Big A's World

Skippy Car #7

2007-06-12T06:17:00.000-05:00

I always thought that I enjoyed car shopping - and I still do, as long as I don't NEED a car. However, when you absolutely have to have a new car by a certain date, it can be stressful. I Don't believe in walking into a dealer and signing the papers right away - at least not anymore. I always go home and think about it for at least 24 hours. Making quick decisions is the best way to do something you regret later. So I picked out a car I wanted, and went home to think about it. On my way to work the next day I found another car that I liked as well - but I ultimately decided the first car was the one for me. When i went back for the first car, it was gone. So I went back to the second car and it was gone too! Anyway, I finally did get a new skippy car. It's probably too nice to be called a skippy car, but I'm sure I'll be able to junk it up pretty fast:

It's an 04 VW Passat AWD.

Another picture with the camera on "night mode" apparently the shutter was open a little longer than I expected, but I thought it looked cool.

And yes, this is the 7th skippy car. The entire skippy car saga is a pretty good, but very long story I have to save for later.

Strike 3 for the Skippy Car

2007-05-29T10:38:00.000-05:00

It looks like this is the end for the poor skippy car. The day after my wife's surgery I wasn't going to work, so I didn't need it - so I let my brother borrow it and she never came home.
It wasn't really Ethan's fault - he got rear-ended by a drunk driver. Who gets drunk at 1 p.m. in the afternoon? Apparently the guy was a real piece of work. Apparently when he crashed a whole assortment of beer bottles, shotgun shells, and various other things came spilling out.
The guy even tried to get away with a hit-and-run despite the fact the he only had three wheels - and at least one of those wheels didn't have a tire anymore. Oh yeah, did I mention he didn't have any insurance?
In it's infinite wisdom, the State of NH does not require people to carry insurance, but if you DO have insurance, you are required to carry uninsured motorists coverage. So at least I am covered - no word from the insurance company yet, but I am assuming it's totalled. My insurance policy specifically covers original equipment replacement parts, so I'm sure it will add up pretty fast.
The guy tried to tell the sherrif that he was only going about 40 MPH, but the 200 ft skidmarks beg to differ.

And another case of getting smacked in the head by the sledgehammer of irony - yup, you guessed it - here is a good shot of my BRAND NEW $400 exhaust system right there. It was so new that the check hadn't even cleared yet.

update

2007-05-22T01:33:00.000-05:00

For those who may not have heard, Krista had to have an emergency appendectomy tonight. (sidebar - is there any other kind?). So far she is doing well. They were able to get it in time, so it didn't rupture. They were able to do it laproscopically, which should help with the recovery time. The surgeon gave me a really cool, high-res picture of the offending organ, but I'm pretty sure she would not care to have it posted here. Anyway, if all goes well, she should be able to come home tomorrow.

Strike 2 for the Skippy Car

2007-05-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

Another chapter in the ongoing saga of the skiipy car muffler problems unfolded last night. Driving home from a disappointing Sox game last night I got pulled over by the Massachusetts State Police for my Muffler - or rather for my lack of a muffler. I informed him that the muffler had fallen off recently and I was planning to get it fixed as soon as I could so he let me off with a verbal warning. I wonder how much longer I can get away with it? I think that the real reason I got pulled over was because it was 1 a.m. I'm sure that if it had been a more reasonable time of day, he wouldn't have bothered. Also, does over two months ago still count as "recently"?

My Front Yard

2007-04-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

or what's left of it.....

Memories

2007-04-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

I was walking past a co-workers office and noticed a map of the Blue Ridge Parkway and it brought to mind a story I hadn't thought about in years.

One day gagknee and I decided to go visit the National Corvette Musem in Bowling Green, KY. So we left our Cedarville, OH apartment, hopped in my 88 Camaro, and headed in the general direction of Kentucky.

We got about 30 miles down the road and decided to look at a map - it was only then that we discoverd that we were almost 300 miles from our destination. We were a little dismayed, but I was getting married in a week and Gagknee was heading back home to NH when that happened, so we knew that this was probably our only chance to do it - so we decided to carry on.

A couple of hours into the trip, I saw a sign for the Blue Grass Parkway. I told Gagknee we should take it because I remembered driving on it with my dad as a kid and the views were absolutely spectacular - so we did. When we got on it, We discovered that this was not the winding road with the breathtaking views that I remembered - it was actually a rather dull, limited access, 4-lane highway. Once on the road, though, we discovered we were the only ones on it. There were no other cars, and certainly no cops, so we decided to see what the camaro could do. Unfortunately, the speedometer only went to 120, so we don't know how fast we were going, but the speedometer was pegged. We set the cruise control and rode the entire length of that highway at 100+ mph.

We got to the Museum, spent the whole day admiring the corvettes, and when we were done, returned home the same way.

That was a pretty good day.

p.s. The real Blue Ridge Parkway IS a spectacular drive, and well worth it if you are in the area, but it is nowhere near Kentucky.

p.p.s. I really miss that car.

ugh

2007-04-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

spoiler alert: I'm going to talk about 24, so if you don't want to know what happens, you may not want to read on.

The disclaimer is probably unneccesary because NOTHING happened. Of all 5 seasons, this was the most boring episode yet. I realize that you can't have a nuclear bomb going off every episode, but come on - a full episode of Cabinet meetings? Ugh. I was really looking forward to watching my favorite show in HD for the first time ever, and what happens? I fell asleep it was so boring. And not only was it boring, but the parts I DID stay awake for didn't make sense. The whole vice-president/president-palmer storyline just doesn't make sense.

Note to FOX: You have been advertising this season as the "nonstop" season of 24, but if the filming schedule for a "nonstop" season is so grueling that you can't be bothered to make a good episode more often than every 3rd week or so, it's no good. I would rather have a week or two off any day instead of this crap.

Also, I can't in good conscience call it the "Jack Bauer Show" anymore, because Jack was barely even in that episode. So until Jack starts doing some more stuff, I will revert to calling it 24. Or I might start calling it the Ricky Schroeder show.

The Best Day of the year!

2007-04-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

It's finally here - Opening Day. My cable company finally added NESN-HD to their channel lineup, so I took the plunge and bought an HDTV. mmmmmm.... Red Sox in HD. If you don't hear from me until October, you'll know why.

Fat Baby!

2007-03-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

I Hate Syrup

2007-03-21T13:59:00.000-05:00

I don't really, but the so-called war on Global Warming hit an all-new high on my ridiculous scale this week when I arrived to vote in my local election and was greeted at the polls with a bunch of these signs. Of course I voted against the Syrup.

A new twist on an old problem

2007-03-13T17:11:00.001-05:00

I do not wear a wristwatch. At work, I usually rely on the computer to know what time it is. Well, yesterday the computer I was using was not properly updated for the new Daylight savings time, so it was an hour off. Not knowing this, I accidentally stayed at work for an extra hour.

Hi-Def Dilemma

2007-02-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

I have been contemplating the purchase of an HDTV for a while now, but one thing that has been holding me back is that my cable provider did not offer NESN HD - and if I can't watch the Red Sox in High-Def, then why bother? But I was perusing my cable company's website and discovered that this year they ARE offering NESN in HDTV. Furthermore, I discovered that my current package already INCLUDES HDTV basic programming (a $5.95 value!). This means that by hooking up my regular TV to this service, I am effectively WASTING $5.95 a month. Therefore it stands to reason that the only responsible thing to do is to go out and buy an HDTV immediately.

Skippy Car update

2007-02-23T23:28:00.000-05:00

I was walking behind the skippy car tonight and thought I saw something weird. Upon closer inpsection I discovered that my bumper is coming loose. Oops.

Adventures with a skippy car.

2007-02-21T12:25:00.000-05:00

Those of you who were laughing at me as I pulled out of the Church parking lot on Sunday will enjoy this story. As you may know, my car recently developed an exhaust problem. As with all exhaust problems I first noticed that it sounded a little bit louder than normal. But I decided to wait for it to get worse before I bothered to fix it.

It started to get louder - but still I waited.

It got to the point where it was really loud when I was accelerating but not too bad if the car was merely maintaining speed or coasting. So I waited for it to get worse.

One day I made the mistake of accelerating as I was driving past a cop. He pulled me over and told me to get it fixed. I told him I was planning to get it fixed that weekend. And I was. Honest. But it was cold that weekend, and the football playoffs were on, and I just didn't have time. So I waited some more.

Ever since then, I just made sure I did not accelerate as I passed that cop and everything was fine. Then this weekend, I noticed that it was worse. It was loud all the time - and there was a distinct rattling when I would go over bumps. When I looked at the back of the car, the tailpipe was definitely in an odd position. The kids in my back seat asked me why their voices sounded funny when they talked. But still I waited.

Then on Tuesday, it finally got worse. I was driving down I-95 when I hit a bump in the road. There was a bang and a rattle and then the distinct metallic sound of metal being dragged on asphalt. Crap. I decided it would be a bad thing to leave a muffler in the middle of a highway like I did with the playpen incident so I pulled into the slow lane and waited until I had a good opportunity to pull off the road. The day before I watched a special report on TV about people on the side of highways getting hit by traffic, so I wasn't about to just pull on to the shoulder. I was about 2 miles from the Hampton tolls and I knew there would be a little parking area right there. How much worse could it get in two miles, right?

So anyway, there I am cruising down 95 dragging a muffler and it starts making a worse sound - it now sounds like it is bouncing up and down between the road and my undercarriage. I am positive by now that this means my muffler is hanging by a string and any moment now is going to go flying into the car behind me (who, by the way, was tailgating) Desperate to avoid this, I reduced my speed drastically. This only serves to cause the car behind me to start tailgating me even closer. (By the way, how stupid are you - if the car in front of you is dragging/bouncing a piece of metal exhust, and it is clear that it could let loose any moment, wouldn't it be a good idea to BACK OFF? Or for that matter, go around! It's a four-lane freakin' highway!!!!)

As I approached the toll booth, I started to breath a sigh of relief. I was only a couple of hundred yards away from the little parking lot where I could pull over and fix it. (well, "fix" may not be the right word). But then - just as I'm about to go through the tollbooth, I hit a bump. The front edge of my muffler caught the lip of that bump and stood up almost vertical, LIFTING THE BACK END OF MY CAR OFF THE GROUND!!! Then it started making the most horrific sound you can imagine - so loud it completely drowned out my Radio. The whole time the guy at the tollbooth is giving me really strange looks. I was able to get the car over to the parking lot fearing the worst. When I got out I found that my muffler was completely wedged vertical between the bumper and the ground, with the muffler supporting a great deal of the car's weight. That awful sound was the sound of me gouging a pretty nice little "scratch" into the pavement. It was wedged so tight that I started getting out the car jack in order to lift the car up and free the muffler. But then I realized there was so much junk in my trunk that it would take way too long, so I just started kicking the muffler. After a few really good kicks, I finally knocked it loose - along with a fair amount of paint from my bumper. I was able to completely remove the muffler and put it in my trunk.

I guess that NOW it is finally bad enough to fix. A cop will usually let you off the hook with a warning for the broken exhaust, but I don't think they will be quite as understanding if they find out the muffler has been completely removed.

The Accidental criminal

2007-02-17T00:25:00.000-05:00

After flying to California for a recent business trip, I reached into one of the pockets of my backpack and pulled out a TOY HAND GRENADE. I'm not sure which one of my kids was trying to get me arrested, nor am I sure how I managed to get through highly trained and extremely competent security in Boston with a realistic looking toy explosive (specifically banned by the TSA), but I decided not to press my luck twice and threw it away while I was out there. It also gives me an excuse to post this amusing picture I found.

Not Clear on the Concept

2007-02-12T10:53:00.000-05:00

If you drive a Nissan Xterra, Ford Explorer, Expedition, Excurcsion, Chevy Suburban, etc... your car does NOT belong in the parking spot marked "compact". Just because your car technically still fits between the lines with the doors closed does not mean you should park there.

Also, a note to soccer moms everywhere - the "mini" in the word minivan does not qualify you as a compact car either.

Memo to Jet Blue

2007-02-11T00:44:00.000-05:00

I recently flew on your aircraft and for the most part really enjoyed the experience. Having 30+ channels of DirectTV available at every seat was really nice (even if 29 of the were carrying non-stop Anna Nicole coverage for the whole flight). However, I was watching "Revenge of the Nerds" on my screen only to realize at the last moment that it was the unedited version. So there I was surrounded by many other people, when all of a sudden there was a full-frontal view of a woman on my screen completely naked head-to-toe!!! To say the least, it was really uncomfortable. I can only imagine what the people around me must have thought - or the (female) flight attendant who chose that moment to offer me something to drink. There were also young children on the plane, fortunately none were in my row. In the future, you might want to keep your offerings to PG13.

Jack Bauer Show

2007-02-06T10:44:00.000-05:00

For the first time in my life, I had to watch the Jack Bauer show last night complete with commercials. It was a decidedly unpleasant experience. I hope I never have to do that again. Pretty good episode though. Although I prefer when Jack has to do "improvised" torture instead of the IV-medicine kind.

Not all bad

2007-02-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I had to take a last minute trip to California, leave my wife and kids behind for a week and watch the SuperBowl on 5" airplane screen, but today I am looking at the bright side - the Bright, Sunny, 65-degree side..... Hope you guys are staying warm today. I'll think of you when I hit the pool later.

aaaarrrgh!

2007-02-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

No offence to gagknee. but in my experience most IT people are idiots. Well, maybe not - but the talented ones all get promoted pretty quickly to Network Administrators and managers leaving the idiots to run the helpdesk.

I found out yesterday that I have to go to California next week, so I requested a laptop for my trip. The guy gave me two choices:

- the standard laptop which is nice, but too big to fit on an airplane tray easily, but that doesn't really matter because the battery only lasts about an hour, so it's not that useful on a 6 hour flight anyway.

- a brand new "small" laptop - which fits on the tray, and a battery life of close to 4 hours. He assured me that I would be able to watch DVDs with it on the plane, so I took the small one.

I waited until last night to open up the case - at which time I discovered that it was too small and didn't even HAVE a DVD drive. And then, when I had resigned myself to no DVD drive, I plugged it in and discovered that the battery didn't even work!!! it won't charge, and the laptop only runs when plugged in - which defeated the whole purpose of having the small one in the first place!!!!!!

Chinese Prison Pictures

2007-01-28T08:44:00.000-05:00

Per gagknee's request here are some pictures of me the day my wife made the "chinese prison" comment. Sorry they are such low-quality pictures. I took them with my webcam while I was working from home.

She Thinks I'm Cute......or does she?

2007-01-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

Checked my "myspace" page today for the first time in a long time and got a good laugh. In my messages, there was a personal message:

Hey Biga,

How's it goin? I'm Kristy, I just moved to the Cedarville area and I wanna meet a nice guy around here :-). I moved here to Ohio a couple of weeks ago for work and now that I'm here I have nobody to hang out with! I read your profile... You're cute and I liked what you had to say :-).

I'm 22/F/single and I'm lookin for a guy who is a little bit older or more mature than me. You say you're 100 and you're cute so I guess you're qualified :-)

(editors note: when I signed up for myspace, I listed Cedarville, OH as my hometown, and my birthdate as Jan 1 1906.)

Ok, so obviously this is spam. Because no 22 year old girl is ever looking for a 100 year old guy. But my favorite part was being called "cute" when these are the only two pictures on my myspace page:

Happy Pie Day

2007-01-23T11:27:00.000-05:00

My good friend Rob wrote that yesterday was "The Gloomiest Day of the Year". Judging by the way my day went, I found it difficult to argue.

However, today is different. Today we celebrate what may be the most perfect food ever invented - PIE. Yes, that is right, today is National Pie Day.

So cheer up, get yourself a nice warm slice of apple pie with some french vanilla ice cream melting on top, and let the deliciousness wash away the gloominess of yesterday.

