I need to complain

So, y'know, things are fine. TV Guide was recently bought by Macrovision and, amid various annoyances, they just announced a change in the dress code policy so that every day is now "casual Friday". That's good news, even though i will have to go buy jeans as i currently have only one pair of jeans that's suitable for work (i.e. without holes). And i just dyed a bunch of my hair with "Fuschia Flash", which is great.

But on top of just having too many important things to do today that are all supposed to be done at the same time, i've had a particularly bad morning, which i am compelled to share with you. I was in CT this past weekend, thursday night through sunday night. I got home last night around 10:45pm, got the mail out of my mailbox, took all my stuff in the house and dumped it on a table, and went to bed. This morning i got up with every intention of getting to work early (so that i could try to fit in all those things that need to be done). So i was putting away my stuff and mail, and i opened the box of Proactiv (yay, infomercial acne wash) that had come in the mail (and been sitting in my mailbox for a few days), and out spilled PILES AND PILES OF ANTS! Of course i dropped it and screamed a lot, giving some of the ants time to get away. I gathered enough wits about me to take the box of swarming ants into the bathroom, but not quite enough wits to drop it in the bathtub instead of the sink. Let's just say a long, LONG ant-swatting adventure followed, many got away, i was not early to work, and i am not in a good mood.

I also have a doctor's appointment this afternoon with my GP to see what tests he wants to subject me to re: my random bouts of tachycardia, which some of you know about, and which advanced from mild concern over my heart health to extreme panic that i'm about to drop down dead, when it struck while driving and lasted about 10 times longer than usual. So in your spare time cross your fingers that i'm not, y'know, about to die. And that he doesn't tell me that the only way i can live is to give up cheese.

The price of change

1:04AM this morning. I awake from my light slumber to the crackle of thunder. I think "Oh, shit, why didn't the weather radio go off?" (we have an alarm-based weather radio that chirps to life with the most horrific chime sound in case of severe weather), and roll over and realize the object I was holding in my arms was not my wife, but a pillow (something I do when alone in bed). OK, where is Jessie? If it is thundering out, and she's downstairs, I'm surprised she hasn't come up yet. I look around the dark room, and make out a few familiar shapes -- the picture of Camden harbor, the entrance to our bathroom, and my dresser -- and try and ascertain where the hell Jessie is. I think, wait, call her! (We do this sometimes, especially when she lets me sleep in on a Saturday)

I roll over and smack my hand on the bedside table -- whirr, I don't have a bedside table -- and knock the phone to the floor -- whirr, I don't have a desk phone in my bedroom. Oh, shit, I"m in a hotel. Where am I again? Oh, Ohio. Fuck.

We've moved a fair amount in the past year. One year ago today, I was in a Richmond, VA hotel with my home in Uxbridge, MA. Six months ago (to the day), I was in a London, England hotel with my home in Springboro, OH. Today, I'm in a Miamisburg, OH hotel with my home in Glen Allen, VA.

In each home, I've slept on the same side of the bed -- the left side, if you are looking at the headboard from the footboard. Most hotels have king size beds, and I generally sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door (as most hotel rooms are L shaped, with the bed occupying the foot of the L). Some nights, this is the left side, other nights, the right; the only time I sleep opposite of the door side is when Jessie is in bed with me, and it's a right-side-door room.

Last night was a "left side" room; with a balcony that had a door on the left side of the wall (from my perspective, the same location as our bathroom in Glen Allen), a small table in front of the big window (which looked like my dresser, in the same location as my dresser in Springboro), and a framed picture on the left wall (that was in the same location on the wall as the picture frame was in our house in Uxbridge).

My brain had assessed "home" out of an amalgam of a pillow next to me in bed (my surrogate wife, much to the chagrin of underemployed hotel cleaning staff), a sliding glass window to a balcony, a picture frame on the wall, and a small desk like object that resembled a dresser. I was awake for the next two hours thinking about that. This is the fourth or fifth time that I can remember, that when in a left side room, I've awoken in the middle of the night without the slightest fucking clue where I am or where my wife is. It happened in London to particularly bad results, where I thought for a solid 5 minutes that the massive pile of pillows next to me was my lifeless wife. Or, when it happened in Virginia once and I nearly melted down, unable to reach anyone and convinced that this was either a horrific nightmare or that everyone had left me. (My nightmares are particularly realistic and vivid)

I guess that is the price of change.

A Weekend In Glen Allen

Jessie and I travel many weekends; off to see the Bullick's and Schoenfeld's, off to Kentucky, or home, or anywhere the winds happen to take us. However, this past weekend we were comfortably ensconsed in our humble abode, attempting to relax and get various things out of the way.

So I started Saturday by making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and chocolate ice cream.

Lins and Tim, that is Scharffenberger 62% dark; I think that 70% might be nice next time, and that's about 2 squares from their 275g bar shaved. Note the bowl of cookie dough in the background.

