no more Pink Panther movies.

Animated Feature. I haven't seen any of these movies, but people have told me that Wall-E was good. Since I'm living alone these days, I don't think I can really go to animated movies. I think it's okay to go to the movies alone (and I have). But it's a little creepy when a guy in his 20s shows up to an animated movie alone, so there you have it. One also appreciates Jack Black's comedic timing a whole lot more when contrasted with Jennifer Anniston's awkwardness. Kate will probably give me shit for that one (she's a big fan of Jennifer). Oh well.

Animated Short. Can you actually see these in a movie theatre. I've been to some pretty damn artsy movie theatres, but I've never seen any of these animated foreign short movies on the marquee. Can they charge full price for a 30 minute cartoon with subtitles? Wait, the winning movie has a French title, but the guy accepting the award is clearly Japanese. I'm confused. Did he just quote Styx in his acceptance speech? Yep. that was definitely Mr. Roboto. Awesome.

(commercial break). Instead of watching another Hyundai commercial and trying to figure out that whole 'if you get fired we'll give you your money back' thing, I'll comment a little bit about the red carpet special (yes, I watched that too). Robin Roberts is asking the first time nominees if they ever expected to be there. It's a decent question, I guess. But she was on SportsCenter like five years ago, so it seems like they could ask her that question too.

Art Direction. I'm a little tired of Sarah Jessica Parker wearing the ballerina dress thing. Someone please tell her that you aren't supposed to steal stuff from your mom's closet when you're in your 40s. I'm done with her until SATC 2 comes out. So Benjamin Button won this one. I don't really understand what art direction is, so I can't say if it was worthy or not. I enjoyed the movie, so we'll say it's well-deserved.

Costume Design. The Duchess won this one. Not only have I not seen this movie, but I didn't know that it existed before tonight. Please hold while I save this one in my Netflix queue. Okay. I'm back now. This dude giving the speech is pretty full of himself. I guess I would be too if I just won an Oscar. I wonder if there's more pressure on the costume design guys to dress well at these things. I'd say yes.

Make-up. Yeah, Benjamin Button probably deserved this one. They did make Brad Pitt look like a little old man. I have a feeling that he'll be a more attractive old man than his character in this movie, but whatever.

Random People on Stage. The daughter from Mamma Mia sort of looks like a young Tori Spelling. I guess you can decide if that's a compliment or not. And the guy presenter is the guy from Twilight. I've already provided my feelings on that in a previous post. They just played a really strange montage. It was like love scenes in movies of 2008. It included really good movie clips (Revolutionary Road, Milk, etc) and then scenes from High School Musical 3 and SATC. I felt like I was listening to a really good mix CD that then has that one crappy song on it. Probably because it has some significance to the person who burned it. Like the dude who edited the montage is Zac Efron's dad or something.

Cinematography. Ben Stiller's Joaquin Phoenix thing would've worked better if it wasn't Natalie Portman presenting with him. Most of the people who would've gotten that joke are probably busy staring at her. They should've gotten Letterman to present with him. Here's another one where I don't really know what the award is for. Slumdog Millionaire won. I guess it was really cinematographic. Whatever that means. How obscure does an award have to be to end up on the Scientific and Technical awards a couple weeks before? How about we cut Cinematography from the big show and keep the extra five minutes just in case Mickey Rourke wins for best actor. Or just let Hugh Jackman do another musical number. That was pretty damn funny.

(commercial break). This is going to be the longest blog post ever. Sorry about that. This is a really long show. On the bright side, it'll make my typical long blog posts look short by comparison.

Best Live Action Short. I haven't seen any of these, so I'll just write about the presenters instead. Seth Rogen looks really skinny. Good for him, but I'm sort of bummed. I always use him as a test for myself. I know that when people say things like "you kind of look like the guy from Knocked Up" then it's time for me to lose weight. Now that his weight is going down, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do when people say things like that to me. Oh well.

Tribute to Musicals. Wait a minute? Beyonce is singing Etta James again. Etta's really gonna be pissed now. I'm expecting big things on TMZ tomorrow. And what value did the High School Musical people really add to this? And the young Tori Spelling-looking girl from Mamma Mia? I know they were in musicals, but not necessary. Bleh.

Best Supporting Actor. Anything that gets me more time with Christopher Walken and Kevin Klein at the same time is a good thing. It almost makes up for having Cuba Gooding Jr. on stage. Heath Ledger won this one. That's all I'm gonna say about that. This blog frequently crosses the line and goes away from good taste, but not on this one.

Documentary. Haven't seen any of these. Bill Mahr just sort of made a Heath Ledger joke. Too soon, man. If someone ever made a documentary about my life, I don't think I'd want it to be nominated for an Oscar. Because if it lost to a film about someone else's life, I'd probably take it personally. I'd think that the loss meant my life wasn't as impressive as the life of the guy who won. Oh, Man on Wire won. I saw that guy on CBS Sunday Morning today, which is sort of like watching the movie.

Outstanding Visual Effects. How do I have grey/gray hair, yet Will Smith looks like he could still be the Fresh Prince? Dude is like 40-something. I doubt Carlton still looks that good. I think Benjamin Button won.

Sound Editing. In order to know which movie had the best editing, would've you have to know what the raw footage sounded like? What if the sound was just really really good to begin with. Maybe there was no editing necessary. Oh well. Dark Knight won. I remember that movie being really loud. I guess that's good sound editing.

Film Editing. See comments above. What if they cut out the best parts? Can they only vote on this one after looking at the DVD bonus footage?

Jerry Lewis Tribute. I don't get Jerry Lewis. I don't think it has anything to do with him being famous before I was born. I don't think I would've gotten him even if he was acting today. I think it's how I'll feel in 40 years when Radiohead wins a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys. I guess it is a humanitarian award, and he deserves that. Wait a minute, how is he just getting the humanitarian award this year? That telethon has been around for like 50 years. Could've they have given him this in the 70s or something?

(commercial break). Only 45 minutes left. We can do this!

Best Original Score - Dumb Category. All sounds the same to me. Have you noticed that these are getting shorter as we go on?

Best Original Song. Boycotting this category because Bruce Springsteen's song from The Wrestler wasn't nominated. And because I need to let Gilbert out.

Tribute to people who have died. Queen Latifah is singing. I was hoping she'd sing U.N.I.T.Y. but I guess that wouldn't make sense here. I always wondered how famous of an actor you have to be to make the list of dead people. I'm guessing there's a meeting, and they have to weigh the artistic merits of all of the people who have died. That would be a really depressing meeting.

Best Director. I think the actors, actresses, and all of the people who work on the movie should determine this one. Like some sort of employee satisfaction survey. Slumdog guy won this one. Not a big surprise there. I'm okay with it. I like listening to him talk. Good accent. Also, I never really understood why they wait until the last ten minutes of the show to give all four of the major awards. I understand keeping a couple of them until the end so you can keep people watching, but there's about a two hour lull in the middle of this show. I think if the show was on the East coast, they'd probably speed it up a bit.

Best Actress. I kind of like this whole 'bring out the old winners of the award' thing that is going on tonight. Kate Winslet won this one. I hope she doesn't freak out like she did on the Golden Globes. Stay tuned. I haven't seen The Reader yet. I didn't think she was all that great in Revolutionary Road, but maybe that's why I'm not a voter for the academy. Oh, and yeah, she's freaking out again.

Best Actor. So the former winners are talking now. Do you think that former winners get an invite to the Oscars for life? I'm sure that the Best Actor/Actress winners get invited back, but how about the cinematographers and short animated filmmakers? Damn. Mickey Rourke didn't win. I'm sure Sean Penn was great and all, but I would've really liked to hear another Mickey Rourke speech. Oh well. Maybe he'll make another movie in another decade or so.

Best Picture. They haven't announced this one yet, but I'm pretty sure Slumdog is going to win, so we'll just act like it's already over.

Alright, that's all. Yes, this is the last time that I'll be doing a running blog.

The Wagon and Other Stuff that I Forget

2009-02-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hello there. Sorry for the late night posting. Not that any of you were sitting around anxiously hitting the refresh button waiting, but I still feel like I should apologize. I was trying to make it through the entire first season of Mad Men and then realized that I should probably turn it off if I wanted to get in a blog post tonight. So tonight's post is about things that I forget too often. Basically spellings or phrases that I should remember, but have to look them up all of the time.

There are a couple of little ones that usually require a quick googling. I always forget if it's grey or gray. And then I get really annoyed when Wikipedia and other sources tell me that it can be both. That really doesn't help me remember. I'd like us to just land on one of them. I know that one of them is the American English spelling, and the other is the British spelling and all that good stuff. Whatever, just pick one or stop using it in elementary school spelling bees. This isn't like the pop vs. soda debate...it's a damn color. We should be a little more definitive on this. And whichever one you pick to type in an email, there's probably a 50/50 shot that the person reading the email is going to thing that you're wrong. I have similar issues with affect/effect. I think someone should come up with some kind of web application where I can type a sentence into a little box, and the computer tells me whether I should use affect or effect. I mean, I can find a translator online that translates something in Icelandic into German, but nobody has created the fancy affect/effect machine yet. Someone please get on that.

My biggest issue is with commonly used expressions. I get pretty annoyed when people butcher a commonly used expression, especially if it's one that I use frequently. I always have the urge to correct them, but instead just start a dialog in my head of what would be the most appropriate way to correct them, and by the time I come up with something, I've missed the last five minutes of conversation. Oh well. The one that I always seem to have trouble with is 'on the wagon/off the wagon' to refer to someone who is drinking or not drinking. I always get confused on this one. It actually came up the other day when I was in a meeting. I was telling one of my friends that I was reintroducing alcohol into my life, and I couldn't remember what that meant in terms of my wagon status.

Oh, and before I go on, I should probably clarify that alcohol is only being gradually reintroduced, this was the scheduled reintroduction, and the reintroduction does not mean that the healthy lifestyle is coming to an end. Kate and I are going to Napa Valley next weekend (her Valentine's Day gift), so a slow reintroduction of alcohol before our trip to wine country is just prep work. Think of it like the guys who start small fires around the perimeter of the forest fire. I never understood how that works either, but we'll just go with that.

Anyway, back to this wagon thing. My friends in the meeting couldn't remember whether drinking meant one was on the wagon or off the wagon. We spent a solid five minutes discussing this before one of us decided to look it up on their iPhone. We even had alternate theories regarding the origin of the phrase. Both were entirely made up, but equally compelling. So now we're 10 minutes into an hour long meeting, but Wikipedia finally answered the question for us. This is why my coworkers (and even my coworker friends) are okay with me just dialing into meetings and being on mute instead of joining in person and coming up with really important topics like this.

So there you have it. If you've got any sayings or words that you forget and have to look up, please share with the group. And for those who also struggle with this:

On The Wagon = Not Drinking

Off The Wagon = Drinking (aka More Fun)

Lost in Translation

2009-02-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

I was watching TV the other day. I know, huge surprise there. Anyway, someone was interviewing a foreign celebrity. The celebrity was talking about how they learned English by watching American television. This got me thinking about the kind of assumptions that one would make if their only exposure to American culture came from popular television shows. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Central Park is the Most Dangerous Place in the World. This one comes from Law and Order. I think about 50% of Law and Order episodes begin with some jogger or biker finding a body in Central Park. I don't know if there's any truth to this or not, but last time I went running in Central Park, I was definitely looking for bodies and/or Mariska Hargitay. Didn't see either of them, but doesn't mean they weren't there.

Editor's Note - I've been working on a Law and Order hierarchy to help me when their are multiple episodes of the various spin-offs on television at the same time. Here's what I've got so far:

1. Criminal Intent (with the big guy)

2. Old school original Law and Order (with Sam Watterston as D.A.)

3. Criminal Intent (without the big guy)

4. New School original Law and Order (with Antonio Anderson)

5. Special Victims Unit

Okay, back to things that one would learn from watching only American television...

America is a Magical Place with Talking Animals and Talking Babies. This one pretty much just comes from commercials. One in four commercials includes a talking animal, talking baby, or a woman talking to a dog (giving the impression that dogs can comprehend the English language). I tried boycotting products from companies that use talking babies or animals in their commercials, but it's practically impossible. Also, I can't say that I hate all of them, because those eTrade commercials with the baby making stock trades are pretty damn funny.

Miami is full of Dead Hookers. Thanks to David Caruso and the supporting cast of CSI: Miami, the fifth most populous city in the United States is best known for dead hookers. When I watch CSI:Miami, there's never a question of whether or not there will be a dead hooker, it's just a matter of whether there will be one dead hooker or multiple dead hookers.

We'll buy anything, as long as the bearded man yells at us. This Billy Mays guy is on my television as much as the talking babies and talking dogs. What the hell qualifies him to sell stuff to me. This goes against pretty much ever marketing principal that I know. The dude wasn't really a celebrity before he started yelling, he isn't much to look at, and his delivery isn't really polished. Yet we trust him enough that if he yells something about Mighty Putty, we say 'yeah, I DO have a hole in my garden hose, and this is the way to fix it.' If we see lots of English as a second language people coming here in plaid shirts and beards who shout instead of talking, I think we'll have Billy to thank.

We have cameras everywhere. I know that Reality television isn't an American invention, but I think we've done the best at over-saturating the airwaves with this nonsense. There are cameras in the kitchen, cameras on some remote island, cameras in the bathroom (thanks Real World) and cameras in houses with people doing nothing in particular (Big Brother). Throw in a couple of bad hidden camera shows, and I think we've got about 85% of the surface of the United States covered with cameras.

I guess there are worse ways to learn a language. My Spanish classes used a fake Spanish soap opera (Destinos) as a teaching tool. So that has left me thinking that Spanish-speaking countries are full of people who are having their brother's baby and have faked their own death. Not sure which is worse.

What's In Your Wallet?

2009-02-15T15:28:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. It's Sunday night here, and I feel like I haven't been all that productive today. I want to do something productive tonight, but I'm a little too lazy/tired to do laundry or clean the house. So I decided that I'd just organize my wallet instead. I just started this task, and have decided that you can pretty much figure out what's going on in my life just by looking at my wallet. When you combine what I have in there, as well as looking at the hierarchy of cards in the wallet pockets, you can see how things are going. So the credit and debit cards always get the #1 position in their respective side pockets. Slots 2-10 (or so) are determined based on last use. So after I use a card, it leaves it's previous spot and moves to the #2 slot, directly behind the credit/debit card. The previous #2 card moves to slot #3 and so on. So proximity to the debit/credit card lets us know what I've been up to. Here's what this means:

Qdoba Q Card - If the frequent burrito-eating card is near the front of my wallet, it probably means that I haven't been paying attention to what I've been eating (i.e. eating way too many burritos). The Q Card ended up in the front of the wallet frequently when I worked in the office. We had a Qdoba across the street, so I was a frequent visitor. Fortunately, the Q Card is currently in the back with the expired car insurance cards, so that's a good sign. Oh, and don't worry, there are some non-expired car insurance cards in there too.

Health Insurance Card - You'd think that having the health insurance card near the front of the wallet would mean that I've been to the doctor recently. It doesn't. I don't go to the doctor as much as I should. I don't really have a general practitioner here in Charlotte. Actually, I never did in Indianapolis either, and I lived there for four years. Having the health insurance card near the front just means that it's the beginning of the year, and I probably just got my new cards in the mail. I didn't explain that part, but new cards usually get to go into the #2 slot.

College ID (circa 1998) - I'm not sure why this one is still in my wallet. I used to keep it in there for when places have college discounts. Now that I'm 28 and have rapidly graying hair, I doubt I could pass for a college student. Oh, now I remember why I keep it in there...it's for when people are comparing really bad drivers license pictures. My license picture is okay, but my college I.D. photo is pretty terrible, so I usually share that one. I have really short hair and a half dozen chins. It looks like my boot camp photo from some fat guy army. So that's why that one is in there. If it's near the front, then it probably means someone was recently talking about bad drivers license pictures and I shared that one.

Blockbuster Card - This one hasn't made it into slots 2-8 in the past couple of years. Do those places still exist? It's amazing how you don't notice places if you have absolutely no use for them.

Sam's Club Membership Card - If this one is near the front, it means one of three things:

1. I'm being frugal and impractical. Buying 128 ounces of something when 24 would probably be overkill, but saving money in the process.

2. Someone has recently tricked me into going to Wal-Mart, and I didn't want to go, so I went to Sam's Club next door and watched the big TVs instead. Probably some kind of made for High Def show on a continuous loop, like Planet Earth, or something like that.

3. The apocalypse is coming, and I'm stocking up on bottled water and duct tape.

Starbucks Gift Card(s) - I usually have about three of these in my wallet at any given time. I go to Starbucks every week or so, but never think to use any of my gift cards. I always use them once (like the day someone gives it to me), but then it goes to the back of the wallet, and I forget how much money was on it to begin with. I should just go to Starbucks and figure out how much money is on each of these damn things, but I doubt I'll get around to it.

