What would happen if.... (8/29 edition)

....private delivery companies (such as DHL, FedEx, or UPS) got sued by the United States Postal Service for their perhaps "unauthorized" use of ZIP codes for routing packages? Doesn't the USPS have some sort of intellectual property claim to the numbers as used to mark regions of cities?

There was a very funny sketch on the old Laugh-In show back in the 60's making fun of ZIP codes when they first came out. They went digit-by-digit showing how it allowed the post office to find exactly where the letter was supposed to go, starting on a countrywide basis and slowly zeroing in until the last digit -- Cincinnati, Ohio. And of course, they pointed out that the city and state were written pretty clearly in large letters on the envelope itself, so why was this fancy number system needed?

[On a side Laugh-In note, they would do "news of the future" bits where Dan Rowan would read the news from 20 years in the future....1988...and he starts "President Ronald Reagan...blah blah blah" The audience is hysterical, but I was watching it on a Nick at Nite rerun IN 1988....so I was totally floored by it.]

One thing we have here at work in the kitchen is an instant-hot water dispenser. Good for tea, I suppose, but I use it also for hot cocoa. You know, for those days where they run the air conditioning even though it's only 61 degrees out. And, not only is it good for making the cocoa, the hot water is the only thing that can dissolve the dried-on sediment from the previous mugful. It can be a couple of weeks in between servings, so the bottom of the mug (which I keep at my desk, a 24-ounce Scooby-Doo "mystery brew" model) gets brown and gunky.

I'm so bugged. I got tickets for Van Halen in Boston for 10/30. I don't mind the drive up, but sure enough, yesterday I get an email that they've added a show here in Connecticut on the fifth of that month. So it would have saved an hour on the ride to the show. The CT show is a Friday, so being out late isn't a big deal...it's a weekend my kids are with their mom....and finally, as my friend has mentioned, who knows if Eddie and Dave will have a big fight and cancel the rest of the tour at some point -- the sooner you can seem them live, the better.

One of my favorite things to do when a spell-checker is turned on is to right-click and view suggestions from the program. For instance, Scooby in the paragraph above is underlined and I'm given four alternatives: Booby, Booby's, Jacoby, or Jacoby's. I can just imagine the porn possibilities of a character named Booby-Doo. Oh, and the alternatives for "Doo" are Dew, Du, Doro, too, or coo. Hey Blogger, wouldn't "Do" be a legitimate word one might *accidentally* type for Doo? Assuming, of course, that I didn't actually mean Scooby-Doo.

Speaking of porn possibilities, one evening a few years ago my ex-boss and I were waiting to start a poker night at the office. Instead of going home, we had a couple of hours to kill....so I suggested a sort of "Internet Mad Libs" -- where you take turns picking a word and going to the site "www.that word.com" and seeing what comes up. Kinda like, first one to end up at a porn site loses. He lost with "gentleman" as apparently www.gentleman.com is a porn site. But you can go on for a while with random words. www.orange.com www.dishwasher.com www.bandana.com....let me know what you can find.

We had our fantasy football draft last night. I actually got first pick. So that means LaDanian Tomlinson is destined to rip up his knees very soon in order to curse me, I suppose. Yahoo's site ranks players, and a very futile exercise while waiting for my turn was to go to the bottom of the rankings and work my way UP the list until I found a name I recognized. Believe me, the fourth- and fifth-best players on really bad teams aren't exactly "household names."

My job requires me to review companies' census data -- names, dates of birth and hire, etc. It's always interesting to see some names....especially when they're obviously ethnic names which, when read in English....well....there was a guy, perhaps Vietnamese, whose last name I'll leave off, but had the first/middle name combo of "Fuk Yue". This perhaps can never be topped.

The parent trap!

First, on the vegetable front. We harvested our lone cucumber. Nine inches long and pretty fat. We're going to see if any others take off, now that the one big one is no longer hording the nutrients absorbed by the plant. We've called off the corn as a bust. The stalks' growth stunted at about 4 feet tall a couple of months ago. We found some two-inch ears with kernels on them...they looked both water-logged AND shriveled....so there was no hope. I've harvested 4 cayenne peppers...one of them is in my snack bag of Cheez-Its, a subtle flavoring perhaps -- or they'll get soggy over the course of the day before lunch. Of course, the most important thing is to wash my hands thoroughly after handling it. And we have three watermelons, but right now none bigger than a baseball. My guess is that the plants will have to be brought inside to mature before the first frost comes. (probably 6 weeks or so for that, so we'll see....)

