Products That Make Me Feel Bad About My Life, Part 1

This is cool. I wish I were enough of a globetrotter to need paper shampoo.


(via Mighty Goods)

Come On

This morning I (and the most amazing intern ever) spent 3 hours breakneck-speed researching sex offender legislation and calling and emailing academics, social workers, and psychologists like mad looking for someone to be on our 1 pm show (the most amazing intern finally got someone like 5 mins ago).

Also, for a shorter piece, I spent the morning researching local incidences of dog fighting and whether the police or animal control have had to investigate any complaints in the last couple of years. (terrible fact: one way dogs are trained are they’re coerced into biting a thick branch on a tree and are left to hang there by their teeth, thus strengthening their jaws and teaching them to not let go when they bite). Aside from the fact that I 'm exhausted from the effort of trying to get someone, anyone, to call me back today, this morning’s research has been profoundly depressing. As much as I love this job, I will not miss days like this when I’m done here.

The Oven Is Dead, Long Live The Oven

Last night Aa was in the kitchen, working diligently on dough for pizza crust. He went to put one in the oven, only to discover that the oven wouldn't actually warm up when turned on. The burners still work, it's just the oven. This may or may not cost a lot to fix. Plus, our stove is old. Old, old, ooooold. It's one of the biggest in-home stoves I've ever seen (funny, because our kitchen is wee) You actually push a button to tell the burner how hot to get. So it might just be worth it to replace.

Of course, this is all part of the homeownership deal. And I'm sure way more expensive stuff is gonna happen (of course it will). At this point, I see all this as a very minor inconvenience. I mean, I'm thinking that stove's lived a good, long life. It's certainly done fine by use these past months. It got us through Thanksgiving. Once we get to the point where we decide whether to get a new stove and we have to decide what kind we want and whether now is the time to put gas in and we have to figure out how to get our current hulk of a stove out of the kitchen (and I have to clean the space that's left -ew), then maybe I'll have the energy to complain. But right now? Eh.

Aa did say we might have to move the stove out the back doors that lead to the deck and backyard. He said we might just have to leave the stove in the backyard for a bit. This is both funny and stressful to me. I already suspect our neighbors dislike us because we do no yard maintenance at all, and the woman who lived there before us I think was probably totally obsessive about keeping a perfectly landscaped front and back yard (there are way fussy elements to both yards that make me think this). If we put a stove in our backyard too, well, I don't even know. But it kind of makes me laugh too.

Maybe I'll help Hillary Clinton win

Or not. I don't know. Anyway, I was on Weekend America this past Saturday with a friend of mine who now works on that show. Go listen.

And, also: I disagree with the characterization that I'm "hip to the music scene". Aa is the hip one in our house, and I tell you, you cannot pick that stuff up by osmosis or whatever. I am actually more like a nice elderly aunt, trying to find some common musical ground with her nephew: "well, THIS is an interesting band! Who is this again? oh, they're called Belgium! Well, isn't that funny! There's a country called Belgium too! Ha!"

HARRYPOTTERHARRYPOTTERHARRYPOTTERHARRYPOTTER

birthday and other ramblings...

things i could post about today..
I could post about...

...on this day 35 years ago i appeared on the scene. thanks to alan and carol for making that happen. (and lowell and gail for being there since almost day 1...they were all very much essential.)

...or i could post about my new job...leaving microsoft and such...

...or i could post about the most awesome wedding i've ever been too over the weekend. including the bit about swimming half drunk and fully naked in the pacific ocean with 20 other people at 4am...or the mariachi band that played looney tunes songs between traditional mexican folks songs while we drank champagne and watched the sunset over said ocean...or the fun of riding on the ferry and splitting a beer with my favorite person ever: jeannie.

...or the really great lunch i had by myself at le pichet today...and the happy birthday hug i got from our friend Gretchen who was hosting at le p. today that cheered me up.

BUT...instead of all of that...i'd like to point out that it was kick ass to be able to go to the gym for the 1st time since i left msft. i had to wait for the account to switch over etc. so...it was, and very strangely so, very comforting. can't explain why, but it was nice to ride my bike to the gym, workout, and then get dressed for work. haven't done it like that since i left msft and it was nice to have one little bit of my old routine back. thankfully, it's the only thing of my old routine that i'd like to keep. and thankfully the bike ride is 4 miles not 25.

oh, and btw, DO NOT try and put a double americano into the water bottle holder of your bicycle. it just doesn't work. seriously. it will not work.

