“I gave them a chance and they gave me a dead baby monkey!” This was M’s cry on Thursday night while we tried to find something to watch in between commercial breaks of Grey’s Anatomy. Thursday nights have always been good TV watching for the general public, if not for myself. I believe Friends was a staple of the night before Friday, as was Seinfeld, assuming the powerhouse legacy left behind by Cheers and the Cosby Show. ER has moved around a bit, but I think Thursday was its home base for a while. Right now, it’s The Office and Grey’s Anatomy doing battle. I think 30 Rock is on Thursday also, and I’ve heard that is a decent show. M didn’t always like GA, since there is a little mystery about who’s going to die every episode and there’s a lot of gore. But the writing is good and it’s a watchable show. I think M and I like it for completely different reasons. There are one or two legitimately laugh out loud sequences every week (maybe they aren’t supposed to be funny, but they are) and it has once of TV’s all time greatest characters, Dr. Sloan. The Office is something M started watching when while I was on the road. She went on a binge and watched 4 seasons in a week or something like that, but that was good since I used to watch it while she showered during GA reruns and I liked it. So we had a couple of options last Thursday. GA isn’t available online the next day, so we watched that and let M watch the Office on Friday at her leisure. During one of the commercials, flipping through one of our 9 channels, we caught a piece of a nature show on PBS. They had a few scenes of baby baboons acting like baboons, which was great, and then they cut to one that was quite dead – end of greatness. For some reason ‘Nature’ shows can’t get away with too much happy cuteness before the hyena comes in and goes to town on some pups of various species. Needless to say, M wanted nothing to do with the nature show and it was back to the commercials.
I’ve always liked the nature shows. My father taped a pretty decent documentary of the Kalahari or Serengeti when I was younger and it was always available on weekend mornings to keep the kids quiet for a couple of hours before the parents were ready to get up. Discovery channel was always awe-inspiring in college, and the hotel room documentaries were always welcome. At my last job, we had a good view of the roof of the building next door and every spring there would be a bunch of seagull groups that made nests in shadows of the air conditioners and various vents. The chicks were always yellow when they hatched and then turned gray before they flew away. There were always one or two monster gulls hanging out watching the flock of chicks before some parent would swoop in with the treasure they dug out of the trash and they’d all feast. It wasn’t always Disney up there - sometimes one wouldn’t wake up and you could tell the others knew something was wrong. It was really the most exciting thing going on while I was waiting for the world’s slowest elevator to arrive. That’s just about the only thing I miss about the other place. My latest employer has a pretty good roof view, but for some reason there aren’t any nests there. In our Friday team meeting, a giant gull landed just outside the window and started grooming itself, which was way more captivating than whatever was being said at the time and took up a satisfying 10 minutes or so.
Now to completely switch gears – my travel load is pretty much nonexistent. My project wound down and I got a nice little respite before a new (non travel) assignment appeared. So that means I’ve been home for over 3 weeks consecutively, which hasn’t happened since we got married, and if you take that out - almost 18 months. It’s been incredibly nice. The weekends have been a lot more relaxing since I’m not scrambling to get everything done that I missed during the week. M and I have been doing some projects together and started work on some new ones. This has coincided nicely with the start of Spring, which means it’s grilling season now. I dusted off the Char-Griller and fired it up for the first time a few weeks ago. Now that we get to go grocery shopping during the week, I can plan meals a little better and make some better tasting ones. We started out slowly with a lowly chuck steak that I classed up with a marinade and some grilled veggies. M’s sister gave us this skillet that I use on the grill, which gives everything a nice smoky body. We’ve since done some cowboy potatoes, corn on the cob, pork tenderloins and a little chicken. I picked up some frozen Ahi Tuna yesterday that I think we’ll do Sunday or Monday. Today I happened to catch a whole episode on Grilling on PBS’ ‘Diary of a Foodie’ that has now convinced me of the need to grill a 160 lb pig at some point. M got into the act last week with some Anton Chigurth cookies that were a dinner by themselves, and I even got a chance to make a mufaletta spread out of XX**CENSORED**XX, which was totally killer. And just for funsies we crushed an alfredo tonight. As you can tell from this impressive list of gustatory excess, M and I are finally insured, so now it’s time for some risky and consequence free behavior.
