The tabula is not quite rasa

It ate double point needles!

2009-02-18T00:56:00.003-05:00

I arrived home early enough to set aside an hour or so to knit. I was stoked. I am working on this cute sock, and I just got my ravelry account activated so I've been chomping at the bit all day. I rushed through some house maintenance and snapped some pictures of knitting projects from the past to post later. I plunked down on the couch next to my yarn work when I realized I was missing some needles. One of my teammates told me she hated double pointed needles because she was always losing them in between seat cushions. I defended my precious dpns. You can't go around judging a tool simply because you misplace it can you? Besides, I have never lost my needles. Clearly she was crazy.

I lost a size 8 within a week. Thankfully, I was finished using it at the time so I could put off retrieving it.

Fast forward a month, and I find myself in a dire situation with a different set of needles. I was without a critical component for my relaxing evening. I figured the needles must have fallen in between the cushions of the couch which I unceremoniously removed from the frame and shoved my hands into the books and cranies of my tawny brown microfiber couch. No needles. Perhaps they fell through the cracks in the frame and dropped to the ground? No needles u dee the couch. I flipped the sucker over to find a rough cloth crumb catcher stapled to the underside of the couch. I heard metal rolling around when i did so i knew i was getting warm A couple staples were missing so I removed a few more and stuck my hand in. Nada. A flashlight, lots of couch flipping, and some arm contortion later brought me my missing size 8 needle but still no sign of the missing size 1s. I turned, flipped, and shook the couch around, and all I found was some loose change. I tore through the house. Finally I reassembled the couch, sat down, and started digging through my knitting tool bag.

Yup. The needles were where they were supposed to be the whole time. All I could do was stare at the furniture with which I had become so intimately acquainted. I don't trust it. I'm still convinced that my sofa lives on knitting tools.

Buzz words destroy sound bites

2009-02-11T09:02:00.003-05:00

It's a big package. This package will not stimulate as much as it advertises. Obama's package is bloated.

So am I filthy minded or does this sound like something other than economic recovery?

Of course these quotes are referring to the collection of government programs and funding that are being proposed in the House and Senate to get us out of the current financial crisis. So what's with all the innuendo words?

This all started in December with the taint of Rod Blagojevich. The word was used first to describe the immoral residue Blago allegedly left on Barack and later on his Senate appointee Roland Burris. The word was in constant use. It would catch me off guard while in the kitchen listening to the news. I had to verify that I was not in fact watching some new spoken word porno channel. There was an excellent montage of television journalists using the word taint on the Colbert Report. If you find a link drop it in the comments.

So what's the real story here? I like to think someone is exploiting the herd mentality of twenty-four hour cable journalists by infecting them with a few double entendres.

Penis.

Naptown Roller Girls on the morning news

2009-01-07T12:26:00.003-05:00

Channel 13's very own Treeboy showed up with cameras to the secret NRG lair early this morning.  I would embed the video, but either it's protected or I'm not adept.  This link will take you there all the same.  You can see an interview with Touretta Lynn and watch a bunch of roller girls skate around in the new practice space. 

I am about to jump out of my skin I'm so excited for this bout.

Happy New Year

2009-01-02T11:51:00.002-05:00

Someone asked me what my New Year's resolutions were, and I replied none. I've not made a New Year's resolution in a long time, generally because I believe there's no time like the present. If I waited once a year to get my act in gear in one area or another I'd never get anything done. I do like the formality of it all, though. A personal legislation body of one can annually draw up a decree for all the citizenry (population 1) to follow. Neato.

I came across this article on Slate today. Christopher Hitchens puts forth the argument that Rick Warren (head of Saddleback church and active campaigner in support of Prop 8) is a douche bag of many flavors and not just sexual intolerance. From this article I now have my favorite diss of the day: Hitchens refers to the president of Syria, Bashar Assad, as a "Human Toothbrush". Delightful.

It's on, baby!

2008-12-30T09:30:00.002-05:00

In case you didn't know what you were doing January 10th here's a hint. What a sopisticated poster!

2008-12-30T09:07:00.002-05:00

I'm back from the holiday mayhem and familial good cheer. Now that some of my sibs are married and one even has chickadees my immediate family has an informal tradition of meeting every other year at our parents' house for Christmas. This was an off year, but I still got to see Oldest Sis and Older Younger Brother with Sister In-Law-1 and their brood. I got to spend a lot of time with my niece and nephew aged five and two respectively. I played the role of "horsey" and I shared the joy of throwing stuffed animals down grammy and popop's laundry chute. I checked myself before I taught them how to "sled" down the stair case in a sleeping bag. That's for another time. Anyhow Sister-In-Law-1 used to be in the Israeli army, and while she claims she couldn't I'm sure she could give me the ass whooping of a lifetime. My favorite part of being an aunt is never having to put the kids to bed. Whew. They are a handfull.

Friday night we had the Naptown Roller Girls 2009 Season Launch and Warning Belles Coming Out Party at Birdy's. It was a blast complete with live bands, skating derby girls, and musical chairs. If you haven't seen derby musical chairs then you're missing out. Let me set this up for you. We had seven derby girls in full battle array with skates, pads and helmets. We took four very brave volunteers from the crowd. Add ten chairs and musical guests from Hero and you have the start of what I would find totally horrifying musical chairs if I wasn't in my full pads. Tom K, not just a pretty photographer, gave me fits, but I managed. Yours truly was encouraged to play a little dirty so as to ruthlessly exploit "derby rules". I think derby rules permits all but the most egregious advantage theiving by say brandishing a weapon or using brass knuckles. Surely those are right out, but pulling a chair out from someone is perfectly legit. Which I did. And a part of me felt really good about it. The gal I yanked the chair from was a great sport about it. Clearly a woman who is in touch with derby.

The Naptown Roller Girls first home bout for 2009 goes off on January 10! I'm so excited and I'm pimping it a little here:

Saturday, Jan. 10th, 2009 7:30 pm IN State Fair Grounds - Toyota Blue Ribbon Pavilion

It's the first bout of Season 3! Watch your Tornado Sirens take on 38th ranked Steel City Derby Demons from Pittsburgh, PA!

Tickets are $11 in advance and $16 at the door. http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/50099

Season tickets are now available! $75 gets you a ticket to each bout, an autographed 2009 calendar, a Naptown Seat Cushion as well as assorted stickers all inside your very own NRG canvas tote! http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/45193

And.....paper tickets are availabe at Indy CD & Vinyl (Broadripple), Out Word Bound (Downtown) and Strange Brew (Greenwood)!

All bouts are general admission. Seats are on a first come first serve basis. Tickets are CASH only at the door. Doors at 6:30pm, bout at7:30pm. Schedule subject to change.

Our bouts are family friendly but it is VERY loud! Our fans are excited! If your child is scared easily by loud noise, a roller derby bout may not be a good place to be.

Directions to the Fair Grounds: http://www.state.in.us/statefair/fairgrounds/maps/driving.html

Rock Pedal

2008-12-16T14:16:00.003-05:00

If you are an imaginary rock 'n' roller of the drumming persuasion then you probably have repaired or replaced your pedal. Perhaps you know someone who likes to beat on plastic drum heads in time to bright lights and music on a TV screen. If so then I strongly urge you to check out the RockPedal. This is the real deal, folks. It's an actual drum pedal with a sturdy chain drive, retractable floor pegs, velcro bottom, and a proximity sensor to trigger when you've hit the drum. It comes with all that you need, and since it's an actual drum pedal you can change the action through tension, height and drop. If you want to fashion a bass drum out of a practice pad or whathaveyou It comes with a beater stick.

I knew this was the way I wanted to go, and much has been said about this product elsewhere, and I don't need to add to that. What I would like to add is what an exceptionally delightful service process the guys at RockPedal have. I abused my pedal in bad ways that would probably void a warranty (yanked the sensor off). I told 'em what happened, they apologized for my inconvenience, they shipped me a new pedal, and they're sending me a shipping label to ship back the old one. All of this was accomplished with very responsive e-mails. I experienced super prompt, very polite, I could even say kind e-mail interaction with someone on the other end.

Bottom line is that this product is high end, indestructible through normal use, backed by a strong warranty, and the guys who make and sell it are super cool. Go buy one. If in 30 days you decide you don't like it you can send it back to 'em for free. Full refund. Such a deal.

Dismember in December

2008-12-16T09:59:00.002-05:00

This past weekend the Warning Belles of the Naptown Roller Girls traveled to Evansville for our first couple bouts. The Demolition City Roller Dolls hosted a four team tournament with a two game guarantee called Dismembered in December held at the Evansville Memorial Coliseum. The building was constructed in 1916 and made out of brick and limestone. It has a great theater vibe to it and seats around 2500 with a large balcony ringing the floor facing the stage. We had an actual dressing room for our dressing room with home made couches. Very comfy.

Our first bout ever was against DCRD, and I am so glad this bout was away from home. I was sent in to block on the opening two jams to knock people down. After two jams I was to come back to the bench and go back to jam. I managed to knock one skater down. Too bad. The penalties were flying and they were not the fun kind either. My first recorded trip to the penalty box was for a false start from the jamming line. During my next jam I went in for cutting the track. Silly. But I got it together and I scored some points. I hit some skaters and I got one girl to chase me around and keep trying to knock me down. We spent a lot of time in the penalty box. There were some legitimate calls and there were some questionable calls. It doesn't matter. The refs are a part of the game. I don't think the scoring defecit would be so high if not for the many penalties we got, but I also don't think the outcome would necessarily be different. We lost the bout, but we gained invaluable experience.

The next bout pitted the Slay Belles against the highly experienced Quad State Terrors. Both teams came together for the tournament, but the similarties ended there. The Quad State Terrors were the dominant force of the whole tournament, and they showed their skills early against the Slay Belles. QST has some great skaters, and even though that was the first bout they played together (I think?) they moved really well together keeping control of the pack and jamming right on through. QST owned that bout.

We went to the consolation match against the Slay Belles. Joan of Dark came in to ensure we didn't go home with a loss and she proceeded to host a clinic on how to achieve multiple grand slams in a single jam. Her first jam out she officially scored 18 (it was 19, but no one was going to quibble). Blue Messiah also netted an 18 point jam. Everyone who jammed, Ivanna B. Naughty, myself, Ana Slaysya, heavy hitting Joanie Gouge grand slammed. The final score was 177 - 6. We won.

I was pretty wiped out after two bouts, and I probably would have been more comfortable at the hotel than at the after party, but I couldn't miss my first post bout bash. It was held in a bar called Hammerheads around the corner from the venue. They had a deafening juke box cranking out nu-metal, grunge, and miscellaneous with an 80s dance party going on in the basement. If Broadripple was distilled into a single bar you would end up with Hammerheads. Everyone was having a good time, and it was great to get loose with my teammates and our opponents. I have a hard time with loud noise though. I think I'll bring some discreet ear plugs to the next after party. I'll risk being lame to be able to party down.

Six more days to go

2008-12-08T14:19:00.003-05:00

Only six more days until I get a chance to compete in my first Roller Derby bout, and it's a tournament with a two game guarantee no less! I'm so excited I can barely stand it, and it's only Monday. I have been pumped up for this bout for the past couple weeks to the point where the hair on my arm stands on end when I think about the pre-game warm-up. I'll need to bring a paper bag to breathe into by Thursday.

In the wake of all this excitement are great moments from this weekend. Namely, the NRG calendar launch party. This was another event for which I was excited to the point of having the squirmies up until I arrived. The place, Christoper West's new gallery, was packed the entire time the event was going on. A couple of friends dropped in, including Fitness Nerd and Athena, to see the new calendar and give support. Even a co-worker showed up. The finished product looks amazing, and covers fifteen months. Such a value! If you're interested in purchasing one then shoot me a comment, and I'll hook you up. Nay from the [un]official Fan Club lead the crowd in some rousing cheers. I stood back and warmed up to the glow from all the support, volunteerism, and down right creativity that was put into all this. NRG is blessed with the best fans and support staff ever.

It's a human rights thing

2008-12-04T11:44:00.003-05:00

So maybe you can't call in next Wednesday, but you like millions of others support the choices of consenting adults and would like to know how to help? Post this message. Donate time or money to a GLBTA cause. The website is full of useful ideas for those who can't take off work, but want to offer support.

I don't know where I changed up. Up until now I've been patient. I've told myself all kinds of stories that have kept me on the sidelines: All out groups experience a time of struggle. I'm not even a fan of marriage. Gay marriage will never happen in Indiana in my life time so why bother. It will happen in more progressive states. That's good enough.

Well it's not good enough. It has nothing to do with my personal views of marriage. And there's no time like the present to get involved in the struggle to perhaps pave the way for gay marriage to be accepted in Indiana whether that be now or later.

But what was it that got me really mad? A group of people took away the rights of another group of people and used a state constitution to do it. I am a strong believer of majority rules with minority rights, and when the gravity of the situation sunk in - that hard won rights were revoked by a simple majority vote I got angry and a little scared. It's not just my freedom we're talking about here. It's everyone's freedom.

Under threat of expulsion

2008-12-02T09:45:00.004-05:00

What a juicy title for a standard update post. I read in Fitness Nerd's blog that if those of us on his Blog Roll didn't update our blogs then we'd be cut, and I just can't afford the traffic loss...

Seriously though, I have plenty going on, but I go back and forth as to what I'd actually publish in a blog. My most recent news is Thanksgiving and the lovely time I had with Maestro, Persephone, and Gentle Giant. We played a lot of Rock Band 2, the modest changes of which make it even more enjoyable for group play of varying skill levels. Persephone got to rock out in front of her younger brother when he dropped by. That must have been a highlight. Persephone singing Blitzkrieg Bop was a bit of an image departure, I'm sure.

I continue to work on the sport and art of roller derby. Last night I broke out the new bout only wheels. For the gear heads, these are the grippiest Radar Tuners, which I don't think is saying all that much. The durometer reading on them is still somewhere in the low 90s. I haven't skated indoors on anything other than Radar Tuners so I'm getting a good feel for what the line has to offer. When I started out in them they were slippery almost as if they were coated in something. After I skated on them for about 10 minutes they felt better and eventually they felt softer than my blue tuners (tite). I don't know if there was something on the wheels or if the slip feeling was from my bearings being brand new as well (Kwik ABEC-9). I think the next set of wheels will have to be these Answers my teammates are going crazy for. Grippy without slowing down? We'll see.

I had a strong practice. I learned a new skill and received some kudos. I'm really excited about our calendar launch party this Friday (1647 English Ave. Indianapolis, 6 - 9 pm. Be there!) And I'm practically humming with excitement when I think about our upcoming bout in Evansville. A mixed team of Vets and Rookies will be going to Evansville for a small tournament against some stiff competition. When it's talked about at practice I can feel my skin electrify and I start pacing in anticipation. I have been thinking about how to handle strategies and tactics that I have never seen before in oponents. I am visualizing successful jams. I believe I am stoked.

Phew... the beat goes on

2008-09-26T11:54:00.002-04:00

George Stephanopoulos is saying the show will go on tonight. Overall, I'm glad to hear it, but I'm a little sad that we didn't get to witness Obama holding a townhall style meeting with the media. That would be a departure. Seriously, there was no way McCain could skip the debates seeing as how every journalist outside of the Fox network was left scratching their collective heads trying to decide how to report this piece of news without stating McCain is playing a game. Fox actually embraced that and lauded McCain's political brinksmanship. What a jaded audience they must have.

As I've said, I believe McCain's move was an attempt to grab the spotlight at a time when his campaign was coming down from the Palin poll bump and simultaneously attempt to add some economic credibility to his CV. I only wonder if Obama will deliver a knock out blow during the debate or just let it drop.

Dear McCain: Please stay out of Washington until the bailout deal is completed.

2008-09-25T15:16:00.004-04:00

If there is no debate on Friday I'll spit.

Well, honestly, I spit often so it's not like I'll refrain if there is a debate. I'm frustrated with McCain's bull fighter's cape sweep attempting to manufacture relevance in an arena he has not entered in some time. He has not seen much of the senate in the last two years and now he wants to go to Washington, presumably to broker a bipartisan deal for a bailout of our financial markets, one that is argued we may not even need. I see this as an empty flourish added to a campaign bolstered by his sensational running-mate selection. McCain is weak on the economy. What better way to avoid a debate that would be completely dominated by the thorny subject of finance than to pretend to trim the briar patch in question? It's hard to nail him on it, because he can counter that he's too busy fixing the economy to talk about it.

The fact is finance is perhaps the most complicated area of an already complicated subject, and in this case we're attempting to fix finance with finance born from taxes. There is a lot of tension between Wall Street, the Fed, the Treasury, and the Hill. I envision lobbyists forced to camp in neighboring parks due to a lack of hotel vacancy. Now that many in Congress have had to say, "If I knew then what I know now..." there will be far more measured thought before we blindly sign a check for what is the gross domestic product of the Netherlands. Basically, this issue is hot enough. How about we let the politicians do their jobs and keep the campaign out of Washington.

My right cheek

2008-08-14T08:54:00.002-04:00

Training for derby means skating aggressively counter clockwise a lot. It creates a special wear pattern on our skates and wheels, but most importantly my body. Certain muscles get worked a lot more than others. My right ass cheek and my left groin for instance are sore in concert today. I feel lopsided, and a wallet just isn't happening today.

In my cubicle I have assembled a bunch of networking gear for a lab. When I turn it all on the fans create so much noise I have to wear headphones to keep from going crazy. Lab work is the best part of my job, but it's also the noisiest. Here I go.

Bizarre overture to an update

2008-08-11T15:47:00.004-04:00

This morning I woke up to the opening monologue of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" running through my head. Weird, I thought as I hopped into the shower. I decided to let it go. Throughout the day I've returned to this fact letting it roll through my mind hoping to perhaps find some meaning to it by not really looking at - like finding the 3D image in the magic eye pictures. I've settled on it being a curious augur marking my return to blogging. Happy Monday, dearly beloved, we're gonna get through this thing called life.

I've been running my buns ragged lately. I'm working at the new regime which is a welcome change. I love my new job. I'm taking a workshop to try out for the Naptown Roller Girls. We'll see how that goes. Training for the roller derby has been the best exercise I've ever done, and in a month I've managed to get back to some of the jeans I couldn't wear after the Mean Gurls Biggest Loser competition backfired on me.

I'm doing quite a bit of work for Woman Within - Indiana. If you're interested in women's empowerment, emotional accessibility, and authentic living drop me a line. I'll introduce you to a wonderful organization full of exceptional women.

So there you have the late summer update. Tune in for the late fall update in October.

Notes

2008-05-04T20:37:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I was visiting a friend on her recently acquired farm. She and her husband are working the land just outside of Martinsville. They have a few acres and rather than just plant one vegetable they are planting what seems like hundreds of varieties. All kinds of lettuce, strawberries, leeks, onions, three different varieties of garlic, peppers, cucumbers, sunflowers, potatoes. Oh there is a lot of goodness coming out of the ground. I made a soft commitment to weed in exchange for some fruits and veggies. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

While I was out there my friend explained how easy it is to make paneer, Indian cottage cheese. I love cooking with paneer, but I don't enjoy driving to the north east side of town in order to gather up what appears to be the only fresh-ish paneer available for sale. She assured me it was a snap and that all I needed was milk and lemon juice. She wasn't kidding. I googled some recipes today and picked up the requisite whole milk and lemon juice with my regular groceries. All it takes is boiling a half gallon of milk on medium heat, add 2 tablespoons of lemon or lime juice, and allow it to curdle. After you think you have a good amount of solid curds throw the mess into a colander lined with a cheese cloth and let all the whey out. Squeeze out some extra moisture from the cheese cloth and then put it in between two plates with weight on top. Let it sit like that for an hour et voila! Paneer. I happened to have some cheese cloth left over from some past science experiment, and I woke up this morning thinking it was a great day to make cheese.

It turned out great, but next time I'm going to wait for the milk to come to a full flowing-over-the-edge-of-the-saucepan boil before I add the lemon juice. I ended up adding the lemon juice too early so I had to add more and turn up the heat a bit to get my curdle on. I now have some lemony paneer that tastes lovely. My new co-workers and I have entered a pact to bring out lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can't wait to bring in my palak paneer with homemade cheese this week.

In other news I received a wonderful gift from Persephone in the mail congratulating me on my new job. Gifts are great, and unexpected packages in the mail are fabulous. Underneath the brown paper was a bodum tea press. It's a fusion infuser blending the mechanism of a coffee press with a tea infusing cage. It works great in the office. I've been chugging pots of sencha and loving it. I was so tickled to get it I sat down and hand wrote her a letter, however, I still haven't sent it. I am without stamps and apparently without any gumption to change that. So Persephone, the tea pot is excellent. Thanks so much. You'll be receiving a proper thank you note by post... eventually.