My older daughter had a sleepover Saturday night -- first time at my house, so that was fun. Three additional eight-year-olds, along with my two kids. Five screaming girls! Keep 'em fed, and you keep 'em quiet :) Really, we made homemade pizza Saturday night, and then there was cake. It was a muddy cake -- chocolate with chocolate-mint frosting, with gummy worms buried in the cake and popping their heads out. Nightcrawlers, anyone? Sunday morning was waffles for breakfast and then hot dogs for lunch. Only one kid tried Erika's favorite topping -- crunchy peanut butter on a hot dog. (It's really good, actually! Especially if the dogs are a little on the burned side from the grill.)

The kids did a lot of swimming, and also some croquet and some soccer. Two of the girls are twins. Freckle-faced cherubic twins -- they both look like Lindsay Lohan, in her pre-skank days. One of those things where you want to say to the father upon dropping them back off, "Your girls are sweet. You may want to steer them clear of cocaine before it's too late!"

One last tale. I am currently navigating Erika through The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. She plays, I tell her where to go....a practice I mastered with my brother on Zelda III for Super Nintendo all those years ago. I actually won Zelda 2 on the old Nintendo system, but the more complex the controlling mechanism, the worse I do. The mind, however, remains sharp :)

It ain't over 'til....

...well, I'm not sure.

Softball playoffs started last night. Top seed, 11-1 DataEase versus fourth seed 5-7 Urban Roots. We get there, and again the town of Trumbull has neglected to care for the field. A good 2 inches of rainwater pooled up in the right-handed batter's box, plus another inch or so just in front of second base. So, as was the case a couple of weeks ago when we played this team in the regular season, one of their guys scurried over to his parents' house to get two shovels and a rake so that we could groom the field and make it playable. If nothing else, it would be good and soft for sliding into 2nd base, rather than dried-out hard dirt.

We went down 5-0 in the first inning. We shoulda gotten out of it unscathed, as the LARGE woman on their team who plays 3rd base decided to try to score on a ball that bounced away from the first basewoman on our team. I don't remember who threw it to home, but the ball went over the catcher's head, and so she was safe. A similar play two batters later -- the pitcher getting in the way in front of the catcher, and the shortstop overthrew both of them amidst the confusion. Just awful.

Anyways, we got it back to 5-2 in the bottom of the first after a RBI singles for me and the woman behind me, but then I was stranded at third. We got single runs in the next couple of innings, gave up one more to have it be 6-4, and then tied it in the 6th, I believe. We play 7 innings, so at that point, all we had to do was "win a one-inning game". In the 7th we had a runner at third with one out....kind of a slap hitter up with a fly-ball hitting woman after him. I was coaching third and I sent the runner on contact. It was a grounder to shortstop, they threw home and their pitcher actually grabbed the ball instead of the catcher (like our team, we trust the guy pitcher to catch it cleanly, rather than the woman catcher) and made a swipe tag about 7-10 feet in front of home. I don't care if I got yelled at for sending him, I think it was the right play. Anyways, the woman up next did fly out to left, end of the 7th.

Eighth inning, I lead off after we hold them. There was no way I was putting one over their heads, they were very deep in right field (almost to a one-ton blocking sled that the high school's football team left waaaaaay out there that was too heavy to move, but also too deep to really be a problem getting in the way). I hit a line drive on one hop deep to the second basewoman....and beat the throw by almost a full step. Now I'm excited, because I'm one of our fastest runners. But I start hearing my team say I was out. Honestly, I'm like, "no I'm not" and I return to first base ready for the next hitter. The other team starts yelling at me, and finally the old coot umpire makes an out call. WHAT?! Needless to say, we had the bases loaded with TWO outs later in the inning (and I'd have scored before THAT to win the game if I'd been called correctly safe), and the next guy up hits a screaming liner that their left fielder jumped up to catch just above his head.

Ninth inning, they get the bases loaded with 2 outs, but I catch a liner in the gap to end the threat. Our left fielder starts jumping up and down all excited for the catch, but I'm still pissed about the out call at first. I go back to coach third again -- even though I got the guy thrown out at the plate in the 7th, I'm very good at making sure the runners hear me. With one out, that same guy hits a single to right and runs to second as they bobble it. I yelled at him to come to third, but I think he peeked back and thought not to. (I thought maybe he'd been afraid to trust me, but I found out later he had trouble in the soft dirt in front of second, which slowed him down.) Why is this important? Because we get another short single, so it's first and third with one out. Next guy pops up to the shortstop, 2 outs. Then the woman who I said always hits fly balls (as in the 7th) hits one to left....the left fielder breaks back at first, but then scurries forward and dives. And did NOT catch it. The umpire didn't say anything, which is what he's supposed to do -- you yell "foul" if it's foul, but otherwise just point inside the foul line for a fair ball. The left fielder had trapped the ball and then held it up to make it look like he caught it....and the old coot bought his story.

