Grandpa was a Carpenter

I heard a song yesterday that I hadn’t heard in a long time.   It was John Prine singing “Grandpa was a Carpenter”.    This is a fantastic song!   I must say that I’m somewhat partial to it because my grandfather was a carpenter.   It’s the same with Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”, because I am the son of a preacher man.   Both are just great songs though.   I really love the lyric in “Grandpa” that says, “He voted for Eisenhower ‘cause Lincoln won the war”.   That is just an awesome lyric; the entire song makes you think about old times.   Like when people chain smoked cigarettes and put pennies in burned out fuses.   It evokes memories of old people in church and a time before television so people listened to the radio.   I love the way songs can make you remember things.   

I always think about my Grandfather when I hear that song.   My Grandfather could build anything.   He built some grandfather clocks later in his life, one of which I own, although I don’t actually have it.   It’s at my Parent’s house.   I’m planning to get it pretty soon.   A lot of the stuff my Grandfather built has been lost over time, which makes the remaining pieces all the more valuable to me and my family.   The legacy of someone continues to widen over time which also causes it to become sparser.   As the children have children and those children have children the memories began to fade and the artifacts become more widely distributed.   We end up with small pieces of people to help us hold on to our memories of them.    I’m glad that there are songs that can also help pull those memories to the forefront.

Listen to:   Grandpa was a Carpenter

Ballet

I went to the ballet last night.   The program was called, “The Stravinsky Project”.   It consisted of 3 ballets with music composed by Igor Stravinsky.   The first, “The Firebird”, is a classic ballet.  The second was a world premiere, just called “The Stravinsky Project” and was a very modern take on ballet.   The third was called “The Rite of Spring”, which also had modern choreography.   This program was performed by Oregon Ballet Theatre, to which I’m a season ticket holder and patron. 

I’m not sure when I became a fan of ballet, but I do remember one of the early points in my development of an appreciation of this art form.   When I was in elementary school, probably around the 3^rd or 4^th grade, I remember the school librarian showing us a film about, “The Nutcracker”.   I was fascinated.   It’s really kind of a creepy story, but then all of the classic ballets are a little creepy.   There is usually a struggle between good and evil.   Good usually wins, but sometimes not without great cost.   The stories aren’t really what ballet is about though.   It’s about the telling of the story through music and dance.   It’s very hard to do well.   I decided that I would be a ballet fan pretty early.   I think that it was in part because I like to be contrary, and most boys and young men don’t particularly like ballet.

I had a crush on a waitress when I was about 17 and working in the restaurant business.   She was a ballet dancer and performed with a very small company in Ft. Worth.   I went to that company’s production of “The Nutcracker” that year and sat on the front row.  The place was mostly empty, and so I was somewhat conspicuous looking sitting in the front row with no one else around.   I enjoyed the show though.   I also really enjoyed telling my friends that I had gone.

“You went to a ballet? Why?”, my friends would ask.

I’ve always enjoyed getting that reaction from people and I still have friends say things like that today.   I’ve been a season ticket holder and patron to both The Washington Ballet, in Washington, DC and Oregon Ballet Theatre in Portland, OR.  I’ve effectively held season tickets to one of those two companies for the last 18 years or so.   I’ve probably missed a year here or there, but not many.   I’ve donated money every year that I’ve had season tickets, even in the early 90’s when I was poor.   (Okay, I wasn’t really poor, but I also wasn’t exactly in the philanthropy business either.)   It’s safe to say that I am a fan of ballet.   Ballet is not for everyone though and I completely understand that.   It’s not, however, something you can discount after watching for 30 seconds.   If you go to a good production and you pay attention to the performance, you might find that you too are a ballet fan.   It can be extremely evocative; in both good and bad ways. 

Please close the doors and windows

I’m afraid that my new house may be haunted.   I’m not usually one to worry about the supernatural, but when it starts to cost me money, I have to put my foot down.   I can’t allow some restless spirit to run up my electricity bill just because they’re pissed off that I’m in their house.   Allow me to explain.

I got home from work earlier this week and found that my house was incredibly hot.   I went over to the thermostat and turned it down, but the heater continued to run.  I started messing with the thermostat’s programming.   I have one of those thermostats that you can program to raise and lower the heat automatically at different times of the day.   I first reprogrammed it, because I saw that I didn’t really like the times that were set.   The heat continued to run during this entire process.   I then overrode the programming and turned the temperature down to 64 degrees.   The heat continued to run.   I tried to turn the heat off completely, but this was evidently beyond my abilities as a programmer.   The heat kept running no matter what I seemed to try.   Frustrated and upset, I decided to take a break and go change out of my sweater and into a tank top so that I could better deal with the fact that my house was rapidly becoming a sauna.  

When I got to the top of the stairs, I could immediately feel a rush of cold air.   It was 30 degrees up there.   I started to shiver.   As I walked toward my bedroom I could feel the cold air pouring out of it.   I went in and found the French doors in bedroom where both wide open to the outside.   Cold air was blowing in completely unrestricted.   It was freezing in there.   Oh well I thought; someone forgot to lock the doors and they blew open during the day.   This is not such a big mystery, so I just forget about it.

