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I think I may be suffering from an addiction. While many people think that I may take too many “happy pills”, being as jazzed about life as I have been lately (so sorry, I’m actually stone cold sober and have never taken anything like that in my life, this is all natural), it’s not drugs or alcohol or anything like it that I’ve become addicted to.

It’s Reese’s Fast Break bars.

OH MY INSERT FAVORITE DEITY HERE.

I can not get enough of these little bars of chocolate and peanut butter goodness. It’s Snickers without the annoying snick. It galaxies bigger than a Milky Way. And I already have my own Almond Joy.

No, no. It has to be Reese’s Fast Break bars and I will absolutely accept no substitutes.

I was craving a bar this morning, so I made my way to the break room at work, where I noticed in the candy machine that there are no Fast Break bars. After sobbing for a few moments and then realizing that no, I could not go down on the street and buy one from a junkie, I decided to have the standard Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

It was o.k. It did not satisfy my craving. While tasty, it did not bring the near outta control, dare I say ‘orgasmic’, rush that a Fast Break bar brings. So immediately after work I headed to Byrne Dairy (read Wawa, AM/PM Mini Mart, Express Mart) and grabbed myself a Fast Break.

Ah, so good.

Then I turned it over and read the nutritional content. 250 calories in that sucker. Hmmm, the same as eating two breakfasts. I didn’t make it past the first line of calorie information. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know. Actually, I don’t care.

I’m just lovin’ the Fast Break. Dude, wanna share?

I am convinced that whomever invented the microwave was into S&M. Yes, I know it’s suppose to be the height of kitchen convenience, but I suffer with a love/hate relationship with the Radarange.

And yes, I still call it a Radarange. As in Amana Radarange. For those that don’t remember the world before Britney Spears, the first popular brand of microwave was made by Amana. And it was called a Radarange. Hell, Amana might still make a Radarange for all I know. I think they were going for the Kleenex=Tissue concept much like Frigidaire did with the refrigerator. And while the name didn’t really carry over to today’s kitchen, it stuck with an old farm boy like me.

I remember the first Radarange I saw – my grandmother had one for as long as I can remember (maybe 1973 or 1974). You had to lock the door before it would turn on. There may have been lead gloves and lead over the private parts involved, but I could be mixing that memory up with a hospital visit or something. Anyway, It had two huge dials that lit up when they were activated – the top one measured the time in seconds (up to 3 minutes or so), the bottom measured time in minutes, up to 20 minutes or so. It was a beast of a thing, requiring two strong, strapping, handsome men to carry it on the rare occasions it had to be moved. Lights dimmed in several counties when it fired up. I’m convinced that the local nuclear power plants were installed to keep the thing running. But it lived for 20 years or so. It would heat up spaghetti lickity-split and even had a fan to send out pleasant smelling reminders of what was inside the “metal cavity”, as it was described in the manual.

My folks won one in a raffle several years later. It was a little more sophisticated, having three temperature settings — scald, melt and incinerate. But it did what it was suppose to do and that was to pop corn without having to use a popcorn popper.

Back in the early days of Microwave Cuisine, you could buy actual plastic popcorn poppers that you just dumped some corn in, put the whole thing in the Radarange and set it to do its thing. My mother misread the directions and put it on for 12 minutes or so. It ended up a big plastic blob, without the popcorn inside by the time the little mechanical bell dinged, but hey, she gets an E for effort.

Back to the S&M. I am eating supper as I write this blog entry. I have reheated some leftover chili that Earl had left explicit instructions to eat while he was away on business. At least he’s given up the color coding of my food (blue for breakfast, lavendar for lunch, strawberry for supper). Just kidding. Anyways, I put a bowl of chili in the Radarange, hit “reheat” and went to business online. I was prompted to stir, so I stirred. I was prompted to stand, so I stood. I was prompted to spin, so I spun.

I’m now eating my chili. It’s stone cold in the middle, and scalding hot in random locations on the outside.

I bet the old Amana Radarange wouldn’t have done that.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’m working on growing my beard. I was originally going to participate in “Beards for a Cause”, but I decided that I couldn’t commit to a year of not trimming my beard and still keep peace in the family and workplace, so I decided not to go that route. So it looks like I’ll pass on the whole Grizzly Adams motif (as if I could actually grow something like that without looking like a derelict.) But I have made a commitment to myself and have decided to keep on growing until at least May 1.