At this point, the woman who coaches our team is screaming at the umpire, who answered with something like, "what do you want, I can't see out there?" as it was getting quite dark. This was returned with, "if you can't see, then call the game!" and the always mature, "okay, it's called!" followed that.

So now I think we're supposed to play next Thursday, resume the game in the top of the 10th inning. I'm sure the other semifinal is finished, so we have to work out all the logistics of where will we play...
a) Do we finish on the same field? If so, there might not be time to get in the second game against the winner from the other semifinal.
b) Do we play on a field with lights? Do we resume the game on a different field? OR, do we finish our game on the same field, and then the winners drive across town to the field with lights?

In any event, we were supposed to play the championship game on Tuesday, but now there's talk that we'll play next Thursday instead (which will just push the season later into the year, after school starts up, and daylight hours get shorter and shorter)....On the bright side, we may not have to reschedule my fantasy football draft after all (previously scheduled for 8 pm on the internet Tuesday night).

I know this....if we hold them in the 10th, I'm going to chop a slow roller at their large 3rd basewoman and dare her to bend over to pick it up and throw it across the diamond to throw me out. Oh right, I wonder if we'll have the same umpire, too.

Stats for the season:

28 for 39, 20 runs scored, 22 RBI (.718 average, 4 HR)
3 for 4 in the all-star game with a triple
1 for 4 (really 2, except for that damned call!) so far in the playoffs -- I hit a hard liner that was caught, and then had a bad at bat where I grounded out...the dreaded "thinking at the plate instead of just swinging" problem.

Let's compare that to my men's league team: 22 for 44, 7 runs scored, 7 RBI (and considering 2 were HR -- that means I only scored 5 runs on my 20 other hits....and that's while hitting 3rd in the order)....God, that team was so bad.

What would happen if.... (8/22 edition)

....Siskel (RIP), Ebert, or Roeper (the new Siskel, really), were double-jointed like Carol in the UK? This would make their modus operandi of movie reviewing more trifurcated. Thumbs up, thumbs down, or the rare thumbs sideways!!

A popular concept at work is for somebody to unload leftover food in the company lunchroom. These leftovers are usually in the form of extra Halloween candy.....large sheet cakes that were half unfinished from the weekend....or a tin of cookies. I say, let's incorporate a broader range of choices. I want to see somebody bring in the uneaten half of a steak. Perhaps some hot dogs that didn't get finished up. The key, really, is to make sure they don't look picked over. Cut the steak cleanly with a sharp knife, so it looks like it was a properly unserved piece of meat, suitable for being picked over in the lunchroom, after all. How about a bowl of chicken wings? Meat doesn't seem as common, on the list of foods you find in the lunch room.

Anybody who's ever watched cartoons on TV is familiar with the dreaded rolling snowball down a hill. The protagonist runs as fast as he can to avoid it, but the snowball gets bigger and bigger. Nobody EVER steps to the side and lets the snowball pass. Not only would the character avoid becoming incorporated into the snowball in a horrific crash, but it would offer the opportunity to interact with the audience, lauding his own knowledge of three dimensions.

I just heard Merv Griffin died this past week. He created Wheel of Fortune for TV. A couple of times on this show, I got the puzzle with NO letters, just by the shape of the words before anyone had spun. The first time I did this was for a place, District of Columbia. Anyway, the categories are becoming more and more bizarre, as though they're afraid to ever use the same "phrase" or "person" again that they might have used 10 years earlier in an episode. One odd category that I sort of like is "before & after" where you might have to solve for something like "The Battle of Bunker Hill Street Blues". That's not as good as the one I came up with a few years ago -- "Microsoft Word To Your Mother". Now, aside from the fact that the lexicon of Vanilla Ice isn't particularly popular any more....I wonder how one submits puzzle ideas to the show, and if they would pay someone $100 for it. That might be a good idea for the producers, actually.

Alice in Chains blew Velvet Revolver off the stage last night. If nothing else, I hope Scott Weiland realizes how lucky he is not to be dead like Layne Staley. We all lost ten years' worth of AiC tunes thanks to Staley's drug-infused death....and Stone Temple Pilots kinda had some of the same problems for a while there with Weiland. Yes, we might still all be listening to grunge! :) oh wait, no smileys allowed in discussing grunge...that's not happy music.