My wife thinks I look like Jack Bauer

2007-01-17T07:27:00.000-05:00

Well, what she said was that I look like I've been in a chinese prison for two years. Maybe it's time for a trim

Jack Bauer Show - Day 6 review

2007-01-16T12:10:00.000-05:00

Wow!
That's really I have to say about it at this point. I'm totally speechless.

The Jack Bauer Hour

2007-01-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, so it took me a year, but I have finally caught up on all six season of The Jack Bauer Show. I must say, while I still enjoyed it, season 5 was my least favorite. It just seemed that the writing got a little bit lazy. And some of the mid-season episodes were pretty boring. Which was disappointing because the shocking way the season started and the first 4 episodes were VERY promising. Here is a short list of the problems I had with this season:

#1 - The Romance with Audrey Raines. Come on - it was unneccesary to the story and totally gratuitous. And unrealistic - He kills her husband in the last season, fakes his own death, disappears for a year and a half, and then they pick up right where they left off? It's absurd. Plus Jack works better as a loner - I mean, come on - his own WIFE only lasted one season, why should the girlfriend last two? Plus I just don't care for her. If they absolutely MUST have a love interest in his life, I would have rather seen the Connie Britton character (can't remember her character's name)

#2 - The "Kim" problem. Is Kim a character or not? She keeps popping up in these useless scenes. I think she needs to be kidnapped in the next season, killed at the end of the season, setting up Jack for another revenge-filled rampage like like he did during season 2. Either that or she should spend the season being stalked by a couger for no apparent reason.

#3 - Loose ends. There were a lot of loose ends in this season. For example, remember the woman who worked for Mrs. Logan and made the recording? What happened to her and her daughter. Did Henderson let them go after he got the info he needed? or did he kill them? We were never told. In previous seasons we were never left to wonder (or at least I don't remember them all). What happened to the traitorous CTU guard that let Bierko escape the final time? Was he captured? Killed? We just never saw him again. And what about Dr. Romano and all of the other mysterious bad guys? Who were they? What was their purpose? They just didn't quite fit the plotline very well.

#4 - Technical Difficulties. Ok, now I don't expect 24 to be "real". Obviously it is an unrealistic show, and they throw a lot of technical jargon around that is mostly nonsense to anybody who knows a little bit about computers and networking. However, that's not really what bothers me. I can accept that stuff, but there were a lot of inconsistencies that bothered me.

For one thing, How is it that an Arms dealer has all kinds of fancy security and surveillance stuff to prevent intruders, and to make sure they are unarmed and not wearing a wire, etc... and yet he has somehow completely neglected the possibility that somebody could saunter up the fire escape and climb on his roof??!! Come on. Have some armed guards that jack has to fight or at the very least a security camera.

And could somebody please explain to me how a submarine with 12 live missles on it could possibly be docked anywhere without a battalion of MPs guarding it? I know it was at a civilian dock, but still. I once worked at a company that owned it's own airport, and one day an F-18 developed some sort of mechanical problem and had to make an emergency landing. Immediately there were a whole bunch of heavily armed Military personnel circled around it.

The recording that Jack spent most of his time chasing also bothered me. In previous seasons whenever they got their hands on something like this, there would always be some magic way to plug it into his phone or PDA and download it immediately to Chloe. Why was this not possible this one time? or why couldn't he at least play it over the phone for CTU? I understand that it was crucial to the plot, but it was a weak plot.

And the cliffhanger ending was maybe the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. You have this super-agent who is so good and so cautious about everything, constantly on the alert for traps, ambushes, etc - basically anything that doesn't add up. And yet there he was surrounded by all manner of hi-tech communications equipment and it didn't strike him as odd that they would route a phone call from his daughter to a land-line in an abandoned warehouse? I was flabbergasted that the season would end so stupidly. That was just plain lazy writing at its worst.

All that being said, I am really looking forward to the new season starting.

Hall of Famer (at least in my book)

2007-01-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

About 1 hour from now, We will find out who this year's inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame are. Some years there is a lot of suspense - not so much this year. Three names overshadow all of the others. Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and Mark McGuire. Ripken and Gwynn are almost Certain shoe-ins. Both played long, illustrious carreers. Both hit more than the so-called "magic-number" (3000) of hits requisite for entry into the HOF. Both were known as "Good Guys", and even more strangely in this day and age, both stayed on a single team for their entire career. And of course who can forget the way Ripken shattered the consecutive games played record previously held by Lou Gherig. In a day where pampered Athletes complain about how hard their job is, and demand days off whether their team needs them or not (Manny Ramirez), or insist on attending their father's birthday party (which oddly is never on the same day every year, and sometimes their father even has TWO birthdays a year - Pedro Martinez), a player who showed up every day, didn't complain and seemed to recognize what a privelege it was to PLAY A GAME for a living certainly deserves to be recognized.

McGuire, on the other hand, almost certainly will not get in. Despite having tremendous power numbers and being the star of the chase to break Roger Maris' home run record that may have single-handedly done more to save the game of basebally than any other factor - he has been labled a cheater by the writers that control his fate. But I did not intend to write about McGuire because I honestly do not know how I feel about it. Some days I feel he deserves everything he gets, some days I think he should be in the HOF, and some days I simply feel bad for him. But I digress....

I would like to mention another guy who is on the ballot that is totally overshadowed by these three guys. This guy was probably the best player in the leage for an entire decade. This is another guy who played his entire career for one team. A guy who played NEARLY every game for nine years. A guy who was had over 100 RBI for 8 years. A guy who batted over 300 for 7 years. A guy who finished his career with a .298 lifetime batting average. A guy who would routinely get walked intentionally WITH THE BASES LOADED because he was so dangerous. He is not in the HOF already because he came 18 Home runs shy of the "magic" 400 threshold and only got about 2500 hits. Even though his average HR/season is higher than Ripkens, and his average Hits/season is higher than both Ripken and Gwynn, he fell short of these numbers because his career was cut short by injuries. But in an era that was not dominated by offense like the 90's and the 00's have been, he still put up very impressive numbers. And I think a guy who is one of the most dominant players in a league for an entire decade deserves to be recognized. Jim Rice is a Hall of Famer in my book.

For what it's worth, he was one of my favorite players as a kid - and one of the only ones that never disappointed me (Roger Clemens).

On a more Positive Note

2007-01-05T14:01:00.000-05:00

After two negative posts in a row about my recent trip to Ohio, I thought I should bring something positive to the table. One of the things that I miss about Ohio is Steak 'N Shake. I look forward to visiting this restaurant whenever we travel out to the Midwest. Although it is primarily a "burger" restaurant, it should not be confused with fast fast food joints like McD's, Burger King, Wendy's, or EVEN (I'll probably take som flak for this from gagknee) Hardee's. This place puts all of those to shame. The burgers are fantastic, the skinny crispy french fries are superb, and the hand-dipped milkshakes are the best you can get anywhere. To top it all off, Steak 'N Shake is open 24 hours a day 364 days a year (Closed on Christmas). That's right - there is no chance that you will be on a ATV trip, decide you want a milkshake at 10 p.m. only to walk across the bridge and find it closed. It will always be open ready to serve you the most delicious burger and shakes you have ever had.

This is not to say that they only serve burgers - they serve all kinds of other foods which I'm sure are great, but I've never tried them. Maybe if I get sick of the most delicious burger in the world I will try something else someday. I will say that the side items offered in addition to the fries - particularly the baked beans and the chili are excellent.

I always get the Frisco Melt Platter with fries and Baked Beans and a Strawberry Shake to drink. It is definitely the best meal you can get for under $10 anywhere.

If you live anywhere near one of these, consider yourself lucky.

Another (Awful) Movie Review

2007-01-04T16:01:00.000-05:00

We were visiting the FIL* and the SMIL* on New Years eve, and we started watching Wesley Cash. Never Heard of it? yeah, neither had I - and for good reason. I knew within 30 seconds that this movie was going to wedge it's way into my "Top 5 worst movies of all time" list. I seriously cannot say enough bad stuff about this movie to do it justice, but I will try.

The video quality was awful - it looked like it was shot with a home video camera, and not one of the "good" ones that you can get at best buy for about $500 - but rather an old VHS style camera from the 80's - probably recorded over top of someobody's home movies instead of brand new tapes.

Sound quality was even worse - the FIL has a pretty decent surround sound system but the movie sounded like it was recorded on one of those old cassete recorders I had when I was about 10 years old, and then played back across a homemade tin-can-and-string "telephone". The bad audio was a blessing in disguise, though, since neither the dialouge or the soundtrack were worth listening to.

That brings me to the actors - oh, my, you cannot imagine how bad the acting was. gagknee made some home movies back in 8th grade that had much better acting. Although I do give the movie some points on the "unintentional comedy scale*" for casting Chad Mathews as the title character - a dead ringer for Ian Ziering (Beverly Hills 90210) both in looks and acting ability.

And finally - the storyline. It was totally nonsensical. The story itself was extremely weak, and It was organized in in a way that was impossible to follow chronologically (kind of like pulp fiction - but without the good acting, interesting story, good cinemetography, etc.. Actually, I should probably be shot for mentioning the two movies in the same sentence).

My FIL has this interesting "TV" which is really just a laptop projector that he projects onto an almost-blank wall in his living room. I remember thinking several times and even saying out loud at least once, that I would rather stare at the blank wall than keep watching this movie. Why did I keep watching it? Because there was nothing else to do - My FIL's house is very small and all of the other rooms were filled with my sleeping children. My choices were to watch the movie, go to bed, or sit in the bathroom. Alright, I exaggerate - I could have gone out and sat in the garage as well. Anyway, after about 35 minutes, I got lucky - The movie is organized in such a way that it shows the same scene several times. I managed to convince the IL's that there was something wrong with the DVD and it kept jumping back to the same scene, so we should just stop watching. So if you were worried about me giving away the ending, you can relax now. I never saw it.

Overall Rating: There is not enough time to type out the number of "Doh's" that would be required by my Homer Simpson Rating Scale, so I will simply use the Simpsons Comic Book Guy instead: "Worst. Movie. Ever."

*FIL - Father in Law
*SMIL - Step-Mother in Law
*"Unintentional Comedy Scale" - a total rip-off of Bill Simmons - a very funny columnist for ESPN's Page 2.

Ohio Blows

2006-12-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

The wind, I mean.

I had forgotten how freakin' windy Ohio is. When we got here, the temp. gauge said 50, so I hopped out of the car with just a T-shirt on, and immediately froze. Putting on my sweatshirt made no difference because the wind cut right through that as well. People always ask me how we can stand the harsh New England Winters, but give me 20 degrees on a calm day anytime over this crap.

Redneck Piñata

2006-12-21T00:37:00.000-05:00

yeah, what you see here is a Piñata made out of a diet pepsi box, speaker wire, and packing tape. I know a true redneck would have used a case of bud light, but I did the best I could with the materials at hand.

Smart Car

2006-12-20T15:24:00.000-05:00

I have seen this car on the highway several times recently. Every time I say to myself - why is that guy driving a golfcart on the highway? Turns out it is not a golf cart at all - it is a so-called "Smart Car". I'm not sure what makes it so smart - certainly not the driver who is taking it out on the highway.

Cool features of the new Blogger

2006-12-19T17:54:00.001-05:00

You probably have to be a bit of a geek to appreciate this, but one of the coolest features of the new blogger is the ability to post via email (which I’m doing right now). You can’t post pictures, but if your email client supports HTML instead of just plain-text, then you can do most basic formatting (BOLD, Italics, Colors, etc).

Oh Yeah!

2006-12-10T23:56:00.000-05:00

Well, it took a little bit of luck, waking up at 5 a.m., hauling my kids down to boston, waiting in line in the cold outsid of Fenway park, waiting around some more INSIDE the park, then waiting in another line outside, and then waiting in one more line once again inside the park, but I got what I came for. Yup, that's right - Red Sox Opening Day tickets. I have always wanted to go to Opening day, but have never been able to. These tickets are so popular, that already, you can find them on a scalper website for $349 each. That is over $300 MORE than face value for a game that is still 5 months away.

New Rules

2006-12-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

Everybody who has kids probably knows that every once in a while your kids will force you to make a new household rule that never occurred to you before. You know, like:

1. Don't put socks in the kitchen sink disposal.

2. Don't put your boogers on the ceiling.

Well anyway, at the Big A household, we had to make a new one last night. Last night my wife started up the dishwasher before going to bed. Lucky for me, I stayed up another 15 minutes or so. On my way to bed, I noticed that the kitchen sink was completely full of dirty water. Ugh. The dishwasher was backing up into the sink which means we have a clogged drain. Before tackling the drain I wanted to dump the water out of the sink, so I got out the mop bucket and started carrying buckets of water to the bathroom and dumping them in the toilet.

After my third bucket, I noticed an odd object floating in the toilet. What was it? Well, if you guessed "Lightbulb", then I would say you have a very active imagination. I would also say you were 100% correct. Not a full-size one, but a nightlight bulb - small enough to go down the drain, but certainly large enough to cause problems.

The irony is that the lightbulb did not actually cause the clog. In fact, I can't even be sure that it was in the sink - it may have already been in the toilet. But does it really matter? Neither place is the right place to dispose of lightbulbs.

So anwyway, the Big A household has a new rule - "No lightulbs in the toilets or sinks".

(And yes, the two rules listed at the beginning of the post are not merely funny examples - they are real rules in our house)

Turducken Review

2006-11-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have asked me about my Turducken and I must say I was a little disappointed. It was very tasty, especially the cajun version, but being all white meat, it was in my opinion a little too dry. I am blaming this on the fact that it was not a real one, though - so I guess I am going to have to make my own someday. And yes - it would have been better if it had been covered in Bacon.

The real star of the show that night was the Pumpkin Creme Layer Pie that I brought home from work. I have never had anything like it, and the only place I have ever seen it was at my office cafeteria. But anyway, it was amazing. If anybody has ever heard of such a thing and has a recipe for it, I would be extremely grateful.

Turducken Time

2006-11-22T10:34:00.000-05:00

Ever since I first heard about the existence of the Turducken I have been fascinated by the concept. For those of you who do not know what one is, it is in short a turkey, stuffed with a duck, which is in turn stuffed with a chicken. Inside the chicken and in between the other layers there is usually some sort of of stuffing - often made of sausage.

Despite my general aversion to eating something that starts with "Turd" it sounds delicous. Here is a picture of a "traditional" Turducken. Note the strings required to hold it all together. A Turducken is completely boneless - another added benefit.

Here is a Bacon-coverd Turducken. Need I say more? I think it is a generally accepted - if not an actual scientific fact - truth that everything tastes better when covered in bacon.

Anyway, I have been asking people to make me one for a couple of years now with no luck. Apparently it is an enormous amount of work. (like 2 - 3 days of work). Click here to see a sample Recipe. Of course, you can buy them from various places on the web, but including shipping cost you are looking at paying close to $150 for a medium sized one. It was apparent that I would never get a Turducken unless I made it myself and since I am way too lazy for that, I had resigned myself to yet another Turduckenless Holdiay season until my wife brought home a flyer from our local Grocery Store proclaiming that they had Turduckens for $4.99 a pound! I went out the next day and bought 2. One with a Cranberry-Apple stuffing, and one with a Louisiana-style stuffing.

Since our Thanksgiving Day meal is already set (Turkey, Ham and Venison), we are having a pre-thanksgiving Turducken Feast at my house tonight. Now, these are not real Turduckens - They are only about 3-4 lbs made with all breast meat instead of whole birds, but It still sounds delicious. I can't Wait! I will be sure to post a review later.

Quiet Please!

2006-11-21T16:29:00.000-05:00

The guy across the hall from me was participating in a very long conference at top volume on his speakerphone with the door wide open - which was bad enough, but then I peeked in his office and discovered that HE WASN'T EVEN IN THERE!!!!

I bet he was in the bathroom peeing on the seat.

You've got to be kidding me!!

2006-11-21T10:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, While driving to work this morning, I heard a radio ad for Rudy Guiliani for President. This is the earliest I can ever remember hearing an ad like this. This is getting ridiculous. It seems like everything has been non-stop politics for a very long time now. I was actually looking forward to a small lull between the recent election and the next one, but I guess I'm not going to get it. Ugh.

