Keep your eyes on your nerd book

This morning, I had a few options for my commute:
1. Get to work. I had a training presentation to give at 10 and wasn't very prepared for it. 1:15 on the train would be a good time to get caught up and start the week right.
2. Get to sleep. I slept like crap the last few nights and had a legitimate nightmare last night. I have long been an advocate for nightmares (real ones, not just stressful dreams). I mean monsters and fire, real scary nightmares. The human mind is a wild and wooly place and I like exploring it. I woke up screaming last night and had an amputation level of dead-arm on Saturday that gave me a good jolt. The train is sometimes a good place to catch a few z's. That is, unless you slump over on your seatmate or start snoring.
3. Watch a movie. I've been getting man movies from netflix, and instead of watching them in hotel rooms, I watch them on the train. It's nice starting the day with fire and explosions and racing engines.

I chose #3. This week's fare is 'Eastern Promises'. I skipped the previews, which are normally a good indicator of what you're about to watch. I jumped right on the main event and was greeted with "Rated R for strong brutal and bloody violence, some graphic sexuality, language and nudity'. Hmm. All the things a growing morning needs, right? There wasn't anyone sitting near me, so I figured I could get a few scenes out of the way without offending anyone. Wrong. It's not like I was caught by surprise at the questionable scenes - I could see them coming - it was the depth and detail of the 'strong and brutal bloody violence' that I wasn't really prepared for. A few years of romantic comedies have sort of taken my brutal violence calluses off. After 30 minutes or so, I started to get some seatmates, so I tilted the screen away so as not to cause a ruckus, but I started to feel like a dirtbag for hiding my screen - I mean who sees a guy hiding his screen and doesn't wonder why he's hiding? Once the train really filled up, I noticed the guy next to me was no longer reading his software engineering book and was blatantly staring at my laptop screen. He couldn't hear what was playing, but aparrently what I was wathcing was compelling enough. There did come a scene where I had to shut it off or else really risk offending anyone within eyesight of me. Judging by my co-rider's sulking and sigh when he went back to his book, I think he was disappointed, but I don't want to end up on channel 5 at 11, facing charges that I offended someone. I still have 45 minutes or so left for my ride home. I can't wait...

Dark Water

Something big is going down in B-town. yesterday I went for a couple of walks down by the water and I saw these huge puppies down there. I haven't seen boats like this since M and I were in Monaco or Antibes. Really impressive, easily the biggest boats in the harbor. So of course I joined in the crowds of gawkers and took some photos. I don't know where you get this kind of $$, but it's not by saving your paper route and birthday money.

In other, more domesticated news, I spent my morning elbow deep with a plunger and foul liquid. It's not what you're thinking though. It was my bathroom sink. Now why would I be doing this in the morning? I have no earthly idea. I woke up at 6, got in the bathroom and decided that the slow drain was bothering me so I filled up the sink and went to town with the plunger. It made some bubbling gurgling noises and regurgitated 9 months of head shavings, which really stink. Not in the figurative sense - they reeked. I also had the shower running while I did this, so the bathroom filled with a thick steam accentuated by the miasma I had conjured up from the deep pipes in the walls, making it almost unbreathable. M was still warmly snuggled in bed, so I couldn't throw open the door to let the fresh air in. I mean I could have, but the trade off would have been short lived. Even worse, the slow drain had now turned to a completely stopped drain. I couldn't leave the black brew in the sink to let it go away on it's own, so I dug my hands in there and tried to see if anything was wedged in the drain. There were big solid pieces of something that I had summoned up. I don't remember sending these down, but they had come back. I broke these up and plungered even more strenuously than before. The water seemed to go away, but not exactly fast. I filled it up again for round 2 and got a more consistent result this time. A few quick plunges, no more belching sounds and the drain emptied like a champion. Crisis solved. M told me hers is a little slow too, so I'm lined up for more fun tonight. Good times.

Salty Blog

I was going to start off with a tirade about my work and why I’m leaving late and on a local train (instead of an express), but then I realized that it’s Friday, I’m not doing any work this weekend and we’ve got some pretty fun stuff planned, so I won’t let the bozo explosion over at client X get to me while I’m on weekend shore leave.

