I have nothing profound to say today, but then again, do I ever? September sure went by quickly...

"Um, I'm gonna sing a song called -- actually I don't want to sing it but the trumpet players have to have a rest and, uh, I'm gonna sing this song called 'You and I and George'. In seriousness, the song was written by a successful songwriter, who one day awoke with a terrible hangover and decided that people didn't listen to the words of songs anyway, and so he wrote this. [...]

You and I and George
Went strolling,
Through the park one day.
And then, you held my hand,
As if to say,
I love you.
Then we passed a brook
And George fell in and drowned himself,
And floated out to sea,
Leaving you
Alone with me."

Tonight's movie was Amélie, the foreign film in last year's Oscars that no one knew anything about besides its 'spectacular cinematography'. I liked the movie; it was imbued with a flight of whimsy that you often find in French movies, and although the sprawl of the plot seemed rambling, everything came together eventually.

Depending on the weather tomorrow, I may head down to Panacea for some early morning pictures. I haven't been down that way since I got back to Tallahassee and it'd be nice to 'commune with nature for a spell'.

The Alias season premiere is tomorrow night.

Watch Alias tonight. 9 PM on ABC.

We watched Jersey Girl last night -- the latest Kevin Smith movie with Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and George Carlin. Surprisingly it's actually a pretty good down-to-earth movie and nothing like his previous fare. That means lots of people will hate it, but I thought it was worth a watch.

Airport Fragments

Lost Episode 2x02 is on tonight at 9 PM. If you missed the first episode, you can catch it again at 8 PM.

Happy Birthday Anna's mom!

Yesterday's search terms:
jennifer garner german accent lingerie season four, larvae titties, minimum order amount under a disa encore contract, the scientific name for pregnant goldfish, yellow lab puppies genitalia, extremely hairy man, ian nauroth

Learn Stuff Day

Here at the URI! Zone, we have always prided ourselves on being able to make our readers come away feeling dumber. However, recent changes to the No Website Left Behind law have mandated that something educational be posted at least once every four years. To fill this need in time for the next round of web funding, today's update will be a class presentation I gave in my tenth grade biology class. Our teacher was too lazy to teach the last eight chapters of the book, so she divided the students into groups and assigned them each a chapter. Our chapter was on the Immune System, and might become practical knowledge on the day that you realize your itch is not going away anytime soon and the girl on the roof of the library was probably a bad idea.

The immune system protects us from infection and disease.

The immune system defeats antigens in two general ways: cell-mediated and antibody-mediated immunity.

Your mom is a prime example of phagocytosis. In other news, Bath and Bodyworks has created a new antibacterial soap called Saliva, Sweat, and Tears. The 60s rock group, BS&T, plans on suing.

That cow kicks ass. It's a little too long though. It probably moos with three o's.

Antibodies look like broccoli that went through chemotherapy in real life too.

Bonus Picture which has nothing to do with this presentation, but which I found in the same folder. Give it a caption! No prize though.

Happy Birthday Anna's Mom!

Friday Fragments

now with onions

♠ Last week, I had my first bison burger at Joe's Montana Grill -- it was tasty but not that much different from a normal burger. Montana Grill also uses Earth-friendly straws, which must mean that they won't annihilate you with a ray gun if they ever arrive on a spaceship.

♠ On Wednesday night, I strayed off the beaten path of American chains to eat in an Ethiopian restaurant in Arlington, where we had tibs with spongy bread. It was pretty tasty.

♠ For work or for play (or to search out new members for my covert prostitution ring), I've been through Arlington every day this week. That's a nice fifty-mile round-trip every twenty-four hours, which means that I'll probably have to change my oil again before my trip to Blacksburg next month. On the plus side, a fifty mile trip for work nets me $25 in "gas / wear & tear" perdiem, which I immediately sign over to Amazon.com for whatever it can get me.

