interesting thought to chew on

I’m only posting this now so I remember to come back to it later.

 

I’m working on a theory, postulating, if you will, about attention whore-ishness and how it relates to how many pictures you have of yourself relative to friends you have on facebook.

Check back later folks.

Vacation

Ahhh, vacation.

I’ve just returned from Emerald Isle, NC and I’ve got to say, I love it there. It’s not a tourist trap like other coastal communities such as Myrtle Beach or Ocean City, MD. It is a nice, quiet, family oriented community. It’s right up my alley.

Anyway, I guess this isn’t the real point of this post. I’m tricky like that. I zig when you think I’m going to zag.

I’m going on a diet. I realized while sunning myself on the beach this past week, that my once sexy body isn’t so sexy anymore. I need to drop about 25 pounds. Last year I took my once burly 255 pound frame down to about 210 but it has slowly crept back up to 225. 200 is the new goal. January 1 is the target date.

Can it be done? Time will tell.

Interesting pheonomena

Last night there were several severe storms that rolled through my tiny burg. The first, at approximately 6 p.m. is the subject of this post.

As I was eating dinner, I noticed a brilliant blue flash just outside my window and jumped up from my meal to investigate. As I looked towards the source of the flash I saw a shower of electrical sparks coming from behind a neighbors home and the entire neighborhood went dark. I immediately grabbed the phone book and went outside on my porch to call said neighbors. As I was looking up the number I saw another neighbor go over to the house that had apparently been struck by lightening so I instead looked up AEP’s number instead.

As I was dialing AEP I heard something resembling 100 electric chairs going off at once and then a very loud and alarming ‘pop’ and another, much larger, blue flash of light that lit up the entire neighborhood. At this point I’m speaking with an AEP representative and she informs me that someone will be sent out to investigate. It was about this time that the first brief, but nasty storm was ending. I looked up and down my street and I saw each and every one of my neighbors outside.

I decided to walk up to the neighbors house that had been hit by the lightening and check things out. Apparently, the initial lightening strike that I saw had hit a tree in their backyard. When this happened, two very large branches splintered away from the tree. One branch landed squarely against an electrical pole, knocking two transformers askew and off of their mounts. The second branch fell over the power-line leading into my neighbors home. When the branch hit the line leading into the house, the line blew and the resulting ‘blast’ blew a hole in the eave of the house.  The second flash I witnessed was the two transformers arcing back and forth amongst themselves. Scary stuff.

Anyway, the real point of this post is the fact that my neighbors actually came outside, and even more fascinating, we actually interacted with one another. Surprisingly, all of my neighbors are nice people. I didn’t know that before last night.

Ann Arbor/Detroit Trip Report

You may recall a few posts back that I mentioned going to Detroit to catch a Tiger’s game. Well, that happened this weekend.

I headed up to my friend’s house after work Friday afternoon. I had planned on stopping for sushi along the way because I was probably going to have time to kill before my friend got home from work, but he called me just as I was leaving town saying that we would be going for sushi upon my arrival and that he was buying. Awesome indeed.

The trip up was uneventful, as most solo road trips are, and I arrived at my friend’s house promptly at 6:30. I dropped my bag and said something along the lines of, “Bring on the sushi”, but my friend informed me that while googling directions, he found out that the sushi bar we had planned on going to had recently closed. I was immensely sad for about 5 seconds until he suggested we go for Indian instead. I had never had Indian before and I was stoked to try something new. My friend, his wife, and I pile into his brand new Scion and roll into Ann Arbor and the campus area is totally packed with people. Apparently UM had a graduation that evening and there was hardly anywhere to park and all of the storefronts had lines of people halfway around the block.

Eventually we found a nice parking spot and started walking towards our destination, Raja Rani. Raja Rani is located in an old house on a corner lot in downtown Ann Arbor. The wait was brief and the food was phenomenal. After we were seated we received a complimentary appetizer of vegetable pakora, which is basically deep-fried vegetables, served with three different dipping sauces, all delicious and all spicy. For my entree I decided to go with chicken karahi, which seemed like a good introductory dish for my first Indian dining experience. Chicken kahari is simply chicken sauteed in a wok with tomato, ginger, herbs, and spices. It came topped with cilantro and was served with rice. I loved it. We also had some type of spicy flat-bread and mango milk shakes. I wanted to take a picture of my meal to post here, but didn’t want to look like a tourist. I will certainly be researching my options locally as far as Indian food is concerned.

After dinner we walked around downtown and stopped at a local coffee shop and grabbed a latte for our meandering stroll through the city. Nothing too exciting was happening so we finished our drinks and headed home.

We were up bright and early Saturday and decided to head into Detroit to check out the pre-game city scene. On the way we stopped at a Greek restaurant and had breakfast. I had an omelet with lamb, spinach, tomato, onion, and feta cheese. It was pretty tasty. Anyway, I digress. Once we made our way into the city we found some cheap parking and headed directly to Cheli’s Chili Bar which is directly across the street from Comerica Park. We had a few drinks and then decided to head into the stadium and find our seats.

