Gerald L. Updyke's Internet Web Log

Goodbye, old friend

2011-09-04T12:48:00.002-04:00

October 12, 1996 - September 2, 2011

On Sourdough Bread and Keeping Starters

2011-06-26T19:43:00.006-04:00

On a family visit to Alabama a couple years ago, I came across a bubbling container of goo on my Uncle's kitchen counter. I asked him what it was and he said it was his Sourdough Starter. That sounded neat to me, so we ended up talking about it for a while. He gave me instructions for making my own once returning to Raleigh. "You see, Dothan Alabama starter will taste different from Raleigh NC starter because of the different wild yeasts in the air", etc. This appealed to my civic pride. And having not baked bread in quite a while, what better way to get back into it than with a biochem project!

Fast forward a few months. I didn't buy his simple explanation for making my own starter, so I looked online and came across the Holy Grail of information on all subjects Sourdough: Sourdough Home!! This site is great and has all the necessary information to create your own starter (or locations where you can buy it mail order...some of the strains are over a hundred years old!), recipes, general baking advice and more. I created my starter with whole grain wheat from the Northwest (freshly milled into flour by a coworker), so even though it was technically "made" in Raleigh, the natural wild yeasts originated from either Colorado or Canada (the supplier was unable to be more specific). So much for "Raleigh Yeast". Oh, I tried and failed to make a starter using expensive store-bought flour. Don't waste your time.

The process of making a starter is tedious and time consuming. In other words, right up my alley! I loved watching it progress from a flour/water mix that just sat there to an active, bubbling creation that I now refer to as my 2nd child (Krusty the Dog being the 1st). On his website, Mike says the best way to get a starter you KNOW will get the job done is to order one. But if you're like me and you want a sense of accomplishment and ownership to go along with your starter, give it a shot: make your own!

Today I made another batch of bread and it's great. Again. The stuff will rise like a champ and all it asks in return is to be fed once a month and kept refrigerated. Not bad! (You can keep them at room temp, but will need to feed them twice a day). Sometimes I take it out of the fridge, crack it open and just smell it. YUM. That cake-batter consistency just drives me crazy.

Before I get to rambling too much, the following serves as a condensed, localized area of information for anyone I've ever given starter to, or who I may give it to in the future:

Keep it in the fridge in a glass or plastic container with a loose fitting lid. I use a mason jar. As the yeasts eat the flour, CO2 is created and you don't want an explosion on your hands.
Feed it every 30 days: weigh the amount of starter you have and divide by 2. Mix that much bread flour and that much water together and into your starter. If you thought, "Won't that make it double in size every with every feeding?", you are correct. Proceed accordingly. Wait about a week after feeding before using.
The gross looking layer of liquid on top of the starter is called "hooch" and is perfectly normal. Stir it back in or dump it. It smells sort of like alcohol!
I prefer the "San Francisco Style Sourdough Bread" recipe. Some tweaks I have developed are:

Start at night for fresh bread at dinner the next day.
Once dough is kneaded and separated, place in PAM'd bread pans and wrap with Saran (keeps them moist). Place in oven overnight with the light off.
In the morning, punch bread down. Place back in oven with light on, unwrapped. The light gives it just enough warmth to kick it into high gear for the final rise.
By 2pm, it should be ready to bake.

In closing: if you like bread and don't hate America, let me know and I'll give you some starter to try out.

Oh, Raleigh...

2011-04-11T10:50:00.007-04:00

Raleigh is Smart!!

Raleigh is "Celebratory" and "Unexpected"!

"Unexpected" + "Celebratory" = "Unexpected Celebration" which can only mean one thing: "Surprise Party!!"

i appreciate the sentiment, but you will need to try harder in the future to keep such things more "Unexpected". here are some tips:

don't advertise my surprise party on a building 20 feet from where i work
change your signage from "Smart" and "Unexpected" to "Inconsiderate" and "Predictable". that will lower my expectations and prevent smarmy posts like this one.
i like 1/2 Chocolate and 1/2 White sheet cake with cream cheese icing. the darker the accent colors the better, b/c who doesn't like it when their teeth and tongue turn blue??
check with my wife for availability.

Thanks!!

Glasses!

