fergojisan's blog cabin

Dream State

2011-08-18T14:29:00.002-04:00

The past few weeks, especially this week, have seemed sort of unreal to me. This week is definitely because of losing Bunky; he's been around for so long when he wasn't supposed to be that I thought he would ALWAYS be here with us. Work has been changing a lot too, and although it was initially my doing, I'm not really sure if it's good or not. I hope this clears up soon because it feels strange.

I thought that I would break down sobbing at some point over Bunky, at least once, since I did twice for melon. maybe that's a part of it, the grief is stuck inside and can't come out for some reason. I have moments where I well up a bit (we got a card today from the vet who told us he would be dead within a year back in 1998; it was a few simple phrases but very sweet and heartfelt. You would think vets always have clinical detachment, but I guess sometimes they don't), but no sobbing. I don't know if it will happen now, and I don't know what that means. Maybe the scab will be ripped off next week when I pick up his ashes.

Two things I wanted to mention about Bunk was the way he liked to snuggle you. He would bury his head in your armpit or elbow and be content to lay that way until you moved. Being cat people, we would try our hardest not to disturb the cats unless we lost total feeling in the snuggled appendage. I liked to scratch his back hard, I'm not sure if he liked it or not, but I wouldn't stop until he made this "mrat" noise. I hope he liked it. He would also give you a kiss on the mouth sometimes, but you really had to beg for it. He gave me one on Saturday, which is nice to remember now.

I still hope to write blogs about the rest of our animals, past and present. I'll try to get moving on that. Taking a break from Facebook to do something mildly constructive on the internet would be a refreshing change of pace. You may also have noticed that my book blog posts have fallen by the wayside. I was going to note that here awhile back when I joined Goodreads, but I stopped updating that too. Oh well, maybe I'll try again next year. One book-related promise I made to myself is to read the children's book The Enormous Egg this year. Why? The summer between 4th and 5th grade, we did a summer reading project where you would get a prize if you read the most books. I forgot what the prize was, but I won handily with 100 books. The Enormous Egg was on the list, but I actually did not read it. I had a pile of library books that had to be returned, so I just returned them all and told my mom that I had read them all. I felt bad about it, but it wouldn't have affected the outcome. To this day I feel bad about this, which is why I finally want to read it. Is that weird?

Goodbye Bunky.

2011-08-17T10:56:00.004-04:00

I hoped that I wouldn't have to write another one of these posts so soon after Melon passed away, but it was not to be.

Bunky had been sneezing on and off for a few weeks and had also lost some weight. We had planned on taking him to the vet, but we were having some trouble paying our bills, so we kept putting it off. Aside from the sneezing, he seemed fine. He was eating well and constantly underfoot as usual, especially when I was preparing food. This past Friday he was in the kitchen, on his hind legs begging for cheese. Saturday he was with us on the couch while we were watching tv and had taken a nap with us in the afternoon. By Sunday though, he didn't respond at all to us calling for him, and also was not interested in the wet food we gave to him (he normally ate dry food). Remembering what Melon went through, we got the syringe out and gave him the juice from the cat food, then some chicken broth later on. He threw some of it back up but kept most of it down, which made us think that because he was congested, he couldn't smell the food and didn't want to eat it. So we put him in the bathroom when we took a shower and ran it a few times when we weren't, and it seemed to help him. Late Sunday night he was very lethargic and fighting the force feeding more, and he would make this long, distressed mewling sound which scared me. We talked about going to the emergency vet, but we knew we couldn't afford it.

I called our regular vet the next morning while I was at work. The only time they could fit us in was at 10, but I couldn't get off work that early on short notice, and Sarah couldn't leave work because she was there by herself. The vet receptionist made me feel bad about that, which I didn't care for. We settled on Tuesday at 10, so we tried to make Bunky comfortable until then. We tried giving him more broth, but he was fighting us even more. I went to bed early so I could get out of work in time to take him to the vet the next morning. I got up at 10 and Sarah was upset and said that we should probably take him to the emergency vet to have him euthanized. She said he looked yellow like Melon did, so it was probably going to mean more force feeding for him if we tried to keep him alive. We had agreed to stop doing this to Melon, so it made sense to do the same for Bunky, even though it hurt both of us to lose him.

We took him to the emergency vet and they told us what we feared, that he was most likely experiencing liver failure and had pneumonia, and there was no guarantee that he would be able to bounce back, so we let him go. The really strange thing was that just the week before, I had a dream that I was chasing Bunky and finally caught him, because he needed to be put to sleep. I finally caught him and gave him half a pill (we give our dog half a thyrozine pill every meal), and he died in my arms. It freaked me out a little bit when I remembered it afterwards.

For some reason losing Bunky was not as upsetting to me as losing Melon was. One reason may have been that we knew he was going to die from the first day we had him. My sister said that maybe because we just went through this with Melon, it made Bunky's death easier to deal with. Also, he went downhill so fast. Aside from the sneezing, he didn't seem sick at all on Friday. I'm not saying I'm not upset at all; I am. When I came home from work, he was always the first to greet me at the door, and I missed that yesterday. It was also weird last night when I was making dinner, no one was in the kitchen looking for food. I take comfort in the fact that we helped him defy the odds and that he lived a long and hopefully happy life. He could get overbearing at times, and I feel bad about how I reacted to that sometimes. But like Sarah said, he just wanted to always be near us, and that's not a bad thing.

Rest in peace Bunky, I'm glad that you came into our lives and I love you very much and I will miss you terribly.

Winnie.

2011-04-27T13:50:00.005-04:00

Continuing our cat series, Winnie is now the 3rd in command. I mentioned him in passing before, he was one of the first four domesticated cats that we took in as rescues (the first was a single feral mom and her kittens who stayed in our bathroom). The 4 cats were perfectly healthy; Sarah brought them home because the woman who had them didn't want them anymore and was going to take them to the SPCA, which was definitely not a no-kill shelter back then. Joining Winnie was an annoying but cute kitten named Tigger, and a pregnant married couple named Kanga and Blackfoot (bet you can't guess what we named one of Kanga's babies!).

Winnie was very skittish when he first came to us. He stayed under the bed for at least a week until he got to know us.Eventually we made friends with him and he became a very sweet boy. He also became a sort of mediator between all of the cats as the room he was in filled up with more cats. He was friendly to everyone and liked to play with the other cats and with any kind of dangly toy (we have one that has a jingle bell on it that is Winnie's favorite).

Eventually we adopted out most everyone out of the room so we could have it back as a bedroom, but Winnie wasn't one of them. We put the few remaining cats back outside for a little bit (they were all outdoor cats to begin with), but then we decided to bring them back inside and keep them ourselves. I think Winnie still remembers this brief period, as every once in awhile he manages to escape. He also likes to man the doors and windows too see what is going on outside. We can tell when there is a feline interloper outside, because Winnie meows weirdly when he sees one. We can also tell when something interesting is happening outside by Winnie trotting quickly from window to door to window. All part of the curiousness, I guess.

Winnie had a little bit of trouble convincing Sunny and Bunk that he could be their friend, but he eventually won everyone over. We were a little worried about Winnie catching HIV from those two, but we found out later that someone who gave us their cats for rescue didn't tell us that one of them was FIV positive, so Winnie may have already had it. But when we had him tested later on, he was negative, so we think he is immune to it.

Winnie is about 9 and is still very active. I mentioned the constant trotting, but he also likes wrestling. Bailey is his main partner, but Melon also liked to wrestle with Winnie. Winnie would wrestle with them for a few minutes, then fake walk away and comeback and attack. Very sneaky.

Winnie was in the first I Can Has Cheezburger book! If you need that explained to you, I can't help you. Sarah bought an old library card catalog to put her rubber stamps into. She was in the midst of doing that when I found that Winnie had climbed into it and was just hanging out in there. I went to get the camera, and he actually stayed in there until after I had gotten a few pictures. I uploaded it to Cheezburger and put a caption on it (which in retrospect, doesn't make any sense). I was disappointed that it didn't get any votes or make the homepage, and I forgot about it until I got an email from the Cheezburger people, who wanted to use it in their first book. Check towards the end of the book for the picture of Winnie!

I'm glad we kept Winnie. He is sweet boy and plays well with others, which I cannot say about all of the cats. Plus, he hasn't really been sick. One time he was moping excessively and not active at all, but we took him to the vet, he got a shot and was all better. Right now he is "mowing," and we can't figure out why, so he is going back to the vet. he usually takes it in stride, and they love him at the vet because he is so good-natured. The only negative against Winnie is his penchant for using my testicles as a jumping-off point when he doesn't want to be on my lap anymore. :(

Books #5 & #6

2011-04-24T07:54:00.003-04:00

My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

I have read a few of Jodi Picoult's books before; I was introduced to her work in a book club and I read another after that one because I enjoyed it. She apparently specializes in fictionalized accounts of real life news stories. This one happened in the early part of this century, where a couple had a daughter with a life threatening disease, and they conceive a baby (with the help of reproductive medicine specialists) so they can use the blood from the umbilical cord to help save the daughter. Jodi Picoult picks it up from there, and has the 13 year old donor daughter sue her parents for medical emancipation. I enjoyed the book, it was well written and I liked most of the characters. However, the ending was unforgivable. I won't spoil it for anyone, but it cast a pall over the rest of the book for me.

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

I tend to stay away from what everyone else labels as science fiction, so I'm just getting to this. I did read The Man in the High Castle years ago and enjoyed it, but I suppose I didn't consider it to be sci-fi. I knew it had been the basis for Blade Runner, but I haven't seen that either (I plan to now). Rick Deckard is the main character, his job is to retire (kill) androids on what's left of Earth, which was devastated by a nuclear war, which has also wiped out most of the animal species. There are 6 escaped Nexus-6 model androids on Earth, and they are so advanced that they could possibly pass the empathy tests developed to identify them.

I wish I hadn't waited so long to read this, I liked it a lot and finished it very quickly so I could find out what happened. Even if you're not a sci-fi nut, I think you will enjoy this book. I am planning to read more of Philip K. Dick's books, and I will definitely see Blade Runner.

I am currently reading Life Of Pi by Yann Martel, so look for a poorly thought out post for that book soon!

Goodbye Melon.

2011-04-04T13:16:00.005-04:00

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook may know that our sweet girl Melon passed away on Saturday. We think she was around 9 or so. I wrote the blog post about her towards the end of January, and she was still very heavy then. She started to lose weight soon after that. We thought it was because she was constantly running around and wrestling with a few of our other cats. We had just brought in Hedwig to be an inside cat a few months previous, and she and Melon kind of became chasing buddies, i.e. they would chase each other all over the house. That's why we didn't think anything of the weight loss.

We went on vacation in the beginning of March, and Melon had dropped some more weight, but she was still very active with the other cats. When we came back it was a different story. She was markedly thinner than she was when we left, and she was hardly active at all. The Monday after we came back, she could jump on our bed, but by Wednesday she couldn't. She would hang on the side until we lifted her up. We took her to the vet and he told us that her liver was failing. He showed me where her skin was yellow, which I had not noticed before. He told us that we had to make her eat, which was the only way she could have a chance at getting better. He didn't know if the FIV was going to be a complication until we could stabilize her liver.

One option was a feeding tube, which involved surgery. I was there with Melon by myself so I told the vet I had to talk to Sarah about it. He gave us some special food and a large syringe and told us in the meantime to force feed her. She was so weak that force feeding her with the syringe wasn't a problem, but she did throw up quite a few times right after. We looked up feline feeding tubes on the web, and all the cats that had them looked miserable. We didn't think she would adapt well to the feeding tube, because she was constantly scratching at her pet collar thing after she had her surgery. She was also throwing up, which meant she could also throw up the feeding tube. The vet also said that there was no guarantee how long it would take her to eat by herself again, if at all.

We took her back to the vet after five days, and she hadn't lost any weight, so we decided to try harder with the force feeding. She was also dehydrated, so the vet gave us an IV drip bag that we had to use on her with a needle. I was hesitant to do this, and Sarah doesn't even like looking at needles, but Melon took the needle okay the first few times while Sarah held her. Thursday night was the end of the IV fluids though, she was struggling more and the needle came out halfway through. Through all of this, she would have good times and bad. She might be really bad in the morning, but she would be perky and a little active when I got home from work. But the force feeding was making all of us miserable.

Friday morning while I was at work, I got a tearful call from Sarah. She had tried force feeding Melon that morning, but she threw it back up. Sarah didn't want to torture her anymore, and I was in agreement, even though I didn't want to lose Melon. Sarah said she would call to make an appointment to euthanize Melon that night, but I asked her to make it for next morning, so Melon could have one last peaceful night with us. Both of us were glad that we had that last night together, even if I had to go to work early so we could make the appointment. Melon was glad too, as she seemed much happier not being poked or prodded.

The night at work was rough, because all I could think about was Melon and how she wouldn't be with us anymore. I was very upset, as she had become my favorite, but I knew she was suffering and I didn't want her to hurt anymore. My brain knew this, but my heart didn't. We took her to the vet without a carrier this time so she wouldn't be too stressed out. The people at the vet were very nice, they allow you to pay beforehand so you don't have to linger too long afterwards if you're upset. The vet was different from the one who initially treated Melon, but we know her well and she was very good to us and Melon. Both of us were crying hard after she was gone, and Sarah had to leave the room before I did. I didn't want to leave because I would never see her again.

I managed to hold it together somewhat until we got home, and it hit me like a ton of bricks and I pretty much broke down sobbing for about 5 minutes. Losing pets is extremely hard for me, I'm actually crying right now as I'm writing this. Like I said before, I didn't want her to suffer, but a part of me wanted to be selfish and keep her with us so it wouldn't hurt. I know we did the right thing for her, even if it did make us sad.

When we came back from the vet, I took everything out of our bedroom that we put in there special for Melon. I didn't want to be reminded of her being sick. We both took a nap after that, but I didn't sleep well. I know I had dreams about Melon, but I couldn't remember them. Last night I had a dream that I was chasing Hedwig through a mall, and somehow she was yelling (or meowing, I guess) Melon's name over and over as she ran. We went to my in-laws for dinner, but I wasn't all there, I was still thinking about Melon. It hit me hard again when we went to bed, because she had spent the last week and a half with us in the bedroom. The same thing happened last night when I went to bed, and I'm sure it will happen tonight as well. It will take time. The worst part about that is that we had her cremated separately, so it will hurt all over again when I go to pick up her ashes. We never liked the fact of having our pets cremated anonymously. We buried the first cat we had to have cremated, but not the ones after that. We didn't want them to be cold underground. I know that sounds stupid, but that's how we feel.

Melon, you were such a good, brave, sweet, beautiful girl. I'm so glad that we were able to be your people, even if it was for only a short time. We and all of your kitty and doggie friends will miss you very much. Rest in peace sweet girl, we love you so much.

Book #4

2011-03-15T16:01:00.003-04:00

Under The Dome, by Stephen King

Every time I go to the library, I check the Stephen King section because I have a backlog of his books that I need to read. I would reserve them, but then I'm never able to make it to the library in time, and they get put back into circulation. But this time I managed to find one I hadn't read, and Good Lord, it is a large one, over 1000 pages. And it figures that it took me the least amount of time to read it of the books I have read so far this year. But I read most of it on the plane to Vegas and the drive to AZ, so that's why I finished it so quickly.

Not much to tell about this one, it's not one of my favorites of his, but I didn't hate it like the Tommyknockers (bleah). It's typical Stephen King, supernatural tales filled with endless description (which I do like). It was kind of like putting on an old pair of jeans, comfy and familiar. For awhile there he kind of got away from horror/supernatural, and I really enjoyed those novels very much (Hearts In Atlantis is probably my second favorite of his). I think all I have left of his is two short story collections and whatever he just released. The most exciting news is that there will be another Dark Tower book! It's supposed to come out next year, but I most likely will not be in line the day it is released. I'll wait a year or two until I find it in the stacks.

Book #3

2011-02-27T08:05:00.003-05:00

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Quite a few years ago (before we got an iPod), I began to take a lot of audiobooks out of the library. I started with a few that I had already read, but then I began to listen to books that I hadn't read yet. At first I thought it was cheating, but I soon changed my mind. I think I was less lazy around the house back then, and I was always doing things, so I didn't have time to sit and read. The only time I ever sat down to read was on my lunch break at work (still true to this day, for books at least). But since I got an iPod and Sarah got me into podcasts and I have grown fat and lazy, all of that has changed.

When I was into audiobooks, there was one reader that I really liked, named George Guidall, and I would get books that I never heard of before just because he had read them. One of those was I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, a sprawling book about twin brothers and the mental illness that affects one of them. At the end of the audiobooks, there's usually a section where there are other books you'll enjoy if you liked this one are mentioned, and She's Come Undone was listed there, so I got the audiobook for it. My audiobook reading comprehension is just as bad as my regular reading comprehension, because I did not remember that I had listened to this book when I found a copy at Sarah's lending library at her work. It wasn't until halfway through that I thought that I MAY have already listened to it. It was nice though, because it was mostly new to me again.

The story is about Dolores, a girl who comes from a broken home and is raped by a neighbor in her adolescent years. She can't really find comfort in her family, so she turns to food and television, and eventually has to spend time in a mental institution. After her constant therapy there, she leaves and gets married, which ultimately fails when Dolores realizes she is married for the wrong reasons. After her divorce, she has some ups and downs and also meets Thayer, who is smitten with her and willing to wait until Dolores is ready. They eventually marry and at the end of the book, Dolores is seemingly at peace with herself.

I guess this didn't have the same affect on me as I Know This Much Is True because I didn't remember it at all. It was a good book though, the most amazing part of it being written by a man from the first person perspective of a woman. But of course, I am a man too, so I only have second-hand info to go on. It's written very well and keeps you engaged. Like I mentioned, I normally only read at work, but I read this at home too because I wanted to know all the things that were constantly happening to Dolores.

This was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1996, 4 years after it was released. I didn't know she was doing the Book Club in the 90s, I'm not really an Oprah follower, but I assume that it did a pretty good business after that. I have only read these two books by Wally Lamb; don't be put off by their length, they are both well worth the effort. I do recommend this book to any reader, but I would read I Know This Much Is True first.

Book #4 was supposed to be Uncle Tom's Cabin. We were reading that for Classic Book Club, which Sarah runs at the library. We both started reading it, but neither of were able to finish it. So of course, a complete stranger showed up for the first time at Classic Book Club, so we talked about the book a little and also about Civil Rights in the 50s and 60s. It turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

The actual Book #4 is Under The Dome by Stephen King, because I have to keep up with the literature, right? :/

Book #2

2011-02-06T09:24:00.003-05:00

My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams and John Underwood

This doesn't bode well, I finished the book over a week ago. Oh well.

I of course knew of Ted Williams and his best season average record (mainly because George Brett came close however many years ago), but that was about it. As a Yankees fan growing up, I was supposed to hate the Red Sox, so I didn't really look into any of their history, other than Babe Ruth and the Curse. But I digress.

This book showed up at Sarah's lending library that she has at work, so I picked it up, hoping it would get me excited to watch some baseball this year (I read Jim Bouton's Ball Four around this time last year, but it didn't work). It was definitely an interesting read. You get the feeling that however much Ted Williams loved and intently studied baseball, he had more fun fishing. The book goes through his not so great childhood and his playing career and his stormy relationship with sportswriters and fans. He definitely hated most sports writers, but he seemed kind of ambivalent about his fans. He apparently only tipped his cap to the fans once, and refused to do it ever again, despite their love for him. I really didn't understand that, but what do I know? Maybe he just wanted to go fishing.

I did not know that he was in WWII and Korea and lost 5 seasons of playing time. It makes you wonder how many more records he would have had, as he hit over 500 home runs during his career. It also is puzzling that the Red Sox never parlayed a World Series win during Williams' tenure there (they only made it once, and Williams only went 5 for 25), but I suppose that one player does not a team make.

The impression I had of Williams before I read the book was that of an excellent player who wasn't a team player and was mean to fans. From reading the book (and since he had a co-writer, you really don't know how much was embellished or cut out), this idea didn't really change very much for me, but he was pretty self-effacing. He was his own hardest critic, even more so than the sports writers he loathed. He spells out in the book that the reason he was so good is that he was constantly practicing and striving to be better. His one goal was to be the greatest hitter who ever lived, and I think he came pretty close to succeeding on that front.

I highly recommend this book to any baseball fan, especially if you like the glory days of baseball, when substance abuse meant drinking a lot and eating a ton of hot dogs before the game. The names he rattles off almost second-handedly in the book are like a Who's Who of baseball greats from the past. The book was written in 1969, after he had retired as a player and was about to start managing the Washington Senators (I had no idea they were still around in 1969). Since I finished the book I have done some Googling and found some unsavory info about Williams' cryogenically frozen head, which I won't go into here.

I am currently reading She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, which I also found at Sarah's library. I picked it because I listened to the book on tape of I Know This Much Is True (also by Lamb), and I loved it. I have since discovered that I may have listened to this one also, but I barely remember it, so it will still be a surprise. I stopped listening to books on tape when I started getting into podcasts a few years ago, so therefore I read less, if you count that as reading (I do).

Melon

2011-01-23T08:58:00.009-05:00

I realized that I have been errant in keeping up with blogs about our cats, so here is another in a continuing series that I will try to update more frequently.

In 2004 Sarah and I started doing cat rescue. We had a feral mom and her kittens in the downstairs bathroom (which we weren't really using at the time), and four cats in the spare bedroom upstairs. These cats were on their way to the SPCA to be put down by their annoyed owner until Sarah stepped in and brought them home. More on them later.

In the midst of this, we thought it would be a GREAT idea to have another cat of our own, as we only had two at the time (those were the days). We were taking our rescue cats to the Delaware Humane Association because they had a very inexpensive spay/neuter program, compared to the local vets. We were looking through their website one day, and they had a photo gallery of all of the available animals for adoption, and we saw this photo of Melon:

Sarah and I both fell in love with Melon from this picture. The caption said he was a sweet boy and that he had FIV. Both of our cats also had FIV, so we figured what's one more cat? Sure.

I took a trip up to DHA to meet Melon. The first thing I found out was that he was a she, they assumed that Melon was a boy because she was an orange tabby, which is apparently rare in females (score!). They kept the sick cats out behind the main building, I don't remember if it was another building or just a shelter, but whomever was sick and contagious were kept out there. One of the staff took me out there and went inside and brought Melon out, into what I guess was the foyer part. There were other cats there walking around, seemingly starved for attention, and it did make me kind of sad and I wanted to take all of them home. The woman gave Melon to me and she was very small and very sweet, and let me put my face up to hers, which hardly any of the cats at home let me do. I decided that I wanted to take her home, and I thought Sarah would agree.

The director of DHA had gotten wind that I was there and was looking to adopt an FIV positive cat. He came out and asked me a lot of questions, I guess he wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to perform experiments on Melon or something like that. I assured him that we had FIV cats at home and just wanted to add to the party. He seemed assuaged by that and I made an appointment for Sarah and I to come back and pick her up.

Our other two cats at the time were male (incidentally, they both still are male), and Melon did not get along with them at all. She was always growling at them when they walked by her, and they seemed to give her a wide berth (the year before, we had acted as a sort of hospice for a terminally ill female cat who acted pretty much the same as Melon, more on her later). She also was very standoffish to us. It took her about 3 years before she would sit with us on the couch or tolerate petting from us. Our poor dog Niffler really got the short end of the deal, as he was never hostile to any of the cats, but they always were to him (not for long, more on that later, probably much later).

Melon eventually ingratiated herself to us and the rest of the cats, and will play with some of them, but not all of them. She really enjoys ripping up carpet, especially when she has a freakout and rips up the carpeting on the stairs. She's really done a number on those stairs.