There are some other boring cards in there. Nothing worth mentioning. Here are other things in my wallet:

10-12 blank taxi receipts - I collect these from cab companies when I travel. I always try to pay for taxis with a credit card. If the cabbie gets all pissy and won't take a credit card, I usually say something smartass and then pay with cash. Because of my smartassedness, cabbies in this situation refuse to give me a receipt. That's why I keep all of these blank receipts as backup. I have a strange relationship with cab drivers. This is probably worthy of its own post.

$26 - I don't like paying cash for anything (please see taxi rant above), but sometimes I have to. Everyone should accept credit cards.

15 Receipts - This means that I've been traveling for work, and haven't gotten around to submitting my expense reports yet. I usually average about 5 receipts/day on work trips, so I'd say I've got three days worth of receipts here. I should probably submit an expense report tonight as well. That's something productive I can do without leaving my couch.

That's all for tonight. Let me know if you've got fun things in your wallet/purse. Now for that expense report...

In Defense of Saint Valentine

2009-02-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

I was going to wait until tomorrow to write about Valentine's Day, but decided to it today instead because: a) Most of y'all probably won't read this until tomorrow anyway b) I have plans and might not get a chance to blog tomorrow and c) I couldn't think of anything else to write about tonight. So here we go.

Valentine's Day seems to be getting a bad rap. I've heard things like "Valentine's Day is a made-up holiday, designed to sell jewelry, flowers, chocolate, and greeting cards." This is absolutely true. It is nothing if not capitalist invention. But who cares? There's lots of stuff that was invented just to sell more stuff, that doesn't make it a bad thing. I've also heard that "Valentine's Day just sets guys up for failure." I disagree with this one. If you want, you can pretty much sleepwalk through this holiday and still be a good boyfriend/husband. Flowers, dinner, card, done. How hard was that? I think it can be a litmus test, too. If you go the traditional route and your significant other doesn't think that's good enough, I think that's a good thing to know. I personally recommend being a little more creative, but if you want to go the safe route, you can't go wrong with that.

I'm not really sure why I like Valentine's Day. It could have something to do with my last name. If you know me, then you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know me, then that line was probably lost on you. Per Kate's request, my last name has been removed from YIFY. I think it had something to do with watching too many Dateline or 20/20 shows about cyber-stalking.

So yeah, because of my last name there's a bit of pressure on members of my family on this holiday. My parents actually tried to order a pizza on V-day one year and the pizza place thought it was a prank call and hung up on them.

Valentine's Day is going to be a little different this year. Since Kate is still wintering in Indiana, I'll be dateless. Instead, I'll be hanging out with my parents and then going to a dinner party at my friend Kath's house. Good to have plans, but bummed that Kate won't be around. At least going to a party means that I have a good enough reason to buy valentines tonight at the grocery store. That's always fun.

Editor's note: I'm trying to think of a situation where I could look like more of a perv than I did tonight. So I go to the grocery store to buy some stuff and valentines. I'm in my typical work from home attire (hoodie, workout pants, unshaven - I think this look is referred to as Homeless Chic). And I'm checking out on a Friday night with my applesauce, Diet Mountain Dew, and a pack of Hannah Montana valentines. I've tried to think of a scenario where I could look like a bigger dirtball, but I can't think of one.

Editor's note #2: If you're wondering why I chose the Hannah Montana valentines, I can't give you a really good reason. Seemed like a better option than Hello Kitty or High School Musical 3.

So my Valentine's Day gift will be delivered to Kate via email this year. You might think that this is a fairly impersonal delivery method, but I think the gift will make up for it. And delivering it via email fits with my job. I'd tell you what I got her, but there's a chance that Kate will read this tonight and that would ruin the surprise. Kate hates waiting for gifts, so I'm going to stretch this out as long as I can. Happy Valentine's Day everyone, and if you get anything really good (or bad), post them as comments.

Life Goals

2009-02-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends. Sorry for the delay. This has been a bad week for posting. I'll try to do better next week. I'm back in Charlotte now so that should help.

On my flight last night/this morning, the guy next to me was watching The Bucket List on his laptop. There are a couple things about this that were upsetting to me. First, nobody should watch a movie on a redeye. Not cool. Second, if you are going to watch a movie, pick one that I want to watch over your shoulder. While watching Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson skydiving and falling in and out of sleep, I started coming up with my own list. I'm not going to call it a bucket list because a) that's sort of a morbid thought and b) nothing on my list involves Morgan Freeman. So instead this is just an incomplete list of not very impressive stuff that I want to do.

Watch every best picture winning movie. I've got a pretty good start on this one. I'm already back to Out of Africa (1986). I've gotta go all the way back to 1929, so there's still plenty of work to do on this one. Also, since they'll probably continue to give an academy award for Best Picture every year, I have to go in both directions. I think I'm up to it.

Make it through life without ever eating a beet. I'm pretty sure I've made it 28 years without eating a beet, so I think the hardest part of this one is over. I had a bit of an advantage because my parents don't like beets, so I never really confronted them during the time in life where other people can tell you what to eat. The only time when this might be an issue is if I'm at someone else's house and beets are somehow incorporated into the main course. I think if I'm confronted with this dilemma, I'll either explain this life goal or say that I'm allergic to beets. I don't think it would be a complete lie. Not that eating them makes me physically ill, but just thinking about them sitting there sweating in the salad bar bowl makes me throw up a little in my mouth, so I think that's some kind of mental allergy, right?

Have Willard Scott announce our 50th Wedding Anniversary on The Today Show. This one is going to be difficult. First, Willard usually only announces 75th anniversaries (or 100th birthdays). Second, Willard is already 74 years old. This means he would be 119 on our 50th wedding anniversary. Now I know that we're making some great advances in modern medicine, but something tells me that Willard isn't going to make it another 45 years. I love Willard. His 3 minutes on The Today Show is probably the second best segment on the show. It involves Smuckers Jam, pictures of really old people, and inappropriate comments. It's hard to beat that. I'd even set him up by giving him a personal description that's perfect for a Willard inappropriate joke. Oh, and if you're wondering what the best segment is on The Today Show, it's from 10:00 - 10:02 when Hoda and Kathie Lee have to apologize for something that Kathie Lee said the day before that offended some group of people. It happens every day and I love it.

Give someone a nickname that becomes their actual name when they move into a nursing home. I should probably explain this one. First, I like giving people nicknames. Sometimes they stick. And by stick, I mean that someone other than me starts to use the nickname. I think I can do better. I want one of my nicknames to become the name that someone puts on the door of their nursing home room. Pretty much everyone over the age of 80 goes by some sort of nickname. I think there are several reasons why. For guys, I think it's because most of them were in the military and they all had nicknames. For women, all names given before 1940 are pretty ridiculous. Also, I think people just get tired of their names, and just like everything else, they just figure 'screw it, I'm old, I can call myself whatever I want.' So hopefully one of my nicknames makes it to the nursing home.

So there's my list so far. Sure there are plenty of other things that I want to do at some point, but one of the most common criticisms of this blog is that the posts are too long, so we'll cut it off there. If you'd like to share some of yours, you can do so as comments.

My Lovely Assistant

2009-02-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone. Whoa, I didn't realize that I haven't posted since Thursday. That's bad news. Sorry about that. I'll try to make up for it with something extra special tonight.

For those of you who watch The Office, you probably saw that Michael took Pam with him on a business road trip as his assistant this week. I'm sort of doing the same thing right now. I'm at a conference in Scottsdale, and since Kate is always looking for a good excuse to leave the frozen hellscape that is Central Indiana, she has joined me for a few days in the Southwest.

Now Kate and I have done plenty of traveling together. But this is different. I think this is the first time that she's traveled with me when the purpose is something work-related instead of just vacation. And it does make a difference. Here are the biggest differences:

Room Organization: I'm sort of anal when it comes to my hotel room. The first think that I do when I get to a hotel room is put everything where it is supposed to go. Laptop on desk and turned on. Running clothes in dresser. Work clothes hanging in closet. I'm still following my normal routine here, but Kate is not. My work travels usually don't involve a hair straightener fighting with makeup and a hair dryer for counter space in the bathroom. It does this week.

Shoes: Okay, I'm going to go on a bit of a rant right now. When I travel, I bring two pairs of shoes. Actually, I pack one pair of shoes, and wear another pair. One for work, one for running. That's it. Kate's here for three days. She has seven pairs of shoes. Please no comments about how girls have more shoes. Just stop it. There can be no justification for this. There are two pairs of identical black flip flops. I was almost okay with this until Kate asked if we could go to DSW. I'm not joking. She wanted to go shoe shopping. When she asked, I think there were three pairs of shoes on my heavenly bed. Those six shoes almost went out the window.

Entertainment: So this is a good one. Entertainment on work trips for me usually involves a happy hour (or four) and watching sports on TV in my hotel room. With Kate around, we do things like going to Barnes and Noble (actually did that one twice today) and watching a bagpiper perform on the patio of our hotel. Not the kind of things that I'd do if I was flying solo.

Editor's Tangent - Kate and I read a pretty hilarious book together today at B&N: I Love Ranch Dressing - And other things that White Midwesterners Like. I recommend it.

The Voice In My Head: Instead of just having my own voice in my head, I also have Kate's voice, which says funny things. Like when Queen Latifah got on the stage at the Grammys and Kate said "her skin looks really soft right now." Or when M.I.A. was on stage and she said "Oh my God, I think she's in labor." The lady is like 8 months pregnant and performing on the Grammys, but it was still funny to me.

So that's why I haven't been posting for the last couple of days. I've been traveling with my lovely assistant. Pretty much just sunsets, comments about Queen Latifah's skin, and 14 shoes on the floor. More tomorrow, I promise. Meaning more blogging, not more shoes.

Dream Jobs

2009-02-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

So there has been a lot of talk about green jobs lately. I watched a few debates that told me that green jobs are good. I don't really know what that means. I also watched a marathon about dirty jobs. Most of the jobs involved feces. I'm just saying. I don't really understand green jobs, and I don't think I'm qualified for any of the dirty jobs, so I'll just come up with a list of dream jobs. Some of these have been mentioned in previous posts. Sorry for the redundancy, but it's Thursday and the good TV cuts into my blog thinking time.

Competitive Eater/Reality Show Weight Loss Contestant: This one combines my two greatest strengths. I don't know if I have what it takes to be a competitive eater. I've never really pushed myself to limits like eating six pounds of corned beef or 50+ hot dogs. I just know that I don't ever really get full, and I assume that is a prerequisite for the gig. And the competitive weight loss thing - yeah, that's right up my alley. Did I really just use that expression? What the hell is that? But it would be like six months of gaining weight with competitive eating, then being a recurring character on The Biggest Loser. Most people would probably consider that a failure, I'd consider it to be a steady income.

Corporate Conference Room Namer - As I type that, I realize that it sounds like a 'real men of genius' commercial. Fun fact...did y'all know that the guy who sings the real men of genius commericals is the former lead singer of Survivor. That's right, the guy who sings the songs about the 'Big Cooler Cooler Roller Guy' also sang 'Eye of the Tiger.' Thanks for that, VH1. But anyway, every business has some kind of naming convention for their conference rooms. Half of them are good. Half of them are terrible. This is based on a few years worth of experience visiting clients in their offices, so N > 30 here. Anyway, most of them have some sort of theme, like 'famous sports complexes' or 'opposites' or 'travel destinations.' My job here would be to evaluate the current theme, identify if a better one exists, and if so, come up with new conference names and an implementation strategy. I would do this job for free.

PETA Letter Writer - I stole this one from my friend Natalie. She told me about a letter that PETA sent to the president of Palm Beach Atlantic University. Their college mascot is some kind of fish. PETA asked them to change their mascot to the 'sea kittens' because it would make people more sympathetic to fish and less likely to kill/eat them. Who comes up with this stuff? As I've said before, I'm not a crunchy vegan hippie, but I do care about the environment, etc. But this is incredible. Sea Kittens? I think PETA can do better than this. I think there are a lot of people out there (myself included) who think that cats are pretty lame. So Sea Kittens doesn't make me more sympathetic. Maybe little dolphins, or Sea Monkeys would've worked better. Wait, I think Sea Monkeys might already be taken. So my friend Natalie gave me this one, and said that her husband wanted to apply for this job. I don't want to get into a resume battle with him, but still think it would be a pretty cool job.

Reality Show Persona Creator and Matchmaker - Sort of a long title, but I think I could fit it onto a business card. My role models here are Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray from The Real World. They came up with some great personas/stereotypes like "vindictive gay guy" and "southern guy who doesn't realize he's an evil bigot". I think I could come up with more of those, and then put decide which ones to pair up on a reality show and it would be great. Of course, it would just be a lot of yelling and fighting, but that's pretty much what any good reality show is anyway.

Movie Trailer Maker Guy - So I think everyone has a problem with movie trailers that give away all of the good jokes in the movie. And I'm sure that studios don't like it so much when the trailer makes the movie look really lame and then nobody goes to see it. I think this would be a pretty fantastic job because I could watch the movies before they come out, and then basically determine who would go see the movie when its in the theatre.

So that's all the time I have for tonight. If you have any dream jobs that you'd like to list, go for it.

It's the Economy, (and I'm) Stupid

2009-02-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

I'll start out by saying that I'm not completely stupid when it comes to economics. I was an econ major in college. That was mostly because you can't major in something like Business at a liberal arts university. I didn't realize that until I was on campus, but lesson learned. So I had four years of undergrad studying this stuff. I learned how to draw some really awesome supply and demand curves. I could tell you all about monopolistic competition or hyperinflation. Or if you want five pages on the market structure of the dishwasher industry, I could probably hook you up. Then I had an MBA program where I learned things about Boeing and Whole Foods and Google. It was basically just a bunch of case studies, but there were some good reads in there. Despite all of this good stuff, I still have no clue how I'm supposed to respond to the current economic situation.

I think what my six years of higher education taught me is that I now know, without a doubt, that the people on TV talking about the economy don't know what they're talking about. My television addiction has been well documented, so we won't dwell on that here. We'll just say that I watch pretty much everything. I do take breaks from Oprah and The Biggest Loser to watch some CNBC and CNN. While these networks are riveting, the best examples of financial expert double-speak happen on shows like The Today Show or the NBC Evening News. Thanks to "the biggest financial collapse since the great depression" (TBFCSTGD for short. You can substitute 'cluster' for collapse if you want) we get to see people like Jim Cramer and Suzi Orman and Jean Chatzky on primetime network news. My favorite part is when people call in with questions like "should I continue to put money into my 401K even though it seems to be disappearing" or "I got laid off and I can't pay my bills. Should I stop paying my house payment or my credit card payment." I should point out that I don't take pleasure in these people's misfortune. It sucks, and I feel bad about that. But I do enjoy watching the financial experts giving advice that completely contradicts what they were saying six months ago. I guess their econ classes didn't cover what to do if TBFCSTGD happens either. We must've read the same books.

While this is pretty entertaining, it makes financial decisions fairly difficult. I mean, the lady on The Today Show told me that I should be saving up all of my money, then the guy on the news told me that the economy is blowing up because everyone is saving their money and we need to spend more. This confuses me. Now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure I can't do both. It's like having Paula Dean follow Richard Simmons in the guest lineup. Oh, that happened too.

It took me a semester of Investments Class (Econ 350) to realize that I'm not smart enough to beat the stock market and that I should just have some smart person who understands this manage that kind of stuff for me. Now it has taken TBFCSTGD to realize that those people might not exist. And if they do exist, they aren't the celebrity financial experts on television.

Pepsi

2009-02-03T19:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not really sure what to think of Pepsi right now. Not their products. I could really care less about that. I drink Diet Mountain Dew (a Pepsi product). Or garbage water as Kate calls it. She stopped drinking pop a few months ago, and isn't a big fan of my DMD addiction. Anyway, I'm not conflicted about Pepsi's products, it's with their advertising. On another note, I don't think I've ever had an actual 'Pepsi'. If I drink regular cola, it's the lesser half of a mixed drink. Usually a Makers and Coke. I heart regular coke. Alright, back on track. Here's what's going on with Pepsi advertising:

Pepsi, I was with you though the dancing bears. It wasn't really my taste, but I was okay with it. Whatever. I also stuck with DMD even after the barrage of extreme sports commericals. I'm not going snowboarding tomorrow and I doubt I'll ever ride a BMX bike, but I'll still drink my DMD. But in the last month, you've really lost me.

First there was the Obama knockoff commercial. These started right around the inauguration. Pepsi was using the 'yes we can' song and their logo sort of morphed into Obama's logo. I don't think I can write much more without commenting on how amazing it is that our president actually has a logo now, and that multinational conglomerates would actually try to knock off the president's logo. I'm not Doris Kearns Goodwin, but I'm pretty sure that never happened with Millard Fillmore or Rutherford B. Hayes. How damn smart are the people who worked on Obama's campaign? I don't really care about your politics, but you have to admit that was pretty impressive. I'm almost okay with this Pepsi discretion. Obama's logo did sort of look like the old Pepsi logo. So Obama sort of borrowed it from Pepsi, and then they adapted their logo to look like his. Sort of annoying, but understandable. The song thing still pissed me off, but I'll get over it.