2011-04-10T20:23:00.008-04:00

one of the best things about life is turning 40. i should know: it happened to me just 3 months and some change ago. it's been everything i could have imagined and more...with one exception: i still don't need glasses!

i've been cursed with "good enough to not need glasses" vision my whole life. everyone says "you'll need them one day", but my patience is wearing thin. and if i'm honest about it, i'm a little bummed. all you bespectacled folks out there, yucking it up with your glasses. it's not fair.

i refuse to wait for the blessed day in which i have Andrea drive me to the Lens Crafter's (i won't be able to drive myself, duh. i'll need glasses!). preparation is important to me, so i've been "test driving" my friends' glasses to see which frames best suit me. except for the migraines, it's been a lot of fun. and it's resulted in an awesome short list.

i have my favorite, Andrea has her favorite, but i thought i'd put it to you, my loyal readership, to let me know what YOU think. plus, this way i'll know exactly who is (and ISN'T) reading my annual blog post.

without delay, here are the new me's:

remember, all of these glasses are owned by someone you probably know who is also married, so no "#2 looks stupid" or "#4 is HAWT!", etc. thank you.

leave your choice in the comments and i'll tally them up and take the results to the Optometrist sometime in the (hopefully near) future.

What's up with that sore on your kid's face?

2011-03-02T11:22:00.005-05:00

below is an email i sent to family members updating them on my son's recent battle with a "skin infection" next to his eye. i may add pics later, but they are not for the faint of heart:

*********************************************************

hey y'all. figured it would be easier to shotgun this info out all at once: Oscar is fine. a quick timeline of events:

Monday, February 14th, he banged his head right next to his left eye. it was nothing remarkable and barely even broke the skin. this is at least a tri-weekly occurrence.
by Saturday the 19th, it had gotten worse, instead of better, although it still wasn't "bad". just a little red dot that wasn't there before.
by Monday the 21st, it looked terrible and i suggested Andrea take him to the Pediatrician Tuesday, which she did.
the idiot doctor who saw him Tuesday (22nd) decided to give him a powerful antibiotic shot that is relatively useless at fighting skin infections (so my sources tell me).
Wednesday (23rd), it was still bad so Andrea took him back and they put him on an oral antibiotic.
we had planned on taking a long weekend at the beach, but with his eye the way it was, i sent Andrea without us (she was attending a blog conference). this was Thursday the 24th.
his eye looked horrible and other little sores popped up around the main one. i made an appointment for Friday morning to see a 3rd doctor.
Friday the 25th, his primary doctor saw his eye and made arrangements to have him go to the hospital to start taking IV antibiotics, since as he put it, "we don't have the upper hand here". the close proximity to his eye and the fact that it wasn't responding to the other medicine concerned him and the IV stuff was going to knock it out. we were all afraid it was a MRSA infection, which would suck. he took a culture off the sore and sent it off to the lab. i called Andrea and she left right away to make the 3 hour trip home. Monica left work and came to the hospital to be with us, which was a life saver. when Andrea showed up to relieve her, she then swung by the house and picked up Krusty to keep him overnight. they started Oscar's IV and gave him 30 minutes worth of medicine every 8 hours for 24 hours. yay.
Saturday morning, the 26th, his eye wasn't noticeably better, but they sent us home anyway. still no word on the culture. our Pediatrician called to check on us and assumed since we had been discharged that the infection was all but gone. he asked how it looked and Andrea mentioned it wasn't all that different, aside from less puffiness. he was alarmed at this and told us to come in Sunday to see him again.
Sunday, the 27th...almost 2 weeks to the day after this whole thing began...he and Andrea wondered if it wasn't bacterial at all, but viral. Andrea and her family are susceptible to cold sores, which as you know is just a form of the herpes virus. Dr. Bo took a viral culture and sent it off, and to be on the safe side, started Oscar on an antiviral medicine. **Edit - He also made an appt. for Oscar to see a Pediatric Ophthalmologist on Monday**
Monday, nothing to report. **Edit - Ped. Ophthalmologist agreed it looked like it may be viral, and that if so, it would be almost unprecedented**
Tuesday, March 1st, Dr. Bo called and told Andrea the viral culture came back positive.