A few years ago she got sick and she needed exploratory surgery. When she came home she had to wear a collar (which she was VERY happy about, as you can see) and stay in our room by herself for close to a month. She made a divot in the carpet by the door, always trying to get out. Later on, after she was better, she made another divot on the opposite side of the door trying to get back in. Cats.

Luckily the vet couldn't find anything, but after the surgery she... changed, a little bit. She gained a lot of weight, which is weird because she chases the other cats around quite a bit (we call her Melon Ball). When she lays on the floor on her side her legs almost stick up in the air. She also meows differently. I don't know how to describe it, maybe it sounds scratchier than her meow used to, but it's definitely different. She also has this weird tic with her tongue now, like she's trying to clean herself but failing. She's still a sweetheart though, maybe even moreso than before the surgery. She's a very good sleeping companion, she's not one who is trying to get you to pet her when you're trying to go to sleep. She stays near the foot of the bed and observes personal space rules. She will come to you if you call her to get some pets, but then she will go back to the foot of the bed when she gets tired of it. She also likes sitting on our lap or by our feet when we're on the couch watching tv. She makes the recliner go back down when she jumps on it though. She is a very sweet girl and even though we had too many cats at the time we got her, I'm glad we did.

Book #1

2011-01-16T15:03:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be writing about all of the books I read this year, and perhaps every year. I don't know how good it will come out because I'm not that good at reviewing any kind of media, other than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Perhaps I will get better as the year progresses. That would be nice.

Enemies and Allies, by Kevin J. Anderson

This book was given to me by my friend Adam for my birthday last month. I love Batman and have for a long time, but my exposure to Superman has only been through TV and movies, and of course general pop culture. I was looking forward to reading this book because I have a few Batman short story books that I read and enjoyed very much. It's kind of nice to read a story about Batman and not have to look at a lot of pictures. I know this is practically blasphemy to comics fans, but I have always been more of a story person. I catch myself quite a bit reading the story in a comic and barely glancing at the art.

The book is set in the 1950s and revolves around how Batman and Superman met and had to unite against their common foe, Lex Luthor. The basic tropes of each character are added along the way, and some of the aforementioned pop culture tidbits relevant to each character are mentioned. I did like that, and I didn't think it was overused to the point of corniness.

This being a superhero book set in the 50s, you can guess the outcome. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it very much. I usually only read books during my lunch break at work; what I read at home is usually just Entertainment Weekly or other magazines. But I did manage to get a few chapters of Enemies and Allies in at home as well, so that's usually a sign of a good book for me. My only complaint is that there seemed to be more chapters based around Superman than Batman (each chapter was headed by the Bat symbol or the Superman symbol, so you knew who the main focus of the chapter would be). Anderson really plays up the differences in the two superheroes; the almost goody-two-shoes alien Boy Scout Superman, and the dark, law-breaking Batman. That's probably why I prefer Batman, because he could actually exist, but in this day and age someone would be able to find his secret identity very quickly.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to a comics fan or a Batman/Superman movie or TV fan. You don't really need to know the backstory of each character to enjoy the book, as Anderson basically gives all of that to you during the book. But if you're not a superhero fan, you should probably read something else.

Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought. I'm definitely not a book reviewer, so I'll have to come up with a different method of writing about the books I read. The next book is about the baseball player Ted Williams, so that will be interesting. I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he is one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. And he's angry.

Recycled Blog Idea/Adulthood Dream Come True

2011-01-01T08:52:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!

I was looking at a friend of a friend's blog, just out of curiosity, and she had posts relating to books she had read during the year. For example, the first book she completed was posted as Book 1, etc. I thought this was a cool idea and that I would try to copy it this year. I'm not a book reviewer by any means, but I will share my thoughts on said book and give it a thumbs up or down. I just started a new book yesterday about Batman and Superman, that I got for my birthday from my friend Adam. It's pretty good so far. Before that I read Blockade Billy by Stephen King, which I had not heard about until I saw it on the shelf at my library. It's more like a short story, it only took me a few lunch breaks to read it. Stephen King loves baseball, and it comes through in this story. It was kind of weird too, because King wrote it as if the character telling the story was telling it to him. I have a lot to catch up on with Stephen King, so you'll probably see me write about some of his books this year.

A few years ago, we went to a local restaurant for the first time, and they had on the menu something called pineapple bread pudding. I had never had it, and it sounded good, so I ordered it. It turns out that I had had it, and quite often when I was a kid. My paternal grandmother always made it, and I had totally forgotten about it. It was exactly like the scene in Ratatouille where the critic is instantly transported back to his childhood (this happened before I saw the movie) after taking a bite of the ratatouille. I thought I was going to start crying right there in the restaurant, but I managed to hold it together.

After I had this experience, and I saw the movie, I started to hope that one day I could do the same thing for someone else. As I have mentioned, my dad was a baker when I grew up, so we had a lot of bakery stuff around the house. Christmas was my favorite time because there was a lot of different stuff that you didn't get the rest of the year, stollen being my favorite. When I got to my current job I started to experiment with it at Christmas time. I started it maybe 5 or 6 years ago (my manager looked at me funny when I asked for a bottle of rum), and I could barely give it away. This year, I had an order for 2 before I even started making them, and people came in and asked for stollen specifically. I'm not making hundreds of stollen every year, but it's a far cry from that first year.

The day before Christmas Eve was a pretty emotional day for me. I was tired as my schedule ramps up around the holidays, and the store ran out of propane, so all of our ovens were down, ruining some of the stuff I had made. I actually threw a bucket in the back room and put a hole in the wall that day, which I feel bad about now. After we opened and had put the stollen out, one of the managers was walking out to the store when a customer stopped him and asked him about the stollen. He referred her to me (I'm the only one who makes it, my co-workers are afraid of it). She told me that it was delicious, and that it made her husband cry because it reminded him of the stollen his mother used to make. I don't remember what I said to her because I was concentrating hard on not losing it right there in front of everyone (I managed to bottle it up until I got home). But whoever you are, that was best compliment I ever could have gotten and probably ever will get. Thank you for making the holiday better for me.

John Lennon and George Harrison

2010-12-08T15:36:00.003-05:00

Today is a bad day for Beatles fans, quite possibly the worst. As we know, John Lennon was murdered on this day in 1980 by Mark David Chapman (many Beatles fans won't mention his name, which I think is ridiculous, it's not going to change what happened and never will). This is just my thoughts about that day and also November 29, 2001, the day George Harrison died.

I wrote in one of my November blogs last year about my friend Steve coming over the morning after. We were in 5th grade at the time, and I think he knew more about them than I did, he certainly had more of their records than I. At one point during the school day we switched classrooms (there were 2 fifth grade classes, and they switched us a few times a day, to make us woefully unprepared for class switching in middle school). The other teacher (Mrs. Cooper) asked us if we knew what happened last night, and I clearly remember my shouted-out answer: "Some jerk shot John Lennon." I don't remember exactly what we talked about after that, but Mrs. Cooper seemed a little angry about it, like Steve did that morning.

The radio of course was filled with Lennon and Beatles music. I made a few tapes of some of that, I think mostly from WNEW-FM out of NYC, but they have been lost to time. I know I played them quite a bit after the murder. There were plenty of TV shows as well, and I remember taping a few of those too, but they met the same fate as the radio show.

That Sunday was the vigil in Central Park that Yoko asked for. People gathered there at 2 pm and had 10 minutes of silence. That morning I went with my dad to get wood for the stove that we had, but not because I wanted to. I brought a radio with me because the stations were still playing all Beatles and Lennon solo stuff. We went back to my dad's friend's house before 2, and my dad's friend put on his stereo so I could listen to WNEW. I sat alone in that room while everyone else was in the kitchen getting ready for lunch. The vigil started and WNEW was silent, but I didn't realize that the rest of the house was also silent. A few minutes later my dad came in and tapped me on the shoulder and gestured for me to come with him. There was a room in front of the house where they had a TV, and everyone was gathered around it, watching live coverage of the vigil. No one said a word until it was over.

I was sad about the murder, but I didn't cry, because I didn't really know what I had lost. After that, I jumped into the Paul sucks because he's still alive camp (which a LOT of people are still in, sadly) and read as much about the Beatles and John Lennon that I could, and I became more aware of the loss over time. A few years ago I was watching the Lennon Legend DVD (a collection of videos for his songs), and after a few songs I found tears streaming down my face. I think it was more for what could have been, which is a bit selfish.

George Harrison's death was a different story, although it was as much a surprise to me as John's death was. Despite my internet obsession in 2001, I really didn't know he was that sick, and when I saw his death mentioned on a news site, it was a shock. What was also a shock was the amount of coverage that his death received. It wasn't nearly as much as John had, even in the pre-internet days, but it was more than I expected. I remember watching various news channels on Saturday night (he passed away on Thursday) well into the night, and they all had extended coverage about George and broke away occasionally for other news. I also watched A Hard Day's Night and Help! that night too, I was home by myself and I was doing a cross-stitch project that I had to finish by the next day, so I was up very late.

I did cry a little that night for George. I was into the Beatles more than ever at that time, the mp3 was fairly new and I was finding a lot of Beatles bootlegs online that I had never heard before. George is definitely the unsung hero of the Beatles. I was also getting into George's solo stuff more too, my child- and early-adulthood being dominated by John and Paul, and even Ringo, since he was putting out albums where George wasn't. The year after George's death, the Concert for George happened, and that was hard to watch without crying. I still haven't watched the whole thing, despite being a celebration of his life, not a remembrance of his death.

And I guess that's the thing, we can be sad that these two men are gone, but we still have and will always have their music to listen to and enjoy, and that makes me happy.

My drunken exploits

2010-12-05T12:35:00.004-05:00

You may surmise from my frequent writings of pouring bourbon and other liquors over things that I eat, that I like to drink a lot. That is not the case at all, I rarely drink. If I do, it is at home or at some one's house, where it is much cheaper than drinking at a restaurant or bar. I do that occasionally, however. For example, I went with my family to Trader Vic's, and I deemed it necessary to have a pina colada while I was there.

When I was in high school and drinking was prevalent amongst my friends, I didn't drink. I think the main reason was that I was afraid. Of what, I don't know, maybe getting in trouble for being underage, or perhaps getting into an accident (this was the heyday of MADD, I remember watching the TV movie made about it, I think Jamie Lee Curtis was in it). It wasn't until after high school that I began dabbling, mainly wine coolers, because I didn't like the taste of alcohol. I was introduced to the screwdriver and fuzzy navel soon enough, and I loved those. I think I had shots exactly once, I don't remember what kind of liquor it was, but I didn't like it.

My 21st birthday rolled around, and I decided (or my friends decided for me) that I would get drunk. If I remember right, I had a mudslide and a kamikaze, and maybe a screwdriver or two. But I was really sozzled, I threw up quite a few times (I had also eaten an entire pizza), and I still have a scar on my right middle finger from burning it with a cigarette I was smoking (I didn't smoke). I passed out around 3 am, and I had the worst case of cottonmouth the next morning. I felt truly awful, and I guess I got it out of my system, because I never did that again to that extent.

Because of this, I have an extremely low tolerance for alcohol. The aforementioned pina colada made me silly for the rest of the night. Sarah and I went to the LoneStar Steakhouse when we were still in NJ, and she drove so I could try the Pecos Peach, which was basically a Slurpee with alcohol in it. I liked the first one so much that I had another, and I was pretty well toasted after that. We ordered dessert, and I got a brownie a la mode, which contained the worst brownie I have ever eaten. Since I was drunk, I brought this to the server's attention, and he brought the manager out. I told the manager how bad the brownie was, and I offered to go into the kitchen and show them how to make brownies, to which he politely declined. Sarah laughs about this incident now, but she probably wasn't then.

Nowadays I don't drink at restaurants because as I mentioned, it's too expensive, but I also don't trust myself to drive, since such a small amount affects me so much. So I limit it to Christmas time, when I make fruitcakes and cookies loaded with alcohol. I also make an egg nog recipe that came from a cousin, we went to their house for New year's a long time ago, and they had this egg nog on their patio, so it was almost like ice cream, and it was delicious. It was also chock full of alcohol (rum, brandy, and bourbon), but I haven't been able to make mine taste the same as theirs, probably due to the fact that I usually buy the cheap stuff, since I use it for cooking. The bottles I buy usually last a few years, so maybe I should upgrade next time.

Cheers!

Yeah, I know (Christmas Sweet Edition).

2010-12-01T14:42:00.004-05:00

Surprised to see me so soon? Me too.

If you know me you know I like to eat. This is one of my favorite times of the year for that activity, because there are lots of Christmas goodies that I really enjoy. One thing is cookies. I don't normally make or eat many cookies during the year, but all bets are off during December. I usually spend a few days and make a variety of 10-15 kinds of cookies, then I distribute them to our jobs and families. After a healthy distribution to myself, of course. One of my favorite specifically Christmas cookies is pfefferneusse, which I used to eat a lot as a kid, then lost touch with for many years. A few years back I discovered that Archway made them every year, and I also found their Fruit Cake cookies (now discontinued), Mexican Wedding Cake cookies, and Cashew Nougats. They are a little expensive, and they don't usually last too long in our house, but this year I thought that I should put a limit on how many of them I eat (Sarah bought me 12 boxes of pfefferneusse last year, because they can be hard to find). I have tried making the pfefferneusse myself on a few occasions, but they never come out right. The Archway cookies have raisin paste in them, which is probably why Mine don't taste right. I have to google raisin paste, maybe I can make it myself.

Another thing I like is stollen, which is a German Christmas bread that has nuts and fruit in it. It can just have raisins, but it can also have the yucky fruit that's in fruitcake that no one likes (I love fruitcake too, but I make my own in early September and pour bourbon on it every week until Christmas or until I break down). I made a stollen at home last year that was awesome, but it didn't translate well at work. I bought one at a German bakery last year as well, and it was good, but not worth the 16 bucks (mine is 5 bucks, albeit a bit smaller). I did find out recently that the German bakery uses a base for the stollen, which made me kind of sad.

Anyway, at one of our local supermarkets, they get the Archway cookies and 3 different kinds of stollen in every year at this time. I usually get the marzipan one, it has a almond paste core running through the bread. I went to this market yesterday, and they had the Archway cookies and the stollen, but this year they also had a competitor for Archway (I forget the brand), and the cookies were cheaper. I picked up a stollen and a box of the competitor's cashew nougats. The competitor didn't have pfefferneusse, but they did have bells and stars sugar cookies, which Archway doesn't make anymore.

I managed to wait until I got home to try the cookies. I ate two of them and that was it for me. There was an overpowering butter flavor taste to them that I didn't like, so I gave them to Sarah to take to work with her. I don't know if the Archway cashew nougats taste like that, it's been awhile since I've had theirs, but I won't try them now. Especially since I tried their two new flavors, Candy Cane and Snow Top. Candy Cane is a white sugar cookie with candy cane bits in it, which I did like, but I don't think I will buy them again (I made a test batch of a recipe from King Arthur Flour of a chocolate cookie with candy cane bits, and while I didn't really like them right after they were baked, they were awesome the next day). Sarah thought they tasted like medicine. The Snow Tops are chocolate cookies with nuts in them, very bland actually. Definitely won't be buying those again.

The same thing happened with the stollen, I even at two slices of it and I didn't really care for it. I'm not sure what this means. Perhaps my tastebuds are being slowly destroyed by my discovery of hot sauce this year? Am I growing out of eating sweets? That would be nice, but all other signs point to no. I think it might be karma. I really enjoy cooking and baking, but I only really bake at work and I don't do too much cooking that is very involved. When I do spend some serious time making a meal, it usually turns out really good. I found a stollen recipe in one of my cookbooks where the method is very similar to the one my dad made in his bakery, so I'm looking forward to trying that. And the weekend after next I have planned for my cookie baking, which Sarah is going to help me with. I'm going to start on Thursday doing prep, because Saturday night is Sarah's office Christmas party, which I am making something for, so I won't be doing cookies that night.

Fair reader, do you have a particular Christmas cookie that you enjoy making/eating? I'm always looking for more to add to my arsenal, so post 'em if you've got 'em.

All done again

2010-11-30T15:52:00.003-05:00

This is the last day of Nablopomo, as I said earlier I won't be doing this too often anymore, unless I decide I miss it and pick another month to try Nablopomo. December's theme is zeitgeist, I barely have a grasp of the definition, how am I supposed to write about it 31 times? At any rate, you won't be seeing me complain as frequently as you have this month, right?

There are actually things I have wanted to write about here, but I never got around to it. I have to finish my cat blogs, amongst other subjects that may alienate people. But who knows when they will show up. Anyway, thanks for putting up with my endless ranting about work this month, I'll let you know if I win a prize.

Sour apples

2010-11-29T15:45:00.002-05:00

Many years ago we visited a friend who had an iMac, one of the older colored ones. My wife was playing with it and fell in love with it and wanted to get one. I did not, I didn't want to change anything and I didn't know anything about working a Mac. A few years later, the same friend got the first iPod, and Sarah fell in love with that too, but I again did not.

In 2007, after years of our disappointing PC from HP which we couldn't update (Windows ME sucks by the way), we decided to get a Mac. Sarah had already gotten an iPod for Christmas the year before, and she loved it. I was still not convinced by the iPod, but I was more than ready to abandon the PC world. The Mac was expensive, but it was a lot easier to use than I originally thought, and we could use most of the programs that we frequently used on the PC. I also found out that you could actually run Windows on the Mac, but I didn't really want to.

After we got the Mac I started to get into the iPod, mainly for podcasts. I had some music on there, but there wasn't much room on it. Sarah had dreams of me putting my thousands of CDs onto the Mac and getting rid of them all, but that will never, ever happen. I have gotten rid of a few, but the vast majority is going to stay. Sorry sweetie.

That struggle was rendered moot in late 2008 when the DVD-ROM in the Mac broke. I was in the midst of starting to put all of my CDs onto the Mac's hard drive when it happened. We brought the Mac to the Apple Store and they said it would cost over $400 to fix it. Of course, it was out of warranty, so we opted not to fix it and get an external DVD-ROM, which has proven difficult. We are currently borrowing my father-in-law's converted internal DVD-ROM drive, which sounds like an airplane taking off, but it works. But if we want to make our own DVDs with the iDVD program on the Mac, we're screwed, because it doesn't recognize external DVD-ROMS. The fact that it broke after a year and a half of not very much use pissed us off, but Apple wanted money that we didn't have, so we had to let it go.

Last year Sarah bought me the 120 GB iPod Classic for my birthday, because my iPod usage far outweighed hers. Besides podcasts, I started putting all of my music onto it so I could listen to it at work, instead of dragging CDs with me everyday. I bought a little radio with a 1/8 inch input jack and I was in business. Until last month, which was almost a year and a half after I got it. It seems that the headphone jack is this cheap plastic piece of crap that just sits inside the iPod (it's not soldered), and if you frequently put headphones in it, it will eventually move and you'll only be able to get one channel. In my case, only the left channel works through the headphones, and I listen to a lot of older music, where the stereo separation is severe. I'm talking vocals in one channel and instruments in the other channel severe, so I get an instrumental or acappella. It was driving me crazy until I realized that I could convert the songs to mono so it wouldn't be so bad, but of course, that takes time and more space on the iPod. It's basically an enormous pain in the ass and is pissing me off.

You would think that something that didn't have external speakers would have a more stable headphone jack, but of course it doesn't. And also of course, they don't don't make my model iPod anymore, and again want an arm and a leg to fix it. Thankfully, there is a market that has risen up to meet this demand, since it is a common problem with iPods. I have ordered the offending headphone jack and iPod pry tools, and my brother in law (who is handy with such things) has offered to replace it for me, since the online tutorials looked really scary. In the meantime, I have discovered that I can get stereo from the dock connector, but there are caveats. You can't adjust the iPod volume, so it tends to distort if you have it up too loud (read:loud enough to hear over the mixers). Also, I need to use the iPod to TV cable, which is a very long cable, made even longer by the RCA to 1/8 inch plug cable I need to plug into the radio. But at least I can enjoy stereo, as long as the dock connector holds out, since I use that everyday to charge the iPod. Hopefully my brother in law will be able to fix it and Apple has this problem fixed in the next iPod I get.

Now Sarah wants an iPad. I think that we will get the extended warranty if we get one of those.

New career is kaput.

2010-11-28T08:19:00.002-05:00

When I was young I had designs on being some sort of writer, as I think I have posted before. When I met Sarah, she was a journalist like me, and I told her I wanted to write a book about my grandfather. She gave me some writing instructional stuff that she had from school and encouraged me a lot, but the closest I got to starting that book was last year on this blog. Nothing since then.

I had hopes that blogging would help me become a better writer (or a writer at all), but I don't think it's working. Just doing Nablopomo every day for a month is really annoying, and as a writer I would have to spend a lot more time on it than I do on my blog. True, life/work gets in the way, but even when it doesn't I can't commit, hence my very infrequent posting when I'm not doing Nablopomo.

I don't know if I'll ever finish the book. My friend Adam is a writer, and he writes a lot and enjoys it. He also submits a lot of stuff to publishers and is rejected, but he makes fun of that and keeps going. I don't think I would be able to deal with that. He and Sarah said that I should write things down about my grandfather on my blog, and maybe collate it all into a book later, which is very easy to do these days. That's a good idea that I think I will try, but once November is over, I don't know what will happen.

Another communication thing I've been wanting to do is a podcast. I love listening to them and I want to join in, because I can be anonymous; I don't really like a lot of attention anymore. I'm not very sociable either, so this way I can reach people without actually interacting with them. I know this is sad, and I don't really have any explanation for it, it just developed gradually since my early 20s, I think. As with writing, I've been hemming and hawing about it for 2 years now. I did record a test that came out decent and I have everything in place for it, but I haven't been able to hit the Commit button yet. The same thing with Librivox, I volunteered to read a chapter of a book two months ago and haven't done it yet. That actually has a due date, so I will get that done, but the book and the podcast don't. I can put a mental due date on them, like this month's blogging, but my other mental parts will rationalize not doing it. My main problem is that I have so many things that I want/need to do that I don't know where to start, so I don't start at all. I somehow need to fix that.

bleah

2010-11-27T19:14:00.002-05:00

So I went back to work today after 2 days off, which is unusual (we are closed on Sundays, and they won't let me work then, I asked). It was hard, as post-holiday days always are, mentally and physically. There were about 30 bags of rolls left today, but we did sell more than last year. Lots of pies left as well, but we put all that stuff out for half price today, hoping it would sell so there would be less to throw away on Monday. Throwing stuff away is the last resort, we don't throw out very much stuff at all since the economy tanked. It seems like people wait for stuff to go out of date these days. Which is fine, as I'd rather sell something at half price than throw it away.

It was crushingly slow yesterday, so I baked very conservatively this morning, which turned out to be a big mistake. The bread rack was almost empty when I left at 12.30 (we're open till 7 on Saturdays), and the 3 pumpernickel bread I made didn't even make it out to the sales floor. I do like when that happens, but not that early in the day. I suppose I have to leave sometime, right?

Another nice day

2010-11-26T17:35:00.002-05:00

I had the day off from work today to make up for the holiday pay yesterday, which was nice. My sister and brother in law stayed the night, and we went to my work so my sister could check out the gluten free stuff we have for sale. Then we went to the health food store and came back here for leftovers. Then Sarah's sister and her family came over and we played the Wii for awhile, which was a lot of fun. Sarah and I are going to have dinner and then I have to go to bed since I have to work tomorrow. It was a really great Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T07:15:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone has a great day today. I have some cooking and cleaning to do, so I need to get off the internet. I will see half of my readers at dinner, yay! :)

All done

2010-11-24T11:24:00.002-05:00

I'm home from work now. We went in at 7 last night and left around 9 this morning. Sarah came in and helped again, and we had to run some errands after work. I am surprisingly not tired, I don't know why. I didn't have any real tired stretches at work either, although I did at one point think that I saw a bird overhead. My knee also started to give out at around 7, probably from carting around my fat ass for so long. But the busiest day of the year is now over, yay!