Weird, but great, but still weird

I got that job.
I start August 21st.
I'm moving back to my old desk.
I started cleaning out my current desk yesterday.
I found a box of RyKrisp that is probably more than 2 years old. Do they go bad?

I have a new job.
Huh.

Allow me to clarify

When I mentioned "murdering photographers" in my last post about nightmares, I mean "photographers who murder (or at least try to murder) me". Specifically, the photographer is short, thin, and bald, and he wears a white lab coat. And he takes pictures of me and then he takes the pictures and starts cooking them in a frying pan. And then after the picture-frying, the big knife and the chasing and the attempts to kill me begin.

I've been having this nightmare since I was 12 or so, and even though I *know* what's happening and that the lab-coat-wearing photographer is going to try and kill me, I still let him take pictures of me. Why? Because in the dream, I like doing the photo shoot. I like having the pictures taken. Even though I know he's going to fry up all the pictures and then he's going to take out the knife and try to kill me. It's an acceptable risk in my dream-world, even though I wake up terrified every time I have the dream.

No more nightmares about KKK lookalikes or murdering photographers*

I'll instead be having nightmares about Dick Cheney, because of this amazing and terrifying series about him in the Washington Post. Here's one particularly creeptastic paragraph:

"Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of power obliquely, skirting orderly lines of debate he once enforced as chief of staff to President Gerald R. Ford. He has battled a bureaucracy he saw as hostile, using intimate knowledge of its terrain. He has empowered aides to fight above their rank, taking on roles reserved in other times for a White House counsel or national security adviser. And he has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did not assert.

Read it yourself! And never get out of bed again.


*These are the nightmares I have most often

Busy Monday

It's Aa's first day at his new job!
I am interviewing for a new job today! (it's at my same workplace though, but still. !)
Zack is in final edits for his autobiography, "Every Dirty Sock Is Special"! Or perhaps it will be called "I'll Eat Anything, Especially If You Just Wore It"! Or "Victim: Why Cats Shouldn't Beat Me Up"

After breakfast at the Bagel

Nice picture, Ryan!
...Why does it look like I'm petting Aa's arm?

The smarty club that dare not speak its name

My sister joined Mensa a few years back, and when she moved to Omaha, she sent an email to other local Mensa-ites to try and meet new people. Nobody ever responded. Earlier today I was emailing with her about birth order and intelligence and she reminded me again about the smartypantses who never bothered to respond to her social overtures. This reminded me of the events that transpired at a Friday night happy hour with some of my co-workers. I emailed her back with this description:

"At some point this guy approached our table and asked "Are you guys the mensa happy hour?" We all stared at him for a beat or two, looked at each other, stared at him again. Then we were all like, "uh, no, that's not us. Nope." Except for one of my co-workers who actually used this dopey voice and said "YEAH! We're with mensa!" I felt kind of bad. He walked away and I was like, we need to apologize to that guy. Every person I was with got pissy and said he was making fun of us. But there's no way he was making fun of us. He looked so embarassed after he saw our reaction. It was so weird and awkward."

I think this may be why nobody from Mensa ever responded to my sister...because they've learned not to go be social in situations where they have to admit they're part of Mensa. Because apparently everyone who's not in Mensa becomes kind of a defensive jerk when they're around.

I LOVE LA

or do i?
it's super sunny. the people are fantastically nice. not sure if it's real or not,but it's refereshing compared to the false smiles and stuck up noses of seattle.

excellent. EXCELLENT mexican food. esp. the taco truck kind (my favorite kind...)

not sure if the sushi is better though. ol' seattle might have that one in the bag.

went for a run this morning. way way too hot for what i'm used to running, but nice to really sweat out last nights tequila and beer.

my hosts, amy and ken, just moved here from seattle. they are fellow midwesterners who are transplants to the west coast. they seem to be fitting inquite well. super happy for them. and they are super nice to be having me here this weekend.
saw old friend from chicago (ala rollingstone.com days)...nice to rehash old times and meet his new wife. they seem to really like it here. he from indiana. her actually from LA.

do i love LA? i sure do like it, that's fer sure.

