I have a huge post boiling up based on a conversation/argument at work today, but first I must interrupt and say FIRST GOAL IN THE NHL BABY!!!!
That's right, Evgeni Malkin popped his first goal past Martin Brodeur in the 2nd period to tie the game at 1. Sadly the Pens didn't pull out the win, but they did manage to pile up some shots. So, hopefully the tandem of Crosby, Malkin, and Staal will dazzle the people of Pittsburgh for years to come. With complement players like Malone, Armstrong, and Ouellet and veterans like Recchi and LeClair, I think we have a solid season. We just need to string together some wins. We're on the road tomorrow so hopefully that will go well. I should have time tomorrow to get into the work discussion. I'm very interested in seeing how the 1 or 2 readers out there actually weigh in on the discussion.

Hopefully Veronica Mars is finding a big enough audience on Tuesday nights on the new CW. I'd hate to see plot lines not wrapped up on that show. I'm not quite sure about Ed Begley Jr's character yet, but maybe he'll face the same fate as Steve Guttenberg. Gage's daycare gave us the heads-up that they're going to be selling Sarris Candy for Christmas. I understand the fundraiser aspect. I understand that chocolate, especially Sarris, is a welcome addition to the holidays. What I don't understand is why they try and pack it in around Christmas. Why not have an April fundraiser when no one else is really selling much and there's less competition? It's the same argument I have with television. Soap Operas are on 52 weeks a year and rarely miss a day's episode. Why can't network television follow a similar structure? The first network that figures out how to have a large ensemble show that rotates story lines and characters to accomodate vacations will build a viewership that will top ER, CSI, and Friends in their respective heydays.

When I was little my family didn't do big vacations. Dad owned his own business and we rarely went far from home. We didn't trek to the Grand Canyon or Disneyworld or places like that. We went camping or to visit family. Those trips rarely required more than 4 or so hours and didn't really take us on interstates or turnpikes. So as a child we didn't play the license plate game the way a lot of people did. We didn't gather states like other people did. We usually started with A and went down through the alphabet using billboards, plates, and roadsigns. However, when 4 different states (none bordering Pennsylvania) passed us on the turnpike mid-Friday morning Terri and I started watching and over the course of the weekend we saw 30 different states, Washington, D.C., Ontario, and a PA plate for Barbershoppers. I thought that was a pretty good haul on about an 8 hour total drive on the same stretch of turnpike. As I said yesterday there were probably a lot more stories I could tell, but most of them would require too much backstory to make it enjoyable. Anyway, I need to wrap it up for Studio 60 and the huge amount of work that needs to get done.

Well, we made it to the hotel (after a detour to the Boyd's Bear Outlet store and several phone calls from the office) with about 25 minutes til we were supposed to depart the hotel for the reahearsal dinner. And Terri and I both needed to shower and I needed to shave. So, we checked in and raced upstairs to our room and made it down in record time. We made it to the rehearsal dinner and started the process of mingling. With the size of Terri's extended family, that takes quite a while. The following day we had a lot of time to kill before the wedding. Then at 4:45 we got on the bus that was to take us to the wedding/reception site. Things got started about 15 or so minutes late and we were in a side room off the chapel which was about twice the size of my current living room. For those of you that haven't been in our living room, that's not very big even at double the size. The rest of the wedding went well and now we're back. I'll probably have some more stories to tell, but I'm trying to get acclimated now that I'm back so I'll just go.

Well, I'm still working to get clear for tomorrow. Theoretically I could work from this moment until I pull away in the car tomorrow morning and still be behind so that's not much help. I do need to accomplish enough tonight so that my QA partner isn't overwhelmed. No sense both of us being stressed. Well, I missed the game tonight since we were at a friend's house, but thanks to the sports package actually benefiting me for once, the Madison Square Garden channel plays all of the Rangers games in 60 minutes so I get to see the outcome, the highlights and in about half the time. So far the game is going well, but it's opened up. After a scoreless first there have been 9 goals so far in the past 30 minutes. And with about 4 seconds to go the Pens go up by the winning score of 6-5. Woo-hoo! That's great so far this year. 3 games and we've won 2 (which is good in and of itself) and those two have been against big east coast rivals the Flyers and the Rangers.

One more day and then a break. Hope I can make it. Oh well, it's time for bed none the less. The bargain bin at the house of Satan actually had some decent picks so I'll have to update the movie selections that I just got.

It's truly not worth having a day off in a company where your work isn't covered while you are out. In my office at Pitt, there were 5 or 6 other people that did the stuff I did, at least until I started being a full time special projects bitch. So, prior to that, I could take a day, a long weekend, or a week and come back and there would be no stress about how to prioritize the stuff that was stacking up while I was gone. No emails to go through or at least no important ones. I've spent the past three days prepping for having Friday off. It's going to take me all of Wednesday and Thursday just to pull into being a little behind before I leave. Then depending on internet access throughout the weekend, I could be anywhere from 2-5 days behind when I get back on Monday.
And, although as I scan back recent posts, I realize that people might get the impression that I don't like my job or I'm unhappy. On the contrary, I really like my job and the people I work with. I just wish my clients would lighten up a little bit. There's no reason to push 80 programs live in the span of 3 months. Especially since we're just not completely equipped to deal with that amount of work.

Another great Studio 60 show. It's beginning to make me want to seek out the West Wing and I can't stand politics.
I like the fact that the show is about plagurism. We were discussing that at work today among designers. Apparently, they knew a couple of people in Pittsburgh who were passing off work that wasn't theirs in their portfolio. Now that might fly if you were moving from one city to another or lived in a large area like LA or New York, but the internet industry in Pittsburgh is incestuous. We don't need 6 degrees here in Pittsburgh, we can do it in 3 degrees or less. When I first started out, my portfolio contained two pieces that weren't solely mine. One was a straight co-authorship (that I did the majority of the work on anyway, because I don't play well with others) and the other was a group project that was split in sections that I could attribute correctly. The funny thing was, I ended up using them as less than the projects they should have been because they weren't completely representative of me. I do agree with the sentiment expressed of a writer plagurizing either knowingly or inadvertently. Any decent writer (and by decent I mean remotely moral or dedicated to the craft of writing) won't even come close to taking an idea or a concept let alone the words that express them.

So the Pens are 1-1 which is still a large improvement over last season. And, although it's certainly still a big question mark over the season, it's hard to hang a 2-0 loss on the goaltender, especially when he's not to blame for either shot.
Interestingly enough, I ran into an old college friend when I saw him flash across the jumbo-tron at the hockey game. So, I ended up at a dinner on Friday night with 30 college students, most of whom are a decade or more younger than I am. It also got me out of bed on a 6:30 Saturday morning to see the first morning of fall rolls for buggy. Of course, since Tom was in town I managed to drag him out too. Then he, Gage, and I came back home and took a nice mid-morning nap. That gave us enough energy to make the Detroit/Pens game on Saturday night. And, through various circumstances, I still haven't sat in the season seats that I paid for. I'm 4 for 4 in not making my own seats.

OPENING NIGHT BABY!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday Mom, Mario, Patrick, John, and Sarah.

Just to start the taunting a tad early...Go Home Flyers!

Tonight is the season premiere of Veronica Mars. If you haven't seen the show before, it's a good time to start. The CW has only picked up half a season and they need to build an audience fast. Otherwise, this will be another one of those shows cancelled before it's time. And, it's a really good show. I have seasons 1 and 2 on DVD and it's by far better than most of the television that the other networks are throwing at you. Hopefully it will build off the Gilmore Girls audience (which I'm told is also a good show) and get picked up for the full season. Well in any case, one guy on the LaPlaca will be happy if it gets cancelled. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign that only one person picked it. Well, it's off to get some things accomplished, break for Veronica Mars, get more stuff done and hopefully make it into bed before 1.

Spamalot was good. Unless you ask Terri. Can you transplant a sense of humor? Geesh. It was interesting to see the updates from the movie to the play. Although a lot of the shock value that used to be inherent in things like that has been diminished by shows like South Park.
Well, so far, my new plan for time planning hasn't quite taken off. I hope to get it into full swing tomorrow, but we'll see. It's kind of sad that I don't actually have time to put my time management plan into action. Oh well, time to chuck it all and go watch Studio 60.
P.S. Still a damn good show, three episodes in. I'm not a big fan of ending on the musical montage. I'm hoping that's not a Sorkin trademark. Also, since I missed Banned Books week to talk about it, here's my quote, and I'm paraphrasing here (if someone finds the actual quote, I'll be happy to amend)..."When you find out a book is being banned, walk, no run to your library, the book store, wherever you can find that book and don't stop til you've read it cover to cover to find out what they don't want you to know." Stephen King

Well, Terri knows now and I guess I can actually blog about it with no fear.
For our anniversary, I bought Terri season tickets to the Penguins hockey games. Yes, I know, it seems more like a present for me, but she loves the games too. Anyway, in doing that it meant that I had to give away the two home preseason games for two reasons. One, we had other plans both nights and two, it would be a little hard to explain preseason tickets that we typically don't come by. So, I had to part with both of them and boy was it painful. Although in addition to the people that got the tickets, one girl at work truly benefited. With my discount, I got her and her boyfriend seats for his birthday 4 rows off the ice for $120. You're paying over $200 for the seats if you just head over to the box office or ticketmaster. And yes, we must have had a good anniversary, or an extremely boring one. Terri's still sleeping. Although that could be because this is the first full night's sleep she's gotten in months. There are days I feel sorry for Gage for having the same sleep patterns that I do, but I know that for every day where he feels like crap because his body won't let him sleep, there will be multiple days (mostly in college) where he'll be able to just keep going and get everything done that needs to be done. But, in the meantime, that means we (and by we, I mean Terri since he never wakes me up) will just have to deal with the fallout.
Oh, and Matt the Pens play the Flyers at home on October 5th, November 13th, December 13th and March 4th (which is a Sunday afternoon game).