Yesterday, I got up to leave for work pretty early.   When I started outside, I found that the front door was unlocked.  I’m not paranoid, at least not very much, but I’m pretty anal about making sure that the exterior doors to my house are always locked.   It was very strange to find the front door, of all doors, not dead-bolted.   I gave this a bit of thought, “It’s possible.   I did go out there yesterday to shake out a rug.   I might have forgotten to lock it back.   That doesn’t really sound like me though.   It’s possible.”   I shook it off and got on with my day.

My wife called me a couple of hours later, “Why did you open the window in the guest bedroom?”

“What? I haven’t even been in there in over a week!”

“Well then, how did the window get opened?”

“Open, like barely cracked”, I ask?

“No, open like raised up!”

I do understand a little bit about Newtonian physics and the wind does not usually raise sliding glass windows.    As I see it there are 3 options for this happening.   Either the window has been open since we moved in; no one has had a reason to open it, in February.   It’s possible that someone has been coming into my house during the day and at night, just to open windows and doors.   This seems unlikely to me, just from a pure motive standpoint.   Or finally, we have a ghost.

Like I said before, I’m not too concerned about this ghost living here as long as he stays quiet and doesn’t scare any guests.   I’m not going to be able to deal with exterior doors and windows being opened though.   I’m not heating the neighborhood after all.   If this happens again there is going to be trouble between me and my poltergeist.   The gauntlet has been laid down.  

Note:   One of my favorite things about writing this blog is that it’s helping improve my vocabulary.   I often use words that are common in speech, but before I commit them to paper, (well electronic storage) I want to double check their meanings.   I’m sure you knew exactly what I meant by, “laying down the gauntlet.”   I wanted to validate though that this was really a correct usage of that word.   According to Dictionary.com, this is an acceptable phrase, but as an idiom.  A gauntlet is actually an armored glove.   I would have been more correct to say, “the gauntlet has been put on”, or “the gauntlet has been raised.”   To say, “The gauntlet has been laid down” is almost like saying I’m giving up.   I started to change the last sentence but it just sounded weird the other ways.   Damn you, Clint Eastwood.

Man vs. Food

I’ve talked about my favorite food related television shows before and I’m going to again.   I really enjoy Man vs. Food.   I think it’s because the host, Adam Richman, is such an affable guy, and he really seems to love food.   It’s a great format for a show as well.   He goes to a city and checks out a couple of legendary local places then at the end of each show he takes on a food challenge.

                You must know of a food related challenge in your area.   A restaurant that has something so big, or so hot, or so whatever, that they challenge you to eat it.   If you do, you usually get your picture on the wall or something.   I saw Adam eat a 4.5 pound steak along with baked potato, shrimp cocktail, salad and bread on one episode.   That’s fantastic!   There was a time in my life where I could have done it too, but not anymore.   Now my stomach just won’t stretch as far as it used to; much like my achilles tendon and my hamstrings.  

                I watched an episode of the show last night and I was happy to see Adam in Austin, TX.   (I watch these shows on Netflix, so this could have actually aired years ago, but I just saw it.)   He went to the legendary barbecue place, The Salt Lick.   I’ve actually been to The Salt Lick myself and I immediately recognized the exterior of the restaurant.   It’s fun to see people on television going to places that you’ve been and eating food that you’ve eaten.   The restaurant is immortalized and you’re presence there is more important than it once was.   I’m not sure why we feel this way.   Maybe it’s because the world at large is now (or could be if the show was highly rated enough) familiar with something that we’re familiar with.   The whole world now knows of the existence of The Salt Lick and I’ve been there!

Snow Day

Once again Portland has been whipped up into a frenzy regarding the weather.  “Winter Blast 2011”!   It’s all over the news.   A massive snow storm was supposed to arrive last night.   There could be accumulations of up to 10 inches on the valley floor!  Thank goodness everyone put on their snow tires at the beginning of the season and spent the last 4 months destroying the roads because the huge snow storm is finally coming.   There was a run on the grocery stores!   People needed to stock up on things.  They could be trapped in their homes for up to, oh I don’t know, 36 hours!  Give me a break!  

Well, surprisingly, it actually snowed a little bit.   I think it took me an extra 5 minutes to get to work this morning.   All of the schools are closed though.   Non-essential services are shut down.   Offices are closed and people are working from home if they can.  

When we have snow here, it lasts a day or two at most.   Even on those once a decade times when it lasts for a week, you can always get out and take the bus.   Let’s be clear.    For the vast majority of people, this is just an opportunity to take a break and blame the weather.   People at the grocery store are mostly stocking up on things like beer and potato chips.   They are not settling in to survive the storm; they are settling in to enjoy the storm.   They'd better do it quick, all of this snow will be gone by this afternoon.