Feet up

2008-04-27T18:17:00.002-04:00

I am typing this post from my recliner using my television as a monitor. I have a whole new entertainment system set up in my den, and I just placed the finishing touches of phase one: computing from comfort. I just picked up this little wireless keyboard and air mouse from Fry's electronics. That's right, air mouse. There are all kinds of Power Point presentation mice out on the market these days, but to my knowledge the one from Gyration is the first and most versatile. I'm thoroughly pleased.

The new entertainment system all started with the need to play Rock Band. That meant buying a new console system. I've been in the market for one and I finally settled on the XBox 360 based on ubiquity and superior online gaming system. If I was going to get a new game system I figured I might as well get a new television while I was at it. My current television is from the early Clinton years, and with the mandated digital television coming along I figured now was as good a time as any to take the plunge into the age of televisions with processing power. What was once a desire for a new game turned into a living room altering shopping spree. But I had set myself on my course. It didn't matter then when I saw that Rock Band was available for the PS2. I had already gotten my credit approval at Best Buy and was well on my way to glutting myself in a consuming frenzy.

I went from a 15-year-old 24" tube style TV with rabbit ears and a PS2 to a vast pile of fabulous technology. The large flat panel looks a little funny on the sagging, old TV stand. I'm thinking that should get updated as well.

And speaking of new things, as I was typing this blog my brand new mouse seemed to run out of juice. The jury's still out on that one.

I might start getting some posts in now that I feel like I'm watching TV while blogging.

A soggy greeting from Hope

2008-04-08T21:52:00.004-04:00

I recently started a new job that has better pay and less stress with more interesting work than the old slog. Not bad, huh? I'm pleased as punch about it. After 18 months hard time in a supermax facility, aka working in an overstretched I.T. department for a fortune 300 financial institution, it's gratifying to know there is reasonable work available. This is my third week and I'm on my second business trip. Last week I was in California. Yay, right? Not bad. I had a lot of work to do and not a lot of time for sight seeing. No beach combing. This week I'm in the birthplace of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee. Hope, Arkansas has a Walmart, a restaurant called Dos Locos Gringos, and a Western Sizzlin franchise. Hope is a small town with not much to offer, its main export being politicians that are able to hit national standing and high end speakers.

My flight into Little Rock was entertaining. While squeezing into his dwarfed seat on the tiny plane an enormous old German traveler confused me for his proctologist and shoved his ass in my face. It was the kind of experience I could only imagine would happen at a thirty year reunion of dancers from the Unicorn. Flabby ass cheeks draped with loud gold, blue, and brown checkered pants hit me square in the face. Awful. I was later informed that the airline lost his luggage. Karma's a bitch I guess. Also on the plane was a god squad in wool suits and bibles. They looked like a bunch of fresh faced MBAs looking for a job or a sales team getting ready for the next pitch. The Little Rock airport is small and brightly colored. Red support pillars shoot up to the vaulted ceiling. On the way to baggage claim a sign welcomed all and sundry to Arkansas. Another sign welcomed the World Series of S.W.A.T. which is being held in Little Rock April 9 - 12. I hear tickets are still available if you're interested.

It takes a little less than two hours to drive to Hope from Little Rock. After a quick meal at a lovely bar/sandwich shop/restaurant we hit the road in the rental car. That's when the heavens opened up. Sheets of rain so thick I could hardly see the road in places. And while the hail wasn't constant it was large and in charge. My boss half believed that the windshield was about to crack at any moment. It was rough. Strangely enough though the satellite radio never gave out. Equally strange were the three distinct moments no longer than two seconds a piece when the rain simply stopped. It was as if I had driven underneath a small, invisible canopy. Completely bizarre. The rain stopped and lulled us into a false sense of confidence only to start up again with renewed vigor. I got off the road two hours ago and the thunder continues. It's a lovely sound.

Goregeous

2008-03-12T15:10:00.002-04:00

Today is beautiful. It's warm enough to recall days of real warmth, and I rolled down my windows in my car while running some post lunch errands today. Since I'm going to be oncall for my last two days of employment at my current job I just couldn't help but take an hour or two out of my day today and run a few errands. Driving around in the midday sunshine with a strong musical accompaniment is utter bliss. At the office I just cannot be bothered to pay attention anymore. I feel like I should have taken today off it being so disingenuous of me to call this a day worked. Another day another dollar - although today I just didn't earn it.

The final countdown

2008-03-11T11:25:00.002-04:00

It's been a while, but the silence is over. These days my job has had my complete attention. I found that even my downtime was focused on not thinking about my job which meant it wasn't fully released to leisure. Today marks day two of my final week at my current job, and I couldn't be more excited. I turned in my two weeks last week to pursue a new opportunity with an expanded role in a smaller company. Thank gawd! I learned a lot of technical widget skills at this job, but the thing I learned that I value the most is how to be a professional and see a task all the way through to the bitter end regardless of whether or not I think it's a losing proposition. Well, and that I want to work in a small shop with less demands. I'm not interested in forfeiting half of my oncall duties running configuration errands for other business groups. "Sorry it's such late notice, but we need to do it now or the business will lose thousands of dollars. You weren't doing anything Tuesday night at 1 am were you?" I'll just reschedule that appointment I had with my bed.

I keep getting asked why I'm leaving by my management, and I believe their questions are genuine and my answers are heard. Since it's on my mind I'll let it loose on the blog, too.

I work in I.T., specifically in infrastructure, and I'm a fan of making changes to the network during a maintenance window, but it's cruel and unusual to state the time and periodicity of such a window and then say, but if it's X enough (important, embarrassing, a VP has a burr in her britches over it) then this change can happen at the whim of the requesting party. There is some need to be this flexible in this business. The only problem is this back door policy doesn't scale well. In a company of thousands of employees with hundreds of business groups the potential to be called upon to make a change whenever one is watching the network is large. Which brings me to the next point. In my opinion oncall personnel, one who is available to repair a problem after hours, should only be notified when a device or service isn't working that this individual manages. Since I work with infrastructure technically everything touches my equipment in some way so I can expect to receive a page at two in the morning for a problem regardless of whether or not there's any evidence to support that my equipment is even breathing heavily much less broken. Here's an analogy: Bobby is expecting a package via UPS and it doesn't arrive. He contacts UPS. When the UPS service rep says he doesn't know what happened to the package, rather than escalating to the service rep's manager Bob thanks him for his time and calls the Department of Transportation. Clearly the package was lost somewhere on the road and it's the DoT's lot to figure out where and get it back.

I'm told at the new job that there is a window that is kept sacred. Nothing is to be manipulated outside of this window beyond break/fix issues. Also, the network is much smaller so it follows that I'll receive less after hours notifications of broken stuff. Honestly, I may never shake the UPS/DoT problem, but I've been told that my new help desk staff is very helpful and is expected to do the requisite troubleshooting to assign problems to the right place. That alone gives me a warm fuzzy.

I'm looking forward to my week off in between jobs. Originally I was going to quit in the middle of the week so I negotiated to start on the following Monday with the new job, but my current boss said it was fine and that I could make Friday my last day. The funny thing is that I don't own a computer. I haven't owned one since college. I've always just used the laptops that I've been issued through work - not the smartest thing when it comes to privacy, but I'm not checking out porn so it's mostly kosher. The long and the short of it is I'll be disconnected for nine whole days. I have a groovy iPhone so I have access to e-mail, but I'm not going to be composing any long ass narratives on that touch keyboard. It gets the critical jobs done, but it's no substitute for a full computer. I haven't spent this much time without access to the Internet since I was aware of the Internet AP (After Prodigy). I look forward to it. I'll be forced to write with a pen and paper which is just weird and tiring, but I'll also have plenty of time to read and knit. Maybe I'll get some more work done on the old bike and de-winterize the new one. I imagine by day four I'll either find myself in a Zen-like blissful state with birds landing on my shoulders to bask in my healthy warm aura, or I'll be clawing my way through a Best Buy clutching my credit card determining if I want to go for the investment machine or the cheap quick solution. The Wii has a browser... Is that a little drool hanging from the corner of my mouth?

Bette Midler

2008-02-28T09:11:00.002-05:00

This morning I woke up with "From a distance" rolling through my head. It gets worse. I don't know all the lyrics so this is a jumbled mass of words conveying the world is blue and green, we're at war, and that god is watching us in a loop. I needed to share this immediately.

I'm not dead yet. I realize I've been pretty quiet, but with good reason. The only thing that's been on my mind these days are work and my girlfriend. I'm not interested in blogging about either topic. It is my hope that my work situation will evolve to allow me some freedom of expression here, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime I'll pick a topic out of a random word generator and start blogging on it as filler if I have to.

A sock is born!

2008-01-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

Well really this sock is so enormous I could stuff a leather bottom into it and call it a moccasin. I finally got over my fears of heel turning, gusset stitches and toe decreases and have a finished sock to show for it. This fine piece of knittery to the right here took me a few weeks to knit up. Yesterday, I decided I needed to get cracking on its buddy, and now I'm more than half-way through having completed the gusset shaping. All I've left is the foot which knits up fast. This sock is on display underneath a scarf I knit that I'm going to be replicating with some color modifications for Aganippe. I can't wait to hit my favorite scarf pattern again! Thanks, Maestro!

In other news I've taken up yoga. I went to my first class ever Saturday and afterwards experienced the state my buddy Belerophon refers to as "yoga bliss". This is ashtanga style which, I've been told, focuses on the upper body; shoulders and whatnot. I couldn't tell you how ashtanga compares to other yoga styles, though. I felt so great on Saturday I curled up into a blanket and napped for a few hours. I'm napping dysfunctional so this took me by surprise. I was still more surprised to find myself actually falling asleep that night. Go yoga! I thought of you, Persephone, when it came time to do handstands in the class. Everyone who was going for it was instructed to take our mats to the walls. You are not alone. And now that I've actually attempted a handstand, and only managed to get into position with the overwhelming efforts of my instructor, I can say that your wall free handstand style is totally bad ass and really mean it. So now I've done yoga, and I completely adore it. It really kicked my ass, too.

Grass fed dairy!

2008-01-16T12:37:00.001-05:00

I surrender to Traders Point Creamery, located on the northwest side of Indy. Today, after my workout I had what I thought I'd never eat: cottage cheese topped with lentils. I had to put cumin and garam masala in to deal with the lentil flavor, but that worked out. The cottage cheese was made by Traders Point. Holy crap, I've never eaten cottage cheese this good before. I've decided that I'm a friend of that farm so here are my reasons why they are great.

They make a great tasting product. If it doesn't taste good why bother? Their yogurt has won best yogurt in the nation for 05 and 06, and their cheeses have placed second in those years as well. And as I've personally testified the chocolate milk is transformational. You have not tasted chocolate milk this good before. Trust.
The product is super good for you: Organically grass fed and grazed cows. Cows are supposed to eat grass and roam in a pasture, but often times dairy cows' diets are supplemented with grain and all manner of things to boost production. This reduces the amount of good stuff in the fat of the milk. The fat is where you get all the stuff that boosts your immune system. They don't homogenize their milk which means they don't pulverize the fat cells. I don't know what that means to our waistlines, but I'm thinking that anything that keeps a food closer to its natural state makes it better for us to eat. Don't even get me started on antibiotics and growth hormones.
They're local. We're not the cheese state, but apparently someone around here knows how to make great cheese. That is just great for Indiana. Purchasing Traders Point products supports local business - tasty local business.
The packaging is retro cool. Milk in a glass bottle! The bottle is reusable, and totally recyclable. The yogurt comes in the same packaging. Safety Tip read that label. I thought I had plain yogurt when I actually had plain milk. But I was transported to the Swiss Alps when I had a glass of that fabulous fluid.
Stick it to the man. So this isn't the strongest reason to make this purchase, but I like to consider it when I'm eating my super yummy cottage cheese. Every dollar you spend on small ops farms with excellent production practices is a dollar diverted from a company that boosts production through bad production practices. Reducing their market share is the best argument to get them to change their practices. If it's not profitable they will adapt.

Yes, it's a buck or two extra and they don't have any fat free options, but this is the best dairy product you can put in your belly. So if you're walking through your grocery store's dairy aisle and you happen to see them, go ahead and try some out.

Hip Hip Hooray only light on the hips

2008-01-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

I returned to the gym a couple months ago warming up to my current workout level. It takes me a while to ease into a new routine so I like to get a head start. Also, I was prompted by the appearance of knee flab. Seriously, I had saggy knees, and this wasn't going to stand. After years of working out and more or less modifying my eating habits I wasn't going to allow this backslide to transform into an avalanche. I mentioned how I've gained weight and I have to watch it only for people to reply that I look skinny as ever. Well, I don't just want to be small. In fact, I don't give a fig if I'm small, what size I am, or how much I weigh. These are just measurements which, true, are helpful guidelines providing objective progress reports, but my ultimate metric is to look good naked. What's the point of all the numbers?

Knee flab. I had developed a small fat fold around my knees. I hadn't gained much weight, but my body was sagging. Cellulite is a fact of life for women who are not professional athletes. That's just how it is. Most women - drop dead gorgeous too - have some cellulite. I've let go of saying goodbye to the bag of nickels nestled just above my hamstrings. However, I know the amount can be reduced and the resulting look smooths out my legs nicely. I also know that this only happens after years of healthy eating and regular exercise, and I'm now learning that slacking off for a year will bring it all back. There's some motivation for me to stay on the treadmill.

So why all the fanfare? This morning, I noticed that the knee flab was gone. I've officially hit my first fitness goal. I don't think I've lost any weight. I know I haven't gone done any pants sizes, but by jing my knees have firmed up! I started cardio only workouts sporadically since Thanksgiving, I started earnestly sweating at least three days a week around Christmas. Recently, I included weights in my routine and I'm working out four days a week. Resistance or weight training is essential to weight loss since muscle cells burn more calories than fat cells. Bottom line: pumping iron increases metabolism.

Now that I am taking my workout seriously, perhaps it's time for me to start dieting. I'm so conflicted on the diet thing. I don't want to modify my eating habits to a level that I'm not going to sustain, but I know that if I slog through for a few months then my body will naturally want to stick to the new regime. Ultimately, I will ease into restricting my diet just like I eased into increasing my workout.

Bad Robot!

2008-01-09T12:38:00.000-05:00

This is a politics free zone today. For reactions to Hillary's win in New Hampshire you'll want to go through the list of blogs on the right. Political races don't interest me much, and I have no eye for the juicy tidbits. Democracy is perhaps the best system available, but I'm leery of any system that allows a large group of people to tell a larger group of people what to do because when separated out they make up the largest splinter. I look at all these goings on like an 18th century sailor. I'm completely powerless against the wind and the tides, and I can only predict them with the shortest of foresights. When it comes to politics I like the big e-z hold building blocks of ethics and morality. When you boil it down, I like the theory. I couldn't tell you how to get to what I think is the tao of running a nation making a neat linear progression from where we are today to whenever we get things squared away in Scrawlvania, my happy imaginary nation.

But I'm digressing into the topic I was avoiding.

Today, marks the first day since December 29 that I am free from Lost. I finished watching the third season last night, and I'm looking forward to the season premier on the 31st. Serious people have written quite a bit about the show. I am not one of these people. Last night I was drawing comparisons from Lost to The Smurfs with Benjamin playing the role of Gargamel, his people playing collectively filling the role of Azrael, Sawyer is Greedy Smurf. Sayid is Sneaky Smurf. Hurley is Clumsy Smurf. Locke is Vanity Smurf (it's a stretch, but I can see it), Jack is Papa Smurf and naturally Kate is Smurfette. Claire is Mother Nature. The list goes on. Why can't Benjamin just leave these poor people alone to have their Smurfy good time while they wait for rescue? I guess the show would devolve into a beach party shoot then. Sun and Jin would be doing the bump by the campfire. Chaos.

Oh gawd, I have the beginnings of three posts piling up so in the spirit of getting it out there I'm going to suck it up and finish this one. I've found that I actually have serious analysis of the program, and that will be the focus of my next post.

Updates

2008-01-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

I just got back from a vendor provided lunch (shh!) at a good burger joint. Naturally, I had to have a burger regardless of the fact that I'm involved in this Biggest Loser program with the Mean Girls, and I'm so glad I did. They cooked it as "rare as you dare" just like I asked which is something that I've simply not encountered in a burger restaurant before. Red "juice" was oozing out of it. However, it was enormous and now I'm a little overfull.

I finished the second season of Lost. That's right. I watched something like 48 episodes of the same television program in five days. And I managed to see some roller derby and attend a warm gathering for New Years Eve.

In knitting news I've finished another scarf, knit 2 hats (one on straight needles one on circular) and now I'm working on a sock on double points. I've gone knitting mad.

That's it for blogging news. Aren't you glad I updated?

Free basing television

2007-12-31T09:07:00.000-05:00

Let me start by explaining that until recently I had not seen an entire episode of Lost.

Occasionally, I avoid television with its cold glow and its insidious companion the ass enlarging sofa. I have a love hate relationship with my television and recliner, and I list them as co-dependent relationships. Generally, I don't like what's airing, and I avoid spending any cycles trying to find anything that I'll like for fear of becoming a couch potato. I have honed a television force field that keeps me in the dark about potentially entertaining programs for fear that I will otherwise find myself unable to not watch. I've been slowly dismantling my entertainment machinery first by letting go of cable, then the Tivo service, and reducing video game play.

Why no TV? I know plenty of people who can talk about TV very entertainingly. In fact there are times when I enjoy listening or reading these descriptions more than I enjoy consuming the actual medium. I myself do not share this talent. I tend to swallow shows whole without actually chewing, and come out at the other end a little dazed and without comment. What this left me with was a lot of time devoted to an occupation from which I got little social mileage. In short: it made me boring.

But I like television shows. I especially like "good television" and at the risk of flinging about a subjective term like its gospel I think I can point to some safe nominations. I appreciate a well crafted, character driven story line, good use of sound track, and a gripping drama. If a writing team adds suspense or mystery of any sort then I'm helplessly hooked. I love that "what's going to happen next?" feeling. I gobbled up shows like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. There's nothing wrong specifically with television programs. What I find difficult is my preferred method of ingesting them, a method I believe I can point to The Sopranos for popularizing.

I freebase TV whenever possible. I will pull out a season or two of a show on DVD, plop down on my recliner in my jammies, and watch television until there's nothing left to watch. I think it's the best way to consume television: all at once. I watched the final two seasons of the Sopranos in a matter of days while I was laid up at home on antibiotics. This is similar to how I caught up to the Sopranos years ago. The feeling of staying on the couch and watching images on a screen for hours on end eventually made me feel sluggish and altogether unhealthy, but I enjoyed it all the same. So when I got together with my friends around the holidays this year, and they presented me with a plan to get caught up with the last three seasons of Lost by January 31st, I was reluctant to answer the call.

I went over to H's house Friday after work. Well, I kinda skived off work deciding that working between Christmas and New Year's is not for me. I went over to his place to knit. I was well on my way to finishing the hat I started on circular needles, and I missed our last knitting session. While I was there he threw Lost into the DVD player and that was pretty much it for me. Smart man. I think H knew there was a strong possibility that I might not get cracking on my mission so just like a good dealer he gave me a taste. Lost has all the elements of programming against which I am defenseless and concentrates them into a powerful elixir. In short this show is like crack, and I am clearly on the rock. H lent me season one Friday night, and I finished it before I went to bed Saturday night... Technically Sunday morning. I was at his doorstep Sunday for season two. Initially I was concerned that I did not have enough time to watch approximately 60 hours of television before January 31st. Now my concern is getting through the inevitable withdrawal while I'm waiting for season four to air. I'm comforted that I'll be forced to watch the show on a weekly basis. I'll be using that as a methadone program until the season ends this Summer.

Back from the holidays

2007-12-27T08:37:00.000-05:00

I've returned to work after five glorious days full of family togetherness. Surprisingly, I arrived at the office earlier than usual which made me feel virtuous enough to blog the day away while everything is running on a holiday skeleton crew. This suits me fine: I can get my body back in the rhythm of waking up before dawn and spend some time recollecting my holiday cheer. About which...

My siblings travel from far flung cities in the US and sometimes Mexico once a year to central Indiana in order to celebrate Christmas together, and with the exception of fifth born everyone was here. Fifth born was sorely missed, but we rallied with Christmas cheer all the same. Sunday I picked up second born and his wife, Pipi, at the airport. Second born and I spent Sunday playing video games. I introduced him to Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk Project 8. It went over well. Sunday night was spent shoveling H's fabulous confections in my maw and knitting with Saraswati while trying to ignore Lost. I've made a loose verbal commitment to catch up on three seasons of the show by the opener on January 31st. I fear I may have overextended myself. I am a television camel. I will avoid television for weeks, but put a series of DVDs in front of me and I'll devour them until my muscles atrophy and I need assistance to rise up from the couch. Regardless, this may just be too much for me.