Come on Rudy - everybody with half a brain knows that you are running, as are John Mccain, satan, Mitt Romney and probably Ralph Nader. Can't you at least give us the Christmas season before bombarding us with Campaign ads?

feeling old

2006-11-17T16:18:00.000-05:00

Remember thinking our parents were old because they used to use 8-track tapes and record players? The other day I had a conversation with my youngest son:

Him: Hey Dad - What's that?

Me: That's a VCR.

Him: What?

Me: a VEE CEE ARE.

Him: Oh. What does it do?

Me: We used to use it to play movies before DVDs. It plays tapes instead of discs.

Him: Oh. That's Weird!

Gimme a Break!

2006-11-16T08:08:00.000-05:00

I am not much of a chocolate person - (I prefer to get my bad calories from cheeseburgers), but one exception I make is the Kit-Kat bar. The Kit-Kat is hands down my favorite candy bar.

So I was intrigued the other day when some friends came over and left a strange-looking one on my kitchen counter. Instead of the normal red wrapper, it had a creamy brown colored wrapper. Turns out it was one of the new "Limited Edition" Chocolate Mocha flavored Kit-Kats.

I was doubtful that anybody could improve on what I consider to be the perfect candy bar, but I was anxious to try it. Opening the wrapper, I was immediately hit with a very strong coffe smell. Not the good kind of coffe smell when you have fresh-brewed coffee in the morning, but more like the kind of smell that my car had (and still does) about a week after the McDonalds Coffee Incident

Despite the warnings my nose was giving me, I proceeded to break off a small piece and put it in my mouth. As many of you know, I will eat just about anything, so I was not to be deterred by a cofee smelling candy bar. So anyway, as I put it in my mouth, my taste buds revolted. Ugh, man - it was the most vile thing I have tasted in a very long time. I would put it right up there with the "smart dogs" Veggie Dog incident or possibly even the Cream of Mushroom SOAP incident. At any rate, like those other two incidents I was unable to even finish my bite let alone finish the candy bar. I spit it out as fast as I could. Do NOT try this candy bar.

More Stuff that bugs me

2006-11-15T16:15:00.000-05:00

Thought of a couple more things on the list of things that bug me. I don't want to get a reputation as a whiner, so this will be my last one for a while:

#11 Women who Whine about Men leaving the Toilet Seat up
What makes you so special anyway? Why is it so hard to put it down yourself? It's not. I'm not suggesting that men should leave it up on purpose either, but what difference does it make? Is it worth yelling at somebody over? No. If you go in, and the seat is up, just put it down and get on with your life. If you have a habit of sitting down without looking and you end up falling in (yes, I have actually been told by a woman that this is a problem for her), then that is your own dumb fault. Whenever a toilet is involved, you should really look before you do anything.

This reminds me of a friend of mine in college. When he got his first bachelor apartment, he insisted that when his girlfriend used his toilet she must put the seat back up when she was done.

The other problem with being this way is that women have inadvertently created a new breed of men which leads me to #12:

#12 Men who pee on the (toilet) seat
Almost all men have two main characteristics - they are lazy, and the don't want to be hassled by women. So if they don't want women to hassle them about the stupid toilet seat, but they are too lazy to actually pick it up and then put it back down, they just leave it down and try to "be careful". This invariably leads to accidents, and while they may clean up after themselves at home (or maybe not if there are little kids they can blame it on), if they are in a bathroom they know will only be used by other men, they will invariably leave the mess for someone else. Go into any public mens room and you will see that I am right.

sorry for all of the bathroom related posts. I blame it on gagknee

The best day of the year

2006-11-13T10:53:00.000-05:00

Today is my favorite Day of the year. Why? Because it means for the next 9 months my wife will be older than me. I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it does.

A couple of interesting facts about Nov 13:

It is also the birthday of the World Wide Web.

One year ago today, Nathan Vasher of the Chicago Bears ran back a missed field goal 108 yeards for a touchdown, setting a record for the longest touchdown play in NFL history. This is interesting because last night, while we were CELEBRATING my wife's birthday, Devin Hester - ALSO of the Chicago Bears - DID THE EXACT SAME THING.

Happy Birthday Sweetie! I love you.

Picture Time

2006-11-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to post these last week, but my home computer is such an adware-infested piece of crap that I just didn't have the energy to deal with it. Sorry about that.

Collen and I with Mom dressed up for Halloween, circa 1979.

There is some controversy on the date of this picture. Mom originally thought it was also circa 1979 with Colleen in the clown suit. I'm not so sure. Based on the car in the background I would say it has to be at LEAST 1981, if not later. Plus the face is definitely not the same as the above picture, so it is either an older colleen or somebody else. The sneer she is expressing is definitely colleen-like, though.

Oh yeah, this was the whole reason for bringing the subject up. My Niece Charity wearing the exact same costume some 25+ years later.

click here for more pictures of the Neices and Nephews

#10

2006-11-06T14:57:00.000-05:00

Just thought of #10 for my list of things that bug me. Why not just edit the original post? because I don't feel like it.

10. Conservatives who are going to blow off this election because they feel let down by the Republican Party

Trust me, I know how you feel. I am also very upset at the Republican party - so much so that I no longer tell people I am republican. I tell them I am an independant conservative, but I digress. I don't know what your reasons are, and I don't really care. But thanks to your apathy, we are facing the very real possibility that Nancy Pelosi will become Speaker of the House. This woman is too liberal even for most Democrats. For her to become the speaker of the house would be a disaster - not just to conservative causes, but to the entire country.

Things that Bug Me

2006-11-06T13:56:00.000-05:00

Nine Things that Bug me. Why Nine? Well it started out as a list of three, but then I just kept on rolling so I decided to shoot for 10. But then I started losing steam at 8, and kind of stretched it into 9. Anyway, in no particular order:

1. People who say "axe" when they mean "ask"

2. People who say "excape" when they mean "escape"

You know, it's one thing if you have recently immigrated to this country from somewhere like Mexico or Maine, but for some reason a lot of otherwise reasonably educated Americans seem to have problems with these words. Come on people - if my 3-year-old can prounounce it correctly, so can you.

3. People who come to a complete stop in the EZ-pass lane

Come on. Instead of spending millions of surplus dollars on stupid projects like widening the great bay bridge - a bottleneck which wastes hours of drivers' time every week, the Great State of NH spent the money on an EZ-pass system (and raised the in-state toll rates by 40%, but held the out of state toll rates level) in order to save you 10 seconds at the toll both. The least you could do is take advantage of it!

4. People who ride my bumper, zoom around me, cut back in front of me - and THEN come to a complete stop in front of me.

Well, you are just stupid. One of these days you are going to do this in front of a semi-truck who won't be able to stop as quickly as I can.

5. John Madden

The third most annoying sportscaster of all time (behind Tim McCarver and Joe Morgan). If I were developing a football video game, my advertising campaign would be totally centered on a "featuring ZERO helpful hints by John Madden" campaign. I'm sure it would sell millions.

6. Joe Morgan

Joe only ever makes two kinds of comments - ones that are either completely obvious, or completely wrong.

7. Tim McCarver

Just like Joe Morgan, but more people make fun of him because it's he's white, and it's ok to make fun of white people.

8. Any commercial featuring Peyton Manning.

Note to Sprint/Nextel. I hate your service. It costs too much, doesn't work well, and your customer service is horrible. Your only hope for keeping me as a customer is that I forget to cancel when my contract runs out. Fortunately for me, that's probably not going to happen because I have Peyton Manning in a stupid fake mustache constantly reminding me to cancel.

9. People who will respond to this post by saying "Boy, you are grouchy today".

I'm not really. I'm actually in a pretty good mood. Ever notice how nothing puts you in a bad mood faster than being TOLD you are in a bad mood? It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

girls vs. boys

2006-10-31T10:45:00.000-05:00

Somehow we got tricked into taking the Burns' kids home from church on Sunday afternoon (I kid - no indignant responses please). I got home from soccer to find that somehow the girls had coerced Ethan and Andy into playing "Wedding". Ethan was pressed into service as the Minister, and Andy was being forced to marry Natalie. When I arrived on the scene, Ethan was mumbling his words as fast as he could, Andy was at the "alter" crying "I want my night-night", and Aryn and Ally in their role as flower girls were gleefully throwing legos (flower petals) all over the living room.

I couldn't help thinking that it was actually pretty close to a real wedding :)

Movie Review

2006-10-24T08:37:00.000-05:00

I went to see The Departed last night. Having heard very good things about this movie I went with pretty high expectations, and I was not disappointed. A very well-written story about an Irish-American Boston organized crime outfit (think Whitey Bulger) I barely even noticed that it was over 2 1/2 hours long.

One thing that is always a danger when a movie is set in Boston is that the particular accents and mannerisms of the characters for which New England (especially Boston) natives are famous for will be so overdone that they seem more like caricatures than real people (think Fever Pitch), but this is not the case. Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Wahlberg all did an outstanding job in this regard.

Jack Nicholson was, as expected, brilliant in his role as Frank Costello - the kingpin of the crime organization. Supposedly Robert De Niro was originally slated for this role, and I'm sure he would have done a good job, but Nicholson was amazing.

If I had any minor complaints it would have with the love triangle between Damon's, DiCaprio's, and Vera Farmiga's character. Honestly, it seemed a little bit contrived. It wasn't bad, but it just seemed unneccessary - like something that got thrown in so that Women would go see the movie too.

Caution: If you are offended by vulgar language, you may not want to see this movie, and don't take the kids to it. They use the F-word 226 times which averages out to be more than once a minute. However, unlike some movies where the bad language seems gratuitious and you sit there thinking that they could have done without it, the language really fits in this movie. It would feel a little strange - and not the least bit believable - without it. I didn't really even notice that many, I was startled when I looked it up later. I knew there were a bunch, but they didn't seem gratuitous or out of place

Overall, A very good movie. This was the first time in a long time that I didn't say to myself afterwards "you know, I really could have put my 8 bucks to better use". While not quite enough yet to break my all time top-five, It is right up there.

Rating: 2 WooHoo!s

(On a side note, I COULD have taken my wife to it after all. I initially figured she would be turned off by excessive violence, but there really wasn't any. Don't get me wrong, it was violent, but not excessively so - it was more of a drama)

Fun Trivia: The Apartment that Matt Damon's character lives in used to belong to The Greatest Quarterback of All Time.

TMI !!!!!

2006-10-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

I was in the men's room at work today standing at the Urinal, and this guy comes in and announces very loudly

"You've got about 10 seconds before it starts to get real nasty in here"

Bear in mind this is not a construction site - this is a professional building where virtually everybody is either a software or hardware engineer. I felt like I was momentarily transported back to high school when Rick or Derek would enter the stall with a similar proclamation.

Movie Night anybody?

2006-10-11T11:39:00.000-05:00

I can't remember the last time I was actually EXCITED about seeing a new movie, but that is exactly how I feel about The Departed. Starring Jack Nicholson who (along with Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, and Robert DeNiro) may be one of the greatest actors of all time. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but this has the potential to be up there with Heat (which incidentally stars two of the aforementioned greatest actors of all time). I am already planning on buying it a year from now when it comes out on DVD, but I MUST see it in the theatre.

If you haven't seen the trailer for it,click here.

Anyway, I don't think my wife is going to be as fired up for it as I am - so does anybody want to go with me?

Thought for the Day

2006-10-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

Some people are like slinkies -
They are not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down the stairs.

Energy Hog Update (part III)

2006-10-06T15:38:00.000-05:00

Back in August I started "Project Energy Hog" after being appalled at my Electric Bill. I started out with a goal of saving $100 a month. As you may remember, my first step was to buy a new energy-efficient washing mashine, which after three weeks - in combination with the PSNH rate reduction had already helped me accomplish my goal. So I set a new goal to get under $200. My next step was to purchase a meter to see where I was losing the electricity - first target: the basement refrigerator. I have already reported the apalling results of that test, so I won't get into it here, but I unplugged the beastly device and waited anxiously for the Month's results.

In the meantime, I took a few other steps. Out of curiousity, I tested both of my computers running for a full day, and was startled at how much they were using. I discovered that somehow my energy settings had gotten turned off, so both the machines and the displays were pretty much running constantly. For the computer that my wife and I use, this wasn't a big deal, because it gets a lot of use anyway, but for the kids computer, sometimes it would go several days without being used. So I set up the energy settings to turn the monitors off after 5 minutes of inactivity and the computers themselves to go into sleep mode after 30. The monitor settings worked great, but for some reason neither computer wants to go into sleep mode and i haven'd had the time or the energy to debug it. However, I did just start shutting down the kids computer whenever I noticed it not being used. This led to a funny conversation I had with my wife:

her: "Honey, something is wrong with the downstairs computer - it keeps shutting itself off. Every time I go in there to use it, I have to boot it up again"

me: "um, no. That's me that keeps shutting it off"

her: "well, it's annoying"

me: "too bad."

Ok, maybe I made some of that up, but the point is that I am dedicated to this project - even if it means annoying my loved ones. :) I have also turned into the light police - walking around turning off lights that nobody is using or yelling at the kids for leaving them on. It has been a long-standing akerberg kid tradition to leave as many lights on as possible, and apparently my children have inherited that trait.

Anyway, I just got the results: One month of not using the basement refrigerator, attempting to use the computers more wisely, and turning off a few lights, and my latest bill is $186.96. My household usage was just over 1,000 KW - 1/3 less than the 1500 I was using just two months ago. My Hot water continues to decline - only 349 KWh this month. WooHoo! I have already reached my goal! Having achieved it so easily leads me to believe that I can do better. I have already knocked off the "easy" stuff, so I expect the new goal will be a little harder to achieve - especially in light of the colder weather meaning the furnace gets used more and the Hot Tub heater will get turned on more. Still, I am going to try to save an additional 10% next month.

Next Step: Timing showers. Certain people in my family think that long luxurious showers are their birthright. I always threaten to time them, but I never actually do.

Cruisin'

2006-10-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

My company forced me to go out to California last week on Business. When we arrived at the rental counter, we were informed that our $45 a day was only going to get us a Hyundai Sonata - which, as good stewards of our company's money was totally unacceptable to us. $45 a day for a Hyundai? Where is the value in that? When we told the counter agent that he needed to do better than that, he started trying to talk us into one of the Hertz Prestige collection cars - a Hummer H2 or maybe a Jag XJ8 for ONLY $80 more a day. While tempted mightily, we realized we were staying at the same hotel as our boss, and figured he might notice if we drove up in a giant Hummer. In the end, we found middle ground - for only a few dollars more we were given the keys to a 2006 Mustang GT Convertible.

Now, I have never been a Ford Man, and never really wanted a mustang, but I will say that this is the closest I have ever been to changing my mind. I really like the new (old) styling, and the interior is fantastic. Very simple, with smooth lines, chrome accents on the round heater vents and Dashboard outline - it really has a nice old-timey feel to it. Cruising down Rt. 101 from San Francisco to San Jose with the top down, and the built - in Sirius satellite radio tuned to the "all-80's" channel, made me feel like I was 18 again.

When it was my turn to drive, I stomped on the gas and this beast really came to life. The handling was superb, although the only time I really had a chance to test it out was when I was doing lane changes. I would love the chance to take it out on a real road sometime. The only real complaint I could think of is the ridiculous color. "Legend Lime" is hideous.

Side Note: There was no mention of this at the counter, but when we went to the garage, there it was - the Shelby GT-H "rent-a-racer". Wow. It was a thing of beauty. I found out later that I could have rented it for a little less than the Hummer. It's probably a good thing we didn't know that at the time. Maybe next time I'll take an extra day, grab this thing and cruise down the Pacific Coast Highway for a few hours..........

.

what do I need YOU for?