Pepsi's latest offense happened around the same time, but I only realized it during the Super Bowl. Pepsi ran a spot on Sunday about MacGruber. It's a knock-off of MacGyver. Not super funny, but better than most Super Bowl ads. I had seen the bit before as an SNL. Same characters, same running jokes, etc. So at first, I thought that SNL must have sold the rights to Pepsi or something. Then, when I was sitting in my cold ass house today, I thought that maybe the actual SNL spots that happened over the past couple of months might have actually been Pepsi commercials. And then tonight the interweb confirmed that this is the case. Doh. So Saturday Night Live has fake commercials that are actually skits, and they have fake skits that are actually commercials. I think I'm cross eyed, just trying to explain this.

I'm not really sure how to to feel about this. The bits that I liked on SNL were actually commercials. Then the same bits were run as Pepsi commercials during the Super Bowl. As someone who does something somewhat related to marketing and advertising, I have to appreciate it. As someone who really likes comedy and the glory days of SNL, I'm a little sad.

Sorry that this is a confusing blog post, but it's a damn confusing situation all the way around. So if you can follow what I'm talking about here, please tell me if I should respect Pepsi for doing this, or be mad at both SNL and Pepsi.

Furnace Shopping

2009-02-02T18:08:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends. Greetings from my 54 degree house. I'd use the little degree symbol, but I can't figure out how to insert special characters in this little blog editor. So as the title and the first few lines suggest, I'm in the market for a brand new furnace. Awesome. Here's my story.

Kate and I wake up on Sunday morning, and it's only 63 degrees in our house. This is odd, since the little computer in the hallway says it should be 70. The house isn't making the noise that it should be making. Not good. Not good at all. Not good, because I don't like being cold. Not good at all, because the big loud machine in the attic happened to stop working on one of the rare weekends when Kate is actually in town. She likes our house, but still has some residual panic attacks about stuff not working in our sort of old house. I'm having flashback to when we put an offer on the place and she immediately thought that everything would start to blow up. Now this is happening. Balls.

If you're a loyal reader, you probably know that I really don't know a whole lot of stuff about things like how cars work or how furnaces work or things like that. I just know that the loud thing in the attic should be making noise and then create heat. Neither of those things are happening. So I call the company that has the annoying jingle. I call them because A. They have an annoying jingle B. They don't charge extra for Sunday house calls C. they have instant chat support on their website. This means I can actually get a technician to come to my house on Super Bowl Sunday without ever talking to a human. So the guy from the company with the annoying jingle comes to my house on Sunday afternoon. He puts on his little booties and goes up to my attic. Then he tells me that I need a new furnace. Here's our conversation:

Guy from company with annoying jingle: You need a new furnace

Me: Shit, that sucks.

Guy: Yeah, your heat exchanger has a hole in it. Do you know what a heat exchanger is?

Me: Nope, but it sounds important

Guy: Yeah, we don't fix motors if the heat exchanger has a hole in it

Me: Okay

Guy: If we do, there are only a couple of things that can happen

Me: Oh yeah?

Guy: Yeah, either it'll start a fire and your house will burn down, or carbon monoxide will leak into your house and kill you

Me: I don't like either of those options

Me: So how much is a new furnace going to cost me?

Guy: I'm just the technician. We'll have to get a sales rep out here. Buying a new furnace is like buying a new car.

So there are about five things in this conversation that could've caused me to go off on a tangent right now. Like why the hell does any item have one part that is more valuable than the entire unit, or which of those two options (house fire or carbon monoxide death) did service guy think was worse/better. But we'll focus on the last point here. Buying a furnace is like buying a new car? Really? So on Sunday night I was thinking that maybe he meant I could just go on CarMax or cars.com and learn all I needed to learn. Or that I could find some good used units in the newspaper or on eBay. I found out today that he was really referring to the actual sales representatives, and not the actual furnace itself. Because furnaces are nothing like cars. People look at lots of different options for cars, and buy cars for different reasons. Furnaces only have one purpose (producing warmth) and only have two things that they shouldn't do (1. stop making me warm 2. kill me). So I guess it is just the sales guys that he was talking about. I had three sales guys come to my house today.

Guy #1 - Sales Rep from company with annoying jingle - He showed up this morning. Confirmed that my furnace was hosed. Asked me a couple of questions (probably to confirm that I don't know a damn thing about furnaces) and then went out to his PT Cruiser to get some paperwork. Then we sat down at the kitchen table to talk about prices. His prices ranged from a 10 day European vacation to a 14 day European vacation. Before he opened his colorful price book he asked me what line of work I was in. I think this was just to confirm that I don't know shit about furnaces, but I thought we had already established this. I answered honestly. So I told him I'd talk to Kate about it and would get back to him. He said he could have someone out to get me a new furnace this afternoon. I bet that line works way better in a colder climate. I live in Charlotte. Having a house temperature in the mid 50s is certainly annoying, but I can wait a day or so. I again told him that I'd call him later. He got a little pissy and asked me who else I had coming in to give an estimate. I gave him the name of another company, and then said that my neighbor (the unemployed investment banker) was also going to come down and give me a quote. Of course this wasn't true, but he was lying all morning, so I thought it was just the thing to do.

Guy #2 from Company #2. His company doesn't have an annoying jingle, but their website is pretty annoying. Lots of animation and some audio that I didn't want or need. This guy was bad news from the start. First, he didn't put on any booties. He just went upstairs with his boots on. What the shit is that? I can't even going upstairs with my shoes on without getting yelled at. Yes, this is a ridiculous rule. Especially since Gilbert can go upstairs whenever he wants, while he just digs around in the yard and at the bark park all day. Yet I can't wear my shoes upstairs? Yeah, I know, but I'm not going to win this one, so we'll move on. So this dude pretty much follows the same procedure. Goes to the attic, asks me questions to confirm that I know nothing about the HVAC biz (including, but not limited to not knowing for sure what HVAC even stands for). And then we go to the kitchen table for the colorful price book. Kate was home for this one. She was already a little pissed about the upstairs shoes thing, so I knew this guy had no shot. Then he asks us what we've budgeted for this. Like people actually plan on their furnace crapping out or have some sort of budget set aside for this. Like we weighed the pros and cons and somehow landed on new big heat creating box instead of trip to Greece. I think that was his second strike. His third strike was leading with similar prices to the first company (same as guy with annoying jingle) and then following that up with:

Guy: So this isn't public knowledge yet

Me: Okay

Guy: But I'm going into business for myself. I bought my first truck for the business this weekend

Me: Okay

Guy: So if you go with my company (not the one he's representing) I can do it for [insert price]

Me: Alright. We'll talk about it, and get back to you.

And the price for his yet to be formed company was about 1/2 of what he was quoting with his actual company. How could that possibly work? Complete shadeball. It's not any kind of ethics that led me to rule him out. It's that this was just a really dumb approach. I mean, there's no way that I'm going to go with his existing company if the other 50% is just overhead and mark-up, and I'm not going to go with some dude who is just starting a new company and has zero customers. If he would've just come in and gone with 'yeah, I used to be with company X, now I'm with company Y, and we charge Z - 50%, then I might have considered it. Gotta go all in, shadeball.

So bachelor #2 was out. At this point I realized that I should probably check and see if I had any kind of home warranty or anything like that. Yes, most people would've probably done this step before any of the other men came over, but let's just give me credit for checking this before dropping 4k on a new furnace. So it turns out that I do have a home warranty. And it'll pay for a new furnace. I just have to have their technician guy come out and confirm that I need a new furnace before they'll cover it. Score. Glad I got that home warranty that I didn't know that my realtor signed me up for.

So this guy #3 comes over. Puts on his booties before going up stairs (good call, since Kate was home) and confirms that my furnace is dead. He then says that the warranty will cover the cost of a new furnace and the service, but that I'll have to pay for some inspections, and for removal of the old furnace. Now if he was the first visitor of the day, I probably would've made some smartass comment about wanting to keep the old furnace and that I'd build a robot out of it, but it was later in the day, and neither of us were really in the mood for this. So I just thanked him and he left. The warranty people called me tonight and said that they'd do it for about $700 total. Which is like a 1 day European vacation. So that sounds better. So now I have to:

1. Deal with a cold house for a couple more days

2. Realize that the $3,300 that I saved is not extra discretionary income, and that I didn't somehow 'earn' a 9 day European vacation in this deal

3. Decide whether I should turn in Shadeball guy #2 or just stop answering his calls

That's all for now. Sorry for the long post. I've had a couple days off, so I couldn't help myself. And the typing is keeping my fingers warm.

The Greatest Show

2009-01-30T17:29:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone. Looking at the comments from yesterday's post, it appears that maybe I haven't discussed the circus before. This surprises me. Anyway, figured I'd do a circus post today to explain point #3 on yesterday's post.

My dad was the P.E. and Health teacher at my elementary school. The school was affiliated with the local university, so he was both faculty at the college, and an elementary school teacher. One of the unique things about the college was that it had a circus. One of the only two universities with a college circus (I think). So my dad decided that he would start a circus at the elementary school as well.

I think this highlights the difference between me and my dad. I come up with things like "wouldn't it be great if we changed the way that bananas are sold?" and then I do nothing. My dad does things like starting circuses.

So from 2nd grade - 8th grade, I was in the circus. The circus traveled to nursing homes, and the mall, and halftime of basketball games to perform. So being in a circus leads to an interesting childhood. Having a dad that started the circus and loves going to other circuses really opens your eyes.

My mom likes traveling to big cities. My dad doesn't. So my mom learned that she could convince my dad to drive her to the big city if there was a circus in town. So most of our vacations were scheduled around the circus. We've seen a Russian circus, other kids circuses, a few Asian circuses, Cirque (more times than I can count), we've been to juggling conventions, we've been to the Ringling Brothers museum. The list goes on and on. I think there was actually a 'soul circus' at one point, but I can't back that up. We would also do street performing during family vacations. Mostly juggling outside with a hat on the ground for donations.

Oh, and then there are the clowns. My dad was the director, ringmaster guy of the kids circus for 20 years. It went from 60 kids to over 200 per year. To show their appreciation, the parents of the kids in the circus would always buy my dad clown figurines. So my house always had an obscene number of clowns. And keep in mind that about 50% of clowns are sort of creepy looking. My mom was not a big fan of the clowns. Or the G.D. Clowns, as she liked to call them.

My dad wasn't just a circus founder/director guy. He found a little-known loophole in the college circus, that allowed faculty members to perform in the circus. So well into his 50s, my dad performed in the college circus. I'm pretty sure there were about 100 college undergrads and one AARP member.

I could go on and on about my circus life, but I've gotta get going. Kate's flying into town today, and I've gotta get to the airport. Oh, and my parents are watching a movie about tight wire walking tonight. I can't make this stuff up.

My 25 Things

2009-01-29T16:04:00.000-08:00

All you you Faceback users out there have probably seen something new popping up in your news feed. Apparently some genius started this whole 25 things nonsense. For the non-Facebook users out there (Kate) this is how it works: You type out a list of 25 random facts about yourself, then you tag 25 of your friends to do the same thing. And they tell two friends, and they tell two friends. So far I've been tagged a handful of times to post my '25 things' list, but have resisted. It's not that I don't want to share information about myself. I think this blog makes it pretty clear that I don't mind sharing details about me. No, the reason why I've resisted is that it sort of has a chain letter quality to it. Chain letters always stopped with me. I don't like asking other people to do things. So I thought that I could just post my 25 things here, and then if people on Facebook bug me to post my 25 things, I'll just send them here. And if I'm lucky, they'll be from South Dakota or Montana and we can cross those states off the list. On that note, we've had our first visitor from West Virginia...just thought y'all would like the update. So...here's my list of 25 things about me:

1. I wish I had more exciting celebrity encounters. All I've got is sharing a plane with the big guy from P.M. Dawn and meeting Phyllis from The Office at the airport.

2. I don't ever get 'full'. I just run out of food on my plate. I think this is a problem.

3. I've worn way more spandex than any man ever should. Between 8 years in a circus and 4 years of cold weather running, I've had more than my share of tights-wearing.

4. I went an entire semester of college without wearing pants on Sundays. This meant going to Taco Bell in my boxers.

5. I'm not very good with colors. Another way to put it would be to say I'm Red-Green colorblind, but I like my way better. This led my elementary school art teacher to think I was special.

6. I watch Oprah pretty much everyday. Even though I don't like her. My thought here is that if she's going to brainwash half of the country, I wanna know what she's telling them.

7. Even though I'm surrounded by technology all the time, I'm fascinated by fax machines.

8. I'd probably buy more flowers if they had more masculine names. Posies, daisies, petunias...who came up with these names?

9. I don't think I've ever been punched in the face. Always wondered what it would feel like. Not enough to try it.

10. I've run six marathons. I know why I ran the first one, but have no clue why I ran the last five.

11. I really don't like loose change. Or any paper money, for that matter.

12. I'm the only person I know that has no interest in going to Hawaii. Ever.

13. Every time I fill up Gilbert's bowl, I wonder what his dog food tastes like. Not enough to try it, but I am curious.

14. If I've heard a song three times, then I most likely know all the words.

15. I started playing golf because it was the only sport where I could beat my dad. Then he got good at that.

16. During conversations, the first thing that jumps into my mind is always something smartass. If I respond with something serious, it's probably the second or third thing that came into my mind.

17. I went to space camp. Nerd.

18. I do several impressions. My favorite is Mel Gibson's daughter in What Women Want. Kate hates that impression. Come to think of it, it is pretty annoying.

19. If I had to pick my top 5 bands or artists, the list would include Jim Croce, The Beatles, 2Pac, Elvis, and Harry Chapin. I have no idea if it's a coincidence that they're all dead (or partially dead). Numbers 6 and 7 are still alive, but probably not for much longer (Willie and Dylan).

20. I don't know how to cook much of anything. I've taken Home Ec, a cooking class, and watch The Food Network. Still got nothin.

21. I hate being late for anything. Even if it's an arbitrary ETD that I picked out of the sky. Kate hates being on time. I don't think either of us are going to budge on this one.

22. I'd lift weights more if there weren't so many strong people at the gym.

23. I want to own more power tools, even if I never use them.

24. I feel productive on trash day if I remember to take the trash out. It's not much, but it gets the day started off on the right foot.

25. I wish I enjoyed reading books, but I really don't. Sorry Mom.

So there's my 25. Now stop asking me to post these on Facebook. And if someone asks you to post your 25 on FB, you can steal any of mine that you want.

The Lady on the News

2009-01-28T18:27:00.000-08:00

The local news anchor on the 11:00 AM news hates her job. I can tell just by looking at her. For the first 55 minutes of this hour-long broadcast, she's pretty much just going through the motions. Murder here, layoffs there, peanut butter recall somewhere else. Blah blah blah. But then something amazing happens. She does a complete 180. All of a sudden, she's animated. She does some impressions, wears costumes, and just has fun. It's time for the Hot Spot. That's their version of the Hollywood update where they tell me all I need to know about celebrity gossip. Actually, I already know most of it. Between what I learned on TMZ the night before, what I learned from borrowing my mom's copy of People Magazine, and the gaps that Hoda and Kathy Lee filled in an hour earlier, I'm pretty much caught up on my celebrity gossip. Yet I still tune in most days to watch the local news lady. It just sort of makes me happy to see her go from disgruntled employee to Suzy Happyface during the commercial break.

Now that I think about it, her behavior isn't really all that strange (except when she was wearing the replica Flavor Flav clock). Work is basically a series of tasks that we have to do. We like some of the tasks and we dislike some of the tasks. I don't really buy into the whole "find something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life." I'm not buying it. If everything about work was fun, they wouldn't have to bribe you with a paycheck. So my theory is to really enjoy the tasks that you like to do. Prove that you're really good at doing that task and maybe someone will notice and then you'll have a job that revolves around said task or similar tasks. I'm not quite sure how to manage the tasks that you don't enjoy. You could avoid them altogether, but that's probably not a good strategy. The lady on the news pretty much just goes through the motions during the tasks that she doesn't like, and that's not a very good approach either. Hmm, I'll get back to you on how to handle those.

Anyway, this got me thinking about my job and which tasks I like and which ones that I don't like. When I started my list of stuff I really like doing at work, I realized that it wasn't really work tasks that I was listing. It was stuff like 'coming up with new avatars for people' or 'trying to work random words into conversations on conference calls' or 'making prop bets about how many times someone would say some word during some meeting.' While all of these things are really fun, they aren't really work tasks. If I was to list these things during my performance review, I doubt they would result in a big raise or promotion.

So looking at my actual work tasks, there's plenty of stuff that I enjoy. An old friend has come back into my work life. A couple of years ago, I was posting frequently on our corporate blog. I started out with some pretty basic corporate-speak, but eventually started writing the kind of stuff that I write here. I think there was one post about Snakes on a Plane, and I know there was one about Chris Hanson on How to Catch a Predator. I went through a pretty serious How to Catch a Predator phase, actually. We even had a group Halloween costume with me as Chris Hanson, and then the rest of the cast (Predator, Tween Girl, camera guy, boom mic operator). Anyway back to the work blogging. My company is in the middle of a blog throwdown with another company (sort of like my throwdown with Heba, but not quite), so I'm back to blogging at work again, and I'm loving it. Yesterday I posted about an email that I got about a rabid raccoon loose in my neighborhood and today I posted about Gov. Blago. I don't know if anyone reads my work blog or if my Blago blog helps us sell more widgets, but I really enjoy doing it.