"On Friday nights, I'm bulletproof."

14 Years

14 years of watching you change (for the better of course)
14 years of happy memories
14 years of pretty much being on our own
14 years of hugs and kisses
14 years of dreams and wishes
14 years of friends that stay and friends that go
14 years of days and nights by your side
14 years of the world going by without changing our love
14 years of movies, concerts, sporting events, vacations, and reunions
14 years of a love that isn't going to give up
14 years of proving to everyone else we can make it 14 years
14 years of reflection to the past and to the future
14 years of cd collection (now that's love)
14 years is just a small piece of the lifetime we have left

Here's to many more multiples of 14. I love you now and I'll love you always, Terri. Between now and then til I see you again, I'll be loving you, Love me.

"Any arbitrary turning and I'd be somewhere else entirely." Is that a bad thing or a good thing? That all depends on how happy you are with your current situation I guess.
So, based on a recent conversation..."What's a big scandal in your everyday life?" If you found out your parents had you before they were married and never told you, would that be a big scandal? Granted, that one probably only works if you were a first-born child. If you found out your best friend had a fling the day before he/she was married? The day after? If you were best man or maid of honor at a wedding that didn't happen? Or a wedding that was a complete sham since the couple had run off to Vegas the month before or a year before? What if your boss were gay? A cross-dresser? Just curious as to what might rock a reader's world close to home as opposed to the scandals potrayed by television.

Well, the Pens have only won two of five pre-season games, but both have been against the Flyers so I'm ok with that. I was talking about Malkin at work today and one of the guys who is just a casual follower didn't realize that he had been hurt. So I'm explaining the graphic nature of the fall and he asked if it was a highlight. Since they showed the play over and over, we figured it had to be on YouTube. He pulled up YouTube on his computer and did a simple search on Malkin. It was on the first page of results. Just so everyone's on the same page.

So I'm trying a new approach to life. Nothing to excess anymore. No more 3 AM shifts trying to nail down everything at once. No more than one client per night, if I bring work home at all. Same goes for work at home. Things will get done all in good time. A good list of priorities and vanity projects aside. Hopefully things will start following fast and furious. It's similar to the theory about 45 minutes per night per class. No more, no less and eventually you learn to fit in the work that you have into the time you've allotted. We'll see. I'll start in earnest next week so right now I'm in the midst of tying up the loose ends.

Your Birthdate:

You have a Type A personality so big it makes other Type A's shrink away in shame. You never shy away from adversity - and you love to tackle impossible problems. Failure is not an option for you, and more than a few people are put off by your ego. You tend to be controlling, and you hate leaving anything up to chance. Your strength: Your bold approach to life Your weakness: You don't accept help Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Pyramid Your power month: October

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Somehow, I can't help by wonder how technology can be this far about me. That description couldn't be less truthful if Captain Pirate Head had written it. (For those of you that don't know Captain Pirate Head, he's the McDonald's happy meal toy from the Pirates of the Carribbean movie that mimics a magic 8-Ball. We've discovered he's a habitual liar). The Pens seem to be able to go the distance during the pre-season, they just need to learn how to close it out before or during overtime.

You Should Be a Film Writer

You don't just create compelling stories, you see them as clearly as a movie in your mind. You have a knack for details and dialogue. You can really make a character come to life. Chances are, you enjoy creating all types of stories. The joy is in the storytelling. And nothing would please you more than millions of people seeing your story on the big screen!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Guess I should throw that whole novelist notion out the window then.

Should I be concerned that instead of a cuddly stuffed bear or a toy truck, Gage runs around with little stuffed Pinky and the Brain dolls singing the theme song and yelling, "Narf!"?
It was nice to see the Pens semi-dominate the Flyers. It's hard to get a good sense considering most of the big big guns weren't on the ice. Although we saw Evgeni Malkin for about half a game. Then came his collision with John LeClair and subsequent trip to the hospital. No one seems to have any news. Ray Shero, who seemed to be smirking a little too much for my tastes, said that Malkin was cleared to fly home and be re-evaluated by doctors in Pittsburgh. So, hopefully it will be something easily fixed by hanging out for a few days and he'll be ready for opening night. And, I know that the commercial blocks were bought in advance, but I certainly didn't need to see the Malkin promo announcing "The Wait is Over." every other commercial break.
Oh well, the Pens are at .500 right now and that's certainly better than last season. So, we'll see how things continue in the pre-season. It'll be interesting to see what the final roster is going to look like.

Studio 60 certainly lived up to the hype. Excellent show. It's a shame they can't keep Judd Hirsch and Felicity Huffman around longer. I'm not quite decided on Stephen Weber and Sarah Paulson, but I'm along for the ride. I think I'm going to try and catch the premieres for 6 Degrees and 30 Rock as well as catching up on the second season of Veronica Mars.
Also, it was nice to once again see my genes come out in Gage. I raced out of work at exactly 6:00 this evening. I got home right around 6:30 and Gage was sitting in his chair in the living room. He was getting ready to watch Dragon Tales and I persuaded him to let me change the channel for just a minute to show him something. What did I want to show him?
HOCKEY BABY!!!!!!!
That's right. Penguin's pre-season hockey started this evening. As soon as Gage saw Sidney Crosby step on the ice, cartoons were completely forgotten about. Sadly, the Pens dropped the game, but I saw good things from some of their draft picks and young players. I still think we need a go-to goaltender. Fleury isn't there. Not yet. Maybe never. Who knows?

Tonight is Studio 60's premiere so I'm going to try to catch that. Hopefully I'll be able to see a few new shows here and there this year. Last year was the worst year of network television for me. I don't think there was one show that I watched regularly. In fact, I think the only thing that I caught the majority of the episodes for was Entourage and I certainly didn't catch all those when they first aired. Thankfully HBO reruns them over and over. I'm still working on making it through the second season of Veronica Mars.

On Thursday night we headed to the Warner's house for dinner. Gage had resisted napping all day so, of course, he fell asleep before we got there. So, Katie had to wait for her playmate to wake up. Andrew is getting big and crawls very quickly. Gage and Katie seemed to have a wonderful time playing together. We managed to get hold of someone at the Mutchler household and that someone was, Alison! She's home. Still not 100%, but getting there. So that was good news.
Friday I left work early and went to the memorial service that Carnegie Mellon held for the 7 alumni who were lost 5 years ago on September 11th. Oddly enough I ran into a very old friend, Erik Larson, that I hadn't seen in quite a while. So, I got to catch up with Erik and be swayed toward doing more alumni related things for the University. Erik is on the board of directors or some such council. I guess I probably should consider it. I certainly don't have the money to pour back into the University, I guess I should give it some time. After that, I drove home, picked up Terri and Gage and headed out to our Pastor's house for a meeting of the 20's and 30's. Our church is very small so they are attempting to group us together in order to have us become more invovled in the life of the church. It was interesting to actually interact with them on a social level. It was a point that was brought up at the meeting. We certainly know one another to see each other, but we didn't really interact on any level other than, "Hi, how are you?" I learned a lot during the meeting.
Saturday I ended up getting a call early in the morning from my brother asking for help rearranging things in his storage locker. I found out that my mother's washer had broken and the service guy couldn't make it til Thursday. So my brother wanted to get his washer out of storage until Thursday and then switch them back. The problem is that his washing machine was all the way in the back. Before I could talk him out of it, he was already there and had a large pathway uncovered toward it. So for the next several hours we hoisted boxes and furniture around and over and through the maze of things in order to free up a washing machine for 4 days that, when we arrived home, I realized he hadn't asked my parents about. Sometimes I wonder about my family.

Lots to blog about in the upcoming days about past events if you can follow that. Just need a few minutes to sit down and sort it all out. I thought that was going to be today, but I ended up helping my brother rearrange a storage locker for no apparent reason.

Apparently now WebMD is tracking my every movement. Terri got stuck working two late nights this week. Yesterday was no problem. Her mom was able to babysit. Wednesdays seem to be horrible for our families. Terri's mom has bowling. Terri's dad still can't get around very well on his tendon. Her sister has class. Her brother doesn't get home in time. My mom has church meetings on Wednesday. My brother is working. My sister-in-law is working. That leaves my dad with my niece and he can't handle two. So, I had to leave work early in order to relieve Gage's babysitter. So, I was up late last night trying to give myself a jump on today's work. Then I raced around all day trying to accomplish a large volume of work. Right before I left, I grabbed a stack of stuff that I wasn't going to get done. I flew home as quickly as I could. Then after my in-laws left, I logged back onto the computer and continued working as I was watching Gage. So, I basically traded about 45 minutes in the office for 3 hours at home. I stopped for a while and read Gage some stories. I come back to the computer and there's an email from WebMD and the subject line is, "Are you burning the candle at both ends?" I'm sure I am, but I don't need someone looking over my shoulder telling me that.