2006-09-19T07:03:00.000-05:00

Last night, my wife got tired of waiting for me to move the computer, so she decided to do it herself. She was delighted to discover that the plugs on the back were color coded and she was able to hook it up all by herself. I think her exact words were "As long as I keep buying Dells, I don't even you anymore." Ouch. Then I made the mistake of telling her that the color coding has been a standard for several years now, and she doesn't even have to buy a Dell. I kind of feel like I did when I went off to college and my parents were forced to figure out how the VCR worked.

If she ever learns how to catch mice, I might be in trouble.

Bad Kids? .... or Bad Parents?

2006-09-18T12:52:00.000-05:00

The other night, while enjoying a quiet dinner with my wife (sans children), a family came into the restaurant with their three children - (I would guess ages 5-9 ). I had a feeling they were going to be trouble when the kids came in with sticks in their hands and immediately started drumming on empty tables while the family waited for the hostess to seat them. Lucky for me, they were seated in the booth immediately behind me. The mother did confiscate the drumsticks but only after I gave them a good long stare and another couple (who was seated next to them) hailed the waitress and requested to be re-seated on the other side of the restaurant.

Shortly after the sticks had been confiscated, the oldest two children apparently had some sort of disagreement because they started shrieking, screaming and SPITTING at each other. After this went on for a little while, the mother finally packed them up and hustled them out the door, much to everyone's relief. In my mind, I was commending the Mother for doing the right thing (albeit belatedly), until I looked out the window just in time to see her leading them into the ice cream shop across the street! Sure enough, they offending children came out a few minutes later holding large ice cream cones. About 20 minutes later, they entered our restaurant again, so that their parents could take them to the restrooms. Apparently, causing a huge commotion earlier made them "customers" and gave them the right to use the restrooms for the rest of the day.

Am I going crazy?

2006-09-18T08:15:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night, my wife and I got a babysitter and went out for a rare "date". We had been seeing ads on tv for Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp promotion on TV, so the original plan was to go to Red Lobster and stuff ourselves silly. Now, being from New England, with lots of quality seafood restaurants, I have always treated red lobster like a second class citizen. But shrimp is shrimp and pretty much tastes the same no matter where you get it, and some of their shrimp dishes are pretty tasty. When we lived in Ohio, we would go once in a while whenever they run the "Endless Shrimp" promotion. The scampi is particularly good - and so is the shrimp fettucini alfredo (even though the waitress gives you a dirty look when you pick the shrimp out of the noodles and then push your plate away and ask for more).

Anyway, we set out to go to the one in Portsmouth - but we couldn't find it! Now, I know I can be forgetful sometimes, but when it comes to food, my memory is usually pretty reliable. My wife swears that there used to be one there too, so if I'm crazy, then we are both crazy. So, WAS there a Red Lobster in Portsmouth at one time? And if so, when did it go away? A quick check of the Red Lobster website shows that the closest one NOW is in Queensbury, NY.

All was not lost, however. Our backup plan was to head on down to Muddy River Smokehouse, which is always good, but while we were driving there, on a whim we decided to give The Portsmouth Gaslight Co. a try. We were not disappointed. We started out with the Clam Chowder which is different than most Clam Chowders. Different - but very tasty nonetheless. I had the ribeye, which was cooked to perfection (medium), and so tender that I started cutting it with my butter knife and didn't even notice until halfway through the meal. My wife had the lobster-stuffed haddock, which according to her was also "very good".

Observations from the morning commute

2006-09-13T12:57:00.000-05:00

Massachussets drivers are the worst drivers in the world. I know that's not exactly news to most of you, but I think it bears repeating.

I can see clearly now I got a new windshield on my car this week. This was forced on me, because the old one had a crack in it and the inspection was due. I didn't want to have a run-in with My Wife's Friend. As usual, I was startled by what a noticeable difference between the two windshields. I cannot believe how pitted my old one was. It is like the difference between looking at the world through gagknee's glasses and having brand-new, clean ones.

Messy, even by MY standards. You cannot imagine what a mess a Large (32 oz) cup of McDonald's iced coffee makes on the floor of you car. Well, maybe you can imagine it, but I don't have to anymore, because I know.

Silver Lining The carpeting on my car floor is the exact color of McDonald's Iced Coffee. That's something, I guess.

AndyMan

2006-09-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

For anybody who is wondering, Andy's surgery went great. Not even any apparent nausea from the anesthesia. He woke right up and asked for a cheesburger. Thanks for your prayers.

Adventures in Potty Training

2006-09-04T12:42:00.000-05:00

As many of you may know, some of the best little-kid stories arise out of the potty-training phase. Until yesterday, here are my two favorites.

#1 - My oldest son, like all little boys has had trouble with aim, but one morning really took the cake. He came into the bathroom, stood directly in front of the toilet, then turned his back to it and promptly peed all over the sink cabinet.

#2 - My middle daughter was once standing in the living room completely naked (in the process of getting ready for bed). She started to pee on herself, and as it started trickling down her leg, got frightened at this new sensation and started running away from it. Of course, she could not get away, and all she managed to do was spray pee all over the room.

However, Yesterday there was an incident that is much better (or worse, depending on your point of view) than either of these. We were in a restaurant bathroom with my 3-year old. He pulled down his pants, faced the toilet like he was supposed to - and promptly pooped on the floor behind him.

Worst. Movie. Ever

2006-08-30T11:54:00.001-05:00

When I watch a movie, I usually just want to be entertained. 2 hours of mindless entertainment is all I'm looking for. I don't want to be preached at or made to think. I just want to sit there and not be bored. I usually find that Action/Adventure types and comedies will do the trick. Every once in a while, though, I find myself in a mood for something different. That Usually proves to be a mistake, and Match Point was no exception.

Ok, so maybe it wasn't the WORST movie I have ever seen. I think Naked and Canadian Bacon are probably still my top two, but this one is right up there. It was boring, slow-moving, predictable, and just plain not interesting. One of these days I am going to put out a list of top ten worst movies, and I predict that it will definitely be on it.

Rating: Two D'Ohs

Energy Hog Update

2006-08-29T08:03:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted a concern that we might be using more electricity than the normal family. Based on the responses I got back I realized that something was drastically wrong.

So I launched a project to reduce my Electricity expenses. My average bill before the PSNH rate reduction was about $310/month. My initial goal was to save $100 a month. Thanks to the PSNH rate reduction, My bill for the July was $270 - even though the usage was actually up (thanks to a really hot spell where we had several air-conditioners running practically non-stop). So I was almost halfway there without doing anything - which caused me to re-evaluate my goal. My goal is now to get the Electric Bill under $200 per month.

Step 1: New Washing Machine

Now, if your washing machine is functioning fine, it probably doesn't make sense to replace it just to save electricity, but since ours was on the way out, rather than buy another top-loader, we decided to get a high-efficiency front-loader.

We chose the Kenmore HE3 which was on sale for $999 - which seemed like a really good value. It was probably about $200 more than the equivalent-featured top loader which we would have chosen. Although we also got a $50 Energy Star rebate, so the price difference was really only about $150.

I was surprised to find out just how efficient the new front loaders are. A FULL LOAD of wash uses 17 gallons of water vs. about 45 gallons for my old one. Therefore, including hot water usage, the new one uses about .45 KWH (6 cents) per load compared to about 2.5 KWH (30 cents) for my old one. For a family of 7, that adds up pretty quickly. They will also tell you at the store that front-loaders will also reduce drying times. There's no good way to estimate how much, though.

Results: First of all, we love the washer (well, as much as you CAN love a clothes washer). For one thing, it's much quieter than the old one. Also, the capacity is a bit larger, so we are pretty much down to just one load of laundry per day compared to two a day with the old one. We haven't seen a huge reduction in drying times, but maybe that's because we are ramming a lot more clothes in there now that our washer has a higher capacity.

My latest Electricity bill which includes about 3 weeks with the new washer was $246, MOST of which can be attributed to my hot water usage being only 379 KWH as opposed 600 KWH the month before - and an average of about 560 KWH for the previous year. And this is a month where we had houseguests for a week, so I would have expected hot water usage to be slightly higher. All in all, I would say the Washing Machine was a great purchase, and should pay for itself very quickly.

Step 2: Identify which appliances are may be "Wasting" electricity

My Friend L-Dub recommended that I buy a kill-a-watt electric meter. I found one on ebay for 24.95 with free shipping. Two days later I was ready to go. My first target: The basement refrigerator. It seems like every time I go down there it sounds like it is running. So I plugged it in and waited. After an hour I couldn't wait any longer - it had used about .25 KWH. Then I let it go for 24 hours. At 24 hours, it had used 6.5 KWH. The most disturbing thing is that based on the first hours usage, I was able to predict how much it would use over a 24 hour period. That isn't how refrigerators are supposed to work. They are supposed to run for a little while, and then shut off - but mine was running constantly. To put it in perspective, 6.5 KWH a day turns out to be almost 200 a month - or 1/7 of my non-water-heating electricity consumption. That is TWICE as much as my 400 gallon HOT TUB is supposed to use on a COLD day. It figures out to be about $25 a month with the reduced rates - over $30 a month under the old rates. That is way too much to pay for keeping your extra soda cold, so we unplugged it immediately.

Butt Rub Update

2006-08-28T10:27:00.000-05:00

So we went to the Hot tub store to find out what the free Butt Rub was all about. The flyer had advertised free food, but much to our disappointment it was really just free SAMPLES of meats cooked with Bad Byron's Butt Rub meat seasoning. However, it turned out ok. First of all, the samples were amazing. I bought my own can and I can't wait to get some meat to try it out on. Secondly, for showing up, we won a free Hammock as a door prize.

Even if they had not given away free samples, I may have bought some based strictly on their amusing corporate logo.

Guilty until proven innocent

2006-08-23T09:06:00.000-05:00

*** Updated - scroll down to see the new Update***

Got a slighty-panicked call from my wife yesterday. She had just gotten pulled over for not having an inspection sticker on the car. Now, the fact that there was no sticker is very mysterious. It has been almost a year since our inspection, so you would THINK that if the auto shop had neglected to put one on, we probably would have noticed OR AT THE VERY LEAST, we would have have been pulled over sooner. If I had neglected to get the car inspected at all, it would have had an expired sticker. If the sticker had somehow fallen off, we would have likely found it laying on the dashboard somewhere. So how did it disappear? I have no idea - I have heard of stickers being stolen before, but not in this area. Anyway, I digress - the point of this post is not about the mystery of the missing sticker, but about the behaviour of the state police.

My wife explained that the car was legally inspected and that somehow the sticker must have disappeared. The officer in question basically told her to prove it, and until she COULD prove it, OR get it re-inspected, she would have to park the car. Apparently the officer was extremely rude to her as well, (which brings up a pet peeve of mine - Why is it that people in a position of authority tend to think that their authority gives them the right to be obnoxious? The last time I had a run-in with the state police, the officer came up to my window and just started screaming at me. When my response was not to his personal liking, he started screaming at me some more), but again I digress.....

Now, I am not unreasonable. I understand that the officer has probably heard lots of excuses for various things, and I do NOT expect her to take my wife's story at face value. However, she had ALL OF THE PROOF SHE NEEDED right there in front of her. In the State of New Hampshire, all inspection stickers are numbered. Each unique number is sent in to the state on the "stub" that came with the sticker. The number is also entered into the state computer system with your name and license plate number. The number is also WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF THE REGISTRATION. A simple check by the officer and it would have been easy to verify that the car was legally inspected. Instead, the officer wrote her a summons, and "generously" told my wife that if we could collect the required proof from the garage that did the inspection and submit it to her she would consider retracting the summons.

grrrrrr.........

***Updated at 2:00 p.m.***

Ok, so I called the number that the officer gave my wife as soon as I got home from work last night. (By the way, have you ever tried calling the office of the NH state police? I have never spoken to so many extremely gruff people at one time in my life - maybe they should outsource their call center to India like everyone else has. But once again, I digress.) Of course, because each officer is apparently the king or at least the duke of their own little fiefdom, nobody except the particular officer in question can help me with this, and of course the particular officer in question was not available so I left a message to call my cell phone the next day.

- side note - when referring to a member of the state police, you should refer to them as "trooper so-and-so" not "officer so-and-so". Not sure why this distinction is important - I suppose it prevents people from being confusing them with the lowly regular town and city police officers.

Anyway, the TROOPER called my cell phone at 7:00 A.M. (Poll Question: is 7:00 A.M. a reasonable time to call somebody?). Of course, I was in the shower at the time, and also because my house is in a cellular black hole, I didn't get the message until about 9 A.M. Of course when I called her back she was again unavailable. Finally, around Noon, she calls me back. The following is a transcript of that call:

Oh - in order to understand the call, you need one more piece of information. Our drivers side window has a problem where it does not roll down all the way, It will roll down a few inches which is more than sufficient for handing paperwork out the window and speaking to a police officer. However, my wife apparently opened the door. Apparently my wife has not watched enough episodes of "cops" to know that you NEVER, NEVER, NEVER open the door. It makes cops nervous. You never know when the 30-something white lady in a car with 5 kids, her mother, and her sister is going to try to go for your gun. The other important rule about dealing with cops is the you NEVER, NEVER, NEVER volunteer more information than is absolutely necessary. My wife, foolishly assuming she was dealing with a reasonable person, does not know this rule either, and she informed the officer, er, excuse me, the TROOPER, about this - At which time the trooper immediately started yelling at her, claiming that window was in violation, blah, blah, blah. (Now, I have scoured the NH RSA's concerning vehicle inspections and I cannot find this anywhere. The window is required to be made of safety glass and cannot have any after-market tint, but there is no requirement anywhere listed that it even has to roll down at all. But that is kind of beside the point anyway) Anyway, on to the call:

(jumping ahead of the usual pleasantries)

Her: I pulled your vehicle over yesterday because it did not have an inspection sticker.

Me: (no kidding, otherwise I wouldn't be calling you) I know. I called the garage yesterday and verified that it was inspected last September. I can give you the sticker number right now.

Her: As I told your wife, what I need is something on the garage letterhead stating that it passed inspection and the sticker number.

Me: I have that right here.

Her: It needs to be on garage letterhead.

Me: It is. I have a copy of the reciept right here.

Her: It needs to be on garage letterhead - it can't just be a receipt.

Me: (speaking very slowly) Ok. I have here a COMPUTER INVOICE on GARAGE LETTERHEAD stating that the car passed inspection and the sticker number that was issued. I also verified with the garage that the information has been entered into the state computer. Why don't I just give you the num -

Her: That's not good enough.

Me: What?

Her: Somebody has to take Responsibility!

Me: What?

Her: I'm doing this as a courtesy - I don't have to, you know. I'm trying to help you. That car did not have a sticker.

(side note - She's trying to tell me that she could be hardnosed about this because the sticker was not properly displayed. I'm not sure if this is true. I have scoured the NH RSA about vehicle inspections, and I have yet to find actual law about the sticker display. There are laws about the inspection, and the sticker is the proof of the inspection, but there is no penalty specified for a missing sticker)

Me: Thank You - but I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what I need to do.

Her: I need something on Garage Letterhead that states the vehicle Passed inspection.

Me: I have that.

Her: And it needs to state that the garage admits that they did not put a sticker on. Somebody needs to take responsibility!

(aha! finally some new information at least)

Me: I don't think they will do that. They claim that they put a sticker on there. Isn't it possible that it fell off or something?

Her: Well, then they need to explain what happened. See, when I pull back a ticket, I have to submit the information to the inspection review board. If the mechanic is not following proper procedure he may have to go to a hearing.

Me: What?

Her: (apparently changing subjects) A lot of times cars get inspected, but they don't pass - and people don't know it. That's why they need a sticker.

Me: I understand that. But a sticker WAS ISSUED. I have the number right here. And it is in the state computer. They would not have issued a sticker if the car had not passed.

Her: See, those sticker all have numbers. They come in a little booklet with a stub that has your information on it and it gets sent back to the state.

Me: Right. That's what I'm -

Her: Somebody has to take responsibility!

(by the way, I am totally bewildered by now - deleted some more conversation where she repeated herself a few more times and then insinuated that because my drivers-side window was out of spec, if there was a sticker issued, it had somehow been passed illegally - and the mechanic might get in trouble)

Me: (choosing not to argue whether the window was legal or illegal for the time being) Isn't it possible that since the sticker was issued almost a year ago that the window could have been working fine at that time?