♠ Most recently, I purchased a book containing an amazing Janny Wurts short story, and seasons of Heroes and Prison Break. I'm currently watching the latter, and it's highly entertaining. It's not quite as tight as the first season, and you really have to suspend your disbelief much more than before. However, the writers have perfected the episodic cliffhanger in a way that the writers of 24 could never do -- Prison Break cliffhangers tend to be more personal (like one of the main characters might get his toes chopped off or the bad guys have figured out the secret plan), while 24 cliffhangers tend to be more meta (like a bomb is going to kill a million offscreen people) or ridiculous (Jack Bauer may miss the sale at Macy's).

♠ When not watching four, five, and six episodes at a time (that's the downside of well-done cliffhangers), I've been working with my Dad to renovate the basement. The walls are now "milk chocolate" which is apparently a "purply" colour. This is an interesting choice for me, because I can't see any of the red in the colour at all, so it looks just like my PUFFIN BAY GREY bedroom to me. To remedy this, I plan to wear 3D glasses at all times in the basement.

♠ Sunday is Jennie Geisner Gordon's birthday. Today is Anna's (and Becca's) mom's birthday, and also Anna's husband's (and Gabe's) brother's birthday (Jon). This sounds like the beginning of one of those ridiculous GRE logic puzzles where we find out that Becca is Gabe's uncle by following the family tree. Happy Birthday everyone!

♠ Have a great weekend / end-of-the-month!

Weekend Wrap-up

I started my final day at work (for a month) with a 5:30 trip to Bailey's Crossroad, and the day gradually improved towards noon, when my team surprised me with a giant cake covered in roses (or chili peppers if you turned it upside down). After cake, I promptly turned on my "Out of Office" automated email message and then came home for a two-hour nap, followed later on by sushi.

On Saturday, I watched the Hokies beat Miami 31 - 7, mounted two new racks in the house (one for keys and mail, and one for magazines), unpacked all of the Halloween decorations from the basement closet, and took an online course on UDDI registries to meet the minimum requirements for my work performance plan this year. In the evening, we went to the Loudest Mall On Earth, Tyson's, for a rather bland dinner at TGIF's and then watched the movie The Informant! starring Matt Damon! It was cute, though it got a little tedious as it went on, but since we paid for the entire evening with gift certificates from various sources, we couldn't complain.

On Sunday, we met Emily and Brian for lunch at Uno's, where I devoured a juicy cheddar and mushroom burger and most of the fries and we discussed the need to turn guyseatingstuff.wordpress.com into a burger-rating site, to give us an excuse to eat lots of burgers. We returned home to a surprise wedding shower for Rebecca, which had appeared in our basement in a whirlwind of activity during our lunch date. I may have accidentally left the back door open before we left.

In the evening, we ran a few errands and then took a Fall walk through Claude Moore Park, which was chilly and deserted. We closed out the night with a dinner of leftover fries, bananas dipped in chocolate, and Sunset Hills cabernet franc.

This morning, I woke up at 9:45 AM and phoned this update in, stream-of-consciousness style. What did you do on YOUR weekend?

Mine Day

Instead of composing a Museday and improving the world of serious music with 30 seconds of music that doesn't sound like fornicating porcupines, I got caught up in playing the alpha version of and looked up four hours later.

Minecraft is an open-world, indie, sandbox game which is essentially a "digging holes at the beach" simulator. Dig in the dirt or attack a tree to gather supplies like wood and rocks, and then craft them into tools like picks and shovels to mine in the mountains. Each block you mine can then be placed, Lego-style, anywhere on the (infinitely generated) world. Craft a sword and attack a cow to get leather, then craft some armor. Combine coal and sticks together to make torches, which keep the zombies from spawning too close to you at night.

This might sound boring as hell, and it probably is, but addicting gameplay is not held back by such mundane considerations. When you're mining out your little cave and stumble across a vein of gold ore, it's decidedly fun. (It's not quite as fun when you kill an exploding zombie too close to your masterpiece though, as a big chunk of your staircase will probably blow up with him, especially if you cut corners, little pig style, and built it out of dirt).

The fruit of my four hours is shown on the left. It started out as a stone house on a giant hill, but I strip mined it, West Virginia style, both to make it harder for spiders to climb in the windows and attack me, and to gain more resources to build stone shovels. There are a ton of advanced crafting you can stumble upon, such as elevators and pressure plates, but the farthest I got last night was crafting a stove to cook the bacon from the piggy I killed (bacon restores health, real-life style, which is useful when a zombie attacks or you fall off your scaffolding while building your steeple).

