The Real Me

Weirdest thing I've thought all year...

2012-02-02T20:22:00.001-05:00

... and that's saying a lot. I'm not allowed to have a Twitter account, because if I wrote down the shit I think as I'm thinking it, I'd be committed in a week tops.

This one takes the cake though. We sort of screwed the pooch on the budget for the next two weeks. My wife forgot to mention her medication when we discussed the budget, which was going to be tight anyways. It would have been nice if she had called BEFORE I handed the dude $100 for the guitar. Anyhoo, what's left is the food budget, the only place where there's any money that can be flexible. So how do I stretch our food budget to last two weeks, minus a quarter of what's left?

Beer. I'm going to use beer as a dietary supplement. It IS calories, after all. Calories keep you alive, right? Your body doesn't care, does it? I've got vitamins, I've got some food. I have 40-something home-brewed beers in boxes in my office. I've got 13 days until payday, I can drink three beers a day, I can survive dammit!

I'm not sure in which direction my wife thinks I've lost my mind... but clearly she thinks I've slipped into LaLa Land.

New Guitar Day!

2012-02-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah!!!!

So, I did some wheeling and dealing on Craigslist. I had the cute little amp that I replaced with the bigger beat-up amp, and an old bicycle. Got cash for the bike, traded the cash and the amp for a guitar. Ta-DA!

I might keep it, or I might trade it for whatever's behind door #2. It certainly completes my transition from metal to classic rock, doesn't it?

I used to have this:

Now I have this:

....

....

.... I feels so old.

Did I really lose 14 pounds since (last)Sunday night?

2012-01-30T20:42:00.002-05:00

...

...

...yes. Yes I did.

Beer bottling, take two

2012-01-27T12:55:00.000-05:00

Ugh....

These things are always a bit of a chore, aren't they? First I had to wash and get the labels off a couple of dozen bottles and dry them. Then sanitize the bottles and dry them AGAIN... that's going on right now. I've boiled the priming sugar and made the hop tea. The hop tea is for flavor. The priming sugar with react with the last bit of yeast in the beer and carbonate it in the bottle. I've sanitized the bottling bucket, and the siphon, and the bottle caps. When everything is dry and the priming sugar mixture and tea are cooled to room temp, I'll transfer the beer from the carboy to the bucket, mix in the sugar and tea, and start bottling.

Yay? This time I'll make sure to lay down some towels to minimize the mess. I'll put the bucket up higher so it is easier to get under it and transfer the beer gravity-style. And in only 6-8 weeks, I'll have drinkable beer. Tomorrow I'm brewing up another batch, and then yet another batch next weekend. My first batch is SO CLOSE to being ready to drink, and since I'm on a diet I'm not going to be drinking more than a few at a time, so I'll be done buying store-bought beer forever! Yay!!

Did I really lose 16 pounds since Sunday night?

2012-01-26T07:40:00.001-05:00

...

...

...

... OK, probably not. Although I have to admit that I sort of cheat when I start a diet. I eat a couple of bigger-than-normal meals the weekend before I start the diet, so my starting weight is artificially high and I get a nice big first week weight loss to motivate me. So yeah, I should have stopped at the third taco and had six of them instead. :) Weighed myself a few hours later Sunday night and I was nice and huge. Figured I would be a couple of pounds up on Monday morning for the first weighing.

Monday morning, the scale didn't work. Tuesday I replaced the battery, still didn't work. Wednesday, yesterday, I bought a new scale. It showed me as having lost 15 pounds from Sunday night. Which is cool, fine, I didn't believe it. I assumed a difference between scales and placement on the floor and whatever would explain the huge difference. I figured I weigh myself again this morning and it should read the same both days give or take a half-pound. Lost another pound though, so that's pretty cool.

Ugh... Weight Watchers...

2012-01-24T10:57:00.003-05:00

Weight Watchers.

My wife is doing it, and I figured that I had better do it to... both because I could use to lose a few pounds, and because I don't want to undermine her efforts. I know how I would feel if I was eating a strict diet and she was eating chips and burgers. But there's a weird thing going on...

WW works on a points system. The points are worth about 50 calories a pop on average, but weighted by the fat-to-fiber ratio or some such. Because I'm a man and pretty heavy, I get a crapload of points compared to my wife. And shockingly, I can't seem to eat that much. It doesn't help that most fruits and vegetables are zero points, and a huge salad has barely any points even with dressing on it because of the fiber. So I'm not getting to the end of my points, and I don't really want to eat a third dinner every night, so I don't know what to do.

On the other hand, for the sake of efficiency and lack of temptation, we're eating NOTHING but frozen dinners, pre-packaged salad kits, and raw fruit. Can you say "no dishes, no cooking, no cleaning, no nothing"? It is actually sort of a vacation for me, come to think of it.

I bought a what?!?!

2012-01-19T18:47:00.000-05:00

Yeah, a new amp... but there's a really good story!

So, we have a few extra bucks this month. Wife is going out to spend a few hundred bucks on new clothing, and Joe decided to look into a new amp. The amp I bought before moving here is cool and all, but just a little too small for my needs.

... a quick technical aside for my non-musician readers. The power of an amplifier, measured in wattage, is responsible for volume and something called "clean headroom": the ability to get louder without distorting. Because of various math and physics things that are too complicated to get into here, doubling the wattage only gives you about 10% more perceived volume. So to get double the volume of my 4W amp, I need a 40W amp. But more importantly, a 4W amp starts to distort long before you hit half of its potential volume, while a 40W amp with a good clean channel will stay clean and clear-sounding until you really crank it up towards 11.

Anyhoo, I'm looking for a bigger/cleaner amp. Last night I saw a used Peavey Valveking 100W amp with a pair of 12" speakers for $300 at the local Guitar Center, on the website. Those amps usually go for around $650 new, so it seemed like a good idea to try it out. I sort of ran it past my wife without telling her that it was used and cheaper, and she was OK with the $650 price tag so I knew $300 would be no problem. If not that amp, then maybe over to Sam Ash and put something on layaway... yeah, guitar shops and gun stores are the last businesses where layaway is common practice.

Well, I go out this morning. Too early as it turns out, since Guitar Center opens at 11 on weekdays. Sam Ash was open at 10, so I popped in there. Turns out they have a 12-month layaway, so I could pay $20-30 a week and afford any amp in the store! WOO! Most amps at least, since you have to put down 20%. So I tried a Peavey Valveking at Sam Ash... hated it mucho much. So much for getting out cheap. I tried a couple of amps, and then had the sales guy demo a couple while I listened... I get guitar store stage fright occasionally. We tried a bunch of amps in the $600-1200 range. Then I thought about it, and questioned the wisdom of committing myself to $300 down and biweekly payments for several months, so we scaled back and checked out a smaller Marshall just for no good reason since it is a 5W amp and not really any improvement over what I have now. Right behind us though, there was the UGLIEST AMP I'VE EVER SEEN FOR SALE IN A REAL STORE. For shits and giggles, since I was about to walk out of there and bring my wife back on the weekend, I told sales dude to plug his guitar into that amp.

No kidding, it was the best-sounding amp in the store. Turns out to be a American-made Peavey Classic 50, four 10" speakers and 50W. Torn tweed covering showing the wood underneath, control panel with the chrome rubbed off and starting to rust out, stains and holes in the grill cloth, dirty all over, dry-rotted leather handle, just a real beater of an amp. The model nameplate fell off not so long ago, so it has a slightly less dirty rectangle patch on the front. The power cord isn't original, and Satan only knows where the footswitch came from, although it seems to currently do absolutely nothing anyways. The damned thing is right around 20-21 years old if I'm reading the serial number correctly. And yet... it is kind of a magical sounding amplifier.

The sales guy called over the sales girl to ask her about it, I guess someone dropped it off the day before and it was my good luck to give it a chance. I brought it home and started looking into fixing it up, but my wife thinks it has "character" so I'll probably leave the cosmetics alone. At least until I have to crack her open to replace a vacuum tube.

Why my wife is the perfect one for me, Part 34,487

2012-01-18T16:08:00.000-05:00

So my wife is surfing the web, and she sort of shouts out something like "Oh my GOD!!! You've got to see this! You've got to... no! I have to buy this for you!!!" Care of uncrate.com:

In case of emergency. In case of zombie outbreak. In case of rabid squirrel attacks — whatever the case, you can rely on the Mossberg Just-In-Case Kit ($360). This all-in-one survival pack includes a 12 gauge Mossberg 500 Pump-Action shotgun inside a re-sealable clear bag, inside a waterproof synthetic carrying tube which also holds gear like a "Survival Kit in a Can" and a multi-tool and serrated knife combo pack.

HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?!?!?! And it is only $360!!!!

... my wife totally loves me. :)

I DO understand hoarders now!

2012-01-18T12:33:00.002-05:00

No kidding...

Everyone who has read this blog for awhile(all 11 of you) know that I LOVE watching those hoarding shows on the TV. Not for nothing, I've got the gene for it based on my dad's behavior. Seeing people destroy their homes with junk and filth is an inspiration for me to run a vacuum cleaner more than once a month and keep the dishes clean. We're not in any danger of being overwhelmed by hoarding... there's not a room in this house that can't be cleaned from top to bottom in less than an hour by the two of us. If the two of us worked on one room for more than an hour, there would be painting or alphabetizing involved. We're not great at housekeeping, but it is at the level of "honey, can you PLEASE get your socks in the hamper" and my wife grudgingly apologizing and promising to do better next time. :)

But...

Since I started this homebrewing business, I've been collecting empty beer bottles. Not RANDOM bottles, mind you. No twist-tops! Mostly Sam Adams bottles, but also some Magic Hat, and a couple of other random brands. Plus I bought a few dozen empties from the local brewing supply shop just because. I've been putting off getting the bottles cleaned and the labels off, mostly because I'd read that the process can be rather arduous. Today I decided to break down and start washing and soaking the bottles. The good news is that the process is EASY! The labels peel right off, and the adhesive residue comes off with a quick scrub of the sponge.

The bad news is I stopped to count to see how many bottles I have to clean. Not counting the bottles that are currently full of beer, I've got nineteen 12-packs worth of bottles. 228 bottles total. If I scrub 24 bottles a day, it is STILL going to be more than a week to go through all of them. Can I stop now? Can I?!?!?! Well, let's think about this:

It takes 4-6 weeks in the bottle for a batch of beer to be drinkable. Each batch is about 48 bottles worth of beer. So I need around 6x48= 288 bottles. So no, I guess I can't stop... at least not for another couple of weeks. It is starting to take up a whole lot of room though. At some point soon, I'm going to have to figure out some sort of system, some sort of organizational method to keep this from overwhelming me. Maybe stack-able file crates from Staples? I guess the point is to get it organized before it gets out of control, right?

Elsewise, I might end up with this:

Sweet Satan it is COLD!!

2012-01-16T09:03:00.004-05:00

You know... people can maybe get used to anything, given enough time. But once gotten used to, the opposite can be difficult to deal with. I moved to Florida on Valentine's Day 2003. That's almost a decade of living in the Sunshine State, so moving to Virginia has been a shock in a lot of ways.

Twenty Two Degrees. At Nine A.M.

Right now in Florida where I lived it is 55° which is a pretty big difference right? Yes?

Beer Brew, Take Two (Part1)

2012-01-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

Yeah... yeah! Went down to Weekend Brewer and picked up a "Big Sky Amber Ale" ingredient kit a week ago. Because I'm lazy, it took me until yesterday to start brewing up the new batch, especially since it takes ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HOURS to put this shit together.

It starts at 9AM, sanitizing and then filling up a couple of gallon pitchers full of filtered water, and chilling it in the fridge.

Time to get my yeast out of the fridge while I'm at it.

Then, three more gallons of filtered water in my 5-gallon brew pot.

While I waited...and waited... and waited... and waited for the water to get up to the required 150-ish degrees, I grabbed my sack of grain...

... and turned it into a sock of grain!

