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Archive for August, 2007

August 30th, 2007 No comments

Sshhh….the Phillies have won four in a row and are only 3 games back of the Mets…if they win this afternoon’s game they will be 2 games back, and facing the Marlins over the weekend, while the Mets have to go up against Atlanta…

I’m not saying. I’m just saying.

In other news, I’m in the middle of a 2-week fantasy football draft, and somehow my 2 quarterbacks are Brett Favruh, who is 387 years old, and Tony Romo, who plays for a hated rival. I’m not sure how this happened. I haven’t had a single drink during the draft process, which is normally how I end up with, say, 4 kickers. I do have good running backs (primarily Steven Jackson; thanks Kyle’s dad for picking me #2!), but I’m going to get stuck with something like the Rams defense. Dang.

Not that any of you care, or even should. I’m just saying my odds of winning any “money” are grim.

I, uh, really don’t have much else to say at this point. My life is busy with boring crap. Unless you want to hear details about Disaster Recovery Exercises! (You don’t.)

Categories: sporty spice Tags:

August 28th, 2007 No comments

Sorry for the complete lapse in postings, but things have been cuh-razy up ins. I spent most of last week in Philadelphia, and then we all had to take turns fighting off the cold that Charles gave us. (It manifested itself, in his case, as pinkeye, which was REALLY EXTRA FUN TIMES! We didn’t get the eye problem, but I’m still fighting the chest congestion and stuffy head.)

In order to placate the masses however, I have something FAAAAR better than my bizarre ravings: pictures of Charles and his cronies! Enjoy.

Categories: charles Tags:

August 13th, 2007 1 comment

I spent most of last week driving to and from King of Prussia, PA (hence the lack of posts), and here is what I can report to you: I-476 and I-76 are the worst system of roads of any place I’ve been to, and include both Staten Island and Boston in that statement. Pretty much everyone in southeast Pennsylvania, totalling several million people, uses one or both of those roads EVERY DAY, and yet they have only two lanes of traffic in each direction. It’s worth noting that this is the same number of lanes that route 87 has through Mason County, Texas, which has, as of the 2000 census, 3738 people in it. Even at 10am the traffic is stop-and-go. I find this infuriating.

I talked it over with my pops, and he says that The Blue Route (I-476) took so long to be built that, while it was completed in 1991, the original planning for it took place in the mid-50s, when much fewer people lived along it. And from the Wikipedia article on the subject:

As one of the most controversial Interstate Highways in Pennsylvania, construction of I-476 began in 1967, but was not completed until 1991 between MacDade Blvd.(Exit 1) and Interstate 76(Exit 16), and until 1992 between Germantown Pike east/Chemical Rd.(Exit 19) and Interstate 276 (PA Turnpike), due to litigation between the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and several communities in the road’s path over environmental concerns. An agreement in 1985 led to many environmental compromises in the road’s design, including a downsized four-lane design south of Pennsylvania Route 3, ramp meters, and federal scenic route status, prohibiting the erection of advertisement billboards along the entire freeway portion. While the redesigned highway was largely well-received, the constriction to four lanes has led to bottleneck conditions in the area, and many communities that originally opposed the road have now called for its widening.

The people in those communities should simply be set afire.

Categories: anger Tags:

August 7th, 2007 1 comment

What the heck, man. How is it possible that I can have gained 10 pounds but still completely fit into all my pants? Am I gaining fat in my knees and feet? What the crap?

What makes it all the more annoying is that I thought I had been reasonably good for the last month. I’m not actively dieting, but I figured I’d just eat plenty of vegetables and get lots of exercise, so I’ve been biking 2 or 3 times a week and running occasionally. I have, however, probably been drinking too much. Stupid homemade beer!

I guess it’s possible I gained some muscle, but I tend to doubt it. I do want to buy a large weight-training device within the next few months, though, so hopefully I can develop pecs instead of boobs. I know, I’ve tried it before at the gym, but here’s the thing: the gym sucks. There’s annoying other people there that I have to share machines with, plus now that I don’t work in Newark the school gym (which I have free access to ’cause Sarah works for UD and all) isn’t even remotely convenient anymore. I guess I could JOIN a gym, but…well, for the price of a year’s gym membership, which I probably won’t use much, I can get a Weider Crossbow (about $400-500) and get ripped when I want in the comfort of my own home. Heck YES, says the goat!

Hopefully it won’t turn into a coat rack.

The downside of riding one’s bike a lot, of course, is that if one is redunkulously clumsy, as I am, one occasionally falls off. On Saturday I took a nice long ride around New Castle, and made a wrong turn. Once I realized that the road I’d chosen didn’t go anywhere, I had to make a U-turn in a tight space, lost my balance, and couldn’t get my foot out of the clipless pedal in time to prevent me banging my elbow and skinning my knee. So now I have a skinned knee for the first time since approximately 1993. Gotta tell you, it’s pretty old-school.

Oh, the beer. Well, the first batch came back with mixed results, and I’m not sure why. Overall the beer is good, but certain bottles are a bit skunky. I thought the bottles were sufficiently clean, but who knows. It’s all a mystery. I went ahead and bought a new beer supply anyway, a “Robust Porter.” I definitely did a better job with the boiling and fermenting process, so hopefully it turns out to be a phatty batch. I bottled it last week, so I’ll know by the end of the month. (And quite possibly by then will have bottled yet another 2 cases. Woo unlimited beer supply!)