We also had our annual condo meeting this week. I would like to think that since a group of people all live in identically priced and located houses, with roughly equivalent automobiles and work hours, that said people would be of similar critical thinking skills and intellect. But what I like to think and what I see with my addled vision are two different things. I inadequately explained this to M about the last meeting I attended. Now that we’re married, M can attend has a full owner too. I think she regrets that second part now. I’m going to stop here, since I could fill another few paragraphs with rants that will only interest me, which I guess is the point of this blog, but I’ll spare you. You can thank me when you see me.
PS.. Great trade by the Patriots. I think the Jets will regret drafting Gholston.
PPS.. It’s golf season! I hit the range and didn’t completely suck.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Big nights out
M and B survived the paraphysical intact, and probably did better than expected. I ended up coming in at a feathery 182. M, as usual, sailed through her tests and by 7am we were out the door. All in all, a positive experience. Hopefully we’ll get the results back soon. Once we got to work, the hits kept on coming. M got a great report card from work and a celebration was due. So what do two swingin cats do to really cut loose in G-town on a Wednesday night? There really was only one option – Applebees followed by Barnes & Noble! It appeared this was the preferred feeding time/place for small children and retirees since we were the only young childless people in our section. Maybe they heard we liked to throw food or something. Anyway, we dug into an ‘ultimate trio’ of mini burgers, honey bbq chicken chunks and spinach-artichoke dip. Now this would have been a good time to stop chowing, since I was already feeling full and somewhat dizzy. The multi-week fruit and veggie binge had apparently worked too well, purging my body of unnatural foods and this was a reaction to the megadose of flavor I was giving it. But then I decided to really tempt the furies and go for the ‘Grilled Shrimp Pesto Alfredo Fettuccine by Tyler Florence’. The menu reads: Tender shrimp is tossed with signature spices and served with basil pesto Alfredo fettuccine, grape tomatoes and Italian cheeses. Top it all off with shaved Parmesan and sun-dried tomato focaccia bread. Translation: Shrimp with spices and butter and cheese, served with pasta and 3 more cheeses. That’s 4 cheeses in one meal. Where are the cheeses you ask? Pesto usually includes parmesan, Alfredo is basically cream and cheese, then the top it with ‘Italian Cheeses’ and more shaved parmesan. It wasn’t white tablecloth, but it fit the bill and I ate the whole thing way too fast. M wisely ate two bites of her entrée and saved the rest for a week’s worth of lunches. Then we tried out a restaurant concept called ‘dessert shooters’, which we had seen on a different occasion. It’s basically a shotglass filled with cake and cream, but for $2, it beats scarfing down a whole new plate of desert pleasure when all you want is a few bites. So we each hit up one of those and headed out for the bookstore for self-presents of the long-term variety. While the shrimp/cheese bomb didn’t kill me, I have been extremely thirsty for the last 2 days. Today I decided to see exactly what I had eaten, but Applebees doesn’t publish that type of information, so I had to assemble a list from other sources. Olive Garden Fettucine Alfredo (lunch portion) 850 cal, Anonymous Sauteed Shrimp (unspecified size) 280 cal, Anonymous Focaccia 110 cal. Apple’s does publish the dessert shooter info, albeit generically, as 300 cal per shot. So that’s, at a minimum, 1540 calories in one sitting. Not the worst thing I have eaten, but that’s at least twice what were the largest meals that I had been eating since Thanksgiving. Then last night I wolfed down a delicious and nutritious helping of chicken fingers, spicy fries, coca-cola, salted peanuts and soft serve ice cream - giddyup. What inspired such a louche menu? That’s right, B and M went to the Red Sox. This was something M had wanted to do since before the Sawx broke the curse, but I had really punted on every chance I had to get tickets. M does a great job on vacation planning , but I tend to not be so good at homeland adventures. This was a chance to redeem myself, and we had a sublime night for a ballgame. Gametime temp was 69 and the seats we had were better than they appeared at first, with ready access to the food items listed above. There was also ready access to the beer taps, which the crowd around us attacked with a vigor. By the 7th inning, I don’t think anyone was running for the windows when they closed. The severe dip in temperatures combined with 7 innings of two fisted imbibing had taken it’s toll and the seats around us were filled with heads nodding off. We did have to leave a little before it finished, given our geographic disadvantage and the fact that I do get up rather early to make it to work on time, but we had an excellent time. While I was waiting for M near the St. Mary’s green line stop, I had the chance to witness one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. A chap got off the green line right in front of me and went to get a cup of coffee. Actually it was a blind (and possibly deaf – he had something in his ears and didn’t acknowledge me when I