Ah, yet another copy of the Star Wars Trilogy. At some point George Lucas has to just cry uncle and stop this nonsense, right? Right? I mean the only thing left is the holiday special. One thing I discovered while adding them to my dvdaf page is that the DVD editions of Trivial Pursuit are listed. If only they'd start listing CD's, I'd be set.

5 years. I know that people always talk about the events that stand out so much in history that one can remember where they were, what they were wearing, and to some extent a lot of little ordinary details that it's difficult to retain on any other day. Sure I remember where I was. I remember who I was with. I remember watching news channels hoping for the calming voice, the one that would tell me that everything was fine. But everything wasn't fine. And in a lot of ways things haven't been the same since. There are a lot of theorists that point to evidence forewarning of us that day 5 years ago. Could it have been prevented? I don't know. I can't say. I do know that hindsight's 20/20 and instead of laying blame and pointing fingers in a partisan country, the legacy of that day should be what it was on that day 5 years ago. One America. Bruised, battered, but never broken. Agree or disagree with whatever political party you ascribe to, but know that at the heart of all of it, we're Americans. Yankees, Rebels, Rednecks, Yuppies, Left, Right, Center, Wackos, Straight, Gay, Confused, it doesn't matter. This day should serve to make America..."one nation, under God, indivisble, with liberty and justice for all"

Several of Terri's relatives were in town for the Steeler's opener and a couple of them stuck around so Friday night we headed down to my in-laws to have dinner and hang out. Since several of them are Pitt graduates, they had the Pitt game on. We were watching Gage run around outside playing with a new pet goose and having fun. When it got dark, he came inside and was showing off for the new people. We heard the ABC's, counting, parts of the body, days of the week, lots of songs and various other things that he knows. Terri's Aunt Kathy started to laugh. She had been dismissing my mother-in-law in several phone conversations..."Sure, Gage is a bright boy. I totally believe you." After listening to him for a couple of hours she was amazed at his vocabulary and knowledge. It's nice to have validation. It makes me feel like one thing is going correctly in my life currently. Of course, I probably can't actually take credit for any of Gage's good things. I'm probably more to blame for the temper and insomnia.

I'm not sure why, but I'm certainly a sucker for the countdown type shows. Over the past couple days, I've had the 20 great Southern Rock songs countdown and AFI's 100 Years 100 Cheers movie countdown. I may not always agree with the choices, but I usually come across something that I should pick up for my own collection or something I may have missed entirely. My complaint with most of these shows are the talking heads. Usually they manage to get people who were somehow connected or purport to be "experts" in whatever field that they happen to be covering. But, then they have these random people and you have to wonder why. Why exactly do they have Jessica Alba commenting on inspirational movies? Was the Fantastic Four just itching to crack into the top ten? I'm not even sure it could crack into the top million. Melissa Etheridge? At least Ralph Macchio had a reason to be there. The Karate Kid clocked in at #98. Sean Astin got to stick around because Rudy clocked in at #54. Oh well. Although I'm not sure that Babe deserves a place and Miracle does not, but I'm a little biased in that case.

It's amazing how good they can make Pittsburgh look on tv. My daily commute takes me right past Heinz Field twice a day. Yet, I watch the coverage on television (I'm watching Martina McBride, not the game, nobody panic) and I barely recognize the place. If I couldn't hear the fireworks burst outside in real time, I would claim it's being staged somehow. Oh and note to the coordinators...Pittsburgh fans boo the opposing team when they take the field/ice/whatever. I'm not proud of it and I only indulge for the Devils, Capitals, Flyers, and whatever team Jagr is on. But, you might not want to have the opposing team take the field during the procession of soldiers and the unfurling of the American Flag field graphic. Just a helpful hint so that Pittsburghers don't look even more dumber than usual. We don't need no help in that department. Especially since I'm sitting in traffic this morning and I'm staring at an electronic billboard. The first "ad" has a guy in a black and gold mask and the text says, "Tonight 8:30." Makes sense though I doubt there's anyone in town who didn't know that. Hell, coma patients had spikes of activity today. The second one is an ad for the local health system. The third one is the same guy in the black and gold mask. This time the text says, "Squish the Fish." I begin running the few teams that I can remember in my mind. Eagles, Chargers, Jets, Giants, Seahawks, Raiders...no acquatic life that I can recall. So, I figured if I turned off my CD figuring that no matter what station I'm on within three minutes I'd find out who the opponent is. Well, I had to listen to Mayor O'Connor's funeral route through the city, an update on Ben and then they announced that kick-off for the Steelers/Dolphins was 8:30 but please be seated by 8:00. I'm sure at this point the people around my car were wishing they had flak jackets. I started punching the steering wheel and screaming obscenities into the air. Why so irate you might ask? Well, just in case the explanation didn't click for you as it did for me, here's a reference. It's only necessary to read the FIRST FREAKIN' SENTENCE! That's why Pittsburgh don't need any help looking more dumber than the average bear.

I found out several interesting facts today. Even though I knew that they were in production for the filming of the Michael Chabon book "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," I did not know that a) they were currently filming and b) they were currently filming in Pittsburgh. I found both facts out this morning when one of our vp of sales came bursting into the kitchen talking about how they were using her backyard to film a dinner sequence for the movie. So, tomorrow evening she'll be watching Mena Suvari, Peter Sarsgaard, and Sienna Miller hanging out in her backyard. Apparently they are also filming a car chase sequence on her street. Man, I have got to find time to read that book quick. Of course, if you think I'll find the time, I'll refer you to yesterday's post.

Where exactly does time go. When I was a kid I remember waking up one morning and seeing that it was pouring down rain. I started reading a library book I had checked out. I finished it. I started a second one. I finished it. I made my mother brave the rain to take me to the library. I got more books. I started a third one. I finished it. I started a fourth one. I finished it. Then I had dinner watched television and went to bed where I started a fifth book. Today while I was sitting in traffic I managed to read a paragraph and I celebrated my little victory. Granted, I didn't have this computer around back then, but even still I log on, skim my email, click through the blogs to the right hand side, and two hours is gone. I just don't understand it. It's not that I've suddenly entered a time warp because some days at work still drag on forever and ever, but lately there isn't enough time to even evaluate all the stuff I'd like to get done never mind actually trying to get it done. And we're still talking seriously about a second child. I have no idea. Maybe it's my personality that I just have to have stuff stacked up to do, but it's not like it shouldn't get done. It's not like I've decided to revisit my baseball card collection from the ninth grade, go through, have it graded and sell it on ebay. I'm trying to go through mail that has shown up in my house in the past week, pull out the bills, and get them paid.

Wow, the week went by so fast I didn't even realize all the stuff that I've been neglecting. This blog for one. Last Friday I worked from about 7-1 on work, Saturday from about 6-2, Sunday 6-2, Monday 7-1, and Tuesday 7-3. Once I got home on Wednesday night I was pretty crashed. I actually went to bed before midnight both Wednesday and Thursday. That meant I didn't really log on to my computer until Saturday of this past weekend during the day. It was nice.

Apparently I must look like death warmed over. I've had three different people in three completely different situations tell me that I should see a doctor in just the past week alone. Of course it doesn't help that I can't remember the last time I actually saw my doctor. Maybe I should schedule a physical. Maybe they'll tell me that I have some weird disabling disease that will put me on workmen's comp for the rest of my life. I don't know if I'm coping better or worse than some of my coworkers. I took a couple of boxes of work home over the weekend and as I was leaving one of my coworkers saw me. He freaked out and thought I was quitting. I guess it's nice to be wanted. In a conversation with one of the newer people, it was mentioned that August was typically a slow month. I agreed and said that was why I was trying to get a jump on my work by taking it home. It was asked what was going to happen when it really started to get busy. I said that those who were aware were already preparing and those that weren't were standing on the train tracks going, "What's that noise?"

So Barry Manilow, hot off his Emmy win last night went in for double hip surgery today. Hopefully all went well. I wonder if he actually took his Emmy to the hospital for good luck? I watched the Emmy telecast. I didn't think it was too bad. I'm very disappointed that Julia Louis-Dreyfus won. Granted the category was a little weak...um, Lisa Kudrow? At the very least it should have gone to Debra Messing as a parting gift. I didn't have any strong pull toward any one win or loss I guess. That's what happens when you don't have time to watch network television much anymore. I realized that I only followed one series in real time through it's season and that was Entourage. Everything else I either caught up on through DVD's or caught sporadic episodes here and there. Speaking of random episodes, Psych is a good show in case I haven't mentioned it before.

Every once in a while something will slip past the big picture recognition and I'll end up looking it up and having that ah ha moment when it all clicks into place. When I saw the musical production of Jonathan Larson's Rent, it was in Pittsburgh so needless to say I didn't see the original cast. But, I was so taken by the orchestration and the music that I decided to buy the CD. Trust me, it was a rough decision. I don't buy many CDs. Anyway, the CD did have the original cast. Idina Menzel, who coincendentally is also on the Wicked cast CD that I bought after seeing the Pittsburgh production. I'd love to switch out Kendra Kessebaum with Kristen Chenoweth on the CD, but that's another story. Anyway, after listening to Anthony Rapp, who plays Mark on both the CD and in the movie version of Rent, I thought that he sounded familiar. And, when I saw the movie version, I thought he looked familiar, but I didn't think much of it since the name didn't really ring a bell. Then after seeing the movie again last night and finding it on again today (gotta love the satellite) I decided to see where I knew him from. Turns out he was the loud-mouthed friend from Adventures In Babysitting. Bizarre.
Why is doing what you love to do and getting paid big money for it selling out to a certain sect of artists?

