Dead Monkey

“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.