Sock of grain goes into the pot to steep for 30-40 minutes. In "real" home brewing, the start-to-finish kind that makes you a master of the hipsters art in your skinny jeans and ironic T-shirts, you'd actually have pounds and pounds of grains and soak them for hours and then drain off the sugary liquid for your beer... and I might go that route someday. Seriously, no kidding. It can be up to 25% cheaper to go that route, although it is a bigger mess. The upshot is that you get a richer flavor... which is why you go ahead and steep a small amount of grain even when you're using the dried malt extract. Speaking of which...

SIX POUNDS OF DRY MALT EXTRACT!!! My first batch of beer was with the liquid extract, which comes in a can and is a very thick syrup. The dried stuff is a little easier to deal with, since you don't have to separately heat up a can to loosen the syrup and then rinse the cans out with boiling water to get all of the sweet sugary goodness into the pot. After the steeping is done, you take the sock of grains out of the water, and mix in the dry malt extract. After a bunch of stirring, my wort looks something like this:

**Not pictured: what it looks like when the pot boils over, spilling sugary badness all over the stovetop.

After my little... mishap, I added in a cup or so of liquid extract to make up for the spillover loss, and to raise the sugar levels overall. That becomes important later. Also at this point, I added the first of the hops. Hops are cool!

**Not rabbit food, or rabbit poop either.

The hops are sort of ground up and dried into little pellets that dissolve in the wort. You add one type at the start, a different sort at about midway, and a third type for the last few minutes. Stirring regular and avoiding boilover helps at this point. After about an hour, the boiling is done, and the pot goes outside on the back porch. I've got a cheap metal tub from Target that I fill with ice water that sits outside in the cold. I take the brew pot and stick it in the tub to cool down the work for fermentation.

While I'm waiting for the wort to go from boil to room temp, I start sterilizing my fermenting bucket and lid, and the airlock that goes in the lid. Adding the previously chilled water helps hasten the process. When that's done, I pour the wort into the bucket through a strainer, which gets rid of the boiled hops AND helps at air to the liquid. Gotta stir and stir and stir to get plenty of air in the wort, although some people use an aquarium aerator... me too someday, I've got it on the list!

At this point, I take a cup of wort out of the bucket and put it in a beaker with the hydrometer. Should have taken a picture, but my wife dropped a broke the hydrometer minutes after taking the reading. No harm done... anyhoo, the point is that you measure the specific gravity (density) of the wort. At the end of the fermenting process, you check the specific gravity a second time, and the difference in the two numbers plus some math lets you know how much sugar was converted to alcohol by the yeast, which is how you get the Alcohol By Volume figure. My first beer came out to about 4.5%... but this time I added extra malt extract, remember? More sugar in the bucket means more food for the yeast, which means more potential alcohol production. By my calculations, I should wind up somewhere in the 6-6.5% range by the end of the fermentation. SWEET!

At this point, I dump in the yeast, give it a swirl, snap the lip on and insert the airlock, and I'm done. The bucket sits on a chair, with a couple of magazines propping up one end of the bucket. As the yeast does its work, the older yeast dies and settles to the bottom. Having the bucket at an angle makes it easier to siphon off the beer while leaving the dead yeast and whatever grain/hops crap might be left in the bucket. After twelve hour or so, the airlock is full of bubbles, which means the fermentation is going well and I'm done for a couple of days. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Can't I get a visit from the Prize Patrol instead?

2012-01-13T16:14:00.000-05:00

NO!

Monday I get a visit from the landlord, and Friday I get a visit from... THE COPS!! Three of them, all sort of hands on guns and in tactical positions around my front door. Looking for someone, but not me thank Satan. About a minute after I shut the door, three MORE police cars drive by my house, one after another after another.

Someone's in pretty deep shit. I'm glad it isn't me.

Funny thing though... I had my gun on my hip, and they didn't say a word. :)

So far, so good? (Beer edition)

2012-01-12T13:12:00.003-05:00

Well... I tried one of my homebrewed beers last week. The results were... less than encouraging? I started to panic a bit, which is why I haven't posted anything about it until now. The beer was sweet but sour, and upset my stomach some. But I read up on it, and that "green apple" flavor is not unexpected or uncommon, especially if the beer hasn't had time to fully "condition" in the bottle. Usually 3-4 weeks, and it has only been 12 days now.

Now, I decided to try another beer. The verdict? Not too shabby. It isn't nearly as sweet, and the sour is starting to turn more normal bitter. It is nice and carbonated, so that part worked out pretty much perfectly. And it should only get better if I can continue to be patient. The home brew websites all say the same thing: the last beer is always the best beer. So I've still got 46 beers left, and I'm going to try one beer every 3-4 days for the next two weeks or so and see how the flavor changes over time.

In the meantime, this gives me the confidence to start the next batch... which is a hell of a lot more complex, but I think I can do it! But, it is a whole crapload of stuff....

There's nothing like a 5-day notice of pending eviction

2012-01-09T18:05:00.001-05:00

... it really adds zest to your day.

Seriously, these people are fucking idiots. We wrote a rent check before Xmas, it cleared two days after Xmas, and now they've assessed us with a $120 late charge and an eviction threat for not paying the rent. FUCKING MORONS!!

You know... I wanted to kick the shit out of the guy. I comes to my house like "I don't know if you guys forgot, or what happened, but you haven't paid January's rent and this is your 5-day eviction notice." When I told him that we paid before Xmas he got this puzzled semi-stupid look on his face. "Oh... people don't usually pay early... ummmm... are you sure?" He looked even more confused when I told him I would have the bank fax him a copy of the cancelled check first thing in the morning. You know, like people who rent can't pay early or call the bank. I guess he thought we were paying in food stamps and extra chickens.

Fuck, this shit makes me miserable sometimes.

I can't believe I cut my own hair!

2012-01-06T21:13:00.002-05:00

Because that makes perfect sense when you're insanely depressed, right?!?!

So what I couldn't stand was the idea of sitting in some stranger's chair and letting her cut the hair off of my head, so I blew through most of my allowance for the next two weeks and bought clippers. To be fair, the clippers only cost a little more than the haircut would have. And I had to cut my hair, SOMEONE had to cut my hair, because it gets long and it gets magically shitty like Einstein hair. And then I came up with the crazy idea that if I could cut my hair myself, because my wife was afraid of cutting my hair and I figured that if I could cut my hair OK, then she could do it better.

And I guess it turned out OK? My hair was acceptable, once my wife spent about 4 minutes cleaning up the back of it. So yay, I guess.

Depression is like...

2012-01-05T17:43:00.001-05:00

... being covered in cold wet itchy blankets, 100 pounds of them soaked in salt water, right after someone has scraped off the top layer of my skin. I'm miserable and sluggish and barely able to think let alone do, but I'm also super-sensitive and prickly about everything. I get all the lethargy with none of the numbness that other depressed people are lucky enough to have.

Why I can't get anything done, New Year's Edition!

2012-01-02T18:17:00.002-05:00

My little sweetheart Lily has had some ups and downs since we rescued her outside the former home of the people who abandoned her when they were evicted. She was really scared and aggressive for a bit, then she went exploring through the house and even took naps with me. Then something went terribly wrong, and she went back to being scared and aggressive again and then even started peeing in inappropriate places even though she has her own litter box.

Well, now she's back being lovey cat again. She's started talking, which is new for her. She plays with string and rolls around in front of my keyboard... OK, in front of AND ON TOP OF MY KEYBOARD. She's still not ready to be around the other cats very much but at least she's not scratching me bloody every other day. We're currently playing a new game, where Lily stretches and rolls around while I rub her belly, and she "accidentally" knocks everything off of my desk one item at a time.

I actually started to panic a bit just now, she's acting like she's had a stroke or something. Nothing wrong... this is just the absolute most relaxed she's ever been since she's been in our house, and she's actually displaying some normal cat laziness instead of being on her guard all day and half the night.

Anyways, here's the picture:

We're going to try again...

2012-01-01T13:18:00.003-05:00

New year, new list of books I'm reading. The goal is to read 100 books this year. Call it a resolution if it turns you on. :) 100 seems like a good number for me, wait and see.

I'm going to try to brew at least 100 gallons of beer? Why not? That's like 20 beers a week. More than enough.

What else? Save $100 a month? Probably not. Lose 100 pounds... and leave a beautiful corpse? Not likely. Watch 100 movies? That's doable. I can sit on the couch in front of the TV with the best of them.

I dunno... at least the house is clean. That's something.

Smells like beer!!!

2011-12-31T17:41:00.000-05:00

*Not my actual carboy.

So we are two weeks into the beer brewing process. At this point, the fermentation is almost completely done. We've checked the specific gravity today, and it calculates out to about 4.2% ABV. And it smells like beer too! Clearly it isn't contaminated and it looks good and smells right and I'm betting tastes OK as well. In a day or two I'll check again, and if there's no change I'll be bottling the beer, about 48 bottles worth. Three more weeks later, and it should be ready to drink. Yay!

Nothing special about the new year...

Shots of Scotch until I pass out...

2011-12-30T19:46:00.000-05:00

Not the cheap shit either. 18 year old Glenfiddich. :)

See, in my house we get our drink on the night before New Year's Eve. The actual day of NYE is for cleaning, because we likes to start the new year with a clean house.

Rainy day blues

2011-12-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

Blegh... it is in the mid 40s and raining out, not a bit of sun in the sky. It looks like a sheet of grey doom has been stretched across the whole of the world. It is pretty damned miserable. The dog is laying on the floor behind me in my office... I know she wants to go outside and poop, but when she gets outside she's too distracted by the cold and the wet to just do her business and get back inside.

I kicked the baby kitten cat out of my office today. Last night she peed on the printer... well, on the blanket that covers the printer when she sleeps on it. I think that while it has been nice to protect her from the other cats by making my office a safe haven, she needs to start socializing with them (and me!) in the broader context of the house. As it stands I feel like she's becoming territorial over my office to an unhealthy extent, and that's got to stop right now. She's upstairs in the bed, currently unmolested by the other cats. I'll take it.

Happy Monkey!!

2011-12-25T10:01:00.002-05:00

On this special day, when we celebrate whatever is meaningful to us in our own unique way.

Also, prezzies!!!!

Finally!!!!!

2011-12-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it has been a tough few months getting settled into the new house. I can cope with a lot of it, but not having my office set up properly has been the biggest burden on me. You know how some people you can tell how their mood is by their environment? It works both ways with me: having my space poorly organized makes me cranky and depressed. I had things almost perfect in the old house, not so much here.

Here's how I had my guitars set up before:

I tried that here, but the anchors just ripped holes in the wall. I couldn't figure out what to do, and going in and out of their cases is a major hassle. Finally stumbled upon a solution yesterday? Day before? Whatever, here is my NEW layout:

That REALLY works for me. At least until I get a bigger amp...

pouring down rain...

2011-12-21T12:46:00.001-05:00

In this neighborhood, the electricity is sort of hit and miss. So whenever it starts raining, I can almost assume the power is going to go out at some point. Crap and crap, since there's not much in the way of food in my house that doesn't require cooking. Day before payday and all that sort of nonsense.

Time to start charging batteries. Yay!

Luckily for me, I have Ryobi cordless power tools, and they share a single battery type. You know, the sort of fist-sized bricks that will run your drill all day long. Even more luckily, the flashlight I have is ALSO a Ryobi, and runs on the same battery. Since I've got 4-5 of those batteries, if I can get them charged before the lights go out, I'm good on battery power until tomorrow at least.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck. Sitting in the dark sucks.

Bubble bubble bubble...

2011-12-19T10:34:00.001-05:00

... my beer is fermenting! Woo!

There's an airlock on the beer fermenting bucket filled with water, and every couple of seconds a bubble pops up to the surface. The beer is coming along nicely. Yay!

I'm learning stuff as I go with the home brewing. Gotta buy extra yeast, because the packet of yeast that came with the mix was shot. Lucky for me, I had bought two ingredient kits and the second kit's yeast packet worked like a charm. Next time, I'll make sure to have extra yeast on hand.

Awesome!

2011-12-18T10:58:00.001-05:00

So, we got locked out of the house Friday night, had to break a window to get in, blah blah blah. You can read about it at my wife's blog right here.

The upshot is that we went ahead and opened our Xmas presents a week early. We needed the good cheer. And today, I'm going to brew my very first batch of beer. Yay!