Some of the OCD Minecraft creations on Youtube (such as a complete scale rendition of the U.S.S. Enterprise) are insane, and there are plenty of helpful tutorials to get you started too. The graphics are atrocious -- I've pooped better textures than these (granted, only in a monochrome palette), and it would be a much more user-friendly game if the various icons had tooltips, but neither of these issues gets in the way of the fun.

Final Grade: B+, If you like building things, the $13 price tag will give you at least that much fun.

Memory Day: Homes

To commemorate my recent mortgage refinance, which will let me pay off the house 8 years sooner for fifty bucks a month less (9 meals at Popeyes), here is a retrospective of all the places that are qualified to erect "BU Slept Here" plaques once I have fulfilled my childhood dreams of becoming a robber baron and then making over my image through philanthropy.

1980 - 1996
My childhood home was nestled in the drooping bosom of Seminary Valley in Alexandria, on a dead end "street to nowhere" which was originally intended to be a major north-south artery, but has since settled on being "that wide street that uses up the asphalt budget because the former mayor lives on it". Since leaving home, I've learned that the one downside to living in Seminary Valley is that you cannot get out of the neighbourhood without an 8 minute wait at a traffic light. This was probably an intentional design aimed at keeping middle-middle class white families in their proper place.

1996 - 2000
I spent 4 years living in West and East Ambler Johnston, long before it became a weird hippie learning commune, when the only noteworthy thing about it was the antics of the arsonist pulling thousands of students out for nightly fire drills. This is also when I learned that you can mute an in-room fire alarm in an undetectable way with Scotch tape and a Sharpie. In 5050 West, Andy Norton practiced his soprano sax along with Kenny G. 3119 East was an engineer zone, led by Dan Shiplett and trailed into detritus by Nathan Egge. 3112 East was a solo pad that I shared 5 days a week with Kelley, when he wasn't out culting it up in DeMolay.

2000 - 2001
8600E Hunter Mill Road in Foxridge, where I lived in my 5th year of college with Rosie and Anna, was the only apartment where the amount of urine in the carpets exceeded the amount of urine in any given unflushed toilet. Thanks a lot, Kitty.

2001 - 2003
Life at Parkwood Apartments in Tallahassee was pretty quiet, other than the time the guys upstairs bought Dance Dance Revolution, setting up standing waves of unfortunate girth. Parkwood is also where I learned that a rice cooker full of rice counts as a full meal, and you should check on the community washers occasionally when using them, because the homeless were often on the prowl for clean shirts.

2002
In order to shave 30 miles off my daily internship commute, I stayed with Anna's family in Chantilly during the summer of 2002, spending most of the time standing around looking creepy. There were Catholics everywhere!

2003 - 2004
I lived at The Elms in Centreville when I moved back up to Virginia, mainly because it was the only place in the area that had an open parking lot with no permits required. This apartment was the battleground in almost every Kitty vs. Booty cat fight video I've ever posted.

2004 - 2011
I moved up to Sterling in February 2004. In hindsight, the birdbath which was the centerpiece of the front yard was clutch. I should have kept it and mounted it on the roof. You can't tell from this picture, but the yard was a mudhole before we built all of the sidewalks around the house, and I was occasionally worried that the house would sink during especially heavy rains.

You are now well equipped to be my reference on any security clearance interview that might arise.

End-of-the-Month Media Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2012 album. Have a good weekend!

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend, I finished off my self-imposed Fall Cleaning effort, which was equal parts actual cleaning and junk organization. When it comes to things in need of disposal, the house is really like a giant digestive system, with stuff we use frequently on the upper floors and clutter gradually making the hajj down to the basement guest bedroom closet where, if we haven't searched for it in a few years, it gets unceremoniously ejected out the back.