Looking for Love

I went out on a date last night.   I’m looking for a new love in my life.   This potential love wasn’t completely new to me, but there had been many changes recently.   Almost everything was in a different place.   Of course I’m talking about the most special relationship a man has; the one with his grocery store.  

I stopped on my way home last night at the Raleigh Hills Fred Meyer.   They completely remodeled the store a couple of years ago and it is much nicer than it had been.   I walked in to the expansive store and started wandering around.   This is the way I like to shop.   I just stroll around until something strikes me.   I turned in to a random aisle and looked to my left.   Condoms, nice! I continued up the aisle and less than 10 feet from condoms was a huge selection of pacifiers.  I swear it’s true, condoms and pacifiers on the same aisle, pretty much right next to each other.   I can’t decide if this was an oversight or just really clever marketing.

I continued on toward the meat counter.   It was nice.   They had a good, not great, selection of fresh fish and meat.   There was also a good selection of cheese in that area.   I perused my options.  From there, I headed over to one of the most important areas for me, the wine section.  It was big and well organized.   I did a couple of quick price comparisons with wines I know.   It was pretty typical. Some wines were priced okay, some were too high.   I would need to be careful here.

I walked over toward dairy and grabbed some butter and milk; nothing out of the ordinary there.   I hit the condiment aisle because I needed some horseradish.  This was okay as well.   I had only one more stop, produce.   I headed over and wandered through the fresh fruits and vegetables.   What a disappointment!   They had the basic staples but nothing very unique or interesting.   Oh well, I guess all dates can’t work out perfectly.   Maybe I should give them a break.   It is the middle of winter after all.  I went home with everything I needed and overall the prices were fair.   I’m not in love though.   I’m sure we’ll go out again and maybe she can win me over.   Right now though, I’m still seeing other stores.

Problem Solving

I installed a television set in my kitchen yesterday.   I wanted to have one in there so that when I’m cooking, or sitting at the bar, or whatever, there will be television available.   I guess this speaks to how addicted to television I am.   Oh well, it is actually the process that I want to talk about, not the result.

There is a place in my kitchen that lends itself to a television.   It’s a little cubbyhole in the center of the west wall.  It’s exactly 18.5 inches wide and about 21 inches tall.   I know the exact width measurement because I measured it before heading out to buy a TV.   I didn’t measure the height because I didn’t think it would matter.   Televisions these days are all wider than they are tall, so my critical measurement would be width.   When I got to the store though, I began looking at mounting brackets.   I found one that would allow me to move the television outward and side to side, but also allowed me to rotate the entire television 360 degrees.    This mean that I could actually buy a TV that was wider than 18 inches because I could rotate it 90 degrees and push it back into its cubbyhole, then was I was ready to use it, pull it out and rotate it back.   The only problem now was that I didn’t know my critical measurement again.   “Oh well”, I thought, “the space is pretty tall.”

I bought a 22” LG television.   It wasn’t very expensive and would do well in my kitchen.   I took it home and pulled it out to make sure it would fit in the space.   It did, barely!   There was less than 1/8 inch on the top and bottom when the television was rotated.   This meant that I had to mount my bracket in exactly the right position.   I had a problem.   I would need to assemble the entire mounting arm and mount the television on it in order to be able to hold the rig in place to ensure that all my movements would work.   I would need to, while holding the arm, work it into every position that I might want move it to ensure that everything would move without restriction.   I would also have to make sure that I marked my bolt holes at exactly the right height so that I could fit within my 1/8 inch tolerances.   This was a problem because the whole thing fully assembled was quite heavy, and this cubbyhole is pretty high on the wall.

How did solve this seemingly impossible problem?   Well, sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.   It sounds simple now, but only because I already thought of it.   At the time, I had to think through all of my options.   I solved the problem by laying the television face down on a piece of cardboard.   I then outlined it with a pencil and cut out a piece the exact size of my television.   Then I mounted the cardboard to the mounting arm and was able to hold everything in place while I tested my movements.  Pretty simple, pretty smart.   The whole thing works perfectly, although I think I might have drilled my bolts through the side of my refrigerator.

President's Day

I like a holiday as much as the next guy.    My company gives us President’s Day off every year and so I won’t be working at my job today, as least not very much.   I’ve never been completely comfortable with President’s Day though.   When I was in school, I seem to remember celebrating both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays.   I was in elementary school after the 1971 implementation of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, so President’s definitely existed back then, although I guess I’m not sure if Texas honored it yet or not.   I’m not really sure now if President’s Day is supposed to honor Washington, Washington and Lincoln, or I’ve even heard suggested that it is “All Presidents”.  

                I did a little research this morning and the best answer I can find is that it depends on where you are.   Different states place the honor a little bit differently from each other.   At the federal level, it seems to honor George Washington.   All states seem to also honor Washington, but some add other honorees as well.   It looks like Oregon just officially honors Washington.   (That sentence sounds kind of funny on its own to a Northwesterner)   I can’t find anything that suggests we deviate from the federal observance.  