One website I use for work a lot apparently requires me to change my password every 36 days. I have no idea why that number, but I've kept a record the last year as to when I'm prompted to change it. My favorite workaround? Change it, and then use the voluntary "change password" option to change it right back to the regular one. I know some places track your password history and won't let you re-use an old one. Not these guys, though. (It's actually a "Fortune 100" company, I've overheard.)

That reminds me, I love hearing when things are praised for being "Top N" in a category, where N is a bizarre number like 15 or 30. (As in, one of the top 15 golf courses on the east coast.) Clearly, the actual ranking is probably N or N-1 at best. If you were ranked number 4, you would describe yourself as one of the top 5....not one of the top 20, top 50, or top 100, right? And you might not say "one of the top 4" because with such an un-round number such as 4....you're not fooling anyone that you're anything BUT number four. So I'm guessing that the "Fortune 100" company above would NOT qualify as a "Fortune 50" company.

If the government had any forethought about computers, they would not have allowed ZIP codes and social security numbers to start with 0. Yes, you can format the Excel cells to show the leading zero, but that's more work than would be necessary if they'd started them with 1. Some of the best ones are SSNs from Vermont, which start usually 008- or 009-, so you have to watch for two extra zeros. If left in numeric format, those zeros just go away.

When my original dentist retired, my records were transferred to another guy in the same town. I'd never had a cavity, but the first time I see the new guy, he finds one on my partially-erupted wisdom tooth, and suggests I get them pulled. Sure -- stupid wisdom tooth, ruining my perfect oral history -- get out, and take your friends with you -- the old guilt by association idea. Anyway, after they're pulled by a dental surgeon, I kept them and wanted to bring them back the next year to have him identify the cavity. I forgot them, so it was actually 2 years later before I brought them to him. Gotta give him credit, he knew exactly which tooth was which, and where the cavity was. He said that in dental school, the students would have to walk around a table of random teeth and identify them all -- including the red herrings of animal teeth thrown in there for fun.

The Connecticut "shore"

Okay, so my mom and dad are renting this house at the beach for two weeks, and mom really wanted us to come down a day, so we did Saturday night.

First things first....as you can see from this picture, Connecticut isn't exactly known for its beaches. Sure, there's about 100 miles of land along the Atlantic Ocean, but since Long Island sorta "blocks" the real ocean from abutting the state, we pretty much get a 10-mile wide bathtub. Waves are generally very small....and wow, lots of rocks. Not exactly the white sands of Aruba, let's just say. And the water never gets up much past 70 degrees (21 for you metrickers) so it's not anywhere near as good as say, a swimming pool.

The other reason I don't really like beach-vacations is the crowdedness. The shoreline was jammed tight with little lots each with a house on them....so there's no privacy, and you're lucky if you can drive in 3rd gear for any stretch. I much prefer going to a lake, like Maine or Vermont. The seclusion is better, and swimming in fresh water is better than salt water....except it's easier to float in salt water. I'd rather look out the windows and see mountains and nature, rather than rows of houses. That's too much like being at home!

Anyways, we missed our chance to go to a clam shack because they only took cash, and my dad didn't notice that the 2nd clam shack we passed DID take VISA. So we ended up going a little inland Saturday night for dinner to a regular restaurant. I had angel hair pasta with white clam sauce and shrimp. Totally floored my mom, who'd never seen me eat seafood in 36 years. Of course, three hours later all I could taste in my burps was the garlic. (Of COURSE an all-fried dinner woulda been cheaper, but hey, they were paying anyways!)

The little "beach association" had some sort of gala Saturday night on the water....a cheesy DJ playing gunk like the Macarena, and a bonfire that smelled like whatever had been loaded on the wooden pallets that they used to feed the fire. P-U. The some fireworks a little further inland....but not much further, wow were they loud. Tried to get some pictures, but who needs to see a bunch of blurry colored dots amidst a black sky? Not exactly moment-capturing. Oh well.

What would happen if.... (8/15 edition)

...the prophet Muhammad made a Mini-Me version of himself, and then this Mini Muhammad gave birth to a college football player? (This is a joke, because Darren McFadden, star player for the University of Arkansas, is the son of a woman named Mini Muhammad.)