offered to assist him) guy who negotiated some very steep stairs off the trolley, then walked down the platform, crossed busy subway tracks with no “it’s safe” walk signal or sound to the platform on the other side, walked all the way down that, crossed Beacon street at a crosswalk on the signal with no audible “walk” chirp, took a right down the sidewalk and then went into Dunkin’ Donuts! He got his cane caught up a few times with lightposts, bicycle racks and some grills for sale in front of a hardware store, but this was amazing. He wasn’t just someone with extremely bad eyesight – he wasn’t looking anywhere near the objects he was feeling his way around. There was another woman watching this with me and we were mesmerized. It’s up there with seeing a blind guy with a dog negotiating the south station redline stair maze while they were under construction and there were detours and temporary walkways everywhere. I don’t know how the dog knew where to go. Maybe their training has reached a level where German Shepherds can read spray painted arrows? If my description above doesn’t adequately describe the degree of difficulty of what this guy did, see my high tech and detailed map below. And have a sunny weekend, because it’s going to be raining here, again. Another golfless weekend for B (if you don’t count the toonamint in Augusta)
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Can't think of a title
Sorry for the long absence, folks. I don’t really have an excuse. There have been some structural changes at work, some homefront activities and a few travel days mixed in, but that’s no excuse for the lack of quality reading material. So I’m going to let loose with a little ground n pound here – I can’t really predict where this is going to go or where it’s going to end, only that it could be long, so I hope you don’t have anything to do for the next 15 minutes or so.
First of all – M and I have a paraphysical coming for our upcoming life insurance underwriting. We were informed that this was a minimally invasive process – someone comes in, takes some fluids and some measurements and we’re done. Then the monks get out the actuary tables and predict if they’re going to lose the monthly “We’ll bet you tons of cash that you’re not going to croak this month, and if you lose that bet, well you owe us $200. Every month. For thirty years. And then all of a sudden they don’t want to make that bet anymore. Check in with me when I’m 60 and ask how I feel about that one. There’s a saying that compulsive gamblers have –“The longer it doesn’t, the sooner it’s gonna”. I think the wisdom is that eventually, if you keep at it, your long odds bets will come home to roost. Based on the terms of this particular wager, I take it insurance companies also adhere to that wisdom. Going hand in hand with the poke and prod is the weigh-in. I haven’t been weighed officially in a few years. I think I was in at about 195 or so when a board certified physician last did one. Since then, I’ve jumped to a high of 208 and hovered in between those numbers, depending on the time of year and amount of physical activity I have been subjected to. At one point in our courtship, M and I were buying clothes and I had a pair of pants that I was ready to buy. M asked what size they were and they were a 38. What can I say? My existing trousers were a little snug and I had an eye towards the future. M didn’t approve of that message, so we cut back on the diner breakfasts and started making better lunches and magically I no longer needed the 38s. Then we were going to get life insurance soon after we got married. M found out that if I weighed 180 or in the area of that, we could save some serious money over the 30 years gentlemen’s agreement. 180 is a hard number (cue fuzzy focus and ‘going back in time’ music), I graduated from high school weighing 185 and I was a competitive lacrosse player and cross country runner who hadn’t had a taste of the outside world yet. By Christmas of my freshman year of college, I was well into the 200s, probably north of 210 and gaining momentum. Everyone around me was swelling like a barbecued bratwurst, so I didn’t really notice. It was a lethal combination of sloth, indulgence and experimentation that put me on this path. I don’t know where I peaked, but I remember only 2 pairs of pants fitting me and one of them was missing a button on the waist. I wore athletic shorts that entire spring because they had the fat man’s helper – the stretchy waist. That spring, someone in my family poked me in the belly like the poppin fresh doughboy I had become. Determined to get myself in beach shape for the fam’s annual Jersey shore adventure, I bought a jumprope and dusted off the old weight bench and got to work. I think most of the excess was malted hops and barley, so as soon as I wasn’t bathing in that, the weight dropped quickly. I had learned my lesson and stayed around the same weight for a while. A few years after that, there was a family feats of strength contest where my younger brother and I got into it about who could do more pushups. I had no idea how many I could do, but I suspect he knew his limits, because I crapped out in the teens somewhere and he powered through until I forced him with gravity and extreme prejudice to stop. I think he was trying to impress his new lady friend (now wife) and he succeeded in humiliating me. I immediately undertook a Rocky IV style regimen of