Monday, third born and his adorable clan arrived from the Rockies. These are healthy people. They eat healthy organic, low-sugar foods, and it's always humorous to watch them adapt to a house that's chock full of junk food with children and good natured but otherwise negligent adults who think it's perfectly fine to "watch" a child by parking it on the couch in front of a television set, a bag of corn chips, and a bowl of guacamole. Come sit with Grampa, we're watching the News Hour. Inexplicably, the kids' focus moves away from the sharp and oh so hunky Jim Lehrer to a bowl full of tasty green mash. Second born bopped back and forth between the kitchen and the family room attempting to persuade his two-year-old to "break the chip for a single dip". The child dutifully paused and looked up at his father with his face smeared green, and when daddy left he returned to using his tortilla chip as a spoon to ladle guacamole into his mouth. I was sitting in an easy chair watching the whole thing. Honestly, I was aghast that second born was putting the kabash on double dipping. I find people who insist on single dipping to be a bit germ phobic. Unless a person is sick I find it a strange practice. I don't have any cooties. Martha, their mother, doesn't agree with this laissez-fair method of child rearing, and there are times when I believe she gets a little frustrated with our 'village'. But she has mellowed to the point of accepting that this is how the holidays look and resigned herself to smolder in silence.

Monday night, second born and I bonded over video games. As is tradition in my parents' house someone was awake at all times leading up to Christmas morning. We are a family of night owls, and Christmas exacerbates the whole situation. We played in shifts until four in the morning. I took this time to finish a hat to match my grey scarf. It's a beanie style hat, and it's left me of the opinion that seaming is not my favorite. I'll be avoiding straight needles for some time I believe. Five am rolled around and the kids who went to bed early were up. I removed myself from the couch and crashed in their room until just before ten. I would have slept longer, but the clock was wrong and I was fooled into thinking it was nearly eleven. I felt out of sorts for the rest of the day.

First born arrived Christmas day around one in the afternoon with her on again off again Mans. Since "family togetherness" is shoved into a few conscious hours everyday, three people were sent to the airport to pick up two. Really, if there was a passenger van available we probably would have stuffed the whole family in it. Seats in the car were sought after, and I'm glad I got a spot. Second born, Pipi, and I went to the airport sporting reindeer antlers purchased on impulse at the only store open at half past eight on Christmas Eve. Naturally, we had antlers for First born and Mans.

Christmas night was spent at Saraswati's parents' house, as is tradition. We rocked out to Guitar Hero, knitted a bunch, played a couple kick ass rounds of Taboo, and tied it up with Soul Calibur 2.

I'll be honest, this blow by blow description of Christmas is getting boring. It went really well, and was the first Christmas I can think of where I didn't find myself wanting to strangle anyone. Everyone seemed to get along really well, and I had a great time. That's really the bottom line for me.

All in soup and Internet cooking

2007-12-18T23:30:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I halved an acorn squash that I had picked up in my better-get-all-the-shopping-in trip to Meijers before the snow hit, roasted it in the oven with cardamom and garam masala and then set aside the other half for making soup. I finally got around to doing that tonight, and I think this was the single most important activity to pulling myself out of an otherwise dreary evening. Also, someone at the office decided to bring in an assortment of baking soda cookies, today. They were ghastly. I suppose my fellow co-workers who had sampled the baked goods had better manners than to leave some sort of warning label on the festive tins. "Caution: contents are not as tasty as they appear!" But who is served by such silence? Not the poor cook who isn't going to receive any peer review, and most importantly, it didn't not help me out at all. Yech. Serves me right for grazing in the afternoon.

Anyhow, I figured it would be a fine thing to take the time out and make something good for myself. None of the recipes I lazily looked through online looked appealing as they had apple in them so I took a road trip in my kitchen. It felt like I was taking a Sunday drive through soup. I read how to actually make the hard cubes of squash soupy and this was invaluable. Boil half an acorn squash with chicken stock, then let it simmer all said a total of twenty minutes. Throw that in the blender. I imagine that boiling up the squash with water would be just fine for the vegetarians. Might even work better to keep the savory flavors at bay. Since I only had half a squash I added a can of garbanzo beans after considering their mega nutritious properties. This had the effect of cooking myself in a corner. The lovely flavor of the squash was totally overpowered by the earthy chick peas. However, it did open up some doors. This is the rest of it:

1 shallot chopped coarsely
1 clove of garlic copped coarsely
1 1" piece of ginger chopped coarsely (I don't like to take the time to mince)
2 sticks of cinnamon broken up coarsely
1 teaspoon ground fennel
2 teaspoons corriander
13 dried dates

Simmer until the dates get tender and plump up a bit. Garnish with red chili flakes to taste and a dollop of sour cream.

The end result was tasty, and I'm glad I gave it a spin, but ultimately I created a chick pea soup recipe. I think the next go around I'll have more onion, and enough squash to fore go the chickpeas entirely. But if I don't put in chickpeas then I'll probably change the spices around a bit probably go nuts with lemon grass and cardamom. I suspect this garbanzo version would be delightful with chives or leeks or more onion. I'm excited to see how the leftovers turn out. I think soup tastes better on day two. Tell me what you do with it if you tinker with this recipe.

I had a blast cooking as I went. I've been looking online quite a bit as a source for recipes and when I do I've been following all the dosages for every ingredient, and this has served me well. I've even watched YouTube how-to videos setting up my computer in the kitchen for little reminders of how to handle little nuances. I've only encountered one dud recipe, and I'm willing to chalk that up to my inexperience. The instructions are all well and good, but I enjoyed just making it up as I went. Well, it also meant that I could just throw in whatever ingredients I had handy. I was about to add in tofu, but I thought - nah - that's just too much.

Simon says Go Snow!

2007-12-16T13:41:00.000-05:00

Friday night I took in a show with a friend for whom I have no blog name. Originally, I was going to stay in on Friday and get some knitting done, then go out on Saturday night, but the forecast looked grim. I decided I should get out while the getting was good. We saw four bands at Radio Radio, two of which were really good. Well technically three were good. The last band lost points for starting their first song out of tune, being last, and having terrible hygiene. The first band was Dan Glenzig. They were a lot of fun to listen to. They played punkish rock and covered some good songs. They were borrowing a guitarist from the next band to perform, and I think that may have led to the cover selections like AC/DC's Rosie, and some Kiss song that escapes me. We arrived towards the end of their set. They are in the "reasons to go see a show" column for me. The next band was Creepin' Charley and the Boneyard Orchestra, and if the four piece band doesn't warrant the title of Orchestra they are certainly helped out by a stage chock full of props including enormous skull caricatures of the band, 9" TVs lining the front of the stage set to snow, and a fog machine. They were performers, and they gave us a show. The front man took his job seriously coming out on stage in a red tuxedo with flames on the sleeves and an Army MP helmet covered in mini-mirrors like a disco ball adorned with red horns. They had a tight set. The guitarist was exceptional. The band played well together. In short I'd like to see them again.

I'm not going to mention the next act by name. He was a one man -ahem- "band" who probably should have moved out of his Mom's house fifteen years ago. He increased speed as he increased volume. He played three chords. He plied the crowd for drugs. When he had finished up for the night he was drinking alone. The whole experience evoked pity.

By the time the next band was up we were ready to hit the road. We rolled over to the Murphy, and hung out with some artist friends of hers who live there. I got to see a couple studios. I felt really honored to see one in particular. It felt like I was walking into a shrine dedicated to beauty. I want some of this guy's art. I just don't know how to work that into my budget at the moment. After the art tour and hearing some good discs it was time to get on home.

I dropped off no-blog-name friend and headed to Meijer's. The reports of bad weather had me concerned and I wasn't going to leave myself snowed in without activities. I bought some chunky maroon yarn, big knitting needles, a frozen pizza, and toilet paper among other things. My fridge and pantry are stocked well enough, and it's not like I'll be stuck for more than a day, but I saw that the quality of the ginger root was good, and one thing led to another. Really, I saw this as an excuse to not leave the house, and I went to bed late Saturday morning excited to wake up in a Winter wonderland.

I spent all day knitting in my pajamas watching Miss Marple murder mysteries and drinking tea. There were a million things I wanted to do yesterday, but I stayed focused and finished my scarf. This is my first wearable knitting project, and I'm pleased. It's pictured here, warts and all. This piece is also the first knitting I've done that involved more than one ball of yarn. I I think the best knitting advice I've received is from Saraswati who told me that all knitting has mistakes and knitters know that. So when my eyes travel immediately to the flaws in my work I remind myself that it's just a part of the work.

Snidely Knitlash!

2007-12-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

So Maestro and I are getting the knit out and starting a knitting circle. Right now it's just a knitting line since there's only two of us, but Mom may be joining us for the next event. Yay! Our first session was really fun, knitting and chatting by the fire with Bazbeaux's Pizza. Pepperoni, garlic, and ricotta cheese pizza is obscenely good. The garlic sweetens up, the pepperoni has kick, and the ricotta is mellow creamy goodness.

I'm off to my mandatory office bowling party.

Too musical for commercial success

2007-12-13T13:25:00.000-05:00

I went to a show last night at Music Mill to see the musical stylings of Over the Rhine, and I do mean musical stylings. The band is a 6 piece from Cincinnati, and you can tell they're from a river community. There's something about river music that's delicious. Very bluesy, jazzy, Old Time, and mish mashed, the lead singer croons in a sultry voice so drippy it could put out the torch she's singing over. Watch where you're aiming that! Singer was backed up by electric piano and a moogish looking thing, cello, violin, upright bass, electric bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and drum kit which included washboard and compact rain stick in the form of many 6 inch rain sticks strapped together. Since there were only six people on stage the instruments were constantly changing as you can imagine. The stage manager was able to work up a sweat handing out guitars in between every song.

To give you an idea of the band's musicality, I think that this was the best performance, most musically sensitive performance I've seen in a set drummer. Period. He let loose and went insane during an extended solo, but it was welcome. Quite necessarily where the drummer goes the band does follow, and so when I say this guy may have been the strongest musician on the stage I think I'm really giving mad props to the band as a whole. The violinist/cellist performs with the Cincinnati Orchestra. He had a brilliant violin solo, so I'm betting the violin is his principle instrument. The upright bassist played electric bass and guitar and sang baritone. The electric guitarist played electric bass and acoustic guitar, and apparently produced the band's last two albums. The pianist was excellent, and he offered up all the between song chatter. He dead panned some beautiful stories, and he made me think of a Eastern Midwestern version of Garrison Keiller. (I consider GK to be Northern Midwestern.) In short he was both hilarious and touching which I find an admirable combination. Played a little stiff though. That's my only complaint about the show. The technically brilliant and smoking hot piano was a tidge stiff.

The show ruled, and I bought their latest non-Christmas album. At the end of the show I just felt happy and a little sad. It's a preposterous notion, but one I haven't been able to shake: this group is too musical for commercial success. I've heard plenty of torchy songbirds released in the last couple years with thin accompaniment in the background, but they can't hold a candle to this lady, and the band is so strong. So where's their radio play? Where's their hit album? They have had a couple songs played on network television shows. Maybe I'm just impatient for what I think what should be. I don't know all the particulars. I don't know the ins and outs of the music industry. I just know good music, and they are good. To me it's simple. Make 'em millionaires and play their music everywhere.

Is anyone else freaked out by that guy?

2007-12-12T12:39:00.000-05:00

Every time I log into blogger I am greeted by this YouTube frame of a freaky looking guy. He's a swarthy, meaty looking man sitting on a funky beige couch wearing a bright yellow polo. His eyes are drawn to slits and his hands clasped in front of him as if this picture was taken at the exact moment when he figured out how he wanted to torture and kill his daughter's boyfriend or perhaps a snitch in his organized criminal venture. Either way it doesn't look good, and I see it every time I login to Blogger. I'm assuming that most of you have seen this as most of you post on Blogger, but here's a picture for those of you not graced with such a pleasure. I can't wait till Blogger changes the dash page. The purpose of the photo is to demonstrate a sharing feature on YouTube. I'm just saying this picture sets back the cause of the vlog. Come on, Blogger. Come up with a new feature! Maybe exploit another Google asset like posting directly from the desktop. Make something up. I don't care. Just get rid of that picture.

Today, I thought perhaps this is just a really terrible moment taken out of context and he's really in the middle of a perfectly legitimate maneuver. Perhaps he's about to sneeze. I should investigate. Clicking on the picture doesn't actually link to the YouTube video in question. I may never know what this guy is all about.

In other news I ate the Blue Cookie. I broke down during a 9 hour troubleshooting session held yesterday. That cookie monster colored cookie may have been the straw that broke the camel's back because today I feel like my jeans are too tight. I can't stand it. I've been slightly uncomfortable all day. I have finally accepted that I actually need to *gasp* diet. So no more holiday cookies. I may just start carrying dish soap after all. Dish soap and a spray bottle so when I'm done destroying the festive food I can spray the bakers with water. Bad kitty!

That's it. Chunky out.

Nobody wants the blue cookie

2007-12-10T20:56:00.000-05:00

I talk about my office in general terms. When I think of my place of work I realize it's rather large from the outside, and "office" is misleading. I work in a large building consisting of two almost wings sitting askew slightly pointing to the East and West. Looking at it from that perspective I work in the West wing, but I haven't run into any decision makers working and walking at the same time with a pack of sweating decision executers in tow huffing and puffing to catch every command. I can't imagine a lot of work gets accomplished that way. To make sure we're all on the same page I'm alluding to Aaron Sorkin's West Wing and, well, really anything Aaron Sorkin ever put on the air involved people working while walking quickly. I don't believe many places get things done in that fashion especially not the White House. I'll bet no one does anything without an e-mail trail, and those who do work that specifically preclude the use of e-mail as a transmission medium most certainly don't follow someone around in a pack while he or she is barking orders. Can you imagine Cheney barking at his staff while tearing through his offices on the way to some important meeting? Can he even do that without risking "national security" or whatever it is that covers his movements? But I digress.

This all started when I was referring to my place of work, a large building consisting of roughly three floors broken into five segments per floor creating 15 "pods". When I think of my office I think of my pod which contains something in the ball park of 100 cubicles. So when I say something like we had an office pitch-in I'm referring to a segment of my building which the Mars company would refer to as "Fun Size".

My office is constantly alerting us to the starting and stopping of a never ending stream of activities. Something is *always* happening that is not work related. I could devote a blog site entirely to these goings on, and with Christmas in full swing it's reaching a fever pitch. I received an e-mail the other day informing me that the Twelve days of Christmas would be starting inexplicably on the 6th, and people are invited to bring in food. And what is the number one choice of food among my geeky brothers and sisters? Cookies. I'm OK with cookies being around, especially if I'm hungry on that particular day, but we're stacked to the drop ceiling in cookies. People are running out of places to stow them. There are cookies in break room, near the supply cabinet, on top of various metal cabinet outposts near the copy machines, piled next to the battery recycling jar...

I ate some lovely cookies today, a bunch of chocolate chip cookies baked into what had to originally be snickerdoodles - they might actually have been better than you are currently imagining them to be at this moment - and some oatmeal golden raisin and craisin cookies. Fancy pants! Very tasty. Somebody brought in store bought peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. Impossible to resist.

But this is too much of a good thing. I'm already trying to work off my I-quit-a-bunch-of-habits weight that I put on when I - well - quit a bunch of bad habits. I work out, but I don't really eat well. Now I'm surrounded by sugary, buttery, chocolaty goodness. This morning I was welcoming the cookies with open arms. By 1pm I was beginning to think twice. By 2pm I was crashing from the sugar when I noticed that a vendor had left an enormous 15 layer tin of cookies in the network team's area. Aargh! I started toying with the idea of covering all the cookies I encountered with dish soap. It's not just for me, you understand. I work in a rather sedentary industry, and Indiana is a fatty fat state. I'd be carrying out some sort of good deed. I'd practically be a vigilante super hero. I could run around in a cape quickly turning corners surprising purveyors of pastries, and soap up their baked goods only to vanish as quickly as I'd appeared. Naturally, I'd report back to my boss and mentor Richard Simmons. We'd reconnoiter with Susan Powter, have a good cry about all the hefty people who were saved by our heroic destruction of snack food, and then reward ourselves with double chocolate ice cream.

And that's how it could go down. But I think I have the antidote that could stop the insanity: The Colts Cookie. Lordy, I'm glad we have such a successful sports team wearing a color that no one would eat, and yet people try to bake the Colts into Christmas. Witness exhibit a to the right here. Now who is going to eat that cookie? Clearly no one I work with. Even the Post-It note asking all of us to "Help yourself" could not entice a taker. That tupperware dish was full of cookies, including the chocolate chip snickerdoodles, but all
that remained today was this sad little dye job. Believe me cookies is cookies is cookies where I work, and still no takers for this one. I mean, if I was really hungry I would eat a blue cookie, and then I bet it wouldn't taste any different. So really the blue cookie is just a hunger litmus test. "Are you sure you want that snack? Well alright then." So in the future I'm going to ask that all office bakers try a little tenderness and a whole lotta food coloring.

I said Gahlic

2007-12-10T13:17:00.000-05:00

I have been cooking a lot of Indian dishes recently. Mostly I'm perfecting my palak paneer entree with rice which I cooked last night. The long and the short of it is that I'm cooking with a lot of onions, chillies, and garrrlic. I love the flavors, and I love that something as boring as spinach can kick the taste buds so strongly with the help of some spices. It's healthier than the perogies and bratwurst I've been eating, too. However, there's a little problem:

I'm now sweating garlic.

I work out at lunch, and afterwards I hit the shower. While I was soaping down, I detected a strong odor of garlic. I thought I smelled it on my gym bag earlier, and I chalked that up to it being in the kitchen while I'd been cooking all weekend. Um. Maybe. Or maybe it's because the bag contains my sweaty gym clothes, and my flesh reeks undeniably of odoriferous allium.

In high school there was a popular Latin teacher named Barcio. Strange that a Latin teacher should be popular, but I hear that's fairly common. I imagine young Latin enthusiasts would have to hone serious humor oriented verbal survival skills not unlike young homosexuals. Thankfully, their passion actually strengthens linguistic skills and sharpens the sword they carry. That's my theory. - Anyway, this Barcio guy was popular - as in referred to without title popular. Barcio said this crazy shit in class. No one had anything bad to say about him save one issue. He sweat garlic. Apparently, the man consumed (most likely still does) large quantities of garlic, and if any of his students were distressed about him they'd undoubtedly bring this up. Reportedly, his pores oozed garlic oil, and if he worked himself up in class woe was it to those seated in the front row.

Sure the guy was cool, but I don't want to be garlic girl. That's not hot. Although, I refuse to change my eating habits. I love garlic. It's healthy and tasty and makes otherwise bland food (pasta, rice, spinach, chicken - anything) fabulous.

I've recently developed a taste for onions as well. My future looks smelly.

Working for the weekend

2007-12-10T12:26:00.000-05:00

It's Monday which means I can come down off my oncall cross and hand my pager (yes they still make them) to a co-worker. Fabulous. The weekend was fairly uneventful - I mean, I went out and bought socks uneventful - but good all the same. I did get someone to babysit the pager Friday night so I could go out to the First Friday art festivities happening all over town. I went with a friend whom I've hung out with here and there for the last year. I'm glad I took the time. I got to see a lot of new art, and the one artist who really stood out was my activity buddy's favorite, Emma Overman. I think of her work as a much softer and gentler Edward Gorey. It's hard to really put my finger on it, but she paints adorable pictures of impossibly cute young people (mostly girls) which are both cartoonish and totally authentic. I don't do her justice so here's a sample from her website:

Check her out. She also has some children's books out that would be perfect for nieces and nephews this Christmas.

Saturday was errand running day when I bought the aforementioned socks. Sunday, after a week of little activity, my normally silent sentry decided to get loud. The oncall pager blew up with some bad issues. Typical. I made a point of setting up my change window an hour earlier than usual so I could watch Blanche and Romeo work the mic for their drag debut, but the network god Geekorus saw my attempts at having a social life while "on the clock" as impudent and he grew jealous that I had friends so he sent down a monkey wrench in the form of not fully baked configurations for new equipment through which I was supposed to send production traffic. His aim was true, and what should have been a simple twenty minute conference call turned into a two hour slog. I don't know why I'm surprised. The rule: if it isn't in production then it isn't actually working. The corollary: If it isn't working then all installation estimates are useless. I was only able to get away after my fellow trouble-shooters succumbed to my jedi mind tricks, begged off for the night and suggested we pick it up in the morning with some more input from the people who set up this equipment from the start. Woohoo! I flew off to Talbott's to catch the tail end of the show. I just managed to catch Blanche in her second costume and to see Romeo's last number. They both sizzled. All the ladies were smokin' and I was glad to fork over some money for a good cause. I'm glad I went, and it looked like B and R were having a good time. I hope they managed to soak up the royal goodness from the event. Meeyow, my babies.

During the show I realized I still have a drawer full of "girl stuff": nail polish, eye liner, mascara, lipsticks. I can't seem to throw them out even though I haven't exposed them to oxygen in well over a year. I tell myself it may come in handy. You know, in case I have to hot foot it out of town in disguise I suppose. I was always terrible about refreshing makeup keeping mascara for years (but there's still some in there. How can I throw it out?) I like the blue nail polish. I won't get rid of that. I think the rest of it can go if for no other reason than hygiene. I'm not poking eight-year-old eye liner in my eyes even if I do have to dodge someone.