Many people know that horrible drivers from Massachusetts are, um, affectionately referred to as Massholes. A friend of mine came up with the term FRID to describe "F***ing Rhode Island Drivers", and then another friend topped that with CRUDs -- "Connecticut's Ridiculously Unskilled Drivers". This is very accurate, I've noticed, after doing some out-of-state driving. The biggest problem with CT drivers is that they don't KNOW THEIR LANE. Too often there are slow cars in the fast lane and fast cars in the slow lane. It shouldn't be that hard to get out of the way when someone's on your tail....I know I do. Of course, part of the problem may be that Connecticut's highways have a lot of left-side exit ramps, which requires slowing vehicles to be on the wrong side of the lane layout. Connecticut often adds a third lane on the right for "slow moving vehicles". It's really for trucks on hills. Not only do they not use the lane, but I've found it a great way to get by not only the trucks, but the people that go left to pass the trucks, but don't really build up enough speed to pass the trucks and therefore cause the passing lane to jam up. And my all time favorite is when I'm minding my own business in the middle lane of three....a car gets on the highway and then for no reason at all moves into the middle lane, when there was nobody for them to pass from the right lane...AND they aren't going as fast as the cars currently IN the middle lane. Like there's some STIGMA to being in the far right lane they can't deal with.

I heard the Eagles' song "Take It to the Limit" the other day on the radio. Two of the lines are:
"You can spend all your time making money.
You can spend all your love making time."
I say, complete the cycle....you can spend all your MONEY making LOVE....at least if you go to the red-light district in the city! :)

I think, technically, that when sugar is added to lemonade, that counts as an artificially-sweetened beverage. I know people will make a point of decrying the use of aspartame or acesulfame potassium in food/drinks as "artificial sweeteners". But here's the thing. Unless the drink is marketed as a sugar-flavored drink, then adding the sugar artificially sweetens it. Naturally sweetened lemonade should mean relying on the sugar in the lemons themselves....of which there's not very much, obviously. How about coffee? Coffee isn't sweet -- however you make it sweeter, it's done by artificially introducing a sweetening ingredient. Again, naturally-sweetened coffee should mean the sugar in the coffee bean itself (good luck).

For the last four summers, I have used MLB.tv's subscriptions to watch baseball games on my computer at work during the day. The past couple of years, they have put up an MLB logo over where the local broadcasters' advertisements would be. I'm sure they don't want some furniture store in Kansas City getting free worldwide advertising just because the game's being streamed over the Internet. The big problem with this is that if you start streaming the game during a commercial, you have NO idea what the sound level is until they game resumes and they resume the broadcast feed. The volume of the feeds vary greatly from game to game, so I alternately have to quickly turn the volume down (oops, sorry!)....or crank the thing up just to hear it at all (which of course, affects the level if I switch to a different game).

We harvested the one carrot from our garden that didn't dry out this spring....it didn't do too hot, either, because our thriving cayenne pepper plants kinda took over the spot. The carrot was green in a couple of spots, and also had a 45-degree bend in it. The part furthest down in the soil was orange and very yummy, but only about one bite's worth. And of course, last night I forgot to REALLY wash off my hands after eating some of a cayenne pepper....and then went to remove a contact lens.

New York City has five boroughs....and yet, it seems like only addresses in Manhattan are written out as "New York, NY 10001"....otherwise I mail stuff a lot to "Bronx, NY 10455" or "Staten Island, NY 10314", etc....I never put "Manhattan, NY" on an envelope. Nor do I put "New York, NY" for address in Queens....seems like I should be able to, as long as the ZIP code is right.

Here's a good topic for a book to arouse ire and anger: Someone should examine the world's major religions, and then perform the following analysis: What's the probability this particular religion is "correct"? Each chapter could dissect some different faith....Chapter one, how correct is Judaism? Chapter two....the Hare Krishnas....Chapter three, the ancient Greek gods -- what are the chances that following THEM is the "way"?

There's a brand of long-distance shipping trucks that just have the big word YELLOW spelled out on the truck...but the truck appears to me to be orange. I should take a picture next time I see one, and put it up for debate. I used to get into arguments over whether a rug at the home-decorating store I worked in was more BLUE versus being more GREEN. Could be the same thing here....I used to debate with my ex-wife whether Winnie the Pooh was yellow or orange, at least the particular stuffed one in our house. Perhaps we see the same color and just interpret it differently -- like, where do YOU draw the line between yellow and orange? Like a line of demarcation on a rainbow to distinguish where yellow ends and orange begins.

And with that....back to the grind....

Was that English?

