matthearn.com

The graphic atop this here page sure is grim, ain’t it? It’s been up since winter, and I intend to put something more spring/summery up ons, but sadly my time at home with the computer has been SEVERELY curtailed by the fact that my wife is working on some kind of paper, and hasn’t let the laptop out of her grasp for 3 weeks. (I suppose it’s also possible that she’s developed a life-altering addiction to Teh Pr0n, but I don’t think so.)

It’s kinda sad, really, ’cause I have like 8 tons of totally hott photos I took with my camera over the last few months, featuring flowers and trees and geese and whatnot, that would be hella rad up there, but sadly I have not been able to edit and upload and make the necessary template modifications. Which is sad, really. Totally sad.

What is also sad is that, despite not having posted in roughly 9 days, I don’t have much interesting to say. I thought I did; I had in fact written four or five paragraphs of something that I thought was totally AWESOME when it was rattling around in my head, which of course turned into absolute pap when neatly typed into El Computador. So, I beg your forgiveness. I’ll give you a hint: it described my boy Kyle as “the fastest human being I personally know.” So, you know, HILARIOUS stuff there.

The weekend was pretty busy; I helped my dad move a piano to my sister’s house AND some of my grandmother’s stuff OUT of hers before she moves to Florida, and managed to do it without exploding my spine. We saw “Chicago” at the New Candlelight Dinner Theatre (it’s New!), which was outstanding. We went to a birthday party for our friend John, who is Old (not New!). Sarah went to the beach for a fun overnight with friends, and Charles and I joined her on Sunday morning because I was singing an evensong in Lewes that afternoon; it was windy and cold and I about froze my nads off. BOO TO THAT. We did get Nicobolis, though. Can’t beat ’em!

I’ve been keeping up with my jogging, although I haven’t been SUPER good about it; I try and get out three times a week, but sometimes it’s just one or two. I’ve basically been eating everything in sight, justifying this by saying “Hey, I’m jogging like ALL THE TIME!” As a result, I’m getting fatter and fatter, so now I’m back to my “eating nothing but vegetables and small amounts of meat with no sugar” diet, along with drinking buttloads of water. Great times! Not really.

Wow, I’m sure typing up the hilarity today. I’ll try and do better later in the week, really I will.

I love the farmer’s market. Other than Walmart, there’s simply no place you can go to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of smug superiority, and Walmart doesn’t feature Amish folks exhibiting their own special brand of eccentricity. At least, the Walmart in New Castle, Delaware doesn’t. (That particular Walmart is a true hotbed of intellectualism; did you graduate high school? 60% of the other shoppers didn’t, and as far as I can tell none of the employees. Also, it’s a good place to get shot, which every neighborhood SORELY needs.¹)

The farmer’s market is great because it’s always “THE farmer’s market,” not “A farmer’s market,” even if it’s not entirely clear which one you mean. It’s as if the place has such gravitas that it ALWAYS warrants the definite article (because you’re DEFINITELY going to see some shiznit up ins). We have two major ones available to us: the one in New Castle, only a few miles from our house, and one in Boothwyn, PA, which is all the way up 495 and through some backroads. Getting to the one in New Castle requires you to go through the intersection of routes 273 and 13, which takes a minimum of 10 minutes, plus another 15 fighting your way through the parking lot because most of the folks who go to the farmer’s market are no smarter than the average sea anemone and have no concept of “not getting in the way.” (More on this in a bit.) As a result, it’s actually faster to get to the one in Boothwyn, particularly if you know the sneaky back way in that avoids the bulk of the parking lot idiots. Also the one in Boothwyn (namely, the Booth’s Corner Farmer’s Market) has an “Amish BBQ” (whatever that is) featuring good rotisserie chicken and a potato soup that we’re fond of that they haven’t served the last 4 freaking times we’ve gone.

We went on Saturday, and oh man the fat emphysemics were out in force. I haven’t seen that many oxygen tanks since I helped bury Natalee Holloway behind a scuba shop in Barcadera. (Too soon?) It’s always fun to wade your way through the sea of inhumanity and see someone you know (we ran into a friend from church), or someone who clearly is as overwhelmed by morons as we are (anyone with a college sweatshirt usually fits the bill). We got food at the BBQ (Rotisserie chicken, enjoyed by all) and I found a place selling Phils paraphernalia so I coughed up $16.99 for a Mike Schmidt tshirt in the totally hideous 80s uniform color scheme.

