I Am the Sitonotis

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:36:17 GMT

Clumsy cooks with no alcohol tolerance should refrain from cooking with a cup of wine, drinking two glasses, then using fussy yet razor sharp knives to chop parsley.

Just saying.

I did get a pretty awesome risotto out of this, though.

BTW, I'm adorkandhispork on twitter, so if you'd like to follow me there (and aren't already) you may. Thanks.

Sat, 09 May 2009 01:45:00 GMT

The same thing happens to me every Friday.

I keep a running post-it note listing all of the healthy, positive, productive and interesting things I want to do over the weekend...

...and then I promptly loose the note.

It's a wonder I get through the day.

This Gave Me Chills

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:31:42 GMT

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:35:18 GMT

I really, really needed this past weekend. I think I can turn the emotional autopilot off and get back to work.

Hope you all enjoyed the sunshine. :D

Vikings!

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:36:44 GMT

This made me smile:

http://www.shopflick.com/stores/beardhead/Beard-Head-Knit-Cap

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:21:46 GMT

Things are okay. Not perfect.

The tiny parking lot behind the building is still Donnerpartyesque, with the Hoopty's right front tire stuck in a six-inch deep ice crater and not able to drive out of it. I might have to wait until spring.

I've forgotten, in this past year, how liberating it feels to be carless while at the same time annoyed at how long it takes me to get to work. My commute is like six minutes tops (i work basically on the other side of Mitchell, so it's just up Clifton and around). But there is no way I can get to work in less than 100 minutes or so due to how the buses run. The 51 to Reading and transferring to the 47 is theoretically quickest but the timing of the two routes typically means I JUST miss the first 47 and have to stand and wait for another one 40 minutes later. Anyway.

And! it's now more expensive to use public transportation than it is to drive. I only drive to work and back and put between 8-12 dollars in my tank every Friday, and now it's $1.75 with a transfer. RRRG.

So this looks to be a good weekend. My friend is taking me to Amol for a belated bday lunch, I'm making chicken stock tonight (I'm half tempted to cool it under my car so that it melts everything away. Carbon monoxide would add a nice tang, no?) and watching movies tomorrow.

Hope you are all happy and warm.

.:ETA:.

I was able to move my car about 18 inches this morning with the help of a hammer, my bench scraper, a screwdriver and my nascent rage. I give up.

My chicken stock, however, was beyond awesome.

ouch.

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 04:09:45 GMT

Mother. of. all. toothaches. Last few days, along the gumline. Searing, throbbing, hurts to chew. Ice deadens the pain slightly. This is new.

I think I need to deal with this toothache like an adult. (Also new.)

By that I mean, I think I need to deal with this toothache the way an adult would deal with a toothache, not the way I would deal with an adult.

Tell me this, people. Why do so many sadists choose pediatric dentistry as a career? You would think there would be some sort of screening process. Bad memories.

I'm making an appointment first thing monday.

Nothing Grave

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:36:43 GMT

Hello Eljay

So I just deleted a fairly long and extremely whiny post, bemoaning the state of my job and my Hoopty Car and my anemic exercise routine these past few days.

Seriously, people, if "being a slacker with a starting-to-rust old car who has fallen off the jogging wagon for a few days." is the worst I can say, how bad can things really be?

Perspective is sometimes a good thing.

Oh, funny thing happened today. A daydream started drifting into a "real" dream, and in this daydream a cop car suddenly pulled out of a driveway, which instantly roused me. Ha!

Anyway, hi. Hope you're all well.

Like discovering your parents are fallable

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:11:01 GMT

I cannot express how difficult it is for the nerdier men of my generation to discover that in reality we are not really that good at Stratego

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:08:55 GMT

Back from a day in Indy.

Let's just say that I have a bad headache and crave Funyuns.

Imma take a nap.

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:09:21 GMT

Okay, this is weird, but...

I found myself oddly touched by this. Come see it with me.

meh

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:28:10 GMT

What a crappy day. Rainy and blaah and stressful and smelly and I think I am going to make some cocoa and crawl under my bed and go to sleep.

No, not my "blankets," I'm going to crawl under my actual bed.

Sorry to whine. G'Night.

Open The Pod Bay Door Please, Hal.

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:38:39 GMT

This picture was accidental but I really like it.

A Haiku

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:48:17 GMT

Fell asleep at work
Problem wasn't the snoring.
It was the drooling.

Nippongrish

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:43:10 GMT

My new bento box has the words "Lube Sheep" on its lid.

I'm... not going to touch that one.

Night.

Pert Near Sandstone

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:32:26 GMT

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=phc/2008/11/01/phc_20081101_64&starttime=00:35:40&endtime=01:05:11

Sometimes music has a way of just reaching its hand inside your chest and grabbing you by the soul.

They play a song (I think it's a traditional number) at about 37:00 that I've been listening to over and over and over.

Please listen. Once. For me.

linkylink

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:49:59 GMT

I discovered this today. Large collection of historical photographs of Paris. So beautiful and touching.

http://www.parisenimages.fr/en/

Enjoy.