So there's my sage work advice. Break your job down to a series of tasks. Identify the ones that you like, and try to do really well at those. Deep stuff, I know. Oh, and even though I'm blogging at work again, I promise I won't neglect YIFY. If you've got some work tasks that you like (or dislike) feel free to share with the group.

The Biggest Loser - Home Edition

2009-01-27T15:33:00.000-08:00

Several of our loyal YIFY readers have asked for an update on my at home edition of The Biggest Loser. Or maybe I should call it Throwdown: Nate vs. Heba. I dunno...still working on the name. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, there's a post on here called 'food and drink' that describes my deathmatch with Heba.

Oh, and I should also state that this is not a healthy living or follow my weight loss blog. I don't really know what kind of blog this is anymore, but I know it's not that. But since I'm exactly 6 weeks into the challenge, and since it's weigh-in day (for both TBL contestants and me) it seemed like a decent time for an update on how things are going.

The Stats

Heba: First 6 weeks on the ranch - Lost 41 pounds and was down 14% of her body weight. Damn, I really should've looked at this before challenging her to a duel. I mean all of this stuff is online...I could've known beforehand what I had to lose. I think my disdain for her 'character' on the show clouded my judgement here. I didn't realize that she actually did really, really well, especially in the first six weeks. Maybe I should've picked another competitor.

Nate: First 6 weeks on plan - Lost 32.5 pounds and down 11.5% of body weight. So yeah, I'm pretty much getting my ass kicked. Stupid Heba. I also realize that anyone with a firm grasp on high school math could figure out my starting weight and current weight with the data provided above. I don't really care. If anyone really wants to take the time to calculate percentage change, then go for it. Damn, I just realized that my goal weight would put me well short of Heba' weight loss in both pounds and percentage terms. Really should have done some more research on this.

The Other Stats

BMI: I never really figured out why TBL doesn't do some kind of BMI calculation on the show. Seems like it would make sense. Anyway, since they don't do this, I can't compare to Heba's performance here. Since my scale tells me what my BMI is even when I don't want it to, I've added a new tab on my spreadsheet for this. Yes, I do have a multi-tabbed spreadsheet keeping track of this stuff. I know, I'm a nerd. Anyway, my BMI has a percentage change of 20.4% in the past 6 weeks. I've put in a solid 3 minutes of research on BMI. Some people think it's a great metric, others say it is completely flawed. I've found that when I do healthy things my BMI goes down and when I drink beer and eat pizza it goes up. So if it's a flawed metric, it seems to be consistently flawed.

Drinks consumed: 0

Times when I thought a drink was a good idea: 6 (and counting). They are:

1. RJ's Dirty 30. It isn't everyday that RJ turns 30. He also only drinks about once a decade, so I would've liked to be there for him. I was sick at the time, which helped me just say no to the nice bartender

2. Panthers playoff game. First because it was a fun atmosphere for drinking. Later because they were getting beat like a drum.

3-4. Couple of work trips. Just always seems like a good idea.

5. Flight from Indy - Charlotte. Was sitting on the front of the plane next to a man that smelled like garbage water. I was convinced that a mini bottle of just about anything would smell better than that man. I almost ordered a drink just to open the bottle and smell it.

6. Sunday - Was cleaning my house after the completion of the downstairs ceiling popcorn scraping. This meant like 6 hours of cleaning, including dusting off all alcohol bottles that were covered in ceiling dust. That made me thirsty.

Most ridiculous thing that I've done so far: I took my scale as a carry-on during my last flight

Best diet-related quote by a family member: My mom. Direct quote "so am I just supposed to serve carrots and water at our Super Bowl party, or what?"

Editor's note: I'm not just eating carrots and drinking water.

So there it is. I'm 8.5 lbs and 2.5% Heba after 6 weeks. 19 more weeks to go, although we'll start to reintroduce some drink and not so good for you food in another month or so (in small doses). I think she's hearing footsteps.

The House Effect

2009-01-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

I just watched House on Fox. I love that show. Kate's not a very big fan. She likes it, but doesn't like it when the patient coughs up blood or has blood come out of somewhere else where blood isn't supposed to come out. And that happens on pretty much every episode. I can say that with complete confidence, because I have watched every episode. USA likes to have House Marathons for 24 hours at a time, and I'm usually good for about 16 of those hours. I find it ironic that they call it a marathon, since it leads to me having a sedentary lifestyle on House Marathon days. I doubt this is what the Greeks had in mind.

Anyway, all of my House watching usually leads me to think that I have some kind of strange, undiagnosable disease. Probably something flesh-eating. This always happens. Every time I watch this show, I end up thinking something like "when was the last time I went to the doctor" or "maybe I should get that checked out." So this is The House Effect - watching or reading or doing something enough that it begins to alter your thoughts or behavior. Here are a few other situations where this seems to happen for me:

Country Music - I usually only listen to country in the summertime. But since I haven't landed on a single good radio station in Charlotte, I've been listening to country in January. Anyway, whenever I listen to country for more than a half hour, I usually end up thinking something like "I should write country songs - that would be a pretty easy job" or "I should probably go to church." The church thing might not be so obvious, but 78% of country songs say something like 'get on my knees and pray' or 'church on Sunday' or 'faith in heaven above.'

Tyler Perry Movie Previews - I say previews, because I haven't actually seen any of the movies. But when I see the previews, I always have the urge to dress up like an old African American woman. Either that, or it makes me want to add Big Momma's House to my Netflix queue. Did y'all realize that they made a Big Momma's House 2? Were there really a lot of unresolved plot lines leftover after the original Big Momma's House?

Working in a Nursing Home - So this one is Kate's contribution. She says that working in a nursing home makes her think that everyone (myself included) has MRSA or dementia. It also seems to give people (my wife) some kind of special medical training where she thinks she can diagnose things or out-doctor the doctors on Discovery Health. That last one was my contribution, and it might seem kind of mean. But keep in mind that Kate called me tonight and said that she started reading one of the Twilight books. So I could've written a whole post on what it's like to be married to a 15 year old girl, but I'm not going to do that.

Eating at a Chain Casual-Dining Restaurant - Always makes me want to talk to Kate more. Usually when you see couples at (insert Applebees, TGIFridays, whatever) they are pretty much just sitting silently, staring at each other. We don't really do that, but I'm usually analyzing the menu, trying to determine how I can get the most possible food for the least amount of money. Not because I'm super hungry or broke, but because it's the most efficient. But the silent couples around me make me think that I should just start talking.

Watching the News anytime in the past 3 months - Makes me want to start stockpiling food and various other supplies for the end of days. I realize that the economic news is fairly bleak. I get it. The mail that the 401k people send me can tell me that. But the news is over the top. You don't need to bring Jim Cramer on the evening news for me to know how bad the economy sucks. Cramer's appearance doesn't help or hurt the economic news, it really just makes Brian Williams look more handsome. That one was for my mom.

So those are the five or so that I could think of in our limited time together. If you have any other examples of stuff that you watch or listen to or do that alters your thoughts or actions, let me know via comment.

And please don't use the valuable comment space to defend the Twilight books. You're not gonna change my mind on that. And I won't fight fair. I'll just come back with something like "Go clean your room, Kelsee. And stop texting your BFF."

Yep, these are my readers

2009-01-25T15:12:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone. Sorry for two days without posting. I have no excuse, but I'll try to make up for it with a decent one here.

So I stole the title of this post from Bill Simmons, who runs The Sports Guy on espn.com. If you haven't read his blog, you should. Actually, I'll back up a bit. If you like sports, pop culture, and sophomoric humor (and want them all in the same place) then you should check it out. If that isn't your brand of whisky, then that's okay too. Anyway, Simmons ends all of his Mailbag posts with that line. He usually picks the most ridiculous question that he receives that week, leaves it for last, and then answers it with "Yep, these are my readers." An example would be a question that he got a couple weeks ago that was something like "Hey Bill, if I hook up with the swivel-headed lady from the Southwest Airlines commercial, would that count as a threesome?" I warned you about the frat-tastic humor that is The Sports Guy. I don't really have a mailbag post, but I thought the title would fit this topic and because it would help for search engine optimization. We'll get to that a little later.

When RJ and I started this blog, we debated on what the appropriate metrics were to measure the success of the blog. We went back and forth with some of the more qualitative metrics like 'funny comments' or 'does the blog make us laugh'. We also wanted to look at some of the quantitative metrics like 'unique visitors' and 'referral sources'. Since we wanted to track some of the numbers, and since it was sort of work-related for us to learn something about web analytics, we had our friend Ben (another Running Club member and loyal YIFY reader) set us up with Google Analytics, so we're able to track all sorts of fun stuff about who is visiting the blog. So this post is about some of the fun data that I've looked at since the blog's re-launch about a month ago. Here we go:

There have been 3,417 visitors in the past month. I thought this was pretty cool. I think about 5% of those people are family members, 10% are coworker friends and clients, 80% are from Kath's blog, and 5% are randoms that found the blog accidentally because of some google search. More on the randoms later. The 3,417 number is accurate, my percentage breakdown is just a guess.

There have been visitors from 46 states. Shame on: Montana, West Virginia, Mississippi, and South Dakota. Not cool guys. I mean, I've driven through all of your states and you haven't visited my blog once? Especially you, South Dakota. I think I spent a whole day at your Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug back in '92 and you still won't give me any blog love. Poor form. So if any of you know people that live in any of those four states, please send them the URL so we can have global (or domestic, I guess) domination. You can lie and tell them it's a funny video or an e-card or something. I don't care how you get them to the blog, just do it. I could be mean and say something about the lack of electricity or internet connectivity in those states, but I won't do that.

There have been visitors from 40 countries. There's plenty of room for improvement here. My analytics report is a big map of the world and the countries change color once I've had a visitor from said country. So if you know anyone from Greenland or Russia, let's start there. That would be the fastest way to color the map, since most of the other big countries have already visited. There's also plenty of room for improvement in Africa. I've had visitors from South Africa and Malawi, but the rest of the continent is there for the taking. So if y'all want to join the Peace Corps and then visit the blog while you're traveling, you have my permission. I'm trying to settle on a goal here for global domination. There are apparently around 195 countries in the world, but that seems like way too many. I think I'm going to go with either the number of countries that are in the United Nations, or the number of countries that won an Olympic medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Okay, scratch that. Google tells me that there are 192 countries in the UN, and we aren't going to get that many. So we'll go with the Olympic thing. That number is 87. So if you know anyone living abroad, send them to the blog. This can be our own little Epcot Center.

Lots of funny keywords. I think this is my favorite part of the web analytics. I look at which search terms people use on Google than brings them to the blog. Then I think about how disappointed they'll be when they end up here instead of something more relevant. Here's a sample of some of the search terms people have actually used in the past month:

guy on guy action

fat machine

has Suzanne Wong left househunters on HGTV

Ebert and Roper

Do your intestines really stretch to the moon

hippie eyewear

homeless hippies

hotel black light test

when is it okay to unfriend someone

grocery store tucamcari new mexico

exchanging numbers with a guy

Bob Ross

I think this is my favorite thing to look at. If you used one of these search terms and found this blog, then welcome. Feel free to look around. I just feel bad for the dude looking for a grocery store in Tucamcari, New Mexico. I mean, I only mentioned Tucamcari once and it somehow ended up in the guy's search results. I think that means they probably don't have many grocery stores there, but that's just a guess.

So that's the end of tonight's post. If you think it's sort of creepy that I'm looking at this kind of data, think of it this way: you're pretty much reading about all of the mundane details of my life when you're visiting this blog, so I think it's a fair tradeoff for me to know where you're coming from. Even if you're looking for grocery stores in Tucamcari.

An Inconvenient Name

2009-01-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about writing a really positive, uplifting post tonight. But I'm sick. I think I've got bird flu or some kind of peanut butter SARS or whatever the news is telling me about. So that means another grumpy old man post.

I'd like to slap the man (or woman) who came up with the term 'global warming'. Not the person who came up with the actual concept, because that's pretty brilliant. I'm by no means a crunchy granola hippie, but I do believe in the concept. I made it about halfway through Al Gore's movie before slipping into a wine-induced coma. That was a couple years ago, so I don't really remember much about the movie. My logic is that if you do enough bad stuff for long enough, then bad things will probably happen. So I'm not mad at the people who developed the concept. My beef is with the term namer. Unless of course it's the same person. Then I wouldn't know what to do. I'm torn like an old sweater.

So here's my beef with the term 'global warming'. It's unseasonably cold in Charlotte (check local listings). And I think it's pretty damn cold everywhere else too. So now every time it's really freaking cold I have to deal with two things: 1. The fact that it's really freaking cold, and 2. The fact that some local weather person is going to report the temperature and then some local news anchor is going to make some stupid joke like "so much for global warming" or "jeez Larry, what about this global warming that everyone is talking about." Just shut up. Seriously. Not funny. Just annoying. If they just would've called it something like 'global climate crisis' or 'impending wrath of Mother Nature' then I'd only have to deal with the cold, and not the unfunny local news banter.

This got me thinking about Manwich. Yes, the canned sloppy joe sauce. I know, we switch topics pretty quickly here, so try to keep up. Anyway, Manwich recently changed their jingle. It used to be:

(Jamaican Sounding Guy Singing)

Momma don't ya make me another meatloaf/

forget the Mac 'n' Cheese/

I want some fun piled on a bun/

I want a Manwich please.

And their new jingle is:

(Annoying kids singing)

Hey you don't have to be a man to love manwich/

you don't have to be a witch either, it's true/

You just have to love a fun tasty dinner/

And wearing some of that dinner on you.

So Manwich is now using valuable jingle space to address the fact that their name is not literal. I wonder if this is because they were getting lots of calls to their customer service center with inquiries from women. Or maybe they were finding that only men and wiccans were purchasing their product. I can't think of any other reason to get rid of the best jingle and replace it with this garbage.

It's not just the global climate crisis and delicious sloppy joe paste that have inconvenient names. I'd like to submit Benjamin Franklin Plumbing into evidence as Exhibit C. What is Benjamin Franklin's connection to the plumbing trade? That's all I think about when I hear their commercials. Their tagline is something about Ben being the punctual plumber. I did a solid four minutes of research on Franklin tonight, and I can't find anything about plumbing or punctuality. He did invent the flexible urinary catheter, but that's a bit of a stretch. Flexible Urinary Catheter would also be a pretty awesome band name, but that's beside the point. The point is, their name doesn't make any damn sense, and I think they know it. That's why they end their commercials with another pop culture reference (that has nothing to do with Franklin, plumbing, or punctuality). The end of their jingle is as follows:

(guy who sounds like Tommy Tutone)

Benny's the punctual plumber/

866 - That's his prefix/

Then 8675309

I don't get it. Ben Franklin has nothing to do with plumbing. Ben Franklin has nothing to do with Tommy Tutone. Tommy Tutone and his song have nothing to do with plumbing. What the hell is going on here?

Alright, that's about all for today. I'm pretty much out of time here. That four minutes of research on Ben Franklin didn't help. Time to tend to my bird flu. Maybe a manwich would help.

On Profanity

2009-01-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

Everyone who knows me probably knows that I have a bit of a potty mouth. I'm not really sure why. Maybe I can blame it on being a golfer. The little white ball can do really frustrating things, and swearing on the golf course is generally accepted. Which is ironic, since it's one of the few sports that actually has rules against bad language. Anyway, I want to work on cleaning up my language a little bit. I would've made it a new year's resolution, but A) would've broken it when the colts lost and b) it's going to take some time and probably some exceptions for me. So the new plan is to clean up my language by the time I turn 30 (15 months and counting). I think that for the most part, people over 30 shouldn't use bad language. Here's my current exception list. It's broken into two part: 1. People who are always excluded from this no swearing after 30 policy and 2. Times when it's okay for everyone else to break the rules.

People who should be allowed to swear whenever they want

Military and Retired Military People - This isn't blind patriotism or something like that. They just seem to be really really good at it. I'm guessing that there's some sort of swearing class during basic training, but all the research that I've done (An Officer and a Gentleman, Top Gun, Stripes) hasn't shown any formal classroom swearing lessons. Anyway because I think it's an art, and military people are great at it, they get a free pass.

British People - They can say whatever they want. It just sounds cool.

Really Old People - I think I'm going to go with 75 or 80 as the minimum age for this category. Much like British people, it's just fun to listen to old people swearing. Also, if we take away the naughty words, all they'd have left are words like davenport, trousers, and supper. And the elderly won't get a free pass here. If they want to retain their swearing privileges, they'll have to give up their racial slurs. Your kids and grandkids will thank you for it.

Rappers and Comedians - They would sort of be grandfathered in here. Sort of a tools of the trade kind of thing. Come to think of it, there aren't many rappers older than 30 anyway, so it's a pretty small group. I just think that any profession that requires rhyming should have the entire language at their disposal. Otherwise we'll end up with rap songs talking about truck, itch or bass. And I think those are the key elements of country songs.