There’s a couple of reasons I’m going on about this a little bit. For starters, I’m terribly vain and I enjoy talking about myself whenever the opportunity arises. I don’t think of myself as prissy, just pretty.

Secondly, people have begun noticing that I now have a beard. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, since I’ve been working on growing it since October 29 and it’s now December 6. I was asked today at work, not once but twice, if I’m growing my beard out. Of course I gave them the whole spiel about growing it out full but keeping it shaped. Bulky, not frizzy, and my other aspirations.

I sort of blame the whole beard experience (and my near obsession with it) on one of my fifth grade teachers. My elementary school had just started the “Enrichment Program” and I was one of the many guinea pig students. I guess we were the freaks that were absolutely bored with pedestrian elementary school tasks like multiplication and division, spelling and band, so they came up with this program for us artistic/creative types, where we could express our other wise hidden talents. Our Enrichment teacher’s name was Mr. Rayburn. He was in his mid 20s and to me, absolutely handsome. I was eleven years old at the time and I knew he was the most gorgeous creature to walk the face of the earth. He was about six foot tall, had red hair and the fullest, most beautiful auburn beard I had ever seen. He seemed like the cool type… the kind that related well with kids, knew how to be hip in 1979 and the sort of guy that you could call by his first name, even though he was a teacher. I was crushed because one day he came in clean shaven and he let a couple of girls in the class touch his bare face. I hated those girls, because not only did they get to touch Mr. Rayburn’s face, they also commented on how smooth and handsome it was. I wanted to slap them silly. He grew his mustache back but it wasn’t the same. He disappeared after that school year. I ran into him once when I was in seventh grade when he was visiting from another school, and there he was, bearded again. I haven’t seen him since.

So I guess I come by my whole beard/mustache/goatee thing honestly. And for now, it just keeps growing and growing and growing…

Malcolm Rayburn

Earl and I decided to a little bit of holiday shopping yesterday, opting to head to the Waterloo Premium Outlets in, well, Waterloo. Waterloo Premium Outlets is a big behemoth of a shopping experience. It’s all outside, save for a food court the size of a postage stamp. Now that I think about it, the food court is very small when compared to the rest of the plaza, which has over 100 name brand stores plopped on a piece of farm land in the middle of nowhere. So we packed up the Jeep with the necessary survival gear; water, slim jims, hats and gloves and other goodies one would save for the Iditarod and headed for a the promise of a joyous shopping experience.

Since the outlet center is entirely outdoors, I instantly noticed that the smokers that have banned from anything with a roof in New York State have headed to this cloud caressed monstrosity. Naturally, being the scorned smokers they are, they’re surly. They’ll stomp on your foot without a second thought if you block the door while they’re headed outside for a pollution break. And they’re loud and raucous, they’re scratchy throats shrieking incomprehensible conversation at Airbus decibels.

Another aspect we had not considered was that it wasn’t going to be very gay there. The gays don’t head for the bargain basement bric-a-brac like the straights do, save for the nasty looking lesbians in the Ford F350. O.k., o.k., I’m exaggerating, as we found a similarly minded bearish couple like ourselves that spotted us instantly. We kept within several paces of each other after the initial eye contact. They were cute. Perhaps there is safety in numbers as it’s possible we were all afraid of more truck riding lesbians arriving, or even surly smokers. Though we never got their names, their presence was a welcomed site. I made a point of driving by their car as they were leaving and giving them the peace sign. They waved back.

We did pick up some lovely Christmas ornaments at the Lenox outlet. One woman grabbed an ornament out of Earl’s hand but he has the sense to fight back like a lion going after a piece of meat. She let out a yell and then left to howl at the moon or something.

All in all, it was a memorable once a year experience (thank insert favorite diety here) that maybe we’ll skip next year. Unless the good looking guys are there again.

This is a first in the almost three years that I have been maintaining a blog. I am writing it in public. I’m not referring to the times that I sat in my car at lunch time, windows steamed up, internet connection ‘borrowed’ from an unsuspecting user in a well-to-do neighborhood.

No, I mean Earl and I are doing it RIGHT NOW in public. We’re sharing a table, notebooks back to back, at Barnes and Noble in DeWitt.