Head over to The Mutchler's blog to see some pictures of new baby Nicholas. And Matt, 3 is not plenty.
For the first time since 2002, I'm sitting in Pennsylvania on the last weekend in August. No one that I know that normally attends the Nascar race in Bristol is actually attending this year. Trust me, I like watching the race on television, but Bristol is so much better live. Hopefully all my drivers will perform well and win me some cash since I didn't make it down this year. One of the things that I really miss is flipping back and forth on the scanner and listening to the drivers. Bristol is a half-mile track with 165,000 people packed around it. There are 43 cars that when running nose to tail take up most of the track so when you get bumped for position you lose a lot of space. I would have loved to be listening to Tony Stewart's scanner when he got bumped and lost 11 spots because there was no opening in line.

Well I didn't manage to get all the BMG stuff done last night, it was crazy! It's like being told you can only have one piece of candy shopping in the Sweets From Heaven at the local mall, not one kind of candy but one piece! I mean one piece! One total piece! With myriad decisions to make, just one piece! Craziness!!!!
Disclaimer: The post above was brought about due to the fact that I can...ha! ha!

Short post tonight. I have much research to do. BMG is running their buy 1 get 3 free special. That's the only one I take advantage of because it's the only one that breaks down to be worth it.

Since I feel bad that my rant probably overshadowed the announcement of Matt and Alison's new baby Nicholas, hopefully this will make up for it.

A Mother and Father's Prayer

I know you’re listening as I lay me down to sleep
It’s not for me I ask, but my children’s souls to keep
It seems the world is going crazy
And though I need to do my share
Could you please take them under wing
Watch over them especially
Keeping them safe from everything
This is a mother’s prayer
I know you’re listening in the silence of the night
The news is blistering but I hold on to your light
And though there’s darkness all around us
By my faith I know you’re there
Give me the strength to lead the way
Send me the words I need to say
Use me to guide them day to day
This is a mother’s prayer
This is a father’s prayer
I know I can’t do this by my self
I thank you for your help
I know you’re listening so I know I’m not alone
I feel you here with me as we all face down the unknown
Could you return us to your garden
Where no one’s hurt and no one’s scared
Free us from pride and bitterness
Keep us so close we won’t forget
Teach us to love as you love
This is a mother’s prayer
This is a father’s prayer
Teach us to love as you love
This is a mother’s, a father’s prayer

Congratulations to Matt, Alison, and Nathan welcoming Nicholas Ian into the world today! Our circle of friends is ever widening.
Based on the wonderful news we headed out to do some DVD shopping, more about that later. I want to talk about the in-between DVD stop because it set me up for a great let down based on the rest of the evening. Anyone who knows me knows about my media lists. I have lists for books, cds, dvds, etc. Well my book list goes with me anytime I'm headed within a 1/2 mile of a used bookstore. It has things I'm looking for, collections to fill out, missing books from favorite authors, recommendations and just things in general that I wouldn't pay full price for. Two collections that I've been working on for quite a while have been the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. There are several incarnations of each, but the original series have gone through a dozen or more printings. I wanted the hardback versions that I read as a child. At Half-Price Books, these are classified as Vintage and Classic books and typically cost a little more, but it's usually worth it. So, over the course of many many trips, I've picked up all the original Hardy Boys (total of 58) and I had picked up 55 of the 56 Nancy Drew originals. I've been looking for #56 for a long long time. Tonight, shining with it's own little light on the Vintage shelf was #56. It was great. Then I was skimming the Stephen King section and there was "The Road to the Dark Tower." I had previously bought two copies of this book. One for Tom and one for Matt. When I went to get my own copy, I couldn't locate it readily so I figured I'd just wait for it to reappear. It took til now. Both of these finds made me think I was going to pick up my sought after DVD and be on my way in time to watch an episode or two.
I swear the DVD people are out to screw me over any way they possibly can. When a new set of DVDs comes out, the first place I check is Costco. They typically have the cheapest prices. Then it's a toss-up between Best Buy and Target. So, typically if I'm out DVD hunting these are my three stops at Robinson. Well, I headed to Costco for the second season of Veronica Mars which came out today. I want to make sure that we're caught up before the third season starts so we can actually watch a show in real time. So I cruise through all the DVDs at Costco. No Veronica Mars. Not a huge deal, they don't always get anything in. But they do have all 3 seasons of the original Star Trek series for $45 apiece. That's the cheapest I've seen them by far. And they have the first six seasons of the Simpsons for $15 apiece. So I had to exercise my willpower and just walk away.
So, I head over to Best Buy. I look in the New Releases, but there's a big gaping hole where Veronica Mars is supposed to be. No biggie, they usually file them in two or three places. I go to the regular shelves. Three copies of the first season, no second season. And they are nowhere to be found in the rest of the store. But of course, season 4 of 24 is on sale. Now I'm a bit peeved. So we head over to Target. Two places with signs advertising the second season arriving today...two holes right above the signs. Again no copies to be found, but Arrested Development is on sale. So now I've been to three places and seen sales at all three that on any normal day would already be sitting on my shelf, but still not the purchase I wanted. So, I had to break down and go to the ghetto Wal-Mart. They had it filed in two places one was empty. The second had two copies left. Boy are they lucky.

So I had Batman Begins on in the background while I was working on the computer tonight. During a couple of exchanges this quote gets thrown around, "It's not who you are on the inside, but what you do that defines you." Seems harmless enough on the surface, but does that mean that you can do charitable works, give of your time and energy and be a demented psychopathic serial killer on the inside? Somehow that seems to undermine the implication behind the statement. Of course on the other hand that could mean that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are actually Nobel Prize winners on the inside, but they are defined by their actions so we see them as vapid morons. I'm pretty sure that it's the inside persona that manifests itself on the outside in some magnitude or other. For example, you could be an incredibly honest and caring person on the inside, but be relatively shy so it's manifested in small gestures like holding the door for the person behind you or giving blood. Small things that, on the whole, go unnoticed by the public at large. I think that in order to do good you have to have some measure of good within you to begin with. Maybe I've just been awake a little too long.

Well, I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. For about 10 hours today, I've been working on listing and integrating the books that I've acquired recently. And, I've run out of room on the shelves I have. It looks as though I need to start looking into a 10th set of bookshelves. I don't know if the space actually exists in the library though. It's going to take some careful measuring. And, until I figure out how to fit one in here and actually purchase and assemble it, I still have the problem of having about 50 just sitting on the floor. So much for finishing that task today.

Well it's almost Friday. Then hopefully we'll get somewhere in the vicinity of a half-day or so to work around the house. Saturday we're supposed to head to my parent's for a barbecue so that will pretty much kill the entire day. By the time we get home from church and get Gage down for a nap, 1/2 of Sunday is gone so I'm right back into the week. It almost makes me want to just work straight through. My goals this weekend...Straighten up the library and integrate and list the stacks of new books laying around, hopefully mow the lawn and get a little weed whacking down and hopefully get some of the financing down to push us toward larger goals. Oh and then there's that whole exercise thing, relaxing, the stack of DVD's that grow bigger, the race and so on and so on.

So years ago I worked for a small start-up firm that dealt mostly with affiliate marketing (read borderline scams). The company could have been something really good, but it was being held back by one significant force...the President and CEO. That is a whole different story. This story deals with the fact that with the user testing and product searches that I did back then. This was before spam and junk mail really blew up into a cottage industry. So, for a month or two on the job, I was actually filling out all of the testing materials as a user. As such, attached to my personal email account I had profiles at dating sites, Netflix, enewsletters, and various other crap. As soon as my personal email started stacking up, I quickly set up a trail of dummy accounts. Now, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 years or so I still see remnants of that job. I'll get emails and snail mail mailings from Netflix asking me to reopen my membership (which, as a test, was cancelled less than 1 hour after completion...that should tell you how long data mining and user profiling sticks around on their end) and at this point since my isp switched mailing domains, I'll get mail from the old domain, but certain sites...two in particular don't recognize the forwarding while attempting to cancel the membership profile to get the hell off the list. After multiple attempts to cancel profiles on two dating sites, I finally gave up. Typically it's a once a week email to show me my new "matches" so I figured I could live with hitting the delete button twice as opposed to the half-hour I lost on hold to one of them.
Now, either one of the sites is truly attempting to get me back or someone thought an inactive, incomplete, and pictureless profile compiled in less than 5 minutes was interesting. I got an email stating I had a personal message and should log right in and check it out.
Normally I think...plot to reacquire my membership...and delete. This email, however, had a picture, username, description, and the message. So, I'm uncertain. The message is just vague enough, but they spelled the word "profile" wrong in the first sentence. So, I feel like it's not an auto send from a database, but really...would they go to lengths that great to get me to log in to the site? The other choice also not that appealing. There really is a 36 year old woman in western PA that thinks I'm "very smart and attractive" based on crap I made up to blow off stuff at work.

So we've been having a discussion (actually, can you call it a discussion if it takes place in the midst of typing emails, answering client calls and interacting with other employees?) about the beaches of Hawaii. My partner just returned and was discussing the white sand beaches to which another pod-mate replied that all of that was brought in from somewhere else. So a google and wikipedia tour later, nothing is overly solved. Then we were into what comprised a white sand beach. Was it calcium and carbonate or decomposed sea-life and shells or limestone or quartz or something else altogether. And now that I think about it, is it really a discussion if it has no point?
We actually have feeler emails out to the department of land and natural resources in Hawaii and the travel bureau. AAA was no help and calling the info desk at Pitt just met with laughter.
Any first hand knowledge out there?