I'm starting simple, with a very basic beer-making recipe. You mix boiling water with a liquid malt extract, cool it down, add some yeast, and leave it alone to ferment. After 2-3days you transfer it to the glass carboy, and let it finish fermenting. So like next Saturday or Sunday it should be ready, at which point you move it back to the bucket and mix in some sugar, and start bottling. A week or three after that, BEER!

It is a lot of equipment though, so I feel just a bit overwhelmed.

**three hour break without power, and it is in the low 40s outside.**

Yeah, it is a bucket with a spigot and a lid with a drilled hole for an airlock, two glass carboys with stoppers and airlocks, a siphon gadget with hoses, a thermometer, a hydrometer, brushes, and some other crap. Looks something like this:

Well, except I got a fancy bench capper that looks like this:

That was the deal my wife and I made: I would make sure she got the fancy bottle capper, and she would help me bottle the beer. Seems like a fair trade.

GAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

2011-12-15T12:43:00.002-05:00

HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!
HOW DO I NOT OPEN PRESENTS?!?!?!

I mean seriously. They are all sitting RIGHT THERE! Just a few feet away, taunting me. Calling out to me, whispering in my ear, causing me hallucinations. I dream at night of my presents, and all the wonderful joy they will bring me. I can't hardly sleep at night, and I'm fixated all day.

...

Yeah, I was also a pretty insufferable child this time of year. I'm not much better as an adult.

Speaking of insufferable... My alpha male cat, Randall, is ruining my life. The new kid, Lily, accidentally got loose from my office this morning, and before I could get her back in here I hear a loud crash upstairs. Randall has chased her into the spare bedroom, and UP ONTO THE BLINDS! Blinds which are now ruined, and will have to be replaced at my expense. Luckily they are the cheap bullshit $5 vinyl blinds, half-assed like everything else in this fucking house. Fuck you Randall, you little shit. I know we had them take your balls, but still.

A holiday post in three parts... Part 3!

2011-12-11T18:44:00.001-05:00

So, in Part 1 we established that I have a tiny tree.

In Part 2 we located my small tree in space, namely several feet off of the floor.

In Part 3, we now discuss the purpose of a Xmas tree. The purpose of the tree is as a handy location under which presents must appear, by hook or by crook. If not presents, then what the hell is the purpose?

Thus:

Consider the cat a bonus. :)

Done printing....

2011-12-10T02:47:00.001-05:00

... all spooled out. Try again tomorrow, or maybe next year.

A holiday post in three parts... Part 2!

2011-12-09T09:39:00.001-05:00

So, in Part the First, we discussed my small Xmas tree as a preemptive defense against the ravages of a household full to overflowing with cats.

In this edition, let's talk about location. As in, gotta put the tree up high. Otherwise, Randall's going to chew off the ornaments, and the other cats will fight over them, bat them under the furniture and then start crying over it, until Ginger runs them all off, eats the "ornaments", and then wants to go outside every twenty minutes to poop them out.

So you've got to put the little tree up a little higher...

A holiday post in three parts... Part 1!

2011-12-08T15:46:00.001-05:00

This is my Xmas tree:

Just for reference, here's my tree next to a 12-oz beer bottle:

The reality is that with the cats we have, we've got little choice besides a tiny tree or a big tree on the floor with a bunch of cats tangled in the lights. It would be a disaster. So, little fucking tree it is.

To clarify...

2011-12-07T20:22:00.001-05:00

There seemed to be a bit of confusion over the star of this post. And none of this Americanized CGI bullshit, neithers. Let me clear it up for you:

That's RIGHT! SUCK IT CGI PUNK-ZILLA. DUDE IN RUBBER SUIT FTW!!

Really wanted to get out of bed today...

2011-12-07T12:14:00.001-05:00

... couldn't. Apparently my leg is a pillow now. Thanks, Ellie.

In less interesting news, I'm looking into serious beer-brewing stuff. Like everything else in my life, I apply math to the problem:

Two 12-packs a week at $15 each adds up to $1560 a year for 1248 beers/117 gallons.
A complete home-brewing setup with a couple of beer kits will cost me around $250.
Five gallon kits of malt and hops and yeast cost around $40 each.
I need 23 kits at $40 each to make 115 gallons of beer, which comes out to $920.
In the first year, I will spend $1170 to make $1560 of beer, at a savings of $390.
After that, it is $640 less per year for beer.
And the more I drink the more I save!

See? Math is your friend!

It's beginning to look a lot like Xmas, Joe-style

2011-12-06T22:02:00.001-05:00

Just so there's no confusion, I'd sell several of your internal organs on the black market to have this on my lawn. SEVERAL.

Office Cat

2011-12-05T08:23:00.001-05:00

So, we're about three weeks into breaking in the new cat, and we've hit a snag. Apparently, "three" was the maximum number of cats we could have who would tolerate each other, and Lily makes #4. I had her sleep in my office for a week before letting her venture out, and it has been a nightmare. She hops on the counter and guards the food dispenser half of the day, but she doesn't really seem to be eating. I've decided that she doesn't like other cats to touch the food that she's going to eat. The other cats don't seem to get along with her yet either... especially Randall, the alpha male cat. He chases her out of the litter boxes on a semi-regular basis.

So... she's back in my office. I leave the door open, but I've sort of insisted that this be a safe zone for her. She can eat in here, and the top of the printer is a safe spot from the other cats for the most part. Kind of hard to get anything done thought, what with a cat to pet at arm's reach all day...

... which is why I'm not an executive?

2011-12-01T14:47:00.001-05:00

We're so broke, it is stressing us the fuck out. Just broke broke broke. We can pay our necessities, but we're behind on pretty much every "second-tier" bill. Credit cards are maxed out, that sort of thing. This time next year we'll be in much better shape as we get caught up and clear the last of the moving expenses, but right now it is somewhere between a disaster and a big mess. So when you look at the budget, Christmas simply isn't happening this year. Hell, we didn't have the money for my wife to have anything for her birthday.

So, last night I had an epiphany and made the executive decision: we're not paying our bills this month. Fuck it, we're not going to be really any more behind by getting a couple of weeks further behind. Not in the grand scheme of things. And we NEED a Christmas... things have been too stressed for too long, and we need the release valve cracked open a bit before things turn ugly. I've crunched the numbers and if we get a couple of gift cards to pay for food and such, we can put together a pretty respectable spread for ourselves this year. My wife can spend a few hundred bucks on clothing for work, and that STILL leaves a couple of hundred bucks for each of us.

What the hell... I makes me an executive decision, dammit!

A quick announcement

2011-11-30T11:29:00.001-05:00

Details to follow...

Yeah! I mean "Maybe!"

2011-11-29T21:08:00.001-05:00

You shouldn't really shout at your spouse/significant other... but if you do, make it something random like "San Dimas High School football rules!!!!'

Yeah, holiday! And other stuff too.

2011-11-22T19:47:00.001-05:00

So, my wife is off tomorrow and Turkey Day... woohoo! We're going to have a scaled down version this year, a turkey breast and some stuffing, crack open a can of corn and some fresh made cranberry dressing. Nothing too fancy, but it is just the two of us and I'm not in a turducken frame of mind for a change.

The house is coming along. We have ONE BOX LEFT! It is clothing and stuff that needs to be sorted and hung up or tossed out. I need to repair one old picture frame, and then it is all waiting to buy the organizing shelves and such to get it the way we want it. I'm going to need a desk, my wife wants a little desk and filing cabinet for an upstairs office. I've put in a request with Santa for some shelving in the kitchen, and a microwave stand for our free-standing ice maker.

In other news, the cats are getting used to the new addition to the family, and vice versa. The dog still hasn't gotten used to the younger cats, and still bows down to Randall the alpha male of the house. And Lily, our youngest?

... looks like I'm going to need a new chair.

Friday Quick Hit: Sith Edition

2011-11-18T17:54:00.001-05:00

I just went outside and played Star Wars with the next door neighbor kids. They have the little kid version lightsabers, like I had when I was their age. I have the realistic light and sound "adult" edition Darth Vader lightsaber. Me and my wife are really popular with the under-10 set now.

New Kitty, Longer Version

2011-11-16T19:05:00.001-05:00

Here's the longer story behind our new kid:

So, we've lived here like 6-7 weeks. At about week 3 or so, we were sitting out on the front porch in the evening, when we noticed a scrawny white cat on the roof overhanging the porch of the house across the street. My wife busied herself with freaking out on how the cat got up there, if it belonged to the house or if it was a stray, whatever and so forth. A couple of days later the cat was either still up there or back up there, and there were a pair of cops hanging out on my street. I figured that would be the person to ask about what's up with the cat and who to call if it was stuck up there for good. You know, since I really don't want to get mixed up with the weird shit across the street. Cat finds her way off of the roof, not my problem.

Cut to the weekend, where the cops spend the whole fucking day at that same house, and at one point one of the guys living there was hanging out in handcuffs. Just a big ugly fucking mess. A week or so later than that, there's a whole bunch of cops and inspector-types milling around the house. Next day there's a big ugly orange sticker on the window that says "NO TRESPASSING" on it. Day after that Handcuffs Guy is out there scraping the sticker off. A couple of days after that, the cops are back and so is the sticker. The last few days I've seen Handcuff Guy once, and the chick living there leave the place with bags and sacks of clothing, and then zero activity around the house.

Well, zero activity except for the same goddamned white cat hanging around the porch all day and night. Finally last night my wife and I were back out on the porch and saw her, and on a whim I decided to walk over and see how she was. Poor little thing comes right up to me and starts nuzzling my leg. I don't think anyone has been feeding her, because she's just stick-thin. So I scoop her up, and run back to the house... well, most of the way and then I trip and fall in the yard and lose my gun somewhere. Did I mention I always carry my gun outside? Anyways, my wife runs over, grabs the cat, and SHE falls down after her foot hits the curb where its covered by leaves.

We find my gun, set up a temp litter box and feeding area in my office, and... here's LILY!!

She's eaten about 47 pounds of cat food in the last 24 hours. She clawed my hand so bad that I'm pretty sure I'm getting a couple of scars from it. Other than that, she's mostly a sweetheart but still easily spooked by the other pets or when you touch her unexpectedly. Randall was like that when we got him, and he grew out of it and now he is the big lovey boy in the house. I'm guessing Lily will be fine too, once the newness wears off.

So yeah... I'm a soft-hearted goof who takes in strays. So sue me.

I guess I have another daughter?

2011-11-15T21:51:00.001-05:00

Yeah?

This is Lily... long story. I literally picked her up off the street.

Beer!

2011-11-13T13:30:00.001-05:00

Picked me up a Samuel Adams Winter Classics variety pack. Two each of the following:

Boston Lager
Winter Lager
Holiday Porter
Black & Brew
Chocolate Bock
Old Fezziwig Ale

I'm all about the variety packs. I likes new and different flavors, and it is pretty cool that I can try a bunch all in one package. The only downside to the homebrew deal I'm considering is that you are sort of committed to 50+ beers all of one sort. I guess I'll just have to buy a few dozen buckets and brew us out of house and home!

Perfectly reasonable plan, right?

UGH

2011-11-12T19:15:00.001-05:00

I keep all the cables. It is totally a good idea in principle: I will never run out of USB phone charging cables, and they work to charge my camera and my pocket camcorder as well as data transfer. I've got a couple of extra of everything in case something goes bad, which isn't a bad idea if a guitar cable goes bad and you're semi-broke.

The only problem is that when you have so much, sometimes it becomes impossible to find the specific thing you're looking for. And if you can't find it, you might as well not have it. So it becomes sort of a struggle, and what I need to do is buy some cable ties and large ziplock bags and organize by category instead of having baskets of bird nests. It is a work in progress.

One of the things that got lost in the move was the receiver for my wireless keyboard and mouse. I found receivers for a couple of sets I don't own anymore, which is worse than useless. So I bought another mouse/keyboard combo that works, and then didn't work right when I had thrown away the packaging. Back to the store to buy a wired keyboard and mouse so that I could work on the computer and fix the issue. Cool, fine, whatever. Decided to just keep the wired stuff for emergencies... remember, I keep everything.