I’m pretty sure most of the people who shop or work there have rusty above-ground pools and/or trampolines in their backyards.

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Footnote 1: In the 3.5 years that we’ve lived in our current location, we’ve had the wife of a university professor get STABBED TO DEATH a few blocks away (by the professor’s mistress and former student, who then went to a Jewish cemetery in north Wilmington and attempted to burn the knife and her clothes on the ground there), and another resident rape someone and then walk out onto the Delaware Memorial Bridge with the intent of ending his woes. We’re, um, hoping to move soon.

I’m working one of those ridiculous jobs in which I’m up all night, sleeping all day, and drinking the blood of hookers I dump in the woods of South Jersey. I mean…well, dang. Anyway, the gist of this is that I have little time for such frivolities as “blog posts” or “pooping,” but because I’m a nice guy, I’m throwing this up on here as a sign unto you that I am rad and care deeply about your personal feelings towards, I dunno, stuff.

Anyway, I thought I’d talk about Old vs. New. Some people are what I call “conservative fuddy duddies” and prefer only the old; some people are what I call “liberal hippie forward-thinking types” and have an endless drive for All That Is New And Rad. Like most people, I fall somewhere in the middle, as evidenced by the following, um, evidence:

• In sports, old is better, like WHOA. The Designated Hitter: bad. Juiced baseballs: hella bad. Umpires wearing some kind of green shirt that makes them look like park rangers: craptastic. NASCAR’s “Car Of Tomorrow”: the stupidest idea since I started cutting myself to stop the crying. Football teams passing on 65% of downs: BOORRRRRIIINNNNNGGGGG.
• Technology: Dell Latitude D410 (my new work lappy) > Packard Bell Pentium 133. XM Radio > cassette tapes. PS2 > Ms. Pacman. The internets > libraries. CDs > vinyl LPs, despite the audiofreaks who say things like “digital recordings are just missing something.” They are, of course; they’re missing tape hiss. This is a good thing. Dorks.
• Women: modern sorority skanks dressing like 7th Avenue streetwalkers are a pretty solid improvement over the grunge-y sweater-wearing style of the early to mid-90s. Unless you have a 14 year old daughter, in which case I suggest you chain her to a radiator. On the other hand, apparently the 70s was the decade for hot chicks getting busy with no repercussions, so who knows. (I was, sadly, like 2 then.)
• Modern hotel keys suck, because invariably they are encoded to deactivate while I’m at work, such that when I return, completely exhausted, they don’t work and I have to take like 8 elevator rides back to the main desk to have them fix things. Argh. (It’s happened twice to me this month.)

In short, I’ve been awake for something like 32 of the past 36 hours and probably need to stop drinking caffeinated sodas because I haven’t blinked in a few minutes.

My office has geese. Not, like, indoors; that would probably interfere with our business processes, and Baby Jesus knows we have more than enough problems already. No, the geese are outside, but they are plentiful, and they have distinctive personalities.

I know what you’re thinking; geese are geese, man! Even worse, they’re Canadians! But I tell you truly, these geese all behave completely differently. For example, there’s one that hangs out by the big pond out back, right next to the path I take to get into the building. It seems to have taken up permanent residence there, and has no apparent fear of humans. I walk within 2 feet of it at least twice a day and it barely even takes notice of me, preferring instead to eat pieces of grass and leave nasty green poop on the concrete sidewalk.

However, there are at least two more who see fit to avoid humans as much as they can, so they sit by themselves out by the running track, hissing at all passersby. (A hissing goose is HILARIOUS, if you haven’t seen it happen. They are the least threatening creatures I’ve ever seen.) By the sixth lap on the track, I’m openly yelling at them “Stop hissing at me! I’ve run by here 5 times already and have yet to threaten you!” But they never learn.

Those are the three that seem to be permanently on hand, but sometimes we’ll have entire flocks of them, splashing around in the pond, nearly getting run over in the parking lot, and hissing at the dreaded humans.

I guess I should be glad; my good buddy Kyle works in a place with a significant goose population, and one gander in particular actually started attacking folks because he thought they were fronting on his woman. Yelling “I have no interest in your woman, you feathered freak! Leave me alone!” had no effect. And in case you’re wondering what a goose attack is like, basically they run directly at you with their big wings a-flapping and hoping to maybe nip a bite out of your arm.

