Mmm...
I invented a sandwich the other night and it turned out so well that I felt like sharing:
Ingredients:
1 egg
2 slices sourdough bread (about 1/2" thick each)
2 oz. baby spinich
1 tbs. hummus
1 tsp. dijon mustard
2 slices provolone cheese
2 slices tomato
butter
Directions:
Toast the bread on a low setting (i.e. you just want the bread slightly crisp, not brown). Set aside.
Fry the egg over easy with non-stick cooking spray, salt and pepper to taste.
Spread hummus and mustard on bread. Assemble in this order:
Bread with mustard
Provolone
Egg
Provolone
Tomato
Spinach
Bread with hummus
Butter outside of sandwich and return to skillet to melt cheese and brown bread.
Models are s-m-r-t.
I generally don't comment on television on here. For two reasons, actually: 1. I don't watch much TV at all (probably lest than one hour per day on average). 2. Without clips, getting any sort of point across is pretty hard.
That said, I have to say something about this.
I was scrolling through the channels today when I heard Tyra Banks' voice say "when we get back from break, we'll help you deal with your fear of gnomes."
Gnomes. As in "ceramic garden gnomes." As in there is a fat chick who has a paralyzing, incapacitating fear of those inanimate gnomes.
Apparently, Tyra had a whole show devoted to people with
fears of gnomes, styrofoam, and ovens.
Oh, wait, it gets better. Tyra's "help" for this fat chick was to place 10 gnomes in a little Brady-esque astroturf garden and, then, to tell the girl that one of the gnomes had a prize underneath. So, the girl goes into the garden, can't speak or stop shaking, turns over two gnomes and finds the prize (a trip to Ireland). She then jumps out of the garden and is visibly shaken. Obviously, she is cured.
Let's just hope Tyra never devotes her efforts to curing cancer patients.
Fuck you, Sony
If you've looked to the column on the right (or, if you are Jeff, if you've scrolled all the way to the bottom where IE likes to put the other half of my template), you might have noticed that there are some links to "Junk I Use."
You know what you won't find in that space? A link to Sony Ericsson, makers of my piece of shit cellphone.
Not so long ago, I mentioned how I swam in the Gulf O' Meh-hee-co with my old phone in the pocket of my swim trunks. Say what you will about the Motorola RAZR--for example: damn, that phone is for 17 year old girls--but that thing was thin. Which was generally a good thing. Except when I forgot that I had it with me on the beach, despite sitting on it for the previous hour.
Anyhoo, I swam with it. And it didn't like that. So I went to Cingular, where this overly-caffeinated blonde informed me that "like, you still have 13 months on your original contract and, like, that means you don't qualify for a free phone upgrade yet." So, not wanting to spend an asston of cash, I opted for a little, blue flip-phone. Small enough to be unobtrusive, but large enough to (presumably) not be a tiny, fragile piece of shit.
Wrong.
If I were writing for slashdot, my review of this phone would go something like this:
The SE Z520a has awful sound, counter-intuitive controls, a seemingly useless button on the outside, and the worst camera you've ever seen on a phone. What's more, it is incredibly sensitive to moisture, as this author found out when his phone died due to some sweat on his face. Even better, if you drop the phone from more than two inches, it does an amazing magic trick, whereby it explodes into three pieces. Finally, try as you might and ask as many people as you can find, but you will never, ever get the thing to connect to the internet... so that ringtone you just tried to order was a waste of $2.99.I refuse to go back to Cingular and get dry-cocked in the ass yet again on a phone. Instead, I am just going to order an unlocked phone online. As soon as I have extra cash. Which means "as soon as I have a job." Which means that my lack of employment prospects seems even more annoying every time I try to use this piece of shit phone.
********
Sorry about all that. I am grumpy tonight. More tomorrow... hopefully in a better tone.
Outlined against a blue-gray October sky
From
Len Pasquarelli:
Leave it to The Human Filibuster to defy the league's latest attempt at enforced etiquette by cranking the volume to the max on his personal soundtrack.
The NFL's stodgy competition committee has jumped on the mute button with both feet, instituting rules changes designed to dump a monsoon's worth of conformist-style good sportsmanship on Chad Johnson's rollicking, one-man parade.
That might be the worst sports lede ever written. Ever. Anywhere.
Pearl Jam
Alive.
Really.