I have a tazo chai to my right, the remnants of a chocolate cookie to my left, Powerbook square and center.

I’ve checked my e-mail. I’ve tried to read my favorite usenet newsgroups, without much luck due to being in public. And Earl and I have chatted with a friendly older couple that were very impressed with our notebooks. They have deicded to become an Apple family. We welcomed them to the fold.

Looking around this little cafe, I’m noticing six notebook users, excluding ourselves. Five of them are using some type of Mac.

I guess we’re all snobs.

I’ve made a bit of a change in my radio listening habits. All of the intense listening I did of talk radio up to the Presidential election has burned me out on the format for a little while. Oh, I still eagerly listen to Sirius satellite radio, as I will never go back to the cookie cutter crap that’s populating “local” radio these days, but I’m listening more to the dance music stations and less to the talk stuff. I do enjoy OutQ as well, but sometimes all gay radio can be a little too much gay.

My favorite music station on Sirius is Sirius 66, The Beat. It reminds me of my old radio Program Director days of Wow FM, “The Beat of Central New York.” Looking back, I realize that Wow FM was way too clubby for the market it served (and probably way too gay as well), but boy was it fun to explore new club music. It’s ironic, but as Wow FM became more accepted by mainstream listeners, the less fun it was to pick out music for the format. Listeners would expect more MTV-esque music and less edgy club music you couldn’t hear elsewhere.

Sirius 66 sticks to the clubby stuff.

They’ve been playing a song for the past couple of weeks that I have absolutely fallen in love with. It’s your typical 123-125 beats per minute dance tune with lead female vocalist, but I find the song so damn catchy. It’s called ““Get Up Stand Up” by the Stellar Project, featuring Brandi Emma. Brandi’s vocals are very similar to the lead vocals (by Jan Johnston) on B.T’s “Remember”, one of my favorite songs of all time. The lyrics actually have meaning, at least to me, and they’re not all angry and rappy. The song actually makes me feel good and lifts my spirits. I don’t know if the song is being played on local radio stations, but damn, I’m glad it’s on Sirius 66. I’m also glad its on iTunes!

In fact, listening to all this dance music has inspired me to publish my first iMix on iTunes. I have no desire to be a radio program director again, but once in a while I do long for the chance to spin some high energy and retro tunes in a club. Until the opportunity comes along, I’m going to share some iMixes on iTunes.

This morning I awoke to a ‘pitter patter’ type sound. Knowing there were no children running around the house, and since the sound was complimented by content purring near my right ear, I decided that it must have been the sound of rain.

And raining, it certainly was. Buckets and buckets of rain, falling from the sky, making a sound on the roof that simply can not be duplicated, no matter how they try. Sure, the CD can do its best imitation, even in quadrophonic stereo sound, but that’s just the sound of rain. It’s missing the soul, the magic of the sound of rain.

There is something inherently magical about the weather. Mother Earth, doing her work keeping her domain in balance. Washing away negativity with the rain. Reassuring her creatures with a blanket of snow. Charging our souls with lightning. Caressing us with her positivity in the wind.

Yes, the world around us full of wonder and magick.

I relish every opportunity I have to just sit back, close my eyes, and listen.

It’s a sunny day at work today. I’m feeling productive. I’m feeling confident. I’m feeling good.

When I resigned from previous job in August (to accept my current position), I was offered a computer tech support position with a company based in Iowa. I had been to one of their training classes the previous April, and had worked with them my entire time at my previous company. The make computer hardware and software for radio stations, being one of the earliest companies to do so. They are a small company and working with them as a customer over the years had been a joy. So I was quite flattered when they offered me the position in August, however, I was not in the position to relocate to Iowa and I was very excited about my new job at Northland Communications. So I politely declined, but told them I would keep in touch. It gave me the feeling of having a safety net. If this position didn’t work out, I could always go work for them.

In a fit of frustration with myself a couple of weeks ago, I touched based with them to see if there were any positions open. It was very early in the morning when I contacted them via e-mail, and I wasn’t feeling my usual ecstatic self. Part of that whole lack of self confidence thing I had going on there for a while. They jumped on my resume and offered me a position. It was kind of cool in that I could work from my home doing tech support and software development, as well as traveling throughout the United States to radio stations installing new systems and whatnot. The circumstances were fairly good, as far as I was concerned, because I would be able to work from home, but while I enjoy traveling very much, I wasn’t ready to be jet-setting all over the country one or two times a month. After all, with Earl traveling, we don’t need me traveling as well. Our household would be in complete shambles if we were both traveling. Plus, the fit of frustration that I was feeling turned out the be a fleeting moment, as I haven’t felt more comfortable in my current position. Things are going really well with my current job. So once again, I declined.