I looked at what we sold yesterday and was a bit disappointed in the amounts, but my co-worker told me to check last year's sales, and sure enough, we sold more this year. Last year we totally sold out of dinner rolls, and we also had more dinner roll orders this year, so I made more than I did last year, 126 dozen in all. I also made 77 loaves of bread and quite a lot of danish, I'm hoping people will pick those up for breakfast tomorrow (they certainly did last year, although the danish numbers have been down lately). In case you don't know, the dinner rolls are all made by me, and I have to roll them into a round shape, 2 rolls at a time, which is why it takes so long. Plus we don't have that much oven space to work with, and my co-worker is also using the ovens to make pies, of which she did about 300 today, again by herself.

Now I am going to clean up the house a bit, since I haven't done that in awhile.My sister and her husband will be here Friday, and we are going to my work so she can check out the gluten free stuff we have, so then I'll find out how much we sold. My fingers are crossed for another sellout.

Long day

2010-11-23T11:05:00.002-05:00

I just got home from work a little bit ago, we went in last night at 9. I made 70 dozen dinner rolls and 50 loaves of bread, among other things. It doesn't seem like a lot, but trust me, it is. When I left there was a little over 50 dozen dinner rolls just for orders tomorrow, so I'm most likely going to have to make twice what I made today. I am going to make some food for tomorrow and set up my coffee and go to bed, as I have to get up in a little over 6 hours and go back. This is what it's like for me every year, Sarah actually takes the week off from her work and comes in and helps us, which is really nice. Okay, I'm really tired, see you tomorrow.

Animals I have seen in the road on my way to work

2010-11-22T12:06:00.002-05:00

Dogs.
Cats.
Endlessly multiplying rabbits.
Chickens/roosters/hens (only they know the difference).
Skunks.
Possums.
Hedgehogs.
Mice.
Humans.
Frogs/toads.
Snakes (why did it have to be snakes?)
Ducks.
Raccoons.
Foxes.
Horses (3 times, the first 2 times it was one horse, the last time was about 10 galloping alongside the road).

New addition from this morning: cows. Not one, but seven. They were all in the road and didn't move when I pulled up, so I had to stop. They stared at me like I had four stomachs* but didn't move until I laid on the horn (I was hesitant to do that, as it was midnight, but I had to get to work). DE law states that the owners of said cows or horses are not liable for any damage the animals cause if they manage to escape. That sucks.

*Terrible, terrible joke.

oops

2010-11-21T17:01:00.002-05:00

Today I had to go Thanksgiving food shopping and I also made some food for the next few days, so I forgot all about my blog. I did laundry too, and now I have to go to bed since I am going in at midnight. Excuse #1, collect them all!

Gearing up

2010-11-20T15:37:00.002-05:00

Today was a long day at work, I tried to get as much ready for next week as I could. Monday through Wednesday next week is basically coming home from a very long day at work, sleeping for a few hours, then going back to work. Hopefully it will not be that bad, but we'll see. I'm starting to get a little anxious about it now.

I am picking up my co-worker at midnight on Sunday night/Monday morning (she is Amish and is not allowed to work at all on Sunday). She does the pies and I do the bread and rolls. We have an overabundance of people working on Monday and Tuesday, which will be good since we only have 4 bakers on Wednesday, which is the big order pickup day. Wednesday usually starts for us on Tuesday night. Sarah is coming to help us also, so that will be good. I guess it was a good thing that I shoveled the sidewalk at KayBee all those years ago. :)

Tomorrow I have to try and get up early and go shopping for Thanksgiving ingredients. The last thing I want to do after work on Wednesday is go shopping, because that's when everyone else is doing it. I am making mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and two kinds of stuffing. That will be easy compared to all the dinner rolls I have to make this week, which I also have to bring to Thanksgiving. It will be tiring, but fun, despite my constant complaints during this time of year that I wish I stayed in school. I don't, really. If I had an office job I think I would be even fatter than I am now.

Friday Shuffle this time

2010-11-19T15:02:00.002-05:00

Sorry, I'm really tired from work and I can't think of anything to write. More of non-content to come until Thanksgiving is over.

California Saga/The Beaks of Eagles, The Beach Boys - This is part of a trilogy of songs about nature in California. This part is excruciating.

Don't Hurt My Little Sister, The Beach Boys - From the Beach Boys Today! album, which was a year before Pet Sounds, I believe. It's amazing how much the lyrics improved in a year. You can guess what this song is about.

D & W, They Might Be Giants - From the Here Comes The ABCs album. I was surprised and not surprised when TMBG started putting out albums for kids. It's a really great album though, lots of great songs like "Who Put The Alphabet In Alphabetical Order?" and "The Alphabet Lost And Found."

Zanzibar (My Lives version), Billy Joel - I love this song, this version especially, since the ending jazz jam is extended. I had no idea for a long time that the first verse was about Muhammad Ali (it sounds like he says "Allie"). I read an interview where Billy Joel said that he and his band felt like grownups playing this song.

Oo Ee Baby, Herman's Hermits - I never heard this song until the Hermits' British albums were released on CD. I didn't miss much with this one. There's a lot of stuff that I would like to hear that is still unreleased, although I did get to hear a bit of it courtesy of Andrew Sandoval, who works (or did) for Rhino Records, and wrote a recording sessions book on the Monkees.

Not Behind The Fighter Jet, Guided By Voices - What a great poppy song by GBV, I love the guitar in this one. I wonder how Robert Pollard manages to remember all of his lyrics.

Poorboy Shuffle, Creedence Clearwater Revival - An instrumental track from the Willy and the Poorboys album. It features the band playing the instruments they are sporting on the cover, and are also mentioned in "Down On The Corner."

Don't Need A Reason, Beth Orton - A new addition to the iPod since last time I think. I saw her video for "She Cries Your Name" back when it was new and loved it, so I started picking up her albums. She has a great voice.

Me About You, the Lovin' Spoonful - From the last Spoonful album, after Sebastian and Yanovsky were gone, and the lead vocals were taken over by Joe Butler. I've only heard two of the tracks from this album, and this is not the one that I like, as it plods. "Never Goin' Back" is much better.

Animal, R.E.M. - I loved this song when it first came out (the first time I heard it was at the zoo, if you can dig that). It's one of those songs that comes up almost every time I hit shuffle though, so I've gotten a little sick of it.

Wow, the Beatles own 14% of my iPod, and they didn't show up until #52. That's weird.

Boo!

2010-11-18T13:55:00.003-05:00

Here are some excellent step-by-step ways to scare me at work. All methods assume that I am in the building by myself (most days until 5 am):

1.Enter the building way before your scheduled time.
2.Jingle your keys without me seeing you.
3.Come around the corner into the bakery and say, "Hi! I didn't want to scare you, so I jingled my keys."

1.The night before, leave the 18 wheeler in the dock with the overhead door open and the metal plate in that connects the truck to the floor of the dock. Pray that I don't notice this.
2.Wait until I am in the freezer with the fans off, so I can hear.
3.Get in the truck and pull it away from the dock so the metal plate falls to the ground with a large crash, making me rush out of the freezer with fogged up glasses so I can only see the overhead door open.

1.Sneak into the building a few minutes before you're scheduled, when no one else but me is there.
2.Sneak into the bakery area.
3.WHISPER my name from across the bakery while my back is turned to you.

This last one is the most effective, that happened many years ago. The first one happens a few times a year. The second one happened this morning. Luckily I had gone to the bathroom right before I went to the freezer.

Taken to the cleaners?

2010-11-17T11:28:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago I decided I needed new sneakers for work. I wear them out pretty fast at work, as I'm on my feet for at least 8 hours a day and I am almost always moving. I know when I have to get new ones when it's raining and my feet get wet on the short walk from the car to the door. It usually takes me awhile to get them, as I don't really like going anywhere right after work (not to mention take off my shoes in public after work, despite the foot powder that I use), and I can't go anywhere after dinner but bed.

Sarah was off on a Wednesday, which is also my day off, so we ran some errands together. We went to a nearby town where the town center is being revitalized and many of the independent stores have been there for quite awhile. There is a 60 year old shoe store there, and I always thought it was a women's shoe store by the name (which I won't mention, but I'm not sure why). Sarah said it was for men and women, so we went inside.

The first thing I noticed was that is was like walking into the shoe store I used to go to when I was little. It smelled the same, it looked the same, and there were Stride Rite signs everywhere (the store I went to when I was little was Stride Rite in the old Menlo Park Mall, I had to get special shoes made because my left leg is shorter than the right). The proprietor had been sitting and talking with two other older gents, and he jumped up when we came in and asked us how he could help us. I said I needed new sneakers for work, and he asked me what I did. I told him I was a baker, and he said he had just the shoe for me, because he sold the same shoe to a lot of chefs in Rehoboth (a beach town in DE with scads of restaurants). He then told me to follow him so he could measure my foot.

This floored me, to tell the truth. I had not had my foot measured since I was 12 or so. Once I started buying my own shoes, I just bought shoes I liked in whatever size I was (I have gone from 10 1/2 in my late teens to 12 now). Some shoe stores do still have those foot measuring things lying around, but I never used them. I prefer the floor mat version, which I noticed recently that Target has. So I sat down and he pulled up that little stool thing with the foot ramp on the front and proceeded to take off my shoe (he asked first, but it didn't make it any less uncomfortable). After he found out I was a 12, he went back and got a pair of size 12 Converse (not Chucks, I wore those for a log time and my feet are probably suffering for it now), and he put them on. I got up and walked in them, and I was surprised at how comfortable and springy they were. I couldn't believe the guy nailed it on the first try, so I have to give him credit for knowing his product. I figured since they were Converse sneakers they would be no more than 60 bucks, but I never asked. I just took them up to the counter and he mentioned that I never asked, but I said that was fine, they were comfortable and most likely worth the money. He said the price wasn't too bad (his words exactly), they would be 90 dollars.

90 dollars! I have never, ever paid that much for a pair of shoes before. I bristled inwardly, but thinking about the comfort and fit, and the guy being the owner of an independent shoe store, I paid the 90 dollars. I did have some buyers remorse, but only for the price. When I wore them to work I was extremely happy with them, and he did say they were easy to clean, which I need to start doing, because they get gross pretty fast.

After a few days I started thinking that I should get a spare pair of the same Converse, because every time I found a good pair of work sneakers, I would look up the same model when I needed a new pair, and they would always be discontinued (mainly New Balance sneakers). So I typed the pertinent info into Google and found out the actual retail price. Across the board, they were no higher than 45 dollars.

I was pissed! I paid twice as much as I should have, and I was going to leave a nasty review on yelp.com. Luckily, I didn't do it right away and I had some time to think about it. I probably would not have found these sneakers if it wasn't for this guy, so there's that. I wondered if the price would have been lower if I had asked what it was at any time during the fitting, which was really a stupid move on my part. I don't know if that's how much he actually marks these sneakers up, or if he was having a bad sales day and saw an opportunity to make a few extra bucks. Whatever it was, I won't leave a nasty review, but I also won't go back there to get another pair. If they were 60 dollars, I would have been fine with it. But a 100 % markup of the MSRP is just too much. The service was great, and the guy was effusive in his thanks, but I don't know if I could ever go back there. I realize that he has to make a living, but I do too. I'm chalking it up as a learning experience.

Mission accomplished

2010-11-16T14:45:00.003-05:00

Yes, that is a clean refrigerator! On the inside, I didn't actually get to the outside, it took about 4 hours just for the inside. There are still Christmas cards from last year hanging on the outside, maybe someday. And it was clean out your fridge day, not clean out your freezer day, so don't ask.

I took all of the shelves out, that was the first time I did that. We got this fridge in 1998, so yeah, ewww. See the drawers on the bottom? I have taken those out and cleaned them before, but I didn't realize the whole assembly came out. There is a glass shelf on top of them that just rests on top of the drawers. I thought it was permanent, but it was actually just some brown goo that was sticking it in place. Once again, ewww.

The drawers used to shriek whenever you pulled them out, but not anymore. Underneath the drawers was pretty bad, how does stuff get down there? Apparently it travels down the back of the shelves, as I found clumps of spilled baking soda down there. I haven't had baking soda in the fridge in at least 2 years. I hope National Clean Your Oven Day is coming up soon.

Happy National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day!

2010-11-15T14:00:00.003-05:00

Yes, it really is. This is what our fridge currently looks like, I seem to only clean it when I spill something in it. So I am going to take today to actually clean it out and also get rid of anything old in there, which may not be too bad, I threw a lot of stuff away recently (I found some cream cheese I forgot about, it was very green). With any luck I will actually do this. I will post the results tomorrow. So if you don't see an after picture in tomorrow's blog, you will know that I am a terrible lazy person.

What?!

2010-11-14T09:54:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I went to an audiologist to get a hearing test. I have been having trouble hearing lately, especially when there's a lot of background noise. I tend to hear different words in place of the real words; for example, the other day I heard my co-worker say she bought a bag of owls but they didn't taste very good. It's funny when I repeat what I think people say, but it also isn't.

The audiologist said that I do have some hearing loss, but not really enough for a hearing aid just yet. When I was younger I had a lot of painful earaches, seemingly once every couple of weeks. I was always at the doctor getting wax flushed out of my ears (I did an allergy scratch test back then, and the result was that I had an allergy to milk (my favorite drink at the time), which caused excess earwax, go figure). That may be a contributing factor. I was playing in bands for 12 or so years when I was in my teens and early 20s, and I went to a lot of club shows during that period, but the audiologist said that probably didn't have much to do with it. I went to a club show a few years ago, and it was the first time that I needed to wear earplugs. And actually, instead of killing the sound like I thought they would, they actually made the music more distinct, instead of the wash of noise that you usually hear at a club show.

The culprit may be the iPod. I never was into listening to music on headphones much until I got into the iPod. I resisted for awhile, Sarah got one for her birthday, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I eventually caved, and she got me one for myself, and it is now a constant companion. I have earbuds, the regular Walkman-type headphones, and a pair of ear-encompassing headphones. The audiologist said that a good rule of thumb for if your iPod is too loud is if people around you can make out what you're listening to. I cut the grass with my iPod on, and I used the ear-encompassing headphones for that so I can hear the music. One time this summer I was listening to A Day In The Life by the Beatles, and the orchestra buildup in the song actually drowned out the sound of the mower. I think that's when I realized that I had better start turning it down.

I always thought I had a mild version of tinnitus, because every once in awhile one of my ears would close up a bit and there would be a high pitched sound in there. This has been happening as long as I can remember, so that's probably due to the earaches, but the audiologist said it wasn't tinnitus. What he did say was that I have trouble hearing higher pitched sounds, which means women's voices, which is mainly what I hear all day, as I work with all women and am married to one. At work it's really bad, because there's a lot of background noise, and I have to have them repeat things 3 or 4 times sometimes.

I do say What quite often, but I have tried to vary it since I use it so much. I say Pardon, Excuse Me, and my favorite, I'm Sorry? I got that one from Die Hard, where Hans Gruber doesn't hear what one of his henchman says, and says I'm Sorry in order for him to repeat it. Saying What is also a reflex, I do say it sometimes when I've heard what the person said to me, which is kind of weird. Another thing I do is to repeat back what the person said if I can catch myself before saying what. I just need to concentrate and listen and stop saying What if I don't have to, because it gets annoying for the person that is talking. I can just picture myself as an old man (say, 48 if I keep up my iPod habits) with a giant ear trumpet saying What all the time, and scaring all the children.

Random bird

2010-11-13T21:53:00.002-05:00

The other day I was driving nearby the house. The road I was on is a two lane road, not really a highway, but the speed limit is 50. The road is in a residential area, so driveways are right off of the road. I was in a line of about 3 cars and we were all going the speed limit. I saw a guy on my right walking from his house to his mailbox at the end of the driveway, but he was facing away from the line of cars. Then I noticed that he was giving the cars the finger as he was walking. We weren't speeding and we weren't making a lot of noise, just general car noise. I was so stunned by this that I didn't think to beep until well after I passed him and his bird. It was a weird sight.

Opposite Day

2010-11-12T14:56:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was a great day, mainly at work. I woke up and I didn't feel tired like I usually do, and my shoulder that has been bothering me wasn't. My back felt pretty good (I have a protruding disc at L5, which comes and goes), and the plantar fasciitis in my heel wasn't bothering me either. With the fasciitis and my shoulder, I usually have to walk down the stairs sideways, one step at a time. I do exercises for my heel, but I have not been to the doctor for my shoulder yet (I'm sure that is in Sarah's list of things to do, I hate talking on the phone so she makes all of my appointments). So none of that stuff was bothering me.

I had a lot of work to do yesterday, and everything fell into place beautifully, and all the bread looked really great. As did everything else. I usually get some help around 4.30 am, but not on Thursdays, but I was chugging along really well and I didn't need it. I even got a couple things done at home too. I kicked some ass yesterday.

Today I got kicked in the ass. I woke up in pain from everywhere, tired and not wanting to go to work. I screwed up a few mixes today and overproofed a lot of stuff, but luckily didn't burn anything. There was a lot of yelling and cursing going on. That has to happen before 4.30, because I don't like doing that in front of the people at work (plus, I can be fired for cursing). So I was having a big pity party for myself for most of the day. I know that it's all in your attitude, but it was so hard to get out of that funk this morning, I did try once people started coming in. It eventually lifted but I was still in wanting to go home mode, and I was able to leave early, after 9 hours, which kind of sucks. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. The challah did look really good today though, so there's that.

Sourdoughmania

2010-11-11T12:58:00.004-05:00

I make sourdough bread at work. Usually the mix I make gives me 6 loaves, and I make mostly round ones and a long one sometimes. 6 loaves is not a lot, really, but they have been selling out everyday. So I started to make a mix and a half, which, if you do your math correctly, gives you 23 loaves. I mean 9 loaves, sorry. Now those have been selling out too. All the bread has been selling really well in the past few weeks. I don't know if it's just the fact that it's colder (our business picks up a lot when it gets cold), or more people like my bread. I have been getting a lot of compliments on it lately, which is really great.

Maybe it could be the sourdough starter I use. I first started making sourdough bread at work in 2002, and I made a starter from scratch. I am still using that starter today. Before you say eww gross, I feed it almost everyday, which means I make a new batch of starter and mix it in with the old. Plus I use milk instead of water, so it gets even more sour. And I throw a little cider vinegar in there too. A lot of people hate the smell when I open the bucket, but I love it. Sometimes it smells like apples for some reason.

I have not tried actual sourdough bread from San Francisco, which I think is where sourdough originated. There is a lot of yeast in the air in that area, and they don't even put yeast in the starter there, from what I have read. I think that's pretty awesome, and eating a loaf of authentic San Francisco sourdough bread is on my bucket list. Wow, I used bucket twice in this blog. Seems like a good ending point.

No, today is Veteran's Day. Instead of using this day to go shopping for something cheap that you don't really need (yes, I see the irony that the first part of this post was about shopping), say thank you to a veteran for putting their life on the line so we can have the freedom to make stupid blogs like this. Thank you Kevin!

Back to Facebook.

2010-11-10T16:13:00.003-05:00

Earlier this year I decided that I needed to get off Facebook, because it was taking up a lot of time (I have no willpower when it comes to the internet). I managed to stay off for awhile, but I missed seeing what some of my friends and my family were up to, so I signed up again, under an alias. I used an alias because I didn't need the amount of friends I had the first time, so no one would be able to find me under an alias. No one figured it out.

Today, I decided to change back to my real name. Why? I'm not sure. The decision to leave Facebook and rejoin under a psuedonym were contemplated for awhile, this was a spur of the moment decision. I already got back one friend that I'm really happy about, so I think it's a good idea. We'll see if it reverts back to a massive timewaster. I vote yes.

The first death that affected me

2010-11-09T13:42:00.003-05:00

When I was 7, my grandfather passed away. He was my mom's dad and the first of my grandparents to pass away. He came to America from Poland 16 years before he died, so he still had a heavy Polish accent. I only saw him once a year, and when I did, I didn't understand him very well. The only memory I really have of him is him sitting at his kitchen table and smoking and talking with my parents and my aunt and grandmother. I think that all these things made me sort of unaffected by his death. I didn't really know what death was at 7 years old. I think I was sad because my mom and grandmother and aunt were sad. There's a picture of me from the funeral home, I'm wearing my little suit and sitting in a chair in the hallway. I think I spent a lot of time in that chair during the viewings for my grandfather, away from the grieving.

When I was 11, I was friends with a boy named Michael, who was a grade below me. We were in the Cub Scouts together, and we spent time at each other's house. One day at school we had an argument about something, I forget what it was now. We didn't speak to each other for a few days. Then the weekend came and I probably forgot about the argument.

On Monday we found out that Michael and his father had taken a boat on a fishing trip over the weekend. I think there was a storm of some kind, and they never came back. They found Michael first, and his dad a week or so later. They had a funeral for both of them, and we went as a Cub Scout troop. Michael was buried in his Cub Scout uniform, but his father had a closed casket, because he was in the water for so long. I felt so bad for Michael's mom, he was an only child, and she had just lost her entire family.

I also felt terrible about the argument I had with Michael. I spent a lot of time wishing that I had spoken to him before the weekend, instead of having our last words to each other be in anger. And after all, he was only 10 years old. 10 years olds don't die, older people do. When you're 10 or 11 years old, or hell, even 40 years old, you think you have all the time in the world. But sometimes you don't.

The worst part about getting older

2010-11-08T15:22:00.003-05:00

I turned 40 last December. It wasn't a big deal to me, it was just another birthday. I don't feel old at all, I still think of myself as a kid sometimes. Granted, I have abused my body with food over the years and I have aches and pains, but I can still walk it off. I forget things too, I go into a room for something and forget what it was. It used to be that if I went back to the original spot, I would remember, but I can't rely on that anymore. But I remember eventually.

My hair has been falling out and clogging up the shower drain for years. I can tell that my hairline in front is higher than it used to be. I really don't care if I lose it all, it's one less thing to do everyday. It's gotten fairly gray too, though not as gray as my beard. I really like the gray in my beard, but Sarah doesn't like the beard at all. I have a goatee for maybe a month until I get tired of trying to trim it, then I get rid of it.

The one thing I cannot stand that's been happening recently is the proliferation of nose hair. I can't grow a really thick mustache, but I think if I let my nose hair grow for a few weeks it would be a perfect mustache. Yes, this is gross.

Where do they all come from? It's not like there's a lot of space in there. I used to pluck them, but it makes me tear up and sneeze and it hurts, so I stopped. I bought a trimmer for my nose and my eyebrows (my eyebrows get really bushy, and yes, I know that's also gross that I use one trimmer for both, it's not yours!). It seems like I'm sticking that thing in my nose everyday. There's so much hair in there that it has actually shut down the trimmer a few times. I know you're supposed to have nose hairs to filter out junk from the air you breathe, but come on. Maybe I don't have allergies at all, maybe I'm just clogged up with nose hair.

The worst feeling is a nose hair that's sticking out or into the other side of the nostril, and that makes me feel like I have a visible booger in my nose, which is something I'm very paranoid about. Then I have to go to the bathroom and check it to make sure it's not a booger, which is a waste of time because it's always a stupid hair. I know the one time I let it go, it's going to be a booger, and no one is going to be nice enough to point it out to me.

I can't wait until I start getting ear hair. :P

This one time, at band camp...

2010-11-07T06:37:00.003-05:00

I thought I wrote about this already, but I didn't see it. Pardon me if I missed it.

I took up the drums at school in 3rd or 4th grade. When I got to high school, I joined the marching band. I carried the biggest bass drum, because I was the biggest bass drummer. High school band was a rough adjustment for me, but most of my friends were in the band too, so we stuck together and that made it a little easier.