Went looking today for the charger for my electric razor. Thing cost like $130, although I only paid $12 thanks to coupons and gift cards. Dug through the baskets for awhile, considered and then rejected the idea of throwing stuff away, and FINALLY found the charging cable for the razor. Also found the receiver for the old mouse and keyboard.

Not going to throw them away, just in case. Hoarders unite!!!!

Friday Quick Hit

2011-11-11T08:15:00.001-05:00

I think Randall my oldest cat is psychic, and has been using my dreams to try to manipulate me into letting him go outside. Not going to happen, because no child of mine is going out and getting hit by a car or lost in the big bad city. Not going to happen, period.

It doesn't mean I don't feel bad for the guy...

One month in the new house/new town/new life

2011-11-01T12:38:00.003-04:00

TL;DR: not bad, some things sort of suck now, but won't forever.

Longer version: Things are not too bad, the house could use some work, but I think we can make a go of it. My wife is VERY happy with her job, and I'm looking at being back in school next fall so that will be cool. In the meantime, I'm getting some exercise and losing weight. My mood and outlook are much improved, according to my wife. According to me I'm generally sleeping better and maybe not flying off the handle as much.

Money is the big issue right now. We're still paying moving expenses a month later. We accidentally ran up a $500 phone bill, plus the connection fees for utilities in the new house were more than we counted on. We're used to having a pretty big cushion, but my wife's higher insurance is going to eat most of that up, so until we get our budget adjusted we're going to be sort of on the edge of broke all the time.

In a year it isn't going to matter. We'll be out of our cell phone contracts, which will mean we'll save $100 a month. My wife's new insurance will save us another $75-100 a month on co-pays and meds. Not having to run the heat/air 24-7 will help too. We're going to buy a chest freezer and start shopping at one of those warehouse stores. And I guess I should brew my own beer to save money? I have a nasty unfinished basement to use as my evil lair/brewery...

At the same time, we need to pour some money into the house to make it more than just a roof over our heads. There's no room in the kitchen for food, no room in the closet for our clothing, and the laundry room is in my office. My office is connected to the living room by French doors, so that's not going to work. There's no ice maker in the fridge, there's no desk in my office, there's no space for anything in the bathrooms. All this means money. Not big money, but nickle-and-dime stuff. Except the desk. That's $500. :)

And even though I don't have a desk, I do have a cleared space with my stuff mostly set up in it. It is a weird thing, how my internal life is often reflected in the external state of my living space. When I'm doing badly, things tend to be a mess. When I'm feeling good, my office stays organized and the dishes get done. What's even weirder is how the external can impose itself on the internal. Without an organized home, I tend to be all over the place. Not blogging much, not interested in doing much, sort of drives me to nap more. My wife and I are going to "finish" setting up the house this week, even if all that means is that we remove everything that's laying around waiting for a home and cram it in the storage room upstairs until we feel like dealing with it.

We're both doing pretty well, and the house should reflect that.

Lack of real content here...

2011-10-20T21:28:00.001-04:00

Yeah. Well.

What do you want me to do? Engage with the evil enough to post about it? Sweet flaming Satan, it would drive me mad!!!!

Have you ever listened to American Family Radio? It is a "ministry" of right-wing anti-American sociopaths, and it is one of the few stations my car radio picks up on the "FM dial". And they represent the mainstream Republican voter! Holy fucksticks, Batman! These hateful goons think that Obama is a socialist, and that the solution to all problems is to ban abortion and eliminate(murder?) gay people, because then their completely imaginary god will make everyone(who counts) rich and healthy and happy and successful. Fuckers... but should I post about them?

What about the creationist assholes who want to destroy American science education because real science says that the world is a bit older than their moronic religion claims? What about the anti-science "holistic medicine" idiots who lead people to their deaths by convincing them to forgo real medicine in favor of stupid fucking nonsense? How about the misogynistic demons who want to make it illegal for women to even talk to their doctor on the Internet about reproductive health issues that might include abortions or even birth control? Don't even get me started on libertarians, or general Republican "tax the poor" economic plans that seek to destroy the economy (and any reasonable practice of sustainable capitalism) in the name of short-term profits. I'll lose my goddamned mind!

Instead, I'll talk about the cat that lives under my car. Or the three cats that live in my house. Or my sweet doggy-girl who loves us like only a dog can. Or my wife who is happier than she's been in years thanks to her new job. Or stuff I want to buy, or the minor problems of moving into a new house, or cooking secrets, or anything that isn't the wider world that seems to be crumbling under our feet even as the top 1% get richer and richer while complaining more and more that the rest of us are being mean to them!

Yeah... Irish whiskey is the cure, and I'm going to drink your share and mine and try not to sink too far into despair.

Gun-nuttery!!

2011-10-18T00:12:00.001-04:00

Well... there's been a little bit of change in the Improbable household.

You know it started with "Joe, you don't need a gun" from Mrs. iJoe. That was semi-reasonable, since we lived somewhere safe, where we locked the front door to keep the cats in and not to keep the burglars out. At some point, my wife took a job in the ghetto... and she started thinking that guns aren't so bad. Then we started talking about moving to Richmond, and the crime stats aren't great, and Joe getting a handgun didn't seem like such a bad idea.

Now we live here. Things are different from what we are used to. We have an alley behind our house where it is convenient to walk the dog without having to pick up her poop, but there are strangers walking through the alleys in the middle of the day sipping on bottles of liquor in brown paper bags. We have a nice big front porch and the weather is nice and moderate and it is nice to sit out there and enjoy the fresh air, but weird guys on bicycles try to talk to my wife, and drunk/high ladies want to borrow things from us, and there are way too many shady-looking people who look like they are peeing on the lawn of the house across the street from us...

So. We have been here less than three weeks, and it has gone from "I guess it is cool if you have a gun" to "thank goodness you have a gun" to "when can you take me to the range and teach me how to shoot your gun" to "maybe I should get my own gun?" It doesn't help/hurt when we're sitting at home on a Sunday and we hear what sounds like gunshots pretty close, and then someone running past my wife in the alley behind the house.

At what point does gun-nuttery become gun-sanity? Maybe when there's a real and present danger of people shooting at you near your house. I don't know for sure, but I'm damned glad that I have the choice to be armed or not.

The pain, it is unbearable!

2011-10-14T19:26:00.001-04:00

Been busy this week. Messed around with organizing, did some grocery shopping, fell down the back porch steps, opened some boxes...

FELL DOWN THE BACK PORCH STAIRS?!?!?!?!

Yep. It was raining Wednesday, leaves fell all over the stairs, I went out to walk the dog. I don't know if she pulled me or if I just slipped, because the whole thing was a blur. An incredibly painful blur. I know I hit with my left calf, then my right hip, and somewhere in there my right side just below my ribs. All of that was blanked out when, as I continued to slide down the stairs, the back of my right arm hit a step and dragged across the step with much of my weight on it. I don't remember turning almost 270° counter-clockwise, but I landed face first in the dirt at the bottom of the steps that way. Somehow, miraculously, I held onto the leash and didn't lose the dog. I got up, brushed myself off, and walked the damned dog.

Holy crap, the pain. The impact was bad. The bruise on my hip is almost black, about the size of a frisbie, and has spread out to cover part of my ass and lower back... I guess, I'm too scared to look but that's how it feels and my wife was pretty horrified when she looked at it today. My arm aches pretty bad, and so does my left calf, and my bad right ankle took a hit somewhere in there.

The real pain is in my right side. It is a low-level dull ache now, but I sleep on my side and tend to toss and turn a bit, and the angle and twisting motion cause the sort of heavy, deep, and wide pain that makes you feel like you're going to puke.

And of course, no insurance. I just have to tough it out. Luckily, I have whisky and whiskey to keep me company, and enough beer to drown a cat in. Woo?

... and my office is completely trashed again!

2011-10-11T15:00:00.001-04:00

UGH!

The rest of the house is starting to look pretty good, minus the cool shelving and stuff we need to buy. For instance, we used to have a walk-in closet, now we have a mini-closet and a nook in the bedroom set up for a tiny TV stand (based on the outlet/cable junction box) and not much else. We're going to convert that into a hanging space like so:

Rubbermaid makes a whole collection of matching stuffs that will let us expand our storage space considerably, and as we have the money I'll be installing the stuff left and right.

In the meanwhile, my someday office is waiting for those organizing tools, and is currently covered with crap in random places. Some of this stuff needs to go upstairs, some of it is waiting for me to own an actual desk, and some of it is waiting for all of those other things to happen, so that there's an actual home for them someday. I need to hang shelves for my bobbleheads. I need to figure out a spot for my amp, and whether or not I'll have space to hang my guitars back up on the wall. Stuff like that.

Watched a whole marathon of that 'Hoarders' show yesterday... my office looks like one of their cleaner rooms! Egads!

Wow...

2011-10-09T18:32:00.001-04:00

This unpacking shit sucks. Seriously. I still have to unpack the wardrobe boxes, and figure out where the garage stuff goes. No garage means no place for more stuff than I realized. We'd like to get a storage shed, and probably will at some point, but until then I guess upstairs somewhere? Crap.

We got my "office" mostly cleared out, but I still need a desk and to figure out what to do with the guitars. I'm going to need curtains, and I've got shelves to hang and stuff. Just not today, I think I've had enough.

So has Randall. Here's him taking a break from the unpacking:

One week in the (ancient!) new house

2011-10-07T09:34:00.002-04:00

Well, that's been a fun week.

I've puked, the water line to the upstairs bathroom sprung a leak, the cats made a break for the great outdoors, the cats decided outdoors was scary and ran right the fuck back inside, I've had two different cable boxes, and most of the unpacking is still waiting to be done.

A couple of those things are related to each other. Part of the reason that the unpacking hasn't been done is that I've had people in and out of the house all day every day since Monday. The shower curtain went up I guess Saturday, and Sunday my wife noticed water leaking from the ceiling below the upstairs bathroom. I waited around all day Monday for someone to come by, and for the cable guy. The cable guy showed up around 2-ish, the plumbing guy showed up at 5 and said "see you tomorrow." The cable guy brought the wrong box, and the leak wasn't completely fixed and patched over until yesterday.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a hard time digging through boxes of my personal belongings when there are a bunch of strangers walking in and out of your house all day. Plus, I had to lock up the pets so that they wouldn't get out and disappear into the great outdoors. I accidentally left the back door open while I was walking the dog, and I saw cats poke their heads out... and then jump back inside really fast. Indoor cats forever(I hope!)

Anyhoo, we're using my new office as the staging area for most of the boxes, and the cats have turned that into their playpen, so that's where they got locked up and I couldn't pull boxes out of that room without risking a great escape. Now that I have a couple of days without workers in my house, maybe I can get some unpacking done. It is hard to see an end though. Old houses are cool if you're a woman who likes words like "quaint" and "rustic" and is impressed with French doors, and lots of sunlight from lots of windows. If you're me, you look at all the windows and say "there's a useless wall I can't put anything against... and another, and another, and another..." and get really frustrated.

Not a lot of closet space either. We're going to be hanging some wire shelves and such, try to maximize what usable space we have. This place is probably 50% larger than our last house, but there's not really more space from a practical standpoint. My wife gets her own office if she wants one though. Otherwise, there are two tiny bedrooms upstairs that aren't going to see any real use at all.

I can't believe I just threw up! (All sorts of puke content, Not Safe for Your Tummy!)

2011-10-04T23:36:00.003-04:00

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I'm very familiar with vomiting. I was a sickly child, I've gotten various stomach bugs over the years, and I've been an big fan of heavy drinking for half of my life. :)

That being said, over the last 10-12 years the drinking-related vomit has been pretty rare. I puked a few weeks ago, when I threw vodka on top of pumpkin-flavored beer. I puked right before the wedding, on a few dozen shots of tequila. I puked once over drinking TWO mojito-flavored malt liquor drinks in the middle of the afternoon, which was based solely on that crap making me nauseous rather than as an effect of the alcohol.

And I just got done puking. Yeah, just like 5 minutes ago.

Clearly, from the lack of obvious typos I'm not the sort of shitfaced drunk that would normally lead to puking. So what happened? Well... I got sentimental, an since I moved to the Highland Park section of Richmond, I bought a bottle of Highland Park Scotch whisky. I paid about $70 for the bottle. I thought it would be cool, since that's the name of where I live, right?