After working hard in the kitchen, it was time to rest:

(note the Yuengling. Can't live without the PA Lager)

We watched "A Mighty Heart", which was a fabulous movie that actually told a story from an interesting perspective (the Daniel Pearl story, but from the perspective of his wife).

We rounded out Saturday with Jessie making the wonderful Baked Ziti and glazed carrots, with a nice Apple and Spinach salad. I worked on my finance "homework", and did a chapter of reading plus the case study questions.

Sunday, I got a nice bike ride in and Jessie made her Bitchin' Potato Salad (it's the actual name, and is bitchin'). I brined and grill-roasted a chicken, which we shared while watching "The Godfather, Part II".

About halfway through the movie, Jessie exclaimed "Look at that!", as the sun reappeared from behind the thunderstorm we had just endured:

All is well on Grace Hill Lane. The ice cream was good (but has lots of room for improvement, 110g of 62% dark chocolate isn't enough; I think next time it will be more like 275g), the cookies pretty damn good, the potato salad the greatest in the world, the weekend relaxing, and the skies beautiful. Jessie finished decorating the guest room this week, and it's pretty spiffy. If you come, we'll make ice cream and cookies, and then some -- hint, hint people: we want visitors!

How is life in your neck of the woods?

SHS in West Lafayette

In the course of some of my daily activities, I've had a few conversations with a woman. We'll call her Scarf Woman because I don't know her name. She was friendly to me when others were unsure if my bandanna-wearing quirkiness was catching or dangerous. Scarf Woman does yoga and has an inspiring life-philosophy symbolized by daffodils. She travels. She is sometimes scorned for some of her eccentricities...we get along.

In the course of one of some small talk about weekend plans, she mentioned that she was leaving for Connecticut to visit her son. As my ears perked up, I managed to ask where in CT she was going. Her wheels were clearly turning..."should I say something about being nearish Hartford, or should I just tell Bandanna Girl (that would be me) the real name...what does it matter anyway?"

Scarf Woman: S...Simsbury
Bandanna Girl: ...jaw drops, crickets chirp, stuttering sets in..."No...no Simsbury...I went to high school in Simsbury...my best friends are from Simsbury", tears well up and I proceed to bore poor Scarf Woman with tales from our high school years.

Her grandson is a freshman at SHS...he plays sports and is in honors classes. By the end of our conversation, Scarf Woman agreed to hold a moment of silence at the high school in honor of me and my love for our school.

Small world indeed!

Last weekend

Hi everybody!

Thank you to the three people on this blog who made last weekend so awesome! And to the rest of you, Andrew and I had a fantastic trip to Pennsylvania last weekend! Andrew co-hosted this great charity barbecue at Wings Airfield and raised money for Angel Flight and the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (which funds the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and The Jimmy Fund). We saw some awesome medical helicopters, and an amazing experimental airplane for one person:

And of course we took advantage of our proximity to Philadelphia to visit with our pals.

Our grown-up friends are cute and awesome and wonderful (and Drover and Savvy are too!), but the blue ribbon of cuteness, awesomeness, and wonderfulness goes to little 10-month-old Penelope! Oh my gosh, she is just a delight! She's crawling like an expert, can stand on her own, and she loves dogs:

She's one smart cookie, but she's still learning to use a remote properly:

Apparently her definition of "solid foods" is a little more inclusive than mine. :)

Camping

My reasons for this post are twofold: I've recently been chastised for my extreme negligence and apparent lack of care and feeling for delightful people in my life, and I've been feeling the need for a moderate rant.

In my head, the idea of camping conjures up ideas of marshmallows, fire, sleeping bags, quiet, birds, gurgling mountain streams, a little romance, etc. Eagle Scout Tim shares many of these visions, though his involve a bit more dirt and fire. With all of these grand visions, we decided to try the whole camping thing again. Previous forays brought a leaky tent, a campground so full of people it felt more like an apartment complex, and lots of time spent washing dishes - not exactly our ideal.

After surviving our first winter in Indiana, we were ready for an outing - some peace away from the loud apartments behind us, a romantic night out under the stars, a chance to enjoy the slightly warmer weather. I looked for nearby parks and found one that sounded perfect - lots of trails, a river, cheap enough, complete with hills (quite an anomaly where we live), and a sassafras tea festival. What more could we want?

We drove a few hours to the park, found a relatively smooth patch on an unpopulated site not directly across from other campers, and went on a short walk until we could buy firewood (there are rules). We saw a snake and I didn't die. We had a pleasant evening of hot dogs, marshmallows, quite possibly the worst cookies ever, and many many more marshmallows. The birds were overshadowed by Ma Beagle yelling at the children that seemed to multiply each hour we stayed - all belonging to the same family. Though we wouldn't describe the setting as peaceful exactly, we'd gotten out into the wilderness, fled the small town life for a village of RVs, we were really roughing it now. Still, there were marshmallows and fire, so life was good.

