Fun and Games Dept

It was recently announced that we have an Olive Garden and a Moe’s being built not too far from home. I’m excited about the Moe’s; I have been to one only once or twice but I remember being able to eat relatively healthy and the food being good. It’s not Chipotle, but it’s a good substitute.

I’m kind of surprised that Olive Garden is coming to the area. With the very large Italian population in the area, Olive Garden always felt that it would not be worth their while to compete with the locally owned Italian restaurants. They must have changed their minds when they saw the hotels going up in the area and figured that folks would want familiar.

I like Olive Garden once in a while. Many shriek that it’s basically “boil in a bag” food but I’ve had some boil in a bag food in my day and I found it quite good. I’m always chided for the fact that I will eat just about anything that is put in front of me; perhaps this skill works to my advantage at Olive Garden. I do like their wine, though. Now that I think about it, I seem to best recall the beginning halves of an Olive Garden experience.

Stunningly beautiful with a gorgeous voice, here’s Sophie Ellis-Bextor teamed up with Freemasons and “Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer”.

I’m totally getting into autumn. Earl and Jamie sat down for supper last night and realized that the paper napkins had been replaced by ironed cloth napkins. For that extra special touch, Jamie showed me how to fold a napkin restaurant style.

I’ve been doing more cooking. I made a meatloaf the other night that turned out pretty good (Earl said it was delicious) and I approached it in a healthy way, opting for leaner beef and turkey instead of going with my normal approach.

The dining room now has it’s autumn decorations scattered about. I organized the hutch yesterday so that I can easily get to the holiday tablecloth and the like when the need arises.

The washer put on enough miles to get to LA and back yesterday but things are clean in the house.

And I changed the litter box.

I’m always excited about this time of year and part of the reason is because I start to fall in love with the house again. I don’t know if it’s the weight loss, the exercise or the decision to smile more often, but life is quite good these days.

I’m sitting here in the kitchen, taking a break from the workday and eating my lunch. I’m still trying to eat healthy and the scale has not been kicked across the room in a while since I began this effort the last week of August. That’s a good thing. I worry that the BMI scanner doesn’t work properly when the scale is kicked across the room like a field goal attempt between the sinks.

The house is quiet today. I find this a little surprising, since Earl is in Memphis through late tomorrow night, but Scott is here until tomorrow afternoon and Jamie is doing his usually Wednesday business about the house. Right now it’s a matter of getting his truck fixed and Scott has gone to pick him up (I almost wrote ‘gone to fetch him’, but I thought that would sound haughty), so other than me the house is empty and I’m just listening to the hum of various appliances and the click click of the clocks on the minute. Even Tom is enjoying some fresh air on the front porch.

This morning I saw a mention of something called a “Honey Boo Boo” on Twitter and I had no idea what the person was talking about. As I type this, someone with the Twitter handle @hotdesigner just informed me that BooBoo is a tubby reality child star. I wonder if that’s something like the 1993 pop sensation Jordy with “Dur Dur D’Être Bebe”. Actually, I don’t really wonder it all because anything that is called Honey Boo Boo is certainly not worthy of my attention. It’s kind of like this fad called a Kiki. I was told that a kiki was a party meant to calm my nerves. There are fewer things I find grating in this world than people piling into a gathering called a kiki. I didn’t even really care for Kiki Dee, why would I want to go to a party in her honor? I find the whole thing dubious at best.

I’d rather calm my nerves by enjoying the quiet.

So Saturday is officially the first day of Autumn up here in the Northern Hemisphere, but Mother Nature is giving us a little bit of a taste today, with a cool, dry autumn breeze and ample amounts of sunshine. I’m smiling right now because this is the beginning of my favorite season. I just love the crisp feeling found at this time of year. I love the sounds the leaves make and the magic one feels on the wind that is rustling those leaves. I just love the energy of the world at this time of year. I find it rejuvenating.

Despite challenges at work today, the smiling continues.

Today was the first day in nearly a week that I did not ride my bike this morning. I opted to work out in the basement instead; lifting weights, doing push-ups, that sort of thing. The magic of the season helps me find the energy to do this. The only thing I wish would happen is that we would put the clocks back in sync with the sun, so we could all have a little natural in the morning. This would make getting up a little bit easier.

So Earl and I have planned our vacation for the end of the year. After doing some careful calculations and the like, I determined that I had exactly one week of vacation time left and Earl always has some spare time lying around in his attendance file, so we are getting away for a week in December. We are flying to Houston on December 1, doing some Texas things for a few days and then driving to New Orleans for the latter half of the week, to return home on Saturday the 8th. While driving in the New Orleans area we may do a side trip to Mobile, Alabama just to get Alabama and Mississippi onto the list of visited states. That will raise the tally to 44.

We decided to go to Houston because we’ve never been there before. I have briefly been to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and we had the Jeep adventure outside of Amarillo when we had to take refuge from a tornado under an Interstate 40 bridge back in 2005, but other than that, Texas is a lot of unknown to us, so we are going to do some exploring. We might make it down to Corpus Christi just because we can and because I am a huge geek, I hear there’s a road somewhere around Houston that has a speed limit of 85 and I simply must drive on that and take a photo of a sign.

We have both been to New Orleans before but our last visit was in 1999, so we thought we were due for another visit. My memories of New Orleans are a little hazy because the last two visits were during radio conventions and I think I was cocktailed fairly early in the morning. Who knows, maybe I’ll do the beer for breakfast thing again. Plus, we’ve always flown in and out of New Orleans, so it’ll be nifty to drive from Houston to New Orleans and see what the area around NOLA is like.