The first year we had band camp at the school, and the 3 years after that we went to summer camps in Pennsylvania. It was the usual teenage hormone knives sticking out of your leg roaming the grounds at 3am setting deodorant on fire littering bug juice gambling vandalism band camp experience. However, no one I knew did anything untoward with a flute.

The first couple of band camps for me were fine, but the last one before my senior year was problematic. I had developed some sort of pain in my side (I have forgotten which one) whenever I carried the bass drum, so much so that I had to play the drum from the sidelines. I think it may have also happened a few times in my junior year, because I remember being in my uniform and watching the halftime show from the stands. I went to a gastroenterologist and they did a bunch of tests, but they found nothing wrong. Still, the pain persisted and I stayed on the sidelines for awhile. I think it did finally go away that year and I rejoined the halftime show in the field, but I never did figure out what was wrong with me.

I have never had a recurrence of this pain since then, but I haven't had anything heavy strapped to myself for long periods of time either (save for my ample belly). I have come to the conclusion that it was psychosomatic. I thought maybe it was nerves, but I was also in a rock band at the time and had no problem singing and playing in front of people. It also could have been the fact that my girlfriend at the time was playing on the sidelines, and I was jealous then. Or it could have just been me vying for attention, I was 17 at the time after all. I think that I have grown out of the attention thing though, at this point in my life I would rather be anonymous to the general public. Hmm, maybe that's due to that pain I had back then. Whatever it is or was, I don't worry about it anymore, but it was a good topic to get through one more day of nablopomo.

OT

2010-11-06T21:24:00.005-04:00

Yesterday at work I got my yearly review. Like I mentioned earlier, I am a dedicated worker there and they appreciate it and treat me accordingly. The one thing my boss said was to cut down on my overtime. This is the busiest time of the year for me, but the overtime I had on my previous check was probably the most I've ever had there.

Up until last week, we were doing two weekly specials, just about every week. We would pick something, cut the price, and make a lot of it everyday and sell as much as we could. The original hope for this was to get people interested in buying the product at the regular price after the special was over, which didn't really work out like that, save for maybe 2 or 3 items. It did involve copious amounts of time spent making one item though, which is why I had all of that overtime. My co-worker that usually helps me out with the specials was off for a week and a half, so I was doing it all myself. I didn't realize I had that much overtime until I got my check, but I didn't actually get reprimanded for it, my boss just mentioned it at the time. But obviously she was concerned about it since she brought it up. Plus, I actually realized that something at work was too much for me and did something about it. I told them that we had to stop the specials until January because it was too much to handle right now. If this was 2 or 3 years ago I would have kept on doing them, but I think I have finally realized what my limitations are. I probably haven't, but it sounded good, right?

I like my job

2010-11-05T13:45:00.003-04:00

In a few weeks I will have been at my current job for 9 years. In April it will be the longest I have worked anywhere (current champ right now is at my parents' bakery). A lot has changed in the past 9 years, I am the only one left in the bakery from when it opened, yes, 9 years ago. My boss is still there but she doesn't do any baking anymore. The bakery was her idea and she worked it for a few months, then left it to us. A lot of people have come and gone, many that I don't remember at all. I can see their faces but I don't remember their names. It's kind of strange that you can see someone for 4 or 5 days a week for months at a time, then later you can't remember them.

We have two stores now, but there is no bakery in the new store, which was a bummer because it's closer to my house. What isn't a bummer is that the bakery is the most requested thing at the new store. Score one for us. They have been talking about transferring stuff from our store to the new store, but I really don't see how it's going to work right now, we are pretty swamped. Maybe in January.

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, so it's making me tired at work, but it doesn't diminish my love for baking or getting up at 1 am to do it. I don't think I could do a 9 to 5 job anymore, I like getting all of my work out of the way before most people eat their lunch. Plus it's necessary, we have limited oven space and the bread takes longer to get to the oven than anything else, and I have to make way for the second shift to start baking when they come in at 7. It is very hectic sometimes, especially when I'm by myself, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

They treat me well there, very well. If I want to try something I can, if I need a small piece of equipment I can get it. They gave me a key to the store a few months after I started, so I must be doing something right. Either that or they didn't want to get up that early anymore.

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but my job means a lot to me, and I want to make sure that I do it right. I do tend to go overboard, and I usually have to get pulled back in by my very understanding wife. But everything is worth it when someone gives me a compliment or says that they traveled a long way to buy something that I have made. It's a nice feeling.

The Lazy Return of Thursday Shuffle

2010-11-04T13:11:00.004-04:00

It was a long day at work today, and I have some things I need to do today before I go to bed early for another long day tomorrow. So yay, Thursday Shuffle!

The Old Grunt - Guided By Voices-I forget how I got into GBV, I think it was just by reading about them. This is from Mag Earwhig! where I think they started getting into more 3 minute pop stuff. The earlier albums are very avant-garde. "Did his wife in with Dueling Banjos" is a great line.

Reckoner - Radiohead-I like In Rainbows a lot, but it's not my favorite of theirs. I don't know what is though. Definitely not the first album.

Allentown (Live) - Billy Joel-This is from 12 Gardens Live, where he pulled out a lot of obscure stuff and lowered the key of every song, presumably so he could hit the high notes. This is probably my least favorite song on The Nylon Curtain.

The Scoop - The Beastie Boys-I am really just starting to get into the Beastie Boys, I am very familiar with Paul's Boutique, but not this one. I can't listen to them at work because of the Amish and Mennonite women that work there.

Arousing Thunder - Grant Lee Buffalo-I got into them via the Mockingbirds video, the Mighty Joe Moon album is awesome. I didn't like the next album too much, then Paul Kimble left and they put out this great album. Not my favorite on the album though, but it does hark back to MJM while most of the rest of the album is very rock based.

Russ - The Inbreds-This is an obscure bass and drums band from Canada, and they currently are my #2 album of all time (Kombinator). This is from a stray tracks collection (Hilario) and it's a great song. There's another band called Inbreds which are more metal, this ain't them.

It Came Out Of The Sky - CCR-Much like John Lithgow in the Twilight Zone movie, I love Creedence. More so in high school, I think, and we did a cover of this song in one of the bands I was in because we each got to pick a song to cover. We told a friend of ours who later became our drummer that we wrote this and he believed us. There was a lot of that when we were young.

Pressure - Billy Joel-Another song from the Nylon Curtain, definitely one of my favorites of his. BJ tends to make embarrassingly bad videos, and I think this is one of them.

The Boy From New York City - The Ad-Libs-I actually grew up on the Manhattan Transfer version from the early 80s version, but they put a little too much vocalising into it. I prefer this simpler version these days.

The Hot Rock - Sleater-Kinney-Sleater-Kinney can rock really hard and do really great mellow stuff too, and this song is of the latter variety. The interplay of Carrie and Corin's vocals is excellent, and even better when all three are singing. This is one band breakup that really bummed me out. I'm glad we got to see them live.

The end, maybe more content tomorrow. Then again, maybe I won't. :)

Ooh, Mac The Knife! Overdone at karaoke, but still an awesome version by Bobby Darin. EEK!

A Childhood Dream Come True

2010-11-03T07:23:00.003-04:00

I don't think I've written about this yet, I'm too lazy to check, and I have never tagged anything, so you get what you get.

Remember the Scholastic Book Fairs in elementary school? They would take over a classroom for a few days, and there would be books piled everywhere that you could buy. It was heaven for me. It was a lot better than the catalog, where they had only a smattering of books and then you had to wait for them to be shipped to the school. I did love getting Dynamite magazine from the catalog, but I can't remember if they had them at the fair.

One of the books that I bought at the book fair when I was 8 or 9 in the late 70s was the Guinness Book of World Records. I absolutely loved that book, I used to pore through it everyday. I think I first heard about it on the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby and Cindy are trying to go for the see-saw record. I believe it was also the first time I saw a current picture of Paul McCartney. I was a burgeoning Beatles fanatic and at that time, had only seen pictures of them as Beatles (I think Paul was in there for songwriting).

The entry that most captivated me was for the World's Quietest Room. At that time, it was located in Bell Labs, in my home state of NJ! I had no concept of where it was, but I knew that it was close by. The entry mentioned that you were able to hear your own heartbeat while in the room, I think that's what really got me. I built up an image in my brain of a dark room with red lights all over the place, trying to match the air of mystery the room had in my head. (I was also fascinated with the phone at the time, which is much different than it is now. My family went to Sears once, and I remember seeing a darkened inside window, and I could see red LED lights and make out the outline of a person inside. I asked my mom and dad what it was, and they said it was a switchboard room for the telephone system in the store (my mom was a phone operator at one time). So I think I transferred that mystery to the Quiet Room.) I read the entry over and over and dreamed of going into the World's Quietest Room. But eventually, I grew older and forgot about it and the Guinness Book.

In 1995, I started working for the food service contractor Aramark. The building that Aramark was servicing was AT&T in Murray Hill. Murray Hill was vaguely familiar to me, and I thought it was because of the sign for it on Rte. 22. But you know where this is going already, right?

On my first day of work, I found out that my friend's dad also worked in the building, and both of us were very surprised to see each other. We caught up a little and saw each other a lot at work over the years I worked there. His son and I were in a band together, so we talked about music a lot (he was also a musician).

Eventually I found out that I worked in the same building as the World's Quietest Room! I asked my friend's dad about it and told him my story. He told me that it was indeed in the building, and that it was no longer the World's Quietest Room, which made me a little sad. I don't know if I broached the subject of my seeing the room, but he didn't take me there then.

On my last day at Aramark, my friend's dad came to the kitchen and asked me to come with him for a little while, and I got pretty excited. He took me into an auditorium and showed me the sound system that was there, which was pretty cool. Then we were standing at the door of the World's Quietest Room! It was nothing like what I had dreamed about. First of all, it was huge. Wikipedia says it's wedge shaped, but I recall more of an oval, but it was a long time ago now. You entered the room in the middle of the wedge/oval, and the floor was made of some kind of netting (the engineer in there told me what it was, but I have forgotten). It was a little rough walking through there, but upon entering, it felt as if your ears closed up on you, but you could still hear. You know how when you hold your ears shut with your fingers, and you can hear yourself in your own head? It was like that, but much clearer, and of course you weren't holding your ears.

One of the coolest things that the engineer showed me was when he walked a few feet away from me, and his voice had the same volume as it did when he was standing next to me. Then we all stopped talking for a minute, and sure enough, I could hear my own heart beating (it was going pretty fast at the time!).

Even though I had forgotten about the room and it had lost its worldly stature, it was still one of the coolest things I have ever done. And my friend's dad was the best for taking me to see it and fulfilling a childhood fantasy. Thanks Al!

Yay, it's Christmas!

2010-11-02T14:48:00.003-04:00

Christmas officially started today, for me. My adoring fans may remember last years November blog post about foods I like to eat and make at Christmas, mainly Archway pfefferneusse. I am friends with Archway on Facebook, and they said their holiday cookie assortment would be available on November 1. I made it to the store that usually has them after work today, and there they were! There are two new varieties this year, one is a choclate cookie called Snow Top and the other is a sugar cookie with candy can bits in it called, oddly enough, Candy Cane. OMG the Candy Cane cookies are awesome. I did not buy the Snow Tops because I am trying to eat better and I had to buy some pffeferneusse. I just wished they still made the fruit cake cookies, those were awesome. I was inspired by them to find a recipe for work, and they sell pretty well, plus they have a longer shelf life because they are filled with booze. You should see the Amish woman's noses wrinkle when I soak my fruit in bourbon (that's not a euphemism for anything, just so you know). The store also had, as an added bonus, Southern Comfort egg nog (booze not included, dang it). I also make my own egg nog at Christmas/New Year's, but I don't drink it on school nights because it too is filled with booze.

You may be wondering if I'm a lush, if that is still a PC term. I am, but just at Christmas time, and as long as the booze is in something. Although I generally will dump some bourbon or brandy in the pancakes whenever I make those. Go ahead, try it and tell me you don't like it.

Anyway, sorry about that. I get the Baking Sheet, which is a quarterly, uh, magazine is probably too generous a term, and pamphlet is too stingy, so I don't know. King Arthur Flour puts it out and it is chock full of recipes, and the most recent one is for the holidays, and this year there is a pfefferneusse recipe which I want to try. The Archway has raisin paste in it, but the Baking Sheet version doesn't, so we'll see how it goes.

Wow, it's great to see that I haven't lost any of my writing skills.

This is not my fault

2010-11-01T17:51:00.004-04:00

It's National Blog Posting Month again, and my friend Monica has shamed me into joining again this year. How did she do it? She wrote on my Facebook wall, I provided my own shame. as is my wont. But it will be fun, I'd rather be doing something active on the internets than passive. So he says.

The keyboard just said low battery, so I have to wrap this up. Plus I have to go to bed. So I will end with a quote from one of the trick or treaters last night, it was a boy of around 10 or 11, and really, it's a life lesson in one sentence:

"I have no skin, and I regret nothing!"

You can't get much more succinct than that, right?

Christmas Disappointment, Atari Style

2010-10-04T12:12:00.004-04:00

Non-video game geeks, bear with me here.

Say it's Christmas, 1987. You and every other kid in the universe want a Nintendo. Your parents or whatever adult figure in your life know this, but maybe they're not really clear on what a video game is, or they're hopelessly behind the times. Maybe they're turned off by the 200 dollar price tag. Maybe they have fallen prey to a salesperson who wants to get rid of old stock.

Christmas morning comes, and you rush downstairs and go for the box that you think the NES is in. You hurriedly and excitedly tear open the wrapping to find...

An Atari 2600. Junior. In 1987.

This scenario popped into my head yesterday because we went to a Goodwill, and I found a box full of 2600 games with a 2600 Jr. console, which I bought (I collect them). I noticed there was nary a Combat cart among the 41 carts in the box, nor a Pac-Man, both of which were pack-in carts for the original 2600.. There was a late 80s version of Space Invaders (you can tell by the label), and a few other late 80s games, as well as a few reissued games from the late 70s-early 80s.

The Atari 2600 Jr. was released in 1985 or 86. It apparently was ready a few years before that, but the Video Game Crash put an end to it, until the NES came along to resurrect video games. I think the reasoning behind releasing the 2600 Jr. in the heyday of the NES was to get rid of old stock, and to be able to say that the 2600 Jr. played more games than the NES. Not that they were better, because they definitely were not. Well, that's subjective.

So what I think happened was perhaps that mom and dad saw the huge NES price tag, then saw the lesser Atari price tag (under $50), and also saw that the games were also dirt cheap compared to the NES (I remember seeing 2600 games at Pathmark for a dollar in the mid 80s). So their precious child could have more games for the same price, and could get a lot more games cheaper from their paper route or lawn mowing money. They also could have been out of touch with video games, and figured that the cheap one was just as good as the expensive one. Whatever the reason, I could feel some one's Christmas morning tears welling up through that box of games.

Candid Camera is now Punk'd, I Guess

2010-09-09T14:12:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went to the bank, and I went through the drive-through lane. There were three lanes in total, and I went into the empty one. While I was waiting, the person in the far lane got the tube thingy back, and they proceeded to back out of the drive-through lane. Obviously there was no one behind them, but there also wasn't anything blocking their way forward. The person next to me had a small trailer behind their truck, and they also backed out of the drive-through lane. There was plenty of room for them to get through the front with the trailer. I was perplexed by this time, and I looked all around for hidden cameras, but saw none (that's why they're called hidden, I suppose). I resolved that I was not going to be one of those people who just blindly does what other people do before them, wrong or not, and left in a forward motion. Thankfully I did not explode or run over a bunch of glass or end up on Youtube, but it was strange nonetheless.

Breaking The Law (Unintentionally)

2010-09-08T11:55:00.004-04:00

I consider myself a law-abiding citizen. Not just federal law, but really rules of any kind, which I suppose is boring to some people. I don't really speed much anymore; my last speeding ticket was 10 years ago, but this decision grew out of my very first car accident 4 years ago, which wasn't my fault. I try my best to keep on the straight and narrow in everything I do. Having said that, I'm going to tell you about the time I broke into a Burger King.

My friend Jeff and I became obsessed with Pink Floyd while in high school, and we heard that tickets were going on sale for a Roger Waters solo show in Madison Square Garden. We decided that we would go and wait in line for tickets at midnight, figuring there would be a long line. We hit the Foodtown and bought lots of drinks and snacks to tide us over, then we headed to the late Cheap Thrills in New Brunswick, which was the closest place that was selling tickets to the show.

We got there around midnight, and there wasn't anyone there. There was a parking lot behind the store, so we parked there and waited for awhile in the car, thinking that we would go and get in line when someone else showed up. By 3 am, no one had come, and we needed to go to the bathroom. We got out of the car and started to walk up the street, and we saw a Burger King that was lit up. We assumed that it was open since all the lights were on. The fact that we didn't see anyone didn't bother us, since it was 3 in the morning.

Jeff grabbed the handles on both of the glass entrance doors and pulled them open. We went straight back to the bathroom and decided to get some food on our way out. We went to the counter and looked at the menu for a few minutes, waiting for someone to come and take our order. No one did, so we ended up leaving. On our way out, we noticed that one of the doors that we had opened had a deadbolt sticking out of it. Technically, the doors were locked, but the door without the deadbolt wasn't deadbolted to the ground, so that's why we were able to open them. When we realized that we had just walked into a closed and locked Burger King, we freaked out and tried to put the doors back, to no avail. We speed-walked back to the car, hoping that no one had seen us.

The smart thing to do, of course, would have been to leave, but the Roger Waters tickets were far too important, so we stayed in the parking lot. No one ever came by, so we thought we were in the clear. People started to appear around 7 and we got out of the car to get in line. At around 8, a police car that was riding by came to a halt right where we were standing. We were sure we were going to be arrested and tried to disappear into the sidewalk. The policeman only rolled down his window and asked what the line was for. Someone else answered and the policeman went about his business, much to our relief. After that, we never waited in line for tickets again.

I was reminded of this incident yesterday when I went to the ATM. The ATM at our bank is on the side of the building, and you can drive up to it. Unfortunately, there is usually a lot of glare on the screen, making it hard to see. I was trying to make a withdrawal, and somehow I managed to get to the DOS menu screen for the ATM! I once again freaked out, thinking that the bank was going to think I was trying to steal money from the ATM. Luckily I was able to see the last option on the menu, which was "8 Return." I pressed 8 and it went to a screen that said the ATM was not in service. I was about to pull away when it went back to the normal screen, and I was able to make my withdrawal. I am hopeful that this will be my last act as a criminal, because it's very stressful.

Savannah Vacation, in Food

2010-08-27T16:35:00.001-04:00

If you know us, you know we like to eat, and you know we plan our vacational food visits before we figure out where to stay. We went to Savannah GA this past week for Sarah to attend a Wordpress conference, and it was no different this time.

We took two days to arrive, stopping in Raleigh NC on the way. We ate at a couple places there, but they were not very memorable. When we arrived in Savannah we stayed at a motel called The Thunderbird Inn, which is a 1950s motor hotel that has been restored to its former glory. It was a pretty nice stay, despite the fact that we had to call 911 on our fighting neighbors at 2 am the first night, and were awakened by a drunk person trying to get into our room at 3 am the next night. The food in the area definitely made up for it.

Sarah loves barbecue, so the first place we went in Savannah was Wiley's Championship BBQ, which was a little confusing to get to, and very small inside. I had always wanted to try BBQ brisket, and it was delicious. Sarah had the pulled pork, but I think she liked the sauce better than the pork, so we got a bottle to go. I had the potato salad, and it was most definitely the best potato salad I ever ate.

For our first breakfast in Savannah, we went to J Christopher's, which I just found out is a chain in Georgia. Our vacation rule is to stay away from chain restaurants, unless it is a regional chain that we don't have near us. The vibe was more coffee house than breakfast place, there was art on the walls and it had almost a warehouse atmosphere. One of the front windows was a large garage door, and we wondered if it had been a garage or a firehouse long ago. The food was okay, I am usually upset when I order corned beef hash (my favorite) and it is the pre-made kind, which is what happened here.

That was not the case at Clary's Cafe on Abercorn St. The hash was excellent, Sarah got these huge pancakes that were delicious (but she couldn't eat them all), and the service was excellent. The biscuits were heavenly. the atmosphere was definitely better for us, even though we don't go out to eat for the atmosphere.

Sarah picked a pub for dinner called Molly MacPherson's. The reason she picked it is because they had Scotch Eggs on the menu, which is something I've wanted to try for a long long time. In case you don't know, a scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep fried. The epitome of healthy eating! It was really good though, but not something you want to eat every night. When we got there, I started to think that maybe we should go somewhere else, because it was a small bar that served food, and I thought the food was going to be mediocre. Thankfully I was wrong. I had the fish and chips, which I always get in a place like this, and it was really very good. It was light, which is surprising for fried food, and it wasn't a huge portion, which was nice. We also had the sticky toffee pudding for dessert, which is something else I've wanted to try for awhile, and it was incredible.

Sarah found a place online that we probably wouldn't have found otherwise. The Masada Cafe is actually a church (United House of Prayer for All People) that raises money by selling food from a cafeteria-style setting. It is traditional southern cooking, and it's inexpensive and delicious. The people there were very friendly and talked to us about our trip. The ribs there were awesome.

On the way home we hit two soul food restaurants, Vick's Drive-In in Fayettville NC and Ann's Wings and Things in Stafford, VA. Both had traditional southern food on the menu, like chitlins and pig's feet, which I am frightened of. At Vick's, we both got the cheeseburger and fries, which was way better than it had any right to be. It looked like a frozen or pressed patty, but it was amazingly soft and delicious. I got the ribs at Ann's, which were great, but not as good as Masada's. What was good was the baked beans, which I think were the best I ever had. I got to sample Sarah's turkey dinner, as she was not too fond of it. I liked it a lot, it came with cornbread stuffing and was smothered in gravy. I was perplexed by the amount of mashed potatoes she left, until I ate them (they put vinegar in it).

Sarah's favorite place (I think) was Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room in Savannah. They open for 3 hours a day, and there are 10 person tables inside where strangers all sit together. There is a long line, but luckily we got there a little early and made it in by noon. When you get inside the tables are covered with all manner of southern dishes. The meat on the day we went was fried chicken, which was great. There were a ton of side dishes too, all the southern favorites. You just grabbed a bowl and passed it around the table. The last time I had a meal like that was when I was 8 and I visited my Aunt Emma in South Carolina. On Sunday morning she was in the kitchen making a ton of food and the table looked pretty much the same. It was the most vegetables that we ate on the trip too, so that was good.

My favorite place was The Breakfast Club on Tybee Island, which is about a half hour from Savannah. This place also had a line out front, but we didn't have to wait as long as at Mrs. Wilkes. I love breakfast, especially if it involves eggs and some sort of meat (I have made myself an egg sandwich with hot dogs on it). This place had so many interesting egg dishes that it was hard to decide, but I got a scramble that had kielbasa in it (the owners are originally from Chicago), and it was incredible.I don't normally eat grits unless I'm in the South, and these were by far the best grits I've ever had, just served with butter So good. The best part was we sat at the counter right in front of the grill so we could watch the cooking. They had one guy on the end doing prep and making waffles and replacing empty stuff; then two cooks on the grill in the middle making everything; and I think the owner on the other end finishing and plating. It was beautiful to watch, like a breakfast ballet. I harbor thoughts of doing that myself, so it was a learning experience for me.

All in all, there were very few disappointments, although a major one for me was being plagued with bad coffee. It wasn't all horrible, but nothing was better than I could make at home, which made me very sad. The absolute worst cup I had was in a cafe, of all places.

Some of you who have dined with us in the past may notice the absence of food pictures, which we like to take when we go out. I think it was just that the food looked so good, we just forgot to take them.