at long last, we now know the following:

Oscar had an outbreak of herpes on his face. essentially, a cold sore right next to his eye. this is almost unheard of and threw everybody so much that not only did it delay proper treatment by almost 2 weeks, it had people prescribing super-strong antibiotics that were really hard on his little body for nothing. we spent a night in the hospital for nothing. i could go on and on, but i guess i don't blame them. Mom and Sam couldn't believe it was a virus, either, and i trust them more than these jerkoff's up here...so i will extend a little grace. to the jerkoff's.
once this heals up (and it is healing), it may never happen again. or if it does, it will hopefully happen in the normal place in the form of a regular old cold sore on his lips.

Through all this, Oscar never acted sick or like he was in any discomfort. but if you see the pictures (and you will when Andrea blogs about it this week), you'll see how disgusting his sore was and how scary it was for us. we/i thought it was a MRSA infection and if you do a google image search for MRSA, you'll see why i was so worried. when the antibiotics didn't help, we thought maybe it was a super strong strain of bacteria that was resistant even to the antibiotics they use for resistant strains of bacteria! we were like, "now what??". we thought maybe his body wasn't responsive to antibiotics. we thought lots of scary things. i got angry that he was going through this and that he would possibly have a big scar on his face for the rest of his life, or that he could go blind in one eye...it's just what parents do, i suppose. but we are very thankful that even though we apparently have weak faith in the face of turmoil, God took care of our little boy and is continuing to do so every day. thank you, God!

thanks to everyone for your concerns. look forward to our next get together.

love,

The Raleigh Updykes

Current Events

2010-03-23T22:52:00.002-04:00

Rather than address real issues facing the poor and the crappy inner city schools in their communities, let's send the poor kids to the rich kid schools while simultaneously sending the richies to the poor kid schools! If that doesn't fix everything, it should at least skew "the numbers" enough to make it look like it's fixing everything, right? OR, maybe it will make it so the poor kids get a 'better education' than the richies, giving them an advantage so they can go on to make more money as adults, thereby displacing the richies.

Sounds like a cycle to me.

Hmmmm.

Sincerely,

Lots of people in Wake County, NC

Unseasonable warmth

2010-02-25T21:06:00.005-05:00

We've been having some pretty nasty winter weather here in Raleigh. Then, there was this nice patch of warmth that came in for most of this week. Our house doesn't have a lot of natural light, so the plants take a big hit during winter. I count on these opportunities every winter to get them out and soak up some sun (and in the case of the last 2 days: rain) to make it until Spring. What i do NOT count on is looking out the window early in the morning and seeing them getting snowed on:

The last pic is taken from the one above it and enlarged. If I have to do digital magic to make the snow visible it must not have been that bad, right? Yeah, I guess. The important thing is it didn't frost last night while they were out. Had that happened, and had harm befallen even one of the 6 plants pictured, it would've been "Go time" between me and....frost.

New series of posts on the way

2009-12-13T15:50:00.009-05:00

my phone doubles as a spur-of-the-moment capturer of memories, i.e., it has a crappy camera built in. i've got pictures on it dating back to the summer and as soon as i get a data cable for it, i'm going to dump them onto my PC and share them with you. it promises to be a lot of fun for me, and i can delete the pictures as i go freeing up much needed space.

here's a taste:

Andrea and I were in Dothan, AL over Thanksgiving visiting my family. Mom offered to watch Oscar one afternoon so we went and caught a matinée (Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we both loved) and did a little shopping. we both think Oscar would enjoy this toy, or one very similar, but they're a bit pricey new. i have never said "you can't put a price on happiness", b/c i can and it is less than $70.

on the way home, Eagle Eye Andrea spotted the toy out in front of a small shop. but this post is not about the toy and whether or not we bought it (we didn't). nor is it about all the great bargains we found in that shop (lots and lots of very inexpensive toys for our boy)...it's about my trip to the bathroom there.

by the time we left the movie theater, i had to go #1 pretty bad, but for whatever reason i chose not to go. maybe i very mistakenly thought we were going straight back and not to Toys-R-Us. well, i sure wasn't going to go there, all the kid germs and what not, so i resigned myself to holding it in. i barely made it back in the car and thought "Finally...we're going home"...when Andrea had me turn into the used toy store.

the first thing i wanted to know when i got in there was directions to the bathroom. the proprietor looked a little flustered and said, "Oh...umm....well, yes we do have a bathroom, but...well...", which did nothing to reassure my bladder. "OK, come all the way around here and go back to the back and then take the 1st right and the bathroom is on the left there". she then very awkwardly broached the "#1 or #2?" topic by saying "i don't think we have any toilet paper back there, but....."