Now, there is at least one clear shelf in every room for the next generation of clutter, and all of the remaining junk is neatly organized so it can be located in a knick knack emergency. The assortment of detritus that finally reached the trash can included a broken camera from 2005, the Jumanji board game, red/white audio cables that haven't been hooked up in a decade, and four nearly empty paint cans of GLORIOUS GOLD, MILK CHOCOLATE, and ROYAL BEIGE that have since solidified into a single lmpy mass. Somehow though, I still have two unopened cans of PUFFIN BAY GREY -- I really overestimated on that bedroom paint job.

Rebecca was off at yoga teacher training during this project, but we reconvened on Saturday evening for a belated birthday dinner at my parents' where we watched the movie, What We Do in the Shadows. On Sunday evening, we had carryout from Joe's Pizzaria and watched more of Fargo.

How was your weekend?

Memory Day: 1983

To compensate for the paucity of 1982 documentation, 1983 featured an explosion of childhood photos, all carefully developed in the darkroom my dad had built in our basement. I started the year as a 3 year old, and some of my clearest early memories involved me scaling out of my deathtrap 70s crib with the collapsible guillotine sides and heading downstairs on Saturday mornings to watch Scooby Doo. Around 8:30, we would then go with my dad to Shopper's Food Warehouse on Little River Turnpike for cheap groceries (in the years before the weekly Saturday Costco trip pushed the Shoppers trip earlier) followed by a trip to the "used bread store" where we bought just expired loafs at a discount -- not because we were poor, but just because my dad was an economist.

Sunday was generally some kind of day trip, hitting every park or historical site in Virginia, Maryland, and southern Pennsylvania. We would pile into a tiny Chevy Citation (license plate XVX-881) whose trunk always smelled like coffee, because that's where my parents tossed their tan travel mugs on the way home. My parents would both wear goofy cloth sun hats, and we would always stop at the black and white historical signs along the side of the road to see what happened there. We would also hit 7-11, where my dad would fill up a Big Gulp, drink it, and then fill it up again before leaving. We were not allowed to buy snacks because "it was cheaper to buy big bags at the grocery store", but I did regularly collect trading cards from The Dark Crystal, and was only 2 cards away from completion (out of about 150) before losing interest.

When the weekend came to an end, I would spend the day at our babysitter's apartment in Mayflower Square. Rosa would keep an eye on me all day long while my sister was bussed across town to Jefferson Houston for first grade (our initial district was based on the babysitter's house, so James K. Polk Elementary School does not enter the story for another two years). We would get dropped off at 6 in the morning and Rosa would order us to "sleep or be quiet" so she could get another hour of sleep herself. I remember most of my days being a pretty boring wait for Ellen to get home from school, along with Rosa's kids, Henry and Felipe. (1984 would be a more enjoyable year because He-Man had been released, and I would bring a daily grocery bag of He-Man action figures along with me). My dad would then pick us up around 4:30 and take us home for a dad-dinner featuring something cooked in the microwave or something boiled on the stove. My mom worked later, usually arriving home by 7 (both had what they referred to as GGJs, or Good Government Jobs, in DC). She would put us to bed with songs or read-alongs from a childrens' Bible.

On our left lived the Malones, a retired couple who once tried to hire my dad as a yard worker after he performed some neighbourly fix-it task for them without being asked, and on our right, the Faragassos replaced the Fishers as the "other family with kids". We also sometimes played with a boy named Tony from down the court, but he was banned after inciting us to throw rocks at windows.

I enjoyed digging for hours in the dirtpile behind our house, where the sun couldn't reach well enough to plant grass. Coincidentally, my favourite stuffed animal was Digger of the Shirt Tales. Digger still lives in my basement today, resembling a veritable Petri dish of dust, mold, and childhood snot.

Other posts in this series: 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1990 - 1991 | 1991 - 1992 | 1992 - 1993

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2018 album. Google Photos sucks.

• Events
  • Rebecca taught her first yoga class at Inner Power Yoga on S 9/1, followed by a family dinner at Bungalow Lakehouse.
  
  
  • Went to the first birthday party of one of Maia's Library Storytime pals, George on S 9/2.
  
  
  • Rebecca took Maia to Baby PT Day at her NOVA program on W 9/5, followed by another visit to my work in the afternoon.
  