                In any case, I’m happy to have the day off.   I have lots of non-job related things to do.   I’m in the market for quite a few things right now and there is usually a good President’s Day sale somewhere.   After all rampant consumerism is what American really celebrates every day.   I’d better go do my part.

Homebrew

I went to a party last night at a friend of mine’s place.   It was a “homebrew” party.   By homebrew party, I mean that the theme was about tasting homemade beer.   I have several friends who make homebrew and they had pooled their efforts and put together a very impressive array of beers.  I spent the evening tasting beers, eating some great food, and talking with friends.   It was a good time.

I used to make home brew years ago and by most measures I was pretty good at it.   I quit when I moved into a small condo and didn’t have much space for that sort of thing.   Home-brewing, if you’re going to be good at it, requires a lot of space and equipment.   I believe that the only way to really make your own beer is to start with malted grain.   This is opposed to malt extract, which is a think liquid base.   Many home brewers use malt extract when they are first starting out, but you’re really limited in how much you can manipulate the final product when you start with so much of the work having already been done for you.    When you start with malted grains you can really express yourself completely in the beer.   I once considered even starting with just plain barley and going through the malting and roasting process.   It didn’t take too much research to determine that that wasn’t going to be feasible though.  

To make beer, you have to go through several steps.   The first is grinding up the grain bill.  You select the mix of malted barley roasted at various levels and grind it all up.   The ground barley is then mixed with water and heated to a desired temperature.    It has to be held at that temperature until the enzymes in the grain convert the starch into sugars.   After the conversion process (mash), the grain is slowly rinsed (sparged) and the sugar water (wort) is collected.   The wort is then boiled with hops.   When the boil is complete, the mixture is cooled and the hops are removed.   The liquid is then put into a fermentation vessel and yeast is added.   The yeast converts the sugars to alcohol and you have beer.   The whole process takes about a week and a half; one day to make up the wort, and about 10 days for fermentation to take place.  If you’ve done everything right, you end up with really good beer.   If you’ve done it mostly wrong, you still end up with something that you’ll probably drink. 

I miss home-brewing sometimes.   I still have some of my equipment so I expect that there is more of my own homemade beer in my future.  Maybe the next “homebrew” party I attend will showcase my own wares.

Someday Soon

Disclaimer:  I wrote today’s entry in good fun.   I have nothing against my elders and I know I’ll be there sooner than I would like.   I actually admire these people.

Tonight will probably be the last night that I sleep in Lake Oswego.   I’m finally leaving this place behind.   There were a couple of restaurants that I wanted to try before moving away and I managed to hit one of them last night.        

The Lake House is an upscale-ish restaurant that sits right on the lake.   The lake is still drained right now, so the view is not what it should be.   That didn’t really matter though; we were sitting in the bar.   We got there after the normal Lake O dinner hour, at about 9:00.   It was very surprising how full it was.  There were still several tables available, but most were full.  We went as far away from the crowd as we could.   There was a piano set up and it appeared someone was getting ready to play.   We sat in a small room behind the piano where there were about six tables.   We were the only ones in that room.

It was happy hour, so we ordered some food from the happy hour menu.  It was a pretty good deal.   We got a salad and a cup of soup for $3.00 each.   We also got “Filet Tips” and a prime rib sandwich for $6.00 each.   Of course, we also got a beer and a glass of wine for $5.00 and $12.00, respectively.  I wish I could find a happy hour where the food prices are high and the drinks are cheap.

As we started to eat, the bar continued to fill.   Very quickly the room where we sat was filled.   Then it was overfilled.  People were standing shoulder to shoulder.   I quickly noted where my exits were.   What was strange though was the crowd itself.  It was old people.   I’m not used to seeing that many old people in a bar.   There were also a lot more men than women.   This is normal in a bar; I’ve just never seen it happen in a bar where the median age is 65.   I got really scared all of a sudden that I’d wandered into some sort of geriatric meet market.   There was a guy next to my table combing his hair, forward of course.   Another man was taking charge, moving tables and chairs, organizing the room to suit his group.  Two women sat together at a table laughing and smiling, surrounded by all of the fading testosterone.   An obviously drunk old man staggered through the middle of the room bumping into things (including me) as he went by.

“Where am I?!”, I thought.

My wife pointed out that one man’s jacket had a logo on it that said, “Advanced Wood.” Yes, I guess that’s what he would have after a little Viagra.

The musical entertainment started.   It was a piano player and a female singer.   The singer was attractive and probably in her 30s.   Since we were behind her, you couldn’t help but notice the old guys staring at her ass.   She sang, “You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling.”

“Not these guys”, I thought, “They’ve got it bad for you honey!”

Our waitress popped through the crowd, “Would you like another round of drinks?”

“No, we have to go!”

Disclaimer #2: I didn’t have access to a computer, or the Internet this morning, so I had to write this entry the old fashioned way.   It had been a long time.