During the pre-game warm-ups, my friend did manage to snag Justin Weaver’s autograph, which was pretty sweet.  The game itself was pretty uneventful, although the 2nd year pitcher, Armando Galarraga did pitch a no-hitter through 5 2/3 innings. We bounced a little early with Detroit leading 6-4 hoping to beat traffic. The score stuck and Detroit came away with a win and we got out of the city well before the sell-out crowd of 42,000 even left the ball park.

The greatest neighbors in the world

The greatest neighbors in the world:

*Allow their cats to go potty in your flower bed.

*Allow their dogs to bark all night/weekend long.

*Allow their children to pee in your garden.

*Allow their children to throw apples at your garage.

*Drive their 4-wheel drive through your backyard.

*Talk on a juiced up cb radio all hours of the day/night even when it comes across your tv and pc speakers.

*Burn plastic and rubber in huge fires in their back yard.

*Let their friends hang out with crappy music blaring from their car speakers all day/night.

*Let me watch their kids for them while they play outside.

*Let their kids play in the busy street.

*Do burnouts up and down the same street their kids are playing in.

Ugh, can you tell I’m really annoyed with my neighbors right now?  I’m sure there are 10 things I’m forgetting.

Wondergarden

So tonight I skipped class so I could get started on my garden. Each year the scale is a little bigger than the previous incarnation. It started out a few years back with 2 tomato plants. Then last year we added a few green pepper and banana pepper plants and some cherry tomato plants that grew to be some 15 feet long.

Anyway, tonight I started digging. I must say that this years garden is going to be pretty big and I’m going to try something a little different with more than one plant. I’ve always heard about upside down tomato plants and I think this year I’m going to try one out.  I’ll probably put one plant in the ground and put another one in a hanging bucket.  Hopefully it works well that way it can free up precious space for next year.  I’m also goign to grow some green onions in containers, just to see how that works.  Also, this fall I’ll be trying my hand at growing garlic.

Look for more gardening posts from me in the future.

Happy birthday to me

Yes, this was my dinner. No, I did not eat it all. I shared, I promise.

*2 Shrimp Tempura Rolls

*1 Spicy Tuna Roll

*1 Dynamite Roll

*1 Mr. Sushi Roll

*1 California Roll (not pictured)

* Octopus Nigiri

* Yellowtail Nigiri

Summer of Baseball update: Going to Detroit in 3 weeks to see the Tigers host the Dodgers in inter-league play.  I can’t wait.

Spring

Today was about as beautiful of a day as you can possibly have in March. I took advantage this afternoon and went for a ride in the country with Gingerdog and my camera. I really need to do this more often.

Baseball

I love baseball. I love playing it, I love watching it, and I love coaching it. There is nothing better than going out to the (any?) stadium on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and just relaxing, soaking up some sun and listening to the sounds of the game, the sound of the lumber against the ball, or the underlying sound of the crowd. If a trip to the stadium isn’t possible, the next best option is sitting on the porch or in the garage, listening on the radio with a cold beer in hand.

Why this post, you ask? Well, like I said, I love baseball. This summer, I have a few trips planned to take in some games. Considering my undying love for the Cincinnati Reds, for whom I have my uncle to thank, I will obviously be attending one or two games there. I’ll be taking both of my sons to at least one of these games and it has become somewhat of a tradition to take them down to Cincinnati once per season.  I’m pretty sure they enjoy it almost as much as I do.

I also have a trip planned to visit a good friend of mine in Michigan and we will be heading into Detroit to catch a Tigers game. This is slowly turning into a tradition as well. Detroit trips are always insane, mainly because my friend doesn’t really have the patience required for city driving. He assured me earlier that all this has changed recently, so…we shall see.

The big trip, and the main reason for this post is something that has been thrown around for a few years now and it seems to be finally coming to fruition, and not a minute to soon, I might add. This June, a different friend of mine and I are going to be flying into New York City so we can experience baseball as it was meant to be, in “The House That Ruth Built”, and while I pretty much despise the New York Yankees, you cannot be a fan of baseball and not have respect for the history that has taken place at Yankee Stadium. At least they will be playing my Reds.

Coincidentally, this is also the last year for Yankee Stadium, as the organization is building a new, updated facility just down the road. Oh, and just to brag a little bit, we’ll be staying in downtown Manhattan, probably right next to Central Park.

semi-rant

Last January I ordered a new desktop from Dell.  I had bought one in 2002 and I really liked it and had zero issues with it so when it was time to upgrade, they were the obvious choice.  Well, the new desktop came and the dvd-rw drive wasn’t showing up in my settings and  I couldn’t get cd’s or dvd’s to play.

Two hours with tech support resolved the issue and it seemed pretty minor at the time.  More of an inconvenience than anything I guess.

Fast forward 14 months and I decide to order a laptop.  I’ve been jonesing for one for a very, very long time and I finally found a deal I couldn’t pass up.  Well, new laptop arrived today. Dvd-rw drive doesn’t work and it isn’t showing up in my system specs.  Wtf orly?

5 hours with two tech support agents and one very pissed off Dell customer later, laptop is working like a charm.  So far.  The first guy basically abandoned me without telling me anything he had done.  He just rebooted my system and when I got back online, “Lucky_511871″ was long gone so I had to get back in the queue and start the process all over again.

I have a lot of software I want to load in the next few days so we’ll see how that goes.