Well, I pulled out my Glenfiddich tasting glass. I poured a little less than a shot into the glass. I sniffed it, and it wasn't too pleasing. I thought about the $70 I spent on the bottle and decided I should drink it down and see what it tasted like. It tasted like a fucking sewer, and my mouth immediately started doing the pre-puke watering. I managed to aim the vomit in an inoffensive direction... into the toilet. Lucky me. The rest of the Scotch in the bottle, $70 worth of Scotch, went down the drain right behind it.

Part of me feels bad about throwing away anything that expensive. That part of me can keep dry heaving, while the sane, sensible parts of me are cooking food to replace the dinner I just coughed up. I mean, holy shite, the rancid flavor! In the future, I think I'll be a little less sentimental, and a whole lot less adventurous. I know that Glenfiddich and The Macallan taste good and don't leave me with a wicked hangover, so I'll stick to those brands from now on.

Internet speed blues

2011-10-03T17:09:00.000-04:00

It is all the blues these days... Here's what I get when I plug my laptop directly into the modem:

Here's what I get through my laptop's built-in wireless thingy:

That qualifies as a problem. Granted, my laptop is pretty old, but my wife's isn't getting any faster speeds. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I don't have any money to throw at the problem. I've never been able to figure out how to make the router do what I want it to do, but I'm going to keep on trying. Maybe someday I can make it work for me?

Probably not. I'm not particularly impressed with myself.

Made it in one piece!

2011-09-30T20:58:00.001-04:00

Florida to Virginia in one marathon drive is not that bad on me.The cats are sort of all over the place. Ellie hopped right out of her carrier and started exploring, and she's obviously excited to have two floors and stairs to play on. Randall, not so much but he has sort of relaxed. Lucy, not even remotely slightly. She's hiding still, and looks at me accusingly every time she sees me. My wife is thrilled with the place. Me, not so much. It is a very old home, which to my wife means "awesome!" and to me means "... ugh." The neighborhood is... improving? Derelict homes all over the place, mixed with newly-renovated homes. There's a chicken joint that looks pretty neat though, and it is almost walking distance. I wonder if I can get a decent plate of BBQ here?

The best laid plans...

2011-09-29T17:10:00.000-04:00

Still in Florida.Right after the movers left, our new landlord called to inform us that our house would not be ready until Saturday. So here we are, and planned to do half of the drive Friday and the rest on Saturday, which would be easier on the pets for sure. Then the movers called, wanted to know if they could drop our furniture off on Friday. NO... Oh, and now the landlord wants to give us the keys Friday and I guess make us negotiate with the construction crews ourselves. Or something. Who the fuck knows... all I know is that I'll fucking kick the shit out of someone, which means that my wife has to deal with it. So no one has to die.

Happy Birthday to me...

2011-09-28T08:48:00.003-04:00

Everything (non-furniture) that I own is in a box, or in a pile next to me on the floor. I've got my laptop and my phone and my guitars and my amp and my toolbox. The Keurig is moving in here the moment this blog entry is finished and I get a cup. I've got my bathroom stuff in a carry-on bag, and a couple of changes of clothing. We bought two twin mattresses to combine into a king size once the beds are on the truck. We're in the process of gathering cats into the old office so they won't be underfoot when the movers come. I hope my wife din't leave anything important outside of my office. The packers were highly efficient. They packed all my food, and even the Capri Sun I bought for the drive tomorrow.

The lawn mower is drained, the tools are packed away, the bathrooms are clean, the only thing left to clean out is the refrigerator and stove, and we've got all day for that. The cable guy is coming this afternoon to take my Internet away... and then I'm off into the wild blue wasteland of real life.

Except for my smartphone. Oh, and wifi hot-spots. :)

We're leaving out of here zero dark-thirty tomorrow morning, so that we can get to the new house in the afternoon and get the keys my wife's paycheck and suchwhat. Friday we'll have Internet, sometime by Monday we'll have our furniture back together. What a thrill, right?

And it is my birthday... I'm not old!

The stuff is getting packed as we speak

2011-09-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

Holy crap, friends and far-off neighbors, we're in the final stretch now. The packers are in my house, making stuff disappear into boxes. My wife is at the dog park with Ginger, who would lose her everloving shit if she had to be here for this. Two of the cats are in my old office, which is where I'm sitting right now with my laptop propped on a plastic dog food container and my butt planted on a cat carrier. The third cat is in the guest bedroom, hiding from the packers. He's usually not the scared one, but my wife tried and failed to pick him up a few times, and now he's pissed off.

This is not going to end well for us, I can already tell.

***************************
Well, I got Randall in the room with the other two cats. That's a good sign. Two out of three of them are hiding inside the travel crates, which is also a not-terrible sign either. If that makes them feel safe, then maybe they can tolerate it for 11 hours on Thursday.

The only question is: can I tolerate them? They are NOISY cats!

Moving Time Blues

2011-09-26T18:06:00.003-04:00

You know, it shouldn't be this hard. Someone else is packing our stuff and loading it on the truck. Someone else is doing the heavy lifting on both ends of the move. Its just that... well, it is hard to get the motivation to clean and throw away stuff. I don't know why it is so bad, why I feel so overwhelmed.

Maybe it is because the last few times we moved, it was all within about a 2-mile radius and could be done in stages over a couple of weeks. Maybe it is because this is the first time I've had professional movers touch my stuff. Maybe it is none of those things and I'm just a fucking lazy bastard who doesn't want to deal. Most likely some combination.

The upshot is that people are coming to pack tomorrow at some point, and I need to be able to let them pack without me having to sound like a hoarder being supervised with my unhoarding: "No, pack that. Keep that. Trash that. Pack those two things but not the other three..."

And of course, the guitars and the gun comes with me!

My wife is home...

2011-09-25T20:17:00.001-04:00

... and we're out of here on Wednesday. Holy crap, things move fast. Just two months ago, we were talking about school money and riding lawn mowers.

In the history of bad ideas...

2011-09-23T16:42:00.002-04:00

... mowing the lawn in the rain is probably in the top few dozen. I didn't even manage to finish more than the front, since it started raining pretty much as soon as I started and is still raining a day later. Maybe that doesn't have anything to do with me being incredibly sick right now, but I'm going to pretend that correlation equals causation just this once. Just a terrible bad cold, I think I should die.

Also, I think I broke my toe. Twice. There's a clumsiness-causing curse in the floor, that usually drives my wife to fall down in the same exact spot every couple of months. Since my wife isn't here, it hit me. I somehow managed to kick the corner of the wall and smash my littlest toe on my left foot while walking. Twice. Think I sprained my right wrist too. Of course, I have a foot brace and a wrist brace. A right-foot and left-wrist brace.

I think I'm going to throw up... here, look at a kitten.

Really?

2011-09-22T09:10:00.001-04:00

Look, I hate mowing. HATE!

I'm moving into a house with about 6 feet between houses on either side, and a "lawn" that's maybe 20% or less than the size of my current one. So as far as the miserable mowing/trimming that takes almost 2 hours, I'm almost done with that... except this one last time I need to mow before I move out.

I've been putting it off and putting it off and finally I broke down as decided to do it this morning. I'm leaving next Wednesday or Thursday, so it isn't like there's much time left. I woke up, had breakfast and a cup of coffee(Keurig!!!), and drove down to the gas station one mile away.

So of course it starts raining on the way back from the gas station. Damn.

I'm still going to mow I guess. I'm going to try. I can't imagine going into the weekend having to do this crap.

COFFEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-09-21T17:14:00.002-04:00

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Yeah, because I'm such a mellow person that I need caffeine to perk me up. HOLY CRAP, THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA!!

So what happens is that my old coffee maker is sort of old. We've had it since maybe we got married, give or take a year? So like 6-7 years, and it was sort of a cheap one to begin with. Sort of nasty on the inside, really not worth the effort of cleaning it and packing it up to move. And since my birthday is next week, I suggested to my wife that if her parents were looking to buy me a gift, I'd be happy with a new coffee maker. Nothing fancy, just whatever they can get from Target for $40.

Today I got my coffee maker.

IT IS THE NICEST COFFEE MAKER I'VE EVER HAD!!! CAN YOU TELL THAT I'VE ALREADY HAD A CUP?!?!?!

Yeah, it is pretty cool and stuff. My mother-in-law is pretty great sometimes... not that she's ever bad, mind you. I've heard the horror stories, but they don't apply here.

I'm going to go make some tea now. Woo!

Semi-random stuff

2011-09-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

My move is a little over a week away, I'm sort of in a scary holding pattern here, my mind is all over the place, I really need a drink.

I'm really going to have a drink. But first, the randomness!

My wife LOVES her new job. It is sad that I'm missing her, and sad that she's missing me and the pets, but at least she's not pissed off and stressed every single day. Changing jobs looks like it will be the best thing that could have happened, and that makes the current suckitude bearable.
I really like my new amp. Like REALLY like it. I'm surprised, because it was an absolute impulse buy based on fear and a willingness to compromise, and seemed like a complete step down. Turns out, it actually sounds much better than its size or price would suggest. I mean, I'm not thrilled with the speaker but that's a $90 replacement part down the road. I hear that a $12 vacuum tube makes a world of difference. That still puts me right at $500 for the whole thing, and that's not too shabby.
I hate Gwyneth Paltrow. Seriously, she's just a terrible phony shithead. She's not as bad as pretty much every single Republican and libertarian Ron Paulbot on Earth, but she's right behind them. Just hate hate hate.
I can't even begin to deal with politics anymore. The world has gone to shit, the bad guys have won, and I give up. Seriously, only Nixon could go to China, and only Obama could destroy the New Deal and the American middle class.
In the meanwhile, I'm going to eat a bunch of chicken salad. This week at least, chicken salad tastes like the perfect expression of cooked poultry. Stuff is just nummy, on bread or crackers.
My glasses broke. My $250 Oakley prescription frames. I have no idea how. I woke up, and they were on the floor in two pieces. Yeah. Just in time for the move.
Also just in time... I bought a gun! Yay Joe! Saves me the hassle involved in buying one after the move. The laws are more or less the same, but I'd have to wait until I got my new driver's licence and have proof of residency and all that stuff. Just seemed easier here.
Coincidentally, it turns out that my driver's licence here expires right around the time I'm leaving. $50 for a renewal, but I can't very well drive without one. Sucks pretty bad, but what can you do?

OK, that's enough... let me get a couple of beers in me before I start deep-frying chicken wings. Hot oil and drunkiness go together so well!

Finally breathing again

2011-09-16T19:40:00.001-04:00

Have you ever been really stressed out? Like crazy insane stressed out, and didn't even really understand how bad it was until it was over? That's what this week has been like for me.

My wife had some... "issues" at her new job. Just a paperwork thing really, but if it hadn't been resolved it could have been a real problem. We're waiting on a bonus check and a moving check and the money is running out and one thing and another thing and what was really a minor speedbump could easily have snowballed into some major issues. Luckily, all of the paperwork has been processed.

As soon as I found out, the sense of relief I felt was pretty amazing. It's like I've been holding my breath for a week, and I've finally allowed myself to exhale. Now things can move forward, now I can move forward and start getting the house together.

BTW, what's the difference between Virginia and Florida? About twenty fucking degrees! It is still summer here, and I'm sure as shit not going to miss this heat.

How hung over am I?

2011-09-12T18:47:00.001-04:00

Wow, this is a tough one to answer.

I had a couple of beers last night, and since I felt OK I had a couple more. Not many in the grand scheme of things. I didn't feel a bit drunk last night, because I'm used to drinking stronger ales. Unfortunately, I had a miserable time sleeping last night. So I took a couple of happy pills and went back to bed. And then slept until 10:30 this morning.

I was crazy dehydrated, which is always fun. Pretty soon I found myself running around doing errands, and collapsed for a nap around 3-ish. Woke up around 5 even more dehydrated, with a headache and a nasty feeling in my tummy. I tried to make up for the dehydration, and now my stomach feels like it is a water balloon about to burst. My left eyelid is doing that weird twitching thing it does when I'm tired.