"That won't be necessary", i interrupted.

the bathroom was relatively tough to access. there was barely enough room for me to squeeze through, sideways, due to all the racks of old clothes and broken, discarded toys everywhere. when at last I reached my destination, this is what awaited me:

I was afraid to touch the toilet seat

i don't know what the cleaning stuff was doing in there,

other than collecting dust.

eww

this sums it up

these camera-phones don't do very well capturing unbridled filth, b/c i'm telling you: i needed a shower after stepping in there. i can only imagine what the shower, had there been one, would have looked like.

Dreaming of joining the Army

2009-11-18T20:56:00.015-05:00

i joined the Army during my Senior year of High School and enlisted 3 weeks after graduation. for 2 years and 19 weeks, i served as a 16-Romeo, which is Army speak for "Vulcan Crew Member". the Vulcan is a giant, 6-barreled Gatling gun mounted into the chassis of an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC). There is also a towed version. It fires 20mm shells at a rate of roughly 3,000 rounds per minute. its purpose was to shoot down aircraft, but it was outdated even when i was in. Stinger missiles were much more effective at that. helicopters, maybe, but fast movers? no way. if used on people, it would leave an unrecognizable puddle of red stuff. to my knowledge, it is no longer in use in the active duty military.

i spent a year in Korea (89-90) where i was lucky enough to go to the DMZ and see North Korea over the barbed wire. we spent a lot of time in the field preparing for war with the North. lucky it never happened while i was there: we all thought of ourselves as "speed bumps" to the North's unstoppable military machine.

my next duty station was Fort Bliss in El Paso, TX, but i only spent a month or so there and was shipped off to Iraq for the 1st Gulf War.

The last 6 months of my enlistment was spent back in Fort Bliss. i'd say Uncle Sam got his money's worth out of me in the short time i was in. looking back i have no complaints or regrets, however i can't imagine a circumstance that i would re-enlist at this point in my life.

so when i say "dreaming of joining the Army", it's not an aspiration: it is a recurring nightmare i've been having. it's always the same: it's current day and i'm leaving my wife and son to go off and join the Army. i don't know what has happened to lead me to the decision, but the emotions i feel are very real. "i'm almost 40...what am i doing joining the Army again?". "What about Andrea and Oscar? and Krusty? Will i ever see them again?". "Will i be sent to Iraq? Afghanistan? I don't want to die". etc.

thankfully, i'm able to wake up and realize it was all in my head. teary eyed and breathless, i wake Andrea and tell her about it and how thankful i am it wasn't real. but for plenty of people, it's very real. lately i've been thinking about those people: people who are having to leave their wives or husbands and their children to go off to a dangerous place, risking their lives. for what? National Security? whose?

my father was in Vietnam when i was born. he talked about being flown home shortly afterward and spending a week in Ohio. he said the quiet McConnelsville nights messed with his head. that, and the ridiculousness of it all: one day he's in Vietnam flying helicopters, getting shot at and the next night, lying awake in a bed in Ohio. going over to begin with must have been hell for him, leaving a wife, 2 kids and one on the way. imagine thinking "gosh, i may never see my daughters again or never see my son." now imagine having to go back. i don't think i could do it and i don't know how people do it now.

without getting too preachy, i just want to say that we are asking too much of our soldiers. it's not fair to keep sending them out for 12 or 15 month rotations in Iraq or Afghanistan. suicides are up, stateside murders by soldiers are up...we're killing them and it's time to bring them home.

June, July, August, September and October pics are up!!

2009-11-08T20:58:00.001-05:00

just check Andrea's blog.

and this video!

Happy Birthday, boy

2009-10-12T19:48:00.004-04:00

according to Jewish culture, you're a man now...