Her: If that's the case, then you should have stopped driving the vehicle immediately.

Me: (incredulous) What?

Her: Anytime that a vehicle is no longer in THE EXACT SAME CONDITION AS IT WAS THE DAY IT ROLLED OFF THE ASSEMBLY LINE - it is not longer legal to drive.

Me: What?

Her: I'm just trying to make sure the vehicles are safe. Just because a vehicle was inspected does not mean it passed.

(totally lost by now, I try to get the conversation back on track)

Me: Ok, so what I need to do is get something with the garage letterhead and the original sticker number (which I already have) and -

Her: I need the mechanic's (license) number too.

Me: Ok - the mechanics number -

Her: Do you have the garage's phone number?

Me: Yes, it is 603-xxx-xxxx. The person I have been talking to is named *****

Her: Ok. Is that the Mechanic?

Me: No. That is his wife. She does the paperwork.

Her: Ok.

(awkward pause where we both apparently wait for the other to give more information)

Me: Um, so does that mean you are going to call the garage?

Her: No. I'm trying to help you get this straightened out.

(*&%^$#@#&????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!))

Me: (desperately wishing I could get the last 10 minutes of my life back) Ok, so just to be clear, I need to get some garage letterhead, with the mechanics number, the sticker number and their explanation of what happened. (trying to find out where to send the required information) And How can I get this -

Her: And you need to get the sticker put on the windshield. You can't drive around without a sticker.

(side note - maybe that's true, but I fail to see how future drivng has any relevance on what happened yesterday - and also - BECAUSE each sticker is numbered, the garage cannot simply give me another sticker. The garage explained this to me yesterday)

Me: (still failing to see the connection, but desperately wanting to get this over with)Well, since it's almost time for a renewal anyway, I'm going to just get a new sticker for the coming year.

Her: When are you going to do this?

Me: (failing to see how this is any of her business) Today.

Her: You are going to have it re-inspected?

Me: (Isn't that what I JUST said?) Yes.

Her: Ok. Here's what you need to do. Call me after you get THAT done, so I can meet you somewhere and inspect it myself.

Me: What?

Her: I need to see that the new sticker is on the windshield. Call me when you get it done. (Hangs up)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
so, now I am totally confused. Why does she have to see the NEW inspection sticker? What relevance does that have on LAST YEAR's inspection sticker? Does that mean I no longer have to do all the other stuff she asked me for? Or do I have to do both?

And by the way, the vehicle passed inspection with flying colors and the mechanic assured me that the window was fine. However, I KNOW that if I go meet her somewhere, she is going to require that I show her that it has been fixed. I know I should get it fixed, and at some point I will, but I find it really annoying that she thinks she has the power to make me.

Full Service Hot Tub store

2006-08-22T19:22:00.000-05:00

Got a postcard from my Hot Tub store inviting me to come down Saturday for a free "Butt Rub"!! Now, they have always provided me with excellent service - but this might just be above and beyond the call of duty.

Take Me out to the Ball Game

2006-08-21T22:27:00.000-05:00

I took my Youngest Daughter to her very first Red Sox game today. Lucky for her it was a coveted game against our most hated rivals the NY Yankees. As we arrived at the ballpark I saw a family where a father had dressed his young children in Yankees gear. I joked to my wife that somebody should call Child Protective Services to report him. As I was leaving the ballpark after another soul-crushing loss, I reflected that perhaps I should be the one who gets reported for child abuse. I mean, what am I doing here? By teaching her to be a Red Sox fan, I am pretty much setting her up for a lifetime of gut-wrenching disappointment. I might as well be punching her in the stomach and telling her how much fun it is. Ugh.

Ah well, a bad day at the ballpark is still a million times better than a good day at the office. Especially when you can drown your sorrows in a heaping plate of Louisian Chicken Pasta at The Cheesecake Factory and chase it down with a slice of Snickers Cheesecake. The only other downside to the day was when the Hostess at the restaurant mistook my 20-year-old sister-in-law for my daughter. "Three Daughters!" she says, "Aren't you Lucky?!" Yes. Yes I am.

Here is a picture of my three "Daughters" at the ballpark.

Confessions of a Pod Person

2006-08-18T10:51:00.000-05:00

Alright, I admit it - I love my I-POD. I used to always say that people with I-POD's annoyed me, but apparently I was just jealous. I bought mine strictly for the purpose of having something to listen to while I worked out. Now I take it everywhere except church - and I don't even work out anymore. (well, that's not 100% true - I'm just taking a break during soccer season - at least that is what I am telling myself). Along with theDVR it may be the greatest entertainment related invention of all time. I love it - it is just so darn convenient. It's like having a 12-disc CD changer in your pocket. The best part is that if you work in a cubicle it is very easy to block out the rest of the world. I think everybody should have one. Never buy another CD player again, just make sure your stereo has an IPOD connection. In fact, never buy CD's again - just buy the music digitally online and you are all set.

um, thanks for nothing

2006-08-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

I bought a new stopwatch yesterday for $9.99 that came with a 4-year warranty. When I opened the package, I got the fine print:

"For Warranty service, please send watch along with a $10 fee to ........"

Happy Birthday

2006-08-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

Today (Aug 13) is my birthday. This is my wife's favorite day of the year, because for three months it means that we are the same age - and I have to officially stop calling her my "old lady". Interesting facts about my Birthday:

- I once dated a girl in High school who had the exact same birthdate as me. Even though I dated her for the better part of 2 years, we were always broken up on our actual birthday, so we never celebrated together.

- At the same time, I also had a boss with the exact same birthday. He was working that day, so he saw no particular reason to give me the day off either.

- It is "International LeftHanders Day". I am not lefthanded.

- Mickey Mantle, the only Yankee player besides Lou Gehrig that I do not hate with a passion died on my birthday in 1995. Rest In peace, Mick.

- Here are some other interesting people I share a birthday with (in no particular order):

Alfred Hitchcock. A great filmaker. I have never seen one of his movies

Annie Oakley. They say she could split a playing card on edge from 90 feet away, and then put 5 or 6 more bullet holes in it before it hit the ground.

Fidel Castro. Evil Dictator. And probably dead.

Brittany Andrews. Porn Star. I have never seen her anywhere except in this photo courtesy of wikipedia. I think I'm fine with that.

Energy Hog

2006-08-08T13:00:00.000-05:00

Opened my Mail the other day and got the Happy News from PSNH that my Electric Rates are going to go down by 15%. WooHoo! That is welcome news. Then something caught my eye - there was wording that the average residential customer would save $12 by this move. $12???!! By my calculations, I should save close to $50. so I looked at it close, and according to them, the average Residential Customer uses 500KWH per month. When I compared that to MY bill, I realized that I am currently using more than that on the Hot Water heating Alone! My average Hot Water bill is 500-600KWH, with the rest of my house coming in at about 1500 for a total of somewhere around 2000-2100.

So who is off? Am we really using 4x the average household? I guess that would qualify as us Energy Hogs. Or is PSNH just throwing random numbers around?

Happy Anniversary

2006-07-30T23:18:00.000-05:00

Today is our 11th Wedding Anniversary. For those of you who do not think that I am the romantic type, the gift I gave my wife was a brand new Front-Loading Washing Machine. ( I DID take her out for a nice dinner and a movie as well - even though we were accompanied by a newborn)

I used to think that anything over 10 years was a long time, but the time has literally flown by. We've been through a lot over the years - some of it great, some of it challenging, and some of it both (5 kids). A quote from tonight's simpsons episode comes to mind: "Marge, we've been through more stuff than the Jews and Charlie Brown combined" :)

Anyway, all I really wanted to say is that I love my wife 100x more now than the day we got married. I cannot imagine life without her, and I thank God every day for Her. I am thoroughly looking forward to spending the rest of my life with Her.

Baby Update

2006-07-19T22:18:00.000-05:00

Krista and Apryl are still doing well. Krista has been discharged from the Hospital, but because of the situation with the medications, they want to keep Apryl one more night for observation. Took the other kids to see them yesterday:

Andy Rolling his eyes at us when we tell him to be careful.

Ally is extremely pleased with herself. After years of being the little sister, she is now a "big" sister.

Aryn is too cool for big toothy grins anymore. She is practically 7, you know.

Hard to believe that only 10 years ago, Arik was this size. Where does the time go?

Hardest part of having 5 kids? Getting them to take a decent picture together. 10 takes and this was the only one where everybody had their eyes open.

Another Little (Big) A.

2006-07-17T21:53:00.000-05:00

At last, another member of the Big A clan has made her long-awaited appearance.

Name: Apryl Krista
Weight: 8 lbs, 3 oz (3.72 kg for my Metric Friends)
Length/height: 20 inches (50.8 CM)

Mother and Baby are both doing really well. As of now, there do not appear to be any of the complications we feared could result from Krista's medications. She needs to be observed carefully for a while longer, but this is truly an answer to prayer.

Some pictures:

Daddy's girl: looking for something to eat almost immediately

HelpDesk

2006-07-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

My computer at work has been crashing. More specifically, The VIDEO driver has been crashing. This happens several times a day. I can work just fine remotely, but to actually sit at my desk and use my PC is very painful. I filed a HelpDesk ticket and waited for the fun to begin.

Solution #1: The answer came back after a few days - "We had to order you a new motherboard" What?? My video card is not even integrated onto the motherboard. That didn't make much sense to me, but few people in a company are more powerful than the computer services people, so I didn't argue. Besides, I had much better things to do than argue with them. Also, I didn't mind having to do my work from some remote location in the building where nobody could find me, so if it took longer to fix, so much the better. After waiting a week for the new motherboard to come in, and ANOTHER week for them to install it, it did not surprise me that the problem still persisted.

Solution #2: "We have to order you a new video card" - ok, this makes a LITTLE more sense, but before we buy new hardware, shouldn't we try getting updated drivers for the video card? These are not cheap video cards - we are talking a pretty high-end dual Monitor card - Especially since the problem didn't happen until they did a windows-update thing, which is notorious for messing up video drivers. Again, I didn't argue. I just waited a few more days for the new hardware to show up and get installed. Imagine my surprise when the problem still persisted.

Solution #3: By this time we are well into a month of this nonsense. I told the guy that the new video card did't work. His response? "Geez, I don't know what else to do, except maybe to update the driver" He gave me the new driver (which I had to install myself - and is all I really wanted in the first place) and I haven't had a problem since.

$125.37

2006-07-12T09:47:00.000-05:00

I had not filled up my wife's gas tank in over a year, but I did so this weekend because I thought gas prices were set to go even higher. Ugh. At least they raised the credit card limit from $50 to $75 so I only had to swipe it twice instead of three times.

Really Short Movie Review

2006-07-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

Rented "The Family Stone" last night. There's really nothing to say about this movie other than it had the most ridiculous plot of any movie I have seen lately. Seriously - from the Christmas movie genre, the story of "It's a wonderful life" or "National Lampoons - Christmas Vacation" are more believable AND less transparent. I give it an emphatic "d'oh" - or in my wife's words: "I'm glad we didn't pay money to see that"

Another Movie Review

2006-07-07T08:41:00.000-05:00

I have been on a bit of a Johhny Cash kick lately, so this week I rented Walk the Line.

I've been meaning to watch this for a while, but I got waylaid by 4 seasons of the Jack Bauer Show. This is not the type of movie I would normally see - It's not funny, has no good action, no violence, no thrilling suspense or mystery, no gratuitous nudity, etc..... It's just a story about a man's life. But it is an excellent, compelling, and interesting story.

I am not a Johnny Cash expert, so I had the good fortune of being able to watch the movie without worrying about things like accuracy, but as near as I could tell it was pretty close. I was glad to see that the film did not really glorify or gloss over the many mistakes and bad choices he made throughout his life.

As far as the acting goes, Reese Witherspoon was outstanding and her singing was very, very good. Joaquin Pheonix acting as Johnny Cash was very good as well. Mr. Pheonix's singing was adequate. He is certainly no Johnny Cash, but then who is? At the beginning of the movie it was pretty bad, but I think that was intentional as he was trying to portray Johnny as a little unsure of himself. As the movie went on, it definitely improved - although Joaquin does NOT have the low range that Mr. Cash has (the low notes in "Folsom Prison Blues" were a little painful to listen to).

The rest of the acting was adequate, but forgettable. The guys playing Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis were pretty weak, but they were bit parts that were not very important to the story.

Overall, it was a pretty good movie. Not one that I will run out and buy, Although it did make me want to run out and buy a copy of the Folsom Prison Recording.

On my Homer Simpson rating scale, I give it one small "woohoo"

Hey Moron!!!!

2006-07-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

I decided to go get an oil change this morning. Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear that I am not overly religious when it comes to car maintenance, but oil changes are one thing I try to keep up with. I don't adhere to the the 3,000 mile guidelines, because that would require getting it changed once a month, but I usually don't let it get beyond 5k or 6k miles.

Anyway, I went around a curve this morning and my oil pressure warning light flashed. I quickly checked the sticker and discovered that I had gone 11,000 miles since the last change. oops!. So I stopped off at Prompto for a quick oil change. (I never change my own oil anymore)

I was sitting in the waiting room and my heart sank when I heard the technician go -"Hey, there's nothing coming out" I then had to sit through a lecture from the Service Manager about how bad it was to let your car run out of oil, and since only a moron would do such a thing, he "helpfully" proceded to lecture me on the corrosion of my battery terminals and the condition of my tires as well. And there was nothing I could say to defend myself. I just sat there and nodded my head and listened to the lecture.

Diet Update

2006-06-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

I have been shockingly busy this week at work - especially since I have NOTHING TO DO. My project was cancelled three weeks ago and not replaced with anything new yet. This week I have been helping somebody else fix a problem on THEIR boards, and by helping, I mean I have been attending meetings. Have you ever seen The Jack Bauer Show? Have you ever heard the head of CTU say he/she wants a status meeting every fifteen minutes and wondered when they were actually supposed to get the work done? That's pretty much what is going on here. We are having meetings, and pre-meetings to discuss what we are going to bring up in the meeting, and post-meetings to discuss what we are going to do between now and the next meeting (well, actually, the next pre-meeting or the PRE-pre-meeting). In between various managers and department heads keep stopping me in the hall for a private update on the situation because they are invariably on their way to some pre-meeting and/or meeting of their own where this will come up. For two days this week, I had to work remotely IN THE SAME BUILDING just so I could get some work done.

And of course every meeting has a bazillion and one managers in there, each with their own idea of what needs to be done next. Oh - and I almost forgot, here's the kicker - we solved the problem a week ago, but in doing so, saw something else that was a little weird but not a critical problem, until a bunch of the managers got wind of it.

soo... anyway, I HAVE been on my diet, but have not had time to post about it. This week I decided to eat whatever I felt like (in reasonable quantities), while testing one of the many,many,many diet supplements out there. Using a careful selection process (i.e grab the first one with a name I recognize and get out of that aisle as fast as I can before someone I know sees me) I chose Trimspa X32.

I bought a 5-7 day supply (30 pills) for $10. I knew right away there was no way I was going to spend $10 a week for a long period of time unless it had absolutely MAGICAL results, but I figured it would be worth a shot - and if not, it might be kind of fun....well, as much fun as a DIET can be.

Unfortunately, in my haste I did not read the back of the box until I had made my purchase - if I had, I might have chosen something else. First of all, it turns out that this particular product is pretty much just an appetite suppressant. AAARGH. I was hoping for some magic fat-burning, metabolism-boosting, carb-blocking, lose-weight-while-sitting-on-the-couch-watching-tv-and-eating-triple-cheeseburgers-and-pizza pills. This supplement still requires diet and exercise! Why bother? I can do that on my own and save myself $10 a week. Supposedly it is an appetite suppressant, but That has never really been my problem. I eat because I love food, and I eat foods that are bad for me. If I only ate when I was hungry, I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place? So what good is an appetite suppressant going to do me?