Bowling for bonuses and booby traps

2007-12-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

Today, the first of two required holiday bowling parties is being held for a segment of the IT division of my company. Since someone has to be available to work on each production system in the event of an outage the division is split in two with half the group going on one Friday and the other half the following. Managers go to both, and attendance is mandatory. Management rents a bunch of lanes at a local bowling alley and give us two drink tickets per person. People generally drink, bowl a couple games, have a white elephant gift exchange, and call it a day around 5ish. Attendance is mandatory, and I think that casts a shadow over the proceedings. I enjoy getting out of work early. I enjoy bullshitting with co-workers, but when I'm told I must it feels a little strained. Last year I went through my two drink tickets before I had bowled my fifth frame... on a team with my boss who doesn't drink all that much. And the bar was most assuredly taking my money.

I'm attending next week as I'm oncall this week, and I'm actually looking forward to it. Last year I got drunk, played pool with a couple guys - one of whom asked me out even though I thought I was pretty clear I wasn't interested - and drove home drunkish during rush hour traffic on a Friday during the holidays on the North side. 'Tis the season, Officer Friendly! This year I'm not drinking so I think it will be pretty easy to maintain focus while I'm in the presence of the higher ups. Last year it was a little touch and go. Also I actually know people so I won't be spending a lot of time on the outside looking in. At least that's the plan.

I'd say I get along well with my co-workers, but we don't make plans together or anything. There was a time when I went out drinking with the guys some Fridays until everyone went home for dinner, but that time is gone. It's for the best. Once a co-worker lobbied heavily to attend the lingerie show at a nearby bar and I actually felt my resolve slipping. I have a simple personal rule: I shall engage in no salacious activities with co-workers even if we are eyeing the same candy. The lines blur too quickly. Furthermore, I've been to titty bars where I was pulled into the show against my will. Quite unexpectedly a stripper pulled my shirt up over my head. Believe me, if I had known that was a part of the deal I would have worn a different bra. And furthermore I didn't get a cut of the tips. Shenanigans, O'Flannigan!

Lullaby

2007-12-03T21:46:00.000-05:00

Listening to Brahms' 2nd Symphony and feeling uneasy, I decided to ditch anxiety and start knitting. I picked up an old scarf that I started eighteen months ago. Yes, I knit a little. I'm not accomplished at it or anything, but I do enjoy it. My trip out to Persephone and Bunyan's place reminded me and since I couldn't decide what to do with my Monday evening I picked up the needles and yarn.

Last night I finished the tag team crossword puzzle Persephone sent me along with the myriad toiletries and night clothes I left over Thanksgiving. Crossword puzzles seem to pick up steam for me. The first ten minutes I spend staring at the squares wondering how anyone completes these things then little by little I find clues that could be for me. Chipping away the puzzle eventually fills in like a reverse sculpture; the whittled away bits are what's interesting not the stone left behind, and I can't believe that I got through what was once seemingly impossible. Crosswords are kinda weird that way. Persephone is write: it is easier when someone starts it.

Crosswords and knitting. Sheesh! Winter is a part of the life/death/life cycle, and that's all fine and good, but do I have to turn into an eighty-year-old grandma during December?

Seasonings

2007-11-30T14:12:00.000-05:00

As far as I'm concerned winter is here. Christmas has been expressed at my company and our corporate halls are decked with boughs of plastic holly. As an atheist I used to get distressed by such displays, but this looks really festive. It cheers our entrance up. I am a pagan sympathizer though, so perhaps I'd be outraged if I was involved with a monotheistic religion. Along with any emotional responses to red ornaments and enormous ever greens these items also send signals to my seasonal sensors. A wreath signals winter. I'm expecting snow any day.

I don't see Fall and Spring as full blown seasons. They are the atmosphere through which we travel before we land at our destination season. Perhaps I'm too goal oriented or centered on the future, but to me Fall and Spring mostly hold the characteristics of their respective target seasons Winter and Summer. Fall fell once the leaves left the trees.

Since it's getting colder I don't want to putter around in my garage so the Honda project is getting put on hold until I get a wild hair again. I wonder how this is going to effect my exposed carburetor. I'll cover it in oiled rags today. To fill that need to putter around and assemble things I've started cooking. I love working in my kitchen when it's cold out. Something about cold weather and runny noses gets me cooking. It's all warm and cozy in my kitchen, although the food I cook isn't necessarily comfortable. The timing is perfect: I've decided to pay off my credit card and get my general finances whipped into shape which means I'm going to start dumping my money in the bank rather than on a restaurant table where I normally leave it.

My favorite foods right now are Indian and Thai - really anything creamy and spicy - so I decided I'd learn how to cook dishes I'd normally eat at a restaurant. I never thought I'd be cooking Palak Paneer, but there I was last night pureeing spinach and sauteeing cheese that doesn't melt in ghee. Ghee is clarified butter in a solid form, looks like yellow shortening, and smells a little gross. I'm not sold on using it as a cooking fat just yet, but I'm sticking with it at least until I get to know it better. The moral of the story is that it's actually pretty easy to cook this stuff. The recipe I used for Palak Paneer is old skool having the cook use fresh spinach rather than frozen, roast fresh cashews to make a powder, and boil a tomato rather than use canned. I never realized how much I like tomatoes. Since it took so long to get all these things accomplished I think next time I'll be taking the short cuts; at least on a weeknight. I was cooking for 90 minutes. The result was really good especially considering it was the first time I'd made it. I believe the hardest thing about Indian cooking is getting all the ingredients. The greatest obstacle is finding a good recipe that translates what the spices are. I had no clue what dhania-jeera is, but coriander and cumin is no mystery. Thankfully, I live and work near two Indian groceries so picking up that wild no-melt cheese wasn't too difficult.

This weekend I'm returning to my cooking roots and tackling my favorite Indian bread product, na'an.

Tag team back again

2007-11-26T19:34:00.000-05:00

I've been out of the blogging picture for some time now. I had some nasty sinus infection that had me out of work for nearly a week, and I didn't really want to give updates as to what I was up to. -Today, I slept fo fourteen hours and my snot is green! - That sort of thing. Then I just fell out of the habit. My convalescence didn't afford any interesting tales.

I had a fabulous Thanksgiving. Aych and I drove out to Iowa in his darling new car to spend the holiday with Persephone, Paul Bunyon, Saraswati, and I really can't think of a name for Saraswati's husband. As soon as I do I'll update this blog. In any case, we all either went to school together or married someone who did. And a college prof showed up as well. It was a wonderful weekend. Persephone and Paul are warm hosts, and everyone in attendance helped out with things here and there. It felt really good to see old friends and for all of us to be gathered in one location without any family stress. Everyone brought something or cooked a dish. I brought Sweet Satan's Seed. I got the recipe out of an ultra lounge how to guide on party throwing, hence the risque name of the dish. Sweet and spicy mixed nuts. Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup honey
2 dried Ancho chili peppers sliced into fine flakes (I used a ~1.5 tbsp of crushed red pepper)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (don't be afraid to shake in more)
3 cups mixed raw nuts

I've tried this recipe with roasted nuts, and it's no good. Go raw. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Through all the ingredients sans the nuts into a microwave safe bowl and heat in the microwave until it gets to the consistency of pancake syrup. Stir it all well and add the nuts into the mix stirring again coating all the nuts. Spread the mix in an even layer on an oiled baking sheet and shove in the oven for ~25 minutes, stirring about every 7-8 minutes. Keep an eye on it for the last eight minutes or they'll burn and it will suck.

I've been doing some cooking recently. I decided to learn how to cook Indian and Thai food as part of my money saving plans, and I started last night with a coconut cashew chicken dish which required around a hundred ingredients. It really wasn't that bad. Prep time was minimal, and I was totally done - with time to clean during cooking - in about an hour. I found the end result a little disappointing as it's not very coconutty or cashewey, but I'm chalking that up to vague directions on what is no doubt a complicated concoction. It's not to say that the meal was bad. It just didn't come out as expected. That's one Thai Indian fusion recipe that I'll just let go. Too bad. My next selections are palak paneer most likely subbing tofu for the paneer and chicken tikka masala.

Pumpkin products

2007-11-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

I'm currently in front of my keyboard at my desk in my cube cubby at work scarfing down the dessert portion of the pitch-in lunch we throw every year for Thanksgiving. I can't recall why we're having it so early this year, but there you have it. What I find so strange about it is we have approximately 200 people line up, grab a ton of food and then retreat to our individual, walled up cubicles where we eat alone. Yeah. It's a little bit of a dirge. I was hoping my single opportunity for social time which manifests itself by waiting in line would be fruitful. This pitch-in reminds me of when I was in elementary school and we all had to sit next to the people we were in line with waiting for food in the cafeteria. Only no cafeteria. I've a cup of coffee to compliment my slices of pumpkin pie and oh-so-rich pumpkin cheesecake. I'm glad I hit the gym beforehand.

This season, I've been introduced to the pumpkin cookie - exquisite - and a little number called a pumpkin roll which was sitting unopened on the pitch-in table. I'd like to try it, but I fear it will create a human structural integrity fault. I'm not yet at full-on holiday gorge shape yet, and I don't want to blow a gasket early in the season. There are many future opportunities for pumpkin roll.

I personally don't have much of a knack for nicknaming people, but fitnessnerd, aka Alain, (secretly aka Bea [Arthur] aka Dorothy) just nailed it when he called Harley Momma, of Shut Up, Phil! fame, Banshee. That's gonna stick. Dorothy, you have mad nicknaming skillz.

It's been pretty quiet for me recently. Monday, my company installed a new firewall on my laptop along with Anti-virus software. It certainly does the job. I can't resolve DNS from my home network anymore. What this means in normal speak is that I can't browse the web, or get my mail or even connect to the company network which is the reason why I was issued a laptop in the first place. So if you don't hear from me in a timely fashion that's why.

Also, on the boring news front I just installed the invisible shield on my iPhone. The phone is definitely protected right now, but I see to have something trapped under the film on the front screen. Agony!!! I can't stand this little imperfection in my otherwise crystal clear screen, and the worst part is I'm not certain I can even remove the screen. It's practically hermetically sealed on there now. Bummer. I'll just have to learn to live with it... or scrape the hell out of the thing trying to remove the screen protector. At what point is a pyrrhic victory simply a loss?

Time to go before I start outlining my chores for the day.

2007-11-05T20:53:00.001-05:00

Relief. I love it on Monday when I'm finally free from my home detention device commonly known as my oncall pager. My mood improves ten times over. After a weekend wondering how to switch careers and idly wondering about a management track at Starbucks I found myself this morning sitting in my weekly staff meeting thinking that this job really isn't so bad. I don't know what kind of crazy I've got to allow myself to forget so quickly how much I do not enjoy a thing. I guess this is how I managed to marry Jaba the Hut. "Oh, really the slave outfit isn't so bad once you learn how to sling the chains just so."

Seriously, I enjoy Mondays. It's my favorite day of the work week. I walk in rested and refreshed from the weekend ready to tackle projects, and seek out solutions. Monday is by far my most productive day. I am able to focus for pretty much the entire day without needing much in the way of a break. Tuesday isn't bad, but I can start to feel myself wain. Wednesday is rough although generally things are hopping on Wednesday. Thursday is probably my worst work day. It's not yet Friday, but I'm going on day four in the work week, and the end just isn't nigh enough. By Friday I'm lucky to stick with it long enough so I can coast through my afternoon occasionally coming up to attend to this or that problem that has been brought to my attention. The thing is the more work I can focus on the faster the day goes by, however, after a while of working full bore I get tired and want to take some time away. I think I would do best with a four day work week. Although I'm sure ten hour days would get old fast.

My favorite day of the week is Sunday. Blanche recently sent out a personality poll with an Eastern flair today and one of the questions involved favorite days of the week.

Yesterday was not my favorite although I got to spend it with one of my longest running (I didn't want to say oldest) friends. H came by to pick me up in his brand new chariot and we headed out for brunch. We ate well at the Original House of (goodness in the form of) Pancakes where we had the eggs benedict and this enormous apple pancake. Biting into the apple pancake sent me to a place where state fairs make delicious apple dumplings with eggs. It was intensely good. The eggs benedict were good too; eggs perfectly poached and complimented with potato pancakes. Absolutely fabulous.

After gorging on brunch items we hit the Half Price books where I picked up "Heroic and Outrageous Women", a chubby little coffee table book full of wild stories of mold-breaking women throughout history from the Warrior Queen Boadicea who took up arms against the Romans when they invaded her lands now in England to Madonna the material girl. The title is appropriate as they are heroic and outrageous. Each entry is only a few pages long so it's suitable for quick light reading times. There's a whole chapter dedicated to women in the military, and I'm excited to find out more about these ancient and modern ass kickers.

After some more shopping and coffee we went to stake a claim at Ollie's in the face of the onslaught of people certain to arrive to watch the game of the season. Our efforts proved to be overkill as, strangely enough, the bar did not actually fill up. I've seen it busier on Friday nights. And I'm surprised. Perhaps people don't come out until the play-offs. We met up with Blanche, Alain, Romeo, Mom, and my buddy Harley-momma (who rides a Honda, but that's really not the point for 95% of the people who read this.) Harley-momma was a hoot bellowing at Phil Simms. At first she screamed when he had something negative to say about the Colts, but it just turned into a yell fest whenever he opened his mouth. It was so regular a drinking game was created. The regularity with which the yells could be heard forced participants to slurp beer. Well, that and some cocktails prior to the game.

I had my first O'Doul's while eating some hot wings. Not bad. Not beer though. It tasted like beer as long as I was eating something spicy but once my mouth got back to normal temperature I could taste the water.

There was quite a spectrum of personalities who appeared. One couple showed up after having drank a few somewhere else and managed to squeeze into our table. Friendly folk. One had an incredible, as in not to be believed, laugh. Think Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins. At one point I half expected him to rise up from the table and bounce along the ceiling at Ollie's having to avoid the Smokeeter.

As you know, the Colts lost. boo. It was a close game, and really they could have had it. If they had a fully healthy team there's no doubt in my mind that game would have had a different ending. But all that amounts to coulda woulda shoulda, and afterall it is only a game. It was fun getting worked up over it, though.

Technophilia

2007-11-01T20:43:00.000-04:00

This week marks the final leg of my Fall marathon for work. As of Sunday at 6 am I return to my regular oncall rotation of one week on and four off. Also, things should generally slow down. Of course, the timing was awful since I missed Skareeoke, and apparently it was quite a spectacle. I actually got to College and Mass before my pager blew up and I had to head back home. Bummer.

All this work had me feeling a little blue, and after my weekend of hockey and overnight data center upgrades I decided to treat myself. Well, honestly, gravity scored an assist. I've had a standard clamshell cell phone with, shall I say, minimal functionality. It performed all the necessary functions of a cell phone: dial in, accept calls, text, voice mail, caller id. It even had a camera, but there was no way to get the pictures off the camera without paying for a picture text and my inner miser couldn't handle that. This phone has also withstood some heavy beatings, lots of drops, and general misuse. I actually had it long enough to necessitate replacing the battery as it could no longer hold enough charge to facilitate a fifteen minute phone call. I'm used to it. It's familiar.

Witness exhibit A to the right here. Saturday, in between hockey games some teammates and I went to lunch at the Ram. When I got up to leave I hastily put on my jacket. Out popped my cell phone and as it tumbled out of my pocket it flipped open. In this open position it slammed into a wooden chair and that was all she wrote for this little number. Or was it? I was in quite a bit of denial after it broke cleanly snapped in two, the flexible data board sheared off at both ends. I took it to a mall kiosk and asked if they could repair it. No such luck. I asked if they could retrieve the numbers off of it. My kind but useless sales associate decked out in blue face paint didn't even try to hook it up. He did try to sell me a new phone though, but if I wanted a new phone I'd have to sign up for 2 years of service. Otherwise the cheapest phone was 200 dollars. Yikes!

I found that I could use the phone with it attached to a headset with mic boom. I spent the next couple days walking around with a wire in my phone holding "stumpy" and dialing out to people who had numbers I remembered. And then I got the hook up.

Romeo helped me out with some discount action on a brand new iPhone. Quite a leap from stumpy clamshell. The interface is excellent although it's taken a little work to get familiar with the touch screen. I've experienced one glitch in operating it so far, but I'll spare you the details. The moral of that side story is that I couldn't be bothered to get upset with the error. In fact this product is so cool I found myself being quite patient in wanting to figure out what the matter was. Anyone who has ever seen me in front of a fussy electronic device has been treated to a colorful spew of expletives. I've spent the last couple days consoling my over worked self with the colorful glow illuminating the crystal clear images on this incredible toy.

Major toy purchases always make me a little elated and edgy followed by some sort of techno-purchase afterglow crash. When I first heard of technology addiction I dismissed the notion as absurd alarmism from a group of sanctimonious busy bodies. What's wrong with being connected at all times? What's wrong with having a device that makes that experience better? What's wrong with pursuing better? Of course, it's that pursuit of better and a search for the external that rests at the core of addiction. I've read that a person is considered to have a technology problem if one spends more time with the technology than with people. I find that to be a facile explanation. People drive technology. We haven't figured out a way to create self-replicating data boards yet. So at the end of every interaction with a piece of technology there is a person who created it.

To me a problem exists when an individual has trouble connecting with oneself, and that is hard for an external observer to quantify. I'd like to sit with a corporate psychologist and ask her how that makes her feel.

I'm going to let that be the end of my rambling. I think working all these hours is making me a tidge punchy.

Are you ready for some football?

2007-10-25T21:47:00.000-04:00

If you've been following along I had a bad weekend. I worked approximately 14 high stress hours and broke many things. During all this time I had but one thing to keep me going forward: Monday Night Football. My sister's boyfriend gets a lot of great comp tickets to various events through work, and he got a couple of comp tickets to see the Indianapolis Colts take on the Jacksonville Jaguars. He couldn't make it because of some work function, and when I heard that I offered to take one for the team and come on down to see the game. I had been looking forward to this game ever since I heard about it. Sis just moved to Jacksonville with her beau and I've been keen to see their new place. Also, I've never seen a Monday night football game. Something changes when the crowd knows they are at the only game in the nation at that hour of that week. The energy gets cranked way up. Every town brings it to Monday Night Football.

Jacksonville was no exception. Every Jag home game has been blacked out due to lagging ticket sales. Now, I think black outs are a terrible way to get meat in the seats as it were. If the locals don't get to see their team on TV how are they expected to want to buy a ticket? In any case, the Monday night game was sold out. Sis, Beau, the co-worker and I arrived to a full house crackling with electricity. It was insanity! For the most part the Jacksonville fans were alright. There were some isolated almost altercations and some frustrated idiot threw a styrofoam stick at me after the Colts scored a touchdown. Whatever. I just let the scoreboard do the talking.

Our seats were exceptional. We sat at the end zone in the belly of the enemy. Sis and I sat apart from the group forming a small island of five Colts fans donning blue jerseys. And I had the faux hawk done up in cheap blue hair paint. It didn't look so great, but it got the message across. We slapped fives every time a touch down was scored, after every sack, and pretty much most first downs. It was great. There was a lot of booing from the crowd, but overall they weren't so bad. Well apart from the styrofoam tosser

I'm going to keep this short. I had a blast at the game. It was great to see Sis in Jacksonville. The game was great. I loved watching the Colts drive the ball through the end zone. It was fab staring Manning in the face as he was looking for a receiver.

Techno zombies!

2007-10-25T21:30:00.000-04:00

It's been non-stop action for me recently. When we left off, gentle reader I was just coming back from my Chicago trip. I had managed to trade my first three days of oncall to go to training, but now it was time to return to the office and a mountain of work not least of which involved tending to a pager. Thursday was a blur of non-stop go go go from the time I got settled in to the time I went to bed. There is a kind of rhythm to IT calamity; an organic element to technological failure. I'll put it like so avoiding technical jargon: If one thing breaks chances are good at least five people will tell you to fix it. Also, due to the dependency each thing has on another thing when one thing breaks it generally causes a chain reaction of breakage. This creates a notification|work multiplier. The good news is troubleshooting problems is much like slaying zombies: kill the head zombie and they all die. So if you weed out and correct the problem the rest of the world can start moving again. The only issue is that the more things that held dependencies with the core thing that broke means more people will notice the breakage which means more people tell you to fix it and the more people telling you to fix the problem means the more "paperwork" after the fact. It's a nasty cycle. I'm grateful that I actually had a chance to get settled in and check my mail over my coffee and a pop tart prior to the flood gate opening.