Happy Flag Day

2010-06-14T15:12:00.004-04:00

I made this bread at work this morning, in honor of Flag Day. This is something I've wanted to try since Sarah explained caning with fimo clay to me, quite a few years ago. Of course, since that is done with clay, you don't get the problem of rising. I staggered the star section, but because of the rise over the top of the pan, it's a little out of wack. Still, I think it looks pretty neat.

I made four loaves to sell in the store. The four loaves took me a half hour just to put into the pan, so I had to raise the price from $2.50 to $3.25. I wanted to make it $2.95, but I really didn't think that was enough. The coolness factor of the bread might get clipped by the price. I'll find out in the morning.

I'm not sure if people even know about Flag Day anymore. I'm curious as to how many people will look at the bread and wonder why the hell we have flag bread such a long time before 4th of July. I have trouble selling colored breads to our customers anyway, many of them probably think that it's weird and tastes different because of the dye (especially the Amish folks, this is definitely not a plain bread). But that won't stop me! I'll probably have better luck on July 3rd, which is a Saturday. If I can get people to buy bread with dyed hard-boiled eggs in it, I should be able to get them to buy this.

Extra special Flag Day wishes to my friend Jenny, but I'm not telling you why.

Lost in the Supermarket

2010-06-10T14:00:00.003-04:00

When I got to work this morning, there was a cat underneath the store van. I walked a little closer to see it, and I realized that it was Byler #2, with whom I had been previously acquainted. Let me explain that.

Several years ago in December, I got to work one morning, and as was my habit, I went around the store and checked all the doors to make sure they were locked. I didn't turn on the lights in those areas, because there was usually enough light to walk to the door and check it. I was in the back room of the stove shop when I saw something move across the door leading into the bakery. It was a big something, not rodent sized, and it scared the heck out of me. Right near that door are stairs going down into the crawlspace, which is where the big something came from. I went to work and forgot about it.

A few days later, I was walking past the deli cooler, and I noticed the meat ends packages were open and bitten into (the deli throws the ends of the cold cuts into a package and sells them). I didn't know what to make of that, as I had forgotten about the big something I saw.

A couple days after that, I was checking the same door, and someone had left the light on near the stairs. When I turned from the door, there was a small gray cat standing there. When I turned, it bolted into the crawlspace. I ran over to see if i could catch it, but it was gone somewhere under the building. I now had the culprit for the missing meat ends. I could smell cat urine down there too. There was a lot of gravel down there, so she was probably using it as a giant litter box.

The next day I was out in the store (in the early am, so I was by myself), and I saw movement from the corner of my eye, and I quickly turned around and saw the cat again. Only this was a brown cat. So now there were TWO culprits eating the meat ends. When the managers came in, I told them that I saw two cats in the building. They explained to me that they had recently sealed up all the holes in the building, and the cats were probably two of the kittens that lived in the barn behind the store (it looks like a barn, but we use it as a warehouse). It was cold, and they had probably got into the store to keep warm, but now they were trapped. These were feral cats, so there wasn't any way of picking them up and taking them out.

We had two humane animal traps at home, because we had been doing cat rescue at the time. I asked the managers if it was okay if I set up the traps in the store to get them out, which was fine with them. It was very near Christmas, so I was going in around 9 pm at night. I set up a trap in the crawlspace, and two days later I caught one of them, and took her home to wait for her brother to be caught. I set up another trap in the deli, and I actually saw the cat in the trap eating the food, but he didn't trip it closed. I walked all the way around and snuck up on the cat, which amazingly didn't hear me. I smacked the top of the trap, thinking it would shut, but it just scared the hell out of the cat and he ran away. I didn't think I would be able to catch him with the trap after that, but by that time they were putting the meat ends and the bags of cat food away at night, so there was nothing else for them to eat. I caught the other one the next night in the crawlspace.

Now we had two feral cats in our craft room. We made an appointment for them to be spay/neutered at Delaware Humane Association, which does low cost spay neuter, as well as adoptions. We didn't name the cats, so we just called them Byler #1 and Byler #2. The store didn't pay for this, we did, but I didn't ask and I didn't expect them to pay either. We had been doing this for some time, so it seemed like the right thing to do in this case. Most of the people at work thought I was weird for doing this. Maybe not just for this, but oh well. :)

We had to keep them for a few days after the spay/neuter (they stayed right in the traps, thank you). After the few days, we brought both of them back to the store and set them free by the barn/warehouse. We had bought a 20 lb. bag of food and just dumped it behind the barn for them to eat. I did this regularly for awhile, but eventually I had to stop, as it was getting expensive. They lived for at least a year after they were born without being fed regularly, so I figured they could keep it going.

The brown kitty was Byler #1. I saw him only once after he was neutered. He was not happy to see me. The gray kitty, Byler #2, was possibly the cutest kitty Sarah and I had ever seen (I think we took pictures of them in the traps, but I cannot find them). I saw her many times after she was spayed. Most times were when I surprised her in the dumpster. I would have to throw something out when the store was not yet open, so I would open the back door and lob the item into the dumpster. Every once in awhile a frightened kitty would jump out and run back to the barn.

I saw her less and less as the years passed, I think now I maybe see her once a year. It has been said that spay/neuter lengthens a cat's life, so maybe that's why I'm still seeing her from time to time. She's still as cute as ever!

Jr. Bunk

2010-06-03T12:35:00.001-04:00

Jr. Bunk is currently the second in command in our house. He was the first cat we found after we moved to DE. We were at a junk shop in south DE and we saw him when we were leaving. We thought he looked a lot like Bruiser, but he was in a lot worse shape. He had obviously been fighting, I suppose to get whatever food he could (there were quite a few other stray cats lurking around), and he had a flea problem. We left the junk shop and didn't discuss him for a few days, but both of us were thinking about him. I had named him in my head. We called Bruiser Bruiser Bunk sometimes, which was based on a character from Homicide: Life On The Street. So it seemed fitting that he be called Jr. Bunk (the actual character's name) on a few levels. We decided to go and get him.

We went back to the junk shop and asked the man if we could have one of the cats, and he said we could take all of them if we wanted. But we just took Bunky. I don't remember him giving us any trouble when we put him in the carrier, but he may have. We made a vet appointment for him that day, because we didn't want to bring him into the house with all those fleas. We had to kill some time, so we went to eat lunch at Burger King, and Bunk was kicking up a fuss in the back seat. We took him to the vet, and he had shots and tests and a flea bath. We took him home to our apartment, and put him in the half bath in our bedroom, again so he wouldn't mix with the other two cats until we heard from the vet.

This is when we learned about FIV, which is called feline AIDS. Neither of us had ever heard about it, and apparently it was pretty new to the vets as well, because his doctor told us that he would be dead within a year. That was 11 years ago. (My tired joke for this is that we should have gotten it in writing.) He could NOT be let out with the other cats, because he would make them sick and they would all soon be dead. We now know that this isn't the case, that some cats are immune and cats who have it can live full, healthy lives. But back then it scared us to death. We decided that we would leave him in our bedroom once he got healthier.

That also was a trial. The bathroom floor was thick with dead fleas and ticks, and he had horrfic smelling diarrhea for a week. But he did get better, so we let him into the bedroom, where he became a feline nightmare. He would attack our toes in the night, and he would jump up on the bed with a crazed look in his eyes. Eventually, Sarah couldn't take anymore and started sleeping in the extra bedroom. I stuck it out for a bit longer, but I had to join her. The worst part of this setup was: we were only planning on being in the apartment for a year or less, until we found a house. So we only unpacked what we needed and used the extra bedroom as a storage facility. So we had to make room on the floor for our mattress, and we slept like that for almost an entire year. I was counting down the days until Bunk's demise so we could have our bedroom back.

We moved into our house, and Bunky took up residence in the master bedroom (again), only this time he shared it with all of the unpacked boxes! Hah! We had a hard time keeping him in there, which was exacerbated by the fact that we would let him out periodically and keep an eye on him; if he got too close to the other cats, we put him back. It was in this era, one night at 2 am on our way to bed, that we opened the bedroom door, and there was Bunky just sitting on the floor, meowing at us. He was not trying to get out, so we suspected something was wrong. We tried to pick him up and he let out a screech, so we had to take him to the vet. At 3 in the morning on a Sunday. That was a bit pricey. It turned out that he had crystals in his bladder, which was blocking his urethra. This was caused by stress, which of course was caused by keeping him locked up.

So we let him out. Sunny either got FIV from him then, or he already had it from the brief forays that Bunk made into the house (sorry Sunny). Bruiser was sick in other ways and he never got FIV. Bunky immediately made up for being locked up for 4 years by walking everywhere that I walked, especially on the stairs, which I almost fell down twice because of that. He has calmed down a lot with that, but he still needs to be wherever we are. If we call any of the cats or the dog, Bunk will come running first. He likes to cuddle, which is fine, except he never learned to cuddle without his claws, which really hurt. And you can't really pick him up comfortably; he is extremely taut and only goes one way. If you pick him up the wrong way you get a chest full of claws. The vet actually called him a "bowling ball with fur."

Bunk is still plugging away, he's right here next to me on the floor. When we watch TV he will be on the couch, and he is so stealthy sometime that I won't realize that he is on my lap. And he has a weird sensitivity to sounds, he could be bored to tears during a thunderstorm, but a sharp intake of breath makes him jump and shred my skin. But he's a good dude.

Life After Facebook

2010-05-24T14:23:00.003-04:00

Last Tuesday morning while I was at work, I decided that I needed to cancel my Facebook account. Many times, I would come home from work and head right for the computer chair, check my email, check other websites I frequent, then I would go on Facebook. And I would stay on Facebook, almost the whole afternoon, maybe stopping for a few minutes to take the dog out or scoop the cat boxes, or get a snack that I didn't need. I have a lot of time to think while I'm at work, and one of the things that I think about is what I want/need to do when I get home. Sometimes I make a list, sometimes I don't. But nothing ever got done, because I was constantly on Facebook. I know my tenses are all over the place, bear with me.

You might think I spent all of my time playing the games, but I didn't play any. It would have been a lot worse if I did. All I did was search for people, look at pictures (sometimes from people I didn't even know, who were linked to by friends), and constantly update the main page to see who was posting what (I hid all of the game-related postings). If I did actually do something productive away from the computer, I would take a lot of Facebook breaks.

What about moderation? I hear you cry. The first step in moderation was to take Facebook out of the Firefox bookmarks bar, so I didn't have a direct line to it. Pretty stupid, right? It's still right there in the most visited drop down menu, it just takes an extra step. Then I tried limiting my time on it, but there was no way in hell I could manage that. So on Tuesday, I decided that I had to go cold turkey, or I would never get off of it. And I decided that it had to be that day. So when I got home, I posted "bye bye" to my status and got every one's email address that I really wanted to keep in touch with. The only sticking point was that I created a group for my favorite podcast, Tank Riot, and I thought the group would shut down when I canceled my account. So I made my wife an admin of the group, thinking that I would ask the group members if someone could run the group while logged into her account. That was actually resolved pretty quickly, someone else is now running the group for me.

Facebook is definitely internet crack, because I'm having major withdrawal symptoms. One of my favorite things to do on Facebook was to try and find people that I met during my day, whether it be cashiers with a name tag at stores, or waiters or waitresses. This kind of borders on stalking, but many times I couldn't access their pages, and if I could, I gave it a perfunctory look and went on my way.

I miss interacting with family and true friends on Facebook. I don't like talking on the phone, so messaging on Facebook was great for me. I also was interacting with relatives I rarely see, which was really nice, especially when they posted pictures of their kids, some of whom I haven't met yet. My cousin Rob is fixing up his house and posting pictures of the progress, which I liked seeing. But I'm afraid if I go back just for this, that it will get out of control again.

Ultimately, I think Facebook is a great thing, as long as you don't abuse it like I did. One of the best things for me was when I found my friend Steve. He was my best friend in elementary school, and he moved far away right before junior high. We kept in touch for a year or so, but then we drifted apart. I haven't seen him or talked to him since those days. Last year he joined Facebook and we found each other, and we discovered that our lives took similar turns, which is cool and kind of sad at the same time, because maybe it would have been better to experience those things together. But what can you do? The next best thing: We are going to see Steve and hopefully his wife this summer, more than 29 years after the last time I saw him. So thank you Facebook, for improving my life in some areas, and ruining it in others.

Mango

2010-05-21T18:09:00.005-04:00

This sweet girl is Mango. She unfortunately escaped from her home and ran into a person who poured lighter fluid on her and set her on fire, giving her burns over 70% of her body. After being cared for by Merced CA vet Dr. Christine McFadden via rescue group New Beginnings for Animals, she was taken to Best Friends Animal Society in Kanab, Utah. She was well cared for there, but she developed a reaction to the anesthesia that she needed when her bandages were changed. Mango had to be euthanized a few days ago due to the complication from the anesthesia.

How do you look into that face and do something like that?

Remember Sammy Jankis

2010-05-03T14:55:00.003-04:00

After a delay of close to 10 years, Sarah and I finally saw Memento over the weekend (thanks be to Netflix). It's one of those movies that we both really wanted to see but never got around to it (just like Shawshank Redemption, which we finally saw last year, despite my love of all things Stephen King). It was a very good movie; I had heard a little about the sequence being backwards, so I was able to follow what was going on in that part (the color part). The black and white part was a bit more confusing. I did kind of suspect what would happen in the end, but I got the details all wrong. For me, any kind of entertainment that confounds your expectations is good entertainment, and I think Memento falls into this category.

I did not care for Guy Pearce in the main role, which is odd, because I really liked him in L.A. Confidential, but I didn't like the movie, because I read James Ellroy's book first. But this is actually not a review of the movie, it's about one short scene in the movie, which I found to be very harrowing and haunting. It's not the murders (yeah, spoilers, but the movie is out of the statute of spoiler limitations after 10 years, sorry) or any of the violence. It's a scene with Sammy Jankis and his wife (played by Stephen Tobolowsky and Harriet Sansom Harris, respectively). If you haven't seen the movie and don't want to know any details, stop reading now.

Leonard (Guy Pearce's role) tells the story in flashbacks of Sammy Jankis, who suffers from the same fate he does (anterograde amnesia, which means he is not able to create new memories, so he forgets that he has already met people, etc.). Sammy can't remember things from one moment to the next, but he is able to administer insulin to his wife when she reminds him, because it is something he did for her before the car accident that caused his condition. Leonard works as an insurance investigator who has Sammy's case, and he denies Sammy coverage because he is not able to learn new things through habit and routine (like Leonard now does), which suggests that Sammy's problem is psychological, and therefore not covered.

All this obviously takes its toll on Mrs. Jankis, who can't really leave Sammy alone, and is having trouble coming to grips with who her husband is now. The one scene I'm referring to (about 45 minutes into the film) has Leonard narrating most of it, but some dialogue between Sammy and his wife comes through. She is visibly upset because she missed a phone call from someone, possibly when she was out, and the call was taken by Sammy and forgotten. She is angry and berating Sammy, who knows he did something wrong, but doesn't know what, and only knows it because his wife is angry. And possibly because in the back of her mind she knows he won't remember, in her frustration and anger, she slaps him. Just once, and not that hard, but to me, it seemed like that slap caused her to break down, and then Sammy tried to console her. It's a very short scene as I said, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since we watched the movie on Saturday night.

First of all, the two actors are absolutely stunning in the anguish and grief they portray. I've seen Harriet Sansom Harris in a few things, both comedy and drama, and she does both very well. But Stephen Tobolowsky is a revelation. I've seen him in comedy and drama as well, but the comedy side of him tends to stick out (Do you have life insurance, Phil? Because if you do, you could always use a little more, right?). His eyes in this scene were incredibly expressive, and today I found myself downloading all 25 episodes of his podcast and putting his own movie where he tells stories about himself in my Netflix queue. I wish I knew more superlatives or could write more like a critic, but I can't. The guy was in a band with Stevie Ray Vaughan, how awesome is that?

The actual reason this scene caused me to write this post was the moral question it raises. There's no excuse for hitting someone in this situation, but what if the person being hit won't remember? I know in my case, I would remember very well and feel incredibly guilty about it. And it's not really a premeditated act, it stems from frustration or passion of some kind. I get frustrated easily and I have a temper, so I'm worried a bit that if I was in this situation, I would do something stupid and then have to live with the regret. I took care of my grandfather for a few months when I was 20, but I had help and it wasn't hurting my finances, and he was just unable to care for himself for a little while. Still, it was very frustrating sometimes. I don't know if my grandfather ever got wind of my frustration, I certainly hope not, but I do think about it sometimes.

Having someone totally dependent on you to live is a very scary thought for me. I hope that I am up to the challenge if I am ever faced with it.

What's all this then?

2010-04-15T15:11:00.003-04:00

Maybe you're wondering about my kind of garish re-design, hmmm? It is a homage to one of my very favorite sites of the late 90s, tsr's NES Archive. I spent countless hours on that site back then, and I miss it. I eventually got to meet Kevin, the guy that ran it, at a classic gaming meeting (yes, I'm a huge dork). He is currently doing a video game blog called Magweasel. I know the 3 of you that read my blog aren't really that into games, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. Just gettin' some blog points, really. Enjoy the new colors, because they're bad-ass and they're here to stay. (I'll give YOU some blog points if you can guess what movie the preceding paraphrased quote is from.)

If you love something, set it free...

2010-04-14T11:12:00.007-04:00

This post will be ridiculous and requires a lot of back story, but I haven't written in awhile, so here you go.

When I was a kid I played with dolls. Not Barbies mind you, I had MEGO Batman dolls, which were a little bit smaller than Barbies. I was a big fan of Batman because of the 1960s TV show that was rerun every day after school. I had Batman and Robin, and at various times I also had the Riddler, Joker, and the Penguin. I say various times because I got the dolls as presents more than once; they got lost or stolen, and I distinctly remember the Penguin losing all his limbs in the bathtub (they were held in place with some sort of string that was not water-resistant). As I got older I lost interest in the dolls, which I didn't know were called action figures until much later.

I'm not sure when the transition from dolls to small plastic action figures occurred; for me, the Star Wars figures were the first of the small ones. Before that, the aforementioned MEGO dolls and GI Joe dolls were what I knew (in addition to the KISS dolls, which I wanted but never got). Maybe I lost interest when they were made smaller.

Fast-forward to 1991, after my dad closed his bakery and I had to get a real job by myself for the first time. I ended up at Kay Bee Toys in the mall, after having failed to get a job at Suncoast Video, which is where I really wanted to work. I was Christmas help at Kay Bee, but I did a good job and made it past the holidays. The Batman movie had come out 2 years prior, which greatly rekindled my interest in Batman. When I started at Kay Bee, they were blowing out the Batman action figures related to that movie (they were actually from a DC assortment with the movie logo on them). I bought those figures and hung them up on my wall at home. Then I bought the rest of the DC line, and then Batman Forever came out, with its exclusive figure line (from Kenner). I bought all of those figures too. After that I started buying figures willy-nilly. We would get closeout figures like Beetlejuice, and I would also but figures from comic books I liked, like Spawn and X-Men.

I think the strangest collection I had was a set of 8 April O'Neill figures from various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lines. I never read the comic book or saw the cartoon series. I saw the first two movies in the theaters and enjoyed them. But I'm not sure why I bought the April O'Neill figures. I hung them on the wall with the other figures and that was pretty much all I did with them.

Fast forward again to 1998, when we moved to DE. All of the action figures were boxed up for over a year, because we lived in an apartment and didn't want to unpack too much, because we planned on buying a house. When we did get a house in 1999, the action figures stayed boxed up until 2001, when I decided to sell them on eBay. They were just sitting there and I didn't miss them, so what was the point? The action figure market had bottomed out by that point, so I didn't even get a good return on them, but I was happy to let them go. Or so I thought...

The only figures that I regretted selling were those April O'Neills, for some bizarre reason. Sarah says that I brought this fact up quite often. Fast forward again to last weekend. We both got flea market fever in a big way, so we decided to go to a monthly rummage sale a few towns over after I got out of work. The first table we arrived at had 4 April O'Neill figures on it. No other action figures, just her. It was the first time I had seen any in person since I sold mine. My first impulse was of course to buy all four of them. Then the wishy washy impulse kicked in, which asked why I would want these again, since I previously sold mine and had stayed away from action figures for the past 9 years? But Sarah, ever the voice of reason, said that if I didn't buy them, I would regret selling them AND not buying them. They turned out to be a dollar each, so I did buy them. Now I just have to figure out where to hang them up...

Ferg's BACK!

2010-02-22T13:22:00.003-05:00

For those of you playing along at home, you may remember that around a year and a half ago, I developed a protruding disc (at L5, no less) in my back. It didn't make my back hurt, it pinched a nerve and made my leg hurt. When it became excruciating just getting in and out of the car, I went to the doctor, who told me the aforementioned things after some prodding and MRIing. I went to physical therapy until the insurance switched, I bought a back pillow, I did exercises, I took lots of drugs. Nothing really helped. I eventually got to the point where I didn't need the drugs anymore, but I figured I would have to live with this for the rest of my life.

Apparently (hopefully), I was wrong. One of the first things I have to do at work is count what's left, which involves bending over and getting down on my knees and bending over some more. This had always aggravated the pain, so I always started the work day off right (there wasn't really any alternative). Last week, I noticed that my back wasn't hurting after I did this. I also noticed that I had to do my lone remaining exercise (hands in the small of my back and leaning back for 5 seconds) a lot less than I used to. This made me very, very happy. But I don't know why it's happening.

I have some theories. At the beginning of this year, I swore to myself that I would take better care of myself, so I don't drop dead of a heart attack next week. I knew that giving up everything bad for me would not work, so I thought that I would try one thing at a time. The first thing I did was to stop eating junk at work. You may know (since I mention it in every frickin' blog post) that I am a baker, and there is plenty of junk to choose from. I have actually managed to stick to this, save for licking my fingers every now and then, but I don't do that as much as I used to. This move, all by itself, caused me to lose 7 pounds, and pretty much keep it off for the last 3 weeks or so. I have been trying to keep my back a lot straighter lately, and I shoveled snow for a week, but that hurt my back really bad. It was right after the week of snow shoveling that I started to feel better. So maybe I was strengthening my back with the shoveling, and the weight loss is also helping. I don't know.

I do know that I have to take another step to lose more weight, as I am still a fat slob. I have to try doing my meals differently. I tend to take a large meal to work for lunch, then I don't feel like doing anything after that. So the next step would be portion control, which is going to be hard because I like to eat. I usually give myself a bigger portion than I give to Sarah at dinnertime, so I could start there, by giving both of us the same portion.

What about exercise? I hear you cry. Don't rush me. I'm on my feet 8 hours a day, exercise is the last thing on my mind when I get home. But I will get there in time. Still hog-tied to the internets though, that's a problem. I have no idea how to take a smaller portion of that.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T09:10:00.004-05:00

I hope everyone that partied last night is feeling good (or at least so-so) today. We spent the evening at Sarah's sister's house, who made us a great dinner. Then we played the Wii with the kids and then Sarah's parents and aunt and uncle came by, and they played the Wii with us too. We had fun, but Sarah and I were tired, so we left at around 11.30. We had a great time.

I think my plan of not subverting my schedule at work was a success. Ususally I feel kind of depressed at this time of year, because I love the holidays, but I don't get to enjoy them very much because of work and how fast it goes by. I had some help this year for the first time, and Sarah gave me a Christmas tree for my birthday, which we haven't had in a long time (in case you're wondering, she put it in the bedroom to keep it away from the cats).

Right now I don't feel tired, mentally or physically, which is a good thing. Also, I think I finally have realized that the year will be what I make it, not the other way around. I need to extricate myself from the computer and do other things that I really want to do. I need to spend more quality time with Sarah, to keep the house cleaner, to exercise, to plan meals better and cook more often, to have a more positive attitude at work, and yes, to play more video games. Not being sucked into the internets all day will free up time for all of these things.

I hope you all have a great year!