Doctors and Lawyers - Only the kind that are like the ones on TV shows and movies. Come to think of it, if you're in a profession where there are television dramas depicting your profession, you can swear. If it's entertaining enough for a television show, then it's probably stressful or scary so we'll let you swear. So I guess cops and firefighters are okay.

Times when everyone else can swear

Extreme physical pain - sort of self explanatory. Also covered would be death of a loved one and getting a not so good diagnosis at the doctor's office. Oh, and losing your job is on the list too, but only if swearing is directed at your former boss.

When you're driving - had to put this one in here for Kate. Come to think of it, I should probably add in 'anytime Angelina Jolie is mentioned' but that one would lead to constant swearing at the Pitt-Jolie household, which wouldn't be good for Pax, Zahara, and the rest of the crew.

Something happens that is going to cost money to fix - This would include losing something that needs to be replaced, getting in a car accident (already covered by previous rule), homeowner mishaps, your pet eating something he shouldn't (but don't swear at the pet), and running over stuff with your mower. I probably should come up with a sliding scale for how much money the fix would take that makes it okay to swear. Something like if the cost of the fix would be more than you make in two hours of work, then it's probably okay to swear. So if it's two hours of salary or two hours of work to fix whatever is broken, then you've got the green light.

When hanging out with friends from high school or college - Please note use of the word friends. If you are just around high school or college acquaintances or classmates, then you probably shouldn't swear. It's either a chance encounter or a reunion. Either of which requires you to put yourself in the most positive light possible to show how awesome your life is. This means no swearing. If it's a guys/girls weekend with your actual friends, then swearing is okay.

When blogging - Just wanted to give myself the option.

Okay, that's my list. Feel free to add on via comments. I won't disagree with anything you add, as it would make it easier for me follow the rules. But nothing is coming off the list. I have fifteen months to adjust my behavior, or I guess I could just become a rapper.

Feeling Old

2009-01-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone. Short post tonight. Everything that I've read about blogging says that it's better to do frequent, short posts instead of really long-winded stuff. Yeah, we'll say that's why this is a short post, instead of the real reason (me = tired).

So usually about once a day something happens that makes me feel old. Usually it happens during the morning or in the middle of the day so I forget about it before blogtime. Today it happened to be the last thing I heard on the radio, and we all know how hard it is to forget the last thing you hear on the radio. So the best radio station in the indy area (WTTS - friend of the blog) has a time capsule feature where they feature a different year every day. Pretty basic stuff - here are the pop culture events of the year. Play a few songs from the year. Talk about movies that came out during said year, etc. Usually it's sort of a history lesson - something from the late 70s or early 80s...nothing that I'd really remember. Anyway, tonight the time capsule was a bit different. The time capsule year was 1993. Most of the stuff that they were talking about and the music they were playing are things that I remember. No big deal, until I realized that if 1993 was a person, this person would be a junior in high school and would have a driver's license. Yeah, all of that stuff really happened 16 years ago. This scared me a bit because it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. And what scares me more is that the voice in my head started saying things like "it seems like it was just yesterday". I then made fun of the voice in my head for using grandpa expressions like this. Yes, I even have a smartass voice in my head that makes fun of the regular head in my voice. I should probably get that checked out. Anyway, here are some of the things that made me feel old from the 1993 time capsule:

Radiohead, Crash Test Dummies, Counting Crows, and Alanis Morissette. Not that I am a die hard fan of any of these bands, but I do remember the videos for all of their songs, and this makes me feel old. Mr. Jones would be like 50+ years old now. I can't back that up, but if he was in a bar staring at a yellow-haired girl 16 years ago, then he's not young anymore. I always pictured him being in his mid 30s when the song came out. Mostly because Adam Duritz referred to him as Mr., and anyone with that title is over 30. At least in my head.

Philadelphia/Streets of Philadelphia. Yep, that was 16 years ago. Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks look exactly the same. Well, Hanks looks a bit better than he did at the end of that movie, but you get the point. Also, I always considered Streets of Philadelphia to be 'over the hill Springsteen.' I'm a little too young for Bruce's prime to be considered my music. I was negative 5 when Born to Run came out, and still in Kindergarten when Born in the U.S.A. and Glory Days came out, so I couldn't really claim this as my music. So yeah, Streets of Philadelphia always seemed like past his prime Boss to me. And past his prime boss was 16 years ago. And now he's back with some good music. I don't know if this should make me feel old or make me happy about Bruce's resilience. Maybe I should just stop thinking about it and enjoy his new music.

End of Cheers/Beginning of Frasier. So this one does feel like it was a long time ago, so I was okay with that. What made me feel old is that it was the kind of time capsule fact that you always hear on oldies stations. Like there's always something about I Love Lucy or Happy Days on one of those time capsules. Then they follow it up with some song from Martha and the Vandellas. Hearing that time capsule fact on my radio station about a time that I remember vividly made me feel old. It made me think that maybe the music from this era is considered oldies.

Okay, that's all for now. Lester Holt just told me that the maximum age for the MTV Rock the Vote inaugural ball is 35. That makes me feel better.

Stacking Cats

2009-01-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends. I've done a lot of soul searching lately. I've realized that most of the posts on this blog are about stuff that annoys me. I think I probably need to change that. Yeah, I could be more positive and talk about all of the great things in this world. But instead, I think I'll change it up by writing about something that annoys my wife instead.

Now as a loyal YIFY reader, you probably know that Kate is fine with most things and most people. There are only a couple of exceptions. Kate's stuff I don't like list is much shorter than mine. It's basically just cold weather, Angelina Jolie, and what I think is called dimensional analysis.

If you've never heard of dimensional analysis, that's okay. Actually, I'm not sure if that's the term I'm looking for or not, but that's what we're going to go with, because it's late and I'm sick of looking at stupid math and physics websites. Stupid Google. If you figure out what the hell I'm talking about and want to tell me what the actual name for it is, that would be lovely. Anyway, the thing that annoys Kate that we're going to call dimensional analysis is something you probably hear everyday without paying much attention to it. It's basically when some type of commercial or newscast or discovery channel type program tries to explain how big or grand a specific number is. Something like: "We produce over 1 billion pounds of trash a day. How big is a billion? Well, if you had a billion cats and you stacked them on top of each other, they would stretch to the moon and back four times!" It usually involves stacking, or laying end to end or time. So hopefully now you know what I'm talking about.

These things get used all the time. Especially on some kind of math or science TV show that's probably designed for tweens. I think the one that gets used the most has something to do with your intestines. Something like "if you were to remove your intestines and lay them out end to end, they would reach from New York to Texas" or something like that. I don't think they ever specify if it's just the large intestine or if it's both the large and small. They don't really cite their sources on those shows.

Editor's Note: If you're wondering why I'm watching some math or science show that's designed as informational for tweens, please refer to earlier post about the lack of good cartoons on TV (especially on the weekends).

So they've got these dimensional analysis things for just about everything. They seem to be especially popular with diseases and radio commercials. You know, stuff like "in the time it takes you to read this blog post, three people will die of lung cancer, four from heart failure, and a third of a person from bird flu. In the commercials or whatever they usually just limit it to one illness or cause of death. I think if they laid them all out in one commercial it would probably be more powerful, but might be overwhelming.

So I've always heard these things and really haven't given them a whole lot of thought. I just shrug and say okay when the guy on TV tells me that Jello has sold enough pudding in the past 20 years to fill Lake Michigan. Kate, on the other hand, gets just about as upset at these as she does when Angelina is on the cover of People Magazine. I'm trying to figure out why. I guess I could ask her, but she's asleep, so I'll just speculate. That'll make for better blog materiel anyway. At first I thought it was just basic skepticism. Maybe she didn't believe their math. Or maybe she figured that the people who come up with these comparisons just realize that nobody can really stack cats to the moon, or lay Twinkies end to end which means nobody can really call bullshit on them, so they just throw out some ridiculous comparison and call it a day. The theory that I've landed on is bringing together two of her top dislikes: dimensional analysis and space travel. I guess I should've mentioned space travel earlier in my list of things Kate doesn't like. But she basically thinks that space travel is dumb. Trust me on this one. So my theory is that since most of these dimensional analysis things involve stacking things, and the big stacks usually end up somewhere in space (the moon, mars, sometimes the sun) she's annoyed mostly because they are talking about space travel (sort of) which, as we previously established, she thinks is dumb.

Wow, I just realized that the last sentence was really long. I could fix it, but my blogging time is up for tonight. Besides, if you stacked that sentence end to end, it would reach all the way to the moon, or at least all the way to the stack of cats, which reach the moon.

A Few Good Ideas

2009-01-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone. We're starting another consecutive posting streak. This makes two days in a row...big time stuff.

Today I heard a commercial for the Invention Submission Corporation. It was something about calling with all of your great ideas and then they would help you get a patent or something. I think they might somehow be affiliated with that guy who wears the suit with all of the question marks on it (Matthew Lesko) but I can't back that up. Anyway, I thought about calling them with all of my invention ideas, but then thought that A) what's going to stop them from stealing all of my ideas and B) Making a phone call...that seems like too much work. So instead I'll just use today's post as my invention submission corporation. If y'all want to steal my ideas, that's okay. I probably won't get around to doing whatever you need to do to make money off of inventions, and I'd rather they just get invented. So you can have the money, just send me a prototype or something. Here are my (your) inventions. I could probably use some help with some of the product names:

Electrocuting Baby Doll- Yeah, this one definitely needs a new name. So the basic premise of this one is that it's a baby doll that provides an electric shock when you touch it. Like a Cabbage Patch Kid with a taser built into it or something. It would have a couple of uses. The primary use would be for training dogs or other pets of expecting first time parents. Basically training the dog that it's not cool to touch the little humans. It wouldn't be such a strong shock that it would do any real harm to the dog, but enough to keep it from touching the baby again. Oh, and if you decide to steal this idea and then find out that the expectant parents with pets market isn't quite big enough to make a profit, I guess you could expand and maybe require all registered sex offenders to take one of the dolls as well. You could turn up the voltage for them. Their addresses are already online so you could just go door to door.

Screw-Off Chicken Bucket. So this one is basically just a screw-off bottom of the paper buckets that are used by KFC, Bojangles, and other fried chicken places (check local listings). Within the screw-off bottom, they would store plastic silverware, napkins, and maybe some plates. I just think it makes more sense to have this as part of the bucket, instead of requiring chicken buyers to take an extra bag just for napkins, silverware, and other things. Why not just put these things in a false-bottom, screw-off portion of the bucket itself? I think one of the reasons this one hasn't made it to market yet is because most people probably think there is a better overall chicken delivery system than the bucket. I mean, if the bucket went away, then so would the need for the yet to be developed screw-off bottom. It's one of the few foods that is delivered in bucket form. But I guess the bucket isn't really going anywhere, so you can borrow this idea and give it to KFC if you want.

Vibrating Television Remote - I guess it doesn't need to vibrate, it could beep or flash or something else. But we needed to call it something, so I'm going with vibrating television remote. Anyway, this one is for when you're switching between two television shows. I mean, one of them is obviously the primary show, but you've got a backup that you are switching to during commercials of the primary show. The vibrating television remote will notify you in some way when your primary show has returned from commercial break. This way you don't get caught up watching your secondary show and forget to return to your primary show. I know that you're probably going to say something about DVR or whatever, but think about it this way. The two TV show technique is often a trade off between two TV watchers. Take right now, for instance. I'm trying to watch the Steelers-Ravens Game, but Kate is not really interested. She wants to watch the series premiere of 'Toddlers and Tiaras' on TLC. If you're not sure what that is, you're lucky. It's a bunch of scary looking five year old pageant kids and their overbearing parents. So think of it this way. I'm probably going to give in and she'll have primary control of the TV (Toddlers and Tiaras). I still want to get in as much football watching as possible, without overshooting the commercials on TLC (which would somehow be my fault), hence the vibrating remote. I could watch my full two minutes of Football and then the remote would tell me when it's time to return to Toddlers and Tiaras. Oh yeah, I'd be living the dream.

So go ahead and steal one (or all) of these ideas if you want. Like I said, just send me a prototype or something. If you've got any inventions that you'd like to share, please post as a comment. I promise I won't steal them...if I won't call the number to submit mine, I doubt I'd submit yours. Unless they're really good.

My Own Little Fantasy

2009-01-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

First off, I need to address the obvious - my consecutive days with a blog post streak. It ended yesterday. Sorry about that. But I did have like 21 days in a row with a post, so I think that's pretty good. Besides, yesterday was RJ's day to post. Also, I flew back to Indy yesterday and it was just a little too cold to think. Really, I think it's too cold to do anything here. But I can't use that excuse all weekend, so here's a fantasy football post.

I play fantasy football. I guess you call it 'playing' even though it feels a lot more like work. Fantasy football involves spending lots of time on the computer (something I do at work), doing research and making difficult decisions (things I do at work) and watching television (something I do at work). So yeah, it's sort of like work, except that it only pays off about one out of every three years.

And the payoff isn't all that great. I mean, when you consider how much time you put in researching players on teams that you really don't care about, your hourly fantasy football rate is well below minimum wage, even if you win your league. I got second place in my league this year and made $60. When you consider that I spent about 3 hours/week watching football, another hour/week setting my lineup, and about 15 minutes per week coming up with a team name, I think I made about $1/hour. Fantasy Football is basically sports gambling for men whose parents wouldn't sign the permission slip for real gambling. It involves all of the analysis and decision making, without the potential for major financial loss or gain.

My favorite aspect of fantasy football is coming up with a team name. Actually, coming up with several team names. This season I switched my team name every week. It usually had something to do with the current news cycle at the time I set my lineup. Since most of the season took place during the presidential campaign, my team names included Bristol's Baby Daddy, Lipstick on a Pig, and The Sad Grandpas. It'll be like a little time capsule from the 2008 presidential election. There were a few other team names that probably aren't blog-appropriate. Come to think of it, they probably weren't work fantasy football league appropriate either, but it's a little too late for that now.

If it wasn't for fantasy football, I think I'd underestimate just how physical the sport is. I mean, it seems like halfway into the season, half of my team has some sort of injury. Maybe that's why I play fantasy football instead of regular football - less chance of serious injury.

I actually did try real football once. I made it through one week of football camp before my freshman year of high school. I only made it five days because I had philosophical differences with the coach. As a 6'3'', 230lb incoming freshman, the coach thought I'd be on the offensive line with the rest of the really large people. But it was August, and all of the linemen had to practice in full pads and do lots of running. I saw the kickers and punters, and they looked like they were having way more fun. They were even practicing right next to the water fountain, which was a huge plus. When I made my case for joining the kicking squad, I think the coach said something like "a boy your size should be doing something a little bit more manly than being a kicker." He was probably right. But I decided to join the golf team instead.

Miami Fat Machine

2009-01-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

Matt Lauer told me something this morning that I almost couldn't believe. But then I remembered that it was Matt and that he's always honest with me, so I just decided that it must be true. The story was about the fittest and fattest cities in the United States. The part that I couldn't believe is that Miami has been named the fattest city in the country. Stop shaking your head in disbelief. Matt said it. It must be true.

I usually go to Miami once or twice a year. I don't think I've ever seen a fat person. I take that back, I have seen fat people at the Miami airport. There are usually some fat tourists in straw hats and Tommy Bahama shirts making their annual pilgrimage to Miami to get on a seven day binge on the Royal Caribbean Buffet of the Seas, or whatever they call cruise ships these days. But those people don't live in Miami, so I don't think they count in the survey. Other than the cruise ship crowd, I don't think I've ever seen a fat person in Miami. No fat people on the beach. No fat people out at the bars and restaurants of South Beach. No fat people in Coral Gables. Where are they?

Well, they must be there, because Matt said so. I can't think of a worse city to be fat in. First, there are all of the beautiful people out on the beach and at the clubs of South Beach. That would probably get annoying. Also, the humidity would really be a drag. I sweat from the moment my flight lands in Miami to the minute I return, regardless of my weight at the time. Even the airport is sweaty. The floors are always sticky there. As soon as I get to Miami, I feel like I just got done with a run, or like I'm RJ, or like I just ate dinner at Fogo de Chao and have the meat sweats. Okay, probably enough talk about sweat.

Probably the worst thing about being fat in Miami would be that you basically have no excuse. If you live in Green Bay or something, you can blame it on the weather and the fact that you can't leave the house for like six months. But the weather can only be an excuse in Miami for the 20 minutes every afternoon when it rains. There also seems to be plenty of exercise opportunities there (nice parks, gyms, the ocean, bike paths, etc) so you can't use that excuse. I don't think they can use my typical alcohol excuse either. Going to a bar in Miami means buying a $200+ bottle of booze (the only way you can get a table), so I don't think there are a lot of people getting fat off of potato skins and other glorious bar food. And you can't just be bulking up to have some extra warmth for the winter. There is no winter.

So I'm trying to figure out how Miami can be the fattest city. There are plenty of cities that should be fatter, including: Philadelphia (cheese steaks, winter), Chicago (deep dish, winter), any city in Wisconsin (their state food is fried cheese, winter) or most of Texas (really big steaks). Sure the food in Miami is good, but it isn't fried cheese.