Also, Hall Pass and Your Highness are TERRIBLE movies, do not watch. I watched Wild Target on Netflix streaming and that wasn't half bad at all. Tomorrow is Thor which is exciting because, well... I SAY THEE NAY!

Time for the heavy drinking!

2011-09-11T13:50:00.000-04:00

... it is a terrible idea. Trust me.

I'm home alone, my wife is in Virginia looking at houses for us to move into, and I'm sick. Yep, sick sick sick as a dog. I think I caught something from all those movies I'm getting from Redbox. Who knows where they've been? I do! They are in a machine outside of the pharmacy, where sick people spend lots and lots of time, and I caught something from one of those fuckers! Also, my right ankle is hurting in a new and frightening way. I broke it about 15 years ago, I've still got screws and junk in it, and the normal pain has shifted around to the other side of it. Weird.

Nevertheless. The drinking must commence? Maybe I just feel bad from the stress. I tried last night, drank three beers and went to bed early. If I don't feel any better after 3-4 tonight I'll just stop and go back to bed. I'm immature and crazy and whatever else, but I'm not a fucking idiot. The last thing I need is to be sick and sloppy drunk. One or the other I can handle, but not both. :)

And not for nothing, but if you get a chance you should run down to the Redbox and rent Paul if you're any kind of science fiction fan. It is my new go-to geek movie.

My wife is gone!!!

2011-09-09T10:34:00.002-04:00

Off to Virginia to start her new job, my wife is about halfway to Richmond as I'm typing this.

Longtime readers of this blog, and people who know me in general, know what Joe home alone means.

HAMBURGER HELPER!!!!!!!

I know that shit is terrible for you, but it is my comfort food and when I'm missing my wife I'll whip up some Beef Stroganoff-flavored over-processed pasta to drown my sorrow. It is going to be a week or two, so yeah there will be beer and such. But there's also going to be juice in a box, and cans of YooHoo, and mac and cheese.

I freely confess: without my wife here, I am reverting to an 8 year old. Enough blogging, I've got to grab me a Capri Sun and some salt-and-vinegar Pringles.

So I sold my guitar amplifier...

2011-09-08T16:41:00.002-04:00

Well, yeah. Not the best thing I've ever done, but I meant well I swear!

I was going to sell my amp anyways. Then my wife lost her job, and got a new job in Virginia, and now we're moving. She's moving tomorrow(*sad*) but I'll be here another week or three. Anyhoo, we needed money because we didn't know how much her last check was going to be and we were thinking maybe $750. We were expecting a $5000 signing bonus when she gets to Virginia but she needed money to travel and buy new clothing and all that stuff. The $700-800 I could get for my amp would certainly help that along, putting her at $6500.

We got good news! Her last check is actually going to be $3200! I figured I wouldn't have to sell my amp, or I could even get a nicer amp!

We got bad news! Her bonus check is taxed at like 40% and is only going to be $3000! The good news and bad news cancelled each other out, and that left me without an amp.

I didn't realize how bad that was going to be for me. I started panicking and got outrageously depressed and decided that I would never ever get another amp again and I might as well just sell my guitars too. Just all sorts of every bit of the general anxiety over the big changes became focused on this one single issue and started to drive me bugfuck.

So we split the difference. I sold the amp, gave my wife half the money and bought a little amp to tide me over in the meanwhile. It is... well, "adorable" isn't a word that usually goes with amps, but in this case? You tell me:

ADORABLE!!!!

Fuck... I'm so gonna miss my wife.

Moving out

2011-09-03T19:11:00.003-04:00

So, my wife and I are leaving Florida, and heading for Virginia. My wife is driving up there next week, and in a few weeks when she's found us a house (*fingers crossed*) I'll be following her up there. I was planning on spending the next few weeks moving, but then a funny thing happened. It turns out that our relocation package actually pays for SOMEONE ELSE TO PACK UP MY SHIT!!!!

It is a little horrifying, because what the hell am I supposed to do for the next few weeks? On the other hand, some of that shit is really heavy, and the last time we moved (ONE MILE AWAY!) I sprained my wrist really badly and was in a brace for a few weeks. Some of the stuff is coming with me, in my car. My guitars don't go in a truck. My computers don't go in a truck. My cats and dog go in our cars. Everything else?

Let someone else deal with it. :)

Again? Another new cell phone? Really?

2011-09-01T15:24:00.001-04:00

You know... before my wife and I were married almost 7 years ago, I had never owned a cell phone. Borrowed one once, but never had one of my own. We bought a pair of cheap phones, didn't even have cameras. At the end of that 2-year contract, my wife bought a Motorola Q and I got a Samsung with a rotating screen and the first phone-based 3.2 megapixel camera in America. Well, that was fine. Except my wife hated her phone, so she bought a Razr, and then a KRZR. Then at the end of that contract we got matching Voyager phones. Then, matching Droid phones. Then my wife got a Blackberry from work. Then she got a Droid X from work. Then I bought a Thunderbolt and my Droid broke. Then my wife swapped her Droid X for a Blackberry, and then she got fired/resigned, and she took my Thunderbolt.

Seven years, two people, 14 phones.

And now, #15!!!! Yay?

Let's say hello to the Droid Charge!

I'm OK with it, but I'm not maybe as thrilled as I should be. Law of diminishing returns and all that. The next series of phones is just a month away, but how much better can they really be? Faster processing of my email? Quicker start-up times? I'm OK with the current generation, which is already almost science fiction level.

Well, I guess that's that?

2011-08-31T18:38:00.003-04:00

My wife was in Virginia interviewing for a job. She got the job, so we're on our way out of Florida and on to Richmond, VA in the next 2-3 weeks.

Well, my wife leaves before I do, but then she's got to find a place to live over there while I pack up over here. I have NO FUCKING IDEA how we're going to transport the pets. This is going to be crazy traumatic for everyone.

Home Alone

2011-08-30T11:44:00.000-04:00

Yeah, good times right? My wife is out of town for a job interview (long story, not very happy) and here I sit. I've been putting off mowing as long as I can, since we'll be moving wherever my wife finds a job and I'm trying to avoid having to mow more than a couple of times more. Well... that's sort of done, looks like it is going to rain the rest of the day so I'm done for now.

What the hell am I supposed to do? I guess I could start packing and painting and repairing and whatever... but that costs money, and we don't have any of that! Maybe we shouldn't have gone quite so "all out" on our vacation? No SCREW THAT, I HAD A JACUZZI!!!!

*ahem*

Anyways, no money for boxes and stuff until we know what's going on with the new job. Relocation package is there for a reason after all. I've got cable, I've got Internet, I've got books, I've got booze. Life is livable for another day or three.

hurricane... ummm... whatever it is called,here it is!

2011-08-25T22:16:00.001-04:00

This has been fun. I was totally going to watch Hobo With A Shotgun, and then the power went out. Then the power came back on and I couldn't find my flashlight. Then when I tried to turn my PC back on the breaker tripped in my office. Then I had to screw with the modem and router. By the time all that got done... No hobo, no shotgun.

This made me giggle, had to share

2011-08-23T17:53:00.001-04:00

... and now I'm a gun nut? Maybe?

2011-08-22T21:59:00.001-04:00

Been thinking about the handgun purchase. Really not so much, because I know what fits my hand and I'm convinced that almost all modern handguns are ridiculously reliable and accurate at home defense distances. I had discounted one pistol because of its sub-par night sights, and then realized that my most probable target would be an invader silhouetted in my bedroom's door frame. Plus, I've got a super-twitchy dog that barks at any noise inside the house that isn't coming from a cat. If I can't hit a target that size framed that way from 10 feet, I need new glasses much more than I need a handgun. I've got enough experience and plan on adding enough training to my shooting that I will feel confident that anyone who crosses the threshold of my bedroom (once my dog has raised the alarm) will suffer serious incapacitating injury no matter what weapon I buy.

No, my nuttery is in a different direction. I'm getting a bit obsessive over how to maintain handgun safety for the other 9,999 nights when absolutely nothing happens. I need to maintain absolute safety for my weapon except for when I decide to engage a fair target. I need to keep the gun out of my wife's hands, since she's got no experience and is likely to shoot herself in both feet before she could shoot an intruder. I've got to secure my handgun against burglars when I'm not home, since I'd feel responsible if anyone was killed with my weapon whether or not I pulled the trigger. I've also got to be able to get at it relatively quickly if there IS an imminent threat to my household sometime between now and my expected death in 2055.

Buying a safe handgun is easy. I've been looking at the Springfield XDM. It is relatively inexpensive, comes with a pair of 15-round magazines, and is pretty highly rated. There's a teat that sticks out on the back that lets you know the pistol is cocked, and there's a flange on the top of the slide to let you know that there's a round chambered. Good info to have in the dark by feel in an emergency. There's no safety lever on it; instead, there is a safety on the back of the handgrip that is engaged by your palm at the web between your thumb and forefinger that says you've got control of the pistol, and a second safety on the trigger itself that disengages when you place your finger on the trigger and intentionally engage it. It isn't the most safe system, but it prevents accidental discharge if the trigger hangs up on something. It is also super efficient when you've decided you've got to shoot someone immediately. Otherwise, it trusts the shooter to only put his/her finger on the trigger when something needs to be shot, and no other time. For smart people like me, it discourages any unintentional drawing of the handgun, which is always a good idea. It also lets you go from safe to BANG without having to pause too many times to consider the weapon itself.

Speaking of which, how do I go from locked up weapon to engaging an intruder as fast as I can, without making the storage of the handgun a bigger risk than any burglar? Like I said, I expect a robbery some time in the next 10,000 days in the busy metro area I'm looking at moving to. I've got to keep the gun secure for every single one of those days, even if I only use it once. So I need a safe, but a small one within my reach when I'm sleeping. I'd prefer to mount it to at least the wall-studs, or connect the pistol safe to a larger cast-iron safe, or even drive bolts into the floor, so that the safe would become a permanent part of the building. It doesn't seem like a safe is much use if someone can carry it off and cut it open at their leisure. Maybe more problem than I can handle. They also sell biometric safes which are a good idea. It is a semi-ridiculous expense for a safe that reads your fingerprints, but it seems like it would open fast and would be real hard to break into...

... maybe I'm being a bit nuts thinking so hard about these issues. On the other hand, I'm thinking about my safety, my wife's safety, the safety of anyone who might be in my home, and the safety of people who might be potential victims of the same people who might rob me. If you've got to be a nut, I think I've found a better way than the gun nuts who think it is a good idea to shoot first, and second, and third... and ask questions never, and only answer questions when their lawyers allow. At least I'm more concerned about not hurting good people, rather than looking for "bad" people to murder in cold blood.

I've got to avoid the gun nuts!

2011-08-21T18:13:00.002-04:00

I really hate the gun nuts, really really really I do.

So, the wife and I have been talking about a home defense handgun. Joe being Joe, I've been doing some online searchings to see what sort of stuff is out there, what people recommend, those sorts of things. I was pretty handy with rifles and pistols years ago, but my current skill and knowledge level are both less than I feel comfortable relying on. There's some good information out there from sane and rational gun enthusiasts, but there's also some crazy people with guns out there.

Lots and lots of crazy people with guns, and nobody seems able to make them stop!

Specifically, there's a big disconnect between the reality of home defense and the sort of things that the gun nuts come up with. For instance, a deer rifle with a scope isn't a home defense weapon, especially not because you believe you might have to shoot at people over 100 yards away. There's a point where "defense" becomes "offense" and you become the criminal and the other becomes the victim. Shooting at someone more than a football field away, especially if they are running away from your house, no longer falls in the category of "home defense" in any rational sense. In real life when someone breaks into your home and you chase them off, they aren't planning on coming back to try again. You're probably going to be OK.

The same basic issues comes up with the amount of times you're likely to get to shoot at a home invader. A six-shot revolver is probably going to be enough to run someone off. Burglars aren't likely to want to get into a shoot-out with a home owner who is awake and shooting back. Let's say that six isn't enough... an average semi-auto carries 10-15 rounds or so, and an extra magazine gets you up to 20-30. I'm not sure what Charles Bronson Death Wish fantasy world you're living in that you think you need a half-dozen 30-round extended magazines to fend off a burglar, but maybe someone should take away your guns until you settle down and maybe get on some meds.