NaBloPoMo - Day Last

2009-11-30T15:18:00.003-05:00

Hooray! I made it. It ended up being mostly about my job, but a man is defined by his work, right? Unfortunately, as I have detailed, this blog felt a little bit like work. I had some topics that I wanted to write about but never got to. I'm not sure why; perhaps if I spend a lot of time a few days a month, it will be easier than a little bit every day. I am going to try and enjoy this whole month, besides Christmas it is my 40th birthday, and it will be busy at work, but not as busy as last week. In case you're wondering, I have no problem turning 40, life begins at 40 and all that. I embrace it.

So you won't be seeing me for awhile, writing anyway. Maybe I'll be moved enough to write something at some point, but it certainly won't be everyday. If I win a prize I'll let you know. :)

I hope I'm just tired.

2009-11-29T08:15:00.003-05:00

I have been pretty cranky for the past few days, sorry about that. I'm hoping it's just work and not sleeping well that is making me that way. This year I didn't upend my schedule like I did the last two years, which I think is helping a lot, but it's not making the crank unavoidable. I don't think anything can do that, save for quitting my job and devoting myself to a life of leisure. That probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Being the manager now is part of it, because I hate being in charge, and I don't see any way out of it at this point. I'm not a born leader, as leaders are, I like to go with the flow I guess. I think being the manager is more stressful than the actual work volume in November and December. I wonder if that's why I'm not sleeping well. I've been having a lot of work-related dreams lately, but they all center around baking and not managing. Who knows.

This Saturday Sarah and I and my sister and her husband are going to Christmas in Odessa. Odessa is a very small town in DE to the north of us. For the past 40-odd years, they get a lot of people in town to decorate their homes (most of which are very old), and they open them to the public. We saw the sign the first time we came to DE in 1997 to scout out living locations, but we didn't make it until last year. It was everything I had built it up to be in those 10 years, and I had a really good time. We stayed overnight on Christmas Eve at Sarah's parents' house last year, and we made donations in all the adults' names instead of giving gifts (her parents did not strictly adhere to this). Aside from my stupid schedule at work, it was one of the best Christmases I've ever had. It came very close to the vibe of Christmas when I was a kid, which I really enjoyed and missed, because most of my family from then has passed away and the rest of us are all over the states. We are doing all these same things this year, so I think it will be even better. I don't really get into the religious side of Christmas; I like the togetherness and the giving part of it, and I try to stay away from the commercial aspect. These days it's hard to avoid.

Slow.

2009-11-28T17:36:00.003-05:00

Today was one of the slowest Saturdays we've had in awhile. I can't really judge it though, since I left 3 hours after we opened, and there were 8 hours left to go. It's usually very busy for the first hour on Saturday, and then it gets extremely busy around 10.30-11. Neither of those things happened. I was hoping to get out after 8 hours, but that didn't happen either. It rarely does.

I have had a nap already, but I still feel pretty crappy. I'm going to sit my ample butt down on the couch and do nothing. This is basically how I feel:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Is it over yet?

2009-11-27T15:00:00.003-05:00

Boy, I'm glad this month is almost over. I don't know if it's because I've been busy at work, but I have grown to hate writing my blog. I never feel I have anything to say. When I do have something to say, it never comes out the way it is in my head. It's like work now, and I dread it and either push it off for awhile, or get it over with fast.

It's weird, because when I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. I think this is because of Richie Cunningham. "Happy Days" is where I learned the word journalist, and Richie was my favorite, so naturally I wanted to be like him. I never really pursued it though. In school when I would have to write papers, I would always do it at the last minute, and I almost always got a good grade. Now it's voluntary and I feel like I suck at it. I know I just need practice, but I just don't want to do that.

After my grandfather passed away, I was talking with Sarah about writing something about him. That same day, I looked at my horoscope in the newspaper, which said something to the effect that I had a great idea for a book and should get to work. It's almost 20 years later and all I have to show for that is a melodramatic first chapter that I wrote here in my blog. I loved my grandfather very much, and I'm the kind of person that feels like I would be disappointing him if I didn't finish the book. But I just don't know if I can do it.

I like to read a lot, and this time of year I don't normally get to do too much of it, but this year I have. Maybe I'll just stick to that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T15:20:00.002-05:00

I have finished cooking Thanksgiving dinner for Sarah and myself, and we are done eating it. It came out pretty good. I was supposed to get a 16 pound turkey, but they brought out a 12 pounder by mistake, and I thought that might be enough. We have a LOT of meat leftover, but that's okay. I'm going to make some stock from the leftover bones and stuff. I hope everyone else had a great meal today!

Things I am thankful for: Sarah, the rest of my family, our house, our jobs, and yes, even our pets. Everyone enjoy the rest of the day. :)

My busiest day of the year.

2009-11-25T22:58:00.002-05:00

Well, it's finally over. I made it through another Thanksgiving. Everyone of my co-workers (and Sarah) did a great job, and we had a lot of stuff to put out for sale today. I made 125 dozen dinner rolls today, among other stuff (if I haven't mentioned before, a big day for dinner rolls is 9 dozen). I got an e-mail from my supervisor after work, saying that all the rolls were gone and that there were not too many pies left. That was nice of him to do that, becuase it was going to drive me crazy waiting till Friday to find out how much we sold. I am actually off on Friday this year, but my co-worker was going to call me and let me know (I did the same for her last year, it bugs her too, not knowing). It's going to make her job harder on Friday, but she'll be there early and I didn't want to have too many leftovers (one year we had around 35 dozen rolls left, that was a nightmare).

Yesterday I had trouble sleeping, I guess I was anxious about the work, because I was having dreams about multiple pans of burnt dinner rolls. I got up an hour early and went into work a half hour early. At around 11 pm I started getting really tired, I was floundering and having trouble focusing, and it took a few hours to snap out of it. At least this year I didn't forget the yeast in anything. It's almost a tradition that I forget the yeast in something on Thanksgiving; one year it was a mix of 42 dozen rolls. That was not a fun time. Hopefully I have broken that tradition.

So now I have two days to relax. Tomorrow I am making Thanksgiving dinner for Sarah and I; this will be my third time making everything by myself. The turkey is currently swimming in brine, and I'm going to make mashed potatoes, apple sausage stuffing, green bean casserole, and a few pies. I brought rolls from work. :) There will be napping, since we'll be alone and we don't have to feel bad about napping, and Sarah is going to watch the parade because she always misses it. We have to take care of our cats- and bunnies-in-law, but other than that and maybe some Beatles Rock Band, we are doing nothing. Hooray!

Oy.

2009-11-24T11:51:00.002-05:00

The last month or so did not prepare me for yesterday. I made less than I did last year, and they cleaned me out. And they didn't start getting orders in until late last week, and I have a lot more orders for tomorrow than I did last year. Today I made 99 dozen dinner rolls altogether. I forgot to mention yesterday that the dinner rolls are all rolled by hand, two at a time. So it takes awhile (it's just me doing them). I had help today, Sarah came in and set everything up for me (thanks sweetie!) and my co-worker picked up the fruit danish and quick breads. That turned a 14 hour day into a 12 hour day. Every little bit helps!

I am all showered already and I'm going to make my breakfast and set up the coffee maker. Good night!

A Quick Blog (While He's Awake)

2009-11-23T13:25:00.002-05:00

This week at work, the top selling item I make is dinner rolls. I make four kinds, white, wheat, pumpkin, and sweet potato. Today I made 28 dozen altogether, but there were no orders. I have a few tomorrow, and many more on Wednesday. Both Tuesday and Wednesday we get a LOT of walk-in sales for dinner rolls. I will most likely make over 100 dozen on Wednesday. I will be going to sleep soon, and I'm getting up at 8.15 to eat, and I should be back at work by 10 (I got home about 90 minutes ago).

I picked up my co-worker last night and I needed to stop at the gas station before work. It's one of those big ones with the huge parking lots, and it was swarming with Amish ruffians when we got there (with their buggies). One of them leaned over and tried to touch the car while I drove past, which is an idiotic thing to do. Unfortunately, the Amish stop going to school after 8th grade, and I didn't learn common sense till 9th grade, so maybe that's it. I like the word ruffians, don't you?

Here We Go!

2009-11-22T15:45:00.003-05:00

Today was a busy day for me, I went to the store this morning to finish my Thanksgiving shopping (which is unfortunately not finished). Then I cooked some stuff for the next three days, which included a meatloaf, goulash, and some gravy and mashed potatoes (the box kind, but I won't cheat on Thursday). Sarah is having a Thanksgiving lunch at work tomorrow, and she ordered a pumpkin and apple pie from my work. I don't like our pie crust, so I made those myself today too. Usually during Thanksgiving week, I eat a lot of sandwiches at work. Not this year, dammit.

Sarah was going to come in to work and help me tonight, but she is out this afternoon and I didn't want to go in too early, so I told her to stay home tonight. She will come tomorrow and Tuesday night though. She saves me a lot of time when she does that. :)

I have to go take a shower and take care of the animals while the food is cooling, then I'll pack it all up before bed. I have to hurry, because I'm getting up at 11 or so. There will be truncated blogs the next few days, probably about work. I know all both of you are on the edge of your seats.

And again.

2009-11-21T13:13:00.003-05:00

Today was a long day at work, I was hoping to get a lot of stuff done in advance for next week. I got most of it done, I had to leave some of it. I can probably get some of the ladies to do it if they have some extra time. I haven't decided what time I want to go in on Monday (or Sunday). I probably should go in late Sunday night so I have enough time to sleep Monday afternoon.

In other exciting news, I ordered my fresh turkey today. I got a 16 pounder so we would have lots of leftovers. I am going shopping tomorrow morning for the rest of my Thanksgiving stuff, hopefully I won't forget anything. I am going to do the brine thing again this year, I've done it twice in my life and it has come out great both times. I am going to have to brush up on turkey carving online, as I have never done that. I also have to figure out what to make for breakfast; obviously something that doesn't need to go into the oven.

Sadly I will be Pookie-free almost all weekend. She was collecting canned food at the supermarket today with her mom and sister, and she's going to the Avon club meeting this afternoon, then to an outing with her boss tonight. Tomorrow she is going to the Penn Museum in Philly for Harry Potter day with her mom and sister and our niece. We went to the first one, and it was really very cool. They had Potter-related displays and classes and also tied in the museum displays to Harry Potter, where they could. They have college students playing the characters from the books, and at one point we passed Professor Snape in a stairwell. He actually glared at us and was very scary! It was a great day and I'm sad it's this weekend, because I cannot go.

I was talking with a co-worker today who just turned 21 last week. She was upset because she will be 30 in less than 9 years! I told her I will be 40 in less than a month. She said that was okay for me, because I am used to being old. That's always nice to hear. :)

Another post about work

2009-11-20T14:17:00.002-05:00

Since this is the busiest month of the year at work (which I believe I have mentioned ad nauseum), this is getting to be a bit difficult coming up with something everyday. Next week will be even worse, look forward to it!

I have been pretty tired lately, and I think I know why. Besides getting up at 12.30 on work days, and going to sleep around 7 each night, and having sleep apnea and a CPAP, I think lack of singing is a problem. I worked by myself for a very long time, I was usually there alone for more than half the day. But this year I finally got some help, I pick up my co-worker every day, and she does a lot of stuff that I usually do, so I can do more bread and rolls. It really is a big help, because usually I have to bring my own help from home, and then it's only on holidays (that would be Sarah).

When I was by myself, I had my music up loud and I would sing along loudly, without worrying about people hearing me. Now, I can't do that anymore. I do have music on, but I have to turn it down, because I can't hear my co-worker talking if it's too loud (and she enjoys talking). That means no singing too, because I feel weird about that. I also had to make a non-cursing playlist on the iPod, because she is Amish and I have a little respect, I guess. So like Butthead says, you gotta have stuff that sucks in order to have stuff that's cool. I am looking forward to the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is the next time I'll be by myself at work. Let the cursing resound!!

Happy Anniversary To ME.

2009-11-19T13:25:00.002-05:00

Today is my work anniversary! I started working at Byler's in 2001, while I was still working in the 13th circle of hell (Sam's Club). The only other place I've worked as long was for my dad, which was 9 years and 4 months.

The bakery actually opened the day I started working there. The store was expanded in August I think, but the bakery wasn't finished until November. We opened on the Monday before Thanksgiving, which I really tried to talk them out of. We had what seemed like a huge space back then, and it was me, my supervisor, her husband, and another woman who made up the bakery. We started at 7 in the morning, which was horrible because it was so late (I convinced them to start at 4 the following week). We didn't really have a plan, we just baked stuff and put it out for sale. We did have a few pie orders for Wednesday, because they had advance notice throughout the store that the bakery was coming.

That first week made Sam's Club look really good. None of us knew what the hell was going on, the ovens weren't working right, and we were using expired closeout crap for some of the ingredients. But it was kind of exciting too, because as the weeks went on, I could see that I could really make a difference and help make the bakery into something special, which I think I have accomplished.

Over the years there have been so many changes in the bakery, and it's gotten bigger (and smaller, if that makes any sense) and a lot busier. I'm the only one left of the original four people who is still in the bakery (my supervisor went back to her office upstairs a few months after we opened), and I hope that will be the case for many years to come, as I don't know how to do anything else.

Turnips and antifreeze!

2009-11-18T08:03:00.002-05:00

I wasn't planning on writing all that yesterday. Maybe my subconscious knew that I wanted to get a lot of things done today, and sitting at the Mac trying to hash out a blog wasn't going to help. So today is short and sweet; if I come back here after Sarah goes to work, that is the death knell for the entire day. Here is a video I like, enjoy!

BUY SOMETHIN' WILL YA!

2009-11-17T21:57:00.002-05:00

It's been kind of slow at work lately, I think people are finally realizing that we are in a recession and are acting accordingly. It was a lot busier last year, but it was also colder last year and we even got a little snow around Thanksgiving. When the forecast is for snow here in central DE, people panic, and we sell lots of bread and milk. It's getting a little colder now, but not much. From what I have seen, people will eat more baked goods when it's cold, which makes the holiday placement very fortuitous for a baker.

The three days before Thanksgiving are the busiest of the year for me. Last year I went into work at 10 pm Sunday night (we are closed on Sundays). I don't remember when I left, but by the end of Wednesday, I almost had my 40 hours in. That may not happen this year, but I'm okay with that. I won't be getting the overtime, but I may enjoy the holiday more. I am cooking for just Sarah and me, and I have off on Friday, so it will be a lot of fun. Sarah has been sick though for the past few days, and I hope she gets better in time for Thanksgiving so she can enjoy it too.

I don't want to give the impression that we throw a lot of stuff away; we don't. When the shelf life is reached, we put it out on a rack by the registers for half price, and 99% of the time, there is nothing left (we do throw it out the next day if it doesn't sell for half price). This has only been the case for the past year or so, which again is due to the economy in my opinion.

A few weeks ago we got a new label machine for our stuff, and the labels now print the pack date instead of the ordinal date (which is what day of the year it is, in numerical order. For instance, the ordinal date on our price sticker for Christmas this year would be 9359; 9 being 2009 and Christmas being the 359th day of the year. Sorry if my explanation insults your intelligence). With the ordinal date on the package, a lot of people didn't know what it meant, and most didn't ask. Now they can see the actual production date, which had me a little worried that people wouldn't buy bread if they thought it was old. I changed the shelf life to 3 days from 4 just to be on the safe side, and we're staling a lot more bread because of it. I've been trying to make less bread, but I've been doing it one way for so long that it's hard to break the habit. One bread that I don't have to worry about is sourdough. It has been selling out everyday (which is only 6 loaves, we are a small volume bakery, unless it's a holiday), and we also recently lowered the price.

I would love to sell more bread; I love making it and I'm pretty good at it. I wish I could concentrate on just that, but we don't have the help (or the sales, so I'm told) to make that happen. We also don't have the equipment. I've mentioned before that our ovens are crappy and we don't have steam in them like regular bakeries do (Sam's Club has steam, for God's sake). Steam gives you a chewier crust, which I like, but the boss doesn't like, or didn't. All the bread had to be soft when I started working there. I have taken to putting bread pans in the oven and filling them with water when I put the bread in to simulate steam, but it doesn't work as well. I wish we could have gotten a rack oven like I asked for for 4 years, instead of the convection ovens that we did get.

Sarah took the week off next week to come in and help me, which she's been doing for a few years now. She usually sets everything up and does the pull so I can start mixing the dinner rolls right away. It's nice, because I normally wouldn't see her those three days for more than a few minutes at a time. Plus she says it reminds her of when I worked for my dad and she would come and visit me when we were dating. I just hope that I'm going to need the help next week.

:(

2009-11-16T14:24:00.003-05:00

Sarah and I were coming home from the doctor today, and we saw a garbage truck on the opposite side of the road. From the front I saw a large pink teddy bear fall to the ground behind the truck. The guy in the back picked it up and threw it in the back of the truck, its head lolling back the whole time. I looked in the rear view mirror as we passed it and saw it among the trash, waiting to be compacted. We were quiet for a minute, and then I asked Sarah, "That was kind of sad, wasn't it?" She said "It was."

Video Game Music.

2009-11-15T12:53:00.003-05:00

This is how much of a geek I am: I like listening to video game music, independently of playing the game that the music appears in. I also listen to game music from games I have never played or have never made it through. I have a bunch of CDs with game music on them, and there is game music in my iPod and iTunes. For awhile, most game music was not in mp3 format, so you couldn't burn it to a CD or listen in Winamp (this is way before iTunes) without lovingly converting it to mp3. This took a long time of sitting in front of the computer, and I did dozens of soundtracks this way, which I still have. Lastly, most of my favorite soundtracks are from the 16 bit era and before, as I never had a Playstation or Sega Dreamcast or anything from the mid to late 90s.

I think a lot of the appeal for me is nostalgia. I played a lot of these games when life was uncomplicated and I didn't have any worries. But some of the music is very beautiful. I have the Secret of Mana game for the SNES, but I didn't get very far into it. I found the music for it (under its Japanese name, Seiken Densetsu) on Usenet, and it's probably one of my favorite soundtracks ever.

Nowadays you can find a lot of these soundtracks in mp3 on various torrent sites, but I try to stay away from those. I'm also too lazy these days to convert the files to mp3, but I will make one exception. Back when I was in the thick of gaming music, there was one soundtrack I was dying to have, because it was one of my favorites and I had logged a lot of hours playing it. Unfortunately, no one had ripped the files from the game back then. I tried to learn how to do it myself, but laziness pervaded. On a whim, this morning I went to a game music site I haven't been to in a number of years, and sure enough, someone had ripped the soundtrack in my absence. I downloaded it and listened to it, and it made me very happy. What game was it? Why, Monopoly for the NES of course. I told you I was a geek!

Stupid cats!

2009-11-14T20:43:00.003-05:00

Just now our cat Toby managed to knock over our free standing halogen lamp, which shattered the bulb all over the floor. I had no less than three cats jump on me and scratch up my legs because of the loud noise. Then they all had to go over and see what the broken shards were before we could go and get the vacuum cleaner. Luckily none of the cats stepped in the glass (luckily meaning unfortunately in this case).

They say that having pets lowers your blood pressure, but they didn't give a maximum allowable amount, which is what the problem is. Sometimes I would rather take lisinopril for the rest of my life than have cats. But I love them anyway, because I'm stupid too.

7 (Cats of Gloom)

You must do a lot of loafing

2009-11-13T13:41:00.002-05:00

Being a baker, that's one joke I NEVER EVER get tired of when people ask me what I do for a living. Oh my yes. :P

Tomorrow at work, I have what I think is the biggest single bread order that I've ever had in the almost 8 years I've been there. 65 loaves of sourdough bread, sliced, for 9 am. The hard part is going to be the slicing and bagging, which sadly I will probably not be a party to. It's Saturday as well, which is the busiest day of the week, so it's going to be a little hairy. But I'm only going in a half hour early, because I don't feel like messing with my schedule too much today. Not that I have important things to do, but Sarah is not feeling well and I want to pick her up at work at 5 so she doesn't have to walk home in the rain. Well, I don't have important things to do besides that. My work ethic has made me miss a lot of time with her in the past, and I also missed a lot of things that I now wish I hadn't, so no more slave to work, unless it's obvious like the holidays. But it's been kind of slow so far this year, and I kind of half hope that it doesn't get any busier so that maybe I can enjoy them a little bit more, which would be nice.

VII

On a slightly related note, I'm really looking forward to making Christmas cookies this year, even though my mixer broke. I won't be doing it overnight like the last two years, so Sarah and I are doing them together. She has already promised to decorate the gingerbread cookies for me. She's very creative, so I'm going to let her do them however she wants. I can't wait!

Nablopomo Day 12

2009-11-12T12:12:00.002-05:00

Good day, and welcome to Day 12.

My friend Monica has a few regular features on her blog. One is Haiku Thursday, where she writes her blog in haiku. This is too much thinking for me today, since it is Thursday. She also does Friday Shuffle, where she takes her iPod and puts it on shuffle and takes the first 10 songs and writes something about it. She usually puts lyrics up, but again, too much work. So I present Thursday Shuffle! I have to go get my iPod, be right back.

Okay, here we go. Please bear in mind that I have about 1000 cds, and only a fraction of them are on my iPod. The burner on the iMac broke after I started putting music onto the iPod. Pleh.

1. Louisiana Redbone, Paul Revere and the Raiders - This is from the Alias Pink Puzz album from 1969, which is long past their peak of popularity. I love the album, but this is not one of my fave raves. I think it's lazy when the same phrase is rhymed over 2 lines.

2. Hang On To Your Ego, The Beach Boys - This is the alternate version from the Pet Sounds Sessions box. I prefer this version to I Know There's An Answer, which I believe Brian wrote new lyrics for after Mike Love complained that the original lyrics (Ego) were too heavy. I may be oversimplifying or totally incorrect.

3. Speed Racer, Devo - From the Oh No, It's Devo! album, which is what many people say, including my wife. I never liked Speed Racer when I was a kid, so this song is also not a favorite. But Devo has feelings too!

4. She Knows Me Too Well, The Beach Boys - This song is kind of typical for post-surfing and pre-drugging Beach Boys; beautiful harmonies, but simplistic lyrics. I still like it though.

5. The Longest Time, Billy Joel - I was 13 when the Innocent Man album came out, and I was heavily into oldies at the time, so I was crazy for this album. Not so much now, but he does a good job doing all the singing by himself.

6. Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway), Billy Joel - This is a live version, from the 12 Gardens album. My first impression of this album was that they detuned all the instruments to accommodate Billy's voice. I prefer the earlier live versions that I have, but he pulled out a lot of obscure stuff on this tour. The song is originally from Turnstiles, which is my favorite album of his.

7. Through The Long Night, Billy Joel - Jeez, the shuffle is broken I guess. This is a beautiful sparse song that always reminded me of the Beatles. I love the harmonies on this one.

8. She's Goin' Bald, The Beach Boys - I think the tune and melody are from the aborted Smile sessions. What a crazy awesome song. "You're too late mama, ain't nothin' upside your head." Genius.

9. Glad Girls, Guided By Voices - This is one of their "hits," as far as you can use that word with Guided By Voices. To me, they seemed to get a lot poppier towards the end. I think this was in a Buffy episode or something like that. Great song.

10. Sportin' Life, The Lovin' Spoonful - It's seems like such a shame that they only released around 5 or 6 albums worth of material. I think all of their stuff with John Sebastian is awesome. This is a nice slow blues song with a great wailing harmonica. Zal Yanovsky is a horribly underrated guitarist, probably because he was also a goof.

Some of you may be wondering where the Beatles are. They didn't show up until song # 24, which is very strange, considering they make up almost 25% of my iPod. Next time I guess.

7.

Veterans Day SALE!!!