We figured that the first week of December would be a good week for us to get away and do our thing. I’m looking forward to the trip. I hope we get the opportunity to meet any gentle readers that might be in the area. If you’re along the way, please drop me a line so perhaps we can say hey. It’d be fun!

I am sitting at IAD (Dulles International) waiting for my flight back home. As I listen to boarding announcements for nearby Air Canada (with flights heading to Montréal and Québec), I am reminded of this blog entry.

Flair For Language.

It’s time to go for a trip up north again. Maybe as part of a leaf peeping excursion.

I am currently on a flight to Dulles International. I am on my way to see our friends Jeff and Mark in Durham, NC. I do this type of solo weekend once a year or so. I am very lucky to be married to the husband I have. Some people don’t “get” us. Others envy us. I just know that I am still in bliss after all these years.

The flight in question is on a Dash 8-200. 8 rows with 4 seats, 1 row with five seats. Originally in seat 3A, I volunteered to move to the back when the plane was determined to be unbalanced. Like my father, my aviator blood gives me a sense of keeping the friendly skies friendly. I’m in the center square, seat 9C, the extra seat in the back row with LOTS of legroom. Our flight attendant is Val. She reads everything off of cue cards. She mixed up the order of some of the paragraphs, blending water landings with the perks of an airline credit card, but I like her for her efforts. I’m well aware of where the exits are just in case.

This has been a week for my journal. My boss finished his business with the company today and we have no further direction on the status of our group. I had a great one on one with him this afternoon. He’s more than a boss, he is a friend. I look forward to seeing him soon.

Jeff and Mark have their own web development and Internet business. Geeks with common interests are naturally drawn to one another. It should be a great weekend.

So I’m sitting in the Jeep in the parking lot closest to the Dunkin’ Donuts near work. I was not able to grab the coveted shady spot, but there’s enough of a breeze to make sitting in the Jeep bearable. I am gazing at the golden rod and purple tinged weeds that line the parking lot; this is a form of meditation that helps me clear my mind.

It has been a week that has needed a lot of clearing of the mind.

Things are a little strange at work. I guess it’s strange when you no longer have a clear sense of direction or being grounded. I’m just doing what I’m suppose to do to the best of my ability and with the hopes that what I think is right is right. The air in the office is somewhat thick with tension. It kind of reminds me of when I worked for DEC and folks started walking around with layoff notices and buy out offers, but I don’t believe that we are in the position in any way. Things are just in flux and it’s going to be a little while before they’re unfluxed.

I don’t think that’s a word.

Yesterday my chiropractor noticed that I had shaved off my mustache and was very complimentary on my “younger look”. Actually quite a few people have commented that I look younger. I feel younger. Exercising in the morning is certainly helping that situation.

Yesterday morning someone inadvertently tried to run me off the road as I was walking on the dirt shoulder (about four feet to the left of the pavement). As I jumped out of the way to what I thought was lawn, I quickly realized that it wasn’t lawn, it was a four foot ditch. I went down in the ditch and scraped up my hand, wrist, elbow, leg and knee. You’d think that the driver would notice that the guy that was walking with a strobe light and reflective clothing had suddenly disappeared, but the driver was probably too engrossed in his or her text message.

LOL.

So Earl and I headed to the Carrier Dome in Syracuse for the first SU Orange Football game of the season. We’ve been looking forward to football season and it was a gorgeous day to make the trip.

I love the Dome. It’s hard to believe that it’s 33 years old. They have made a bunch of renovations to the displays around the place; there are two HD-quality monitors at each of the field now and an LED ribbon that circles the entire Dome. With the addition of the ribbon, the smaller scoreboards are gone; the displays are now incorporated into the ribbon, but in only two spots. And they disappear frequently to make room for advertising. I found that odd. The old big screen display has been repurposed into a permanent scoreboard that sits in the northwest corner.

Then I noticed that they had replaced the time and temperature display that used to sit in the northeast corner. Installed with the building of the Dome in 1980, this display was the lightbulb type that you would find on the front of the bank at the time, and it proudly displayed the time and temperature in a “lazy” alternating display. And it displayed the temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius! That’s right, it was installed when the U.S. was going to convert to metric. I noticed that the new, high tech display the replaced this retro-tech goodness only uses Fahrenheit.

Nevertheless, I still love the Dome.

But, one step forward, two steps back.

Actually, the game was all about one step forward, two steps back and we ended up losing to Northwestern by one point. Ugh. There were plenty of visiting fans sitting around us. They make me hostile but I’m not mean to them or anything. I mean, if I drop popcorn on them, it’s not on purpose or anything like that.

The Orange had way too many penalties and mistakes and at one point they were down 13-35, but then closed the gap during the third quarter. I really thought we’d done it but with less than two minutes left in the game, we lost it.

On the way home from the game I told Earl that we should consider going to an away game this season so I can know what it’s like to be a visiting fan. Perhaps I wouldn’t feel quite as hostile towards the visiting fans that are just cheering for their team. Except Rutgers fan. As I always say about Rutgers fans, at least we don’t have to live in Jersey.

Go Orange!

Here’s Earl on the bus from Skytop to the Carrier Dome. Because of the Carrier Dome’s downtown location, parking near the Dome can be a bit of challenge. This year we’ve decided to stick to Skytop, one of the remote parking areas where plenty of buses shuttle fans back and forth. Plus there’s a lot of tailgating!

Another shot of the Dome.

Some people don’t get how much I love Syracuse. It’s my native stomping grounds, after all and that comfort just rings true to me after all these years. It’s the one city in the Northeast that I could live the rest of my life in.