The pseudo-birthday grill special was a prime rib, and it did not disappoint. It probably wasn’t a true prime rib, I think that’s usually cut from the first 1-4 ribs of the steer, this was a second cut and wasn’t prime grade, but it was in the neighborhood. We picked it up at the Stop N Shop while they were on sale. Actually, I’d never seen them for sale at any price there. It’s hard to justify buying a $30 piece of meat for 2 people, but I threw it in for some occasion or maybe a night when M was out and I wanted to go on a beef bender. A few days before Sunday, I took it out to thaw and then age in the refrigerator. Then I made up a paste of salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary and black pepper grapeseed oil. Gave it a good coating, set it on the grill to cook for an hour and a half at 250-300 and we were good to go. We served it with some pepper skewers, sausages from the meat share, grilled onions and a potato salad I made with potatoes I roasted on the grill and tossed with ranch dressing, paprika, pepper sauce and some of the beef drippings. I made a bad joke at the meal about drenching the taters in rendered beef fat. I skimmed the fat off before I tossed in the drippings. That’s not to say I didn’t consider it, but I’m not looking for the gout before I am 50 at least. After 50, I’m open to it, but not before.

Much to M’s dismay and vocal displeasure football season is almost here, which means Fantasy Football (FFL) time. When I started my very first job, I was introduced to the game by a few of the older guys I worked with. They’d come in every day, bragging about how one of their players killed it the night before and there’d be a lot of trash talking for the better part of the morning. At the time, they were talking about baseball, but I’d never done fantasy sports so I didn’t know what was going on. When they invited me to their league, I was a little unsure about the cost - $100 to join? that was a lot of good times right there – so I split the cost with another co-worker and shared a team. Needless to say, we basically donated the money to the league as we were woefully unprepared. By the time the next season came around, I was hooked. Since the company itself was full of slackers and easy jobs, there was ample time to do research, talk trash and generally spend more time on fake sports leagues than actual honest work, but I wasn’t complaining. If all these other people could do it, why not me? This was still in the somewhat early days of the internet as we know it and FFL sites were nonexistent, which meant tons of time analyzing and researching the old fashioned way. It was an incredible time suck but I never had so much fun at work. FFL alone could not keep me at that brutally awful job, so I quit and traded (somewhat) lucrative and satisfying work for FFL glory. I still belong to that league. The draft isn’t until September 2nd and this year I may actually get to attend. I’ve missed the past 2 because of work traveling. I’m a mediocre player at best. Some years I catch a wild train ride to the finals, other times I stink out the place, but it’s always fun to send obscene emails and generally try to be as offensive as possible in the name of a game. Given this spotty history, I decided to double down on the frustration and worry and join a second league, this one made up of coworkers at my current employer. So far I have made it a point not to socialize too much with coworkers. I find that I spend quite enough time with them already. So far it’s been an interesting strategy. My utter lack of interest in work socializing has made my real life seem that much more mysterious to the people around me and I want to keep it that way. In FFL though, there is a good chance the worlds will collide, George Costanza-style. I’m a somewhat different person to my co-workers, a little more reserved, a little more conservative. To the FFL people, I’m a lot freer with my opinions. It’s going to be a hard line to walk. I’ve seen a few email battles already with the new league and I may have to bat the bees’ nest around a little.

So that’s about it, my train is empty, it’s raining and I’m feeling great. Another 1600 words of nonsense, courtesy of B.

Phones and Rolls

So what’s new…. It’s been too rainy to do any real grilling, but I’m planning something big for my fake birthday. My family tends to travel on the anniversary of my being born in 0 A.B., so we’re doing it this weekend, although they won’t all be there at once. You see, I’m so fly I get my birthday spread out over several weeks, like a book or movie tour, with different audiences and accolades.