2009-11-11T17:14:00.003-05:00

Today is Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day). It is a day to honor United States veterans of all wars. But like most American holidays, it's just an excuse to get a day off work and/or shop. As we all know, Christmas starts in October now, and not everyone celebrates Christmas anyway (I won't even go into the recent War on Christmas here). Thanksgiving is basically for eating and watching football, and I think FDR moved it back a week to kickstart the Christmas buying season. Valentine's Day is a terribly commercial holiday that starts right after Christmas is over. Easter's religious themes have given way to chocolate, eggs, and gifts. Gifts! I never got gifts on Easter, just chocolate. I'm not religious, so many of these holidays mean spending time with family, as that's what is important to me. Last year for Christmas, for adult gifts, we gave money to a charity in their name, but we gave my niece and nephew toys.

Am I also guilty of being a holiday commercialist? Of course, I make food for a living, and I will cater to whatever holiday is coming up. I will take my wife out to dinner on Valentine's Day, and I have gotten her chocolates. But Veterans Day (and Memorial Day) shouldn't be treated this way, as those days are honoring the people that let us commercialize these holidays in the first place! So if you haven't already done it, please thank a vet today. They deserve it.

What, me worry?

2009-11-10T20:39:00.003-05:00

If there's one thing about myself that I would change, it would be worrying. I have always been a worrier, but at this point in my life, it's actually physically hurting me, as well as mentally. I think butterflies in the stomach is due to worry, but sometimes it goes father than that, like maybe you feel really sick or throw up.

When I get worried, I hunch my shoulders, so much so that it is second nature. I have to actually realize that I'm doing it in order to relax, but it doesn't last long. A couple of months ago, we had our Customer Appreciation Day at work. It's usually a very busy day, and it's also a long day for me. I guess that I was super hunching, because by the end of the day, I had a terrible pain in my neck and right shoulder, which went down into my arm. When I left for the day, I could barely use my right arm because it hurt to put any pressure on it. It hasn't hurt like that since then. It's flared up a few times when I've been stressed about something, but never as bad as that day.

I know that I can avoid this. I couldn't change the fact that Customer Appreciation Day was coming, and I can only do my best at work, so worrying is for naught. I don't think worrying has ever helped me in any situation before, yet I do it constantly. Many people worry constantly for no reason at all, usually hurting themselves in the process. Why?

I had a neck pain flare-up today while I was at work. Two weeks ago I read somewhere about male breast cancer, which I don't think I ever heard about before. Friday night when I got out of the shower, I noticed that I had a painful knot underneath the skin on my chest. I thought it was probably a pimple that hadn't surfaced yet, but the breast cancer angle was in the back of my mind, and I started worrying a bit. It got stronger after a few days when the knot didn't go away, and I worried about telling Sarah because I didn't want her to worry. I told her on Monday when I got home from work, and I told her I was going to call the doctor (which is the reverse of what usually happens). The doctor's office told me to call back on Tuesday morning, so naturally my neck and arm started to hurt once I got to work this morning and started thinking about it. Along with worrying, I tend to assume the worst is going to happen, and I make up scenarios of doom in my head. That's what I occupied myself with during work, so I was good and frightened when I got to the doctor's office.

The doctor basically said that my first instinct (the rogue pimple) was probably correct, and that cancerous lumps aren't painful at first, and the fact that it didn't hurt as much now was a good sign. All stuff I could have found out on the internets, if I had stopped worrying for a second and thought about doing that. The doctor is not ignoring it though, I go back next month regardless of what happens to it in the meantime. But it was a relief to hear.

It seems abnormal to live my life without worrying about something, which itself is probably abnormal. I just don't know how to stop.

Fall, we hardly knew ye

2009-11-09T12:26:00.002-05:00

A couple of days ago I had the heat on in the house and it was cold at work. Today I had the AC on in the car, and I'm going out to cut the grass in shorts and a t-shirt. I hope we get back to fall before Thanksgiving, because I am making a turkey for Sarah and me (it's just going to be the two of us for the first time), and I like to brine it. I don't have room for a turkey bucket in our refrigerator. The last time I did it (2001), I was able to brine the turkey in the attic for three days, because the temperature in the attic was well below the green zone. I don't think it's been that way since then. And it would be fantastic to have snow on Christmas, even though we may be driving to be with my sister and her husband. I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I really like this time of year, but it's not right if it's this warm out. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Old Friends

2009-11-08T08:25:00.002-05:00

This morning I had a friend request on Facebook. It was my childhood best friend Steve, who moved to Ohio in the summer after 5th grade. I was very sad to lose him, but it may have been better than what happened with a lot of my elementary school friends. We ended up drifting apart and hardly speaking once we got into middle school and high school. The same thing happened to Steve and I, but I chalked it up to being a distance problem. When you get to middle school, you're no longer with the same people that you've been with for the last 5 years, and there's a lot more people to talk to. So you do drift apart, but I think you get more life experience that way.

Back to Steve. I don't know if we met in kindergarten or first grade. We didn't become really close till probably 3rd or 4th grade. I could be wrong, because short periods of time when you're 10 seem like they lasted an eternity when you're approaching middle age. I think it might have been the Beatles that brought us together. We were both big fans, and he had a lot more of their records than I did. He made me some tapes of them, and I remember him loaning me his white vinyl copy of the White Album, which I didn't have because it was a double album and therefore cost prohibitive. One of my most vivid memories of Steve was on the morning of December 9th, 1980. My mom had left me a note that John Lennon had been murdered the night before, and I went downstairs to watch it on the news. I was sad about it, but I didn't really know yet what had been lost. After awhile, I thought I would go to the school early (it was across the street from my house) and see if Steve was there yet. He apparently had the same thought, as he was walking up my sidewalk when I went out the door (the only time that I can remember him doing this). He managed to look stricken and angry at the same time. I don't remember what we said to each other, but it was good to be together then.

We spent a lot of time together. We would wait outside the school in the mornings, and many times we would cross Hamilton Blvd. and go to the Corner Deli to get baseball cards or Jolly Rancher Apple Stix. We made up a band called the Jumping Doodles, and I had a tape recorder and we recorded a song that Steve had written called "We're All Going To Camp Gitchee Gumee." Another classic was "Lick Your Hand and Smell It." This is what 10 year olds do, I guess. He had a blue hoodie that had the string in the hood, which I coveted. I had to get my clothes at Sears, and they apparently didn't have any blue hoodies or my mom wouldn't get it for me. I finally got my own blue hoodie last year, and it makes me think about Steve whenever I wear it.

If I'm remembering correctly, his moving was a sudden thing, because I remember it hitting me like a ton of bricks. I was very upset, I may have even cried about it. I was moved enough to get him a going away present, which was AC-DC's Dirty Deeds album. I went to his house to give it to him a day or two before he moved, but he wasn't home.

I suppose we did actually drift apart. His moving meant we didn't see each other everyday anymore, but we could write letters to each other. He wrote me a letter, but I don't think I ever wrote him back. I was never much of a communicator, which extends to my adult life. I did call him once when I was on a trip to Michigan, and I think that's the last contact we had, until this morning. It's much easier to keep in touch with people these days with the internet. Steve still lives in Ohio, but Ohio is a lot closer these days. When I was a kid, I had to get permission to call someone who was that far away, and visiting was pretty much out of the question unless we were taking a vacation in the area (I didn't make it to Ohio until 2005, on a Beatles related trip, and I think we were very close to where Steve now lives. Dammit). But now, I can email, or catch up on Facebook, or call (which I probably won't, as I hate the phone, sorry Steve). I can even drive out there and see him if I want, which is not a bad idea at all.

Filler

2009-11-07T19:39:00.002-05:00

Just doing my nablopomo obligation today, sorry about that. I know you were expecting some meandering sentences without a proper resolution today. Sorry to disappoint. Saturday is usually relaxing day, I work the most hours of the week (usually) and I have a catch-up nap. Then Sarah and I eat nachos for dinner and watch television. We are watching the IFC Monty Python documentary, and we are just getting to the part where they start making movies, which is what Sarah has been waiting for. My coffee is ready now, so I'll see you tomorrow.

Christmas Foods FTW!

2009-11-06T14:57:00.003-05:00

You know how when you watch the Food Network this time of the year, and they have promos that say "Season's Eatings?" I take that to heart. Archway Cookies (which briefly went out of business last year and scared the crap out of me) makes a Holiday Assortment every year, and they're usually the only way I can get pfefferneusse (sometimes I can find Stella D'oro, but they're not as good). I am a fan of Archway on Facebook, and they announced that the assortment was now available. Today I went to the only store that I have found them in, but they did not have them yet. They did have a Christmas food half aisle, and they had those giant Panettones and Jane Parker fruitcakes. I bought a dark fruitcake, and ohmygod is it delicious. I bought some egg nog too. I usually get Southern Comfort egg nog, but they didn't have that either, so I got some Lehigh Valley nog. I put some bourbon in it when I got home, which made it a little tastier. This store had these great marzipan-filled stollens last year, but not today. They had a lot left over last year, so I'm worried that they won't have them this year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

But you're a baker! I hear you cry. You can make this stuff yourself! Yes, I can, but I've never had any luck with pfefferneusse. I make stollen at work, but I have grown disenchanted with the recipe I was using. I've been trying some new recipes out in the last couple of weeks, and the first one was actually pretty close to the one I got at the store. I'm going to try a few more; I have some old bakery formula books from the 40s and 50s that have stollen recipes in them that I need to reduce in size, which I'm afraid might make a difference. Plus they have weird stuff in them that would be hard to find these days (does anyone still use powdered ammonia?) I do make a good fruitcake (which I need to get started on, actually), but it takes awhile to absorb all the bourbon and cure. I DO have one that I made over a year ago. I was supposed to send it to my dad, but I never did. I really want to eat it but I would feel bad. I can't believe I haven't eaten it already. It taunts me everyday.

Untitled

2009-11-05T12:16:00.003-05:00

My blog really sucks this month, I can't put cohesive sentences together anymore. Sorry about that, fair readers.

In exciting news, we got our new scale at work, and now the process of labelling baked goods is more precise and streamlined. If only we could get the baking to that point. We have two old 4 door deck ovens (basically pizza ovens). I'm pushing 40 (holy crap, that's the first time I've had that thought!) and those ovens are older than I am. Earlier this year we got a 2 door convection oven. I had been asking for a rack oven with steam for many years, but we got the convection oven to implement the crappy ones we already had. I had never used a convection oven before this, and I told them that. We got it anyway. I was told that it would be good for pies and cookies, but not for yeast-raised stuff, which is my department. A convection oven, for those who don't know, has a fan in it to blow the hot air around, baking everything evenly as well as faster than a regular oven. It baked evenly for awhile, but now, not so much. One of the problems with the deck ovens is that we have to turn almost everything around halfway through baking, which gets to be a large pain in the ass (and my back too, the bottom doors are about 10 inches off the floor). The convection oven was supposed to correct this, but lately we have started turning pans around in there too. Lovely.

When we first got it, we had to figure out how to use it, because the manual was not really forthcoming in this department. We figured out the pies first, they come really nice now. We had trouble with the cookies and bar cookies (brownies et. al.), and people would complain about the cookies that were baked in the convection oven. So now, we don't do any cookies at all in there. I experimented with some of the yeast raised stuff, and the bread in the loaf pans comes out great, as does the cinnamon rolls. I bake the pastries and danish in there too. All in all, I think the convection oven was a bad idea. If I had known more about it or worked with one before, I could have told them, but I was assured that it would be great. I learned after the oven came in that many convection ovens have a switch where you could turn off the fan. This would be great if ours had that, because we bake a lot of cookies, but we can only bake 4 pans at a time in the regular ovens. There are only 2 doors where the cookies come out right, even when messing with the temperature. It's very strange.

Thanksgiving is almost here, so the convection ovens will be very busy with pies, so we'll get our money's worth out of them then. But come January, when it gets slow, we won't be using it very much. Some days it probably won't be worth it to turn it on.

Day off.

2009-11-04T14:28:00.003-05:00

Wednesdays are my usual day off from work, along with Sunday (the store is closed then). I've been off on Wednesdays for as long as I remember, because that is the day that was the least busy in the old days when there were bakeries everywhere. That's not always so these days, but it works out pretty well for me, work-wise. Sarah is not off on Wednesdays, so I am home by myself from 9-5. I usually wake up and take care of the animals, and most times I make breakfast for both of us. This morning I made ham omelets and toast. It was pretty good.

After Sarah leaves, I have trouble focusing on what I need to do that day. I make a lot of plans but hardly get any of them done. I often end up sitting on the internets for most of the day, or I am constantly breaking up my tasks with visits to Facebook. This is actually what I'm doing right now. I have laundry going that I should be folding, but I'm here instead. I am also ripping CDs on my slow PC to put on iTunes on our Mac, which really isn't necessary. But it also breaks up the tasks. I have finished putting out the recycling, but I still have to vacuum, which I'm not looking forward to.

This happens every Wednesday, and I don't know how to buckle down and just do what I have to do, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I have found a program for the Mac that will shut down the internet for 8 hours, but I think that would drive me absolutely crazy, and I don't know if it would work. There's still the tv, and I can still use the Mac for other stuff. I guess I'll get my tasks done eventually, right? How do you stay off the internet or avoid distractions?

Paranormal Activity - WTF?

2009-11-03T21:30:00.002-05:00

Sarah and I went to see Paranormal Activity tonight. We were expecting a good movie, what with all the giant hype that surrounds it. It was really, really bad. People keep saying that it is the new Blair Witch Project, but it really isn't, unless you mean ripoff. I can't understand how people were so scared by this movie, I didn't find myself feeling scared like I did at Blair Witch (which maybe isn't a fair comparison; we saw PA at a multiplex, and BWP in a drive-in, surrounded by trees, and the drive-in owners made up some of those tree-branch figures in the movie and hung them up all over the place. It was very cool). I guess I was just expecting a lot more based on the hype. I remember reading about the movie a few years ago, and even then reviewers were saying it was the scariest movie ever made. I'm a big chicken when it comes to that stuff, and I figured I would have to sleep with the lights on tonight (which happened after Blair Witch). I think the ending (suggested by Steven Spielberg, thanks a lot Steve) instantly negated that feeling for me. I just watched the original ending, and it was better, but not something we haven't seen before in a George Romero movie (spoilers, I guess). Two guys behind us said "You've got to be kidding me" and "Horrible movie" as they were leaving. My sentiments exactly. Sometimes too much hype can be a bad thing, but not in the money department for the writer/director! A sequel has been announced! Let's hope the actors can make more of this than their Blair Witch compatriots did.

Random weird thought for the day: At work this morning, I was walking back to the bakery from the bathroom, and I had to walk through the gift shop stockroom to get there. There was a section of the floor that had a lot of glitter on it. My impulse was to draw a chalk outline of a fairy in the middle of the scattering of glitter. Alas, no chalk.

Day 2

2009-11-02T17:26:00.002-05:00

Hmm, I'm already cutting it close (I should be getting ready for bed now, I usually wake up to go to work at 12.30 am), and I don't know what to write about. I had a crappy day at work which started at home. We were away for the weekend and got back Sunday night in time to start getting ready for bed. I changed all the clocks downstairs that didn't change themselves, then went about my evening ablutions in addition to unpacking the car (does anyone say ablutions anymore?) (addendum to yesterday's blog: I love parentheses). I went upstairs to bed. I put my CPAP mask on (I'm fat and have sleep apnea) and set my clock for 12.30. Yes, without setting it back. So I was up at 11.30 and not real happy about it. But I got ready for work, I didn't want to disturb Sarah by going back to bed, and I was afraid of falling asleep on the couch. Mondays are usually kind of busy, because Saturdays are very busy and we usually get cleaned out. Today was the exception, of course. I got all my work done quickly because when I get annoyed, it quickly turns to irrational anger, and it makes me work faster for some reason. I took some stuff I made down to the freezer, and one of the bagging room workers left a cart kind of in the pathway. The cart had small bottles of soda on it, many of which fell on the floor when I tried to get past (no mess, just lots of bubbles which equates to flat soda down the line. Sorry, customers). When I came back, the woman had moved the cart, but she was up on the ladder and dropped a box of potato chips on my head (it was an accident, but it did not help me calm down). Then I had to do administrative bullshit work, which I don't have to do a lot of, but I hate hate hate doing it. I do love my job like I said yesterday, but just the baking part of it, not the administrative being the manager of the bakery part of it. I'm not built for that; I learned that long ago, but I have failed to apply this to my actual life. Twice now.

We are getting a new label machine in the bakery, and all of the labels have to be input all over again by hand. I'm not responsible for that; I am responsible for going through every label to make sure the weight, ingredients, and price is correct. There's more than 300 items, and it took me 9 hours. That's a whole day of not baking! Not in a row, over 4 days. Yes, I do realize that this is an entire job for some people and I should be happy that I don't have to do it all the time, blah blah blah. Sometimes it just feels good to be pissed off, you know? It gave me a lot of energy today. Usually it ends up badly, but it's hard to just shake it off. It's something I inherited from my dad. He managed to get rid of it somehow, but for me it feels like it's getting stronger.

This is another thing you can expect from my blog: confusion. O_o

Grand Re-Opening

2009-11-01T18:09:00.002-05:00

Hello, welcome to my blog, if you're coming from the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. It is mainly a personal blog, so you will read all about stuff that happens to me and stuff that I like or don't like.

If you have already read my blog, you may have learned the following things about me:

-I love my wife. :)
-I love my job (being a baker), but I did not always love my job.
-I love to eat.
-I love adverbs.
-I love my pets (7 cats and a dog), but they can be infuriating. Right this minute my cat DD is really invading my personal space. :P
-I love emoticons. :D
-I hate paperboys. :(
-I don't update my blog much anymore, unless there's cash on the line.

For those of you who don't know, November is National Blog Posting Month. If you go to nablopomo.com and register today, and you post a blog every day this month, you could win something. I don't know what the something is, I have not checked yet. I'm not in it for that; I do enjoy writing here but I need an excuse to do it, so thanks to nablopomo.com for that.

I must warn you, I do tend to get a little long-winded. I'm not much of an editor yet. But since November is my busiest month of the year, there will probably be a lot of short entries, so don't get too discouraged. After the month is over, if I make it, I will most likely drop off to 2 posts a month again, but who knows. I like Christmas a lot, so maybe I'll talk about that.

If you like or don't like what you read here, please leave me a comment. I think getting comments from strangers would be pretty neat, but I haven't gotten any yet. And lastly, if you are a nablopomo blogger, good luck!

Content Coming Soon!

2009-10-27T15:46:00.002-04:00

So yeah, I haven't been updating my blog, but that's about to change. My friend Monica reminded me that November is National Blog Posting Month (www.nablopomo.com, I'm much too lazy to make html tags, sorry). If you register on the site and post every day during the month, you could win something. I don't care about that, I just need an excuse to write more. Plus Monica told me that the number of hits that my blog gets could go way up, because I registered my blog at nablopomo.com, and they have a thing where it points you to various registered blogs at random (called The Randomizer, natch). It's going to be tough for me to post something everyday, because November is my busiest month at work, but I will try. I have been thinking about a few subjects to write about for the past few weeks, hopefully I can make those happen. The other problem I have is writing a short entry if I have a specific subject. Maybe I'll do installment blogs. Or maybe I'll save the short ones for Thanksgiving week. They'll probably be one-sentence blogs then. I'm excited about it, quite possibly you are groaning at the prospect of my writing. But at least there will be something new here to look at!

Should we talk about the weather?

2009-09-01T13:36:00.001-04:00

It's beautiful outside, in the 70s with a nice breeze going. I'm going outside to play. If you consider cutting the grass playing, YMMV. Ta!

Neglect.

2009-08-31T10:36:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure what, if anything, I'm doing with my blog. My updating has severely fallen off this summer; I suppose I need the structure of NaBloPoMo to actually write something on a daily basis. Without it I write less and less, but with it, I am stressed for absolutely no good reason. I look at the blog from time to time and think, I can write something quick, but I'm too lazy to even be sitting at the computer (which I do incessantly) writing; just clicking on Facebook stuff is enough for me.

What is it about Facebook that, if I manage to tear myself away from it to go and do something constructive, I have to take a break after a half hour and check it again? I sit and wrack my brains, which must be slowly turning to mush, for people's names from my past that I can look up on Facebook. I said to my father in law the other day, a new Facebook convert (who already understands its time-sucking ability), that probably 2/3 of my Facebook friends are people whom I don't really associate with, don't comment on, or I skip their updates (I haven't gone as far as blocking anyone, but I have dropped one "friend"). So with most of these people, we became friends, said hello in a brief message, and that was it. Why? Is it just me? I would consider dumping these folks as friends, but then I wouldn't want to offend anyone, which is even more ludicrous when you think about it. Don't get me wrong, it is a great tool for getting people together and keeping them informed of what you're doing, down to the most annoying details. But when you finally find that kid that moved away in first grade, and feel the triumph of having solved a mystery of some sort, what happens after that? Usually nothing. You may have had many things in common when you were 8, but probably not much 30 years later.

Wow, what a tangent. I'm neglecting many things I want to, and should, do. I'm running out of time and excuses to justify sitting in front of the computer when I get home from work. I always told myself that I wouldn't be on the internets when Sarah was at home, but that's happening a lot now, and I feel the worst about that. I think I could use a support group for this. I'll have to look on the internet for one. :/

Unexpected Emotions

2009-08-16T12:28:00.003-04:00

As I say almost every blog now, I am a baker. I can do cakes, but it's not my strong suit. I have done a few wedding cakes, but to me they are not worth the mental stress (I have had a few bad experiences). I have started saying to people who ask that I will only do wedding cakes for blood relatives, the last one being my sister. But that one wasn't so bad, because my dad and I made it together (I made the cake and icing and did the basket weave, and my dad did the rest).

A few months ago I was chatting online with a friend (I'm not using any names, just in case), and she asked me if I did wedding cakes. My guard instantly went up, but instead of saying "no" I asked "why?" She told me that she had a friend who was a cancer survivor (let's call her Jane to alleviate confusion) and was getting married in the fall. Jane was on a tight budget and lived close to me, and my friend thought it would be a nice gesture to help out with the wedding cake. I gave her my blood relative line, but I told her I would think about it. Meanwhile, I looked Jane up on Facebook. I could only see her photo because of privacy settings, but it was a picture of her and her fiance, and they looked so cute together. I think it was that picture that convinced me to help. I emailed my friend back and told her I would do the cake, but I also stipulated that the only good thing about the cake was that it would be cheap. I don't have as much confidence in my cake making as I do in my bread baking, so I really undersold myself in the email. My friend said that she didn't want the wedding cake to be torture for me, so she didn't let Jane know, and I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I think that same week I started watching Cake Boss, and the show hit a little close to home for me with the bad parts about making cakes, so it was a relief to me that I wasn't going to make the cake.

This wedding cake was still in the back of my mind though, and last week I decided that I would do it, confidence be damned. I just hoped that I wasn't too late, since it was a little over 2 months until the wedding. I let my friend know, and she told me to go ahead and email Jane through Facebook. I went through my friend's Facebook friend list, but I didn't find her. I searched for her on Facebook, but I couldn't find her that way either. I knew her fiance's last name, so I searched for that in the region he lives in, but he also disappeared from Facebook. I Googled Jane and her fiance, but I couldn't find anything recent, and I was panicking because I thought something bad had happened to her. I spent a good part of the afternoon searching for her on the internet, but no matter what combination of words I used, I found nothing. I was really worried at this point, and I emailed my friend to tell her that Jane was no longer on Facebook. She emailed back later that night to tell me that she was there in her friend list, and she sent me the link to her page. I clicked on the link and got my home page, and I then figured out that she had changed her privacy settings to friends only, which never occurred to me while I was searching for her, afraid of what I might find out.