Focus

I can become very focused on things, individual things.   I can sometimes get so focused on a problem that I really can’t think about anything else.   Some problems will consume every bit of my brain power and I can’t do anything except try to solve it.   This is not really good for me.   I’m supposed to be able to multitask.   I’m supposed to be able to up-level things and work on multiple problems at once.   Sometimes I can do this, but sometimes I really struggle.    It’s hard to tell what problems I’m going to obsess over when I first encounter them.

I used to program computers when they ran DOS.   I know you’re asking yourself, what is DOS?  Well kids, once there was a time when we had to work on computers that only displayed letters and those were in a 24x80 grid.   We did cleaver things like draw boxes out of ASCII characters.   DOS was single-threaded.   Programming had it challenges back then, but one thing that was pretty easy about it was that you only had to worry about the processor doing one thing at a time.   It couldn’t multi-task.   Now days you have multiple core processors and multi-threaded operating systems.  Programming is a little different now.   Our brains though, are a lot more like DOS than they are like Windows 7.  

People can only really think about one thing at a time.   When you think you’re multi-tasking, you’re actually just task switching.   You can do this pretty fast so it seems like you’re focused on multiple things, but you’re not.   My brain can sometimes forget to switch.   Sometimes it gets caught up in an infinite loop, processing on the same problem over and over.   I have to watch out for this in day to day life.   I have to try and remember to switch.   It’s really hard sometimes.

Written Words

I have been using the Internet regularly since 1991.   In 1991 there wasn’t much there compared to what we have today.   Back then, we used things like “Usenet”, “Gopher”, “Elm”, and this new thing that was just starting called the “World Wide Web”.   “WWW” was just some linked text and you could find a few research papers.   I wrote a paper in college about the Super Collider project in Texas.   I was actually able to download some internal memos from CERN that I used in my research.    If you know your Internet history you’ll understand why I was able to find those documents on this new web thing.    In any case, I’ve pretty much been using the web since its beginnings.  

I now use the Internet every day.   Pretty much everyone does.  I don’t know anyone that is not connected.  I do research for my job.    I’m Facebook friends with people I see every day and some that I haven’t seen in over 25 years.  I write a daily blog with a massive readership.   I Tweet from time to time.   I’m Linked In.    I get about 100 emails a day, most of which I delete without reading.   I’ve got a pretty solid online presence.  

The online world still scares me.   I understand how it works better than most.   I can avoid viruses, or at least clean them up when I get them.   I know where security is weak and where it’s strong and can behave accordingly.    I know when it’s safe to use credit cards and even why it is.   None of those kinds of things scare me.   What scares me is the persistent nature of the written word.   Once I post something, or send something, it’s forever.    Spoken words fade quickly.   Our memories, believe me on this one, suck!  We really don’t remember half as much as we think we do.   That’s why we write things down.    That’s why things that are written down are forever.   Every time I write something I have to consider who is going to read it and what they are going to think.    Who will misinterpret what I said?  Who will read too much into it?   Who won’t understand my “Den of Earth” joke?   It’s scary.   I think that may be part of why I like it though.   A little discomfort in this regard, is not a bad thing.

One other thing...

I almost forgot.   I have a prediction for today.   I had a very clear dream last night about the band “The Eagles”.   I’m confident that we will see something in the news this week regarding the band or one of its members.   

Cutting the Cord

Late last year when I became homeless I decided that I was going to try an experiment.  Since I was moving to a temporary apartment in hell, aka Lake Oswego, I decided that I would “cut the cord”.   This is a term that is being thrown around in the context of people who are ditching their cable subscriptions and getting their television “over the top”.   Over the top, in this context, means over the Internet.    I love how we always come up with little catch phrases for things.   “Cancelling cable” is 15 letters.   “Cutting the cord” is 14 letters;   that’s a big savings right there.    I suppose it does have a more ominous sound though.   Cutting the cord makes it sound like it’s forever.   There is no coming back from cutting the cord.   If you’ve just cancelled cable, then you could just sign back up.   I’m afraid I’m digressing though, so I’d better get back to the point.

I bought myself a Sony Playstation III to be my new television entertainment hub.   The Playstation has a wireless internet receiver, a blue-ray player, and I think it can play games or something also.   I also signed up for Netflix.   Netflix is really a fantastic deal.   I pay them $9.99 a month and I can have one DVD mailed to me at a time.   The more important part of this deal to me though is that I can stream movies and television shows.    There is a lot of stuff available.   I’m never hard up for something to watch.    I can get my two favorite food shows streamed in, “Man vs. Food” and “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern”.    I can get tons of movies.   I can also, currently, get anything from the Starz TV network.   I hear this deal may go away pretty soon, but for right now it’s awesome.   I’ve been watching the two seasons of the Starz original series “Spartacus”.    Every episode of Spartacus starts out with a warning.

“Spartacus depicts extreme sensuality, brutality and language that some viewers may find objectionable. The show is a historical portrayal of ancient Roman society and the intensity of the content is to suggest an authentic representation of that period. “

This actually means that the show is soft core pornography mixed with graphic violence.   Ah, but it has a story line and some intrigue.   I supposed I can justify anything if I try hard enough.   