When work intrudes at home and home completes the circle by intruding at work and everything is a screaming level 5 priority with all the red exclamation points beside it, where do you begin? Well, you do like I did on Saturday and you just shut down. I did not accomplish one meaningful thing on Saturday. Which would have been great if I could have just picked up Sunday and not thought about it, but of course there was guilt about blowing stuff off and all the time that I could have been doing something else. If time stood still starting right now...I'd catch up somewhere around 2010 with everything.

Ah, I guess it is August. Which means that the parents of the world have already seen the arrival of fall oriented things in the store and began to give thought to the Halloween costume choices available this year. The Folks over at De Stijl have a little girl who is slightly younger than Gage. They have a little costume pool going on over there. Terri and I haven't discussed it much yet this year. Last year's Yoda went over really well so we're going to have to see about following it up.

Day 4 Post-Performance After the reading, we headed out into the cool humid as hell night air. We managed to get in touch with Adam and his friend and we met them down near the Port Authority. Adam's friend is incredibly nice, intelligent, and it was great to finally meet her. We decided on the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, although if we had known about the faulty air-conditioning we'd have nixed it in a heart beat. Again, severe heat diminishes appetite. After dinner and conversation we decided to part ways. Times Square has more people milling about at 1 in the morning than Pittsburgh does at 1 in the afternoon. I'm not overly surprised by that, but it's just interesting to see in person.
Day 5 The long way home Once we got up, we made a quick plan of action. Down 10 blocks to the Toys R Us to pick up the exclusive collector's tin of the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit DVD game. Then back to the hotel to cram everything into what little luggage we brought, cab to Penn Station (best $7.00 we spent all trip), and train back to Trenton, light rail back to Camden, walk to the car, pack everything else up and head home. My parents had already left with Gage so we had a clear shot the 300 or so miles back across the state to their house. We left New York somewhere between 10 and 11, by 10 that night we were back in good old Pittsburgh. Of course, that meant that the next morning I had to get back up and go to work.

Day 4 Performance For those of you that don't know, this trip was built around the fact that Terri, Tom and I had tickets to a benefit reading (The Haven Foundation and Doctors Without Borders) given by Stephen King, John Irving, and JK Rowling. So we make it to Radio City and deal with the morons handing out flyers for a Harry Potter conference. I'm not even going to justify it with an explanation. We get inside, find out seats, which aren't bad considering I had never been there and picked off the net. Tom and I spent the time leading up to the performance discussing the three authors. He's not enthralled with Rowling in the least, he's not read any of the books and doesn't take kindly to her being compared to King and Irving as one of the greatest authors. The program lists them as three superstar authors. King has written somewhere in the vicinity of 50 novels. Not that I'm arguing proficiency makes you great (think Harper Lee), but it don't hurt. His views on everyday life and his unique twist in taking the mundane to the macabre and back again have earned him legions of "faithful readers." Irving, not quite as prolific, he's closing in on a dozen novels. However, his reach is far and wide due to several widely successful film adaptations to introduce readers to his books and vice-versa. Rowling has completed 6. According to rumors and straight from the author's mouth she's "well into the 7th novel." Again, I'm not saying that volume = anything, but her 6 books, though massive bestsellers, are all about the same subject in the same world. No stretch of the imagination, if you'll pardon the pun. So to put her in the same league just kind of set both of us on edge. The woman in the front of us was kind of leaning back looking for some way to interject on the subject of Rowling's only redeeming feature being the alleged fact that a new generation will discover other authors through her books, but when the topic shifted back to our start on King, I did some quick math and realized that I was 8 or 9 when I read my first King novel (Pet Sematary). This widened the woman's eyes and completely took the wind out of whatever argument she was gearing up for. Which, was good considering the house lights began to dim and special guest Whoopi Goldberg was announced. She did several minutes praising everyone involved and making the audience laughed. Then she introduced Kathy Bates. Also well received, Kathy did her piece on Stephen King. At the end, they cut to a video montage of interviews, movie clips, and peer observations on King. While they were showing the video, stage hands quickly moved out a platform containing a rural setting onto stage right. King came out and read the pie-eating contest section from the novella that became Stand By Me. Then the house voice introduced Andre Baugher who, in turn, introduced John Irving. Another video and stage left was occupied with a platform resembling a den complete with fireplace. Irving read the selection of roles for the Christmas pageant from "A Prayer for Owen Meaney." The house voice then introduced Jon Stewart who, in turn, introduced JK Rowling. The video segment went by and center stage was replaced with a platform resembling a castle like setting. Rowling read from book 6. Immediately after her segment, Rowling began to take a few pre-selected questions. It was then that I began to realize that the reality of my worst nightmare was unfolding before my eyes.
JK Rowling is a media whore. She enjoyed lording her vague answers over the audience. She's not going to be able to give that up with one more novel and three movie adaptations. My initial thought is that she's going to attempt a book far from Potter and his world, it will initially be received tepidly and then fall flat because her fan base won't understand how to adapt. A slew of bad reviews, more bad press when the paperback hits, comparisons abound and two or three years later and we'll be back in Potter's world. It won't necessarily have him as the focus (though it didn't look as though she'd be able to give that up either) and whatever credibility she would have had will disappear faster than (God help me) Harry wrapping his invisibility cloak around himself.
Thankfully after a couple questions they brought King and Irving back for a few questions posed to them.
Post performance and trip wrap-up tomorrow hopefully.

Okay, Day 1 was a lot of travel. We went from Pittsburgh to Williamsport and visited with Brian and Brian. A helpful hint, if you don't really enjoy being jumped on and licked by a wild puppy, playing kitten isn't the optimal idea.
Day 2 We woke up at my uncle and aunt's and headed out to do a little shopping. Gage actually rode around in his stroller and then proceeded to fall asleep in his stroller. When we got back to the house, we packed up again and headed to a picnic given by my aunt's nephew, at least I think that's who it was. That's where we discovered Gage liked playing fetch. Also, we met a throwback from the 80's, right down to the orange hair bow. Hopefully I'll find some time in the near future to get the pictures up here.
Day 3 We headed out to Camden, met Tom for lunch, relaxed at his place til he was done with work and then headed out with him and Adam and saw Clerks II. Then we headed to the new Cheesecake Factory that just opened up and had a pretty good meal.
Day 4 We got up, headed to the "light rail" and rode from Camden to Trenton. Then we hopped on a train and headed into New York City. We got off at Penn Station and walked 17 blocks (on what we later found out was the hottest day of the millennium in Manhattan) to the hotel. The hotel, which left a lot to be desired, did have one thing going for it. When we walked out of the front door of the hotel, we could look down a block and a half and see Radio City Music Hall, which was the ultimate destination that evening. We found out that the heat kills your appetite. Which wasn't totally bad after we saw the prices for food in Manhattan. We had lunch at ESPNZone. Then we did some shopping since the stores were air-conditioned. We hit Toys R Us, which had several life-size Lego statues. Then we hit the Virgin Records Mega-Store. Needless to say, I could have spent the rest of the day (and the rest of my salary) in that store. In reality, I left the store having purchased...not one thing. For those of you that have trouble believing that, I have Tom and Terri as witnesses. We hit lots of souvenir type shops and I almost forgot FAO Schwartz. Then we headed back to the hotel, which left a lot to be desired, and showered off some of the grime that we had accumulated during the day. Then we headed to the performance. More to follow tomorrow. Time to hit the bike. I'm not giving up $100 without a fight.

Ok, no vacation recap just yet. I need to have a little more time to get everything sorted out. I did want to show you guys this. Tom sent me this article. Now, there are several things mentioned in here that were of interest. One, his shows will be scheduled well into 2007, which bodes well for a potential trip. Second, he'll have a new album coming out around my birthday. Also, I started looking at the picture accompanying the article and damned if it didn't spark something of a childhood memory. I must say that time has not been kind to either of them.

We're back and eventually I'll get the trip recap posted here.

Apparently Gage is part golden retriever. My cousin's daughter Sydney was watching over Gage, Janessa, and Jillisa at a picnic we all went to. She would throw several different sized balls (volleyballs, softballs, etc.) and the three of them would chase them down and bring them back. This went on for at least a half-hour with no sign of letting up. Of course, the older folk sat around with their own form of entertainment. There was a teenager there who literally could have just stepped out of the fashion hey-day of the 80's. I got a picture that I'll have to post sometime later. And, of course, there was the mechanical failure of one of the fold-out chairs. By the time they were done discussing it, we were certain that my dad and uncle were going to have major power tools and an arc welder involved.

Well, we made it to Williamsport, saw Brian, Brian, Jessica, and Toby and met Nicky. Gage had a good time once he got used to the puppy jumping up. And, considering he spent between 6 and 7 hours in the car traveling today, he did fairly well adjusting. After we left Brian's house, we headed down to my Aunt and Uncle's place. And even though my parents didn't think they were coming til tomorrow, their car was in the driveway when we got here. So Gage got to see Grammy and Grampy. Tomorrow there are rumors of a picnic so that should be fun.

Well tomorrow we're off. First to Williamsport, then Lancaster, on to Camden, to New York City, back to Camden, and home again in time to find out how much stuff went kablooie at work. Note the technical term of kablooie. Hopefully you'll all have a good weekend and I will too.