We finally got the Iphone. The acquisition was anticlimactic. There was this big long wait for it and a ton of publicity and people waiting in lines like the cure for their itch was being given away for free. I’d been through this before. In 1984, I was 7 years old and the Transformers landed on these shores. I saw the reports that no stores had them. I saw the commercials, the cartoons, but I’d never seen one in person. I wanted one more than anything I had wanted in my life up to that point. When the day came when all American children get what they desire, for no reason at all, other than they are American and their parents got it for them (Christmas), I felt deep down that there would be no Transformers coming. Santa was good, but he didn’t shop at Child World, and I knew Toys R Us was flat out. There was no Ebay or Amazon to the rescue. I didn’t even know what shape a transformer would be (I had never seen one!). So when I opened the package and there was Megatron and my brother MH opened up Optimus Prime, I think a part of me died a little. I knew now that all I had to do was wish and hope and miracles would happen, forever destroying my work ethic. That’s what I think. What I know happened is that pure chaos erupted. I am getting goose bumps just writing this, remembering the pure adrenaline tail wagging barking giddiness that only a small child can feel. I also remember completely breaking down and crying in frustration when I couldn’t make Megatron turn into his robot form because I tossed the directions aside. It took my mechanical engineer father what seemed like hours to figure it out so he could teach me. Does anyone remember what Megatron’s non-robot form was? Anyone? A Walther P38. That’s a gun. A life-sized gun. There are a few iconic guns out there, the cowboy and his colt, 007 and his PPK. You know who made the P38 famous? The Wermacht, i.e. Germany’s Army circa WWII. So I essentially got a nazi war toy for Christmas that turned me from a happy innocent child into a greed loving frustration case overwhelmed with joy and excitement. So here in 2008, 24 years later, those Transformer (and Cabbage Patchers, 1984 was a good year for toys) kids got a new toy, the IPhone. The phone costs roughly 20 times as much (with a 2 year subscription!, monthly rates vary), but you can sign up for a list and instead of rioting in the aisles when they arrive you simply show up and claim your prize like Ed McMahon sent you a letter. We picked it up, did the paperwork, paid another chunk for a holster (yes a holster, I am a yuppie cowboy and my phone is my pistol) and that was about it. There were no screams, no instruction book, we casually went shopping afterwards as if nothing had happened. There were nearly some tears though, when I tried to get it to work with my employer’s email. I am still capable of childish temper tantrums when I can’t get my toys to work, which is good to know. I’ve spent the past few days buying music and generally learning how to use it. Overall I’m happy, but I don’t get any goosebumps when I look at it. M and I will be able to get our intended use from it and that’s the most important bit. And I get a little bit of cool out of it for a few more weeks, which ain’t bad.

In other news, I saw a ghost. Not a real ghost. Is that even possible? Can you see a ‘real’ bigfoot, or the ‘actual’ loch ness monster, or an ‘ethical’ republican? Anyway, I saw a Rolls Royce Phantom being parked in a lot around the corner from my office. I don’t work in a particularly pimped area, although I do see the occasional nice car. The Ferraris and Bentleys usually get parked in the valet spaces underground. This was out in the open, in a scrub lot with a teenager running it. I had to stop and take a picture because I found it hard to believe that someone gave the keys to their $300,000.00 car to a teenager, but they did. I looked it up - RR has sold only 3703 of these things worldwide since 2003. I know most of them to the middle east and Asia. Let’s say that half of them are. That’s 1850 for Europe and North America. I’ll pretend they’re distributed evenly and being that there are about 250,000,000 cars in North America alone, that would give me a .00037% chance of seeing one of these cars. I don’t want that kind of luck. If I’m going to overcome incredible odds, I want to win the Mega Millions. The fact that I managed to buy a home and get married to M should tell me that my winning lotto tickets have already been cashed, but that damn transformer just made be greedy. As an aside to the Rolls story, one of the features of the Rolls is that the back seat is nicer than the front, because you’re so stinking filthy rich that you pay someone to drive you around and the owner shouldn’t get the crappy seat. I wonder what these rich folks do with their sports cars? Do they drag Jeeves into the backseat so they can show everyone they are so rich that they drive their sports car with a guy in the back who is paid to be there? But I digress. There’s supposedly some snob joke that one drives a Bentley but gets driven in a Rolls. There were no chauffeurs to be seen on this day. So there’s a broke Rolls owner driving his own car, parking it in a budget lot downtown. Somewhere a violin weeps.