I hate phone calls at work. In part because I'm stuck with MassMutual's phone system that doesn't have caller ID on it. And I've been blindsided too many times by our clients' employees just calling up randomly because their HR person gave them my number....asking stuff I can't answer.

(The worst part is that I'm NOT a MassMutual employee. My boss is, but I manage his side business for him, and the deal is that I have to work in this stupid insurance agency surrounded by a bunch of Willy Loman types pestering people on the phone to be their financial planners....)

Anyway, another reason I hate the phone is when you get somebody that doesn't speak English well, or natively. Through no fault of their own, I am absolutely ABYSMAL at trying to parse together broken English or English with thick accents when it's spoken to me. If you want to write down your message, I'll figure it out, no problem. But I'm awful when someone stands there and tries to say something with a thick accent.

For instance, one of the back-office people from MassMutual's headquarters is a nice little old lady from Russia. And when she calls me, I panic, because I'll understand about 40% of what she says. So almost all the time, she emails me, and it works great.

Today, a woman called, and I think she says she's trying to fill out the paperwork to get her just-died husband's 401(k) money paid out to her. I had her repeat full sentences. The phone line was crystal clear, but I swear, I had no idea what she said. Maybe it's a learning disability on my end or something.....I certainly tip the scales heavy in some other categories on the good side, this could be something to balance me out?! Because I was tempted to say, "Was that English?" I had no reason to think it was bad grammar....she certainly sounded confident in whatever the chirp-like quality to her voice was explaining to me. So it wasn't like she was fumbling for words -- I had no idea what the words were, that's all.

So how does this manifest itself in me? Maybe a slight trepidation towards phone calls -- although that's mostly the blindsided-by-angry-people-without-warning effect. The real effect is that even though I got straight A's in Spanish classes four years in high school (and a couple of courses in college), I will do anything to avoid actually trying to speak it. I would be too ashamed to sound as incomprehensible and wrongly-accented in their language, as others sound in mine.

I always have thought that I'm going to vacation somewhere that speaks Spanish, and I'm going to bring along a pad of paper to write all my requests in perfect grammar, like some sort of mute. Anything that shows a weakness in my own person, must be avoided!

They used to call me Crazy Joe, now they can call me Bat man.

Down Under David has been inquiring what exactly was being delivered to the house, a birthday present from my brother in Florida.

Turns out I got a baseball bat. Sure enough, it's not something I'd want to get hit in the head with. It's kind of a blackish-green color, so that's cool. I have to take the sticker of Todd Helton off it.

Strange present choice....I don't think it's legal for the softball league I'm in -- bats for that have to be approved by some softball governing body, I believe. The handle's thinner than the softball bats I use, too....So this might be one I save for going to the batting cages with the automatic pitching machines.

For my tenth birthday, my mom bought me a wood bat in Little League, an official Rod Carew model. (You may know Rod Carew from either his 7 American League batting titles, or from the Adam Sandler song, since Carew, and not OJ Simpson, is a Jew -- "he converted".) Anyways, I still have that bat, but it's too small to use as an adult. Of course, as a kid it was too heavy for game use, and then we all started using aluminum bats around that time, anyway. So I still have it and actually had to break it out for a softball game last year when nobody else on the team even brought a wooden bat -- which we're required to use to restrict distances on balls in flight.

Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, he took an ultrasound of my shrinked up thyroid -- I take synthroid pills to overcome that. Anyways, since it's the same gel and stuff that pregnant women have for ultrasounds, I asked him if it were a boy or girl thyroid. After having to explain to him the joke about the sex of my thyroid, he said it was a boy, as he could "see a small penis." Let's leave the "and where was he looking, again?" jokes to ourselves, thank you all.

Hopefully the rain will go away for the weekend, I have to spend my Home Depot card on stones and put in the rest of our front walkway.

Nichole's questions...

Normally I don't get caught up in the "pass it on" type blogging fun some others have. I tried tagging people a few months ago....yeah, how'd that turn out...

Anyways, I signed up for what Dr. Nichole referred to as "Krystyn's questions." Simple enough rules:


* Leave a comment saying anything random. Something totally out of the blue. Whatever.
* I'll then post five questions for you. Customized!
* You post the answers to your questions on your blog.
* Include these rules and offer to ask participants questions.

Ok, birthday boy. Here are your questions:

1. What's your favorite food?
A bacon cheeseburger on a fresh poppy-seed roll. Cooked medium....still pink and very juicy without feeling raw and gross in my mouth. The cheese may be either cheddar or American (which one Canadian friend has taught me, isn't a real cheese, but just a processed cheese).