Kyle weighed his options: he could kick the bird’s ass, but he would feel guilty about it, and also probably be FOUND guilty of bird abuse by a court of law; he could call animal control, but figured there wasn’t much they could do other than take the bird away and probably kill it; or he could exercise the third option, which was to buy an air horn.

So Kyle went out, wandered up to the gander, which, as was its wont, came at Kyle with murder in his eyes, and Kyle fired off a blast from the air horn as soon as the bird got close. The bird immediately stopped, honked the goose-speak for “My bad, dude, I didn’t realize you were the head gander all up in this peace, I’ll be going now,” and shuffled back to his lady.

I’d give up to $100 to have video of this, btw.

(Speaking of Kyle, and of money, he and a lot of his close friends are Virginia Tech alumni, so this has been a tough week for all of them. I don’t really have anything useful to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere, so I’ll just link to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and prevail upon you to donate some small amount of whatever vast cash reserves you may have.)

I’ve been getting swept up in a lot of “Disaster Recovery Tests” here at work, which basically means I end up driving out to some hotsite for a few days and working my tail off. The basic idea is that we have to assume that our data center was destroyed by a comet or overrun by Commie Nazis or something, and we have to rebuild everything. I actually enjoy them, because while it’s hard work and long hours, it’s almost completely technical problems, which is the part of my job I don’t despise with every fiber of my soul. Unfortunately, many of the technical problems appear to be with stuff I don’t control (invariably the backup systems get all screwed up and take 3 times as long to get running as we had anticipated; so far this has happened EVERY SINGLE TIME, and yet we invariably allocate like 3 minutes to get that stuff built), so I spend a lot of time sitting there watching OTHER people panic.

Anyway, we did one starting Friday morning in Carlstadt, New Jersey, which is like one good camel spit from Manhattan. My part in the test wrapped up at about 2am Saturday morning, so I went back to the hotel, got some sleep, packed up, checked out, and drove through Manhattan to Brooklyn to meet my boy Josh for some Wild Fun, which at this stage in my life consists mostly of eating everything I can find.

We grabbed brunch at a nice place called Rosewater (very reasonable; I think we paid about $36 for our grub, which was pretty nice by NYC standards), and then headed into the city to misbehave. We wandered all over Greenwich Village and its environs, ate at Joe’s Pizza (really good), got ice cream at Cones (bloody outstanding), and then a few hot dogs at a street vendor (tasted like a tobacconist’s carpet), along with going into a few fun shops selling things like raccoon penis bones (really).

We went back to Brooklyn to chillax for a while (my left knee has developed the annoying habit of developing AGONIZING PAIN if I walk more than a few miles, so I needed to rest it up), met up with Josh’s girlfriend Cassie, and spent a few hours jamming on our Guitars (we, sadly, did not play Freebird). After Cassie’s nap, the three of us went out and got delicious BBQ (I don’t remember where). Mmmmm…brisket. Then we went back into Manhattan to go to a party, at which I met a large number of Josh and Cassie’s friends and drank too much vodka.

I may or may not have said horribly racist things in the cab on the way back to Brooklyn. I honestly remember nothing of the ride (I fell asleep for most of it), but woke up the next morning with a feeling in my stomach that indicated either I had cast aspersions on the heritage of various persons, or had simply poisoned myself with alcohol, or both. So, to all who were in the car with me (Cassie, Josh, and some poor Middle Eastern driver), I apologize for any and all things I may have said about anything. (This is a pretty standard boilerplate statement that I issue whenever I drink more than 3 cocktails in one sitting.)

Sunday we all slept in until about noon, and then Cassie had to go meet friends for brunch, so Joshums and I went to the Miracle Grill, a satellite location of the official one in Manhattan that’s mostly known for being Bobby Flay’s first big restaurant, before he got famous and turned into a dick. I had an omelet with herbed goat cheese in it, which was ridiculously good.

Then we hung out at Josh’s apartment playing Burnout until I got back in the car and drove home, where I collapsed and entertained myself by tickling Charles to make him giggle, which is HILARIOUS.