I thought Miami's expanding waistline might be economic. Maybe the fact that their economy is in the toilet is causing people to switch to cheaper, less healthy food. But then again, cities like Las Vegas are just as bad economically, and they also have casinos and cruise ship-inspired buffets. And declining home values should lead to less dessert at TGIFridays, right? I think I learned that in my econ classes.

My next thought was that maybe it has something to do with Miami's sports teams. The Dolphins were way better this year than they were last year, and the Marlins were decent. So my theory here is that better sports teams = more people going to watch their games. And there's no way to eat (or drink) healthy at a professional sporting event. But I really doubt that an improved football team can really explain this phenomenon.

So all I'm left with is that either 1) The survey is BS or 2) Matt Lauer is lying to me. I don't want #2 to be correct, so if you've got another theory, please let me know.

At the Movies

2009-01-14T18:20:00.001-08:00

I wrote on my hand today that I should write about movies, so I'm going to go ahead and do that now. Otherwise I'll take a shower and will no longer have this brilliant idea documented anywhere. So here's my movie post.

My parents watch more movies at the theatre than anyone I know. Granted, I don't know that many people, but they watch lots of movies. My dad will watch pretty much anything. He's a big fan of the Action Summer Blockbuster genre. You know, those movies that used to be comic books back when there were comic books. But he'll also see anything that my mom wants to see. She was a librarian and watches everything that was based on a book that she read. Based on those two rather broad categories, they pretty much have 12 of the 16 screens at the theatre covered. Oh, my mom will also watch anything that features Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, or any other male lead who could be named the AARP Sexiest Man Alive. Just had to get that in there, even though I know I'll get an angry phone call or email tomorrow morning. Sorry mom.

I think the data point that best explains my parents' dedication to the movies is the fact that they used to wake up at 4:00 AM on Sunday mornings (back before DVR) to watch 'At the Movies' with Siskel and Ebert or Ebert and Roper. That's dedication. They also have a very stong relationship with Netflix. Since they see everything that makes it to the theatre, their constant pen pal relationship with Netflix usually covers everything that doesn't make it to the theatre (documentaries, etc).

Netflix probably loses money on their relationship with my parents. It more than makes up this loss with us (mostly Kate). Kate is very particular about the type of movie that she will watch. Here are Kate's rules. I'm making these up as I go, but have about six years of data or so to support this:

1. Has to be a romantic comedy. I've found that most movies in this genre are neither romantic or funny, so I'm not sure how they came up with this label, but I digress.

2. Running time under two hours. There are some attention span issues that are the culprit here. I believe those were mentioned in a previous post about road trips if you're scoring at home.

3. Either the male or female lead has to be someone who starred in another movie that she has previously seen and enjoyed. This one is difficult, because it rules out anyone starring in their first major motion picture.

4. The male or female lead cannot have starred in a romantic comedy that she disliked. This rules out a lot of movies.

5. Movie cannot have a 'bad' ending. Bad = any loose ends. Funny story on this one. Now that Kate is back in Indy, I'm going to a lot more movies (with my parents, of course). We saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other day. Instead of asking me questions like "how was the movie" or "would I like it" her first question was "How did it end?" It's a three hour movie and her only real question was about the ending. So yeah, I think this rule is valid.

6. Movie cannot have anything to do with Angelina Jolie. This is probably the most important rule. So you can copy and paste it into the #1 spot if you want. I think this rules out Brad Pitt movies, Billy Bob Thornton movies, and Jon Voight movies. It actually rules out movies that have trailers for Angelina Jolie movies. Kate likes pretty much everyone. She's the nice one. But there's something about Angelina Jolie that really makes Kate angry. When a trailer for an Angelina Jolie movie is on TV, it is usually followed with "ugh, that freak, go drink some blood" or "ugh, what is she doing in another movie, doesn't she have like 18 babies to take care of" or "ugh, gross. I don't like her. I think she's a vampire." Not a big fan.

So those are the rules for new movies. For DVDs, we're pretty much limited to John Hughes movies made between 1983 and 1993. So my choices are cinematic gems like Uncle Buck, She's Having a Baby, Home Alone, Curly Sue, and a handful of other movies that I've seen a dozen times. Our Netflix queue pretty much looks like it would if I was in a coma for the past 15 years and was from Chicago. Awesome.

My movie tastes are somewhere between those of my wife and my parents. But I'm usually too busy to go to the movies. This TV isn't going to watch itself.

Potpourri for $1000, Alex

2009-01-13T20:05:00.000-08:00

So it's about 11:30PM (check local listings), which means I have to hurry up and post to keep my consecutive days with a post streak going. I've been driving in my car by myself for the past five hours. I tried to come up with topic for tonight's post, but all I ended up with is a lot of random thoughts that aren't really connected to one another. So tonight's post is just going to be a list of things that I thought about tonight on my drive.

1. With all of the funny stuff that happens on a daily basis in our country, there's no way that what Bob Sagat/Tom Bergeron put on ABC every Sunday night is really a comprehensive collection of America's funniest home videos. Somebody had to be taping some of the really funny stuff, they just didn't mail in the tape. I don't have a video camera. If I did, I'd probably use it. I think I could find something funnier.

2. If anyone tells you that they were in the band in high school, but that "band wasn't like it was at other places...band was cool at their high school" - they are lying. Nothing against the band. I'm sure you had fun and there were great people in the band, maybe even some lifelong friends, but band was not 'cool' at your high school. It's high school, so probably football and cheerleading were/are/always will be what the cool kids do. Unless you're going to Grambling, School of Rock with Jack Black, or Juilliard, the band is not cool. And I think one of those is a college and another doesn't really exist.

3. I think that blogging is the equivalent of the safety school for people who want to write a book or start their own business. It lets people write stuff or potentially make money without having the risk of either of their top choices. I'm still not sure about the making money thing. At last check, Google tells me I've made $11.83 on this blog. Not quite enough to retire on.

4. People always talk about wanting to drink a beer with the president. Or wanting to play basketball with Michael Jordan. If I was going to play the "pick and celebrity and pick an activity" game, I think I'd go grocery shopping with Jessica Tandy. I came up with a few reasons why...a) I always feel out of place and uncomfortable at the grocery store, and Jessica would help me fit in b) I enjoyed watching Jessica grocery shop during Driving Miss Daisy, so I know she's good at it c) when people swap their celebrity encounter stories, I don't think anyone could top grocery shopping with Jessica Tandy. It would replace meeting Phyllis from The Office at the airport. And yes, I realize that Jessica has passed away.

5. I've rethought my dream job. Previously I was going with two jobs - Host of Man vs. Food during the winter (basically just traveling the country and overeating to get my picture up on the wall at random diners) along with annual The Biggest Loser contestant in the Summer. I always thought the two would go together really well. But I thought about it tonight and decided that my heart would probably explode. So now my new dream job is "Guy who comes up with conference room names for companies." Every office has conference rooms. All conference rooms should have a consistent naming theme. I think I can come up with awesome conference room names. Can't find that one listed on CareerBuilder right now.

6. There should be some sort of rating system for gas stations so that you know at the time you pull of the interstate if it is the kind of gas station where you feel like it's okay to use the bathroom. They've got plenty of extra space on those blue highway signs. They should use that space to give some sort of star rating to the gas stations. Or maybe somebody could write a book/list of gas stations with clean bathrooms. This would make my life so much easier. Kate holds me personally responsible if I stop for gas and it turns out to be a dirty gas station. How am I supposed to know this when I get off of the interstate? All I see is the gas station logo on the sign and maybe a billboard. That's really not enough for me to make an informed decision.

7. Nobody seems to know why "Virginia is for Lovers." I've heard the slogan for years, and nobody can give me a good answer to this one. I asked the guy behind the counter at the dirty gas station, and he couldn't help me at all.

That's pretty much all I thought about tonight on my drive. I also had thoughts like "I forgot to DVR The Biggest Loser tonight" and "Why didn't I fly to Richmond instead of driving" but those aren't really blogworthy.

11:47 EST. The streak is still alive.

The Hotel Test

2009-01-12T19:35:00.001-08:00

This is going to be the second travel-themed post in a row. I hope y'all don't mind. Since I'm traveling right now, it's the only thing that I can think of to write about. I promise this isn't turning into a travel blog. I'll try to change it up tomorrow and write about dogs or church or bananas.

I'm a bit of a hotel snob. A shrink would probably tell you that it has something to do with my childhood. Hotels growing up meant one of three things: 1. A campground 2. The pop-top of a Volkswagen Vanagon 3. A Motel 6. The Motel 6 was only on special occasions. Usually on New Year's Eve in Tucamcari, New Mexico. I can still hear my dad's advice as we got into bed: "kids, keep your underpants on." Oh, the memories.

So now that I travel for work (and sometimes for fun) I can be a little picky about hotels. There are certain things that I look for in a hotel. I just did this subconsciously until one of my friends pointed out that I was just applying my own hotel test. The hotel test is the criteria or set of criteria that you use to determine if the hotel is somewhere that you are willing stay. Please note that this is not my idea, but I feel compelled to share the concept with all of you. Idea creator(s), you know who you are.

You can establish all sorts of hotel tests. I have surveyed at least a handful of people and would like to share some of these hotel thresholds or tests with you:

Interior Room Entrances: This one is pretty self-explanatory. If this is your hotel test, it basically means that you rule out staying at any hotel where you enter your room from the outside world (sorry Motel 6). I can understand this one. I think it also dovetails off of the "won't stay at the kind of hotel where people live" rule. Think about it. When you're eating at a Cracker Barrel and look over at the adjacent hotel and see someone bringing it groceries, they are probably entering from an exterior entrance. I guess people do live in hotels with interior entrances, but they are usually professional athletes or guys going through a divorce. Anyway, I understand the interior room entrance rule, and I think it's a good one.

The Map: This one isn't quite as obvious, but I love it just the same. Creator of the map rule (you know who you are) thank you for developing this wonderful threshold. So here's how it works. If, upon check-in, the guy at the front desk pulls out a map of the hotel (and a colored pencil) and then draws the path that your car should take to get to the appropriate entrance, then this is a hotel that you won't stay in. This rule is a little more strict than the interior room entrance rule, as most map hotels do have rooms that you can enter from the inside.

Room Service: Another brilliant rule created by one of my friends at work. The law, as it is written, requires that all hotels must offer room service. This does not mean that the rule creator (or rule follower) will order room service during their stay, it simply means that the hotel has to offer it. It makes sense if you think about it this way: in order to offer room service, the hotel has to have a kitchen. If the hotel has a kitchen, then that means some sort of regulatory board (other than the Elevator Certification Board) has been in the hotel and has given at least the kitchen a thumbs up for cleanliness. It follows then that the rest of the hotel probably follows the same standards of cleanliness.

The Fluffy White Comforter Test: Also known as the Kate test. This is Kate's requirement. She wants to stay only at hotels that have fluffy white comforters. When I called her today, her first question was "How's your Hotel?" When I said it was just okay, her second question was "What kind of comforter is on the bed?" Much like my overall hotel snobbery, Kate's bedspread/comforter rule was established early in life. Kate's mom was apparently ahead of her time. She had a fear of foreign stains on bedspreads long before Dateline/Primetime/20/20 began doing their hotel room black light tests. When Kate was young, the first thing that her mom would do when they checked into a hotel room was to wildly strip the comforter off of the bed, making sure that nobody touched it. Because it's difficult to predict the color and fluffiness of the hotel comforter prior to check-in, I typically use the interweb and do the virtual tour of the hotel to confirm the color and fluffiness of the comforter prior to making a reservation.

The Indoor Pool Test: Also known as Kate's Second Test. This one isn't a deal breaker for Kate, but she does look favorably upon hotels with an indoor pool. Keep in mind that in our 100+ nights of staying at hotels with an indoor pool, I think she has actually used said pool twice. That said, she just likes it being there, and gets all excited when I tell her that the hotel has a pool. It's one of the few times that Kate acts like a seven year old kid, which I think is funny. Maybe you had to be there. It's a valid test just the same.

I'm interested to hear if any of you out there in blogland have hotel tests of your own. Post them as comments if you are comfortable sharing. And don't just say that you use star ratings. Those things are always inflated...sort of like star ratings on Star Search. Those things were really bogus. Did anyone ever receive less than three and a quarter stars on that show? Okay, I'm rambling now. Time to tuck myself in under my fluffy white comforter.

The Front of the Plane

2009-01-11T15:47:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I travel quite a bit for work these days. There are pros and cons to work travel. Some of the cons include having to shave (if I'm meeting with clients) and being away from home. Some of the pros include getting to visit some interesting places, having HBO in hotel rooms (giving me an opportunity to be exposed to new favorite shows like True Blood and In Treatment), and frequent flier miles. When I lived in Indy, the frequent flier mile thing wasn't really a big deal. The Indy airport isn't a hub (or even a mini-hub) for any airline. So I basically had miles on every airline, but not enough to get free trip anywhere. Now that I'm in Charlotte, I live in a hub city. This means that every time I fly somewhere, I'm flying on the same airline. So I'm building up all of these miles, and then comes the best benefit of all: the front of the plane.

For years I had dreamt about the front of the plane. I had no idea what life was like in rows 1-4. I always wanted to go up and use the first class bathroom, but the pre-flight announcement tells me that I should use the lavatory in the main cabin. The announcement actually says something about it being a safety reason why people in coach can't use the first class bathroom, but I had my doubts. My theory was that they had fancy soaps and hand towels up there, and they're afraid that us savages back in coach would steal all of their fancy products. My theory also included a bathroom attendant and a toilet made of gold. As you can tell, I've spent many hours in coach, just dreaming of what was going on in front of the mesh curtain.

So now that the airline decided that I've flown enough to now sit in the front of the plane pretty much every time I fly, I can tell you that there is no golden toilet. There's not even a fancy soap. The first class lavatory is pretty much the same as the one in the main cabin. And it's still a federal offense to tamper with the lavatory smoke detector. So that's a bit of a disappointment, but the other aspects of rows 1-4 are pretty stellar. There are plenty of things that I could talk about here: the free drinks, the bottomless basket of snack food, the warm towel that I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with. I'm not going to focus on these things, although I do need to discuss the bottomless snack basket briefly. For a few years, I thought that Funyuns had disappeared. I hadn't seen these delightful half potato chip half onion ring treats at either gas stations or grocery stores. Turns out that Funyuns are alive and well. I think the airlines actually bought all of the world's Funyuns and are stockpiling them in a hanger somewhere. For first-class consumption only. I find this sort of ironic, since Funyons always seemed a little white trash, yet they are served in fancy pants first class. Ironic and delicious.

But my favorite aspect of sitting on the front of the plane is the fact that it's where all of the flight attendants hang out when they want to hide from the annoying passengers. It's like there little break room, right across from the unimpressive first class bathroom. So I do what any other person would do and I listen in on their conversation. They spend most of their time talking about the annoying passengers back in coach, like the little kid who spilled his cheerios or the lady who wouldn't turn her damn cell phone off when it was time for takeoff. I guess they figure that since we're sitting in the front of the plane, that we probably also look down on those coach heathens. Or maybe they just don't think that anyone would be eavesdropping on their conversation. Either way, it's pretty entertaining. In addition to talking about the annoying passengers, they also spend a good deal of their time talking about their schedules. I have no idea what they're talking about, but it's fascinating. They have like their own language that only other flight attendants understand. Like some remote island nation or twin talk or something. I heard something about having a double turn then a quick flip and a hard stop for a pass-through. For a minute I thought they were talking about a figure skating routine, but then they said something about LAX, so I knew it was fight-attendant speak.

In addition to this anthropological study, I also like to observe the reaction of other front-of-the-planers when they see me sitting among them. Most of the other front of the planers pretty much look how you think they would look. There are three types of people on the front of the plane:

1. Businessmen and women. Usually wearing nice suits and annoying blue tooth earpieces

2. Morbidly obese people who need the extra room

3. Women (40-65) wearing some sort of costume jewelry, too much lipstick, and some sort of fur or leather product. These women didn't get the memo that flying is no longer elegant or an event, and that it's now more like a greyhound bus experience.

And then there's me. I typically go with my standard work from home attire. This means hoodie, puma workout pants, and baseball cap. Mostly because I like being comfortable. I do put a bit of a twist on this...I pull the baseball cap down a little lower. I do this because it's what the celebrities do. I watch TMZ pretty much every night, and whenever they catch a celebrity at the airport, s/he is always dressed similar to my WFH outfit, and usually has a baseball cap pulled down really low. I'm guessing that this is so nobody recognizes them. So I go with the same look. It's my way of staying comfortable while still giving the impression that I might be important or famous. Judging by the reaction of my fellow front of the plane passengers, I think about half of them think that I'm famous, while the other half just thinks that I'm lazy and probably don't belong on the front of the plane. The other half would be correct.

So that's what life if like in the front of the plane. Sorry if I ruined the mystery, especially about the lack of a gold toilet. Oh, but if you ever having a craving for Funyuns, now you know where you can get your fix.