secret pushups and pullups to get myself ready for the next contest, which sadly will probably not happen. I stuck with this unorthodox and irregular program for a few years and I always felt better after I did it. We’re somewhere in 1999-2001 at this point. I have moved away from home to experience ‘real life’ and experience it I did. It was freshman year all over again, except I had money in my pocket and one of my roommates was practicing for his future career as a chef. We never got the deep fryer, but I did need new clothes. My employer at the time was offering a gym membership for a reasonable price and the gym had many locations which were convenient from work and home so I decided to join. I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t have a regularly scheduled social life to speak of and it was better (in theory) than sitting home and playing Grand Theft Auto. The funny thing was, it was actually something I started to look forward to. The results were slow at first and I didn’t get on any supplements or shakes, but it was a great way to burn energy and stay somewhat active. Fast forward a bit and I had moved back where my parents live and the gym was at the end of my commute, so what better way to get rid of that work and commuter stress than repetitively lifting heavy iron weights? At this point though, I wasn’t losing any weight. The homemade meals were of the infamous ‘Mom’ portions and I wasn’t doing anything to regulate what I was eating or drinking, so I just started to swell up. My golf swing got all screwed up by the new geometry of my body. Not that it was championship caliber before, but this was an unpleasant symptom. I was teetering on the dangerous ground of no longer just pursuing this as an activity and making it a goal-oriented part of my life. Fortunately, I moved back to Boston to resume my sedentary lifestyle before I started wearing tight black t-shirts and going tanning. Fast forward another 18 months and I’m trying to buy size 38s. Having a serious relationship meant sharing my accumulated knowledge of the local eating establishments and then attempting to duplicate these at home with the requisite butter and cheese ‘improvements’. My better half did reign in our growth with the introduction of smaller plates (genius) and saving portions for lunch and leftovers (a novel idea). The big test was going to be the cruise we were taking. I had read all about the pasty Midwesterners fighting over endless macaroni and cheese and shrimp cocktail and I was worried that when confronted with unlimited food options, I would display my binge consumption abilities, but this was not the case. By now I was a food snob and mostly stuck to what wouldn’t make me ill. There was one huge development, though and that was the ship’s rock climbing wall. M and I went to the wall (really some fiberglass nubs bolted to the ship’s smokestack to hide it) to evaluate it and maybe give it a try. I watch some jabroni who brought all his own gear – seriously, who brings rock climbing gear on a Caribbean cruise? – scamper up the ‘hard’ section, then the rock wall helpers basically dared me to try, so I strapped it on and attempted the 2nd hardest section. I have no idea why this seemed appropriate, but I made it. Barely. Every muscle in my body hurt afterwards in a way that I hadn’t felt in since high school. I didn’t think I was in shape by any means, but this was a big red flag that I was definitely out of it. Time to resume secret workouts. It is a well established fact that M takes a nightly ‘constitutional’ in the shower just about every night. This leaves me with approximately 45 minutes to do whatever I want with. For a while, this became known as ‘Shower Snack time’, when I would raid the kitchen for whatever I could find. M knew this had happened by the chocolate or crumbs on my shirt after a pillaging of the cabinets. Shower Snack has been replaced by ‘Monkey Bars’ after the homemade rig I assembled from steel cable, half-inch steel pipe, athletic tape and a 4” hook screwed into a rafter in the loft. I suppose to the casual observer, it looks like a monkey swinging around, but it was really a super-secret regimen designed to get me into wedding/insurance shape. That and no longer loading up on free chips in the work kitchen. For the most part it’s worked. I had to replace the wedding pants I had originally purchased because they were hanging a little low. I even created a travel set of monkey bars consisting of nylon rope and some old belts. I figured going through the airport with 15 feet of steel cable and taped up pipe was a little suspicious. At least bundled rope can plausibly be described as a ‘personal interest’. I can now turn a small-sized hotel room into a gym in about 5 minutes. So the Monkey Bars phase has been in place for just over a year now and I weighed in this weekend at 188. I have a realistic shot at 185 by Thursday. I’m not going to go out and run 20 miles or anything, but it’s possible to get back to a weight that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years, which is remarkable. My dad was supposedly 155 when he got married. Maybe the cold-war food rationing was in effect or he was a nervous wreck, but 155 is real small. I don’t know what I would look like if I weighed 155. I think my chest hair and big toe nails alone weigh 9 lbs. Another 30 lbs would mean losing a leg or something and I am not ready to commit to that.