Reading further, I found something even more disconcerting - actually a little terrifying. (I'm paraphrasing a little bit because I don't have the box in front of me) Warning: Product may swell in your throat and cause you to choke and die

Deciding to live dangerously, I kissed my wife for good luck and swallowed the first pill (which WAS enormous by the way). Turns out years of swallowing massive amounts of food have conditioned me for this sort of thing, because it went down without a problem. Emboldened by this succes, I took another. Every day, I take six of them, and although I have not yet had a problem, I still cannot take them without at least thinking about the danger.

Diet: I had a good week, foodwise. Every day for breakfast I had a piece of fruit, for lunch a delicious sandwich, and for dinner whatever delicious thing my wife cooked for me. At least two days that involved Steak Tips from the Meat House. If you live in the Seacost, NH (and maine, I suppose) area, I highly recommend them. They are amazing - but make sure you don't cook them too long. If you are the kind of person who doesn't mind your meat a little pink in the middle, then go ahead and grill them. If you ARE the type of person who likes them to be "well done", it is probably best to broil them in a casserole dish so you don't lose any of the juices. Doing them this way will make them nice and tender as well - so if you have bad teeth, that's not a bad way to go. I did not do too much snacking, except for the occasional handful of salt 'n vinegar chips. The only really bad thing was when we went to Friendly's on Wednesday with my Son's Baseball team, and I celebrated with a bacon cheese burger (which came with a free ice cream sundae, of course).

Workouts: Having been kicked out of the soccer field last week by the cops (I was going to tell this story but never got around to it), I had to settle for plain old running/walking. I found a 3.2 Mile loop near my house which worked pretty well, so that's what I did on Monday and Wednesday. Tuesday, I had a softball game, so I skipped the morning workout. On wednesday afternoon, we spoke to the Recreation Director for the town and got explicit written permission to use the town fields, so Thursday and Friday I was back to playing soccer with my brother.

Results: I did not weigh-in this morning, but as of Yesterday, I was at -27.5 which is an all new low. (Woohoo!). However, that's not a lot more than last week, so I don't think the supplement helped me all that much.

Also, I never felt any change in appetite. I was just as hungry as normal during normal times. I did not really seem to suppress anything.

Side note - I was a little bit constipated Monday-Wednesday. And on Wednesday I noticed my urine was an odd orangish color. No idea if this was because of the supplement or not. I feel fine now, though.

Recommendation: If you are looking for a supplement, keep on looking. I didn't find that it did anything for me in addition to the regular diet.

New Email Address

2006-06-21T12:04:00.000-05:00

For anybody else out there who is a Boston Red Sox super-fan like me, you may want to take advantage of this offer THIS OFFER:

your own email address with an @boston-Redsox.not address.

Hurry up before all the good user names are taken. Mine, of course, is biga.

Today's "Office Space" Moment

2006-06-19T20:02:00.000-05:00

Today I was required to go to, not one, but TWO pre-meeting meetings.

Movie Review

2006-06-17T08:23:00.000-05:00

The Break-Up

Thursday night, thanks to my wonderful sister, my wife and I had a rare opportunity to go out without the kids, so I gave her what I like to call the "Blair Special"

side note: In college, I used to have a roomate named Eric Blair who was not very imaginative, and NEVER DID ANYTHING besides dinner and a movie on his dates. So much so, that forever after we dubbed the Dinner-and-a-movie date the "Blair Special". There is also a "Big A Special" but we don't want to get into that right now.

After a delicious dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, we wen to see The Break-up starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie, because I thought it would be funny, and because it stars Vince Vaughn who may be the funniest man alive right now. And besides, my mother-in-law said it was hilarious. (Of course, my mother-in-law also thinks Ellen Degeneres is funny and once highly recommended a movie called Mr Wrong to us, which was horrible. So maybe that wasn't the best source for a recommendation.) But, it had Vince Vaugh, so it HAD to be funny.

When we walked into the theater 2 minutes before it was supposed to start, we were the only ones in there. "uh,oh, I thought to myself - this is not a good sign" but I immediately cheered myself by the thought that if we were alone and the movie was really bad we could fool around a little bit.

As the movie progressed, I kept waiting for it to get funny, but it never really did. Oh, sure - there were a few funny scenes here and there, because after all, it DOES star Vince Vaughn, but in my view they were few and far between. I found it mostly to be sad and even a bit depressing. One thing I will say for it though - It was a pretty honest commentary on how selfishness and pride can sabatoge a relationship. People planning to get married should be forced to watch this move as part of their pre-marital counseling. Overall, if it had been billed as a drama, you might actually think it was good. As a comedy, it just doesn't quite cut it.

I am going to use as my rating system some popular Homer Simpson phrases: d'oh, meh, and woohoo. I give it one and a half mehs. If you want to watch it, wait for the DVD. If you insist on spending $8 for a movie, go see Cars or X-Men 3

Diet Update

2006-06-15T16:13:00.000-05:00

Workout: Another hour of soccer with my brother. Walked/Ran home which is 1.7 miles. Happy to say that I was able to run more than I did yesterday.

Weigh-in: Forgot to weigh-in. Probably just as well. The sporkie and the chinese food all in the same day would have been bad.

Breakfast: 1 can of Campbells Creamy Chicken soup. 130 calories

Lunch: Dangelos/index.html Honey Dijon Chicken sandwich. A delicious sandwich, but I did not realize it had ham and swiss cheese on it, which made it higher calorie than I was expecting. About 700 Calories

Dinner: We have a babysitter tonight, so I am announcing ahead of time that I will be going off the diet tonight. It is rare that my wife and I get to go out alone, so I will be taking full advantage of it. I will try not to eat like a pig, though. Well, I promise that I will try to try.

Humble pie

2006-06-14T09:40:00.000-05:00

I was feeling pretty good about myself after yesterday's weigh-in. This feeling lasted all day until 3-yr old son took me down a peg or two when he asked if I had a baby in my belly like mommy does. sigh.........

Workout: Went down to the Milton Town Beach with my brother and played soccer for an hour. At the end of the hour we did some 40 yard sprints, with dissapointing results. I like to think that I am still pretty fast for VERY short distances, but today I just felt like something was holding me back - I don't know, maybe it was because I was already pretty tired. Afterwards I ran/walked back to my house (about 1.5 miles). I know this was a good workout because when I got out of my car after my drive to the office this morning I was SORE - more so than I have been for a long time.

Weigh-in: -25.5. I knew yesterday's results were probably too good to be true. Still - it's 3.5 lbs lower than where I was at this time last week, so I suppose that's progress.

Breakfast: 1/2 of a chicken salad sandwich (made with light Miracle whip and light Oatmeal bread) and a can of Campbells drinkable Chicken and Stars soup. About 180 Calories.

Lunch a good friend showed up to take me out to lunch today. He chose to go to Bertucci's where the temptation to get a sporkie was just too great. So we split a large sporkie. I'll eat lite at dinner - I promise.

Dinner: My wife wanted pad thai (which has chicken in it) and Sesame chicken for dinner, so we had dinner courtesy of China Pond. This time I was able to resist the crab rangoon, but I'm guessing it still isn't very low-cal.

Total for the day No idea really

Phase II

2006-06-13T10:15:00.000-05:00

As you know, lately I have become more and more dissatisfied with my treadmill. One of the problems is that it's not very good for running. It has this quirk where every once in a while the belt will come to a complete stop for a brief moment and then resume it's normal pace. I have gotten used to this, but I have found that I really need to be holding onto the rails when this happens or I will fall. Consequently, I have been afraid to do much running on it. I don't like to hold the rails while I'm running - I like to swing my arms - and I fear that I will fall off some day when it starts acting up. I feel like I am at the point in my workouts, though, that I need to step it up a little bit. Furthermore, the treadmill makes this awful squeaking sound now that drives my wife crazy. Since it is supposedly summer now, I decided it is time to take my workouts outdoors.

Unfortunately, as I have stated in this space many times, I HATE running. It's not that I'm lazy (no comments please) - it's just that I find it so incredibly boring. If I am playing a game like soccer or football, I can run all day (and by all day, I mean I can run for 5 minutes, take a 15 minute break, run another 5 minutes, take a break, etc...), but I can think of nothing more miserable than running just for the sake of running. Up until now, I have had my treadmill placed in front of the TV, which I have been able to use to keep my mind from dwelling on the misery of running. Obviously I cannot take the TV with me, so I had to find a new distraction. So I went out yesterday to Best Buy and bought myself an IPOD shuffle.

Now, I like new gadgets as much as the next guy, but I have thus far resisted the ipod craze because I could not actually think of a situation where I would use one. If I listen to music, I am never that far from a CD player or a radio, and frankly people with IPODs drive me nuts. They walk around in their own little worlds - totally insulated from whatever else is going on around them, OR, (even worse, IMHO), they use them as fashion accessories. They always have them clipped to their belt or whatever, with the ear buds draped casually over the shoulder. It's like they want to tell the whole world: "Hey, I had $200 bucks to waste, so I spent it on this thing". However, I must admit, for exercising it seems like the perfect accessory. No need to fiddle with radio stations or worry about CD's skipping, and you could hold many many many more songs than a CD or tape player anyway.

So I finally caved and joined the IPOD generation. I went with the shuffle for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was inexpensive. I got the 512 Mb version for $69.99, and Best Buy gave me a $10 gift card as a reward. The 512 Mb holds about 120 songs. I guess that is not a lot, but it's way more than I would ever listen to in one sitting, so it seems fine for my purposes. The other reason is the size and weight. It is .8 oz, and about the size of a pack of gum. It fits quite easily in the palm of my hand, so I figured it would be the least trouble while running. I tested this out this morning and it was ok. I may try to figure out a way to attach it to my waist at some point, but it was not a big deal to carry it. It comes with a lanyard for hanging around your neck which would probably be fine for walking or mowing the lawn or somehting, but I figured that it be annoying for running. One time I dropped it, but it is so lightweight that it did not even come unplugged from the headphones so it never hit the gound. I just grabbed the headphone cable and kept on going without breaking stride.

Other features I like:
- power. It has an internal re-chargable battery so there are no batteries to change ever. The really cool thing is that it charges while it is plugged into the USB port of your computer (which is also the way you download songs to it). So there are no extra pieces or charging cradles required.
- itunes software. easy-to-use inteface makes programming it as simple as clicking on the song titles you want and dragging them onto your ipod. Only takes a minute to download songs from your library. Also makes it easy to rip music CD's into MP3's or whatever format you want and put them in your library.
- the sound. I figured when I bought the low-power, low-feature ipod I would be sacrificing some sound quality, and maybe I am but I certainly haven't noticed it. the sound was CD quality, and I was able to crank it loud enough to be uncomfortable without noticing any distortion. There was plenty of bass in the songs that require it as well. I was really quite surprised at how good it sounded.

Things I don't like:
- the earbuds that it came with. They sounded ok, but they are not comfortable at all, and they will only stay in if I am sitting perfectly still. No way could they ever be used for any kind of workout. I had to substitute my Sony headphones immediately.
- USB connector. Thanks to the fancy plastic that dell uses on the front of their computers, the USB connector is not quite long enough to fully mate with the USB ports. I had to use the kids computer which has more accessible USB ports on the back. I understand this is really Dell's fault, but if the USB connector on the IPOD was just a centimeter longer, this could be avoided. I understand they sell USB extension cables for just this purpose, so I guess I will have to go get one.

Oh yeah, and to go along with my new toy, I figured I should put something new on it. I probably haven't purchased a new CD in 10 years, so I figured I was due. I went with The Best of Neil Diamond - 20th Century Masters, the Millenium Collection.

Ok, I guess that doesn't really qualify as "new" music, but I have been wanting to get some Neil Diamond for a while. Every time I go to a Red Sox game and they play "Sweet Caroline" during the middle of the 8th inning, I always say to myself - "I need to get me some Neil Diamond" - and then I never do. It also always makes me want to go rent Saving Silverman, which is probably the funniest movie ever made about obsessed Neil Diamond Fans (actually, it may be the only one - I'm not sure).

It's a little crude, so don't let the little kids, or my dad watch it, but pretty funny overall.

Alright, enough about that - on to the diet update:

Workout: I set out this morning with my new IPOD shuffle all charged up and loaded with Neil Diamond and ready to go. Unfortunately, there are not really that many roads in Milton, NH, so I selected as my route to cross the bridge into Lebanon, go up the east side of the lake, cross back over at the other bridge and come down 125. Another problem for me is that I don't have any watches suitable for jogging or other methods of keeping time (thanks to my low-featured ipod), so I was a little surprised when I got to the end of the Neil Diamond songs and had not yet reached what I consider to be the halfway point (the other bridge). I kept on going and ended up doubling my normal workout time to 1 1/2 hours. oops. Later, I went and clocked it with my car and discovered that the chosen route was 6.1 miles. I wish I could say I ran the whole way, but I didn't. I wish I could say I ran HALF the way, but that probably isn't true. I did a lot of walking as well, but it was still a pretty good workout. Along the way, I discovered that when I run, these particular shorts would keep falling down. So I would run for a ways, stop to pull up my shorts, walk for a while, then start the cycle all over again. So for the future, I will need to wear my drawstring shorts. I suppose it's a good sign that my shorts are starting to get too big for me, but it was a little annoying. No time for situps with the extra long workout.

Weigh-in: -26.5 woohoo! My extra effort has been rewarded. This is definitely a new low for me - even if at least half of it is likely the result of being partially dehydrated. Still, the 25 lb mark is a pretty good milestone that I am going to try really hard this week to stay on the other side of.

Breakfast skipped breakfast. Well, not so much skipped as left it sitting on the counter when I walked out the door. I DID drink 2 cans of diet pepsi, though. 0 calories

Lunch Another vendor meeting. Again, they brought in bertuccis/ pizza. Usually, there is a chicken option, but today there was none, so I had no choice but to go with another slice of the sporkie. I also tried a slice of the Pucillo - which is the same kind of sausage with peppers, onions, and mushrooms - but no Ricotta cheese. It was still pretty good, but it was certainly no sporkie. This vendor also brought in salad, so I had a plateful of that with a little bit of Italian dressing.

Total Calories for the day: I really have no idea. sporkie + Pucillo + 0?

Diet Update

2006-06-12T12:37:00.000-05:00

Forgot to post last Friday, but I DID keep track:

Workout: 30 minutes on the treadmill, no situps (not enough time)

Weigh-in: -22

Breakfast: Another can of drinkable Clam Chowder - 120 calories

Lunch: Went to a restaurant with a friend and found out once I got there that they had absolutely NO SEAFOOD CHOICES whatsoever. It was a new-york style deli called "The Metropolitan Deli". Since I was going to have to cheat no matter what I did, I went all out - NY Style Roast Beef on Rye with Lettuce, Tomato, Swiss Cheese, Roasted Peppers, and a little bit of Mayo. oh, man - if you are ever in Westford, MA and looking for a good sandwich, I highly recommend trying this place. If you order it "NY STYLE" they will pile it so high with meat you fill find that you have trouble getting your mouth around it. I don't know how many calories and I don't care.

Dinner: Broiled Haddock, baked potato, and corn. Probably 4-500 calories. Unfortunately I was so hungry that at midnight when my week was officially over, I had a chicken Salad Sandwich and polished off the rest of the Sea Salt'n Vinegar chips.

Oh yeah - and thanks to the person who saw me this weekend (wearing socks and sandals) and came up to me and said "Hey, nice socks". Nice to know people are reading this....

Now on to this week:

I feel like Chicken tonight
As I was deciding on the menu for this week, I was considering travelin guy's suggestion of red meat, but I am afraid that having just recently gotten back on track, I might get tempted to eat too many double-cheeseburgers and quickly derail myself once again. However, it did get me thinking and I decided to do a chicken week.

Of course, that lasted until lunchtime when I went downstairs to the cafeteria and quickly discovered they did not have anything in the chicken realm that looked the least bit appetizing - but the deli special was a delicious-looking turkey sandwich, so I quickly adjusted the menu to include ALL BIRDS - since they pretty much all taste like chicken anyway.