Fries With That

2009-01-10T13:13:00.001-08:00

I got a haircut today. I know, that's big news here. Third haircut in the six months since I moved here. My hair cutting person (I refuse to use 'stylist') didn't ask me if I wanted to buy any of their product. When the cut was complete, I thanked her for not asking me if I wanted any gel or conditioner, or whatever else they're selling. She seemed a little surprised by this, told me that I was welcome, and then told me to please not call corporate and tell on her for not making a mid-cut sales pitch. I promised that I wouldn't tell on her, and that I was truly thankful that she didn't follow the script. The script usually starts mid-haircut, when you're most vulnerable with "Do you use any gel or product in your hair?" Regardless to the answer to this question, they are going to follow that up with whatever product they are trying to push this week. As you can tell by today's interaction, I'm not a big fan of the script.

It's not just the haircut place, I also get the script at places like Jiffy Lube. Just like with the haircut script, the Jiffy Lube script starts mid-transaction. Your car is up on the big magic lift, and the guy comes in with your air filter. He then shows you the air filter, and says that it's 'black' or 'pretty dirty.' I think this depends on his perception of the customer, and whether or not you know anything about cars. He then asks if you want him to replace the air filter for $10 or whatever it costs. I've tried out a few responses to this question, but haven't landed on a favorite yet. I've tried:

"No, I'll change it myself, thanks for pointing this out" (clearly a lie)

"Have you guys ever had someone come in and found a clean air filer?" (probably a little too smartass)

"No, but I'd like to speak to a manager, because I bought an air filter here 3,000 miles ago. If it's already bad, then I must have received a defective air filter and I'd like to talk about compensation." (a lie, and probably too dramatic)

I never buy the air filer. At least not from them. Probably because of how they are forced to ask me. I'd probably be more willing to give them an extra $10 if they just said "hey man, business isn't so great, could you spare an extra $10?"

It's not that I am a complete ass. Well, maybe I am...let's try that again. It's not that I don't enjoy speaking to retail or service-based employees. I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I just don't like being asked to buy other things while I'm buying something else. I'm actually pretty loyal to my favorite customer service representatives. There's the ex-con looking checkout guy at Lowes who always looks like he's going to murder someone. I always go to his checkout line and then ask him something like "Your shift almost over?" or "Ready to get out of here?" It doesn't matter if he's only got ten minutes to go until he leaves or if he just started his shift, he always gives the same surly, disgruntled response, and I love him for that. I actually think that he's about one bad shift away from snapping and taking people out with a ban saw. I think that maybe I go for his line every time so I can witness this freak out. That's beside the point. The point is that I do enjoy speaking with my checkout people and other service-oriented employees, as long as they don't try to sell me more stuff. I like crazy Lowes guy because I know he's just going to scan my stuff, put it in my bag, and go on hating life or plotting a crime. There's no chance that he's going to try to get me to sign up for a Lowe's card, or ask if I found everything okay. What kind of a question is that? Did I find everything okay? What the hell...if I didn't find everything, are you going to walk away from your checkout desk and help me find stuff? If I didn't find something, I wouldn't be checking out. I also always go to the same checkout girl at the grocery store. She's really good at scanning items, especially multiple scans if you are buying more than one of the same product. She'll do a double (or even triple) scan while tossing the other similar items into the bag without even looking at them. I frequently complement her on her bagging and scanning technique. I didn't really need to go off on that tangent, I just didn't want y'all to think that the only checkout people that I like are potential murderers like the Lowes guy.

My dislike for this mid-transaction sales pitches sort of goes against what I actually do when I'm working. My job includes coming up with new ways for companies to sell you more stuff while you're already buying something else. I justify this contradiction with the distinction that the cross-sell and up-sell strategies that I come up with at work are all about online transactions. I'm okay with that. If I'm buying something online and during the checkout process there's something about "you might also be interested in this" I'm alright with it. Maybe it's because I'm not required to talk. Or maybe it's because I just want to feel good about what I do for a living. I'm not sure which it is, I'll ask crazy Lowes guy and see what he thinks.

This distinction has actually caused me to move away from human interaction whenever possible. I use the ATM-looking thing at the movie theatre, and use the self-checkout machine at the grocery store if I'm only buying a few items (or if multiple item scanner girl isn't working).

So that's all I've got for now. No, I don't want to mega-size it for $0.39, I don't want a four week trial subscription to Entertainment Magazine, and I'm not interested in the extended warranty. And I won't call corporate if you don't even ask.

Stand-Up Guys

2009-01-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

Kate and I are really big fans of live stand-up comedy. Come to think of it, we're also fans of TV stand-up comedy. I guess that makes sense, since I love comedy and I love TV, the two sort of go together. Anyway, going to see a live show at a comedy club is one of our favorite things to do. I think it's actually one of the few things that we both enjoy doing that involves going out at night and doesn't involve eating. Kate's not really a big fan of movies. I've seen more movies since she's been in Indy then I did in the past couple of years. We also have a running joke about going out to a trendy club. Usually when we're just hanging out at home and comfortable, one of us will say something like "Wanna go to Ice tonight? I heard they have this amazing new DJ." We're not really dance club kind of people, but 'Ice' sounds like the kind of place where the cool kids hang out. Anyway, this is a post about stand-up comedy, not Kate's movie viewing habits or our inside jokes. That will probably be another post. So I thought I'd give some live comedy recommendations. I'm not an expert on comedy (or anything, really) but if you find this blog to be at least mildly entertaining, then you'll probably like these guys.

Jim Gaffigan - You probably have seen or heard him, but might not realize it. He did some Sierra Mist Commercials a couple of years ago (he was a TSA agent, some spots also included Kathy Griffin), but his stand-up act is great. He usually talks about food. Mostly things like cake and Hot Pockets. Here are a few of my favorite Gaffigan jokes:

Life is a little easier for attractive people. Think about it, if a stranger smiles at you and they’re attractive, you think, “Oh, they’re nice.” But if the stranger’s ugly, you’re like, “What do they want? Get away from me weirdo.”

It is amazing how email has changed our lives. You ever get a handwritten letter in the mail today? “What the?... Has someone been kidnapped?”

Mike Birbiglia - Probably not as popular as Gaffigan, but just as funny. He has recurring bit called his secret public journal that he does on the Bob and Tom Show. Yes, I realize the irony of referencing a morning radio show one day after my negative post about AM radio. I get it. Anyway, Birbiglia has a sleeping disorder that causes him to sleep walk, sleep eat, and sleep lots of other stuff. He frequently works this into his stand-up act. Here are a couple others:

My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian

I shouldn't say bad things about the illiterate, though.. I should WRITE IT. That way they won't find out.

I went to a funeral recently, and they handed out Kleenex before the funeral. Which I thought was cocky

Dane Cook - Not really. Actually I can't stand the guy...I just wanted to check and see if you guys were paying attention. I don't get him at all. Comedy Central has a Dane Cook special coming up and the promo described him as "the most popular comic in America." This really upset me. Not because I don't think it's true (it is) but because that says something about the collective sense of humor of our country (check local listings). Sure he's okay to look at, but he's no Ryan Reynolds. Sorry to be negative, but I can't make it any entire post without saying something mean-spirited, it just isn't my nature.

Mitch Hedberg - Going to be sort of difficult to see him live, as Mitch passed away a couple years ago. Still, you should check out some of his concert CDs if you get a chance. or download it or whatever the kids are doing these days. Anyway, he's worth listening to:

I want to hang a map of the world in my house then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve travelled to. But first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

Alcoholism is a disease but it's the only the disease you can get yelled at for having. Damnit Otto you're an alcoholic. Damnit Otto you have lupus. One of these doesn't sound right.

Editor's Note - The last two jokes probably give you some insight into Mitch's demise.

Demetri Martin - I haven't had a chance to see him live yet. I've watched his Comedy Central special about 10 times. I feel like if I keep watching it, then maybe it will influence Comedy Central and they'll decide that he's the most popular comedian in the world. Damn, too bad that I don't have a Nielsen Box to track my television watching. I did a little research on the topic, and apparently they don't take volunteers. They want it to be random so that they get an accurate sample. Oh, but if any of you out there in blog land have a Nielsen box that you don't want to have anymore, I'll take it off your hands. You can even keep the money that they pay you and the free dinners and stuff. I just want advertising and programming decisions to be based on what I watch. Anyway, here are a few Demetri Martin quotes:

“I like video games, but they’re really violent. I’d like to play a video game where you help the people who were shot in all the other games. It’d be called ‘Really Busy Hospital.’”

"If you can't tell then difference between a spoon and a ladle, then you're fat."

A quick way to start a conversation is to say something like “What’s your favorite color?” A quick way to end a conversation is to say something like “What’s your favorite color…person?”

Well, sorry that this blog is mostly other people's jokes and not a whole lot of original content. I didn't think about anything really interesting today, but wanted to keep my streak of 'consecutive days with a blog post' alive. If you have any favorite comedians, post them as comments. Please don't use the comments section to defend Dane Cook. You're not going to change my mind on that one. Oh, and before I sign off, I should say that Kate really likes Kathy Griffin and Chelsea Handler. I had to write that or else she'd read this and be upset that I didn't mention them. Okay, that's all.

AM Radio

2009-01-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

One of the benefits of working from home that I didn't get to mention in my previous post is that I can now avoid listening to morning radio. Don't get me wrong...I love listening to the radio, but for some reason station directors can't quite figure out how to make decent radio before 10:00 AM.

The formula is pretty much the same. Take two men, ages 35-54. Give at least one of them (possibly both of them) a stupid nickname. Something like Boomer, or Wank, or Goober. If only one of the deejays gets a nickname, then make the other one go by his last name. Add a female deejay, but don't give her top billing on the name of the show. She will have three primary duties during the Wank and Goober Show: 1. Reading the News (while Bobo and Chachi make stupid jokes about the news) 2. Weather and Traffic 3. Providing the female perspective to all of the idiotic things that Hambone and Sloppy talk about. Now throw in some really bad sound effects (a bike horn, a cowbell, possibly a siren), a few stupid games for callers to play, and a handful of cliche topics to discuss. Now we're good to go.

The underrated show Crank Yankers (2002 - 2007) did a great bit on this. I think it was Patton Oswalt and Jimmy Kimmel starring as Boomer and The Nudge. They'd just call people out of the blue, say they were from some fictional radio station, and get people to play their idiotic games. I guess you had to be there. Maybe you can find it on YouTube or something.

I used to think that the formula was only used on stations that I listened to, and I was just really really unlucky. Then I did some research, and found that it doesn't really matter what genre of music you listen to, you're still going to find the same formula. Two middle aged male idiots. A token female. Stupid games. Etc. It happens on pop stations (probably the worst offenders), country stations, Spanish speaking stations, R&B stations, and oldies stations. At least I think it was the same format on the Spanish station. I don't really know what the deejay was saying, but it sounded pretty consistent with my description. Then again, it appears that Telemundo follows this format for all of its programming.

Alright, back to morning radio. I forgot to mention that prerequisites for these AM deejay jobs include being very overweight and having poor vision. Actually I'm just assuming that is the case because it's always the wacky morning DJ doing the testimonials for both the local bariatric weight loss surgery center and the laser vision correction place. Which means even if you avoid the deejay during the morning, you're going to get a steady dose of MadDog throughout the day. Damn, I just talked about laser vision correction, which probably means that one of my ads is going to be about Lasik. Oh well.

I really think that a radio station could take advantage of this void of good morning radio. I've got a crazy thought that you could just play the same music that you play during the day and people would still listen. Then again, I'm only one person. And I watch The Today Show during my commute up the stairs.

Jumping the Reality Shark

2009-01-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

Let me start this post by saying that I do not condone my use of the term 'jump the shark.' It's actually on my list of words and phrases that people should be caned for using. Along with man card, maverick, ponzi scheme, wall street to main street, and a few others. Unfortunately, shark jumping is the topic of tonight's post, so it's unavoidable. For those of you not familiar, Jump the Shark is a term used by TV critics and others to denote that a television show has basically gotten ridiculous or veered off course from its initial plot. I guess you could say that about my blog. The term itself comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzi attempted to jump over a Shark while skiing. I think I'd like the term better if Fonzi would've jumped over a skeleton instead, then we could say 'Jump the bones' which is always fun to say. Most traditional shows (sitcoms, dramas, etc) just jump the shark by adding a new character or new pet or killing off a character. But this isn't a post about traditional television, it's about reality shows jumping the shark.

Jumping the reality shark is much more difficult. In order to do it, a reality show has to do what it has always been doing, but to take it to the extreme. I thought of this last night when I was watching The Biggest Loser. Most of our loyal readers know that The Biggest Loser is one of my favorite shows. Based on my sliding weight scale, I can relate to the contestants (both the before and after), but now they've gone a little too far. During the first few seasons, the people were definitely fat, but the kind of fat where you can say 'hey I think I saw that lady at Wal-Mart last night.' In order for TBL to jump the shark, they had to get fatter and fatter contestants. Instead of guys weighing a solid three bills and women tipping the scales at a deuce, or deuce and a half, they are moving toward TLC fat. This season they've got a guy that weighs over 450 and a girl over 320. The only way that they can push the fat envelope any farther would be to start taking some people from TLC or Discover Channel, like that 1,300 lb dude in Mexico or the lady that eats 32,000 calories per day. Oh, and their also getting older contestants. There's like some 70 year old guy on this season who nearly had a grabber during the first day of working out. I'm thinking that maybe TBL is looking for some kind of product tie-in with defibrillator paddles or something.

It's not just The Biggest Loser. Extreme Makeover Home Edition is also getting more and more ridiculous. It started out with plot lines like 'parent died, let's build 'em a house' or 'kid is sick, let's build 'em a house.' I guess that got sort of stale. They've now moved onto things that sound as if they were inspired by a country song (wife left, lost job, dog ran away, kid in the service, dust bowl took all the crops away, etc). I have a theory that Ty Pennington has something to do with this. Not that he's embellishing the stories, but that he's actually harming the families to make better stories. Like he's got a family that is almost downtrodden enough for Sunday night, but then thinks to himself "yeah, it's good, but it would be better if the dad didn't have any legs." I'm not saying that he's doing it, but I think he's involved. The Real World isn't much better. The last season actually had a meth head stripper, a chick with an eating disorder, and an alcoholic. I'm not sure how much further they could go.

So this got me thinking about other reality shows that I watch and what they could possibly do to jump the reality shark:

Survivor - Start killing off people. Maybe not all of them at first, but eventually it would be like Surviving the Game. You know, the mid 90s movie starring Ice T. Where a bunch of hunters went into the woods and started hunting humans. Yeah, it would be like that.

Real Housewives of Atlanta - I've got a couple of thoughts here. First they could give the stars stun guns during the reunion show. I'm pretty sure that Nene would use hers on Kim. If that wasn't enough to boost ratings, maybe they could add Amy Winehouse to the cast. True, she's not a housewife, and she's not from Atlanta, but she is batshit crazy, which seems to be the only requirement for getting on that show.

Jon and Kate Plus 8 - They could make Jon and Kate take custody of the Pitt-Jolie children, which would be Jon and Kate Plus 14. But I'm afraid that would probably make Jon snap and maybe we'd end up with Jon Minus 15. It would just be Jon. Sitting alone in a dark apartment. Shaking.

American Idol - Lots of people think that adding the 4th judge was jumping the shark. Still others think that when Paula went from being a little tipsy to being full on sweating scotch drunk that this was a sign of shark jumping. I don't think it was either of these things. I think it's when they went from highlighting bad singers to highlighting bad singers with mental problems. Honestly, when was William Hung not bad enough? Did they really have to put on kids that have special needs in addition to a bad voice?

Alright. That's all for now. If you've got any thoughts of reality show shark jumping, post it as a comment. It doesn't matter how obscure the show is, I probably watch it. Or your comment will motivate me to start watching. Unless it's Big Brother. That show is lame.

YIFY Sells Out

2009-01-06T05:33:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends,

If you're a longtime supporter of Yourself in Five Years, you've probably noticed something different about the blog. If you look to your right, you'll see that we've sold out and added advertising to the blog. It's that stuff to the right. You know...probably something about teeth whitening or laser hair surgery or something else you probably aren't interested in. From now on, you'll see those Google ads when you log on to YIFY. I know, adding advertising to a blog probably isn't as shocking as Dylan going electric, or Metallica cutting their hair, or The Jonas Brothers doing...well...I don't really know what the Jonas Brothers do. I really need to brush up on my pop culture references. But anyway, I decided to give in to the Man and sell out. Here's what I was thinking:

It isn't (all) about the money. Really, it isn't. I'll let you in on a little secret. YIFY averages between 35 - 903 visits per day. Well, most days we're right around 35 visitors. If my friend Kath decides to give me a mid-post shout out, we get around 900 visitors. Yeah, so I guess you could say her blog is a little bit more popular than mine. Oh, did you see what I did right there? I put in a link back to Kath's blog...now we're getting fancy. Give me a couple years and I might start putting pictures on this thing. But who knows, I just heard that my cousins in Ohio are reading the blog, so I could be up to 40 visitors per day in no time. So I'm pretty sure that with 40 visitors per day, the ads probably aren't going to make me rich, especially since I know most of you, and you don't need teeth whitening or laser hair surgery.