So I went out to pick up Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain tonight and Gage was getting hungry so we stopped at a Burger King. I've been seeing those midget commercials for the BK Stackers. So, I thought I'd give them a try. Burger King has always fascinated me with the fact that they have pictures of how to construct their burgers on the wrappers. I mean, no intelligence needed. Anyway, the stackers come as a double, triple, or quad. And, since I had already eaten one dinner I just went for a double. The wrapper had a little qualifier for each level. A double - Meat Lover A triple - Meat Enthusiast A Quad - Meat-ivore !?! Um, isn't that what a carnivore is? Seriously, as a society, are we degrading that far that fast? Are the terms carnivore, omnivore, and herbivore that hard to tell apart?

I'm not sure what's worse. Getting ready to leave for a vacation at work or coming back from a vacation at work. I have so many meetings in the next two days my chair is going to rent itself out. It's amazing how many hours I spend at work and when I take stock of things around me, how little actually gets done. I got an email from a client who sends in stuff approximately once a year. We finished up her set of programs (each time shuffling them to the bottom of the priority list) and she copied the EVP of Sales on the email. The content...he's phenomenal, I'm so happy with service and quality, yap yap yap. Wow, congrats all around. Can you call some of the rest of my clients and get them off my back?

In a high school of less than 500 people, not only do you know everyone, but you know about everyone. When I was a freshman, I actually attempted to fly under the radar for the first couple weeks til I figured out where I fit in. Coming from the 3 years of middle school (junior high to those who had a real school), I was in the crowd of kids who ran most everything...did all the clubs, etc. In high school, I didn't expect to be in that crowd, at least not in the first year. However, small towns breed familiarity so I was already marked in several circles.
My second week of high school, I was still learning the ropes and moving pretty quick from class to class trying to be a conscientious student. Then I ran into Armand. Literally. Books everywhere. All mine, he didn't seem to be carrying any. Not a good impression to make on a senior. So for the next two weeks, he seemed to go out of his way to make my life miserable. Apparently I made him look bad. After I zigged when I should have zagged and his trip caught my shin sending me sprawling lenghwise in the air landing in a full body bounce on the hallway floor, a few seniors made it known to him that he should back off and again for whatever reason, he did. End of association except to pass in the hallway over the course of the next 7 months or so.
So, why tell that story now? I read this article in the paper. Different paths to say the least, but I have to say that the punishment isn't enough. Not for the loss of life. Not for the fact that he was a habitual repeat offender. 17 times he was caught. How many times did he get away with it? How many lives ruined from the ripple effect? And to what end? Why?

So while I'm trying to get stuff finished up for tomorrow, the movie playing in the background is The 40 Year Old Virgin. Not really the funny movie everyone made it out to be. Or perhaps I'm just not amused by Steve Carell. On the whole a "cute" movie, but not something I'll revisit. It was interesting to see Dagmara's little sister have a minor role and I do like Catherine Keener, but it's two hours I could get back if that deal was on the table.
So, one of the things that I've noticed in my new role is that I've become quite the spin doctor. Clients know what I tell them and my version of the truth is just that. I also find that it makes me much more candid in dealing with day to day people since most of my editing energy is used up during the day. So, if I seem a little harsher than usual, you'll know why.

So, we were discussing bad movies at work and I've found I have an odd compulsion. When two of my coworkers were in agreement that this movie was among the worst they had ever seen. After clicking around, we even found out it had a sequel. So, now I'm interested in seeing both of them even though I never played the game. I have no background on the story. My coworkers say that doesn't matter. They say that the only thing that matters is discovering how much uncut heroin it took to convince Jeremy Irons to actually take the role.
I found I have the same compulsion to discover things for myself with all forms of media. That's what drove me to read Wuthering Heights after Susie gave it a poor recommendation.
Oh well, eventually I'll run across these two movies and chances are...I'll hate 'em. And then you'll have to read about it. Vicious cycle.

What was supposed to be a good day to have Gage play on the porch while I attempted to hack out the stairwell again turned into a rain delay. When I'm home it rains, when I'm not it's sunny. Perhaps I should just give up. I need to take my microeconomics final, dig myself out of my buried work in order to get ready for next weekend. Of course, then everything will just heap back up and I'll be right back where I started. Makes me feel as though I'm on some higher being's treadmill.

Ok, I'm done with the heat. I'm pretty sure I mentioned that yesterday, but it bears repeating. June was a very light month which makes me think this heat is going to continue well into September like last year. Which of course means that I'm going to have no motivation to do yardwork and considering I'm already packing a machete to get in and out of the house, I may get planted in. Hopefully the people I know in town will come and cut us out of the house.

So I bought a Darth Vader voice changing mask tonight since it was on sale for $7. So, of course, when I got it home I had to take it out of the box and try it out. I must say, enclosed black plastic in the humidity, not a good combination. However, I walked upstairs and Terri thought it was going to scare Gage so I cautiously entered his room. He thought it was funny and when I took the mask off to breathe, he said, "Do it again." He made me keep the mask on for like 5 minutes. The next house has air conditioning, that's a deal breaker.

Radioland Murders is on the sleuth network this evening. I never understood why this movie wasn't a smash hit. And then I realized...it's a thinking movie. There's a plot, smart funny dialogue, and things you have to pay attention to. I mean on paper you have, George Lucas, Mel Smith, Mary Stuart Masterson, Jeffrey Tambor, Ned Beatty, and George Burns, Christopher Lloyd and Rosemary Clooney in cameo roles. If you haven't seen it (and I'm guessing out of the regular readers only Tom has), I recommend that you queue it up on netflix, head out to blockbuster, or hit deep discount dvd and discover a buried gem.
That's my shilling public service announcement for today.

So I pay very little attention to newspapers and weather. I used to be a religious reader of the paper and news was must see TV. Then I realized that 99% of the stuff was just a made up slant on what may or may not be an actual story. And I stopped caring about the weather the day that there wasn't a cloud in sight and no rain predicted for the entire week and on Monday and Tuesday I got caught in a torrential downpour on the way to work. So, I just live my life skipping the noon, 5, 6, 6:30, 10, and 11 o'clock news. For the most part, the only part of the Post-Gazette I read are the articles that people send me. And, asking me what the weather is going to be like only elicits the response, "Got a window?"
So, why is it that I constantly have to listen to the retards in my office yell out their weatherbug readings every 5 minutes? I don't care that it spent most of the day in the upper 90's. And, most importantly, there was not a damn thing I could do about it. It's pretty much the same attitude I had when they were all announcing that it was single digits in mid-January.

Well we made it home in one piece. And Gage is on his 3rd consecutive night without a pacifier so we'll see how that goes. Although the entire house feels like it's standing in as God's oven and we're slow broiling some nice steaks.
It's funny. Gage got real excited about going on a "car trip." The problem with that is that he has no concept of what a "car trip" actually is. He did pretty well though. I'll be interested in seeing how he does toward the end of the month, that'll be a long time in the car between all the stops and total time.

This year's reunion movie ended up being Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest. Interesting movie. Kind of a similar situation to the Empire Strikes Back. Middle movie, darker plotlines, heroes in peril at the end and situations up in the air.
I need to go back and try and piece together a list of all the movies we've seen during family reunions. They stretch back quite a ways. We can distinctly remember seeing Young Guns II and that was 1990. So, that would mean if that was the first (which no one is quite sure of) there are at least 16 other movies up to and including this year. We remember some, but it will take some recreation to figure out the whole list. Some have been really good movies and some have been awful. We're limited by appealing to the group as well as bound by whatever the theater happens to be showing. Bradford has one theater and it has two screens. Olean (considerably farther) has 8 screens so art house and independent flicks are usually out of the question. In fact when we got to the Bradford theater this evening, they had a sign on the front door boasting that they have the best Dolby Surround Sound System for 65 miles. It's actually quite possible that they have the only Dolby Surround System for 65 miles.

Bob Dylan is touring this summer. Guess where he's coming near me. Could it be the Post-Gazette Pavilion? No, not Dylan's style. PNC Park then? Nope, more Springsteen than Dylan. Mellon Arena? Wrong. He's going to play the Chevy/IC Light Ampitheatre? Wrong again. Oh, ok, he's going to play an intimate show at Heinz Hall. Um, no. The Benedum? Not even close. So he's going to hit West Virginia? Getting warmer. Bob Dylan is going to play Falconi Field in that rock and roll haven of Washington, Pa. Apparently a lifetime of drug abuse does eventually take its toll.

So, we're getting together with some people from work tomorrow night and I had to go out and pick up the gift for the person leaving. We decided to get a nice bottle of bourbon (Bookers). So, while I was down in that area, I stopped by the Half-Price book store. I'm looking around and all of a sudden I hear "Not to put to fine a point on it, say I'm the only..." and then it cut off. It turns out that yes, there was an ubergeek walking around the store that had "Birdhouse in your Soul" by They Might Be Giants as a ringtone. Now, finally that might almost persuade me. Not quite, but close.
So we're off to the family reunion this weekend. I think there's internet access at the hotel, but it is the middle of nowhere so we'll see.