2. What was the best birthday present you got?
Probably a fifty-dollar gift card to Home Depot from Mom and Dad. It's been a couple of months since we worked on our front walkway. This should get us the rest of the stones we need to finish...assuming they've not been discontinued. The style is "bellacobble buff". Erika says there's something good she's buying for me, but it's not arrived yet! My brother says what he has sent from Florida (also not here yet) is something I don't want to get hit in the head with.

3. How much did you spend on your haircut and in what type of establishment did it occur? (that's only one question)
I went to a place called "Colton Joshua Salon", which is a remodeled former "Family Haircut Store" that changed ownership a few months ago here in Fairfield where I work. I paid $15 for the cut and left a $5 tip.

4. What kind of outdoors-y type games did you play with your friends when you were a kid?
Lots of wiffle ball. We had a great fenced-in yard for it. Kept track of all the statistics via tally marks after every at-bat. And real ball....run the bases, ghost runners....not just "you hit this far, it's a double" baloney. Then we'd do write-ups on the games and stick them on the refrigerator....next to the statistics like a real sports section to a newspaper.

5. Did you get any cheap lobster when you were in Maine?
I do not like it in a house. I do not like it with a mouse. Actually, I was a very fussy eater as a kid (or as my dad used to quote George Carlin, a "big pain in the ass at the dinner table"). They offered me baseball cards if I tried some when I was 12. I said okay, and had spasmic reactions every time I tried to swallow. Looking back, I wonder if it was an allergy thing....but I ended up spitting it out after a minute in my mouth. My parents gave in anyways (rare for them) for putting forth the effort. I re-tried lobster a couple of years ago, and didn't like it again.

So there's the deal...Feel free to leave a comment and then I'll get to make up questions for you.

The rain in Maine stays plainly as a pain...

One thing that Maine is known for is its blueberries. Here's one, from a single bush that grows along the lake shore amidst large rocks.



More importantly, though, is where we were. The lake is Upper Sysladobsis Lake in eastern central Maine. My grandfather built it (the cabin, not the lake!) in the 1950s, I believe, after their older cabin burned down. There's no electricity, but most everything runs on gas. There's a fridge and stove/range that haven't changed in fifty years, easily. Gas lamps that you have to be careful lighting, not to blow out the glass mantles. A couple of years ago Erika tried to make me a cake in the oven but it didn't cook very evenly. But it's easy to fry stuff up on the range part. I made bacon and eggs and pancakes Saturday and Sunday, for instance. Something about being at camp lets you say, "screw eating healthy!" although I did bring some fruit and nuts for snacks.

This year's birthday cake was finished off in Connecticut, but by the time she'd frosted it, it was like 9:30 pm, and the kids were in bed because we were getting up around 1:30 am to start driving. We took off around 2:10 from home and stopped in Augusta, Maine, at around 6:30 for breakfast at Friendly's. We got up to Lincoln, Maine around 9:30 or so and hit the grocery store for some last-minute beer. It takes about 45 minutes from Lincoln...the first 15 or so are regular road, but the last half hour is on unpaved dirt roads. It was dry up there, so even though I was in a little Nissan Sentra, I had no real issues with clearance over some of the rocky parts. A couple of loud bumps on the bottom of the car, but at 20 mph, they don't do any real damage.

So the kids changed out of their PJs and into their bathing suits. They have life vests that keep them afloat while swimming. I don't think they NEEDED them, but they don't have to worry about the depth of the lake or the gunky mossy bottom of the lake touching their feet that way, either.

On Friday the kids and Erika swam about a third of a mile and back with vests on to this island at the top.







Anyways, I had to help with yard maintenance. The original septic tank has rusted out, so there was a sinkhole that needed to be filled....a few trips in my uncle's pickup to haul dirt from a nearby quarry-like spot. In addition, I was finally instructed how to operate a chainsaw, as I was in charge of slicing up a cedar tree that was impacting the ability to pull down the driveway, and may also affect where the replacement septic tank goes once the permit is obtained. (I'm not sure how much of the operation is impacted by the Penobscot Indian sovereignty in the local areas. My uncle seems to be in okay with them.)

Anyways, we were all exhausted most of Thursday, so the good part of vacation started Friday. My uncle left, with instructions for cleaning up and locking the place. I took the boat out on the lake....there are a couple of clusters of cabins in spots, but mostly only a few isolated ones, or none at all. Very peaceful. There was a loon in the lake, I only got a half-decent picture of it....its song greeted us each morning. Friday evening, thunderstorms rolled in and rocked the place. The skies kept changing color from bright orange to purple to gray, and then once the really dark clouds came in, they opened up. High winds led me to need to bail out about 6 inches of water (mostly waves crashing in, rather than actual rainfall) the next morning.