It’s as with all new positions or job. A new experience, lots of uncertainty. “Am I going to make the grade?” “Can I do this?” “Will they like me?” “Are they cute?” “Do they find me cute?” I believe there’s a turning point after you take a new job, in where you feel like you’re “getting it”. A confirmation to yourself that yes indeed, you did make the right choice and that you’re in for the long haul. If you don’t hit that point within several months, you move on to another opportunity.

I hit that point on Friday.

I’m in it for the long haul. I enjoy my work very much. I work with the greatest group of people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in a long time. It’s been too long since I’ve smiled getting out of bed or since I’ve looked forward to the challenge of my job. And the feeling is wonderful.

To celebrate, I’m following the lead of my on-line friend Robert and my long time friend Dana. I’m writing my first haiku and it’s about work.

I answer your call.

You get your dial tone.

One ringy dingy.

Earl is currently away on business in the lovely red state of Ohio. It’s the first time he’s been away that’s he’s been able to use his new iBook on the road. And following the lead of many others, his hotel has free wireless internet access, so we’re able to chat and cam via iChatAV (Apple’s contribution to the AOL Instant Messaging community). It’s the first time that we’ve ever done this, and I find the experience to be absolutely wonderful. In the past I’ve wondered why video phones didn’t catch on as predicted in the early 1990s, because being able to see a loved one face to face while they’re hundreds of miles away is a warm, fuzzy experience.

I did have initial concerns about Earl using a public internet connection to do our chatting. I had visions of some pervert sitting in the walls watching Earl and I chat back and forth and listening in on our conversation, doing something interesting with his private parts. But then I decided that I really didn’t give a care. I mean, let’s be honest, I have a blog that I basically use as an outlet for many different facets of my life. I pretty much write any aspect of my life here. Reading through my blog entries, anyone could find out any number of things about me. I have no idea how many people read my blog daily, weekly or whatever. I don’t bother to look at the usage stats. The crowd of voices in my head are all the audience I need.

Besides, as long as you’re on the internet, you can not be anonymous. Don’t let anyone fool you. I’m currently writing this blog entry on my lunch hour. I’m sure that the people across the street from my parked car are blissfully unaware that I am currently using their unsecured internet connection. That’s right, Verizon sent them a little package of parts and cables, told them how to hook it up over the phone, never advised them to change the default settings on their equipment, and now here I am, in wireless range, happily chugging along on the internet. With the right tools, I could probably see what they were doing online. But I don’t really care, so I don’t bother.

I must admit that I find these people with webcams throughout their house wildly exciting. Watching a guy type on his keyboard and work on his daily business (well, maybe ‘daily routine’ would be a better description) is interesting to me. Yeah, there’s always the chance that you’ll see a ‘full frontal’ and I’m not going to turn away from that, but since I’m an avid people watcher this just adds an amazing aspect to the genre. People are fascinating.

So tonight Earl and I will be chatting on the webcam again. I don’t know if the neighbors will be watching us, though since I password protected my wireless network, I feel pretty confident that they won’t.

I’ll leave the webcam focused on me sleeping naked as the unsecured connection. Maybe they’ll enjoy that.

Over the years I have added several blogs to my “must read” list, including The Daily Pequod.

My online friend Robert had a little celebration upon the 5,000 hit on his blog, and I had the honor of being the chosen one. The winner received a poem and a beer on him. I took a raincheck on the beer until we get to San Francisco (probably in February), but Robert did go ahead and wrote me a haiku:

Little bird on stalks

Flits from encroaching wave

Live crab in hungry beak

I’ve never had someone write me a haiku before. I find the honor very fascinating. And I look forward to the beer.

In other fascinating news, I’ve hit a month on my beard and I must say that I’m digging it this time around. I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to do a “Beards For A Cause” charity, but I’m going to help out by contributing to their website instead. I don’t think I can commit to a beard that goes untrimmed for year and keep my lover, family and employment.