Yesterday was Sarah’s birthday (she’s heck of old), so we went to Red Robin (which recently opened near us, and which we had been advised was rad) to get some burgers and meet up with friends. There were perhaps 15 of us, 5 of which were small children. I spent most of my time making sure Charles didn’t eat silverware, but here’s what I came away with:

• The burgers are fantastic. I had something with egg on it, and I say, anything you can do to add fat and protein to my meat, DO IT. (More on this later.)
• The fries are free. Let me repeat that: the fries are free. And they just keep bringing them to you, like tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants. And they’re not little cheapy fries, but enormous steak fries, one of which was the length of my forearm. I wouldn’t want to meet that potato in a dark alley! Ha ha!
• The burgers aren’t bad reheated and feasted upon the next day, either.

It wasn’t haute cuisine, but it was good, and Red Robin himself was there, to the mirthful delight of all. If I could describe Charles’s response to the enormous mascot, it would probably have to be “speechlessly enamored.” Sarah even got a picture with RR, which I can’t find at the moment or I would have scanned in.

I’ve been in a pretty serious burger mood recently for some reason; Friday night, I took a last minute trip to NYC with my parents and ate at the Ben Ash Deli, known worldwide as “The Deli Across The Street From the Carnegie Deli Which Is More Famous.” Like all good NYC delis, the meals are enormous. I got a basic bacon cheeseburger, which contained a half-pound of beef and easily another half-pound of bacon. As I was eating it, I somehow finished the beef first, and was left with a bun and a handful of bacon. I actually had to stop: I had had enough bacon. This has never, EVER happened before. My mother wondered if I was feeling okay.

We were in New York, incidentally, to see the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys sing the Bach St. Matthew Passion; it was last minute ’cause my rents were going with a friend who had to back out. It was, nevertheless, 8 bombs of awesome. They had TWO orchestras of “period instruments” (wooden flutes, weird fat oboe things, old-style violins strung with catgut and bowed with tree limbs or something), a good gaggle of soloists, and of course St. Thomas Church, which is a rather resonant place to sing. Plus the conductor looked like an Austrian Richard Marx. I was going to shout “PLAY HAZARD” during a tender moment, but my mom grabbed my arm skin with her fingernails like she used to do when I misbehaved in my vigorous youth.

The Phillies preview is TOTALLY COMING, I swear! I might even throw in something about how my fantasy baseball draft went! I’m sure you’ll be thrilled. Hint: Mark Teahen is the highlight of my team. It’s going to be a GREAT season.

In which I hate technology, and technology hates me right back.(All up in my grill, yo.)

It’s heck of warm out today (low 60s), so, being a forward-thinking individual, I thought to myself yesterday “I should TOTALLY go running at work and try to eliminate the enormous amount of fat located between my crotch and my boobs,” and brought in running clothes and a towel to store in my locker downstairs in the poop room that has showers. And lo, I took an early lunch, went out, and ran 2.75 miles before the agonizing chest pain and developing foot blister made me stop.

Have I reached my point yet? Not even remotely.

So I came back in, showered, and grabbed lunch, which consisted of a Salisbury “Steak” made of, as far as I can tell, pressed gerbil cremains, along with green beans and cheesy potatoes au gratin (a quality side, to be sure). A few hours later, I realized I was still pretty hungry, so I said to myself, oh man, the SNACK machine will hook me up with FLAVOR.

So I wandered into the snack room, bought a bottle of Diet Coke, and then studied the snack machine for delectables. Sure enough, they had some kind of Apple/Cinnamon-flava’d Danish, all over which I desired to jump. I attempted to stick my dollar into the machine, but was foiled! It would accept no bills. And I had just used the bulk of my change on my drink. Bemused, I pressed a few buttons on the front of the machine, which showed no sign of even being powered on. Argh!

I wandered aimlessly around the halls, looking for another snack machine, and finally found one. Sadly, it had no Apple/Cinnamon-flava’d Danish. It did, however, have a three pack of chocolate cupcakes of the type I subsisted on in high school, so I inserted my dollar and pressed the proper buttons. The machine whirred for a moment, then beeped, and a small light appeared next to some words reading “Please make another selection.”

“What?” I replied. “But the other selections are not what I desire. Don’t mess with me, machine, I COLD RAN 2.75 MILES EARLIER AND AM NOT ONE WITH WHICH YOU SHOULD TRIFLE.” And I pressed the buttons again.