Yesterday I was having a conversation at work about the movie “Heavy Metal”.   My friend was telling me that he hadn’t seen the movie in years.   Heavy Metal was released in 1981.   It’s hard to believe that it was 30 years ago.   It’s even harder to believe that I remember it better than “Black Swan”, which I just saw a month ago.   That’s an aging brain for you.    I decided when I got home that I would see if I could stream Heavy Metal from Netflix.    I was very excited to find that I could.   I fast forwarded to the “Den of Earth” segment.   What an awesome story line.   A geeky kid from earth is transported to another world where he’s got a chiseled body and can fight.   Fantastic! 

“Eighteen years of nothing and now twice in one day!”  (that’s a quote from Den if you haven’t seen the movie)

 I’m afraid that the animation is just a bit too dated though.   We’ve become very spoiled with animated movies over the last 30 years.   

In any case, I don’t think I’m going back to cable.    I think I have indeed “cut the cord”.   When I can just go home and fire up Heavy Metal, I believe I’ve arrived at my entertainment nirvana. 

Hurt Feelings

I don’t like the phrase “hurt feelings”.   Perhaps I hear it too often.   I’m pretty good at hurting feelings judging by how often I hear that I’ve done it.    I don’t like the phrase because it suggests that feelings are a fragile part of our body, one that can easily be injured.

Our feelings, or emotions, are a continuum.   They all connect with each other and play on each other.  One can’t exist without the others.   Without caring there can be no indifference.   Without anger there can be no joy.   Our feelings all need to exist concurrently.   We have to accept them all and understand their place in our emotional wellbeing. 

We give other people the power to hurt our feelings.   We give it to them by having expectations about what they should say or do.   This is not a bad thing.   We should expect people to behave in certain ways and we should react to the fact that they didn’t.    It’s important to understand what is happening though.   It’s important to remember that the same power we gave them to upset us is the power we gave them to elate us.   It’s the power we gave them to make us happy or proud.   We have given them enough credit to be able to expect something from them.    If someone is not upsetting you from time to time, they are probably also not making you happy.

Now that's a hamburger

I woke up yesterday morning with a single purpose.   I had a vision.   It was a vision of a cheeseburger.   I had been seeing it in my head for days.   It was not something original, it had been done before, but I had never done it and yesterday morning I set my mind to task.

I headed off to the grocery store.  I needed supplies.   I purchased a range of things that would be required for my task.  I needed hamburger.   I bought three quarters of a pound of 93/7 ground beef.   I would have preferred 80/20, but my grocery store prides itself on quality so they keep their ground beef a little leaner.   I briefly considered asking them to add some fat, but I decided that I would just plus up with bacon instead.   For bacon, I got half a pound of hickory smoked goodness.   I also need tomato, cheese, lettuce, and buns.   I grabbed a loaf of Franz White Bread.   I know what you’re thinking, how can I make a bun of that?   Stay with me, I promise it will work out.

I got home and started my preparations.   The first thing was to fry the bacon.   I cooked up the half pound in two sessions with my large skillet.   After the second batch was completed, I had a very nice pool of rendered fat across the bottom of the pan.   I pounded out my patty.   I added salt and pepper and threw that baby into the sizzling bacon fat.   In the mean time I cut up tomato, onion and lettuce.   I threw the onion rounds in with the popping meat to fry along with the rest of the party. 

I took 4 pieces of white bread and buttered them heavily.   I grabbed my George Foreman grill.  (Okay, in the interest of journalistic integrity, it’s actually a Cusinart Griddler , but it’s basically the same thing.)   I put a Kraft Single between each of the two sets of bread and threw them into the grill.   This created two individual grilled cheese sandwiches which would serve as the top and bottom of my bun.   I threw a third slice of cheese on top of my sizzling hamburger patty and watched as it started to melt down into the pool of bacon grease. 

I laid out my two cheese sandwiches and slathered them with mayonnaise.   I put on the patty, with its melted cheese and added the grilled onions.   I stacked on the lettuce, tomato, and bacon.   It was a sight to behold.

I dug into my masterpiece with the gusto of a starving man.   I shoved in bite after bite chasing them with Langunitas Imperial Stout.   I was sure I could get it all down, but once again I was wrong.   The food and drink hit my stomach like a bunker buster bomb.  I could feel the expansion as each part of that artery clogging mess passed my lips and into my gullet.   In the end,  I could not finish it.

I gave it my all though.   I’m not ashamed of my effort.

Epic Journeys

I went wine tasting yesterday.   I went down to Dundee, OR and tasted 11 different pinot noirs, 1 gewurztraminer,  and 1 chardonnay.   I would say that they were all good.   The chardonnay, a 2009 Bergstrom Sigrid, was by far the biggest surprise.   It is really an amazing wine.   I would still have to say that the best I tasted was a 2001 Archery Summit Estate.   At $195 a bottle though, it had better be.  After I got home from Dundee, I had a dinner to go to in Portland.   This dinner would no doubt also involve wine, and so I had a slight transportation problem.    I had already been out wine tasting all day, adding more with dinner would most certainly prohibit driving.   Since I’m still currently living in the hell that is Lake Oswego, walking was out of the question.   I could use a taxi service, but that can get expensive and you all know how frugal I am.   There was only one solution.   I would take the bus.