  
  • Had dinner from a food truck at Old Ox Brewery on F 9/7 and let Maia climb all over the cornhole station.
  
  
  • Had a dinner out at The V on S 9/9, where the food has greatly improved since the early days but the crowds are still minimal.
  
  
  • Took Maia out to visit Uncle Dave and Aunt Carol in Taylorstown on H 9/13.
  
  
  • The Ahlbins came up for a day visit on Felicity's birthday on F 9/14. Had a family date at Lake Anne with a walk and dinner at Monmartre.
  
  
  • Had a small barbeque with the Wilmers, Jacksons, and Tammy on S 9/15. Promptly caught a bug from Maia right afterwards.
  
  
  • I took a solo Dad dinner at Miller's on S 9/16 while Maia and Rebecca walked in nature and ate nature at Cava.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia met Jessika at Lake Anne on F 9/21. Had dinner from a pizza food truck at Rocket Frog Brewery that evening.
  
  
  • Went to the Claude Moore Fall Festival (complete with petting zoo) on S 9/22. Met Aaron and Jax there and pet some llamas. Had Car and Ben over for a dinner full of grilled veggies in the evening.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to visit Annie in Alexandria on S 9/23 and I had a french dip at Miller's.
  
  
  • Had family dinner in an empty Cafesano on M 9/24.
  
  
  • Went shopping for closet doors and then had Tammy over for porch burgers on F 9/28.
  
  
  • Saw Stu and Michelle of Berkeley at the Lake Anne Farmer's Market on S 9/29 and had brunch at Cafe Monmartre. Had dinner at Chuy's.
  
  
  • Michelle stayed the night on S 9/30 and we had a small yoga gathering to catch everyone up.


• Projects
  • I made it to 39 years old.
  
  
  • I powerwashed a decade of mildew off our sidewalks and stoop on F 9/21.
  
  
  • Got a physical and flu shot on T 9/25.


• Consumerism
  • Gave Super Mario Odyssey another chance this month while also slowly getting into Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
  
  
  • Enjoyed watching The 100, Season Five and The Good Place, Season Two this month.
  
  
  • No new music of note.

September's Final Grade: B+, A little chaotic, but fun visits and finally cooling temperatures.

Quarantine Data Day

Today we're on Day 200 of self-quarantine, having spent 54.8% of the year away from gross people.

I think we have adapted quite well, adjusting socially to have one family at a time for dinner on our screen porch or doing activities that mostly involve the forest. We've taken two vacations (complete with pre- and post- quarantines) as a pod, taking advantage of the available rental stock on VRBO and other sites.

We've switched almost exclusively to grocery pre-order and pickup, although I still make a weekly early morning trip to Safeway for their soft, soft bagels and Coke Zero (surprisingly, there is still a Coke Zero shortage because production has switched to basic Coke to avoid any shortages of that grossness). I also hit Costco maybe once every two months for meats, but even that is more nice-to-have than anything.

Maia did not start Preschool this year, but she gets about 20 minutes of Khan Academy Kids time on the iPad every day and just learned about rhyming. She also kicks ass at those Washington Post Magazine puzzles where you have to spot all the differences between two photographs -- Waldo isn't going to stand a chance some day.

Rebecca and Maia have been planting tons of composted stuff this year, from volunteer tomatoes to peach trees, avocado pits, and 12 tiny squirrels. Our fig tree is out of control, engulfing the sidewalk by our driveway like a leafy octopus.

How is your 2020 going?

Memory Day: Snapshots

This photo was taken 7 years ago today, on September 28, 2015.

This was the halcyon era, pre-kids, when the afternoon might take an unexpected turn towards the couch resulting in a two hour nap. We had three cats at the time, Booty (who weighed as much as two cats), Sydney (who stayed for a year while her owners moved all over), and Amber (unpictured, scared of the rest). Booty and Sydney hated each other but liked sleeping on people, and this was about as close to each other as they would ever get.

I'm reading Shift, the 2nd book in the Silo trilogy by Hugh Howey. It was okay, but the whole of the trilogy was never quite as good as the first book, Wool. Shown is my brand new Kindle Paperwhite, which is still an excellent e-reader.