Workout: I skipped my workout this morning because I needed to get to work early and because I have a softball game today, which I WAS planning to count as my workout. Every time I have done this in the last two weeks has proven to be a mistake. I always end up missing the game due to weather or some personal reason and therefore lose the workout. Fingers crossed but we'll see how the day goes.

Weigh-in: Forgot to weigh in this morning, but I DID do an unusual weekend weigh-in yesterday which was -24. I'm pretty sure this is a new low. I may have gotten close about 3 weeks ago before my hiatus, but I don't think I did any better than -23 and frankly I'm way too lazy to go through the archives and check. Anyway, it still feels pretty good.

Breakfast: As usual, I chose my week's menu with absolutely no planning ahead, so I had to get breakfast at the gas station where I filled up my car. You may be surprised to know that there are very few chicken based breakfast foods available at a gas station, so I had to settle for a Chicken Quesedilla Hot Pocket.

I will probably not choose this option in the future. It really wasn't that tasty. Maybe it was because I microwaved it instead of baked it, but if you can't microwave a hot pocket, why bother eating one in the first place? If I had 20 minutes to wait for one to cook in a conventional oven, I would have made myself something better.... anyway, it did NOT have a "great tortilla taste" as advertised on the packaging. What it had was a doughy, stale taste - and furthermore there was very little chicken in it. At 520 calories, I felt ripped off.

Lunch: Smoked Turkey with a sun-dried tomato Garlic spread, swiss cheese, carmelized onions, lettuce and Tomato on a delicous baguette roll. I'm guessing about 500 Calories. The sandwich was delicious, but in an effort to be good I chose the pretzels over the potato chips and was promptly rewarded with a broken tooth for my efforts.

Dinner: My lovely wife made Chicken Divan for me. This is not a particularly low-fat dish, but it's got broccoli so it must be good for you. The real problem is that is one of my favorite dishes and I usually have trouble limiting myself to a single plate. Tonight I succeeded, though - telling myself if I don't eat it all in one sitting I can enjoy it for breakfast tomorrow. Not sure how many calories, but it can't be that bad.

Total for the Day: 1020 Calories + Chicken Divan.

Quickie

2006-06-09T10:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday:

45 minutes on the treadmill and 80 sit-ups while watching NESN replay the game in which Clemens set the major league record for strikeouts (21).

Weighed in at -22.

Had 22 small pieces of shrimp coctail for breakfast (150 Calories)

Seafood salad pocket made from imitation crab meat and Miracle Whip, accompanied by Cape Cod Sea Salt and Vinegar chips for lunch (500 Calories)

2 cans of Beachcliff Sardines w/Louisana Hot Sauce, Saltines, and more Cape Cod Sea Salt and Vinegar chips for dinner (500 Calories)

various snacking on the Sea Salt'n Vinegar chips throughout the day (300 Calories)

Total 1450 Calories

Sporkie time

2006-06-07T10:26:00.000-05:00

Allright, I have had some questions about Yesterday's Lunch where I raved about a thing called the "Sporkie". If you do not know what a Sporkie is, you are indeed missing out. If you are from Australia, there's not much you can do about it, but if you live in New England, or the greater Washington DC - Baltimore - Philadelphia Area and you enjoy some good italian food and/or pizza, you should run, not walk, to the nearest Bertucci's. As far as Italian Restaurant Chains go, it is the best that I have ever had - far and away better than Olive Garden. If you are a restaurant critic, it may not measure up to to one of the fine Italian restaurants you will find in Boston's North End, but for regular folks, it is is pretty good.

Anyway, a sporkie is pretty simple really. It is a regular Bertucci's Brick-Oven Cheese Pizza, with some Ricotta cheese and sweet Italian sausage. And it's not a ton of sausage either, just these little sausage "meatballs" sprinkled around with some pools of Ricotta cheese. It doesn't really sound like much, but it is very good. If you look at their menu, they actually have many unique combinations that are quite tasty, only some of which I have had a chance to try - but the sporkie is my favorite for now. And again - it is a fun word to say - try it, it has a nice ring to it. You can make up meanings to it. It can be an adjective - "I feel pretty sporkie today" - a noun - "Man, that guy is such a sporkie" - a verb - "Man, you really sporked that one, didn't you?" ......
They also have a pretty full non-pizza menu of Italian dishes. On the Pasta Menu, I also highly recommend the Scallop and Shrimp Rossini. And of course, if you are eating in the restaurant, every meal comes with salad and delicious rolls. Dangit, now I'm hungry - I may have to go to the one down the street for lunch.

You will all by happy to know that I am wearing normal boat shoes and socks today. Apparently people are fascinated by my footwear, because these boat shoes are a source of another very common comment that I get - my shoes are untied. Leather Boat shoe laces are stupid - they are only there for decoration. Over the years, I have spent tons of time tying these shoes only to have them come untied within 5 minutes. I have eventually given up. People are constantly warning me about them - which is rediculous, because in 31 3/4 years I have been on this earth, I have NEVER, to my knowledge tripped over untied shoelaces. I have done lots of other clumsy stuff, including tripping over nothing, and I have even been done in by my beloved sandals (like when I am stepping over something and my foot clears the obstacle but the front part of my sandals do not - stairs are a particular problem sometimes) but I have never been done in by the shoelaces. The worst that has ever happened is I have stepped on them and broken them - which is actually a good thing because then they become impossible to tie and they no longer flop on the floor. This is the case with my left shoe currently, but it STILL DOES NOT STOP people from telling me to tie my shoe, even when it is perfectly obvious that it is no longer possible. Oh yeah, by the way, it is rarely a man who ever mentions either the sandals or the shoelaces. It is almost always women.

Anyway, on to the diet stuff.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill and 80 Situps. Watched the Season Finale of "The Apprentice". I did not really care for this season that much. I think Donald Trump is full of himself (more so than usual, I mean) and I was not all that impressed by the candidates either. Plus the ending was pretty predictable.

Weigh - in -22. To quote Homer Simpson, "meh". Not bad considering I have blown of the diet for a few weeks, but not the miracle I was hoping for when I finally worked up the courage to step on the scale again.

Breakfast: Campbells apparently got wind of my idea for drinkable soups, because they have come out with a line of their own. They should take it one step further and actually market them as "breakfast soups" for busy commuters, but anyway - I had a can (cup?) of drinkable New England Clam Chowder for Breakfast. 140 Calories. Also, even though, according the rules, I can drink whatever I want, in the spirit of things I washed down the soup with 16 oz of Clamato juice. I know it doesn't sound that appetizing, but it was pretty good. The Clamato juice was 120 calories, for a grand total of a 260 Calorie Breakfast.

Lunch seafood salad wrap from the cafeteria at work. approx 500 calories

snack the remaining 16 oz of Clamato Juice. 120 Calories

Dinner Ceasar Salad, Stuffed Haddock and fake fried potatoes. What are fake fried potatoes? They are potatoes soaked in a solution of water and sugar, that when baked, crisp up just as if you had fried them in oil. They taste just like fried potato wedges, but with a lot less calories and none of the fat that comes with frying. They are very tasty. I also didn't really care for the stuffing in the Haddock, so I took out about half of it, which is where most of the calories were anyway. Total - about 600 Calories

Total for the day: 1480

Confessions of an addict

2006-06-06T12:19:00.000-05:00

Alright, it is time to stop fooling myself. I have finally come to realize that I have a problem. I thought it wasn't a big deal, and I thought I could control it but apparently I cannot. I thought it was just a personal problem, but now I realize it is affecting my social life and my relationships with others as well. I can't afford therapy, and I don't have time for a support group, so I'm just going to lay it all out on the table right now and rely on my fellow bloggers to get me through this. Here goes:

Hi, My name is Big A, and I wear socks with sandals. Not just sometimes, but virtually every day from April through November. I wear them with jeans, dress pants, shorts (both play and dress), and virtually anything else. I wear them to work, to church, to picnics, ball games, family gatherings, and even while I am mowing the lawn. The last time I had to make an appearance in court for sundry traffic violations (fortunately, that has been a while now) I'm pretty sure I wore them.

I do this because I like the way it feels, and increasingly I enjoy the attention I get when people mention it.

Whew... glad I got that off my chest. Now on to the diet report:

Workout Had to go to work early this morning so no workout. I justified this in my own head because I will be playing softball tonight. I'm sure that 2 hours of standing around with brief moments of activity sprinkled in should be equivalent to a normal workout.

Weigh-in Feeling pretty good this morning so I was not afraid to weight myself - however, BECAUSE I was feeling so good I totally spaced it and forgot to step on the scale.

Breakfast 1 1/2 Tuna fish sandwich on light bread - (Tuna salad mixed with Light Miracle Whip instead of Mayo - which is actually pretty good. Kind of sweet like good Ham salad). 280 Calories

Lunch Free lunch today, so I had to eat what was offered - Bertucci's pizza. I got to the meeting early and grabbed myself two slices of the "sporkie" which is always the first to go. If you ever go to Bertucci's, I highly recommend the sporkie. It is delicious and fun to say repeatedly. Sporkie.
No idea how many calories, though. Sporkie

Snack After softball, I was starving and could not wait for dinner, so I had a small handful of Cape Cod SEA Salt and Vinegar chips. These may be my favorite seafood of all time. 150 Calories

Dinner Stuffed Salmon, Stuffed Clams and some Shrimp Cocktail for an appetizer. The Shrip Cocktail was great - the stuffed Salmon and the Stuffed Clams left a little bit to be desired. These were not home-made by someone's mom's secret recipe, but rather pulled out of the grocery case, so I guess I got what I deserved. I had to use a liberal amount of Ketchup to add some flavor. My wife also mixed up some rice Pilaf, but when I discovered that there were 200 calories in a single serving, I decided not to eat it. About 600 Calories

Total for the day : 1030 + the sporkie.

Back in the Saddle

2006-06-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

Alright, I am back on my Diet in earnest. I planned to make this week "seafood" week. Seafood is actually very good for you - at least as far as Calories go. I have no idea about any of it's other nutritional Value. For example, a cup of Lobster meat is only 142 calories. Unfortunately, we don't like to eat plain old seafood. We like to dip it in Melted Butter first, or roll it in some breading and fry it in oil. Or mix it with Mayonnaise and spread it out on bread. And For some reason we prefer to eat it with french fries. Or Fried Onion Rings. Or ColeSlaw, which is really just a cup of Mayonaise with some cabbage thrown in to help it slide through our Intestines better. Even if, in a nod to healthy eating, we decide to have it "baked" instead of fried, we put it in a baking pan and then cover it with breading, butter, cheese, and who knows what else before we bake it in the oven. And to top it all off, because it is so delicious we probably eat twice as much as we should.

Why is it that we feel compelled to take all this wonderful, healthy seafood and make it as bad for us as possible? I'm not sure. I do the same thing - but I'm going to try not to do it this week. That being said, I will probably be having seafood salad for lunch.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill, 80 situps. Still not doing any push-ups because I don't want to hurt my wrists and mess up softball. Still don't have anything to watch except Glenn Beck and Sportscenter. The only redeeming quality about working out on a treadmill is watching TV. If there is nothing good to watch I may start moving my workouts outdoors - at leas twhile the weather is nice.

Weigh-in: Still wasn't ready to face the bad news this morning from taking two weeks off, so I skipped the weigh-in. I HAVE been having trouble keeping my pants up this morning, (more so than usual, I mean) so I take that as a good sign.

Breakfast: I am addicted to the Cumberland Farms version of the Slurpee. (I was going to put a link to their website, but I didn't bother because they have the worst website of all time) They have tons of delicious flavors, and at .69 for a 32 oz cup, you can't beat the price. My favorite Flavor is the Green Apple. This morning I went in for one and they were all out so I had to get the Blue Raspberry. This was pretty good, but not as good as the Green Apple. Another Downside - the stains. It stained my lips blue, like a little kid. Of course, since I was drinking through a straw, it actually only stained a small stripe down the middle of my lips. So I am walking around my office with freaky blue-striped lips. Fortunately, nobody is noticing, because they are busy looking at my sandals and socks (which is apparently a huge fashion Faux Pas - as I am constantly reminded by everybody from my sisters, to my friend's wives, to little girl at church whose mom told me she reads this blog to help stay awake at work in the middle of the night)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I had a blue raspberry slurpee for breakfast. I didn't think it would be that bad - I mean it's just a little bit of cool-aid and some crushed ice, right? Wrong - I looked it up on the web this morning and discovered it is is probably about 420 Calories. Ouch. Well, I guess that's ok if you have it as your meal, but if you drink it alongside the Jimmy Dean Sausage Sandwich (which I didn't - at least not today, anyway), then you might have a problem. Probably shouldn't make a habit of drinking these every day, though.

Lunch: Sm. Seafood sub from D'Angelos. About 500 Calories, which seems like a lot for the amount of food you get. Pretty Tasty though. They were advertising a Garden Salad w/lobster + a cup of New England Clam Chowder which also looked pretty tasty and would probably be less than the seafood Sandwich. at $8.99 it was a little pricey for lunch, but I might give it a shot one day this week anyway.

Dinner: As usual, I don't make my decisions until the first day of the week, giving myself absolutely no time to plan ahead and actually have the proper ingredients - and this week was no exception. Fortunately, we did have a couple cans of canned salmon which my lovely wife was able to whip into salmon patties. We also had scalloped potatoes (very small serving for me), green beens, and corn on the cob (very light on the butter). About 500 Calories.

Dessert: The Temptress made herself a root beer float. I am enjoying it vicariously through her. 0 Calories.

Total Calories For the Day: 1520

Diet Log: Week something, Day something

2006-05-31T12:18:00.000-05:00

I know, I know - It's been a couple of weeks since I discussed my diet on here. I think the problem is that I am riddled with ADD (self-diagnosed) and therefore often have problems sticking to one thing for very long. I also have lots of good ideas and am always highly motivated to start things, but actually finishing it off bores me to tears. If you want proof, come to my house. My wife will gladly point out the two broken snowmobiles, the broken 4-wheeler, the HALF pile of mulch sitting in the front yard, and my "workshop". The workship is especially bad because it is a mess. I have started cleaning it at least a dozen times in the last few years, and I get halfway done and then I discover I have run out of time, so I hurriedly throw everything back into a pile - having accompished nothing except for re-arranging all my stuff into slightly-neater-looking-but-still-impossible-to-find-anything piles. I have 16 tape measures, 12 pairs of pliers, 8 ratchets, 7 hammers, 5 crowbars, and countless screwdrivers because I have found that when doing a project it is often much easier to buy new tools than to find the ones I already have. In fact, I often blame my lack of progress on the broken snowmobiles and the 4-wheeler on the fact that I need to clean out my workshop before I start anything new.....

Anyway, I digress... My point is that I got distracted and stopped writing down my diet log. However, after a while, not writing it down sort of turned into not doing it anymore culminating in a memorial day weekend whereby I stuffed my face with cotton candy, potato salad, hot dogs and cheeseburgers all weekend long - which is not good (although the cheeseburgers were not my fault - I ate them because they were served to me by a cute little girl and I didn't want her to feel bad, so I made the sacrifice and took one for the team - remember, I AM a selfless do-gooder). So, anyay, I am getting back on the wagon this week.

We had a birthday party for my Daughter this weekend and served make-your-own sandwiches. Of course, we have TONS of leftover meats and cheeses, so I really need to help eat that stuff before launching a new food week. so this week will be leftover week (I guess you could call it processed meat week too).

Workout: I had to cut my workout a little short this morning. I got up in plenty of time but when I sat down on the couch to put my running shoes on, I kind of spaced out for a half-hour. Not really sleeping, but not totally conscious either. Anyway, I did 30 minutes on the treadmill. Now that we are full-on into summer re-runs I don't have much in the way of TV to watch anymore, so I had to find a new show. I'm giving the Glenn Beck TV Show (on Headline News/CNN) a try. As far as current event/politics/news shows go, it's pretty entertaining. Kind of hard to work out to, though.