In a completely unrelated and different track, a lot of people I know are makin’ babies. I have been enjoying the post-wedding pre-kids phase very much so far. These people jumped past that and into advanced marriage right away. M is going to be a cousin once removed in a few months. One of my roommates from college just told me he’s having a little one in October, there’s my manager, next door neighbor, 2 friends I used to work with and at least 6 more here at work. I know I’m getting to that age, and this is what people do, but it is all a little strange for me. I have friends who already have kids, and they seem to be the same guys. But their kids will never know that daddy once (censored) or mommy used to (censored). I am thinking about starting a pool where M and I bet various household chores on who can guess the next announcement. I know a few people have us in their own pools, but once again, the wagon is for utility and it’s good in the snow! Not for hauling little B’s or M’s around… yet.
In Bandmeltun news, out in the exurbs – you know, the reason for the blog - we have created a list of household projects for the spring. We’re going to improve the herb garden from last year and even attempt some more aggressive vegetable growing. We’ve done the annual living room re-org and included the guest bedroom in a little furniture swap. There was a headboard project completed and there are signage and clock projects in the works. There will be some painting and possibly some acquisitions, but nothing from the G-town flea market. M and I went there last weekend, looking for some treasures like I see on Antiques Roadshow and we got a bunch of carnies and gas huffers selling Nintendo games (not even the n-64, but the old school 8-bit ones), moldy belts, ninja swords and scary cat-themed arts and crafts. Sometimes I forget how out there we have chosen to live. I joke about driving the Subaru on the towns’ existing dirt roads (there are a few here), and I enjoy driving on the back roads to see the cows and horses. I haven’t fully embraced that in areas where it is acceptable to raise livestock, the lower edges of the townie economy are going to be populated by some unusual characters. Needless to say, our treasure hunting days in town are limited. We’ve also got some trips planned – Italy and Greece in the fall and Germany around Christmastime. You’ll be sure to hear about and see some scenes from those adventures, hopefully in a somewhat shorter chapter. So if you’re still there, thank you for tuning in and see you again sometime soon…
First of all – M and I have a paraphysical coming for our upcoming life insurance underwriting. We were informed that this was a minimally invasive process – someone comes in, takes some fluids and some measurements and we’re done. Then the monks get out the actuary tables and predict if they’re going to lose the monthly “We’ll bet you tons of cash that you’re not going to croak this month, and if you lose that bet, well you owe us $200. Every month. For thirty years. And then all of a sudden they don’t want to make that bet anymore. Check in with me when I’m 60 and ask how I feel about that one. There’s a saying that compulsive gamblers have –“The longer it doesn’t, the sooner it’s gonna”. I think the wisdom is that eventually, if you keep at it, your long odds bets will come home to roost. Based on the terms of this particular wager, I take it insurance companies also adhere to that wisdom. Going hand in hand with the poke and prod is the weigh-in. I haven’t been weighed officially in a few years. I think I was in at about 195 or so when a board certified physician last did one. Since then, I’ve jumped to a high of 208 and hovered in between those numbers, depending on the time of year and amount of physical activity I have been subjected to. At one point in our courtship, M and I were buying clothes and I had a pair of pants that I was ready to buy. M asked what size they were and they were a 38. What can I say? My existing trousers were a little snug and I had an eye towards the future. M didn’t approve of that message, so we cut back on the diner breakfasts and started making better lunches and magically I no longer needed the 38s. Then we were going to get life insurance soon after we got married. M found out that if I weighed 180 or in the area of that, we could save some serious money over the 30 years gentlemen’s agreement. 