Andrea decorated the cake!

traditional "handshake" photo. i have 13 years worth of these.

the streak is over

2009-10-04T21:23:00.005-04:00

i've had my beloved Krusty dog for almost 13 years now. his birthday is the 12th of this month and let me tell you: he is SO a Libra.

throughout his youth, i didn't have to concern myself much with trimming his nails b/c he was always running around so much, they wore down naturally. but when i did trim them, i always took great care to keep it above the quick and make it as painless and blood-free as possible.

for nearly 13 years that has been one of the prides of my life. when Oscar was born, i voluntarily took on nail trimming duties, given my impressive track record with the dog. things were going well until he was 5 months old and i chopped off a large hunk of his left index finger right before bedtime. not good. on the positive side, i don't have any stressful records in the back of my mind when doing his nails now. AND i know it's not the end of the world if it happens again.

i've been thinking a lot about Krusty's mortality lately. he has slowed way down, but is still the same happy, loving dog he's always been. only now, the fun needs to involve things that don't require him to hear, run or jump.

today we took a family walk around Lake Johnson. Andrea blogged about taking Krusty and Oscar on the same walk and how hard it was for her to handle them both. i went along this time and let me tell you: she wasn't kidding. Krusty freaked out walking across the bridge again and stopped to pee on everything. but it was great seeing him out in the woods on a beautiful Fall day. it was also a nice treat to veer off the path down to the waters edge and play stick. he enjoyed that. see for yourself.

Happy dog

Glory days

we have hardwoods throughout our house and often times, Andrea and i are in opposite ends. Krusty goes back and forth checking on both of us until we come together in the same room. problem is, he goes back and forth right in front of Oscar's room and with those long nails, sounds like 8 people wearing tap shoes. he has woken the baby on more than one occasion and tonight i figured it was time to cut some dog nails.

as tired as he was from our walk earlier, he was putting up his usual resistance. i'd trim one nail and he'd pull his leg back, as if i had hurt him. Andrea came up with a good idea of giving him a little treat after each nail. he's totally food motivated, and the "painful recoiling" ceased once we were putting food in his belly.

and then it happened: i squeezed my fist to activate the pincher style blades on the clippers and blood started oozing out of the tip of his nail at a frightening rate. i was numb. all i could say was "Oh my God....he's bleeding". Andrea went in the bathroom and got some toilet paper and a Hydrogen Peroxide soaked cotton ball. by the time she got back, the bleeding had stopped, but not before my fingers were covered and my heart was broken. did i mention he never even flinched? again, thanks to Andrea for taking his mind off it. all he wanted to know was "Where's my treat??".

Exhibits A, B and C

we finished his last paw without incident. he and Andrea are in bed now. i'm so thankful i didn't cause him any pain. he's such a great dog and has been my best friend...i don't know what i'll do without him. anyway, he's fine. i just had to get this off my chest.

in other news, my son really looks like Chucky in this picture:

Little Pal

2009-08-18T15:29:00.002-04:00

Oscar's my little pal and it makes me sad to listen to this song and imagine singing it to him for real. naturally, i listen to it over and over again. you should, too.

Great site

2009-08-06T10:59:00.002-04:00

"MarloweDK", funk bassist of YouTube fame, had his account suspended b/c of his "play along" videos which violated their copyright rules. so he did what anyone would do: made his own YouTube-like sight and uploaded them there, and you can do it to! here's a taste. the run at 2:29 kills, as does the one at 3:26.

May Pics are up!

2009-06-17T19:22:00.001-04:00

Oscar - May 2009

T + 16

2009-06-04T09:50:00.004-04:00

pics from Wednesday, June 3rd: 16 days after seeding.

what's the worst song a bunch of good musicans can record?

2009-06-02T21:31:00.002-04:00

click to find the answer.

T + 10

2009-05-28T20:51:00.002-04:00

pics from Thursday, May 28th: 10 days after seeding.

T + 9

2009-05-27T15:03:00.002-04:00

pics from Wednesday, May 27th: 9 days after seeding.

T + 8

2009-05-27T14:33:00.006-04:00

pics from Tuesday, May 26th: 8 days after seeding.