Weigh-in: I was scared to step on the scale this morning. Much in the way that people don't open their electric bill right away because they know it's going to be bad news, so they put it off until tomorrow hoping that the news will be better tomorrow (maybe that's just me - I don't know), I decided to skip the weigh-in today.

Breakfast: Turkey Breast and Swiss Cheese Sandwich. Made with a small amoung of LIGHT Miracle Whip on fat-free low-calorie Italian Bread, it's actually not that bad, although it's a little dry. Fortunately I had a can of diet pepsi to wash it down with. 220 Calories.

Lunch: Two more sandwiches exactly like the one I had at breakfast. Plus an apple. 500 Calories

Dinner: Two more sandwiches exactly like the previous ones - except with tomato and lettuce - which really makes a big difference. A SMALL handful of chips to go with it. 500 Calories

Total for the day: 1220 Calories.

What's in YOUR wallet?

2006-05-30T15:17:00.000-05:00

Remember when the "color" of your Credit Card used to mean something? A "Gold" card was something special - supposedly reserved only for those with the best credit. and then they came out with the "Platinum" card which was supposed to be better than "Gold" In practice, these designations have been meaningless for some time. Somehow I got on the Mailing List for "First Premiere Bank". They keep sending me "Gold" card offers. For a $90 "Acceptance Fee", $6/mo "Membership Fee" (billed annually - in advance - of course) and a $59 "Annual fee" (not to be confused with the membership fee), I can get a "Gold" card with a limit of up to $300. Wow. That really is special. When they issue you your first card, you have like $30 left out of that limit thanks to the fees. I get get at least one or two of these offers every month. You would think they would eventually clean out their mailing list.

On to the REAL story:

I am a Capital One "Platinum" cardholder. They recently changed my account to include a $59 annual fee for no apparent reason. Maybe they didn't think I would notice? Anyway, I refused to pay it, so I cancelled my card. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to speak to a real person when I did this, but I assumed it was all taken care of. A Month Later, I get a bill for the Annual fee. I didn't worry about this because the recording had told me this might happen anyway. ANOTHER month goes buy and I get another bill showing an Annual Fee AND a LATE FEE for not paying the Annual fee in time. So I decided to call again. This time I just kept pressing buttons until I got a REAL person. Because I was such a "GREAT" customer, the service rep was perfectly willing to waive ALL outstanding fees and bring my account back to $0 if I would keep the account open. While midly disturbed by this, In order to get off the phone and get back to my busy blogging schedule, I agreed. I figured it would be easier to do it this way and then close the account later.

Which brings me to the point of this story. When you call them up to cancel your card, they actually have pre-programmed menu choices to say you are cancelling the card because the fees are to high - whereupon someobody comes on the line and offers to waive those fees. This is like the corporate equivalent of panhandling. Apparently their business plan is to assess extra fees and see if anybody notices. The ones that notice and object to it get their fees "waived". Talk about easy money. I wonder how many people just pay the extra fee and don't say a word?

For those of you who have credit cards with an annual fee, call them up and tell them you don't want to pay it any more and see what happens. Post your results here.

Random Musings

2006-05-30T05:43:00.000-05:00

1. My Youngest Daughter (for now) turned 5 this past week. She was born 2 weeks after I started my current job. It feels like she was just born yesterday, but I have been at this job forever.

2. I think Pad Thai noodles, Seasame Chicken, Crab Rangoon and a little bit of fried rice may be the most perfect combination of Oriental food. Unfortunately (for my diet) the place here in town does not offer that combo so I have to buy it all seperately - making it way too easy to eat more than I should.

3. If you are driving up Rt 16, and you see no cars in front of you and a huge line of cars behind you, that may be a sign that you are driving too slow. If you miss that, maybe you should take a hint from the guy towing the horse trailer that passed you, or the guy behind him in the 26 ft. coachman motorhome.

4. I always thought Cotton Candy would be a mess to clean up, but it's surprisingly easy - it dissolves instantly in warm water.

5. In retrospect, because of #4, letting a dozen kids covered in Cotton Candy jump in the Hot Tub was not a good plan.

6. Hope everyone had a good Memorial Day. While you were enjoying yourselves, I hope you took a few minutes to reflect on the sacrifices that others have made on our behalf.

Correction

2006-05-28T07:32:00.000-05:00

I previously referred to my neighbor who owns the corvette as a "him", but it has come to my attention that it actually belongs to his wife.

ENVY

2006-05-25T13:28:00.000-05:00

I want a new car. I have hated my car since the day I got it. Well, maybe I don't hate it, it but I don't really like it. It doesn't look cool, It's not fast, it's not fun to drive, it's not good at hauling stuff, etc.. It is only good at one thing, and that is it gets me to work economically. I paid $5000 for it and have put about $1000 into repairs over the last 120,000 miles. Looking at it that way, how could I complain? This car has been great for me. Even if I decided to go for something like a hybrid for the better gas mileage, I figured out that accounting for the price difference, I would have to drive a Toyota Prius 340,000 miles before I broke EVEN.

For 3 1/2 years now I have tried really hard to be content. Every time I am tempted to get something new, I have to remind myself repeatedly that keeping this thing until it falls apart around me is the most sensible thing to do - and so far it has been working. But it is starting to get harder and harder. A couple of weeks ago, there was the MCDONALDS INCIDENT which was pretty hard to take. And then this week, my neighbor bought himself a RED CORVETTE.

NOTE: (not actual car)

Now, in my opinion, the Corvette is one of the greatest cars of all time. Ever since I was probably about 10 years old, I have promised myself that I would have one someday. Don't get me wrong, I don't hold any ill will towards my neighbor. In fact, I am happy for him. (now if it had been my OTHER neighber, it might be a different story - only because I would be afraid of the irreperable damage he would likely do to such a treasure), But it STILL makes we want to run as fast as I can to the nearest Chevy dealer, sign the papers, and drive away with the wind in my hair worrying about the financial consequences later. Sigh......

slacker

2006-05-24T10:40:00.000-05:00

You guys are right - I HAVE been slacking lately. Not boredom, but busy-ness has kept me away. And maybe a touch of "blogger bloc" (writer's bloc for blogs). I have started several posts over the last couple of weeks and didn't have time to finish them and then by the time I could back to it the subject in question was no longer relevant.

I even tried to bust myself out of my slump yesterday by copying gagknee's idea of making a top ten list, but I wasn't able to finish that either.

This has also caused a problem with my Diet. The Diet was a lot easier to stick to when I was faithfully recording what I was doing every day. I haven't gained any weight back, but I haven't made any significant progress of the last couple of weeks either. I blame this on you guys. The point of having a diet blog is so that you guys can hold me accountable.

I am also running low on ideas, so please post some for me to try starting next Monday.

Speaking of diets, Al Gore really needs to go on one. Here is a picture taken of him at the Cannes film festival last week:

You can barely even see his beady little eyes.

My Own Dam pictures

2006-05-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

Not to be outdone I thought I would post my OWN dam pictures. Here are some pictures of the NOW Famous Milton Three-Ponds Dam. This dam is almost a stone's throw from my driveway.

Make sure you click the "continued" link below. I had to put the pictures on a different page because they were breaking my blog somehow. (If any of you HTML gurus want to explain why, please do). Also, if the videos are not working it is because
youtube is down.

Note in the video below that the picnic table is no longer there

A WARNING SIGN

People Ignoring the Warning Signs

More people Ignoring the warnings.

The small river flowing from my yard has dug a pretty deep ditch in my neighbor's driveway....

..... and deposited much of it on the street below

Here is a video of the Dam.

Here is a video of the small river running through my normally-dry front yard.

Diet Log: Week 9, Day 4

2006-05-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

Today has not been a great day for dieting. First of all, My company was having a "health fair" today, which featured a free cholesterol screening right next to a table where they were giving away free Ice cream. I decided that was a little hypocritcal, considering that ice cream is food with a LOT of cholesterol. so... rather than be a hyprocite, I just had the free ice cream and skipped the cholesterol screening.

Also, a sales person took me out to lunch. I did not get to choose the restaurant and found myself at an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet. And this is not one of those cheesy ones where they feature chicken nuggets and bacon-wrapped hot ogs. It was all real chinese food - and in my humble opinion - the best I have ever had. No for someone who loves to eat, AND who is value-concious an all-you-can-eat buffet is not good for losing weight. When you add in the fact that someone else was paying in the first place....... I was good, though. I only made one trip to the buffet, and one trip to the dessert table where I chose to have only a few small pieces of fruit.

When I got home, my wife had made a delicious broccoli quiche. I have no idea how many calories were in any of this stuff today, so I won't bother with a normal log.

My weigh-in this morning came in at -23, though - once again an all new low - so that was nice. I'll probably pay the price tomorrow, though.

Practicing Random Acts of Rudeness

2006-05-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

While getting my meatless breakfast sandwich at the McDonalds in Rochester (the one across from Home Depot) this morning, the drive-thru attendant felt compelled to tell me - for no apparent reason - that she would be ashamed to drive around a car like mine.

Now, I drive a white 96 Nissan Altima. I have never pretended that it is a cool car, but it is in good repair, looks fine, and is a pretty good commuter car. I think calling it "shameful" is probably going a little bit too far.

Diet Log: Week 9, Day 3

2006-05-10T09:58:00.000-05:00

I tried BOCA Meatless Sausages for breakfast today and as it was cooking, I was filled with hope, because it smelled absolutely delicous. I put it on a hot dug bun and took it with me - planning to eat it in the car. When I bit into it, though - I had to roll down my window and spit it out - it was even worse than the hot dog from the other night.

Here is what they claim on their website:

"Thought sausages were a thing of the past? Off the list? Gone forever from your diet? We’re happy to respectfully tell you that you’re wrong. BOCA® sausages have all the spice and flavor you’d expect in traditional pork sausages, but not all the fat, calories and cholesterol. Click here to compare for yourself. Whether on a bun or right off the plate, you’ll be enjoying the wholesome taste you thought you said good-bye to long ago."

I am here to tell you that this claim is absolutely false (IMHO). In fact, I would not even consider them to be edible - well, maybe they are edible in the sense that they are not poisonous, but that would be about it. It certainly did not taste anything like a sausage. It didn't really even taste like food.

Fortunately, I had grabbed an apple as a back-up plan in case the sausage didn't work out for me. Unfortunately, the apple turned out to be rotten, so that went out the window as well. I ended up having to get a no-meat egg McMuffin from the McDonalds next to the gas station where I filled up my car.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill and 60 situps. My arm doesn't hurt too bad, but I still felt a little twinge when I picked up my youngest daughter yesterday, so I don't want to push it with pushups.

Weigh-In: still holding at -21.

Breakfast: No meat Egg McMuffin from McDonalds. 300 Calories.

Lunch: Veggie burger and like 6 curly fries. About 500 Calories. This veggie burger wasn't bad either - it was from the cafeteria at work. The guy working the grill looked at me like I was some sort of freak for ordering it, but oh well. It tasted a lot more like grilled vegetables than some sort of meat substitute.

Dinner: McDonalds apple pie, Bowl of Pasta salad, and 2 servings of Tostitos. That's a dinner to be proud of rigbht there. About 700 Calories.

Total for the day: 1500

Diet Log: Week 9, Day 2

2006-05-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

You're only fooling yourselves

I always like to try new things - especially when it comes to food, so I am looking at this week as kind of a culinary adventure. Whith that in mind, I went to the store yesterday and stocked up on some Vegetarian meals. Namely, Veggie Burgers, Soy Protein burgers, Veggie Dogs, Soy Protein Dogs, Soy Protein, Soy Cheese (American AND Swiss flavor), and Soy Protein Sausages. I sprinkled in a couple of different brands. Now, if you read any of the Vegan propoganda out there (which is, by the way, possibly the most arrogant propoganda I have ever read), they would tell you that all this stuff tastes as good as meat, and is better for you. Now, the claim that this stuff (especially the soy stuff)tastes just as good as the real thing is obviously nonsense - but, I thought, maybe it tastes OK. So I figured I would give it a try.

For dinner, I got some Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime Veggie Burgers, and since I wanted to hedge my bets a little bit a pack of "smart dogs" soy-protein dogs. The plan was to eat one of each, but my wife cooked up two burgers by accident, so I ended up with 2 burgers and one dog. As it turned out this was a fortunate accident, but I am getting ahead of myself. I also got some soy cheese to put on the burgers.

First up was the "smart dogs".
Now, I LOVE hot dogs. So I was looking forward to having one that was only 80 calories. If it was tasty, I could eat 5 or six of them in an average meal and still be ahead of the game. I took the first bite and was immediately dissappointed - it was mushy. A good hot dog must have the right texture that kind of "snaps" when you bite into it. As the flavor started to hit me, I was more than disappointed. I was grossed out. This was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted. The only reason I didn't spit it out was because I was in my living room and the fastest way to get rid of the taste was to swallow it quickly rather than rush to the kitchen. ugh. I have 4 more left over that I have no idea what I'm going to do with. That's $3 down the drain. (not only are they gross, they are expensive, which may be the most offensive thing to me of all) Maybe I will try to trick my kids into eating them. If all vegetarian food is like this, I am beginning to see why it is a good weight-loss technique. You are way too grossed out to keep eating.

Alright, on to the veggie burgers. (Insert picture here later when Blogger stops acting stupid). These were actually not too bad. They were very dry, and didn't have that much flavor (which I fixed by adding a lot of ketchup), and I could not tell any difference between the "american" soy cheese and the "swiss" soy cheese, but at least it was edible. I would say it was like if you are at a barbecue and everybody finished eating a couple of hours ago, and there was that last one on the plate that nobody wanted because it was a little overcooked, and it's been sitting around for a couple of hours..... Not bad if you are hungry, but not anybody's first choice for flavor. Here is my problem with it. I compared the Nutrional information to a regular ground beef patty (75% lean - pretty much the fattiest meat you can buy):

............."real" beef ........Veggie(pro-rated) ......Veggie (Actual)

serv. size ..3 oz (cooked) .......3 oz......................2.5 oz
Calories ....191..................204.......................170
(from fat) ..114..................96.........................80
Total Fat ...12.7g...............10.8g.......................9g
Saturated ...4.9g.................1.2g.......................1g
poly .........3g..................4.8g.......................4g
mono ........5.8g.................4.8g.......................4g
Chol .......63.9mg.................0..........................0
Sodium .....67 mg................432g.......................360mg
Pot.........247.9mg..............192mg......................160mg
Carbs.........0...................4.8g.......................4g
Protein ....18.1g................20.4g..................... 17g

The only REAL advantage I see here is maybe the cholesterol. So if you have a cholesterol problem, and you really love dried burgers that don't have much flavor, I guess you should go for it. (This is, of course, if you don't have a sodium restriction as well - if you do, you are just plain out of luck) For the rest of us, I don't really see the point.

My point is - I just don't get it. If you have a conviction about being a vegetarian, rock on - but why bother pretending that you can have all of these meat substitutes? They DON't taste that good, and they are not particularly better for you. There are many delicious non-meat food products out there in their natural form - just eat those and be happy.

Workout: 45 minutes on the treadmill. My wrists and forearms are killing me today, so I skipped the pushups, but I did up the situps to 60.

Weigh-In: -21. I guess my cheese-filled brats and root beer float weekend didn't do that much damage after all.

Breakfast: 2 more apples. I don't know what happened, but my wife bought some delicious MACs the last time she was at the store. That is very rare for this time of year - usually the apples available do not have that declicious-fresh-off-the-tree flavor, but these ones did. They literally tasted like I had just picked them. 120 calories.

Lunch: A large, delicious veggie sub from D'angelos. About 600 Calories (mostly from the cheese and bread, I'm guessing).

Dinner: PREGO Vegetable lasagne. This was frankly not particularly low-calorie, nor was it low-fat. It WAS actually pretty good though, probably because it wasn't pretending to be something it's not. About 700 Calories

Total for the day: 1420