“Please make another selection.”

I tried to outwit the machine by requesting my dollar back, which came back in quarters, and inserting exact change, but I came to the conclusion that whoever inserted the latest supply of foodstuffs had improperly loaded the chocolate cupcakes. In the end I realized that the machines were involved in some kind of conspiracy not to sell me anything that might increase the amount of lipids bonded semi-permanently to my stern. I relented, bought a small package of peanut butter crackers, and went back to my desk to weep silently.

Oh hi! Long time no see, and all that noise. Once again, I have come through my semi-official March no-blogging-allowed time unscathed. In case you’ve missed things and need to catch up, the high school show that Sarah and I rock out on happens in March every year, so basically I disappear off the face of the internetz for the duration of the really hectic part. Which is now over. So I am at your service, once again.

Not that you asked, but the show went really well, almost surprisingly well, considering we started out short on time and THEN lost rehearsals to snow days, such that the pit band had only gotten together twice before tech week. Woo! Also, we waited until the last possible second to find a pianist, and through the blessings of Sweet Sainted Baby Jesus we were able to get the inimitable Steve Weatherman, who singlehandedly saved the show at least thrice. Wooooooo Steve.

Adding to the miracles was the fact that pretty much every single person involved with the show caught the Rotavirus during tech week. In case you are unfamiliar with how Rotavirus works, here’s a snapshot of the symptoms: first, you spray liquids from all of your major holes, and then you sleep. Then you wake up and spray some more, and then feel achy for a few days. This is not conducive to dancing and singing, but everybody pulled through, with the help of a lucky snowstorm Friday that postponed that evening’s show. Oddly enough, I was almost completely unaffected, aside from a queasy feeling all weekend and being unbelievably achy on Saturday. Somehow, we survived.

Now, of course, everyone’s asking me “Hey, now you have all this free time! What are you going to do?” Well, duh: all the of the crap that’s piled up for the last 6 weeks. It’s amazing Charles has gotten bathed and fed, with how little time I’ve had. It’s amazing I’ve been bathed and fed, although to be honest, I do smell a little like fish. I haven’t eaten fish in weeks. I’m wondering if there’s a flounder trapped in a fat roll on my back. (It happens sometimes when I go swimming in the ocean, too.)

Anyway, my plans for the next while involve cleaning my house, playing with my son, napping, and watching baseball. Yay, baseball! BTW: Phillies preview coming up in the near future.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, which was like 26 days ago so this is TOTALLY CURRENT AND UP TO DATE AND YOU CAN’T TELL ME DIFFERENT, here are a short list of various reasons why I love my wife:

• When we took a road trip to the Outer Banks last fall, I made a mix CD of various recent tunes that I liked, which included some Alison Krauss, John Mayer, and that new Avril Lavigne song, “Keep Holding On,” which is in 3/4 and therefore I like it. (I have a thing for that meter.) After listening to the first few tunes, HW turned to me and said,

  “Were you on your period when you made this?”

• Yesterday, we were in the kitchen feeding Charles and making lunch, and she walked by me and bumped her hip into mine. I said,

  “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  Sarah giggled. “Yep.”

  “All trying to give me the hip bump?”

  “I farted.”

• She takes so much in stride:

  Me: I just pulled a chunk of wax out of my ear the size of a lady bug.
  Her: Eww dude
  Me: Jeepers, what the hell. I thought I cleaned this ear the other day. I’m getting even MORE wax out.
  Me: What the [very bad word]! I think a bee tried to build a hive in here.
  Her: EWW
  Me: I’ve scooped out 3 big chunks with my pencil, and I think there’s more.
  Her: Oh, weird.The date on my watch is messed up.

So, in short: Sarah is rad.

On the news front, the show is chugging along; we open Thursday, with three rehearsals between now and then to get things right. Woo! I’m terrified, but I always am at this point.

Things with the high school show (“Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Mar 15-17, 7pm, Brandywine High, come check it as it will be RAD) are ramping up rapidly, so we’re heck of busy with that. Still, a few things worth sharing:

Our friends Brian and Karen got married over the weekend; check out a few choice photographz here. Everybody was HOT.

I also put up some new pictures over at CharlesHearn.com. They are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend checking them out.