Okay, yeah it's been a while. The holiday kind of threw me off and then Gage spent most of the past weekend with my parents so Terri and I were trying to do all the things that are difficult to do with him around. We moved furniture around, did the shopping for the month, saw a movie and a show and slept in late.
So, there were 8 main characters (give or take) on the Dukes of Hazzard. Luke Duke (Tom Wopat), Bo Duke (John Schneider), Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach), Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle), Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke), Roscoe P. Coltrane (James Best), Enos Strait (Sonny Shroyer) and Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones). Denver Pyle and Sorrell Booke have passed on. That leaves 6. I met Ben Jones at a NASCAR race in Bristol Tennessee a couple years ago and got his autograph. Saturday, Terri and I met Tom Wopat after his performance in 42nd Street and got his autograph. So, I only have 4 more left to complete the series. I should probably target James Best since he turns 80 at the end of the month.

Wow, my 500th post. You'd think I'd have something momentous to say, but no...pretty much the same old crap. I know that medical personnel work incredibly hard to keep all their patients alive, but I'll bet they tried extra hard to revive Kenneth Lay. There are a lot of people that think he got off easy with his sudden death from a heart attack. Although there are some people who are already positing that he didn't really die. He simply had his death faked, took his laundered millions and is living abroad in France. I know that I would certainly want to see the body in person if I had been one of the countless that he screwed out of their life savings.

Today we had dinner at my in-laws house. It's amazing how a child can be on a nice structured schedule and in the span of 7 hours it can all be destroyed and you're left with a little raving maniac running around yelling no.
Even though limits are set, I still don't think eating one hot-dog and then being pumped full of cookies, cakes, ice-cream, and candy is the best ratio on food consumption for the day. It's funny, I don't remember my grandparents being like that and I certainly don't remember my parents taking those liberties with me. It's very puzzling how they'll let my son get away with stuff that I couldn't.

Hope everyone has good plans for the weekend through to the 4th, since most normal jobs have Monday and Tuesday off. I will be at work on Monday. The one nice thing about having minimal holiday time off, no client interaction. It's a great clean up day at work. I got a bunch of documentation done today and hopefully on Monday I can get to all the administrative work that has been stacking up.

I don't know what the full story is. And, I'm not sure any type of explanation will suffice. I will never comprehend the reasoning behind this. To put it in other terms, it's like replacing Harry Caray with Bob Uecker. Mike Lange is the voice of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Paul pales in comparison. I know they are both exceptionally knowledgeable in the world of hockey, but Lange actually has the personality for television. Paul barely sparkles on the radio.
Also, congratulations on the Hockey Hall of Fame for finally recognizing that Herb Brooks belongs there.

Well, I woke up at about 6:45 AM Monday morning and I have yet to sleep. After running some errands we got back to the house around 9:15ish. We started the bedtime routine (emphasis on started) and then I finally started working on work-related items in the library/office around 9:45ish. I stopped this morning at 7:15 to take a shower and get ready for work in the office. The kicker, still didn't get everything done.

Well it took almost 29 years, but I finally found a movie that I like better than the book that it's based off of. This was so much better as a movie than as a book. The book wanted to be a good book, it tried really hard. Mayes is a good author, but I have to give more credit to Audrey Wells and Diane Lane, I want to see their vision more than Mayes'.
I've also come to the conclusion after watching this, Nora has the most boring commentary track that I've ever listened to. And that includes the historian track on the Casablanca DVD and the Extreme Sports Punk #1 commentary on Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. She just has a grating monotone voice that carries no emotion toward the project she's trying to sway you to like.
And what exactly makes Nicole Kidman so talented? No...wait...let me rephrase. What makes everyone think that Nicole Kidman is so talented?

Well it took almost 29 years, but I finally found a movie that I like better than the book that it's based off of. This was so much better as a movie than as a book. The book wanted to be a good book, it tried really hard. Mayes is a good author, but I have to give more credit to Audrey Wells and Diane Lane, I want to see their vision more than Mayes'.
I've also come to the conclusion after watching this, Nora has the most boring commentary track that I've ever listened to. And that includes the historian track on the Casablanca DVD and the Extreme Sports Punk #1 commentary on Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. She just has a grating monotone voice that carries no emotion toward the project she's trying to sway you to like.
And what exactly makes Nicole Kidman so talented? No...wait...let me rephrase. What makes everyone think that Nicole Kidman is so talented?

Well, for the moment the Pens have a Staal brother. Hopefully it won't pan out like the Primeaus and the Hatchers where we ended up with the wrong brother. So far, the Staals all look like great prospects. I'm blowing off work that I brought home with me. That means that I'll be behind when I get into work tomorrow morning. What fun. Oh well, how much farther behind can I get you know?

Tomorrow night is the draft. I'll tune in for at least the first two picks. I'm interested to see what kind of moves are made in preparation for the draft. There are rumors that even though Carolina will be near the bottom of the draft order that they'll trade up for the Staal brother in the draft. It's going to take some hefty trading to get that I believe. Phil Kessel will be a hot property I'm sure. I don't know much more about the rest of the draft. Hopefully I'll get a chance to read up before tomorrow night.

I've been at my current job a little over a year and a half. I've been in my current position a little over a month and a half and with the flux going on around me, I'm being looked at as the "senior" member of the Project Management staff. Sure, you can laugh. I certainly did when they mentioned it to me. In addition to all of the meetings, administrative tasks, emails, client calls, and oh yeah, the actual work, I'm also expected to train, help train, and troubleshoot for the other 4 teams. Mark and I are basically building a department of 10 from the ground up and both of us are still months shy of hitting the 2 year plateau with the company. And, I know I've been complaining and whining as of late, but for the most part I really do like my job. I've actually trained myself to think before coffee, be pleasant on the phone, and not actually say the word "Jackass" out loud to anyone above me. All in all, I think I'm doing ok. I still have a sound byte from the Wizard of Oz on my desktop, though. I couldn't let that go.
Well, nobody actually expected him to win it, but Sidney Crosby did not win Rookie of the Year. Alexander Ovechkin won. Dion Phaneuf had basically no chance and I think even he realized that. The award show was kind of disappointing overall. I'm not sure what they were going for, but it was very Canada centric (ok, it was in Vancouver, but you don't want to alienate anyone, do you?) All in all a good show. Even though Jagr won an award it was still ok.

Work has made me cranky recently. So cranky, in fact, that one of the guys at work who plays in a band on the weekends and I have started conjuring up a second career. We spontaneously decided we're going to drop everything and buy a bar. And, everytime one of us is in a foul mood, we add to the bar. So far, the bar has oak paneling with a mahoghany bar top and high back chairs instead of stools. There will be a section of the bar that is a literay section with books adorning the walls. Another week or so of this and we'll probably have enough details fleshed out to set up a business plan. Why a bar, you might ask? Well, no one calls you at home on your day off (or at Idlewild, if that's where you happen to be) and says, "Hey we're out of vodka. We know you can't do anything about it, but we wanted you to know." They'll simply just start serving gin or tequila.

So Gage had a lot of fun and wore out 4 adults in the process. He did get to ride a lot more things this year than he did last year. We found out that some of the things we didn't think he'd care for, we couldn't tear him away from. He still does not like to be splashed, especially around the face. Just like Daddy I guess.

Game 7 Baby!!!!
I'm sorry, when you watch two teams battle it out and trade wins (or in this case battle back to even things up) it's amazing to watch the last game. This really is for all the marbles, the whole enchilada, the whole ball of wax. It doesn't matter who wins because someone is going to be skating the Stanley Cup this evening (or at the very least early early tomorrow) and someone will be headed home empty handed. 7-10 preseason games, 82 regular season games and anywhere from 16 to 28 postseason games. That takes approximately 3/4 of a year.
One of my favorite things about hockey games is hearing both anthems sung before the game. I don't know. I'm not Canadian and probably won't be Canadian, but I know the words to their anthem just as well as I know my own. And for the 7th time in this series I got to hear both anthems sung before each game. And I got to watch as fans from both teams showed tremendous respect in singing along with both anthems. It shows patriotism in a wonderful light for both countries.
Now, I don't have anything riding on the outcome and I'm not overly pulling for one team as opposed to the other so there's no real way to end up disappointed, but wow what a great hockey series.
Tomorrow I'm taking a well-deserved day off of work and heading with Gage, Terri and my parents out to Idlewild. It should be a lot more interesting this year since Gage is wildly mobile and into everything.

Well, Game 7. I'm not sure why, but Carolina just laid down for Edmonton. I'm not sure what the locker-room atmosphere was for Carolina, but having two chances to close it out and falling short both times doesn't look good for them.
We had Father's day dinner at my house and my family came down. Terri's family turned us down and I was heartbroken, but then I got over it. I just remembered a conversation we had at work. We were standing in the little kitchen/cafeteria area in our office and I said, "Life's too short to waste on something that you aren't having fun with." Another guy walks by and says, "Hey, life's too short to waste on something you are having fun with." Interesting prospective.

Wow, at the rate this game is going, there might be a game 7 on Monday night.
Apparently the US team thinks they're going to glide into the World Cup. At the rate they're going, I don't expect them to make it past the round of 16.
Terri and I went to the first of our CLO subscription shows today. We saw Beauty and the Beast. It was a pretty good show. The orchestra could have been toned down just a bit, but on the whole very enjoyable. Although I should have realized that Saturday matinee for a show originating from a Disney movie would be packed with children. And, I guess I can be lenient on their dress code, sort of. There were some people there that looked like they would be more at home in a mall. There were several girls who actually looked like they should be standing on the corner outside of the theatre. I wonder when Americans stopped giving a shit about things like pride, class, traditions, and just manners in general?