I say paperwork, but there's no such thing as paper based communication for me anymore. All notification and updates are done electronically through a web based ticketing system. Things like web based trouble ticketing systems are touted as helpful tools that management magnamimously offers to their technical staffs as a generous aid in the never-ending struggle of zombie slaying commonly known as troubleshooting. In practice this all looks like a different animal. Something breaks: the oncall engineer receives electronic notification which needs to be acknowledged. The oncall engineer then starts furiously typing an e-mail in a desperate attempt at playing beat the panic. Before the second sentence can be typed out three people run by the oncall engineer’s cubicle explaining something has happened. These people are in turn acknowledged. Then the oncall engineer receives at least one instant message requesting to join a troubleshooting chat room to give updates on the issue. It’s around this time that the oncall engineer’s boss is now in play asking what has happened and when will it be fixed. A page goes off requesting the oncall engineer join a telephone bridge call to give an update.

Remember how troubleshooting is like slaying zombies? Well, in a way when a thing breaks it almost instantly starts eating the brains of the people who support things that have those dependencies which effectively increases the zombie horde. Eventually, people start asking when the service will be restored so their particular thing will start working again. At this point the OE manages to ignore everything else and start troubleshooting the issue. A good boss will morph into an offensive linesman and start blocking the newly created zombies, and eventually functionality is restored and all questions are answered.

We have a weekend event called "Fall Release". I have no clue what it is we're releasing, I think it's software, but I know that it takes a huge amount of personnel and other resources to accomplish. In any case, this past weekend there was a lot of movement among the developers and the server teams which resulted in a lot of work in the form of tying loose ends on the network side. My side.

It’s Saturday afternoon when my weekend becomes cataclysmic. I perform a change for someone and it won’t work. Between the two of us we fiddle with all kinds of knobs and nothing seems to make the light turn green. For an hour and a half we work, and then out of frustration and desperation and sheer idiocy I try a command that isn’t even supposed to help the situation. One minute later I lose connectivity to the machine that received the command. It’s at this time that the guy I’m working with loses connectivity to his server. I try to re-establish connectivity. Nothing doing. I try to establish connectivity to the hot standby device (an understudy that can leap out on stage the moment the lead collapses). I can’t get to it. It won't even respond to the most basic call - the simple ping. This is a crucial thing. This is a thing with many many dependencies.

To cut to the chase: I removed my company’s web presence from the Internet for over an hour.

I was working from home so I flew to the office receiving an electronic onslaught of notification all the way. When I got in to the data center a manager (not mine) was there waiting and then standing behind me offering assistance. My manager did hit the scene pretty quickly, though and we worked the issue along with another engineer. Service was restored and now it was time to face the music. I had to sit there and say I broke it.

My boss took it really well. I imagine if our roles were reversed I would be angry in a way that would hearken to the animal kingdom. I’d be baboon-screaming-poo-flinging-jumping-up-and-down-on-my-desk mad. He didn’t even raise his voice. Perhaps he could see how sick I felt about the whole thing. Perhaps, he was terrified of making me cry, a fear that would at one time offend me very deeply, but now I completely endorse if it means I don’t get yelled at. Sincerely though, I appreciate not being cut to shreds.

Regardless, I had a terrible Saturday. Remembering it puts my stomach in knots. I tried to surround myself with friendly faces at a gathering after that terrible outage, but work and technology just wouldn’t cooperate, and I trudged home armed with exceptional chili. My brief time out was restorative. The worst and best part was I had to go home and start working on that problem where I shit the bed to begin with. It felt terrible getting back on that horse, but it was well worth it. I eventually found the problem and fixed it, and nothing blew up. That felt pretty good.

I ended up working much of Saturday night and most of Sunday, and the world kept turning. I did find an hour to go for a lovely motorcycle ride around Eagle Creek. There's a narrow road that feels like a country lane lined with trees, and on Sunday the sun shone down through the golden, orange, fiery red leaves as they lazily drifted over me onto the street like warm, paper snow. It was so warm. The last warm day I believe, and it felt so good. It was centering in a way that I desperately needed.

The next installment: From wind-stealing lows to dizzying highs. My first Monday Night Football game.

Shopping, showing, skiving, skyscraping

2007-10-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I had a chance to go shopping along the Miracle Mile. I always check out the Marshall's first since the Marshall's in Chicago has items I'm far more likely to purchase than the one in Indy. The last time I dropped in I purchased a pair of shoes that became my everyday-in-every-way brown shoes. I walked those things into the ground until they actually increased a half size through use. No such luck on this trip. Actually, my shopping time was brief due to dinner plans so I hit the Levi's store - which didn't have any standout items. I then went to my holy ground, Gap. My wardrobe is composed almost exclusively by Gap. The cuts and the styles just fit right. I finally broke down and accepted a Gap credit card. There's no point in buying all these clothes all the time and not get a little back. I tell myself that as long as I stay on top of it and never ever ever carry a balance I'll be able to reap the rewards of the card and not feel violated by the jaw dropping percentage rate. It's usury plain and simple.

Indy has a good Gap at the Fashion Mall, but this lovely locale on what is truly a Miracle Mile boasts three whole floors. Granted the basement is a kids/baby Gap, but whatever! It's enormous and it has so many clothes! I didn't even bother looking at Ralph Lauren or elsewhere so out of my price range. I hunted through my favorite store on steroids and came up with a hot outfit for my night out. My first ever pair of navy trousers - dark navy cut curvy with pinstripes. Yow! Also a pair of trousers colored in heather with brown criss-cross - not quite plaid and not quite checked. They're a looser fit. Both pants work with the white button up shirt with thin blue stripes. If I were a guy I'd look like a Republican, but I think there's something hot about a woman in mannish clothes cut for ladies - if not bordering on subversive which will always turn my crank at least a quarter revolution.

Today, my training class wrapped up, but not soon enough for me. Somewhere through the instructor's nervousness and his sudden inability to answer my questions satisfactorily I decided to skive off during a brief lunch break and go check out the Sears Tower. I thought this was going to be a twenty minute side trip. I imagined I'd stroll into the tower, get pointed to the appropriate elevator and check out Chicago from the clouds. Not so. I walked into the business side of the building. I figured I was in the wrong place since I didn't have a swipe card and getting to the elevators required one. I was pointed to the right direction, a separate entrance entirely, and was on my way. This skydeck only portion of the Sears tower has a long series of people herding maneuvers. I was ushered to an elevator going down to a basement where I was ushered through a security checkpoint - brief metal detector walk through - then moved along to a ticket counter. Getting to the skydeck costs moolah: $12.95 for the non-tour version. Nineteen for the tour. I opted for the general admission, given a ticket, and was informed there was a movie. OK. I was then greeted by ticket takers who sent me along a corridor where I came to a stop. Up until this point I was moving along at a good clip. I guess things aren't so busy on a Wednesday after lunch. Along each point of my journey I thought, well, I'll pop up to the sky deck around this corner, check it out, and head back to the training. I even told myself that I was willing to part with thirteen dollars for a brief visit to the top of Chicago especially if it meant getting out of class for half an hour. Silly Scrawler. This was not to be. I turned the corner the open doors to a small theater. I thought, oh well I'll skip that and head to the elevators after using the can. Well, when I got out of the restroom I looked around for the elevators up. No such luck. I walked around the theater and saw that the only possible way to proceed to where I thought the elevator was would be through doors towards the front of the theater. As I realized this the doors to said theater closed, and I noticed they had no handles on them. Once they were closed they were closed. No way to just slide in late.

I stood trying not to fume waiting and waiting (I hate to wait). After what seemed like a looong time, but what was really only fifteen minutes I was able to get into the theater that was totally emptied of people and had no visible exit. The way out had the same handle-less door system and there was no skipping this informative film brought to us by the History Channel.

Finally, I got up up up and away. I'm glad I waited through all of that. I took only a couple pictures and of the two I like this one most:

The skyscraper: penis on the outside vagina on the inside! It's a forest of sex organs. How delightful.

Greetings from Chi-town

2007-10-16T23:04:00.000-04:00

Good evening from the windy city. The time to blog is upon me which is sensible seeing as how I have approximately a pound of dead cow in my stomach and I'm not much use for anything else at the moment. I didn't start my day this way, and I'm happy to tell you how my current state came to pass - well, will eventually pass but I'm using a phrase.

I'm up here for no particularly fancy reason. It's work related. My company sent me for a two day training class on a product we recently purchased. The quality of instruction has me pleasantly surprised. Generally, two day training means a rush job through the product fraught with sales pitches. I'm tickled to report I've received cogent information from day one. I don't think it's a coincidence this product is really good as well. Good follows good and a company that produces worthwhile software will likely have good people explaining how to use it I suppose.

I drove up last night with a co-worker who I'll call papa sweet grump. He's a nice older gentleman - recently a grandfather - pretty cool in just about every way, but he's a nay sayer - a trait he pulls off fairly well. He and I hit a Bennigan's on the way up (they still exist!) and made it to our hotel a little after nine pm. Thankfully PSG stepped away while I was checking in since the desk clerk asked if he had his own registration or if he was staying with me. I calmly stated he had his own, but I was surprised that it was a question. The picture the two of us pose is incongruous at best; thirty-year-old woman with spiked hair who reportedly looks like a complete lesbian and a mountainous white haired man in Dockers. What surprised me more: that he thought we were together or that he thought I was straight? I'm unsure. I suppose people make platonic shared hotel arrangements all the time and it was simply be a question.

I spent some time walking up and down Michigan after checking in. I heard a volley of When Johnny Comes Marching Home passed back and forth from street side sax players punching the march into a slurry yet punctuated jazz number. I walked quickly and saw the river. I ended up going to Borders and buying a book and a three-pack of Moleskine journals. I say yes to Moleskine. They make a quality product although the marketing turns me off just a hair. Buy this notebook because creative people did nearly a hundred years ago. But the paper, smart binding, and excellent size are exceptional. I know of no better pocket journal.

Today, PSG and I walked to our training facility from our hotel, mostly along Wacker, a street name which illicits the same response that I first had from it at ten. We ended up spitting distance from the Sears Tower, pictured at top. I like skyscrapers. People say they're phallic, and I did too until I heard the best counter to it from a good friend of mine. He says, yeah, but if you enter the skyscraper and look up it's like an enormous vagina. I'm down with that. The building our training is in is also a skyscraper, and for the first time I've been confronted with a restroom that's controlled by a five button keypad. This is on the fourth floor of the building. What kind of crowd control does one need? The restroom is also exceptionally grey. Since I was wearing my grey fleece jacket today I had to take pictures. Which now that I review them are kinda lame. Moving on.

So how did I end up with this bovine bounty in my tummy? The one good thing about traveling for the company is being able to treat oneself on someone else's dime. I like to eat that which I cannot in Nap-town. I asked the concierge what our best bet was for authentic Chicago cuisine and
he said without batting an eye it was the Chop House. It was within walking distance to our hotel which was a major selling point. I know you can get a great steak for that kind of money in any city with an international airport, but this place had style and panache and an incredibly intense bone in prime rib so popular it's the every night special. We were seated on the second floor in a window table overlooking Ontario. There were pictures of meat packers and "Builders of Chicago" on the wood paneled walls. After a wonderful filet with asparagus and hollandaise I made a point to go to the bathroom partially to take a look at the place and - I'm not gonna lie - a little bill dodging. I didn't want to deal with the expense report. When I arrived at the bathroom and entered a stall I was exposed to something unique - thank goodness. Nothing sexual - no. This was the strangest sanitary device I've ever encountered. I was so floored I took a picture. Let's take a look:

OK. My complimentary internet connectivity is acting funny and giving me fits. I'll have to be content describing this for now. I open the stall door and see a toilet seat covered in a plastic bag. The hinge is enormous and I'm thinking this is some sort of take on the paper seat covers. I'm not much for the hysterics of bathroom hygiene. An old school toilet seat just isn't the kind of place that can support bacteria, germs or whatever else has women hovering and pissing all over a perfectly good resting place. If I had open wounds on my ass cheeks that might be a different story, but as long as my butt remains lesion free I'm just not giving these concerns any cycles. The baggied toilet seat isn't just a simple cover. Oh no. The hinge that holds the seat to the commode is enormous, about four inches high, and it comes with a red button on the left and instructions. "Press once before use. Button resets after in 20 seconds." So, completely floored I push the button. This is what happened:

Now this is just about the craziest, nastiest, saddest thing I've seen in a bathroom. It's like those terribly unhygienic towel rolls one only sees at Illusions as reported by Fitness Nerd only for your ass! Really? For real? Is this what people want? For the first time ever I really didn't want to sit down. That plastic just looks flimsy and full of creases and crevices where nastiness could hide. Ugh.

That wraps it up for tonight (hah!) I'm going to roll quite literally into bed and get ready for day two of my whirlwind Chicago trip. I'll be heading back to Indy tomorrow during rush hour. We'll see how that goes.

slap shot and coffee

2007-10-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

This weekend has been both sedate and rewarding. I'm the kind of person who doesn't clean unless company is coming. I mean, I keep the tumbleweeds from taking up residence, but it gets a little nesty in my family room from time to time. I like to walk in from work, kick off my shoes wherever I happen to be when I don't want to wear them further, plop down in the recliner, and eventually articles of clothing get removed and exchanged for pajamas. The result turns my small condo into an enormous dressing room. So when I had surprise company Friday I found myself motivated to get my clean on.

Humorously, I decided to invite more people over on Saturday when I knew I wouldn't have time to clean up. It was all a little awkward. I invited Reichy (formerly DeeDee) and a friend and her brother over to watch that classic 70s sports flick, Slap Shot starring Paul Newman and introducing the Hanson Brothers. Reichy asked me during our last practice how it is one actually commits a foul in hockey, and I could think of no better way to explain it other than Slap Shot. The -eh- film has a fairly high incidence of gay bashing, although I contend its overall attitude towards homosexuality is open and tolerant. In a way it boldly highlights certain homosexual issues, Lesbians After Marriage for instance. But it's crowded by a frenetic plot. No scene off the ice is longer than thirty seconds and there are plenty in short succession. According to wikipedia Gene Siskel says that it was his greatest regret as a critic to have given Slap Shot mediocre reviews. Apparently he enjoyed it much more after multiple viewings. I believe that has to do with how fast the movie moves. It's hard to follow. I wonder if the director was trying to mimic the pace of a hockey game.

So here I was with a filthy home inviting people over some of whom had never seen the place before to watch a movie that by most accounts isn't great on the first viewing. I felt slightly awkward, but really I could have spared myself. My guests were gracious, and took it all with good nature.

Today, I woke up with the cleaning bug. Sometimes I pop out of bed with a burning desire to jog, or go to the mall, or grab some brunch, but today it was all about cleaning. I like how the place feels now. It's incredible how much dust and cat hair can collect in certain nooks and crannies. Now I'm breathing a little easier in my super comfy home.

I went shopping for a list of household items at Bed Bath and Beyond: a coffee maker, sheets, light bulbs of various sizes and nothing met my specifications. B,B &B is leaving much to be desired these days. I did come home with a Mukka express cappuccino maker though for much less than what I'm seeing them on the web. It's a stove top espresso maker on steroids. It's larger than the average espresso maker. At the top of the "percolator" in the coffee carafe section there's an extra valve that is used to froth milk that you've added into the carafe section. It's actually rather clever. All you have to do is put water in the reservoir, coffee in the filter, milk in the carafe, set the valve, and put the whole assembly on the stove top et voila! Cappuccino. I've decided to try it out as my replacement for my daily coffee ritual. My trips to Starbucks have become more frequent, and I'm sick of spending time and money on a product that - while oh so tasty - gets to be an expensive drag in the morning. I've gone through and created cappuccino, latte and espresso as part of the initial throw away runs of the product. So far so good. I need to get real espresso roasted coffee beans though. Regular beans work, but the method begs for a bean with a bolder flavor. The only problem is going to be the additional maintenance required. I actually have to clean that valve out and rinse the pot rather than just let it stand in all its milky glory while I'm away at work.

Gambling

2007-10-09T17:07:00.001-04:00

I had a busy weekend jam packed full of events. It was a little too cramped for my taste, and I've spent some time processing it. I rode the motorcycle down to Louisville for a Celebration event honoring the weekend work I and thirty other women did with Woman Within. I rode with a group of women who were headed for New Albany, specifically Cesar's Casino. Somehow they got rooms comped for the night and we were going to take advantage. We avoided the interstate, and the ride down was goregeous once we got south of Franklin. We eventually hit 135 and snaked through Nashville twisting through forests and winding around cornfields. Lots of beans and corn this year. For some reason the bean fields smelled like onion. Maybe there were onions out there, too. I had to break off from the group when we hit 60 so I could get to my event on time. I threw on my helmet, kicked it into 6th and peeled off towards I-65 at 100 mph.

I was feeling shakey and rushed when I arrived. I had to change; the shirt I had packed for the event somehow got ruined while in my bag and that really pissed me off. I wanted to look cool, and instead I was wearing a slick pair of grey trousers with a light pinstripe with a brown on beige striped t-shirt. Ugh. But I did it, and it was fine. I managed to get centered and get into the moment.

After the cermony I invited a woman to hang out with me and the group of women I rode down with to Connections. At least that was the idea. I got back late; most of the ladies were ready for a nightcap and bed. Lesbians are in bed by 11pm. Sheesh. That's when the party is just kicking off. I had never been to a casino before, and I was determined to spend some dough. The lady I invited, I'll call her Virginia, was definitely down for some gambling. She's primarily a slots gal which is the way to go odds-wise as far as best return on "investment". I personally find the slots dismal. I like holding on to the myth that I am somehow in control in a game of chance so it's no wonder that craps appealed the most to me.

I didn't have a good time gambling for two major reasons. The cheapest tables had 15 dollar minimums, and I was the only one I knew playing them. I started the evening with blackjack. Boom boom boom boom. Ninety seconds later and sixty dollars down I decided to end that train wreck. That's when I wandered over to the craps table. I had no idea what I was doing and only picked it up by watching for about 20 minutes so I was missing a lot of information. I actually won some dough playing craps, but really it was just enough to cover the losses incurred at the end of a run, and eventually - inevitably - the house got my money. I was only able to slow my roll with the craps table (hah!) and I really enjoyed throwing the dice. All in all I lost $140, and I experienced gambling, an activity of which I've had my fill. I felt like I was throwing my money away surrounded by fish-eyed slot zombies. At least in a strip bar I get to see naked people.

The next day I split off from the group again this time to get back to town to do some work. I took the long way back until I hit Nashville. Again, totally beautiful ride. Just enough clouds in the sky to make it pretty. In Nashville there was some bad accident where someone took out a transformer and the entire town was dark. No gas. So I ended up turning around and headed to Columbus. I burned up I-65 until I hit my exit home.

I took this trip thinking I could get my work done on Sunday whenever I wanted as long as it went well. Well, this upgrade I had to do - that was tested in our lab - didn't go well. In fact it broke things in a very bizarre way. After 8 hours of troubleshooting to get a good idea of what had happened I rolled it back. Apparently, this was the wrong thing to do, and my decision to make the change six hours after I said I would was called into question. Erp. I feel a little miffed about the whole thing. Yes, I didn't do something when I said I was going to do it, but that would not have mitigated the impact. Monday was rough.

Tonight, I'm playing a hockey scrimmage breaking a drought of over a year. I'm psyched to get back on the ice in earnest. Hockey is one of the most exhilirating sports I've ever played, and I could use a little good competition vibe.

Friday blah

2007-10-05T23:05:00.000-04:00

I knew that Friday was going to end up lackluster. My dreams were incredible this morning, and I semi-consciously chose to sleep in rather than get up and get in to work. I was in the car about 5 minutes into my commute and stuck behind a chucklehead moving 20 miles per hour. I didn't want to stay stuck so I passed her on the right in a shoulder turn lane. Unfortunately, I executed this maneuver in a school zone in front of Officer Friendly. At least I had the presence of mind to throw on my seat belt when I saw him whip out of his hidey hole. That kept an additional 25 dollars off a ticket that already amounted to 150. Good morning.

After that I decided to go to Starbucks to get some coffee. Fuck being late. I wanted a latte.

Work wasn't too bad. I've been working on installing and learning this enormous software based network toolset, and it's been slow going. The documentation shows you what to do for very specific scenarios, not how the whole thing works. My boss rolled up to my cube wanting to see the beast in action, and I couldn't get it to work. I found another problem I had to open a support case on to solve.

All this in the back of my mind. I was meeting up with this young lady tonight who has me more or less captivated. I left work twenty minutes early, got home, ate some grub, and hopped on the bike to go check out the First Friday Art shows in Fountain Square. The ride over there was fun. I'd shaken off the slow downs from the ticket I received this morning and zipped along 65 South at a good clip. I even had a brief chase with some dude on a sport bike.

I found a motorcycle sized parking spot (which I always love to utilize) in front of Penumbria Gallery. There were some beautiful paintings there. I've only recently started to appreciate abstract pieces, but now I prefer them. I take in the painting and see how I respond. The showcased artist was Gwyneth Sutherlin. She had several pieces I enjoyed, but the one that gripped me was called "Depth". I don't think it was her strongest painting, but it definitely had the strongest affect on me.

I walked up and down Virginia Ave checking out the galleries. I eventually came to find out that Aganippe wasn't going to make it out. So I packed it in and went out for a ride. I sent out messages to a few people seeing what's doing. Not much was the response. So I eventually went home.