I've been reading about people who stash a gun in each room, or who carry a handgun 24-7 including when they're sleeping. Talk about training your whole family in drills in case your home is broken into. All sorts of paranoid delusions about gangs of armed thugs kicking in their door with the intent to rape and murder the whole family and the pets too. That shit doesn't actually happen in real life, does it? I mean, often enough that anyone should be one step away from booby-trapping their house? Most people who get killed in America are criminals shooting each other, or domestic violence situations, stuff like that. There isn't to my knowledge some epidemic of armed gangs breaking into people's homes with the intent to commit murder.

Folks are just fucking NUTS!

2011-08-20T19:41:00.000-04:00

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!! Yeah fuckers!

My wife and I are looking at moving sometime in the next couple of months. One of our best prospects is in Richmond, VA. Which is a super-dangerous city. But we can live really close to work/school for less than what we currently pay plus what my wife's raise will be, which means more money in our pockets compared to now, and less gas money every week. Plus, the neighborhood we're looking at has a nice park for Ginger to play in during the daytime.

Not the best neighborhood ever, even though the houses for rent are huge and ridiculously nice. So you know what that means? HOME DEFENSE HANDGUN.

Yes, handgun. My wife suggests to me that a "home defense sniper rifle" isn't a reasonable idea. She's nuts and doesn't know what she's talking about, but I love her so I'll take her word for it. Now I get to go shopping! Also shopping for a new knife maybe, because VA has a law about switchblades. My #1 knife is a sweet-as-fuck $260 Benchmade auto-open knife. Illegal in VA. I don't think I'd ever get stopped and searched, but I'm naturally paranoid.

So, new knife, and a new fucking handgun! I'm looking at a couple of different pistols, semi-auto in 9mm, .40 S&W, and .45ACP ... good times. I'd like to go big, for maximum stopping power. My wife will be getting a whistle and pepper spray. :)

More cooking... is this weird?

2011-08-18T12:53:00.000-04:00

It is like 12:30. We eat between 6:30-7:30. I have at least 6 hours to get dinner done. Why have I started now?

Why? Because it is the only way to get the kitchen clean. Sad but true fact, but after I sit down and eat, have a couple of drinks, I'm not interested in doing any clean-up. And I know this, man! Like with most things in my life, instead of admitting a flaw and working on eliminating the flaw, I admit the flaw and then correct for the flaw with a messy work-around. It is like my life is the Enterprise and I'm down in engineering rerouting power couplers and diverting power from the impulse engines to the forward shields.

So, instead of just cleaning as I go, or cleaning after and just sucking it up? I cook in sections, all day or sometimes over the space of two days. Right now I've got parboiled potatoes cooking in butter. When that's done, I'll clean that pan and fry up the minced lamb with shredded carrots and onion. I'll assemble the shepherd's pie, and then stick it in the fridge until it is time to heat it up. Then, having an empty stomach, I'll clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher and even add the soap, but not run it.

I'll run the dishwasher tonight, after we eat, since I'll leave spots for a couple of plates. I'll be pretty buzzed by then, but even buzzed Joe can turn a knob.

MEAT!

2011-08-17T14:39:00.001-04:00

You know, I just wanted to make some tacos. Not sort of deep-fried U-shaped processed corn tortillas stuffed with factory seasoned ground beef/"processed soy protein" and rubber cheese. Not a Taco Bell taco.

No, something a little bit yummier. Shredded beef, slow-cooked all day in seasonings out of the cupboard, fresh diced onion, real cheese on top, maybe a little cilantro and lime. Soft corn tortillas, the sort of food you might get out of a food truck out West, or a little greasy spoon where the whole staff is related to each other. More like this:

So you start with the meat. I bought a chuck roast, about 3.5 pounds worth. Rubbed with roasted cumin, smoked paprika, and chili powder. Seared on either side, and then dumped into the crock pot. I cooked up a diced onion, garlic, and a chopped chipotle in adobo sauce, all in the same pan I seared the meat in. A quick deglaze with beef stock, and then all of that goes over the beef.

In a few hours, I'll pull it apart, and serve it up on some soft corn tortillas. I'm left with just one problem: what the hell am I going to do with all the damned leftover meat?

NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books list... how many have I read?

2011-08-13T11:53:00.006-04:00

Hey, it isn't my list. Blame NPR!

There are things missing, and stuff on the list I don't agree with. One's I've read are ~~bolded~~ underlined, and I'm giving myself credit for series if I've read at least half of the books in the series. By my count, that's 59. Woohoo! Yeah!

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

We're moving to Seattle!

2011-08-11T18:18:00.001-04:00

... or Virginia. Or Maine. Or Kentucky. Or Oregon.

Yes, this is going to be a nightmare. No, we don't have much of a choice. Please, cross your fingers that we can secure a paid move. Feel free to offer help in the form of cash or cashier checks made payable to me.

Am I the only one?

2011-08-10T21:05:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder... I mean really wonder... how far away from the rest of humanity I really am. I just do weird things.

When I start a new book, I go to the last page and see what the total page count it. I like to know about where the halfway mark it, half and three quarters. I do the same thing with movies, more or less.
I talk to my cats and dog in their own language. I'm semi-convinced that they know what I mean and they're just fucking with me.
Sometimes, mostly when I'm by myself, I sing random made up nonsense songs in a terrible falsetto. Usually there are dirty words and racist and sexist language involved, like in rap songs. Since I'm the world's whitest Puerto Rican, it just makes me giggle.
I spend a little too much time counting food in my house. I have this weird paranoia about running out of food. It never happens, but it could happen any day. I also stock up on "emergency food" frozen and in cans that can be turned into meals on short notice.
I own a fancy pencil for special pencil occasions.

Not to mention that I wonder how it is that people don't know things. How do you not know things? We're in the 21st century, everyone is plugged in all the time. How do people justify not just looking things up when they have questions? Look it up! Hell, in my day you had to walk 20 miles to the library, uphill both ways, and read a BOOK!

The Hunger Games... three days, three books, three cheers?

2011-08-09T16:26:00.001-04:00

Yeah, those were pretty OK books. Young Adult books are pretty cool, they sort of gallop along and you get to feel like you read pretty fast since the print is a little larger. I take what little boosts to my ego that I can get. I'm still not feeling very well, so there's been a whole lot of me and a book and a bed and the pets taking turns hanging out with me for the last two days.

Speaking of which, I've edited my "books read" list to add numbers... more than a book each week, which is not too shabby when you think about it. This is certainly more books than I read last year or the year before. I don't know why, but I've been mostly checked out from books and movies and music over the last couple of years. The last CD I bought was a Joe Satriani disc from 2008. I used to get three discs at a time from Netflix, and now I get one and it takes me weeks to watch it. I'm back on board with books though.

Maybe I'll start listening to music again... I have no idea what's good anymore, and I think the kids listen to 14 different kinds of poop, so no help there. It would be cool to maybe have something to inspire my guitar playing, which has felt a bit stagnant lately. There are worse things I could do, like heroin, sweet sweet heroin...

... what?

crap... literally!

2011-08-08T19:04:00.001-04:00

I'm sick, friends and far-off neighbors. Sick with a bad pooping bug of some sort. I caught it from my wife. It is weird, because whenever we both get sick this way, she pukes and I poop and never the other way around. Odd little bit of strangeness. My wife also seems to recover much faster than I do, maybe because she's expelling the sick instead of having it work its way through her whole body.

Anyhoo, not the best way to start off the week. Just not at all, even a little bit.

Daddy...

2011-08-07T13:22:00.000-04:00

... can you read me a bedtime story? PLEASE???

Yeah! Great day!

2011-08-06T19:26:00.000-04:00

So, I've withdrawn from the "skeptical community" for the most part... it is filled with people who are willing to destroy people like me in order to preserve their sacred cows, which is actually kind of sad... by which I mean that I'm kind of sad about it, but it hurts me too much to continue with them. I know that most of them are good people who mean well, but I'm not convinced that they are nice people. It means that I'd be willing to donate a kidney or take a bullet for them, but I wouldn't be willing to share my blanket or my beer. They don't deserve to die because they don't like or respect me and I wouldn't wish any actual harm on them, but I won't go out of my way for their comfort either. That;s because I feel like they would defend me over a real threat or existential attack, but if I don't like their favorite band they'll toss me under the bus.

That's fine... I'm better if I'm away from people who have contempt for me. In happier news, I got a haircut and an iron and an ironing board. I felt all Marine-ish today! My haircut would pass muster, and I haven't ironed anything since I was in the Marine Corps. Oh, I'm good at it, don't get me wrong. I've just avoided it by wearing polo shirts and sending my khakis to the cleaners to be pressed. But I bought a lot of nice shirts for my vacation, that I need to either iron or send to the cleaners, and I'm afraid of that bill. So, tomorrow I'll be slaving over a hot iron all afternoon, making my cool shirts and pants worth wearing.

Also in happy Saturday news, after the haircut and Target for the iron, we went to Books-A-Million, the happiest place on Earth. Do you know that they have books there? They DO! Happy books! I picked up Old Man's War by John Scalzi. It is seriously excellent! If you're a science fiction fan, I'll describe it as Ender's Game in reverse, with elderly troops instead of children. If you're not an SF fan, I'll just say that it is a story filled with cool normal people, well-realized, placed in extraordinary circumstances. It is a real joy to read this book, and it is part of a series that I'll be reading over the next few days.

Anyways and BTW, has anyone else seen the "Catwoman" pictures from the latest Batman movie from Christopher Nolan? He's a great filmmaker, but I'm less-than-impressed at this point. It is going to be a tough sell for me as far as Catwoman anyways. I'm giving Nolan the benefit of the doubt because he and Heath Ledger created the definitive Joker on film. I'm not convinced that Anne Hathaway can deliver the same strength of character for Catwoman. Not for nothing, but the language matters here. She's CatWOMAN, not CatGIRL. She's been best portrayed in the comic books as an equal to Batman. There's often been a whimsy to the character, but she's never been anything less than Batman, and always someone who can stand toe-to-toe with him physically and mentally.

Think about Christian Bale. Think about Anne Hathaway. Does that really make sense to anyone?

Are pets psychic?

2011-08-05T19:17:00.001-04:00

No!

But how smart are they? Smart enough to know we ordered a pizza?

The dog has been randomly barking, like someone is at the door. The cats are milling around the door. It is just really strange. How do they know?!?!

To be fair, the dog knows what the end of a TV show/movie looks and sounds like. She sees the credits roll after 9PM, and she runs to the bed expecting us to follow her. So maybe she knows the word "pizza" and her guard goes up.

WTF?!?

2011-08-04T12:04:00.002-04:00

Wow, I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been crazy depressed about a whole lot of stuff, and I've avoided talking about it because I don't want to get even further mired in the mud. It turns out that the "skeptical community" is packed to the rafters with misogyny and sexism, so that's been pretty fun. Obama sold the country a shit sandwich of a debt ceiling deal and is now bashing the progressive base for not helping his advertise said shit sandwich. The world is falling down around me...

... so let's talk Superman, shall we?

I'll admit, I was as disappointed as everyone else at the last flick, Superman Returns. You could tell that it meant well, and I thought Brandon Routh was phenomenal as a stand-in for the late Christopher Reeve. Unfortunately, the writing was crap and the story was crap and you could tell that they made the movie because Batman Begins had done well and not because they had anything interesting in mind. I mean, come ON! Superman is able to lift medium-sized islands and hurl them into space, and his enemy is a crook running real-estate scams? Anyways, at least Routh looked the part. The "S" shield is a bit small on his chest and the reds could be brighter, but otherwise it is pretty standard interpretation of the costume.

Now they've recast all the roles, and are working on a new film called Man of Steel. And, well... here's the new costume:

Well, the shield is bigger. The cape is apparently nine feet long. The sleeves bunch up at the wrist. And if you look at the full-sized image? The suit is apparently covered in fish scales. FISH SCALES! This ain't the Aquaman movie!

And not for nothing, but this guy looks like a heroin addict with an appetite for rape. I know the studios just LOVE "grim and gritty" superhero stories, but this looks like a disaster.

Kamikaze!!!!!!