It's very difficult to become oriented to a routine in a new position at work when the entire company is in flux around you. Every major client that I've dealt with thus far has sent some sort of email to one or more of my superiors and complimented on how well I'm transitioning into the new role, which sets the bar so high I have no room for errors. Not that I ever make errors, but it would be nice to have the leeway just in case.
Seriously, was the first Garfield movie such a smash and Bill Murray so hard up for money that a second one needed to be made?

Well, perhaps there's only one more period to go in this year's hockey season. We'll see. I'm posting early so I can't say. I want to be able to concentrate on the third (and possibly) more periods.

Now, without fail, come all the twists and turns to a story that was blown out of proportion to begin with. The police didn't want to release the name of the woman who was driving the car that Ben hit. The news had no problem releasing her name, telling where she lived, showing her house on television, and interviewing a neighbor. In addition to all of the injuries that Ben may or may not have received, there were "experts" on each of the channels talking about what he might have to go through in recovery. We also found out that Ben may not have even had a license or permit to ride a motorcycle. And the number of helmet articles goes beyond measure. Apparently since Pennsylvania repealed the helmet law in 2004, the number of motorcycle fatalities went up 30% but no one gave a shit til mid-morning yesterday. Day 2 of Ben-gate continues and the lack of news goes on.

I would love to blog about current events and happenings, but every media person in Pittsburgh is sitting at or around Mercy Hospital. If you don't know why, go here. The accident happened before noon today. The newscasters broke into programming and pre-empted most of the early afternoon programming in order to stand near the Armstrong tunnels and show a mangled motorcycle and a car with a busted windshield. I'm almost certain downtown shut down today with people pouring out of the buildings screaming and crying and waving their hands in the air. According to my podmate, the churches were full of people gnashing their teeth and rending their garmets. I want to say that I'm joking but if you were anywhere near the epicenter of this "breaking story" you'd begin to question what was real and what wasn't. Through the grapevine I've heard stories of injuries that they're keeping from the public, a nurse in on the surgery who stopped to break all the privacy laws by emailing her address book that she was about to go into surgery for Ben. The helmet stories have already started and it wouldn't surprise me if Harrisburg convened an emergency session and the helmet law was re-enacted before the day is done.
Honestly I hope the guy is alright. And my reasons for that are two-fold. One, I'm a fairly nice guy and would hate to see for anyone to be seriously hurt and two, I don't know how much more of this I can take. The federal government could have released a story about Dick Cheney shooting half of congress on a hunting trip while George Bush personally pushed the button and nuked Iran, Iraq and France and it wouldn't have even played before the first commercial on the Western Pennsylvania news. Hell, it might not have even led on most national channels the way this story was snowballing. MSN had four links about it on their homepage alone. I wonder what other kind of story can generate this blinding storm of publicity to the point where I actually heard a newscaster say "A car has left the Steelers practice facility. It may or may not contain Mr. Rooney and it may or may not be headed to the hospital."

Why do weekends have to be so damn short?

Well, I got the DSL all installed. Thus far, they have yet to impress me. The amount of crap that it added to my system is outweighing the speed that it added to my system. Once I go through and uninstall the "helpful" toolbar and various other extensions, then maybe I'll be happy.
I don't understand when the people in this country stopped settling for what they actually want. Why does everything have to come bundled with 45 features that you don't want? Take television. In order to get the ten or twenty channels you will watch on a regular basis, you have to pay more than you should (and in most cases, more than you want) and you get channels that you'll never stop on. Granted these ten or twenty channels vary from person to person, but imagine how much happy the television viewing public would be if they could buy channels a la carte. That won't happen since the owners, broadcasters, and cable providers would find the number of channels that they carry dramatically decrease. Right now they can claim that each channel has the same base number of subscribers since all subscribers get the that channel. I'd like to see the actual number of viewers for certain channels. Then maybe some of these superfluous channels would fade away and stop diluting the programming across the board. It's the same thing with every software package you install on your computer. I now have six toolbars attached to my internet window. They all do basically the same thing and all of them are useless for my purposes of using the internet. Finally after the verizon one attached itself and started spouting "helpful hints" at me while I was trying to accomplish actual work, I deleted all of the useless stuff. I increased my viewing size per page by about a third. Now that's helpful.
Oh well, off to take a microeconomics exam, hopefully it doesn't have the add on attached.

Just hangin' out at school

I'm goin' here someday

Daddy and Gage at The Fence

Mommy and Gage at The Fence

Ah Game 1. Normally I would be posting this much later, but I want to make sure to catch all the action so I wanted to get this short post out of the way quickly. We got a notice today that our two extra phone lines were completely disconnected, our DSL package had shipped, the DSL service would be available on June 9th, and our phone lines might not be compatible with the DSL service. Um, isn't that something they should check out prior to shipping all this stuff out to me? Just a thought. Today was Jacob's 6th birthday. Robyn brought down Norah and Jacob and since Terri had the day off she brought down Gage and we all went out for lunch. The mistake in all that...letting Jacob pick where we got to eat. We ended up at McDonalds. I can still feel the non-food congealing in my stomach, blech.

So Saturday was an interesting day. Terri worked most of the day so I was hanging out with Gage. He let me sleep in til almost 9 and then we got up and had breakfast. We watched a couple cartoons and then headed out to a store called Volkwein's. Volkwein's deals in all things musical. They sell a variety of instruments, do repairs, give lessons, have music related stuff (pens, pencils, blankets, etc), and sell sheet music for all instruments, orchestras, and marching bands. For those of you that don't know or didn't remember, for more years than I care to remember at the moment I played the clarinet. Yes, I was a band geek. Well my mom was asking me whether or not I knew where my clarinet was since she wanted to organize something at her church and wanted to know if I might want to play. My first inclination was to say no since I haven't even opened the case in three years or so. However, I decided to haul it out and see what the situation was. Turns out, it needed a good cleaning, some keys tightened, a cork replaced and some pads re-done. I looked it over and estimated about $50 max. So, that's why we headed to Volkwein's.
I walked over to the instrument repair desk and asked the woman behind the counter how long it would take and how much it would take to repair the clarinet. She said it usually took about a week and they charged $210. I politely pointed to the sign behind the woman that offered brand new clarinets for sale starting at $325. I asked why I would spend $210 to refurbish what I had when I could just spend a little more and get a brand new one. She said, "Well, that's your choice." I asked if they sold repair kits. She laughed and said no. So, I laughed right back, said I'd pick up one on the internet and do it myself. Oddly enough, it turns out that I can, if I'm so inclined. I've found several sets ranging from $25 to $85 which should take care of all my problems. I'm shocked that people would pay that kind of money at Volkwein's. Granted, I like to think of my time being valuable, but a few drops of glue, some cotton wadding, tiny pliers, tiny screwdrivers, and about four strips of corking shouldn't cost me more than the instrument did initially.
Once we left there, Gage and I headed back home and took a nice nap. Then when Terri finished work, we headed up to Randy and Elizabeth's house for a nice cookout. When we got there Randy was in the process of digging up the backyard to replace a natural gas line that was out of code. So, the grill was still sitting in the basement. Randy got the hole dug, the line hooked up, we tested for leaks and then he and Ben went to grab the grill while I filled in the hole. Good burgers I tell you. Katie and Gage had fun playing with a neighborhood boy named Luke.
I also found out that Ben actually played on the album that one of my quotes was taken from. The first quote on the page comes from an album named Glutton's Dozen and Ben played Bass on the album. Small world.

So Tom emails me today and says that Edmonton has their rink booked with Dora the Explorer for the same day and time that, if necessary, Game 6 would occur on. I think it would be funny to see both of them on the ice at the same time. Dora is coming through the neutral zone...ouch...right in the backpack. That's gotta hurt. She's probably gonna send in Benny the Bull to be a goon. Hopefully the Map will be able to diagram some good plays.
So I was poking around today and found out that today is Dana Carvey's 51st birthday. Wow. I would have thought early to mid-40's. Damn.
Tomorrow we're headed out to the Warners for a barbecue with Randy's new grill. Of course, that's if Randy gets it put together correctly (his words, not mine. I have the utmost confidence that it will get done right)
So, I may have sporadic postings over the next week. I decided to jump into the late 90's and get DSL as opposed to the dial-up that I've been working on. Am I dissatisfied with the dial-up? Nope. However, I can use VPN from work if I get DSL (since dial-up can't handle the encryption). This means that I'll have home access to everything that I would have at work so if I do run into the situation where I'm stuck working on stuff at home, I'll be able to fully complete each project instead of just doing 3/4 of it here and finishing at work.
When we moved into the house where we currently live, we put in phone lines and put together a plan that benefited us at the time. Upon closer inspection, we don't need three phone lines and a ton of extras that we aren't getting our money's worth from anymore. So, I dropped the extra two phone lines, ordered DSL and as soon as it's up and running I'll drop the dial-up. Since I don't know when that will happen, I may be on and off this week.

Carolina and Edmonton. I hope their series is as enjoyable as the Eastern Conference Finals. There is always a split on the players who are superstitous and those that aren't. But it always amazes me to see the playoff beards and avoidance of the conference trophy.
Again, I have no real ties to either team. Although both teams have players who started the 05-06 season on the Pittsburgh Penguins roster. Dick Tarnstrom plays defense for the Edmonton Oilers and Mark Recchi plays forward for the Carolina Hurricanes.
I think I'm going to have to go with the western conference team for the win. Edmonton in 6 games.