I did eventually get in touch with Jane to let her know that I would be willing to do her wedding cake. She sent me a reply and was very sweet about it, and she told me that they had a cake as a package deal with the reception hall. I was again relieved that I didn't have to make the cake, but I was also disappointed more than I was relieved, possibly because I felt a connection with her after my alarming few hours of fruitless searching.

I have never met Jane, and now I probably never will, but for an afternoon it felt like a friend was slipping away from me. I really don't know why I felt that way, is it strange or normal? Has anyone else felt like this before? I don't mean with a celebrity either, just a regular person. I suppose this kind of chance encounter doesn't come up very often.

Hawt.

2009-08-10T16:55:00.002-04:00

Since I'm a baker, I get to deal with ovens and a proofbox (which doesn't give off heat, but a nice brief sauna when you open the door). Luckily I don't have to work with a fryer, which is the worst. You kind of have to lean into it to flip the donuts and get them in and out, and you have to watch out if you're sweating and it falls into the fryer (I know that's gross, but it happens, probably very often during the summer).

When I was a teenager working for my dad, I worked by myself overnight on the weekends, and despite the ginormous exhaust fan over the oven, it was boiling in that place. A lot of times I would just wear sneakers, shorts and an apron. If you've seen me lately, you're probably throwing up a little in your mouth picturing that (if you've gone that far), but fear not, I was pretty svelte in high school. That's when the sweaty donuts happened.

The only relief from this was either sitting in the walk-in freezer for a few minutes (which didn't really help in the long run, it just gave me a chill because it froze my sweat), or I put on the cold water and used the sink sprayer to spray down my head. I did the water spraying more often, and that's how we get the phrase "go soak your head." Now you know the REST of the story!

At my current job, they added on to the original building and put the bakery in the new part, back in 2001. We've had some problems with air flow in there since then. We have an exhaust fan over the ovens, but it is on the roof, above the hood (we could see the one in my dad's bakery). We found out 2 years ago that it was broken. We could hear it power on, but it wasn't turning. It broke again early this summer, and they said it would be fixed permanently this time. I listen closely when I turn it on now, just in case it sounds different.

The other problem is air conditioning. I only worked at one place where air conditioning was effective, and that was at Rutgers. Other places had it, but it was instantly negated by ovens, and at Aramark, by the 4 giant open steam kettles that they made soups and sauces in. When I first started at Byler's (where I am now), if you walked from the bakery into the store proper, you could feel the temperature drop about 20 degrees. About 4 years ago they put an AC unit in our back room, which was only good in the back room and the warehouse behind that. We put a giant fan in the back room to blow the cold air into the bakery, but it didn't really help. There was a lot of head soaking going on in those years.

There is a thermostat, an air intake, and diffusers in the ceiling of the bakery. We found out last year that the hoses for this AC were screwed up, which is why we weren't getting any air. They fixed that, and lo and behold, we had AC in the bakery! After 6 and 1/2 years! But like I said, it does get negated by the ovens, but it's much more bearable.

Until we got our new convection oven, and I had to move stuff around to make it fit. My back is now to the ovens, and it gets pretty hot. You can see the salt stains in my shirt at the end of the day. Last week, I moved the benches a little further away from the ovens, because we had the space on the other side. Thankfully, it made a big difference.

Thanks for making it to the end of today's disgusting topic. Tomorrow, all about pus!

MORAL: Don't eat donuts in the summer.

On Being Cranky.

2009-07-30T15:10:00.003-04:00

I am a baker, as you may know. I've known lots of bakers in my time, and my experience has been that when bakers get older, they get crankier, a "crusty baker" if you will. I always joked with Sarah that I was going to go this route, neither of us thinking I ever would, since I am pretty happy-go-lucky and I like to goof around. You know where this is going, especially if you read my last post.

Let me clear that up; I was exaggerating a bit. I did almost hit one of my co-workers with a plastic spatula, but it was not thrown in anger. The sink is in the back room, and if I have a soft or light object that needs to be washed, I will step in the back room, lob it into the sink, and turn right back around again. That's what I did, but I didn't realize until it was too late that my co-worker was washing a mixing bowl at the time. I had too much forward momentum and I couldn't stop, and the spatula ended up in her bowl. I did apologize to her after, but she didn't seem fazed by it. My last post was just stupid, but I feel dishonest taking it down now.

Have I torpedoed stuff into the sink in anger? Yes I have. I am not proud of this and I am not making excuses for it. I get my temper from my dad, he had a hair trigger and could be quite destructive at times. He has grown out of it while I seem to be growing into mine. Not that long ago I hated to have people see me like that, but now it seems that I don't care how they see me, which is bad.

My problem is lack of sleep. I don't go to sleep when I should, and when I do go to sleep, I don't sleep well because I'm overweight and don't exercise. I use a CPAP, but I think it's only because I'm overweight. Right now I think I'm the heaviest I've ever been, but I'm not sure. I bought a scale today so I will have to check that out.

I've complained about this before, I hear you cry. Yes I have, and I haven't been doing anything about it. I have a new plan this time that I'm hoping will work, and I hope that I can drag Sarah with me, as both of us would feel a lot better if we lost weight. I have a friend from years ago on Facebook now, and he is also trying to lose weight (he was mentioning exercising and eating healthier in his status updates), and I was asking him about it. I actually asked him if he wanted to race, and he said he would (that's why I bought the scale). People do this all the time I guess, but I never tried it before. I can't really have a weight-losing competition with Sarah, because we tend to enable each other too much, so we both lose. I think it will be easier with my friend Chris, and maybe Sarah can get some benefits out of that, since I do the cooking (no benefits tonight though, I'm making some chicken smothered in a condensed chicken soup and cream cheese sauce, the sauce is awesome).

Meanwhile, I will try to be cheerier at work until I can sleep better. I need to get started before the holidays hit, because then my schedule goes crazy and I don't have enough time to sleep. only 148 shopping days till Christmas!!

You know what sucks sometimes?

2009-07-21T15:25:00.002-04:00

When you're having a bad day at work, and you're surrounded by people so you can't throw stuff or curse loudly. Even worse is when you work with mostly Amish women, and you feel bad if you curse accidentally (on purpose). The absolute worst though, is if you DO throw something and almost hit someone, and you have to apologize. That sucks.

Apparently, making a nice chocolate chip cookie eludes me.

2009-07-20T14:51:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I made a bunch of cookies for a dinner that my in-laws were doing for their church's homeless shelter (I'm not sure if that's exactly right, but the church provides a lot of food for this particular shelter). Sarah and I went to help out, which was the first time I've ever done anything like that. It felt good, except when we sat down to eat with them. I didn't mind sitting with them (they were all men), they were all very nice and we were chatting with some of them about what they did before they became homeless, and what they wanted to do in the future. The thing that made me uncomfortable was eating. I felt like I was taking food away from them, even though there was plenty of food there. I often have seconds when I eat (which you can tell by looking at me), but this time I didn't, for obvious reasons.

Sarah's parents were responsible for breakfast and dinner each day for an entire week. Sometimes they used the food that was there, and sometimes they made stuff at home and brought it with them. Last night was a bit of both. The kitchen/cafeteria was in the basement of a church that was built in the last few years. Apparently they had some Code problems, because the only thing that was hooked up in the kitchen was a 3 door refrigerator. There wasn't even a sink; luckily there was a bathroom in the basement, and we used the sink in there if we needed water (they took all the dirty dishes home to wash). There was a lot of equipment in the kitchen, and they are hoping to get it all installed and running by November, when the shelter gets more people for the winter (there were about 25 men there last night, they had up to 40 over the past week). I was actually wondering why Sarah's parents didn't ask us to help them before this. I have always wanted to help in a shelter on Thanksgiving, but I remember reading somewhere that everyone wants to do this, but no one wants to help the other 364 days of the year. So I guess this is a start for me.

We found out a little about what the men like and don't like (no diet anything, and no decaf!), so I think that I will get some giant cans of coffee to give to my in-laws for the shelter. I will ask to help them next time it is their turn, or if they are helping other parishioners. I don't do a lot of volunteer work (none, actually), and I feel bad about that. I suppose that I was afraid, but I see now that there is nothing to be afraid of.

I also see that I veered from my blog title. I made bigger cookies than I usually do, because I baked off 2 different sized chocolate chip cookies and let Sarah pick which size to make. I baked these 2 cookies in the toaster oven, and they were beautiful. I had my regular oven preheating, so I scooped out the cc cookies and put them in. My regular oven seems to be much cooler than my toaster oven, because the cookies turned out to be a flat mess (the other 3 kinds I made were fine). Maybe it's just the oven, I don't know. But my cc cookies are always too flat, like an halibut.

I need to find synonyms for "apparently."

Yay! New Oven at Work!

2009-07-19T09:19:00.002-04:00

We have a lot of space issues at work (meaning we don't have enough), and this also extends to our ovens. We have two Blodgett deck ovens, which for one thing, are way older than I am. They are also very erratic in the heat department, and since they are deck ovens, they have way too much bottom heat (you usually see them in pizza places). We have to turn the pans around halfway through baking time on pretty much everything, and some stuff can only be baked in certain spots, or it comes out like crap. With the deck ovens, we have space for 16 sheet pans. This may seem like a lot, but it really isn't. We have been asking for new ovens for years.

Finally, earlier this year, the managers told us that they were looking into a convection oven for us (the deli recently got one of their own, as they're making hot foods now, and we didn't always have the space for them to use our ovens when they wanted to). I had never used a convection oven before, and neither had any of my coworkers. So I was hesitant, but it was a new oven, so I was more than willing to try it out. One of my managers had a lot of experience with it (she used to work in a restaurant), and she told me that most of my stuff would probably not be able to be baked in it (I do the breads and other yeast-based items). It would be mainly for pies and cookies, but this way, I wouldn't have to rush to get out of the way when the next bakers came in, which is partly why we wanted new ovens anyway.

It took awhile before they pinned down if and when we were getting the oven, but it finally came in 2 months ago. It took so long because they were refurbishing it. Unfortunately, it was missing parts that we needed, so we had to wait until this week for it to be put in. I didn't totally understand that part. Another problem was that it was not replacing one of our ovens, it was going next to the other ones, which added to the space problems that I mentioned before. We had to rejigger the bakery a lot, which I'm still having problems with, but the oven is totally worth it.

The Stove Shop guys put it in on Thursday night, so I got to be the first person to use it. My basic understanding of convection is that it bakes in less heat and less time than regular ovens, because of the fans that blow the hot air through the oven. This also causes everything to bake evenly as well. The first thing I baked was tea biscuits and scones, which were apparently on too high a temp because they came out too dark. I tried them again the next day on a lower temp, but it was almost the same. I'm giving it one more shot on Monday, and if it's not right, they'll go back to the deck ovens.

I put puff pastry in there next, and after finding out that I have to put the items in the four corners of the pan to keep the parchment paper from blowing over and fusing to the pastry, they came out really nice.

The items I really wanted to try were the danishes, which are yeast based. They were perfect when they came out! They even have more body than they did in the deck ovens. I also made some of the frozen rolls in there, and I'm not sure if I will do that, because they got more top heat than bottom heat, so there was no support, and they eventually got squashed in the bag because of this. I put some yeast breads in there too, and they were absolutely beautiful. I've had trouble with the loaf breads being more than done on top, but not on the sides, so they collapse under their own weight like the frozen rolls did. But these were the same color on all sides, and they maintained their shape, and remained nice and soft on the inside.

My coworkers are having some trouble with the cookies. The pies are coming out really nice, but they're having a lot of problems getting the cookies to come out. Usually they ask me for advice since I've been in the business a lot longer than they have, but I was kind of stymied this time. I'm in the same boat, I have to try it every which way to see what works.

All in all, it's worth it to me, being cramped in the bakery in exchange for the new oven. I am afraid that they are still going to have to wait for me to get out of the convection oven now, because it's awesome!

Hey, wait a minute (I'm writing a book)

2009-07-01T10:19:00.002-04:00

I have been wanting to do this for almost 20 years. I got the idea of writing a book about my grandfather (my dad's father), after he passed away in 1990, and I finally have started it. It's going to be a slow process, but I hope to finish it at some point, perhaps by next year. I think what kept me from doing it until now was the whole getting-it-published thing. Now, I can do that myself online, so that's my plan. I have given up on traditional publishing and I don't care if anyone outside of my family sees it.

I'm not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but that's because I don't write. I was hoping to practice a bit here, but it kind of fell by the wayside. I'm sure I will be endlessly revising this book. It has already morphed into a book about both of my grandparents, as I didn't think I would have enough material with just my grandfather. I'm sure that when I get into it it will be easier, but I'm still a little scared.

I have written the opening chapter, which was also a giant stumbling block, and I feel relieved that I figured out how to start it, which as you'll see, is at the end. I'm going to post it here, but it is an embryonic version, so please be forewarned. I would also love to hear any feedback you have, good or bad. I can always use the help.

I don't have a title for the book yet (I was considering "Southern Gentleman," but that won't work now since it's about both of my grandparents), and I probably won't have chapter titles either. It's pretty long, so you can leave now if you want to. Here goes.

*****

It was 8:30 Wednesday morning, and I was still in bed. Wednesday was my only day off from my job, which was at my family’s bakery. When I say my family’s bakery, I mean just that: it was my parents, my sister, and myself and that was it. We had other employees at one time, but they had to be let go, because standalone bakeries were becoming obsolete in the early 1990s. My parents had recently sold the second bakery they had bought five years earlier. That bakery proved to be a financial disaster.

That Wednesday was also my day off from driving my sister and her friends to school. My grandfather Vance was living with us then, and he drove them that day. He was in the hospital the previous fall for almost three months. He came to live with us after he was released in December, which is partly why I dropped out of college. I was to take care of him in the morning, then go to work in the bakery in the afternoon. I would sit with him some nights and watch television until he went to bed.

At first he had trouble doing anything for himself, but gradually he became stronger. I helped him with his morning ablutions and made him breakfast and lunch. After a few months, he was able to go out, so I mostly took him grocery shopping. I think I took care of him in this way for six to eight months before he was able to do everything for himself, including driving, which was pretty good for an eighty-year-old man. Out of all the things we had to do for him when he was recuperating, I think he missed driving most of all.

I heard my grandfather come in on that Wednesday morning. I was still in bed, but awake. I was feeling lazy that day and I didn’t want to get up. I heard him walking from room to room downstairs, and I heard him scolding one of the cats. I don’t think he actually hated the cats we had at the time (there were four of them), but they always seemed to be in his way or shedding on his things. He used to say to them, “Get outta here!” the same way I hear my dad, Vance’s son, do now when I talk to him on the phone.

It was quiet for a few moments, and then I heard a loud thump. Having four cats, this was not an unusual sound, so I stayed in bed for a few more minutes. I realized that I didn’t hear my grandfather scolding the cats, so I reluctantly got out of bed to investigate. I had on a pair of shorts, but I didn’t bother putting any other clothes on, because I planned on going right back upstairs to bed after I found out what happened.

It was not the cats that made the loud thump. I saw my grandfather’s legs on the floor as I came off the stair landing. He had fallen on the kitchen floor, and he must have been trying to steady himself with one of the kitchen chairs, because he pulled it down on top of him. His nitroglycerin pills were scattered all over the floor. I can only assume that he felt what was coming and tried to stop it, but he was too late. I was starting to panic at this point, and I called out to him, but I received no response. What made me panic even more was the sharp, raspy, and loud intake of breath that came after I called his name. I could see that he wasn’t breathing aside from this, and I was frightened and I didn’t know how to help him. I did have the presence of mind to dial 911, and I called my dad at the bakery right after that. In the first of many regrets I have about that day, I left my grandfather on the floor in the kitchen and went upstairs to put a shirt on. I am still amazed that despite my terror at my grandfather’s situation, I was selfish enough to do this.

When I came back downstairs, I noticed that the fedora that he was wearing was still slightly on his head. I gently removed it and put it aside. Soon after that, the first police officer arrived, less than five minutes after I called 911. I explained the situation to him, and he tried resuscitating him. A second police officer arrived within minutes of the first, quickly followed by an ambulance crew. They brought a stretcher in and cut through his clothes to try to revive him. He was wearing a dress shirt, along with a vest and a sport coat, which is what he normally wore. He used to tend his garden in a dress shirt and pants in the summertime.

The ambulance crew decided that they needed to take him to the hospital, so they put him on the stretcher and took him outside, which is when I saw my dad pull up in his truck. I don’t know how he didn’t get pulled over, because he made the trip home from work in half the time it usually took. He got on the ambulance with my grandfather and went with him to the hospital. The police also left, and then I was alone.

I thought that my grandfather would be fine; that my dad would call in an hour or two and tell me that Vance was okay, that he just had a minor setback. I was in a bit of a daze, but I decided to hang onto these thoughts and do something normal. It was breakfast time, so I decided to make some pancakes for myself. I had the batter all made up when the phone rang. It was a lady from the hospital. I don’t remember what her name was or in what capacity she worked for the hospital, but I did know from the fake tone of her voice that my grandfather had passed away, which she confirmed for me seconds later. I know she was just doing her job, that she probably had to make dozens of these calls every week, but I wanted to jump through the phone and punch her in her face. I didn’t want her talking about my grandfather like that.

I started to cry when she told me that my dad wanted me to come and pick him up at the hospital. To me, this meant that the world was not going to stop now that Vance was gone, which made me feel worse than I did. I attempted to compose myself so I could go and pick up my dad. He was waiting outside where the lady said he would be, and his eyes were red and puffy. I had only seen him cry twice in my life. He told me that he went in to see my grandfather after they pronounced him dead.

I drove back to our house, which seemed very empty. I saw the pancake batter on the counter, so I made the pancakes for my dad and I. I didn’t know what else to do.

Public Bathroom Hijinx!!!

2009-06-15T13:10:00.002-04:00

Not of the George Michael variety, that's a whole other blog.

This is probably going to be just for the guys, since I don't normally go into the women's room. Maybe the womens will appreciate it, but I'm thinking not. I usually get the frowny face when I start talking about bathroom stuff, which is often. But I digress.

Have you noticed that you never see floor length urinals anymore? Have you EVER seen them? The last floor length urinals I used regularly were in my elementary school, and here's why you probably don't see them anymore: they are very easy to stop up and flood the bathroom. And yes, I speak from personal experience. When I was in 1st grade my friend Mike and I were in the bathroom, and it seemed to be a good idea to fill the urinals with toilet paper and flush them numerous times. This was in the 70s, so there wasn't any crap about conserving water, so there was a lot of it all over the floor quickly. I guess we brought wet footprints into the class because we got busted, but instead of giving us detention, they made us apologize to Mr. Hermanns, who was the custodian that had to clean it up. I felt terrible after that, which I guess was the point, and I never did it again. (As a side note, I later found out that Mr. Hermanns was a twice or thrice decorated WW II veteran. And now that I think about it, there were other custodians in the middle school and high school who were also veterans from Korea and Viet Nam. Maybe they were isolated incidents, but it doesn't seem fair.)

Remember the classic hand dryer instructions?

1)Push button.

2)Rub hands gently under warm air.

Did you ever see a dryer that actually had this printed on it? Maybe if you were installing the dryer, but if not, you probably did not see those words. What you actually saw was words and letters scratched out, so it read

1)Push butt.

2)Rub hands gently under arm.

It was the same on every single dryer that you used in any bathroom that had a hand dryer in it. Maybe this even spread to the women's room at some point, but I don't know. I wonder if the company that made them gave up after awhile and scratched the letters out themselves, just like Wheel of Fortune gives you the R S T L N and E for the last puzzle, since those were the only letters that anyone ever picked. But now they have circumvented this problem by having pictures instead of writing. There's the pressing the button picture, the rubbing the hands under the warm air picture, and then the picture I can only describe as peeking inside the dryer and getting acid thrown in your eyes. What does that one mean? Can you actually pull down the dryer thing and dry your eyeballs out? I haven't found one yet where you could do this.

One ineluctable (I had to look that up) part of the men's bathroom is the graffiti. There are web sites and blogs devoted to this, but I want to mention something you don't always see, which is corrected graffiti. If you're a Mad Magazine fan from way back, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, there's a public bathroom that I go into quite often which apparently is also frequented by a member of the KKK, since it has been carved into the stall twice. Some very nice person (probably not in the KKK) has disguised both of these carvings. The first one now says "CHICKKKENS," which is kind of odd because you don't see a lot of chickens using the public restroom. The other one now says "BOOKKEEPER," which is much more clever, because there definitely could have been a bookkeeper using this particular stall, and the KKK is just a little more hidden than in the previous example. This kind soul may also have been the one who carved "PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ON THIS WALL." He said please, right? We must listen to a man that says please.

Finally, a word of advice to manufacturers of public bathroom products that have their company name emblazoned on said products: if your company name has the word "ass" contained in it somehow, PLEASE consider changing the name of your company. Seriously, you're just asking for trouble. I have been in a bathroom where they have the tissue paper rings for the toilet (and really, what a waste of an invention) in a plastic dispenser, with the words "REST ASSURED" written across it. They are raised letters in the plastic, but someone will see it and bring some sandpaper with them next time, and perhaps make it say "REST ASS HERE." I know someone will do this because I have already thought of it. It may take awhile though, because the dispenser was put in upside down. Maybe to discourage the inevitable defacing.

The 16 year old me would be horrified by the 39 year old me.

2009-06-13T21:12:00.002-04:00

Do you remember the song "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)," that came out in 1999? Had lots of nifty life-living advice in it and was NOT written by Kurt Vonnegut? Yeah, that's the one. One of the lines in it is "You're not as fat as you imagine." When I was in school, I considered myself to be fat. I tried to wear long shirts to cover up my gut and I never wore shorts, so I wouldn't expose my thunderous thighs to anyone. But the song is right, and has been proven by the old pictures of me that have been posted on Facebook by my school friends. What the hell was I thinking? NOW I am fat, or at least overweight, and it's a lot harder to do something about it these days. Sometimes I actually pine for the days of mandatory twice-a-week aerobics.

The other day at work, I went into the bathroom about halfway through the day. I then noticed that I forgot to brush my hair that morning, and I wasn't wearing a hat, which is de rigeur for me. I couldn't brush it then because I didn't have a brush with me. So I said "meh" and went back to work. This would have been INCONCEIVABLE to me in high school. I always took a shower in the morning and blow-dried my hair, in order to get it to do what I wanted (which rarely happened). I always had my brush sticking out of my back pocket, and I spent copious amounts of time in front of the mirror in the assistant band director's office trying again to get it right. You would think with a hair obsession like mine, that I would have caved in to men's hair products, but I never did. Nowadays I can't be bothered with a blow dryer or carrying a brush, and the only time I use a product in my hair is when my hair is getting too long and I'm too lazy to make a haircut appointment, so I put some Frizz-Ease on the sides so I don't look like Wolverine. But you know what? I'm the only one who cares.

If you read this, then you'll know that I hated working in my dad's bakery when I was in high school. I would rather have been spending time with my friends. I guess MORE time would actually be correct. You wouldn't have been able to convince me back then that I would still be a baker 20 years later, plus the fact that I love doing it and I put everything I have (and sometimes even what I don't have) into it. I was planning on becoming a rock star, thank you very much. Rock stars don't bake. Well, not in that way.

The only tolerable thing about my loathsome job was the money. I always had money, and I always wanted more. This wasn't just in high school, it lasted well into my 30s, which I think was because I didn't have as much as I did when I was a teenager. I don't know what caused my turnaround regarding money, but I'm glad it's not as important to me as it was. Don't get me wrong, it is of course important to live and eat and all of that. If we lost all of our money tomorrow, Sarah and I would still have each other, and as cliche as that may sound, it's true. My relationship with Sarah and the rest of our family is much more important than our bank account. You can always get more money, right?

I sometimes think that I haven't changed much over the course of my life. I wonder if I think that because almost everything about me has changed? Good thing too, because I was really obnoxious in high school.

Yes, I'm going with the past tense there, thanks.