2011-07-31T20:02:00.002-04:00

I'm mixing them, I'm drinking them... woe is me!

More tomorrow...

Holy crap, I got a free beer!

2011-07-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

Not only that, but I bought a cordless trimmer for the yard work. No more 50' extension cord for ME!

Free beer is a cool story. There's a gas station just one mile from my house, and they have the best selection of craft beers I've ever seen anywhere in my life. It is just a little convenience store, that is packed to the rafters with beer and wine. I don't know... 150 varieties of beer and another 150 varieties of wine? A fucking shit-ton of booze, especially for a little convenience store in the middle of nothing in a medium-sized suburb. Me and the guy who runs the place have 'bonded' over the beer over the years. I'll steer him towards new stuff to bring into the store, and he'll point out the new beers I haven't tried yet.

Which is awesome.

Recently, he got in a new beer. Something called "Ten Fidy Imperial Stout" from Oskar Blues Brewery in Colorado. It comes in a can. IN A CAN! And a 4-pack costs... $14.99. With tax, that's $4 per beer, IN A CAN! IN THE STORE!! I'm not paying that! Even if the "Ten Fidy" means that the alcohol content is 10.50%... which is DOUBLE AWESOME!

Well... turns out I didn't have to. Today I went in to pick up a sixer of Dogfish Head Raison D'etre Ale. Good old Don rings up my beer, and as he hands me the receipt he says "did you see those beers in the can? They're so expensive... do you want one? Let me go grab you one!" I was a bit confused, but he was already on the move. As he's walking towards them, he tells me that the supplier dropped off a 4-pack with a missing beer that he had written off as damaged and lost, and gave it to him for free. As he's telling me that when he got the free 3-pack he thought about me and figured I'd like to have one, he's putting two of the three beers into the ice cream freezer. He comes back around to the front of the store, hands me the third beer and says "let me know how you like it Joe!"

Well, it has been a few hours, the beer got cold and got drunk, and it was incredible. Pretty damned excellent. Like a Guinness, but almost like a REAL Guinness that pours slow and thick. Just really excellent and flavorful with a great aroma and it is really smooth going down, although the strength of the alcohol is higher than the level of the taste, so you could easily make the mistake of drinking too many of them too quickly. Not that I'd ever buy this, not at $4 a can... but it is nice, and I'm really happy that I got to try it.

Did I mention my new trimmer?

It is a Ryobi One+ trimmer from Home Depot. I've already got a bunch of the cordless power tools with the old Ni-Cd batteries, but those batteries are starting to die and not hold a charge anymore. They have new Lithium-Ion batteries that cost more, but last a bunch longer. The cool thing is that the batteries are so expensive that it makes more sense to buy more tools that come with batteries. The REALLY cool thing is that the batteries are forwards and backwards compatible. My old batteries will run the new tools, and my new batteries will run the old tools.

So, one of my old batteries died. Instead of buying a new Lithium-Ion batter for $90, I got a new cordless trimmer for $120. Pretty neat, right? When my next battery dies, I'm getting a leaf blower!

To get serious for a minute: I have been on the waiting list for a couple of cool overdrive pedals for almost 6 months now. I finally got the email telling me that my pedals were ready, and I turned them down to get a damned weed trimmer. I guess I'm getting old, but you know what? That's OK with me. I've got more or less enough toys to get me through, and what I need are tools like a cordless trimmer so I'm not taking an hour to do a 20 minute job because I'm playing cord wrangler all over the property. Yeah, I think I might actually be MORE than OK with it.

My house smells so good!!!

2011-07-24T18:14:00.002-04:00

I've been working all sorts of new cooking angles since we've been back from Puerto Rico. I've been doing more cold stuff like cheeses and sliced meat and chilled shellfish in light sauces and dressings. I've been experimenting with various and sundry new ingredients like mango, plantain, and calabaza squash. I've gained a new appreciation for stuffed olives.

And I've been baking.

Not really baking, mind you. Baby steps. I'm baking the pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store. So far garlic knots and bread sticks stuffed with cheese and pepperoni. The garlic knots are the big hit so far, although I'm still working on it. The topping is some mix of butter and olive oil and pesto with a little sea salt, but I'm still working on the proportions. Also, trying to figure out the whole rising bread business, which is confusing. How much will it rise as it sits out, how much more will it rise after I bake it?

I should have made 12 knots with my current batch of dough, because the six I made are each bigger than my fist. Which is sweet, except my wife can only get a third of one if she's going to eat the rest of the meal. The rest of the meal BTW is chicken thigh pieces in a mushroom(baby bella, shitake, and white mushroom blend) cream sauce over steamed jasmine rice, with a carrot, zucchini and pepper medley on the side.

So, I couldn't sleep last night...

2011-07-20T22:48:00.001-04:00

...

I guess the biggest reason was that I've spent the last few days trapped in the world created by Jeff Somers. I've been a huge fan since his first "Avery Cates" book a couple of years ago, and I got the last tow books in the series over the weekend. I think I started reading the fourth book on Friday, and I finished both books by the following Tuesday. Finished reading, at least... it may be a few more days of digesting.

We're all aware of my politics. I'm generally progressive, respectful of profits and against profiteering.

These books have seemed like an expression of the worst of the political positions I'm against. Not in any remotely obvious or overt way. Not even in a covert or disguised way. Just a series of books that play out the libertarian-ish outlook to its logical conclusion. Does humanity survive? It comes down to the wire.

Want to know more? Read the books!! Jeff Somers. Avery Cates. Get some. NOW.

Quick update: Books I've read update

2011-07-16T14:24:00.003-04:00

Sorry folks... I sort of got lazy and haven't updated that feature in a couple of months. It isn't that I'm not reading anything, but I sort of hit a slow patch and took forever to finish what should have been a two-afternoon read.

Anyhoo, I'm caught up and quickly closing in on 40 books for the year. I had hoped to read at least one book a week, so I'm just a little bit ahead of schedule. Can I read 100 books this year?

....

....

....

...Ummmm....

NO!!!!!!

What are you, crazy? I can't read a hundred books in a year! Of course, it isn't like I don't have a stack lined up... here's the next seven, unless something new comes out and skips ahead of the queue.

So, my wife has left me...

2011-07-13T19:39:00.003-04:00

... not the way you think, put away the hankies.

Back in 2005, George R. R. Martin released the fourth book in his huge epic fantasy series, called A Feast For Crows. My wife and I had been married about 8 months at that point. Ever since, she's been talking about the next book in the series. No big deal in 2006. Nothing to worry about in 2007. Come around 2008 my wife starts wondering. By 2009 my wife had started turning into a nagging crow over the whole thing. 2010 and she sort of burned herself out on it and stopped complaining so much over something that I couldn't help... although she still mentioned it from time to time.

Not her fault exactly. After four rather large books, Martin realized that he had written himself into some sort of corner that he couldn't figure a way out of. Apparently the books are sort of plotless, and progress almost randomly from place to place without any momentum. It is like "here's a thing that happened" and then "here's something else that happened"... and not much in the way of through-line to link them all together. It seems like Martin created a playground that he's so happy with that he didn't create any games with clear rules or ways to win or lose. That makes it hard to get from beginning to end, don't you think? I'm not getting involved... I'm still smoking and singed from Stephen King's Dark Tower debacle.

Come 2011. Martin announces an HBO series. Then he announces a publishing date for his fifth book in the series. Then everyone on the Internet plus my wife starts freaking out. Then finally we get to July 12, 2011. And the book actually comes out. And I'm at the bookstore before the book makes it to a shelf, and I buy it. And my wife was too busy yesterday to start reading it.

... and now I'm a widower until she finishes the book. Now I know how the wives of obsessive sports fans must feel. That's cool though, because my wife has sat through a few of my obsessions. We work like that... we're the same type, so we tolerate each other when the obsessions happen. It is better than the alternative, which is a chick saying to me "What's the big deal? That's just War Trek or whatever, Wookies and the Enterprise and lightphasers, and I don't know why you care?!"

Yeah, this is MUCH better!

Eureka!

2011-07-10T18:53:00.001-04:00

The TV show!

Part 2 of the fourth season starts tomorrow night on Syfy. Gosh I loves this show. My wife and I were looking for something to watch in between the end of the spring season and the start of the summer shows. Netflix has the first three seasons up for streaming, so we watched them all over the last few weeks. We've also watched the first of two discs for the first half of the current season.

It is AWESOME!!

It is the story of the smartest town in America, and the average guy who is the sheriff and voice of reason. The set-up is that back in the 1950s Albert Einstein convinced the government to set up a town where the best and brightest could live and work together to produce the best science possible. 50+ years later, Eureka is at the cutting edge of 22nd Century science... which could get to be 21st Century science if they can work out the bugs. The high school science fair is one part cool and nine parts potentially fatal.

Our hero is Jack Carter, former Federal Marshall who along with his teenager daughter stumbles on the town by accident, helps them solve a mystery, and ends up replacing their old sheriff when he's injured in an experiment gone horribly wrong. Carter has the lowest IQ in the town (110-range) but he's a great detective and has a knack for reading people and making intuitive leaps. That's useful in a town where people are great at creating crazy technology but can't see the forest for the trees.

It is a really fun show. Every episode is a "science experiment gone wrong" but each episode is really about the great cast of characters and how their personal issues are reflected in the bigger near-catastrophes they face. They all feel like real people in unlikely situations, which really keeps the show grounded and lets you ignore the techno-babble explanations of what's going on.

The only rough spot with the show is that you absolutely have to watch it from the very beginning. There are a couple of time travel episodes that completely reboot the show and change everything around. If you watch season 1 and then skip to season 4, you'll be really confused as to why people who used to date are now barely speaking to each other, or why one person with a disability is not only cured but was never actually disabled at all.

Other than that, go watch the damned thing! Mondays on Syfy.

KNIVES!!!!

2011-07-05T16:35:00.000-04:00

I'm just a little bit obsessed with these new Ka-bar Zombie Killer knives. Yeah!

A couple of these things are better than 15" long... not knives as much as short machetes. Not that I'm complaining... I WANT!!!!

Gimme gimme gimme gimme. NOW!! Zombies could be right outside dammit!

I know kung fu!

2011-06-29T20:38:00.000-04:00

OK, not really... but close?

Before:

After:

I know solder fu! One step closer to building my own amp!

Trying a new strategy...

2011-06-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

The assholes keep knocking on my door!!

Oh, wait... let me back up a little bit.

Ever since I've been living in Florida, I've been getting semi-regular visits from people wanting to know if I speak Spanish. Since I'm Hispanic and have a Hispanic last name, it is a little.... creepy? Like I'm being stalked, like someone's sold my name to these people. I'm pretty sure they are all church goons, but only some of them lead with the church stuff.

I've tried being polite. I've tried being curt. I've tried being "normal" rude. It doesn't help, because a week or three later some other couple of people show up, knock on the door or ring my doorbell and freak out my dog really bad. They wake me up from my naps, they interrupt cooking or watching movies or whatever else I'm doing that is more important than the time-wasting of these assholes at my door.

Now I'm just fucking pissed off. Saturday afternoon the doorbell rang, the dog started barking, and I lost my fucking shit. My wife had answered the door and got rid of them. I ran out after them and started shouting at them. I demanded to know why they were knocking on my door, why they thought I speak Spanish, what the hell sort of business did they think they had on MY MOTHERFUCKING PROPERTY, YOU GODDAMNED ASSHATS!!!!!! Also, I've got your licence plate and you'd better let your idiot friends know they aren't welcome or else I'm calling the cops.

Fucking ASSHOLES!!!!

And then the rainy season!

2011-06-27T14:27:00.000-04:00

It has been super-hot and super-humid. Finally, the storms are rolling in and dropping buckets of water on us. Yay! I've got to tell you, it is a relief. My lawn has been turning to sand for the past couple of months, and mowing has been like wading through a knee-high sandblaster. Forget new amps or guitars, I want a riding lawn mower!

Of course this also means that my power is going to be hit and miss for the next few months, but a break from the absolute heat and a less-dry lawn is worth it.

Mostly.

In other news, I'm starting a new project tomorrow that will maybe CHANGE MY LIFE FOREVER!!!!