180 is a hard number (cue fuzzy focus and ‘going back in time’ music), I graduated from high school weighing 185 and I was a competitive lacrosse player and cross country runner who hadn’t had a taste of the outside world yet. By Christmas of my freshman year of college, I was well into the 200s, probably north of 210 and gaining momentum. Everyone around me was swelling like a barbecued bratwurst, so I didn’t really notice. It was a lethal combination of sloth, indulgence and experimentation that put me on this path. I don’t know where I peaked, but I remember only 2 pairs of pants fitting me and one of them was missing a button on the waist. I wore athletic shorts that entire spring because they had the fat man’s helper – the stretchy waist. That spring, someone in my family poked me in the belly like the poppin fresh doughboy I had become. Determined to get myself in beach shape for the fam’s annual Jersey shore adventure, I bought a jumprope and dusted off the old weight bench and got to work. I think most of the excess was malted hops and barley, so as soon as I wasn’t bathing in that, the weight dropped quickly. I had learned my lesson and stayed around the same weight for a while. A few years after that, there was a family feats of strength contest where my younger brother and I got into it about who could do more pushups. I had no idea how many I could do, but I suspect he knew his limits, because I crapped out in the teens somewhere and he powered through until I forced him with gravity and extreme prejudice to stop. I think he was trying to impress his new lady friend (now wife) and he succeeded in humiliating me. I immediately undertook a Rocky IV style regimen of secret pushups and pullups to get myself ready for the next contest, which sadly will probably not happen. I stuck with this unorthodox and irregular program for a few years and I always felt better after I did it. We’re somewhere in 1999-2001 at this point. I have moved away from home to experience ‘real life’ and experience it I did. It was freshman year all over again, except I had money in my pocket and one of my roommates was practicing for his future career as a chef. We never got the deep fryer, but I did need new clothes. My employer at the time was offering a gym membership for a reasonable price and the gym had many locations which were convenient from work and home so I decided to join. I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t have a regularly scheduled social life to speak of and it was better (in theory) than sitting home and playing Grand Theft Auto. The funny thing was, it was actually something I started to look forward to. The results were slow at first and I didn’t get on any supplements or shakes, but it was a great way to burn energy and stay somewhat active. Fast forward a bit and I had moved back where my parents live and the gym was at the end of my commute, so what better way to get rid of that work and commuter stress than repetitively lifting heavy iron weights? At this point though, I wasn’t losing any weight. The homemade meals were of the infamous ‘Mom’ portions and I wasn’t doing anything to regulate what I was eating or drinking, so I just started to swell up. My golf swing got all screwed up by the new geometry of my body. Not that it was championship caliber before, but this was an unpleasant symptom. I was teetering on the dangerous ground of no longer just pursuing this as an activity and making it a goal-oriented part of my life. Fortunately, I moved back to Boston to resume my sedentary lifestyle before I started wearing tight black t-shirts and going tanning. Fast forward another 18 months and I’m trying to buy size 38s. Having a serious relationship meant sharing my accumulated knowledge of the local eating establishments and then attempting to duplicate these at home with the requisite butter and cheese ‘improvements’. My better half did reign in our growth with the introduction of smaller plates (genius) and saving portions for lunch and leftovers (a novel idea). The big test was going to be the cruise we were taking. I had read all about the pasty Midwesterners fighting over endless macaroni and cheese and shrimp cocktail and I was worried that when confronted with unlimited food options, I would display my binge consumption abilities, but this was not the case. By now I was a food snob and mostly stuck to what wouldn’t make me ill. There was one huge development, though and that was the ship’s rock climbing wall. M and I went to the wall (really some fiberglass nubs bolted to the ship’s smokestack to hide it) to evaluate it and maybe give it a try. I watch some jabroni who brought all his own gear – seriously, who brings rock climbing gear on a Caribbean cruise? – scamper up the ‘hard’ section, then the rock wall helpers basically dared me to try, so I strapped it on and attempted the 2nd hardest section. I have no idea why this seemed appropriate, but I made it. Barely. Every muscle in my body hurt afterwards in a way that