What a Wonderful 24 Hours

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:44:17 GMT

20:30 Saw Jonathan Richman play the Southgate House. It's obvious that he is older, but he still has that mesmerizing combination of vulnerability and goofy abandon that makes me love his music. Mostly newer material with a couple of Modern Lovers' tunes thrown in.

23:45 Pimenton on roasted potatoes = yum

08:14 A friend invited me to the outlet mall near Columbus this afternoon. I'm not a huge shopper but it would be ostensibly social.

09:30 I find my DVD of Smilla's Sense of Snow wedged far beneath the couch, along with a couple of socks.

10:30 I am struck by this thought: The question is not WHY I should make Bacon Egg-Nogg, rather, "Why Shouldn't I?"

12:30 Meet my little friend and her little friend at Habanero. Arroyo Hondo. Laugh non-stop at this flier reading "Free Bookmarks!" with blank strips cut into the bottom where the phone numbers usually are.

14:00 I buy little, but I do pick up a $3.00 book of Hot Cocktails, many of which I am eager to prepare.

15:30 Immensely flattered by this.

18:45 Alma Mater beats Michigan for the first time since 01 (and frankly we had some help that day) and the first time in A^2 since 90. Yay.

19:45 I've been jogging for a week now, and tonight I broke through and made it over a mile-and-a-half. I feel great.

20:37 Laundry is done. Dishes are done. All I have left to do before Monday Morning is a bunch of fun cooking.

Hope you're all having a good weekend. :7

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:10:32 GMT

I ~~am going~~ went jogging. Yay!

I think my lung is somewhere on Cornell, but you get the idea.

:)

Work Stuff... silly but vaugely apt.

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 23:55:36 GMT

So my office-mate had a Rabbi on speaker phone this afternoon. (Long story short it had to do whether certain materials could still be considered kosher after being loaded into a rail car of dubious pedigree.)

Dan (office mate): "it comes from here and here, and my boss thinks it's okay..."

Rabbi: "I'm sorry, Dan, but MY boss DOESN'T think it's okay."

I admit that this exchange was incredibly cheesy. But it made me laugh.

The chocopot song

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:36:07 GMT

I really do need to clean my stove.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:22:48 GMT

Power again. Yay!

In a World...

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:40:23 GMT

The Voice Died.

And with it, my dream. Permit me a confession, which may just cement my status as the nerdiest man alive.

For the last fifteen years or so I have been concepting a screenplay, and by "concepting," I basically mean fantasizing about the trailer.

I've wanted to create a bi-opic of Mikhail Tal, former world chess champion of the early 60s and a dominant figure for more than a quarter-century.

"The Latvian Nightmare" is your archetypal romantic genius figure. the guy was a badass. You know, young prodigy, undisciplined and reckless, who reached the highest levels of his craft through his sheer will and sheer genius, before prematurely and tragically loosing it all.

And the vices! He drank, he chased women, he smoked too many of those those Soviet-era cigarettes, He even got his ass kicked in a barfight in Havana, something I've always wanted to do. Tal was also remarkably anti-establishment for a man in such a position, remaining on good terms with Western players and fans in Stalin's Russia could not have been easy. He was also considered one of the funniest chess writers in history, unfortunately most of his stuff has never been translated.

Oh, and along the way, he played cruel, destructive, and beautifully apocalyptic chess.

There are concepts, admittedly, that do not translate well to the screen. You can enjoy a football movie without being Bill Bellicheck because the game is reasonably easy to understand. But chess is a little different, it. Even to fully understand high-level games takes skill. Plus, the chess world is deeply divided, almost as polarized as our current body politic, between the strategists and the tacticians. Between the risk avoiders and the risk embracers. Between those who play on principle and those who calculate. Between those whose goal is a technical advantage in and endgame and those who want to set the board on fire.

Tal has the respect of nearly everyone, but among the later, he will always be something of a deity. He risked. He sacrificed. These elegant, dizzying combinations of instinctive moves, completely bewildering to everyone in the room, but somehow, always, managed to be correct.

If only there were a way to capture that on film.

So I've always focused on The Voice narrating the trailer.

Imagine a camera fading into a dark, somber, and silent room. The camera falls on one man, his cheeks beading with sweat and pockmarked by fear reaches a shaky hand toward a wooden chessboard as the camera circles to an intense, confident glare... and hearing The Voice say, "Chess has always had giants, but only one of them... Was Tal."

Sage-Like Wisdom from the American Midwest

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 07:07:20 GMT

If you cant Duct it, F*** it.

Word.

Everybody in the Bank Line Knows

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:10:49 GMT

I'm surprisingly chipper for a guy who just had to reformat his hard disk. A couple of blue screens, a failed restore, and then the nuclear option.

Well, all isn't lost. I have saved emails with most of the good pictures and my resume, etc. I have my music on an MP3 along with my pre 2006 stuff. Most of my bookmarks are online as well.

Sunday I'm having friends over for breakfast, tomorrow I'm going to Findlay in the morning followed by the Bodies exhibit at the museum center...

And tonight I'm going to make some dinner and dance around the apartment like Jonathan Richman.