The bus ride from Lake Oswego to NE 38^th and Sandy is a pretty epic journey.   It starts with the TriMet #35 which takes you downtown where you connect to the #12 which heads out Sandy Blvd.   The clientele on the bus goes through many interesting shifts along the way.   I love it.   It affords so many opportunities for observing people that I’m always excited to be on the bus.   I looked at the whole journey as a small adventure.   I felt like I was Ernest Shackleton embarking on a quest to reach the South Pole.   I have some friends that enjoy going on my adventures with me.   I would have to say though, that yesterday, my wife was not among them.   She was not at all excited about this trip.   It started out okay.   It was just starting to sprinkle, but we caught the bus with less than 30 seconds to spare so there was no waiting.   The #35 wound its way down along the river and into downtown Portland.   It was mostly empty.   A few non-descript riders got on and off.   The bus driver yelled at a bicyclist; nothing could be more normal than that.   What was interesting though was watching the rain change as we traveled north toward our destiny.   It changed from a sprinkle, to a shower, to a storm, to a driving wind fueled torrent.   I smiled at my wife.   She was not amused.  

The connection point from the #35 to the #12 is on West Burnside.   The city of Portland is divided into quadrants.   The Willamette River divides east from west.   Burnside divides north from south.   We made our connection at 6^th and Burnside.   We were very, very close to the exact center of the city.   It’s hard to describe that area of Burnside if you’ve never been there.    If Portland were a human, the first few blocks of W. Burnside would be the colon.   We got off the bus on 6^th and had to cross the street and go about a half block to the #12 bus stop.   We did this quickly as the storm attempted to drown us.  We made it to the tiny shelter where there was barely enough room to stand.   It didn’t much matter though because the wind was driving the rain sideways into the shelter anyway.    The #12 was not due for 10 minutes.   Luckily for me, there was entertainment to be had.

There were 6 people in the shelter.   An obviously homeless woman sat on the single seat in the corner.   A nice, but obviously income challenged woman stood next to her.   My wife and I stood in the center.   An older gentleman was next to us and a nice younger man rounded out the group.   I can say that the woman and younger man were both nice because they both recognized that we were out of place and offered up non-solicited, but helpful information.   As we stood there growing ever wetter, a man walked by on the sidewalk.

He was muttering, “I hate all of you people……you people make me sick….you all suck.”

This is normal for this area of Burnside and I thought nothing of it.   The seated homeless woman in the shelter was having none of it though.   This sent her off into a profanity laced rant that was astounding.

She began screaming at the top of lungs.   Her words were slurred, “Whaaat!  Whahaat! Don’t you f$#king talk to me you bastard!   You call me a witch!  Come back here and tell me I’m a witch!   I’ve been out here since 1963!   I support you people!   I’m going to let all of you starve!   I hate all of you c@#ts!”

                “What”, I thought to myself, “did she just use the c-word?”

                Her rant continued, “You people come out here! You people come out here in the rain and look at me!   You’re all a bunch of c#@ts!   I hate you c#@ts!  Vietnam never should have happened!”

                “Vietnam?”

                She was up and pacing now, “What are you looking at!?  Don’t you f%$king look at me!  I support you bastards!  Oh she’s a loser.   You and your backpack!  You know what, that’s a thing of the past.   Nobody wants to see backpacks!   NOBODY WANTS TO SEE BACKPACKS!  Nobody wants to see sunglasses and backpacks!”

                She wandered off into the night still screaming.  The pounding rain quickly drowned out her voice.   I looked at my wife.   She was seriously not enjoying this.

                “There’s the #12”, said the helpful woman cheerily!   “I guess we’ll all be getting on this one.”

                We rode up Burnside and then Sandy to our destination.   I had a deep sense of satisfaction having completed my journey.   I was wet.  I was cold.   My wife was annoyed.   It wasn’t quite Shackleton’s expedition, but it was as close as I could get on a Saturday in Portland.

Don't get too close to me, you look sad

Emotions are funny things.   I usually try to keep mine pretty much in check.   Allowing oneself to get too emotional can result in very bad decisions.   I can sometimes get overly emotional when I drive.   Many would say it results in bad driving decisions.

Another funny thing about emotions is how contagious they are.   Have you ever noticed that when someone around you gets mad, you tend to get mad too?   It’s almost like you’re mad at them for being mad.   The closer you are to someone, emotionally, the easier it is to catch their feelings, but it works across large groups as well.   Have you ever been to a sporting event that you weren’t all that excited about?   I would bet that you got pretty excited just based on everyone around you being excited.   Feelings are like airborne viruses moving from person to person.

I’ll bet that a lot of fights between couples happen because of this.  One of the partners gets mad at something.   The other one then catches the anger and the next thing you know they have channeled all of this rage toward each other.   Then the bad decisions start.   Watch for this in your own relationships.   Head it off, if you can.