Now here's where I turn my blah into something incredible, dangerous, and quite possibly addictive. I wanted a bowl of cereal when I got home, but I was out of milk, and I wanted something junkier than Raisin Bran so I rolled out to the grocery store. As I was struggling between Choco Cap'n Crunch and Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch I turned my head and saw a beautiful sight there beyond the cereal aisle on the far wall: Trader's Point Creamery Chocolate Milk. My choice was made for me. I grabbed the PB Cap'n Crunch, the chocolate milk, and some skim which I normally drink and went on home. This combination is heavenly. I initially pulled off the plastic top and took a swig from the bottle, and my world was rocked. The chocolate and cream together are so rich it's almost overpowering. To use this with cereal is enough to stop hearts. It really is decadent.

So I'm glad I'm seeing the end of this particular Friday. It's rather pleasant now.

Filler Musing

2007-10-02T14:26:00.000-04:00

I find it distracting and interesting that the three major topics covered by media - sports, business, and politics - are games with increasingly higher stakes.

Discuss
(Because I haven't gotten around to writing up a blog entry after my super weekend with the women).

Motorcycle repair continued: the saga of the frozen screw

2007-09-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

It's been quite an experience working on the motorcycle. The process is so enjoyable. I generally work on it for about two hours a night when I hit some seemingly insurmountable snag. Then I come to it the next day with new information, or a recently purchased tool, or maybe just fresh eyes and that problem gets worked out. I've never worked on a carburetor before so this is all new. I'm figuring it out as I go. It's very rewarding that way. It took a lot of doing, but I pulled the carb off the frame.

Prior to carb removal

The tops of the released carbs

The carb came off fairly easily once I figured out how to create slack on the throttle and choke cables connecting it to the bike. I took it over to my work bench, a converted coffee stand in a previous life, and took off the air covers. I think that's what they're called. Whatever isn't the float bowl. I got a chance to crank up ye olde air compressor to push air through the jets. What a joy. Of all the tools available pneumatic tools are the coolest looking. They're made of shiny stainless steel and generally need to be oiled daily so they look cool for a long time. I only have a 3/8" ratchet and an air gun (ffft ffft!) but they're a lot of fun. The hilarious, ridiculous thing is that I have a whopping 15 gallon 150 PSI air compressor. It's overkill, but hey that's fine. If you ever need air in your tires and you're in the neighborhood you know what to do. But I digress.

The jets were cleared, the top of the carburetor isn't very compelling. It's the floats that gets all the action so it was time to crack those puppies open. I got through one screw. All the rest were frozen solid. The head on one screw was stripped out. This was definitely one of those stopping points. I asked around the office and got advice on how to drill out a stripped screw. Yep, drill out, whereby I would take a drill with a super strong bit and push it through the screw. Then I'd get my tap/die kit and tear out the rest of it hoping I didn't totally re-thread anything the wrong way. No problem right? ugh. I was nervous about this procedure so I went online and looked up alternatives. Apparently, there's this magical device called an impact driver which is like a special screw or bolt driver. Essentially you put the tool in the screw and smack the other end with a hammer. There's a spring and a revolving cylinder in between the bit and the impact area that turns as a result of the downward force. Further screw stripping is much less likely. This sounded much better to me than drilling into a delicate mechanical device so I rolled into Auto Zone and got myself one of these gadgets.

Behold the exposed float chamber!

It took a bit of doing, and I thought I wouldn't be able to get it at first, but eventually all the screws turned for the impact driver. The result is the picture here to the right. Look, Ma, no bowls. I'd like to take this time to point out that I love the vocab here what with all this talk about bowls, carbs, jets, and the like. Makes me feel like I'm in a head shop. I'm surprised by how clean the actual float bowls are though. They need to be de-gunked, but not by much. The seals need to be replaced, too. They were crusty when I gingerly pulled them out. I thought they'd snap on me. The relative good health of the carburetor concerns me a bit. If that's not what's been causing the bike starting issues, then what, pray tell could it be? Idunno. I guess I'll have to figure that out when I come to it.
In the meantime I need to figure out what kind of large, open mouthed glass container I'm going to dump this metal thing in along with highly combustible and toxic chemicals to remove the lacquer on ol' girl's respiratory/digestive system.

Random musings

2007-09-27T09:19:00.000-04:00

It's been a disjointed couple days. Tuesday marked my return to hockey with practice at the sentimental and unpleasantly fragrant Pan Am. In all my warm recollections of hockey I'd forgotten about the bacterial infused facilities and terrible Zamboni work. But that's a part of it, I suppose. Pan Am is an old gal and could use a little TLC; an unlikely event as her existence is darkened by the shadow of the new stadium and what will be done with that real estate.

The team looks good, and it feels good getting back into the gear that's held up well although I've shrunk some in the last couple years. My shot is weak, but it was never really that good to begin with. I've always relied on one timers and dekeing goalies. No slappers for this gal.

I received a coupon today from Borders thanking me for shopping at a particular Waldenbooks and that it will be closing soon. What libel! I haven't shopped there as an adult. Is Waldenbooks even a real bookstore? I mean, they sell Harry Potter and whatever criminal/lawyer/stock broker/politico/CIA operative drama of the month, but I see them as a large news stand with materials that take a little longer to digest than the Post.

On the work front, business hasn't been so good. I'm somewhat unaffected by it being in I.T., however, I'm still nervous from the grumblings and potential fallout. It's the not knowing that's rough. The best that can be said is this is a potential character building experience in that I'll be practicing going to work everyday under a cloud of press clippings fraught with insider commentary.

Last night I continued the saga of repairing ol' girl. Ol' girl is my '82 Honda CM 450 motorcycle and while she is younger than me I would have no age based qualms in dating her. That's an old motorcycle. I drained and removed the gas tank which took about forty minutes. Apparently, I left far more gas in the tank than I thought. Those carbs are going to look nasty! I drained and nearly removed the carburetor. I was going to remove the tops and have a look see in the jets, but after seeing the black ick drain out of the carbs I decided I might as well rip the whole thing out and have it bathe in carb cleaner. I have it loose, a minor miracle, but the choke and the throttle cables are still attached to it, and I've no idea how to get them unattached. The pins on the ends of the cables look like they were stamped after installation, but I'm sure that's not the case. I'll be scratching my head over this one for a while.

During all this I managed to spill gasoline everywhere. Under the bike, on the engine case, on my shorts and sandals. I walked into my garage this morning and experienced the reek extending to high heaven. I hope I can air that out before it gets inside the house. I have the excess gas (and some brake fluid, and yogurt... I reuse those glass jars) stored away, and I'll be disposing of that at a tox drop facility.

Cleaning out ye olde closet

2007-09-25T22:09:00.001-04:00

I came home from an outing Sunday and was faced with the realization that my kitchen is covered in laundry. The laundry cabinet shares the same wall as my pantry, and I fold my clothes at the kitchen table, throw them in baskets and cart them off to my room. For work I have a slew of collared button downs that need ironing and so they get pulled out of the dryer lickity split and placed on the back of a chair. I tell myself that if they are in the same room as the ironing board then I'll actually iron them - a sloppy lie. My cotton polos wrinkle easily and so they get folded over a different chair. When I'm washing my laundry I generally like to do some other chore - or watch television - which tends to distract me as I have a limited attention span. So my kitchen generally gets overrun with a couple half full baskets of clean laundry around the table with a few piles of t-shirts, undies, and socks that have been rifled through on my way out the door to work.

For some reason this Sunday I decided that I didn't want to look at it first thing when I walked in the door any longer so I got to putting things away. Of course, it's not as simple as all that. I'm in between looks at the moment. Not uber butch, but that strappy evening dress just doesn't seem right anymore. As a result I've been buying a lot of clothes but holding on to the old ones. This leads to an input/output issue. I'm not tossing out all the dresses, but I have some outmoded shirts and trousers that need to go. And do I really need that bride's maid dress now three sizes too big for the wedding of the couple I wasn't really that close to? I've trimmed down what's in the closet to make room for what should be in the closet.

Before I completed the closet re-org project I moved on to the garage. I have a tendency to hop around, and the garage has been in my sites for some time. I finally threw out a pair of heavy, chrome, metal frame dark brown fabric armchairs. I bought them five years ago at a going out of business sale at a coffee shop and put them in the unfinished basement of my old place which served as my combination video game room, storage area, and laundry facility all under a single, bare, low watt bulb. It had its charms. In any case, I moved to my condo two years ago and these chairs have been piled up in the garage ever since taking up hot real estate in the corner. I threw these out last night, removed all the crap in that corner, and put my '82 Honda CM 450 where they were.

It's this item, my first motorcycle, that's pushed the mess in my garage to the front of my mind. It hasn't run in a year and a half, and has been literally stuck in place for some time. I sat on it for a while and remembered how much fun I had riding it around. Sure I was a little embarrassed of its age and small engine, but ol' girl is my first, and she's extremely comfy in comparison to my zippy sport bike. I need a winter project so this is going to be it. My goal is to have that bike running again. I've already started by removing the front brake last night. Ugh. It really wasn't a frozen clutch that was keeping it from moving. I've been working on that brake since I dropped that bike in '05. Sheesh. I think I'm going to just rip it off, put a drum brake on the front wheel and call it a day. It's not like the bike will cross the 70 mph threshold again. The point of the story is even though the tubed tires are rotten, and the gas in the tank hasn't been stabilized no doubt coagulating into petroleum based life forms in my carburetor I'm determined to resurrect ol' girl.

And if that doesn't work out I'll dismantle her and sell the parts.

Sunday Football segment

2007-09-23T22:10:00.000-04:00

The Colts beat the Texans today. It was a good game overall, however, the special teams scare me a little. Clint Session needs to get some tackling tips or something. From my amateur eye he looked timid. Big props to Hunter Smith for being such a gung ho tackler and a shake of the head to the rest of the guys on the field who left it to the kicker to stop the return. Seriously, I hope you're all thinking about that tonight. Manning threw well. Addai put on an air show flipping into the endzone, and Reggie Wayne had a show stopper catch, although I seem to recall that getting ruled incomplete. The refs were stingy about ruling a pass caught. But whatev. We won another division game, and join New England, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay in the 3-0 club. We'll be playing the Pats early in November here in Indy.

Before we do that though we'll be playing Monday night at Jacksonville on the 22nd of October, and I have tickets! My sister's boyfriend scored tickets for Monday night football, but he can't go so I'm flying down for the game! I'm so excited. I've never been to a Monday night game, and I haven't been to a pro game since... well high school when the Colts weren't all that awe inspiring. I need to come up with a catchy initialization for ESPN to put on a poster and get on TV. The only thing I could come up with is Eat Some Pussy Now, but I think my odds of getting that air time are low. It's a work in progress. I'll just let it come to me naturally. The faux will be done up in blue hair paint, temporary of course, and I'll don a jersey. I've got plenty of planning time. More to come.

What a difference a day makes

2007-09-19T22:03:00.001-04:00

Oh gawd, I'm going through a sobriety flip-flop. I quit consuming substances a couple months ago. Last week I toyed with the idea of indulging in alcohol again. Well, Monday rolled around and I made up my mind. I tell myself it wasn't fair. I was convinced I had sex in my future if I could just drink a little. I was right. Alcohol really fuels the sex drive. Nothing gets a person into the mood quite like a chemically affected intimacy. And I told myself, no one likes to drink to fuck alone. And thus I was rewarded for drinking with sex. howza!

So then I decide this whole sobriety thing is for the birds. Why not just go back to what I've done, avoid going overboard, and see where that gets me? I've been sitting around with those thoughts today, and I've had a little trepidation over it. The fact is, I know where that takes me, and it's the place I've been bitching about for a long time now. Oh, why don't I ever write that novel? -or- I wish I could start a project and see it all the way through. -or- Why can't I get over my intimacy issues? I know this will eventually turn into -Why am I not in a relationship?

There's the rub. My most recent chemical binges were mandated by a need for personal buffer zones between me and the world. I couldn't possibly be in a relationship after the divorce. Even when I was technically in a relationship I still wasn't there. I presented a proxy of myself to this other and went about my business in my head. I'll tell you, the chemicals really aided this duality.

Last night I went out and drank. I had a few beers. It wasn't a big deal either way. Most of my encounters with alcohol go that way which seriously confuses the situation. I have all these scenarios where I can point to having drank without trying to fulfill a need in futility and tell myself I can do this. That's the thing. I can and I can't. As long as I have that crutch available I will *always* use it. What I need to do is break the circuit entirely. Clear out and see what it is to behave like a normal person for a couple years like I initially told myself I would.

So in any case, I was convinced that I was going to continue on the path of indulgence until tonight.
Tonight, I spoke with a good friend - well, worked with is really the phrase. I spent a lot of time in blissfully brutal honesty considering what it is that I'm really looking for when I drink and how I'm only achieving the opposite of what I want.

What sucks is that I just don't think I have the personal fortitude to continue to play rugby and remain sober. I feel bad about that. I feel like I'm missing out on something that I really wanted, but if I keep looking I see how rugby isn't all that great for me. I love my brain, and I am still feeling a bit dim after that shot to my jaw from last Saturday. Perhaps, it's better to bow out while I still have the ability to bend at the waist.

The one thing I want to impart to all those who read this blog is that I love you, big drinkers! I like being sober around you while you're drunk. I like hanging out with you anyway you are. You are great, and I have never felt uncomfortable not drinking in your presence. You are good fun! I'm not confused as to who has the chemical problem. That's all me, my babies, and I'm not into making my problems the problems of others. I guess this is really for Romeo's benefit. Kisses, babe!

I imagine I'll have some more spills, slips and slides as I check out this whole sobriety thing over the next couple years. Stay tuned.

First game

2007-09-16T18:04:00.000-04:00

More on the rugby front. Thursday night I found out that I'm terrible at tackling. I kept getting deked by my teammates during my first tackling drill ever. I was pretty nervous since our first game was coming up in a couple days and tackling is a flanker's bread and butter. How is it that I could suck so much at something I thought I would take to like a duck to water?

I got some outside help from veterans on the team. I was dropping my head way early when I shouldn't be doing it at all, and I was aiming too high. Essentially, I was to focus in on my opponent's pelvis and crush it. No worries.

Friday night I went out with the gals for the Friday night ride. I went home at around midnight avoiding the bars. I had woken up that morning feeling a bit sick, and I didn't want to coax an oncoming cold.

I was nervous when I hit the field Saturday morning. I was getting last minute instructions and advice yelled at me prior to the kick off, and I was feeling less than confident that I would do well. I didn't even know if I was going to play. But as it turned out I started at flank with a strong vet helping me out. She was strategically placed at weak side, in my mind, so that she would have to cross my path to get to the action. In case I was in the wrong place she would know it and usher me to the correct position. Plus she's faster than me. It worked out well.

We lined up against Depauw. The ref informed us that they were petrified and requested that our front row work with their front row prior to the game to work out any possible issues. We were also urged to give them advice throughout the game. Even with this information I was still concerned about my own performance for the test. I didn't calm down until the ball was kicked (not to me thankfully) and we charged down the pitch with authority.

As it turned out this was an uneven match up. We held possession about 90% of the match and kept Depauw out of our 22 the entire game. That wasn't so great for working on tackling, but it helped me get comfortable with the offense which I still find bewildering. We scored try after try I don't think anyone kept score. I've never played a game so team oriented before. I scored a try, but it is nothing like scoring a goal in hockey or soccer. I was pleased, but I thought, "Well yeah, anyone would have done that who was where I was." It wasn't spectacular or anything. No the spectacle comes at the next social. When someone scores their first try it's tradition to "go zulu" at the social. The social is a beer bonging bash the home team throws for both teams and running zulu means I'm getting nekid and running around the party. I hope they have a privacy fence. Hoo Rah! I had to miss this social to run off to a wedding, but I'm sure I'll be making the run at the next event.

The game itself felt only slightly physical. I got banged up a little throughout and stepped on a couple times, but I was fine until late in the second half when I took a tremendous shot to the jaw during a tackle. I think it was with some girl's head or elbow. It was something very hard and bony. I was hit with a wave of pain that was followed by nausea. I heaved enormous gulps of air for a couple minutes, and felt a lot of concern about concussions. My jaw is still a little swollen, but I don't have any bruising on my face which is nice. For the most part the headache is gone though. I think my fears were overblown.

So that was my first rugby test. I'm pretty psyched for the next one.

Cool evening cool on the job

2007-09-12T22:10:00.000-04:00

It is a crisply fabulous evening, cool and fresh. I smell autumn around the corner. I can't wait to crawl into bed tonight. This is some mighty fine sleeping weather. Windows open, naturally. If I'm not careful I'll snooze till ten.

Last night brought a hard practice and a late start to sleep. I was a bit groggy today, which worked out more or less since the 2,000 or so employees that make up my company were carted off to Deer Creek (aka Verizon Wireless) music center for a four hour "Hooray for us!" meeting. This is a silly affair, and ultimately surreal for hump day. For the most part we dutifully donned our corporate branded apparel and shivered in the shade of the pavilion at the amphitheater watching a photo/video presentation set to music full of candid pictures of us cube jockies. We heard a speech from our CEO, a bit disappointing with all the stuttering but otherwise painless, after which was a hurried Q&A segment followed by an award ceremony for a few ass kicking employees. I work with one of the recipients, and he is in fact an ass kicker. This was followed promptly by lunch which was edible but full of starch. Back to the pavilion to watch the finalists of our own version of America's Got Talent which we use as a fund raising carrot for the United Way. I got to witness a co-worker sing some baritone aria a cappella, another sang terribly karaoke style to some Christian song that involved such enraptured love imagery I imagined it was originally written for a bride of Christ. Yet another group got up and played short selections with hand bells - only they were more like pitched cow bells. I can't explain it. Just imagine hand bells playing "When the Saints Come Marching In" only very clunky - now multiply whatever clunk you imagined by ten. Yes it's possible. Someone in middle management graced us with some wicked break dancing moves set to JT's "Sexyback" and finally we were treated to a group of line dancers grooving to this song I hear at The Ten all the time, but I have no clue what it's called. Ultimately, it was harmless, and I suppose it's good to recognize good work. It's good to get people together off site for a pat on the back, too. But the average I.T. cube monkey isn't concerned with that. At least, I'm not. I would have preferred an afternoon shooting pool or bowling or something that didn't involve sitting in the shaded outdoors. It was all very high school.

A lot about my job reminds me of high school. Not the actual work, but the mechanics of me attending my job. It's certainly not as strict, but every day I stream into a large building with a coffee in my hand and computer bag on my back. I sit in my chair and work at my desk until I have to go to a meeting which will range in utility from highly productive to worse than useless, but for the most part falls under the category of functional. I am glad that I can say my company doesn't fall into the trap of habitually scheduling meetings that do little but waste time. I occasionally pop my head up for light interaction with my co-workers. So really it's like high school meets college. I have a lot more freedom than I did in high school, but I'm still physically stuck in the same location every day until I'm released. I don't enjoy sitting still. At least I don't enjoy sitting still staring at grey/oatmeal colored cubical walls at a desk that just doesn't seem to fit right. Maybe some decorating is in order.

Today, when I got back to the office I was beat from all the extra food and wasted rah rah rah. When 5 o'clock rolled around I was crawling out the door.

It's been go go go just about every day for me for the past two weeks so I decided tonight would make a great night to do nothing but eat an enormous cheeseburger, watch a movie, and defragment my hard drive. File maintenance is like going to the dentist. I should probably do it twice a year, but I just can't be bothered. My hard drive was so full I spent an hour selecting and deleting MP3 files before I could even run the defrag. If it wasn't for this new beast of a packet analysis tool I have to install on my work laptop I'd be blissfully operating with only 3% of my hard drive free.

All this lackadaisical computing occupies me just enough to notice little else but the crickets outside my window which brings me back full circle to the weather, my clean sheets, and how these two components are going to intersect in a heavenly fashion at the Me axis. I feel my nerves along my arms and legs stretch out for that anticipated comfort. No sense in delaying this gratification.

World cups a poppin'!

2007-09-11T23:19:00.000-04:00

The 2007 Rugby Union World Cup is on, and I've only just watched my first test. Games can be viewed, after a twenty-four hour delay, online on the official ruby world cup website (rugbyworldcupvideo.com) for $3 a pop. Or one can opt to purchase all 48 games for $50. There's another package that's much pricier that includes some sort of premium content. I'm contenting myself with the pay per view route. So far so good. Streaming occasionally gets choppy. I haven't bothered to wait for an entire download. I'm assuming the servers are in the UK. I've been watching Scotland pummel Portugal. The English announcers have handled Portugal at once charitably and condescendingly. I don't know how an announcer manages to say the phrase, "Please, if you're from Portugal don't take offense, but when you have a match up between a rugby union heavyweight and a rugby minnow..." with deference but somehow the gentleman managed.