I hadn’t felt in since high school. I didn’t think I was in shape by any means, but this was a big red flag that I was definitely out of it. Time to resume secret workouts. It is a well established fact that M takes a nightly ‘constitutional’ in the shower just about every night. This leaves me with approximately 45 minutes to do whatever I want with. For a while, this became known as ‘Shower Snack time’, when I would raid the kitchen for whatever I could find. M knew this had happened by the chocolate or crumbs on my shirt after a pillaging of the cabinets. Shower Snack has been replaced by ‘Monkey Bars’ after the homemade rig I assembled from steel cable, half-inch steel pipe, athletic tape and a 4” hook screwed into a rafter in the loft. I suppose to the casual observer, it looks like a monkey swinging around, but it was really a super-secret regimen designed to get me into wedding/insurance shape. That and no longer loading up on free chips in the work kitchen. For the most part it’s worked. I had to replace the wedding pants I had originally purchased because they were hanging a little low. I even created a travel set of monkey bars consisting of nylon rope and some old belts. I figured going through the airport with 15 feet of steel cable and taped up pipe was a little suspicious. At least bundled rope can plausibly be described as a ‘personal interest’. I can now turn a small-sized hotel room into a gym in about 5 minutes. So the Monkey Bars phase has been in place for just over a year now and I weighed in this weekend at 188. I have a realistic shot at 185 by Thursday. I’m not going to go out and run 20 miles or anything, but it’s possible to get back to a weight that I haven’t seen in more than 10 years, which is remarkable. My dad was supposedly 155 when he got married. Maybe the cold-war food rationing was in effect or he was a nervous wreck, but 155 is real small. I don’t know what I would look like if I weighed 155. I think my chest hair and big toe nails alone weigh 9 lbs. Another 30 lbs would mean losing a leg or something and I am not ready to commit to that.
In a completely unrelated and different track, a lot of people I know are makin’ babies. I have been enjoying the post-wedding pre-kids phase very much so far. These people jumped past that and into advanced marriage right away. M is going to be a cousin once removed in a few months. One of my roommates from college just told me he’s having a little one in October, there’s my manager, next door neighbor, 2 friends I used to work with and at least 6 more here at work. I know I’m getting to that age, and this is what people do, but it is all a little strange for me. I have friends who already have kids, and they seem to be the same guys. But their kids will never know that daddy once (censored) or mommy used to (censored). I am thinking about starting a pool where M and I bet various household chores on who can guess the next announcement. I know a few people have us in their own pools, but once again, the wagon is for utility and it’s good in the snow! Not for hauling little B’s or M’s around… yet.
In Bandmeltun news, out in the exurbs – you know, the reason for the blog - we have created a list of household projects for the spring. We’re going to improve the herb garden from last year and even attempt some more aggressive vegetable growing. We’ve done the annual living room re-org and included the guest bedroom in a little furniture swap. There was a headboard project completed and there are signage and clock projects in the works. There will be some painting and possibly some acquisitions, but nothing from the G-town flea market. M and I went there last weekend, looking for some treasures like I see on Antiques Roadshow and we got a bunch of carnies and gas huffers selling Nintendo games (not even the n-64, but the old school 8-bit ones), moldy belts, ninja swords and scary cat-themed arts and crafts. Sometimes I forget how out there we have chosen to live. I joke about driving the Subaru on the towns’ existing dirt roads (there are a few here), and I enjoy driving on the back roads to see the cows and horses. I haven’t fully embraced that in areas where it is acceptable to raise livestock, the lower edges of the townie economy are going to be populated by some unusual characters. Needless to say, our treasure hunting days in town are limited. We’ve also got some trips planned – Italy and Greece in the fall and Germany around Christmastime. You’ll be sure to hear about and see some scenes from those adventures, hopefully in a somewhat shorter chapter. So if you’re still there, thank you for tuning in and see you again sometime soon…
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