Saturday we did a little day trip to Bangor. In part to re-load on things we needed -- paper towels, dishwashing soap -- stuff we didn't know that the camp was out of. Also, to see how much rain had collected on the dirt roads. Several puddles of varying sizes that required me to swerve back and forth on the roads....A guy on my fantasy baseball team who lives in New Brunswick and I had discussed meeting for lunch, but Canada had a three-day weekend, so he'd made other plans. Still, we got to see Stephen King's house in Bangor. It's nice, but very centrally located in the city. My camera batteries died out the first time we swung around the block (the master of horror strikes!!!), so we did swing around again and take a shot from my new cell phone. Erika was surprised someone of his stature chooses to live in a non-secluded area. I say, good for him! Between the two of us, we've read all his books. I read his book "Faithful", a running dialogue with the co-author about the 2004 Red Sox, and Erika's read everything else :) -- in fact, she's just re-read 1408 after seeing the movie.

Sunday was mostly cleaning, and we left around 11. One of my contacts had ripped Thursday, so I spent the rest of the weekend with my glasses on. That meant no sunglasses for the drive back west. Interstate 95 is also a nightmare in southern Maine and New Hampshire on Sunday afternoons, we learned last year. So my bright idea was to cut through northern Maine on back roads -- Route 2 from mid-Maine west through New Hampshire and Vermont, to cut down Route 91 south as the sun was setting. Much less traffic, and since the last 4 hours would be south, the sun wasn't an issue. All that was true, except the lack of a high-speed freeway added 2 hours to the middle of the trip! Ugh. Anyway, home around 9:30 for a well-needed shower and bedtime....and slice of birthday cake!

La policia!

We saw the Police last night. They were great. I didn't realize that Sting's actually pretty good on the bass. Only the trio, no backup musicians...that was also cool, although hearing no piano on "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" was a bit odd.

Parking was 15 bucks....cash only. There was a supervisor taking our $, and he was a prick about it, told us to do a u-turn, and they'd stop traffic to let us out when we told him we only had nine dollars in cash plus our checkbook. Well, they direct us out, and next thing you know, we're in another lane leading to a different parking area, where people have ALREADY paid. Serves the s.o.b. right!! :)

Too bad it took 50 minutes to get out of there after the show. It was at UConn's football stadium....several towns away from the campus, of course, because they only went division 1-A (Bowl subdivision) so that they could make money, so they put the stadium near Hartford instead of near the students. Almost entirely bleachers. Beer was expensive, of course.

So anyway, what a great show. They did pretty much every song you'd expect, and I don't think there was any Sting solo crap. Andy Summers looks a little bit like the hairstylist from "What Not to Wear" (the American version, Carol!) Sting was buff, and Stewart Copeland had a gray mop-top...and odd look for someone that old, but at least it looked like they were having fun.

Next time, though? I park somewhere else in East Hartford (I grew up in the next town over, so I know all the streets) and walk to the stadium.

This game is.....

Bonkers!

This was a game that I loved as a kid in the late 1970s. And unbelievably, my wife had a full copy of it when I met her! So now we force the kids to play it, instead of Monopoly, to the chagrin of my older daugther.

Here's a recap of the rules. You roll the dice, move, and then play a tile on the spot you land, that'll say something like "ahead 4" or "back 2". Then you do that instruction. You try to aim yourself to the scoring pods. There are also "lose" spaces on the board where you'll lose a point. First to 12 wins.

Because you can't go below zero, Erika's favorite thing to do, even more than winning, is to set traps. If she ends up on the Lose space, she'll deliberately play cards that lead people BACK to Lose. Roll a 5? Then she plays a "back 5" card and you lose another point. (Unless you're at zero.) Click on the picture of the board to see how whatever you'd roll from the Lose space would get you stuck BACK at the Lose space, except for only a couple of possibilities on the dice.

It's also fun when the cards instruct you to go to spaces that have OTHER cards.....Back 5 could lead to ahead 10, which then says back 15, which then says back 4, and you finally get a Score point. If the scoring pod is occupied, you also get to roll again, so you can possibly continue to accumulate points.

Here is the song from the commercial way back when, printed on the bottom of the box. (Courtesy of boardgamegeek.com.)




All right, I gotta pack. We leave at like 1 am tonight. What's that, 4 pm your time, David?