On Martha Stewart's show today

-a segment called "Chafing with Christy Turlington". This was coupled with a shot of La Turlington holding something close to her chest and shyly rotating her torso from side to side.

-a basenji!!, which erased all memory of how weird it was to look up and see a segment called "Chafing with Christy Turlington". Until right now. So now I need to go look at pictures of basenjis to get my brain in an ok place again.

"I think some of the sportswriter women probably think they do"

Cubs manager Lou Pinella on women, kicking dirt, and the last challenge of his career

I took the wrong bus to work this morning. I took the WRONG. BUS. TO. WORK. I was reading the paper and looked up and realized, hey! I'm not on 45th Street! I'm on the Aurora Bridge, heading downtown! This fun little field trip in the exact opposite direction of my office made me late for work. And, also, it made me kind of grumpy and pretty embarassed.

So what's the lesson here?

1. When I travel, take a goddamn day off between the day I travel and the day I go back to work. Air travel is fun because I get to sit on my butt and read but it always makes me feel lousy.

2. If something feels weird when I get on the bus, pay attention to that feeling! I noticed the bus was way more crowded than usual, but I ignored that and found a seat and cracked open my paper.

3. That teevee show 30 Rock is funny. (uh, that's actually a lesson I learned yesterday thanks to United In-Flight Entertainment)

4. Consider two cups of tea before leaving the house in the morning.

This week in insects

I just got back from Chicago, where the cicadas are making their once-in-every-17-year appearance. Hearing them make their weird noises, seeing their pudgy bodies zoom around, powered by those fast, massive wings...it was pretty awesome. The last time they emerged, my sister and I were babysitting some of my Uncle Terry's neighbors' kids. We'd try to take the kids to the park and on a few days, the cicadas were so thick we couldn't even stand to go outside. They'd buzz our heads, land in our hair. Their shells were all over the ground and crunched under our feet. My cousin Marty, out of...revenge? Frustration? Boredom? 13-year-old-boyness?, took to carrying a baseball bat around with him and smashing cicadas who were mating. He said he wanted to kill them while they were happy.

Last night, I hung out with Cindy the Superwoman and her two beautiful kids. We sat in the backyard as her son swam around in the pool. While we were out there I got to see lightning bugs, one of the things I just miss terribly about summers in the Midwest. Seattle's beautiful and all, but in Illinois, they have these bugs with butts that light up. What mountain can top that?

Other stuff that happened while I was home (very, very briefly):

-much time spent with fabulous parents
-more information gathered about a coupla different things
-went to a Cubs game, which they won, I think by accident
-time spent with cousins
-saw Aa's band play
-time spent with some, but not even close to all, of my friends
-pizza ingested many, many times
-withered repeatedly in the thick, hazy heat and humidity of Midwest June
-ran into two of my favorite people, my Aunt Maribeth and Uncle Dick, while in the security line at the airport this morning

Now I'm home. The Zacker's passed out on his perch. Aa comes home tomorrow. I head into work in the AM. Aside from seeing my dog, I am not yet happy to be back.

shawnee national forest...

For the first time since 1995 i'm going to be in the shawnee.


i like the forests of the northwest..fer sure...(the "fer" was for you kevin...)..but there is nothing quite like the deciduous trees of the midwest in summer time. everything is on fire with life. so great. lots of fond memories of the being in the shawnee with my bestest friends(GV, LEB, KB, TW, LA, SB)!

anyways. good times on our day off. crazy night last night with tim seely's band (another seattle band). those boys party like a real rock band. not quite like our flipflop wearin' selves...

louisville kentucky.
bourbon.
god damn.

Aaron

wanna know what happens on the road?

ryan, a super kick ass photographer...is touring with the band...he's putting some of the pics up here...check 'em out:

http://hobodisco.com/sf100/

that's what life is like on the road.

well, except for the escaping from kansas city on backstreets at 2am to avoid nefarious people part..

The most important vote you'll make

Whether Family Circus gets funnier when its caption is switched out for another cartoon's.