The Ads are sort of funny. Google is usually pretty smart when it comes to these things. They're scanning content and trying to pick out commonly used words and phrases and trying to match the ads to the content of this blog. Yeah, good luck with that. Perhaps if I stayed true to the blog's initial value proposition (something about life five years after college) then maybe all of the ads would be about paying back student loans, or online gambling, or maybe even life insurance. But as you can tell, my thoughts haven't really had any consistent theme lately. My guess is that the Google Spyders scan the content of this blog, they probably make it through five lines of rambling text about bananas and just say 'screw it, let's just throw up the teeth whitening ads, I'm going on break.' So part of my rationale was that I wanted to see what kinds of ads they put on the blog. I saw one for Jimmy Johns last night. I don't think I've written anything about sandwiches or speedy delivery, but whatever.

It is sort of work related. I sort of work in online marketing, so it makes sense to have some first hand knowledge of online advertising. Oh, and if Google somehow looks at the complete lack of clicks on my ads and comes knocking on my door saying that I actually owe them money, then perhaps this could be considered a business expense. I'm not really sure if you can lose money doing this, but we'll find out. At last count I've had a total of 2 clicks on the links. One was my friend Ben. I told him to click on one of the links. I wanted to make sure that the clicks were being tracked. The other one was me. I just really thought Jimmy Johns sounded good.

So that's the story of the ads on the blog. Good story, huh? Oh, and I guess it's not okay to instruct y'all to click on the ads. Google says that's not okay. I don't know how they'd know, but they would. Maybe they'd come to your door instead of mine. I don't want to find out. But if you're interested in teeth whitening or laser hair surgery or anything else that the ads are promoting, feel free to click away.

And if you scroll through the ads (I think there's a scroll arrow) and see a funny one, leave a comment and tell me what it was. That's why I put them there, remember?

Working from Home

2009-01-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that when I moved from Indy to Charlotte six months ago, I also moved from working in an office every day to working out of my house. I get lots of questions about working from home, and how it is different from office life. Most of the time I think that people just don't have a whole lot to talk about with me and they're just being nice, but anyway, I thought it would be helpful to create a work from home faq post. So I'm sorry if you were planning on pulling out the "How's working from home?" card next time you see me. I guess you'll have to stick to something like "How's Charlotte?" or something else. Here we go...

Q. What are the best parts of working from home?

A. There are several things here, so this answer will be longer than the others.

1. Less driving. When I worked in an office, I had about an hour commute. This meant two hours of my day were spent driving. That's 10 hours per week. 40 hours per month. 480 hours per year. Which works out to be 20 days out of a year that I spent in a car driving to work. I'm not sure how I'll spend those 20 days, but I can assure you that I'll be able to answer all questions about Law and Order, House, and any other show that USA decides to put on for days at a time. Oh, and it's probably better for the environment too. But that's probably offset by the 16-18 hours/day that the TV is on.

2. Decreased emphasis on hygiene. I guess some people (Kate) might see this as a downside of the WFH lifestyle, but it's my blog, so I'll put it in the positive column. Shaving is now a weekly activity, instead of every other day. I think I've had two haircuts since I moved. Oh, and I've gone entire weeks without wearing anything with pockets. Unless the kangaroo pouch on my hoodie counts. I don't consider that to be a pocket because things can fall out. So the look that I'm currently sporting is somewhere between Howard Hughes (without the peeing in bottles or creepy fingernails) and Ted Kaczynski (without the manifesto or bombs). Since I don't really like the character traits of either of those people, lets just go with a cross between Bob Ross and Tom Hanks in Castaway. Yeah, that sounds better.

3. More time for other stuff. Yeah, I know that this one is related to #1, but I think it deserves it's own section. I'm doing lots more cleaning and laundry in my spare time. Oh, and I can go to the grocery store when it isn't dark outside. This means it's pretty much just me and the retirees, and I can easily out-maneuver them to the front of the 10 items or less line.

Editor's Tangent: I really think that there's a better way to sell bananas than the bunch form that most grocery stores use. When you buy them as a bunch, they are either all ready to eat right now, or none of them are ready to eat right now. I don't want 5 bananas that are ready today, and I don't want 5 bananas that are ready five days from now. I want one banana ready today, another tomorrow, etc. I'd like to propose breaking up the bunches and placing the individual bananas into corresponding baskets based on their ripeness. There would be 5-6 baskets, labeled things like 'today,' 'tomorrow,' 'day after tomorrow,' etc. Each day, the grocery would just have to move the labels down by one slot. Oh, and the basket that is labeled 'today' today...if there are any left the next day, they will go into the basket labeled 'banana bread.' I've sketched out what this would look like (I even used colored pencils) but this is a graphic-free blog, so you'll just have to use this description and draw your own. If you own a grocery store and want to see my original sketches, just send me an email.

Uh oh, Double Jeopardy just started and I've only made it through one FAQ. This means I only have 14 minutes of blogging time left, so I'll have to speed things up a bit. I just thought the banana thing was important enough to write, just in case Gilbert eats my sketch.

Q. Don't you miss working in an office?

A. Yeah, there is stuff that I miss. My company does lots of fun stuff during non work hours (happy hours, softball league, celebrity book club, etc) and I miss those types of things. Celebrity Book Club probably deserves its own post, but it's basically a bunch of people sitting around with copies of US Weekly and People discussing the Hollywood gossip of the week. So yeah, I miss that kind of stuff. And I have lots of good friends that still work in the office. You know who you are.

I also miss office drama. Most of the WFH crew would probably lie and say that they are happy that they don't have to deal with office politics and drama. That stuff is fantastic. In its place, I make up drama about strangers at the grocery store or dogs at the bark park. You know, stuff like "I heard that the Rottweiler got really pissed when the Dalmatian started humping the Pug." Or, "Crazy guy in Aisle 5 is just being nice to old lady in produce because he thinks that being nice to her will make her break up the bananas into daily bins." It just isn't the same as good old fashioned office gossip.

Q. Now that you're WFH, do you really watch TV all day?

A. No. The TV is on for 16-18 hours per day, but I'm not always watching it. Sometimes I'm just listening to it. Kathy Lee Gifford is no less ridiculous when you only get the audio of the 4th hour of the Today Show. And I'm really not going to make anything that Martha Stewart is showing me how to make, I just enjoy the soothing sounds of that domestic goddess/ex-con. Gilbert is the one you should be looking at. He watches TV all day and gets pissed when I turn it off. My dad actually told me that when I get a new TV I should look into an industrial television that is designed for being on for long periods of time. Probably not a bad idea.

Q. Will you ever go back to working in an office?

A. I don't know. Maybe, I guess. I feel like I'm actually more productive when I'm working from home. Like some sort of hyperactive eight year old that is spending his first day on Ritalin and has some sort of super focus. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounds good.

Well, that's all the time we have for today. Final Jeopardy just ended. Time to do some laundry, or maybe work on creating a daily banana bin prototype in my garage. Talk to you all tomorrow. I'll be the one without pockets.

My Man Card

2009-01-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

As a former fraternity member, I'll be the first to admit that fraternities have contributed so much to society. The beer shower, Animal House, the popped collar...would these things even exist if it wasn't for the college fraternity? Despite all of these contributions there is one fraternal outcome that has made society a little worse. It's the term 'Man Card.'

To be honest, I don't know if the birth of the term Man Card actually came from one of my frat-tastic brothers or not. All I know is that the first time I heard it I was in college. I think I've hated the term ever since. For those unfamiliar, Urban Dictionary gives us the following definition:

Man Card: Requirement to be accepted as a respectable member of the male community. Can and should be revoked by other respectable males for doing non-respectable-male things.

So if you're going to use it in a sentence, it would be something like: "Bro, I can't believe you watch Oprah. That's so not cool bro, I'm gonna take your man card, bro." It doesn't always have to be bracketed by multiple 'bros' but it usually is.

I've got a few problems with the term. First, it makes you sound like a damn meathead. Honestly, there is no way to use the term without sounding like a complete idiot. One of the Fox football announcers used it today and it really annoyed me. I can't remember which one. They've got like six guys on the pregame show. The first time that I thought about writing on this topic was a couple months ago. I think it was a night when I was eating sushi, drinking wine, and watching Sex and the City, the movie. Oh, and that was after a little shopping trip to Ulta Cosmetics. I just felt like someone from a neighboring college was going to come over with a paddle and his greek letters on and say something about needing my man card. And then calling me his bro. The thought almost ruined the second half of the movie for me.

Editor's Tangent: Why the hell did Carrie end up with Big? Seriously...Aiden was 10x the boyfriend that Big was. This never made any sense to me. Carrie always seemed like the rational one, but I really disagree with this decision.

Editor's Tangent #2: I wonder if Samantha (Kim Cattrall) gets a smaller percentage of the residuals from the TBS episodes than she did on HBO. Honestly, she's barely in the TBS version. Most likely because all of her scenes involved her doing things that are not suitable for TBS. It doesn't even make sense on TBS. Here's a typical scene from a typical SATC marathon that I typically watch: [Carrie voiceover] "MEANWHILE...Samantha was going downtown while I was shoe shopping uptown." And then they just cut to Carrie's shoe shopping, with no other mention of Samantha. We all know what we'd see if this was on HBO. Ugh.

Aaaaannnd we're back. So back to the whole overuse of Man Card thing. It doesn't make any sense that a guy would lose guy points for doing things that are typically reserved for women. Think of this idea in reverse. If a girl happened to like football and beer and books about war, would she somehow lose her woman card? I think not. I hope I didn't just give some sorority somewhere an idea.

It would make more sense if a man who did things like watching Oprah, Ellen, or Real Housewives; or tried Pilates a couple of times; or occasionally reads Cosmo would instead have some kind of punch card for these female-leaning activities. Each time a guy did one of these types of things, they would get another hole punched on their card. Once the cards is full of holes (shaped like Austin Powers' necklace medallion), perhaps he could send it in for some kind of woman card. He wouldn't have to turn in his man card (because in my little world, that term is never used again) but would instead have some kind of dual citizenship. You could put it on your resume, sort of like fluency in a foreign language. Oh, and it would also give you free entrance into the studio audience for a taping of Ellen. She gives away the best prizes to her studio audience. And it's like an every episode thing with her...not just once a year like with Oprah.

So that's all I've got for now. Even if my punch card/dual citizenship idea doesn't get off the ground, just do me a favor and never use the term Man Card. Oh, and if you happen to know how I can get tickets to Ellen, let me know, Bro.

The Nateys

2009-01-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

Around this time of year, two worlds nearly collide. The first one comes from print media. It's the 'I'm going to mail it in and just write a best of the year column.' They make best of/worst of lists for everything. I'm pretty sure they just don't want to work between Christmas and New Years, so they just keep a running list of stuff though the year and slap it into column form. The second world is award show season. Tis the season for the Oscars, Emmys, People's Choice, CMA, and Source awards. Pretty much every award show happens in the next couple of months, except for some of the country music award shows. They tend to give different shaped awards out quarterly. I think it's because the viewing public really likes the tuxedo with a cowboy hat combo.

Since we're right between the 'best of' list season and the awards show season, I thought I would come up with my own awards - The Nateys. It's sort of like an awards show, but it isn't televised. It's basically just me standing on the red carpet in a tuxedo. And by red carpet, I mean the red welcome mat that we have by the door, and by tuxedo, I mean I could probably throw on a suit since my dry cleaning bag is sitting next to me on the couch. If Cojo, Seacrest, and the Rivers gals could see me now.

The Nateys recognize outstanding achievement in television commercials. It's about me trying to do my part to save commercials from obscurity. With the advent of the DVR and online marketing, TV ads aren't receiving the attention that they deserve. The Nateys are judged entirely by me (with a little help from Gilbert). Yes, it's true that I don't have any knowledge of the advertising industry, but I do watch a lot of TV. My TV is on anywhere from 16-18 hours per day, so I think I'm qualified. Oh, and the categories are being made up as I go, and they are by no means complete. I limit my posting time to 30 minutes per post, so I'm sure I've overlooked some outstanding achievement, but my made up rules are my made up rules. So here they are, Your (or my) 2008 Nateys:

Category: Catchiest jingles that I wish I would stop singing

Winners: Subway - Five Dollar Foot long and Verizon/Beyonce - Lemme Lemme Upgrade

Explaination: This is Beyonce's third nomination and second win. Not really, but that's what they say when the star is walking up to the stage. That song is so damn catchy. I don't even use Verizon, but for some reason I really want to upgrade. Lemme lemme. Actually not sure if it's Verizon or some other carrier, but whatever. For Subway, it isn't that great of a song. I'm just glad that Jared the Subway Guy has not been asked to sing this song yet. If Jared sings the $5 foot long song sometime in 2009, we will strip them of this award.

Editor's Note: Yes, there can be ties in The Nateys. Sometimes two of my thoughts actually are connected. Besides, this separates us from all of those other award shows.

Category: Worst Commercial in the world. Ever.

Winner: Toyota - Save by Zero

Explanation: What the hell is this garbage? I don't even know what this means. I like Toyota. I really do. I own one. My dad owns one. My sister owns one. This commercial does not make me want to go out and buy another Toyota. It actually makes me want to go out to the driveway and key my highlander. Just put a big scratch right down the side. Sorry about the anger here, but I'm really passionate about this one. I did some research, and there are actually facebook groups devoted to the cause of ending this ad campaign. I think that says it all.

Category: The Heather Graham Award. This award is named after the star of the smash hit "Emily's Reasons Why Not." It is given to the star who has more prime time commercials promoting their show than actual episodes. If your show is cancelled after one show, then you're probably a nominee.

Winner: Christian Slater, My Own Worst Enemy

Explanation: I have a theory that this show was actually cancelled before the first episode aired. I think that the NBC execs were sitting around watching The Office when one of the "My Own Worst Enemy" commercials came on. And then another one came on. And then another. One of the execs then said something to the effect of "This is garbage. Whose idea was this? Make it stop. My stomach hurts." And then the show was cancelled. Again, it's just a theory, but a well-deserved win for Slater and the former NBC exec who signed off of this train wreck.

Category: The most underrated tag line

Winner: Clear Blue Easy pregnancy test - "The most advanced technology you'll ever pee on."

Explanation: I think the tag line speaks for itself. That's fantastic, even if it isn't true. I mean, there's always a chance that I'll pee on a laptop or car or maybe even a fax machine. The loyal readers (all five of them) know that I think fax machines are the most advanced technology ever, basically because I don't understand how they work. Sorry, that's a bit of a tangent. Put your hands together for the ad wizards at Clear Blue Easy!

Category: The "I was once a respected celebrity but this commercial proves that I'm now on the D-list" Award

Winners: Denis Leary (Ford Trucks) and Keith Sweat (McDonald's Nuggnuts)

Explanation: I'll admit that I was once a Denis Leary fan. Kate doesn't like him. She'll say things like "Oh, he's vulgar" when one of his specials come on Comedy Central. At this time I usually say that she sounds like a grandma. That's neither here nor there. Anyway, the guy was once pretty famous. Now he's telling me about torque and payload. Whatever happened to "I think you hear me knocking, and I think I'm coming in." Oh, and Keith Sweat. I guess he wasn't all that famous to begin with, but singing R&B slow jams about pieces of fake chicken is even beneath him. I am, however, going to start using 'nuggnuts' in conversational English and see if it catches on. Instead of saying "Man, that's crazy" I'm going to say "Dawg, that's nuggnuts." Okay, I probably won't say 'dawg' but the rest is true. I did this once with 'smurfy' when I was in college, just like most of the smurfs do. I think this is when I was waking up in the middle of the night to watch the Smurfs (see previous post). Stayed tuned for a future post on "annoying stuff I did in college." I think I'll write that one tomorrow.

Category: The Beatles Award. Going to the artist, duo or group whose song should never ever be in a commercial but is

Winners: Three Dog Night - Shambala and David Bowie - Space Oddity

Explanation: Bowie is not going to make me want to buy a Lincoln. Put on eyeliner and blush? Maybe. Buy a Lincoln? Never. And Shambala is by far Three Dog Night's best song. I love it. I bought the album off of a homeless man selling CDs out of his trunk along with a Belinda Carlyse album and a Motley Crue album (ask Kate about that one - she was pissed). But I really don't need to hear the song in a Michelob commercial. I like beer. I like Three Dog Night. I just don't like them together. I think Behind the Music told me that the lead singer sold his Grammy for crack money. I guess selling your song to a beer company isn't that much of a stretch. Come to think of it, I hope he doesn't sell his Natey for crack money. Would that make me an enabler?

Category: The 'Oops I Crapped My Pants' Lifetime Achievement Award. This is given to the commercial parody that has consistently made me laugh though the years every time I watch the rerun on E! or Comedy Central.

Winner: Sam Waterston (the dude from Law and Order) - Old Glory Robot Insurance.

Explanation: Well, it's just really, really funny. And then you see the dramatization of the 50s-era robot eating the old people's medicine. Good lord that's funny.

Well, the music is playing. That means it's time for me to get off the stage. I've hit my self-imposed 30 minute limit. Please add your own fake categories and fake award winners as comments. Those can be like our version of the "earlier this week, the following awards were given for scientific and technical achievement."