It's been fun to watch Scotland blow out a team, but my next game will have to be a closer contest. Perhaps featuring New Zealand's All Blacks. I want to see how the US do, but I'll skip their opener against England where they lost the test and a player for the rest of the tournament after he committed a dangerous tackle. I'll be interested to see how they do against Tonga tomorrow who is supposed to be a much more even match. Also we have 4 players on the US side who were born in Tonga one of whom is the nephew of the Tonga head coach. Rugby Union has a lot more nation swapping than say the soccer World Cup or the Olympics.

It's strange watching an international sport that's more or less dominated by anglophones. New Zealand and Australia are always strong contenders with Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, and South Africa putting in strong appearances. Other teams are strong, France for instance has been pretty much on the leaderboard for some time

The US men's rugby team ranked 15th are coming off of a loss from England, but people are offering their tenacious performance as evidence for their favored status in their upcoming match against 14th ranked Tonga tomorrow.. This should be a close match - and freaky. The US side has four players who were born in Tonga and one of them is the nephew of the Tonga head coach. Bum bum buuum. The US

The US Women's Soccer team went up against N. Korea and tied 2-2. It was raining cats and dogs in China where the match was held. I don't place too much on any result under such conditions - the weather, not the nation. Their next match is against Sweden on the 14th. The fourth team in this bracket is Nigeria. Ugh. It's not a cake walk. Especially since whatever happens in the US Sweden game will pretty much determine who gets to move on. Commence nail biting.

As mentioned the women's cup is held in China this year so the games come on at 5 or 8 in the morning EST. I don't have cable anyhow so it's not like I'd be able to peep them all that much. I'm looking for games online, but the offerings are slim. I've seen some sketchy deals touting satellite tv through the internet where I can watch 1,000s of satellite television stations for a one time cost of 49.95. I'll tell you whenthe first question in the FAQ is "Is this legal?" and the answer is an unsupported "Yes." I have to keep on surfing. However, it just occurred to me that ESPN is merely doing a bad job of marketing their merch without driving up page counts for google. I've been searching women's world cup matches online without a single peep from the network that carries the games, but a quick hop to their site shows me that they're airing the games for free on ESPN360. Hurrah! Now I'll have something to do tomorrow morning at work.

In my own rugby news, my first game (ahem "test") is this Saturday. I'm psyched and nervous. I'm excited to finally get on the field and see what this is really all about. Practice is one thing, but we don't engage in a lot of contact so that we might keep our bodies fresh - although tonight we did some tackling and some dropping and I managed to be clumsy around some injured teammates. At any rate, I don't have a true understanding of how much I'm going to limp afterwards. Then I'm flying off to a wedding so I'll be missing the post game fete. After every rugby match there's a social where both teams get together and drink a shit ton of beer generally hosted by the home team. Crazy.

Observations at a bar

2007-09-09T22:05:00.000-04:00

I find that I have just enough eventfulness to keep me from being overwhelmed by activity, but not enough is happening that stands out for to blog. Just enough to keep me busy from getting productively introspective.

This Thursday I watched the Colts annihilate the Saints in the NFL season opener. Looks like the Colts are still a second half team. I caught the game at Downtown Ollie's, Indy's gay sports bar, and noticed that the old gal has had some work done. The wall behind the enormous projection TV where I watched many an episode of The Price Is Right has been replaced by glass, and the windows facing Illinois have been de-blacked and now let light in. There are flat panel televisions posted everywhere, including the entrance. It looks like the main dining area carpet has been replaced, and now in one corner there is an electronic mini grand piano. Still a gay bar.

I met up with DeeDee and some ladies she knows. A gal from my rugby team showed up with a friend, and much fun was had by all. Conversation flowed. Flirty mingling was the medium of the evening. My teammate was hilarious and tres cool. Sometime during the third quarter we decided to leave the Colts to play with their food and head off to The Ten. There I received more attention in one evening than I believe I have in the past four months. Crazy. It was as if I was wearing super cosmically strong lesbian cat nip. I've been going over what caused this in the hopes that I may reproduce it. I've come up with the following list.

1. I'm not interested in getting involved with anyone. I've closed the store for an inventory audit, but as long as the lights are on and the door is locked it looks like shoppers just can't wait to get inside. I've heard it before. The second you stop looking is the second people dart for your door. I'm not particularly thrilled with this phenomenon, but what can I say? Unavailability is irresistible.

2. I was rolling with a group of attractive women. The most attractive thing to other people is for an individual to be around attractive people. I consider myself to be attractive. Depending on how I'm dressed I'm either cute, mildly hot, or at the very least presentable. But apparently being attractive requires some extra qualifiers, like attractive friends. Just how attractive is that hot chick up at the bar? Apparently, you can tell as soon as she reunites with the people she walked through the door. It's like cruising with silent visible references.

3. I spiked my hair. Normally it's in the fauxhawk - which I feel may be a little intimidating or goofy. I'm not certain how much this actually weighs in the grand scheme of things, but it's about the only factor that originates with me so my vanity is including it as a possibility.

4. I was dancing with the aforementioned group of women. Not only was I hanging out with them but I had the chance to a) demonstrate my strong hip work on the dance floor and b) demonstrate that we all pretty much find each other hot enough to dance with. Not to mention the possibility that I might have actually made up my mind for the evening. Scarcity mentality sets in for the ladies around and the reaction involves making a move to at least take a chance for the evening. Ah, for once this actually worked in my favor rather than me being the one making the panicky play for fear of missing my opportunity. Well, it almost worked in my favor. I'm not interested in getting involved with anyone so all the other points are moot.

All in all it was a good evening. I met some new people and got better acquainted with people I've previously met.

Muscle armor

2007-09-05T22:36:00.000-04:00

As I'm playing what many regard to be a brutal sport that does not indulge in anything more protective than a mouth guard I've decided to take some precautions. I want to keep from getting my block knocked off in a game so I decided to hit the gym today and lift for the first time in years. Lightly building up muscle in vulnerable places will reduce my risk of injury. Well, that and an unwavering focus on flexibility. And I can enjoy the dual purpose of becoming a more effective tackler by getting stronger. For these goals I've taken the suggestion of focusing on my shoulders. I expect my shoulders to make a lot of contact. At least that's the goal.

If anyone has any good rotator cuff protection strategies or delt building exercises I'm all ears. I did shoulder raises, lat raises, shoulder presses, and something simply called a raise where the weight travels along the sides of my trunk. I don't want to be the gal who injures herself training to get strong before gameday so I didn't go beyond ten pounds per hand. I have to thank H's recent injury for this essential caution. This, core work and some lunges (If I'm going to have lift day then I can't skip lunges) rounded out my workout. It feels good. I'm tired, but I don't feel strained. I only did two sets of ten for each shoulder exercise. Perhaps I should stick to the weight I'm at and add a set. Suggestions? I don't need to bulk up. I just need to get the muscles that I do have nice and strong. And I cannot risk pushing myself too hard in the gym.

Only time will tell if any of this will be effective. I may be playing as early as next weekend depending on game time, but I'll definitely be playing the following weekend. I can't wait to get out there on the pitch.

Middlemarch read

2007-09-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

I enjoy words spelled identically, but pronounced differently like read (red) and read (reed).

I've been avoiding the blog as I've been fervently reading Middlemarch to the end. Eliot's broad spectrum of characters is only outstripped by the depth of each individual portrayal. The plot is gripping and yet bordering inconsequential. Because of its size, large cast, and time period I keep wanting to draw comparisons to War and Peace. I imagine Eliot saying, your Russian strife is all fine and good, but look what I can do with a little Victorian intrigue. It would be fantastic since they were published so closely together. I don't want to give the impression the story lines of Middlemarch are insubstantial, but the political aspects of the novel are handled quite lightly although undeniably present.

All this is doing is forcing me to actually take another look at War and Peace. Ugh. I think I'd rather not... but I'll follow a laugh just about anywhere. I'm intrigued by Eliot's depiction of kind and slightly doddering Mr. Brooke running for office. I once saw a Monty Python add describing "upper class nitwittery". As a result my mind turned to Monty Python often when Mr. Brooke spoke.

I recommend this book to anyone who is amused by scandals centered around questionable lineage, religious hypocrisy, bird's eye views into the minds of participants in strained marriages, and passionate idealism. (Dorothea ranks on my short list of all time favorite characters). I had been tipped off to the very element I enjoyed most about the book so I looked for it. Eliot treats all of her characters with care while making true to form individuals. The foibles of human nature aren't lamented but expressed and evenly so. The book is full of great quotes, but a rather popular one is, "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are." That is the overarching sentiment of the book consistently displayed.

Rugby... It seems so obvious now

2007-08-29T23:29:00.000-04:00

In Scotland I roomed with a girl who played rugby for UNC. She was sharp as a tack, cute as a button, kind to animals and the homeless – that sort of thing, and she could drink me under the table on a hangover. Her existence convinced me that rugby was a viable sport for me, and I’ve toyed with the idea of signing up off and on ever since. Last night I went to my first rugby practice with the local team, the Indianapolis Hoydens. I've played different full contact sports such as hockey and tae kwon doe, but there's something about running with a ball in my hands and hitting people in the great outdoors that I really enjoy.

Allow me to offer a brief explanation of rugby from one who only understands it in the briefest of ways. The mechanics of rugby are at once familiar and foreign. American football shares a lot with rugby. The ball is moved up the field towards your team's goal (in football it's an endzone). Points are scored for literally touching the ball down on the ground which scores you a "try", 5 points. After scoring a try you get to kick the ball through uprights for extra points. A player may also kick the ball through the uprights directly, but that's rare. There is tackling in rugby and the team is pretty much divided into two segments, the backs and the forwards or the pack. The backs are small agile, and the top scorers. The forwards, or packees, are burly and do the grunt work of moving the ball forward. If you've ever seen rugby before undoubtedly you've witnessed a bunch of people tightly bound together ramming their bodies into an opposing group of people equally bound. This is called a scrum and is rugby's jump ball or face off. The forwards engage in the scrum while the backs, well, hang back. The idea is to get the ball back to your own team's backs who will advance the ball up the field.

A scrum

So all of this has elements with which I'm at least vaguely comfortable as I can draw comparisons to other sports I've played. But then it gets weird.

Thou shalt not throw the ball forward.

I knew this going into practice, but I didn’t understand the impact until I actually saw it implemented. Because of that little rule the act of moving the ball down the field is totally turned on its ear. Soccer, Football, hockey, basketball. Think of how much different these sports would be if you couldn't send the respective object of play directly forward. In rugby the ball must be thrown backwards and only run or kicked forward. This creates a constant looping pattern whereby the team with possession runs in a diagonal line behind the person with the ball. As the ball is passed backwards the person who had possession peels off from the top of the line back behind the ball and the diagonal looping back to the right or left. Lather, rinse, repeat. I imagine the aerial view resembles a rotating hive moving at angles. This is all happening while the opposing team is coming on in an attempt to gain the ball by brutal means.

Rugby has other idiosyncrasies. When the ball goes out of bounds (out of touch) it is returned into play with a throw-in similar to soccer. However, the reception of the ball is… well, the two teams line up perpendicularly to the touch line. This creates a “tunnel”. The ball is thrown down the middle into the air as burly people raise smaller people up into the air to catch it. This is known as lifting, and it looks totally wild – a celebration that the ball has come back into play.

When we did full field drills I played flanker. I believe this is the position that I've been waiting for all my sporting life. I'm actively encouraged to hit people. I'm not stuck in the front of the scrum. As soon as the scrum's out I peel off lickity split to chase after the ball in support of my team. I hit people after they’ve hit one of my teammates, or I receive the ball and either pass it off smartly or get hit by an opponent when I will hand the ball back to a teammate while I'm on the ground. This running into and tackling of people for forward motion is called a ruck. A ruck is what you’d get if play didn’t stop after the ball was downed in American football.

I’ve heard that soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans and rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen. I know a fair amount of good hearted ruggers, and I’ll say there’s something to that.

Letter to a maybe thief

2007-08-22T19:45:00.001-04:00

Some time ago, January '07 to be more precise, I was burgled. Someone broke into my home and stole my old PlayStation2 and newly purchased Wii. The memory card on the ps2 was invaluable as it held about three years worth of gaming on it. At the time I was thankful nothing else was taken and furious and scared. The thief didn't just take my toys and run though. A woman's high school class ring was left behind. Creepy. Discovering the ring scared me more than noticing the lack of possessions. Someone very real and tangible entered my home and left something of, presumably, herself. I have to admit I just assumed the thief was a guy. Perhaps it was a guy who just left someone's class ring behind. But why? Who the hell wears those after high school anyhow? And why bring it to a burglary and then take it off only to leave it behind? So many questions. All I could do was address this embodiment of the thief cast in a stainless steel hunk of metal with a green semi-precious stone shining on the shelf next to where my consoles used to rest.

After the burglary I kept most of what I generously call an entertainment center just the way it was the night it got violated. It took me months before I dusted off the hand prints that were left on the stereo tuner. I told myself that I hadn't really gotten attached to the Wii yet and really the biggest loss was the memory card on the other system since I had so much time logged on it. I was purposefully missing the point. I was stuck. While watching countless hours of television I caught myself staring out my back window subconsciously on guard duty in case the scoundrel should return and I'd have to defend my things or myself. The idea that I had to actively hold my home horrified me. I was in a mild panic most nights. But I ignored it. I couldn't admit to myself that this event had left a mark on me that I would eventually have to accept and process so I focused on the fear of a possible future recurrence.

Of the wounds that can be healed time can heal them all because eventually one has to do the things one did when one was wounded, and in my case this is as simple, (and sometimes infuriatingly difficult) as living my life. And a lot of time has passed since that night. I feel secure in my own home again. I eventually replaced my PS2 with the new slimline version with built-in ethernet adapter and even unlocked a good portion of my old games on a fresh memory card. The summer has left me feeling free to leave my back door open -although I never leave it unlocked and unattended anymore. I feel a lot more like I did when I first purchased the place and just about every day brought some new joyful home related task. It feels good. I have reclaimed. But I still haven't replaced my Wii.

This all came up today as I was doing some virtual e-mail housekeeping and happened upon the e-mail address of my Wii. Each Wii has a hard coded e-mail address - sorta. The Wii has to allow communication to another "account" and the account in turn has to accept the Wii. Since I'm a bit geeky that's one of the first things I did with my console.

So here I have my Wii's unalterable e-mail information, and an e-mail account registered with said device. I have a hard time imagining the person who is currently enjoying my console has kept the original information on the Wii, but it's very easy to wish for it. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone behave -ahem- carelessly. These days I'm in a strong place - strong enough to address the person who now has my stuff. So, today I sent an e-mail to my old Wii. I did, after all, stay in line overnight outside of a Best Buy with a thermos, blanket, and a chair. That was a great time and I wanted to reconnect with it in some way. I am claiming that Wii even if I don't currently possess it.

I won't retype it all here. That's between me and the current possessor of the console. I have no idea what the relationship between the current holder of the Wii and my thief may be. I am getting more and more curious about this ring, though. So I'll part with a message to the original owner:

Beth, graduate of Martinsville High School Class of 1984 who participated in gymnastics, your ring was left in my home. Would you care to have it back? I'd be happy to trade.

Work and Dvorak

2007-08-21T21:28:00.000-04:00

I set off on a mad dash to make it to the whole foods grocer prior to their closing this evening and wound up with something to say. Prior to hopping in the car I was pooped. A little about my job. I have an on-call rotation with four others which involves taking every problem great and small that comes our way and fixing it. Immediately. For 168 hours. I work with network infrastructure which means that every little problem appears enormous to our corporate customers who in some cases have created the problem from the start. Essentially, it's like throwing someone out of the city gates for a week to fight off, placate, or confound the Mongol hordes and repair the damage they wreak upon said walls while the rest of the troops focus on designing better walls and weapons ostensibly to make guard duty easier. There are sweet times when very little is happening, but this week isn't shaping up that way. I couldn't even describe how I felt I was so worn out from ten hours of non-stop multi-tasking, troubleshooting, and downright arguing with a little bit of line-in-the-sand drawing for emphasis. I looked at my cat and said, "I have nothing of interest to report." and decided to do some shopping chores.

As I was pulling out of my garage the gentle voice of a WFYI announcer was describing the beginnings of the serious pursuit of formal music education in the US which was the lead-in for Dvorak's 9th symphony. In the past I have described my ear as unsophisticated and immature. I rarely linger on the 2nd and 3rd movements of any orchestral work as they are -slow- which has always meant -boring- to me. Few first movements light me on fire (although I can listen to the first five notes of Eroica and turn off the stereo), but tonight I was in the car and it was on the radio. I enjoy D's Ninth quite a bit although the piece definitely falls into the category of skip to the fourth movement.

The weather was warm, the sun was thinking about setting, and I was listening to some of the most beautiful music ever written serving the double purpose of a sonic mirror for a young nation which wrote its own rules still simple in so many principles and of a driving overture for the most tumultuous, historically significant, scientifically advancing, catapult ride that has been the 20th century. For a brief moment I thought it would be a pity to get out of the car to hit a grocery store. Chance kept rolling sevens, and as it turned out the store was closed. I would continue my listening.

Indiana is at its most beautiful in the late summer at sunset. For reasons I don't comprehend the sky can light up with every color of the spectrum between dusk and twilight. At the point the 2nd movement intoned through my speakers with clear opening chords the evening had large patches of pinkish red against light blue streaked with wisps of clouds.

I turned back to my street telling myself I'll listen to this when I'm not working on something else. I have a good copy of it. Now I can listen to the whole thing. But I'll probably hold off until next week.

Happy happy happy birthday - a belated blog entry

2007-08-20T19:45:00.000-04:00

I've been rather sick of late - nasty congestion and all - just in time for my vacation leading up to my big 3-0 birthday! My continued neglect of this blog hasn't had a chance to bother me too much I've been so busy. Where do I begin?

I took a few days off from work since my birthday was upon me and taking vacation worked out pretty well with my work schedule. I spent that time going out mingling in smokey bars which proved to be my downfall. I got hit with a sinus infection Thursday which I ignored. I was too busy with birthday affairs to be inconvenienced with a cold. I told myself to eat a lot of spicy food and see if that helps anything. Perhaps it will go away... Right. In any case, Thursday I spent with the fam. My younger sister and her beau paid me a surprise visit for dinner. They've been on a whirlwind tour of the midwest prior to their moving to Florida. I thought they would be unable to celebrate, but they pulled it out for the big day. I received motorcycle themed presents from my parents and some cherry jam from Michigan.

Friday was the actual anniversary of my birth, and I celebrated with a facial at an Aveda salon. My facial expert was highly informed she herself reported often and a bit shrill. However, I can't argue with results. And really, a facial that starts with me hopping into a bath robe and receiving a foot bath can't be all that bad. I ended up buying a boatload of essential facial products and pledged to go on a regimen that surprisingly enough includes repeat trips to the spa for more facials. My inner cynic is telling me that this is just a scam to get me to buy expensive soap and "sonic treatments", but I'm letting go of that voice in an effort to combat my adult acne which I'm told should be totally clear within 6 months. I can give it that much time and money. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. I'm excited to go back when I'm not so congested to enjoy the aroma therapy.

Since my massage was cancelled the prior day I decided to finally scratch an itch I've had since I was young and do something wild with my hair. I had called a few hair salons to see if they could fit me in for an appointment Friday afternoon and if anyone on their staff knew how to create a faux-hawk. That's right. I lopped off my locks for a spikey ridge down the middle. Shockingly, all the stylists I spoke to asked me to describe the fauxhawk which left me a little concerned for my hair. Especially, since I ended up making an appointment at a salon that had never seen me or my hair. I had a moment of panic prior to the procedure when I perceived my stylist's reaction to my new hair cut was less than warm. Her shoulders slumped, her face fell, and she quickly asked for a photograph. Apparently, the receptionist had not clued her into what was going down. While I was sitting at the head sink to get a shampoo I was thinking "I can end this right now. This isn't such a good idea." But I stuck it out, and I'm glad for it. I now have crazy short hair that can be sculpted into all sorts of different ways. At times I look like Yunsung from Soul Calibur 2.

I was a little concerned about how I could pull this look off at my fairly conservative office, but my concerns were unfounded. I can sculpt this just about anyway I wish, and for the office I'm going for a slightly edgier version of Annette Benning circa the American President. But as far as Friday was concerned I was straightup coxcombing it with a little punk 'tude in tight blue jeans and girly Honda motorcylce T with red shoulders and red sneakers. I hopped on my gixxer and rolled off to the Rathskellar to meet up with friends HR, sister, beau, and A for Beer-biddly beer and brats. After the Rathskellar - where I had a fabulous run-in with an old college prof we were off to the Metro to meet up with more people and meet some new ones along the way. I met some fabulous guys through the nurse who just happened to be at the Metro. And DeeDee showed up with her latest project in hand. It was time to go off to the Ten.