Categories: dear diary Tags:

August 2nd, 2007 No comments

I try to avoid commenting on current events, because I really don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time, and because you find better commentary other places. Really, you could find better commentary on MySpace, I think. So the bad news is, I can’t let the I-35W Bridge Collapse pass without some sort of comment. The good news is that the comment is coming from someone else!

From James Lileks, probably the best conservative pundit/humor writer/all around amusing individual on the web today:

I’m listening to a story on the news about a man who survived the fall – then ran to help the kids on the bus. I’d guess the fellow never considered what he might do in such a situation. Never thought about it much. Who would? But then you find yourself on a bridge that’s crashed down into the Mississippi, and you’re struggling with the seat belt buckle. It works , but your hands feel thick. You’re alive – which doesn’t seem that odd, really, you’ve always been alive, so this is just different, but you have strange thoughts about insurance and a mad swirl of panic and there’s blood in your hair but you can stand – and then you see a school bus. So you go to the bus. Of course you go the bus.

Most of us would. It’s a remarkable instinct that wells up and kicks in, and it’s something you never expected to experience. As someone said about humans: We’re at our best when things are worst.

Would you have run to the bus? I’ll answer for you: yes.

Me? I dunno. There have been FAR too many times in my life when I’ve wussed out instead of confronting something that I can’t say for sure what I’d do in that situation.

What would you do?

Update: A later Lileks post on the subject:

I heard a KSTP reporter speak on the Bob Davis show this morning – he told a story about a first responder finding someone trapped in the wreckage, dying. The rescuer handed the victim a cellphone to say goodbye to loved ones.

Jesus Q. McChristus.

Having kids definitely makes one consider one’s mortality in a more concrete way. (Don’t worry, this is leading somewhere.) When you’re, say, 20 years old, no wife, no kids, the concept of death usually occurs to you, probably as you’re about to do a drunken swan dive off of a 5th floor hotel balcony into a swimming pool, but it’s very abstract, and is treated as such. The most attention you can really give it is thoughts like “When I die, I want my ashes poured over Niagara Falls” or “Dude my funeral is TOTALLY going to have a Zydeco band!”

Once kids enter the picture, the thought of one’s own death conjures up thoughts like “Do I have enough life insurance?” and “Shoot, I’d better find myself an attorney and get a will drawn up!” An unforeseen side effect, is that you find yourself occasionally wondering what it would be like if members of your immediate family, particularly (heaven forfend) your kid(s), were to die. So there have definitely been times that I’ve sat awake at 2am in one of my fairly frequent moments of insomnia and considered what it would be like to have the state troopers show up at my door one evening to tell me that HW was in an accident and … well … we’re so sorry …

::full body shiver::

It’s probably the least healthy thing I could be thinking at any time, assuming my “many worlds” and “steering” theories have a grain of truth to them. Still, I have no more control over my train of thought than I do over a collapsing bridge, if you’ll forgive the blunt reference to the topic at hand.

Anyway, the point, and you’ll have to forgive me if I turn off my FCC filter for just one graf:

<PROFANE>

At no point, up until this very afternoon, had I ever considered the thought of hearing my wife’s dying words over a FUCKING CELLPHONE. And trust me, this is different than, say, if my wife called me from a plane that terrorists were about to crash into a building. This a phone call from someone who is already fatally injured, whose eyes are already dimming, who’s finding it harder and harder to breathe, who is seeing their own blood pouring out of them like water from a leaky fucking dyke.

</PROFANE>

So here’s a REAL question: if you were fatally injured, and almost certainly dying within the next few minutes, would you CALL anyone? If so, who?

Categories: musings Tags:

August 1st, 2007 No comments

This is the worst short story ever. By me. Based on true events from Monday.

Robert didn’t think of himself as high-strung. He was a pretty relaxed individual. Which is why it was such a surprise when he killed that guy.

All he’d wanted to do was go for a bike ride. So he put his bike on the rack on his car, packed up his helmet and other associated gear, and went to work. Around lunchtime, he gathered up his stuff and changed in the bathroom.

“Damn it!” he said to himself. “I forgot a towel.” Hm. Robert was going to have to shower after the ride, but without a towel he’d have to stand around air-drying. Just then he thought, “Wait, I only live 5 miles from here. I’ll just ride home, throw a towel in my backpack, and then finish out the ride!” Good thinking, Robert.

So that is what he did. Sort of. Except for the retrieving a towel part, because Robert got all the way home and was pulling into his driveway before he realized he had forgotten his keys.

So, he spent a few minutes trying to figure out a way to break into his house, but being a security-conscious soul, every door was locked, and every window latched. “Well, that’s just great.” Robert considered his options, and realized there wasn’t much he could do. So he headed back to the office.

The sky grew ominous as he rode along route 40, and eventually turned into a torrential downpour. Robert was soaked to the bone, but didn’t slacken his 15-mile-per-hour pace. He stopped only to check his phone and make sure it wasn’t going to short out and melt or anything.

After 8 miles of being really pissed off about being stuck in the rain, Robert came back to the office, went to the bathroom and showered. He came out and prepared himself to just stand around while waiting for the water to drip off. Just then, a man came in to change for HIS workout.

“Rainy enough for you?”

So Robert beat him to death with a cycling shoe and dried himself off on the man’s pants.

Categories: anger, wtf Tags: