A video from yesterday’s walk, where I talk about Apple, my beard, spinning at the local bar again and other thrilling topics. I hear the shaky-cam is in.
Ponderings and Musings
Good Audience.
Earl and I went to see “National Treasure 2” this evening. We both enjoyed the movie very much and will probably rent it on iTunes when it becomes available later this year.
There were a couple elements of this cinematic experience that I found pleasantly surprising. First of all, when the theatre showed the “please turn off your cell phones” message, several people surrounding us did just that. Let’s score one for technological common sense!
Secondly, the feature presentation was preceded by a good ol’ traditional Disney cartoon clip starring Goofy: “How To Hook Up Your Home Entertainment System”. What a delightfully modern take on the old Disney films that were common place when I was kid! I was not aware that this was included with the “National Treasure 2” experience. I hope that Disney follows suit with more of their movies.
A pleasant distraction from Nicolas Cage’s hairpiece is sidekick Riley, played by Justin Bartha. Here he is in a geeky hunky glory. He’s not my usual type but he has cub possibilities.
m.
I grew up in farm country. For the first nine years of my life, I played in a yard that was surrounded on three sides by an electric fence. When we drove home from town, we would pass a silo that proudly proclaimed “M & M Farms”. We quizzed Mom as to why that was written on the silo and she told us that’s where M & M candies were born. The farm was actually owned by a married couple named Marshall & Mary, but I didn’t learn that until I was 25 (just kidding). Every time I grabbed a handful of M & Ms from Grandma Country’s three tiered candy dish, I would look at one of those candy coated drops of chocolate goodness in my hand and see the little “m” imprinted on it and revel in the fact that it wasn’t melting before my eyes. The little “m” seemed reassuring to me. It’d always be there until I ate it, that cute little “m”.
Now I see that Mars, Inc. is offering consumers the chance to have custom-printed slogans printed on the little candies for special occasions. I realise that they’ve been doing this for a couple of years, but it’s only recently that I’ve been seeing the ads plastered all over television. I was hoping that the fad of custom printed M & Ms had passed because to me though whole concept seems unnatural, like jokes printed on a Pringles chip or “Just Shoot Me” being considered “classic television”.
So today I feel motivated to buy a three-tiered candy dish and load it up with classic M & Ms. I’ll use them as a treat, gaze at the little “m” and revel in the fact that they melt in my mouth, not in my hand.
Quiet Sundays.
One of the things that Earl and I have been doing this new year is kicking back on the weekends, all two of them. There’s a reason for that and it’s quite simple; we are during that bleak, dark time of the year. I’m not referring to winter and the short days in these parts, no, I’m actually referring to the time between Christmas spending frivolity and tax refund checks.
Now I realise that the American economy has taken a downturn and we are fortunate enough to have a roof over our heads with all the trimming while many do not. But I’m sure others would agree that this is the time of year when everyone tends to tighten the financial belt a little bit. It seems to go hand in hand with the diet resolutions or something.
This weekend I decided to give my PowerBook a little pep by wiping the hard drive clean and reloading Leopard (the latest version of Mac OS X) from scratch instead of cruising along with the Panther -> Tiger -> Leopard upgrade I’ve done on this machine. The results have been amazing and despite being 3 1/2 years old, my computer feels quite new again. While reloading the software and tweaking the computer to my liking, I have passed the time by browsing various internet shopping sites for some do-dads and other intriguing geek toys.
I think it’s time to start saving my allowance again. I feel like Lucy when she saves money out of the “household budget”. Ramen noodles anyone?
Primary.
I’ve been keeping relatively quiet about the primary elections, caucuses and other activities that strain one’s high school lessons in social studies. Earl and I have had several discussions here at home, but for the most part I haven’t been doing much yapping on the blog.
If the truth were to be known, I already sick of the presidential election and it’s still 10.9 months away. However, I will say this: Over the past eight years I have equated “baby Bush” with the entire governmental process of the United States. As part of my extreme nature, “it’s all of them” that have been making life less than delightful for many Americans. I don’t believe that we are any safer today than we were on 9/12/01. I don’t even buy into that “be very afraid because they bad guys are going to get us” mentality. Hey, if it’s my time, it’s my time, whether it’s from a lightning strike, a bad piece of food, an anti-gay wing nut or at the hands of a terrorist. Quite frankly I think the country as a whole has it’s panties wound up entirely too tight and if people were to relax, think and ponder life a little bit instead of racing to hysterics at the smallest opportunity, the United States would be a much happier place.
A number of months ago I expressed a desire to move to Dublin, Ireland. It’s my favorite city, despite my very limited time of being there and someday I would like to live along the River Liffey. A number of months ago I also had dreams of becoming an Irish citizen and leaving Ol’ Glory behind.
I don’t feel that way anymore, and here’s why. Earlier this week Hillary Clinton’s now infamous “tearful speech” moved me.
But it was Clinton’s response to the last question from freelance photographer Marianne Pernold Young that provided the electric moment. How did Clinton keep going? “I couldn’t do it if I didn’t just passionately believe it was the right thing to do,” Clinton began telling Young, her voice cracking. “I have so many opportunities from this country and I just don’t want to see us fall backwards as a nation. This is very personal for me.”
When I heard Senator Clinton’s tearful response, it struck a chord in me. It wasn’t the tears that moved me, it was the message and the way that she conveyed her feelings on the subject. There *are* people in government that really do care about the United States. There are government officials that share my view that our great country is moving backwards on so many levels.
As children we are taught to respect the President. The President leads the entire country; it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, black, white, straight, gay or whatever, the President is leading the whole crowd. Earl reminds me that we should always respect the office entitled President, but sometimes the person isn’t worthy of that respect. If I were to vote today, I would vote for Hillary Clinton. I believe that with her as our Commander In Chief, we would have a leader that I could respect once again.
Bright and Early.
So today is Saturday. Because my body likes to play tricks on my soul, I am wide awake at 6:46 on a Saturday morning. “Heh! He’s out of work and waiting for school to start in a week – let’s get him up bright and early.”
And so I lie here in bed with the PowerBook catching up on various blogs wondering if I will still be awake after lunch.
I have to give props to Earl for going to work this early on a Saturday morning. He went in to catch up on the stuff he was unable to get to all week. I guess that’s why he’s the big guy and all at work. There are an infinite number of things that I admire in that man and his dedication and determination are just one of them.
The DirecTV man is suppose to be here between 8 and 12 this morning so that he can repair our dish that was damaged in the wind storm the other day. Aside from this brief flit with frivolity we have no plans for the remainder of the weekend. We were going to drive to Buffalo tonight for their bear night but the post-holiday budget doesn’t include hotel rooms at this time.
Now I’m starting to yawn and feel like I need to take a nap. So much for that bright and early Saturday morning.
Happy Spring.
I know I’m tempting Mother Nature to inflict some wicked mischief upon us by writing this blog entry but I feel like taking a walk on the wild side. The National Weather Service predicts that it’ll reach into the lower 50s today and nearly 65 tomorrow. As I write it is currently 51 degrees fahrenheit. For Upstate New York in the beginning of January, this is big. Not only will winter blahs be pushed off for a while longer, but now we’ll have rapidly melting snow to flood basements and such. There’s always both sides to every equation.
I’m still on the fence as to whether this is totally due to Global Climate Change or if it’s part of a cyclic pattern in the grand scheme of things, but I tend to lean in the direction of the former.
Whatever the reason, I plan on drinking in some of this nice weather every chance I get.
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The aforementioned DJ SuperCub mix has been posted. There’s one really bad segue in there that I could have edited to make it perfect, but then that wouldn’t have been an honest representation of my work.
Evaluate.
So this afternoon I watched the video I made last night. It’s the one I blatantly shared on the blog; the one called “The Ride After Guinness”. After watching the video I realised that it’s a good thing I live life without regret and choose to treat everything as a learning experience. To be quite honest, I didn’t enjoy seeing myself a little intoxicated. On one hand I wasn’t puking or anything, after all I was sober enough to edit the video when I got home (though I don’t really remember doing it). I guess drunks everywhere are lucky that the latest version of iMovie can export directly to YouTube. However, on the other hand, I kind of blabber on like an idiot. It reminded me of the time I was drinking with co-workers and inadvertently grabbed the company Vice President’s ass.
I think I’m going to calm down on the Guinness. My gut will thank me for that and the scale will breathe a sigh of relief.
I decided to celebrate the first weekend of the New Year by cleaning the house from top to bottom. I figured it should be done once a year and I might as well do it at the beginning of the year so I remember when to do it again. Earl was up at the crack of dawn so he could go to work so I didn’t make him join in my fun when he got home, though he was kind enough to pack up the Christmas decorations.
He did join in the merriment for a moment when I nearly passed out from bleach fumes. I didn’t know you weren’t suppose to put pure bleach in a squirt bottler and found myself a little woozy while cleaning the bathroom. To remind me not to do that again, he took a video of me coughing, gasping, wheezing and lying on the bathroom floor.
I don’t think I’m going to share that video.
Tonight’s fun (and subject of today’s 365 Days photo) has been making a new DJ SuperCub mix. If it passes quality control later on I’ll share it with the masses.