By the time we got there my voice had already dropped an octave due to cold weather and smokey conditions. I was feeling a bit wretched, but I was determined to sally forth! Afterall, what's Saturday for if not recovery? I got into some line dancing for the first time ever, and of course, lil sis was down for that. And was I glad to have stuck around. Instead of the booty shaking contest this Friday had a wet T-shirt contest. And my oh my the hottest straight girl in the bar decided to kick up her heels and disrobe - quite literally. She changed at our table, and was given a talking to by a staff heavy. She claimed that she had never stripped before, but she was a natural. Vicky, the MC queen, had to remind her often to watch it as she was nearly tearing her tank top right off. And after she won the contest she gave me a birthday lap dance. How sweet. Straight girls slay me. I'm not particularly attracted to them in any meaningful way, but I'm not above the titillation they provide.

In a rare turn of events I drove HR home because he was trashed. I was glad to do it. My voice was then at frog levels and I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I paid for it Saturday, and well, I'm still paying for it, but I had a great time.

Market Days - Saturday

2007-08-15T10:33:00.000-04:00

So one thing has led to another and now I'm confronted with the neglect of my blog. I have this feeling of accountability for my online presence like it's some electronic pet that will die if I don't "feed" it. Worse yet, I've experienced plenty of bloggable events since this weekend and I see the tales piling up before me.

This past weekend was spent in Chicago exclusively along the L red line. I went up for Market Days, an enormous GLBT festival held in Boys' town. Halsted St. is closed to vehicular traffic for six blocks from Belmont up to Addison and is lined with tents selling all kinds of goods from t-shirts to tequila (frozen with fruit juice served on a stick!). And the mad swarm of people filling the street is breathtaking - literally. Saturday afternoon people were packed in so close there were times when I couldn't move in any direction. All I could do was wait for traffic a few feet over to clear and make my way through. It was glorious! To be in the eye of a pink storm is a wonderful experience for many reasons, but the vibe alone is worth it. I haven't been called baby, honey and sweetie so many times in my life. Events like these are powerful affirmations, and seemingly everyone in attendance feels friendlier. I know I did.

I only wished there were more ladies out. There were clusters of women running around, but they had places to be. They were going somewhere or doing something that wasn't whatever it was they were doing at that precise moment in time. I needed information on where the girls party in Chicago and my attempts to approach these fleeting ladies left me feeling like an interloper. I was informed that I was in the place to be for women, too. Looking around that didn't seem to be the case. Don't get me wrong. Boys are beautiful. I enjoy a ripped chest as much as the next gal, but when it comes to a dance partner I want to get down with a member of the fairer sex. Perhaps, they were afraid I was trying to crash their group. Perhaps, I need to work on my approach. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

More and more I feel groups of lesbians are like groups of nymphs; world weary, quicker than lightning in their own element, and protected by a powerful deity. In many ways I feel like an insecure version of Pan with cloven hooves, bare breasted and twigs in my hair approaching the handmaidens of Artemis and fearing they will light off and report my behavior as a grievous recrimination to their lady. I need to get whatever mojo that ugly fucker had going for him because this self-doubt thing is cramping my style.

But this is about Chicago - not my insecurities - well OK. It's about whatever comes out of my head. Back to the windy city, I met up with the gang at Sidetrack. Men were flirting and drinking and carousing and having a grand old time shoulder to shoulder in a sea of humanity with music blaring and videos playing on flat screens around the bar. Again, all wonderful to see. FN, HR, Blanche, Romeo, and Mom were all at the front of the house strapped with fans compliments of gAyT&T. There were also a couple others from Indy whom I've met before, but I've not yet come up with blog names for them. Fitness Nerd informed us all that the crowd was comprised almost exclusively of people from the Midwest and perhaps most of the locals were simply taking the day off to avoid the crazies.

Mom and I ended up taking a leave in search of water and a little breathing room when we came upon Beatnix, a store where even the tallest drag queen can find a pair of ruby red slippers or a silk kimono in her size. My next trip to Chicago is going to involve a credit card and a shopping frenzy. The t-shirts are so funny how can I refuse? And seriously, I've not found another location where I actually want to accessorize - a talent I've not nurtured. I picked up a shirt from a street vendor that states, "The best way to get over him is to get under me." with a silhouette of a hot lady in repose in the middle. Faboo.

Eventually we all wandered back to their hotel south of the party site for naps and workouts. I got to reunite myself with my favorite institution, Jamba Juice and talked with Romeo for a while. Eventually, I made it back to my own accommodations to meet up with DeeDee at the Chicago International Hostel. shudder.

The CIH is the first hostel I've stayed in State side so I don't have any North American frame of reference, but I know bad when I see it. I have to say after reading reviews of the place I wasn't all that surprised when the gentleman behind the counter couldn't find the reservation DeeDee had placed online. I did what I could to remove my own corporate mindset and personal ideals of service as the kind middle-aged man doddered about behind the counter trying to find the reservation. I didn't get the impression he knew where to look to begin with. I mentioned he was kind, and it is somewhat accurate. He somewhat owned responsibility for losing the reservation and offered me a bed in a dorm room which was the original arrangement at the start. I was alright with this.

Charitable reviews of the CIH mention the "fun and funky decor". This is code for mismatched mishmash of smelly items purchased from various estate sales of old ladies who have passed away. Turning the corner from the front desk selling an assortment of instant foods such as mac and cheese and ramen noodles one encounters a Mediterranean scene painted on the wall behind a plaster cast sculpture of a woman holding a water jug. I got the impression that at one point in time water flowed through the sculpture, but now it was dry and still. There are two sets of track lighting above the sculpture one of which works. The common area is painted in blue and the furniture therein is covered with white sheets. On the south wall hangs a combination world map and international clock that no longer works. It's about eight feet wide, three feet tall, and looks to have been made in the 60s. Everyone in the common area appeared to be silent and glass eyed from traveling. The front stoop was far more hopping, but to my own loss I was trying to either get going or get to bed whenever I passed through. When DeeDee and I had changed for the evening we were out of there lickity split.

Dinner was pizza at Renaldi's - wonderful - followed by a caffeine stop and the whole gang was off to Sidetrack. The line to get in was long, but that allowed us to watch the unfolding of a street drama starring a fat, drunk, belligerent man and a couple police officers armed with hand cuffs and a golf cart. We had a good time at his expense led by Fitness Nerd. I kept switching from joining in with quips of my own and voicing my distaste at calls for the tazer. I am inconstant and often I fail to get jokes when my own seriousness gets in the way. On a trip to find an ATM (the line was so long we had ample time to walk off and look for banking options) DeeDee spied women going into Spin and suggested we go there. I refused stating that Sidetrack should have women, too, andthat I wanted to hang with the group for a bit. And I did enjoy chilling with my posse, but she had the right idea as I would soon find out. We returned to the line and eventually entered the club.

As the day continued the crowds got bigger and the space got tighter. That trend was not broken at Sidetrack at night. However, bar service was really speedy. I wonder what kind of bank the bartenders made that day. Ugh, I can't even imagine working a shift though. The group broke up, wandered about and mingled, reunited and repeated. When we're all out and about we expand and contract like heavenly bodies, each individual a planet with his or her own specific gravity. Eventually, we all make it back to the group's own solar system huddled around a star of familiarity and common experiences. Romeo was the first to cut out followed by Blanche, H, and Mom. I was buzzing on Red Bull and ready to go shake my booty. H gave me directions to Charlie's and FN, DeeDee and I set out for the after hours dance club.

Charlie's is a lot like Gregg's in Indy. They even have line dancing until 2am. Rather than naked men on the video screens Charlie's has a text message board. One can send a text to a number where it is then sent to the video screens throughout the bar. Oh yes, all the different combinations of good and bad you can imagine came out. This club was the most packed to date. Dancers on the floor were topless, sweaty, and gropey. Occasionally, a smoke machine would fill the floor to such degree that visibility was 0. I could not see my hand in front of my face, and the air was filled with white. The white outs were created to encourage more groping I'm sure, but unfortunately, I was not to participate in such matters. The ladies who were at Charlie's were most definitely straight. I actually approached one lady in particular offering to buy her a drink and received a confused look followed by a pity smile. sigh. Getting off the dance floor proved to be difficult. Imagine a car wash only substitute men's chests for brushes and sweat for soapy water. DeeDee described it as a re-birth. It was a tidge icky.

This is all just day one. I need to stop for now. More later.

Gay debates and the ultimate POTUS

2007-08-09T22:56:00.000-04:00

The gay debates have just come to a close. Tonight, the Human Rights Campaign and Logo, a gay themed MTV station, put on a gay oriented debate for presidential candidates. It ended up being a Democrats only gathering as all Republican candidates declined the opportunity. I'm not a fan of politicians in general, and most "electable" candidates have concentrated doses of all the qualities I dislike. They strike me as liars who change their answers according to their audience. The increased pace of media coverage and more over the accessibility of said coverage the Internet has driven evens things out and holds individuals accountable for what they say even when they have the illusion of a home field advantage as Mr. Lott and more recently Ms. Coulter have found. What do we get as a result of this total coverage? Candidates who drone on with an innocuous, boring, base-shoring message. The candidate who can repeat him or herself the most times, doesn't anger anyone, looks attractive, and not suffer brain fade at the end of the race wins. Useless.

Tonight, the usual happened. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards were strong, charismatic, and didn't say anything to rock the boat. They are taking the tactic of attacking Don't Ask Don't Tell which is totally safe for Republican leaning swing voters and it shows some support for the gay community. The military can't be all too choosey right now. And DADT is really just about the lamest piece of playground legislature available. Kucinich and Gravel (I didn't even know he was running) were honest and open. I'm sure they are viewed as radical although they're really just comfortable with humanity. In my eyes Kucinich is a loon only because he wants non-profit health care. Not because he espouses the notion that love conquers all. And Bill Richardson - one of my favorite politicians prior to tonight - just flopped. I'll have to give him a pass. He's a hard working guy. He has a strong record. I don't know why he performed feebly tonight, but he did.

Perhaps I'm a dreamer. The candidates that try to stick to the middle drive me nuts. I know I see issues as being right or wrong. Good or bad. I'm told that this is an unrealistic ideal (phooey). So candidates that have something on their minds and share it really appeal. Of course, these candidates tend to be viewed as unelectable. I say viewed as because that's all it is. If everyone who said, "I'd vote for so-and-so but so-and-so can't win" actually voted for so-and-so the odds would certainly tip. But even after locating a dark horse, enlightened candidate it's most likely that I won't agree with all of his or her platform. Even candidates who are wonderfully genuine, such as Dennis Kucinich, may not punch all my buttons. Kucinich wants non-profit health care. This drives me crazy. Oh Dennis, I love love, too, but I'm a capitalist. I won't be calling you the morning after so don't come a calling tonight.

In the spirit of the debates (entitled The Visible Vote '08) I'm going to write up my dream candidate.

My dream candidate would be a bastion for reducing government and increasing individual freedoms like Ron Paul almost is (he's against gay marriage and abortion rights. I can't let that go.)

Like Paul and Kucinich my dream candidate would bring focus on the United States and not the United jihadist front. I'm not saying we ignore those who would do us harm, but let's try to focus on defense. Further, as distasteful, immoral, and wrong as terrorists are they are not human rats to be exterminated.

My candidate would be real about personal liberty like Dennis Kucinich. Senator K was the only candidate who handled the gay question perfectly. Really it's one question framed many ways: Do you recognize homosexuals as human beings with inalienable rights? The question is answered in the telling (homosexuals are humans so duh). It's a non-issue. The people who would like it to be an issue - and have created this issue - do so against the rights of others and should, by all constitutional accounts, not be allowed to continue. Seriously, I want to ask why are we still talking about this? Oh yeah. There are a lot of misguided individuals in this country who don't understand what it is to have personal freedoms and how that doesn't only extend to their personal in-group. Unfortunately, many of those misguided individuals appear to have a lot of power.

My dream candidate would answer all questions directly - even ones that put him or her in a bad light. Again, this is something that needs to be put in the forefront. We ask presidential hopefuls a question concerning subject x and they respond with a pat response about subject y. A person can't run a Burger King that way. How do we think they can run a country with that kind of verbal smoke and mirrors?

My dream candidate would be viewed as electable - mostly because the majority of US citizens would embrace this bold leadership style. The majority of US citizens would recognize that personal freedoms are to the benefit of all. A community is made of individuals. That which benefits the individual will benefit a community. One can't ask the individual to sacrifice for the community. That makes no sense. And a community can't sacrifice for an individual since it's all comprised of individuals.

Someday we'll recognize that the "give and take" between the people and the government is just robbing Peter to pay Paul in circles with interest. Until then, I guess we'll just keep throwing darts at the board or worse, pick the person most likely to win.

2007-08-08T21:52:00.000-04:00

All activity must be indoors for the next couple days. It is sweat-down-your-ass-crack hot out there. I decided to cool off by doing some essential shopping prior to this weekend's trip to Market Days on Halstead Street in Chicago this weekend. I'm so excited I went out and bought a 40 dollar t-shirt simply because it screams sex. Part of me balked at that price tag for a t-shirt, but I then asked myself what price would I pay for a t-shirt that was guaranteed to get me laid? I didn't have to imagine a number since my feet had already walked me up to the register. I also picked up a sling bag from Eddie Bauer and a pair of clam digger jeans. The clam diggers -heh- were a little disappointing when I got them home. They are not cut for a woman of my ample thighs and ass and relatively small waistline. That's the last time I try to play beat the clock in a fitting room. I wish I wasn't so quick to take off the tag.

The weather is unfortunate at the moment, but it's going to be cooler in the windy city. I've located what is reportedly the girls' town which is Andersonville located around Clark and Foster. Anyone who knows where to go please send me in the right direction. I'm planning on hitting some clubs with DeeDee and perhaps her friend on Saturday night. Although the main event looks to be the following Friday at Circuit for a ChixMix production. I don't know if I'll make it out, but it's a goal.

Basic Bach

2007-08-07T20:41:00.000-04:00

I read on a friend's blog today a quote from George Eliot: "It's never too late to be what you could have been." I was so touched that I had to go out and buy Middlemarch at Borders today at lunch. It helped that work wasn't really holding my attention. While I was there I picked up Glen Gould playing the Bach Goldberg Variations and Solti conducting selections from Matthaus Passion. Perhaps the heat is getting to me. I've never enjoyed Bach, but today I thought I should give it a go. I've undergone a total detoxification of all chemicals stronger than coffee and I reasoned that my new found sobriety would help me appreciate the composer I've always seen as a little simple. I am told by numerous Bach fans that it is his clarity that makes him so endearing and really with all the linear motion Bach is far from simple. Whatever, I'd shrug. I prefer more turmoil and tension making that resolution all the sweeter. I prefer Liszt and Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Swoopy. Brooding. Triumphant. Emotional. I told people that my ear was too immature for Bach and that was fine by me.

I listened to the Goldberg Variations on my way back to the office, and found myself rather pleased with my purchase. There's probably something to the context: driving on a sunny day with heavy puffy clouds hanging in the sky like enormous air cows, surrounded by trees on either side of a small road, and the crisp sound of Gould's treatment of music that for me has always conjured images of hiking. I imagine Darwin listened to Bach in his head as he was going about his scientific research. Bach is musical lemonade, and on a day like today with a heat index hovering around 106 degrees Farenheit every possible relief counts. And Glen Gould really is a monster. He tears through the piece and when his left hand starts moving on a separate line it's such a treat.

I still haven't cracked Middlemarch (but that will soon be rectified) and the Passion remains unheard today. I'm happy to be enjoying a piece of music that I've merely endured in the past. The switch has been flipped.

Sweet sweat!

2007-08-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

Last night was a blast starting with three wonderful women I had just met through my buddy DeeDee. We fell in a wide spectrum of personalities on the social and fun side of things. One woman had a great deal of resort style vacation experience with an appreciation for pampering (and really who doesn't?) and another was getting ready to shave her hair short for a hiking trip through Peru. I ran into the other tech geek (there is, thankfully, generally another person in any given group of four or five who groks I.T.) while the rest assembled had to eventually wrench the conversation back into the human world. And it was such a treat to run into a nurse with ER experience. Throwing a party blending a bunch of people who haven't met before? Be sure to have a nurse on the guest list. The stories are priceless.

Oh so different and yet we all ordered the chicken tika masala of varying degrees of spiciness.

After dinner was duckpin bowling, the beautiful love child between contemporary bowling and skee-ball. (I'm conveniently ignoring that duckpin predates the big pin variety.) The lanes in town are super retro. The decor is blonde wood furniture with green vinyl trim. Heavy ceramic ashtrays are built into the ball return system, and the lanes are a bit warped with seems in the floor sticking up a tidge here and there amidst patches of dirt. Due to its antique nature it's not the kind of sport for the fiercely competitive, and it comes highly recommended for hang out time prior to shaking your groove thing on a Saturday night. DeeDee, who took much abuse for her Chaplinesque bowling style, blew the rest of us out of the water with a score of 63.

After a shuffling of cars, a general thinning of our numbers, and a meeting of new people - all young men off to the leather bar - we headed for Talbott St. I don't even know how to categorize this place any longer. Groups of straight girls have shown up in the past, but they seem to have brought their straight mens now as well. It's owned by a lesbian, but not a lot are present although I'm assured that it is otherwise on evenings when I'm not there. Saturday night is drag night on the side Legends stage, and the main dance floor was crammed with sweaty, topless men gyrating with blinkers to thumping techno. There were a few power bottoms displaying some serious ab work under paper thin twinks on boxes dispersed towards the DJ booth setup on the stage at the head of the floor. I wasn't drinking, but I had guzzled a double latte at 10pm and followed that with a red bull around midnight. After the 12:30 drag show, which naturally started at 1, I had pushed through the caffeinated edginess and was simply wired. The nurse and I were dancing with such abandon that someone asked DeeDee if we were rolling. My shirt was drenched and my jeans were sticky by the time we headed out into the relative relief of the muggy morning. Mission accomplished!

DeeDee's boys arrived back at the "Gay Ghetto" around the same time we did and were off for some food. What night out is complete without a trip to Peppy Grill? I couldn't refuse, but I should have chosen something other than a BLT and OJ. (I'll blame my I.T. job for my predilection for initialized foodstuffs) Ugh. It's still sitting in my tummy funny. Again, I got to meet new people who were much fun.

Cutting this off, the sun is shining in earnest for the first time in days. I must go out and get some of that.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the blog

2007-08-04T12:12:00.000-04:00

Now I too shall blog. I've decided to get with the times and start posting. Yes, I'm in between gen X and Y and still this is my first blog entry outside of that medium known as myspace. I even work in the tech sector and have for years. The way I initially experienced blogging set me off in a negative way. When I first came across the concept of blogging I thought it was a crap idea thinking of it as an online journal. Who posts ones most secret thoughts for the entire world to sift through and consume? Furthermore, would I want to read the fruit of what I assumed to be an extreme exhibitionist mind? I had caught glimpses of the web during its wild west phase reading the products of rolling eyed lunatics with their conspiracies, the gentle helpful geeks with their measured explanations, the humorists whose comedic style could not be tolerated on late night cable, the brilliant and socially backward all assembled in this electronic frontier. I was happy to laugh at their hijinks or learn from their help pages but I didn't actually want to read their diaries.

When my first friend fell to blogging I couldn't even bring myself to read it. The process felt invasive, like sifting through her garbage in a hotel room after spring break. I didn't need to know. Eventually, more and more of my friends - excellent writers all - started blogging. Still I resisted. The mechanism seemed bizarre. This is a broadcast sent out to all and sundry. I'm not all and sundry. I'm an individual and perhaps my communication with said friends should be more on a personal level. Feeling a bit miffed (you'd tell *anyone* that? I thought I was special!) I chose not to read. Anyhow, I was already getting the inside scoop actually hearing my friends recount these stories over the phone. I read a few posts here and there, but that voyeuristic feeling lingered. The transition from interlocutor to narrator was driving me a little batty. I have a sister who blogs on extended travels. It's an excellent read. I've always thought that was what blogging was all about - Can't talk now. This is what I'm up to. Catch up with you later. My life simply isn't that interesting.

Eventually, it was vanity that brought me around. Last night at a birthday party another friend told me that he had given me a blog name of Xena lesbian princess or something to that effect. I was flattered not just because I love the idea of being associated with Lucy Lawless, but that he had written about me. I had to see what he said. This morning after a slew of offline journalling I read his blog over a cup of tea looking for traces of myself. I either couldn't find it or he hadn't written the entry yet, but I was absorbed by the entries. I found them funny and honest and well - refreshing. It was like reading a magazine published for and by a specific clique. He has light entries and entries with plenty of sturm und drang, and at the end of it all I didn't think any less of him or think he was an exhibitionist. I was glad he had written it, and I was glad to have read it.

So, now I have a better appreciation for the blogosphere. It doesn't replace any dearly held communication mechanics. It doesn't aggrandize idiocy anymore than the reader allows. Really it adds to personal interaction giving people a chance to catch up with each other - and oh how helpful when it comes to the shifting schedule.

So now I'm off to hit the road and enjoy the day.