The worst kind is sadness.   How can you possibly be happy when someone is sad or upset?   We will try what we can to “cheer” them up, but until we’re successful, everyone will suffer.    I’m particularly fond of dark humor.   Hang out with me at a funeral sometime; I’ll bet I can get you laughing.   I hate being sad.

Light me up

I really love spicy food.   Anyone that knows me knows how much I love to eat things that make me sweat.    There is a Thai restaurant close to my office where I eat fairly regularly.   The owner knows me and she knows how much I like my spicy stir-fried pork and basil.   She always asks how spicy I want it, but she already knows the answer.    She has about 4 levels of spice that you can ask for.  

·         Mild

·         Spicy

·         Extra-Spicy

·         “Native”

Of course I always ask for native.   Sometimes I’ll even tell her “extra native”.   It’s usually pretty hot.    I’ve found that spice is somewhat inconsistent at all restaurants though.   I speculate that some of it is just based on the chef that day, but that it’s also sometimes inconsistency in peppers.   Sometimes they are hotter, sometimes not.    Occasionally I’ll get something that is “native” that will really light me up.   Sometimes, it’s just a good spicy dish.   

I went over the Thai place yesterday for lunch.   I was actually doing a lunch interview.   I took one my candidates over there thinking that it would be an okay place to grab lunch and talk through his previous job experience.    We ordered and I got my standard pork and basil stir-fry.    She asked me how spicy and I stopped and thought for a minute.   I needed to be into the conversation.   I needed to be concentrating on what he was saying.   This wasn’t a time for tweaking my taste buds.  

“Extra-spicy”, I told her.

She smiled a knowing smile and left the table.  

My waitress knew me too well to just go with extra spicy.   She went with native; possibly double native.   This dish was hot.   This dish was “light me up” hot.   I’m not sure I’ve ever had a dish there that was that hot.   My eyes watered.   Sweat beaded up on my forehead.     My nose ran like a faucet.   Then the most dreaded of spicy food symptoms; my ears begin to ring.     Here I am trying to conduct an interview and I’m having a spicy food experience that I only manage to find a few times a year.   The irony was astounding.   The one time I ask for something less spicy, I get the experience that I would normally love.

The interview was painful for me, trying to maintain eye contact through watery eyes, wiping my nose after every bite.    I actually had to apologize to the candidate.   I could barely concentrate on what he was saying.   There was one saving grace though.   The food was awesome.

Bank Transaction

I had a really good customer service experience yesterday.   That seems strange to say.   I called my bank/brokerage to get help transferring some money out of my account.   It was after 5:00 so I was fully expecting that I would get either a recording, or someone that was incapable of helping me.   I was really just hoping to get some information so that I could call back today and actually do the transaction.   I was greeted immediately by a guy name Jim who spoke perfect English.  Shocking!   He proceeded to lay out my options and told me exactly what I would need to do.   My account wasn’t quite set up to do what I wanted, but he told me how we could get around that.   He gave me his fax number and asked me to send some things directly to him that would allow the transaction to take place.    It was really awesome.    I’m pretty sure the money is all moved and I won’t have to do anything else.    I have only one major concern at this point.   What if I dialed the wrong number?

Want a job?

I have been doing interviews over the last few weeks for two open positions that I have.  I really hate hiring people.   Don’t misunderstand, I like bringing new people into the company, I just hate the process of deciding who it’s going to be.  

I work with recruiters for the most part.   They pre-screen applicants and send me over resumes of people that they think will work.   I’m pretty sure that both of the recruiters I use really hate working with me.   I’m not very good at providing feedback about what I like and don’t like.    It’s very hard for me to quantify what appeals to me on a particular resume.    If I do find one I like, then I do 30 minute call with the candidate to decide whether they should come in for a full interview.   I’m actually even worse about being able to quantify what I liked or didn’t like after the phone call.   You see, with me, it’s all mostly done on a gut feeling.    I just seem to know whether someone is going to work out or not.    I actually have a pretty good track record on people that I hire working out, so my gut must be (more or less) accurate.

I think it was Jack Welch that said, “Your gut feeling is really just pattern recognition.”   I suppose that’s true.   There are resumes that stand out to me for some reason, or reasons.   There are people that I know I’m going to get along with based on the calls and some I know that I won’t.   It’s just for the life of me I can’t say exactly what it is.   It’s some complex combination of things.   I suppose it’s the right balance of trade-offs.   No one ever has exactly what I want.   Sometimes they have everything that I think they need, but they still just don’t seem right and I don’t exactly understand why.

It’s too bad that we have to make hiring decisions based on resumes and several hours of interviews.    A company makes a huge investment of time and resources when it hires an employee.   Sure, you can fire people if they don’t work out, but that is actually pretty hard to do these days.   Even if you do go through the trouble, it’s still been a huge waste of money and time.   I wish there was another way.   I don’t have any good ideas of what it would be though.