Tick Tock.
I’m a bit of a time geek. On one hand I know that time is an arbitrary unit of measurement assigned to any random moment of existence, and quite often I curse this human invention (usually when I want to be somewhere and it seems to be a long way off due to the time between me and whatever “it” is). However, on the other hand I am always aware of the current time. I need to know what time it is, no matter where I am. And I think it’s the pre-occupation with time that is slowly driving me nuts.
I left work on my lunch hour at precisely 12:30 p.m. I normally do this at noon. By leaving at noon, I neatly divide my work day into two even halfs: four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon, then ain’t we got fun. However, because I left for lunch at 12:30, I am now quite giddy with the fact that my afternoon half of the day is shorter than the morning half of the day, which means I will be closer to quitting time when I sit back at my desk at precisely 1:30 p.m.
I guess it’s the little things.
I’m constantly running a countdown clock in my head as well. For example, I usually have a running tab in my brain that has things like “Twelve days and eight hours until our big visit” or “76 days until spring”. I usually round to the nearest day when it’s over than two weeks. I allow myself that luxury.
Now I’m not going to freak out by yelling “Wapner Time! Wapner Time!” and start rapping on the door of a house in the middle of a cornfield the next time I’m in Oklahoma or anything. My timeliness doesn’t go down that path. Yet. But my touch of OCD keeps my preoccupation with time even more interesting as I need to have all clocks within eyeshot in perfect synchronization with one another. Part of this stems from my collection of old school clocks that are wired throughout the house; they all advance in unison, once a minute, just like they did in the elementary and high schools of days gone by. But in today’s digital era, where every electronic item has it’s own clock following it’s own rhythm, I’m presented with a greater challenge of trying to make all the digital displays advance in unison with the school clock collection. It’s become a weekly chore of synchronizing the microwave, stove, alarm clocks and one quartz clock we have with the school clock collection system, which is synchronized to all the computers, which are synchronized with the atomic clock in Colorado.
There will come a time when I will just have to sit back and enjoy the moment without assigning a series of numbers and a flashing colon to it (why does that last part sound dirty to me?) Until then, does anyone really know what time it is?
Mattress Compatibility.
The room is dim. As you enter, your senses are overwhelmed with the sights and sounds of a typical Friday night. You feel confident. As you casually scan the room, looking over the forms that move dimly ahead of you, your eyes lock with another pair of eyes that are searching for the same thing. Fireworks explode, chimes ding, hearts sing. You have found your soul mate.
It’s a little while (minutes, days, weeks, months, years, take your pick) later that the confidence you felt that night is put to the test for the first time. Forget all that has transpired during the courtship; the home cooked meal that was successfully executed without a trip to the emergency room and the fact that your newly beloved doesn’t have a search warrant or three. Put that all aside, for it’s time to get into bed together.
You approach the bed and make your way to “your side”. He approaches the bed and makes his way to “his side”. And you hope and pray and get all sweaty nervous that the “two” sides are not the “same” side. It’s make it or break it time. Will he hop on my side of the bed? Is this a weird game of musical chairs?
Where is it written that a married/committed/adulterous/take your pick couple must spend the entire night together? Who’s idea was it anyways? Don’t get me wrong, I understand the theory behind sharing a bed. You hit the sheets, mess them up a lot with some wild action and then snuggle up next to each other in contentment, spoon style, and visit Mr. Sandman together. But does it really happen that way? More times than not Earl and I sleep very contently together, so I guess it’s a good thing. There are other times, though that he keeps me very much awake or vice versa. Once in a while he wakes up to find me sleepwalking and he has to steer me back to bed. Occasionally his CPAP machine blows a gale force wind that parts my eyebrows. But truth be known I wouldn’t change it for anything. I knew it would work out o.k., you see Earl and I went to opposite sides of the bed that first night. There’s only one side of the bed that’s my side of the bed and that’s my side of the bed (unless I’m sandwiched inside a group, but that’s a different tale I’ll save for another time)! Just for kicks we tried to switch sides one night early in our relationship and that was a complete disaster. Sheets flew, nightstands danced, the headboard was jarred, I had his knee in my groin and Tom didn’t know who’s ass to bounce off of as he made his way for the windowsill. We vowed to never do that again and nearly 12 years later I think this is the first time I’ve mustered enough courage to mention it.
Looking back, I think my grandparents were on to something with their custom made bed: I believe it was two queen sized mattresses placed side by side with a common set of sheets. It was the only way that she could tolerate his snoring; in a bed that size she was in the next zip code.
Truth be known I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Just a little extra shut-eye once in a while.