Just been swamped between going to Denver, having my lil' bro in town for two days, and trying to do wedding stuff. Denver was a great time--it's always nice to see that part of the family, and the wedding was fun (open bar). Lil' brother came to get fitted for a tux and we got to hang out with Jeff Tuesday night. All in all, a fun week. These are the things you can apparently do when you are unemployed.
Speaking of, still no word on a job. At this point, I'm torn between adopting "
the world needs ditchdiggers, too" or "
bend and scoop, bend and scoop, like the Mexicans" as my mantra. Actually, there is a somewhat promising lead in the world of academia--legal academia, no less, proving that God has a sense of humor--but I'm not getting my hopes up.
Other than the above, not too much is going on 'round heRRe. Been working on a couple short stories that I started months ago and trying to figure out the best way to murder the squirrels that are fucking up my yard.
Finally, file this under "C" for "Craptastic News:" We got our plane tickets and reservations and rental car and all that shit taken care of for the honeymoon. The only catch? We are
flying into and out of Heathrow.
Out like a herd of turtles
Softball playoff game tonight. Flight to Denver at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow.
Expect nothing from me until Monday.
one
Rollin' up that highway they been workin' on for years
I just realized that I hadn't posted in a while. I am lax. Lackadaisical. A lollygagger, even. Whatever.
Brief updates:
Career--Nothing yet. One new promising lead, however, that I am following up on today. I have no explanation for why this whole process is going so slowly. Well, other than "they hate me cuz they ain't me." Haters.
Social--Softball tourney started last night. We won. I played pretty well. We played like shit overall, however, and it doesn't bode well for tomorrow night.
Personal--I'm meeting my dad and (probably) brother in the middle of nowhere today to exchange some pleasantries (haven't seen either since Easter) and get my belated graduation present. Rumors that Arkansas itself is wholly the middle of nowhere are unfounded.
Wedding--65 was the final number of response cards received by Friday's "deadline." We've received another seven since then. Meaning only about 80 are outstanding. Which is fucking outstanding.
Miscellaneous--We leave for Denver Thursday morning, where we will see my aunt/uncle/cousins for one day and attend the woman's friend's wedding on Saturday. There will be at least one night of belligerent drunkeness, however. In many ways, this trip feels like returning to the scene of the crime. (Inside comment that exactly two people understand.)
You wanna fight? Them's fightin' words!!!
Courtesy of Jeff
I am the air, I am Pain
I don't consider myself accident prone. I don't slip and fall with regularity. I don't stub my toe on the bed when I am walking around in the dark. I don't accidentally cut myself when trying to open a CD case. I don't drop accidentally drop stuff that I am carrying. Generally, I get around in my day-to-day grind fairly safely.
Yet, somehow, I seem to routinely find myself injured. Every six-to-twelve months or so, something happens that lays me up for a little while, either literally or figuratively. In the past decade, I've:
- Ruptured the meniscus in my left knee during a fencing tournament. I have it on videotape and everything. I lunged forward, rocked back, lunged forward again, and, as I flexed back, the inside-left portion of my knee just collapsed toward the ground. The camera was a good 50 feet from the match and there were other matches going on around the gym, but you can still hear the cracking sound on the tape. And writing this just made me queasy.
- Caused permanent damage to my left wrist playing tackle football at age 21. With no pads. And with people who were a lot bigger than I was. I made a great one-handed catch across the middle, turned up field, got ridden out of bounds, and tried to catch myself as I went down. Pop. The wrist still sucks to this day. Which is definitely a by-product of not having health insurance at the time.
- Wiped out on a mountain bike at roughly 20 mph while going down a gravel trail. The person in front of me lost control of his bike and I jerked hard to the right to avoid his skull. The bike disagreed with my approach to biking and sent me flying. Gravity decided to bring me back to earth among some small, sharp rocks. Friction decided that the best way to stop my forward motion was by ripping flesh from my forearms, much like a NASCAR car disintegrating as it flips through the infield.
- Gotten a mild concussion during an IM flag football game. (Not my fault--the guy didn't see me running his direction and he cut at the last second. His forehead established temporary residence behind my left ear.
- Carried a backpack and a computer bag in the same manner everyday during 1L until it became apparent that I'd caused some muscle injury to the right side of my back. Physical therapy, muscle relaxers, chiropractic, and exercise have all failed to correct this.