And then we went to bed. There were waves of sound. The earth was shaking. Earthquake? Mind-boggling sex? No no...out in the middle of this "natural" setting, we were experiencing the race track across the road from the entrance of the park...hidden from view, shockingly absent from any brochures about the park. For over three hours, we were privy to the crescendo of revving engines...now that will rock you to sleep any time.

Since I wasn't sleeping, I had ample time to listen to our recently arrived neighbors - a male and female trucker, another man, a mother, and her small son. It was from these fine people that we learned that the sounds were generated by a race track and not some obscure natural phenomenon. We also learned that they were staying in the Taj Mahal...a tent recently purchased at the local Wal-Mart. A fact the younger man mentioned to anyone lucky enough to walk by his fine structure. The men traipsed through the woods at 1 am, gathering and breaking firewood, while loudly discussing relationships. The male trucker flirted shamelessly with the female trucker by proudly proclaiming he was a gem of a man as he'd stayed with a woman for 11 years and never married her. (I believe this was intended as a testament to the value he placed on marriage.)

At some point, I considered kidnapping the boy. Instead of being in a safe and loving home, tucked into bed, he was awake, in the cold, with some questionable characters, getting in trouble for being loud when egged on by his oh-so-responsible grandmother.

Ah nature, there's nothing quite like it.

Toilet Talk

I remember my mother admonishing me: "Andrew, quit it with the toilet talk, or I'll get a bar of soap!" So, naturally, when I was using a toilet at O'Hare this morning, I thought, wow, why did we call it Toilet Talk? Why not "bad language"? Because, sadly, now talking about toilets is apparently social taboo. How can you say that, Andrew, you may be thinking, but, after an experience this morning, it's clear that we need a National Dialog on Toilets.

Bathrooms, and their design, absolutely fascinate me. No where is our collective neuroses of sanitation, privacy, Puritansim and sexism more evident than in your modern airport bathroom. Why the airport? Because airports are the focal point of all such transient activities -- many cultures, many sexes (I have actually seen a man in woman's dress pondering which toilet to enter, at DFW of all places), and also a prime location for bureaucrats to spend large amounts of taxpayer dollars on white elephant portals to nowhere (like Dayton, OH!). So, naturally, if there is a Hot Trend in Toilets, you'll learn about it on your average multi-segment flight.

So there I am, trying to complete my normal morning routine 642 miles and 2 hours in 12A away from my comfortable, clean, and "Andrew Certified" commode, in the latest bathroom renovation trend to spread like wildfire through airports: the auto-rotating sani-seat, with built in, self disposing seat condom, and anti-microbial plastic doors to help prevent the spread of disease. As a 6'2", 250 pound American male, a Gentleman of Luxurious Proportions, if you will, such fads usually involve some sort of posterior pain and dogfighting-esque manuvering to align my Waste Removal Ports with the Waste Intake Ports that O'Hare has so nicely provided me.

While using this toilet, which I swear had a smaller internal diameter than a 5 gallon bucket (thanks to the massive rotating-condom-dispensing toilet seat), the seat starts to shimmy. You see, in all of their brilliant wonder, the designers of said toilet device decided that after a fixed interval of time, the toilet seat would re-condom itself to ensure that none of the airborne pathogens being emitted from the clearly foriegn man in stall # 3, after eating what had to have been rotting fish flesh for dinner the night prior, would deposit themselves (and thereby sully the otherwise virginal plastic) on the seat. Now, I'm all for rotating around my anal axis, but, I don't like doing it when I've had little sleep and I'm trying to drop core in Chicago. Not to mention, when the plastic slides out, the tacky tape is still fresh and my posterior skin happens to be quite sensitive, especially to freshly exposed, organic compounded loaded super sterile plastic tape. Thankfully, I was able to complete my business before rotation was complete, but now I had a new problem -- this ingenious contraption made deployment of the Hazmat Cleaning Crew very challenging, due to a tight quarters issue. Of course, I'm extremely pleased at this point, after getting what amounts to a reverse lap dance from the toilet followed by some light bondage, and now I'm exploring the Kama Sutra, and finding the Inverse Hibiscus Cleansing position so I can clean up without breaking tender bits.

After all of these gymnastics were complete (the Russian in Stall # 2 gave me an 8 for technical presentation, but shit all over my artistic scores), I had the enviable task of cleaning my hands. The soap was an automatic dispenser, the water manual, and the paper manual. Now, to me, it should go in order of cleanliness: soap manual (because your hands are already dirty), water either way (but should be automatic), and paper clearly automatic (because my hands are clean, and I'm going to touch where everyone else has touched?) But, on some level, this logic escaped the designer and they went with The Really Cool Device That Bukkake's Your Hand With Half Emulsified Foam (I did not think, at the time, to check to see if the device was indeed manufactured by a large Japanese concern) and the I Think The 1950's Are Calling paper towel dispenser.

I think we all need to talk about our toilet experiences. If we don't, we will be relegated to these perverse studies in Industrial Design that probably are some big joke on idiot humans dumb enough to drop trou in public.