- Broken my right hand and torn open the skin on the palm of my left when I blacked out. While I was weight lifting. There is something about losing consciousness when you have 405 pounds on your shoulders that doesn't lend itself to a happy ending. (Give the details, this was actually the best case scenario. When I try to reconstruct how I fell, I cannot believe that I didn't lose at least two fingers.)
- Had my left knee pop out of place. Again. Just last year, after nearly nine years of no recurrence of injury to that same left knee, I was playing catch with Jeff and it went out on me. I was not doing anything even mildly "extreme;" I caught the ball, stepped to left to return the throw, and felt it slide out and back into place. With a loud pop. That Jeff heard from about 100 feet away. And I just got queasy again writing that.
- Fell down some wet stairs and strained three ligaments in my back. About two weeks after the second knee-pop-outting, I was in a hurry to meet someone and I wasn't paying attention as I left the apartment. No one had mentioned that the bottom three steps had a plastic liner on them. (Why???) Also, it was raining, and this was the first time it had rained while I'd been in Little Rock. Long story short, my right foot hit the incredibly slick step and shot straight forward, bringing my left foot along for company. The middle of my back (which is where I tend to keep my spine) landed at a 45-degree angle on the middle step, which, according to the doctor, stretched the ligaments on either side of that vertebrae such that they didn't un-stretch back for months.
- Apparently fucked up my left foot. About four weeks ago, during a softball game, I was beating out an infield hit and the morbidly obese first baseman was standing on the bag. I managed to sneak my left foot in there (I was safe), but it then slammed into his fat knee. I've had a stabbing pain in it when I walk ever since.
So, what's my point? Well, other than the falling down the stairs thing, almost none of these can be chalked up to anything other than simply not knowing my limits. My brother and I were talking about it the other day and he's the same way--it seems we jump right into activities without really thinking through the whole "can I do this, should I do this" rubric. Which, more often than not, leads to injury. Not that I really mind--I'm secretly one of those sickos who kinda lacks a nagging pain because it lets me know I'm alive (or some shit like that)--but I am currently thinking about going skydiving in mid-August. Looking at that list, I can't help but wonder what could possibly go wrong?
Cartman
Every now and then, I worry that we really are going to hell in a handbasket. (What is a "handbasket," anyway? -Ed.)
Then something like this comes along and assures me that all is still right with the world.
Government study shows women still do most of the housework.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:
Q. Why do brides wear white dresses?
A. So that the dishwasher will match the stove and fridge.
/mysoginism
Computadora Conquistador
Update on my
fight with Internet Explorer.
Because I know at least one of my four regular readers is forced to use IE at work, I thought I would try to make this page appear correctly. I apparently would have better teaching Britney Spears calculus. I went through my source code and adjust every conceivable width that could be responsible for lining the two columns up (instead of bumping the right column to the bottom). Nada. Bupkis, even. Every tweak did nothing to my Firefox display and merely made the length of my sentences within the left column change in IE. I am officially out of ideas. Consider this both my waving of the white flag and an appeal to someone with more common sense than I possess to offer up some help. Do it for the children.
And, by "children," I mean "
poor assholes who are using IE."
Easy like Sunday morning
Pardon me while I rant for a moment.
On June 27th, we mailed out roughly 150 wedding invitations. These came on the heels of a similar number of Save The Date cards mailed about one month prior. Inside these invitations were an invite (obviously), a response card, and a pre-addressed/pre-stamped envelope in which to return said response card. These response cards were such that a person attending the wedding had to do nothing except write hir or her name. Someone choosing not to come, though clearly an asshole, needed only to write his name and the word "not" in the "will ______ attend" space. Like I said, the envelope was already addressed and stamped, meaning the entire process would take a person roughly 7 seconds.
On the card, we also said "The favour of a reply is requested by the twenty-eighth of July."
That's today.
Of the original 150ish, guess how many cards we've received back at the casa?
61.
Sixty fucking one.
I don't get how this makes sense. What part of "hey, could you reply to this pretty soon? I've made it as easy as it humanly possible, short of mailing a midget to stuff the envelope and lick it for you" do people not get?
I realize I sound pissy. I am a tad pissy. Unless I get 90 cards in the mail today (at which point, my mailman will likely stab me), I am waking people up with phone calls at 6AM tomorrow to get a yes or no confirmation from them.
Because that's how I roll.