Phase 5

2009-05-25T10:36:00.014-04:00

Monday, May 18th, i spread the seed. the weather called for rain the day before, so i didn't want to chance it all getting washed away by doing it then. instead, while Andrea was at our weekly Community Group meeting (Bible study), Oscar slept and Krusty and I did our thing.

There are no pics of the "post-smoothed" yard, but it's not hard to imagine: barren dirt, but somewhat smooth instead of lumpy. not all that picture worthy. But before seed could be spread, it needed to be roughed up a bit, and that took nearly an hour. i went over the whole yard with a garden rake and took the opportunity to remove more clumps of dead grass and dirt, to facilitate further smoothing of the surface. then, it was go time. 15 pounds of "shady mix" grass seed into the spreader and i was off.

in the beginning, i was trying to be all careful, but after a while, i was just zig-zagging all over trying to ensure no square inch was left unseeded. there was another whole 15 pound bag and the plan was to use some of it, but i ended up using all of it, too. so...30 pounds of grass seed later, it was time to spread some starter fertilizer. this stuff looks like rabbit food and didn't spread as easily as the seed, but is a necessary ingredient.

Monica gave me a partial bale of hay, which didn't cover the whole yard, but was better than nothing (i have since purchased a bale and completed that step).

the soaker hose i bought was completely worthless. i mistakenly thought it was the "sprinkler" style, but as the name implies, it just seeps water out into the ground. it would be perfect for a huge garden, but terrible for a new lawn. as luck would have it, Steph came home right about that time and said she had a sprinkler head they didn't use, so i gave them the soaker hose in trade. it's now in their huge garden, doing what it was meant to do. thanks, Bob and Steph! Witchger's to the rescue, again. or should i say, to the "Fescue"?? huh? huh?

Here's the yard after seed and hay application:

see the caution tape? i decided it was necessary what with all the foot traffic the yard gets. all the mail boxes in our neighborhood are on our porches, so the mail man walks from house to house, cutting through everyone's front yards. i felt like a jerk blocking off his path, so i left him a "Thank you for not screwing up my yard while the seeds sprout" card. oh yeah, and $20. hey, a little palm grease never hurt anybody.

we found a few grass blades yesterday. check 'em out!

not too impressive. but before you judge, check out the picks from a few minutes ago:

by my best and most conservative estimate, i'm thinking tomorrow it should look something like this:

nothing like lush grass to attract the neighborhood cows. i'll deal with them when the time comes. tomorrow.

as per the stipulations of the watering permit i purchased from the city for $50, i am allowed to water between 6 and 10 (am and pm) every day for 45 days. we have year round water restrictions, so without the permit, i would only be allowed to water 3 days a week. there's no way that would sustain a new lawn, so it was a non-negotiable.

you may be thinking "it's too late in the season to plant grass seed, you idiot!". that's fair. but in my defense, i say: nuh-uh. the night i seeded was the beginning of an unseasonably cool streak, thereby simulating optimal seeding conditions. add to that the absence of young-lawn killing thunderstorms, and i'd say the pieces are in place.

more pictures and less talk in the coming days.

Lawn Project Update!!

2009-05-16T15:10:00.006-04:00

Phase 4 - Subphase 1
as per the last post, Bob lent me the family tiller again and i went over the yard. it was great! the tines got lowered down to several inches, since it had to go through the new layer of topsoil to get to the original surface. it was fun to get the two layers mixed in and i could really feel the dirt moving. the hard part was going back over it with the garden rake and smoothing it out.

Phase 4 - Subphase 2
today i rented a manual "sod roller". it's just a ~22 gallon drum with a drain plug you fill with water. and a handle. not much to it. the cost for 4 hours was $11. it didn't exactly pack the dirt down the way i had hoped, but it did a decent job. as Andrea put it, once the grass comes in, the variations in smoothness won't be visible.

from the rental place, i went straight to Lowe's and got 30lbs of "Shade Mix" grass seed that's guaranteed to grow. we'll see. also picked up several bags of starter fertilizer. i called my dad on the way, as he's the lawn king. he did the same thing to his yard a few years ago that i'm doing now, rather successfully. he encouraged me to keep going and said everything sounded like it was going as it should. i was gonna seed today, but it's supposed to rain pretty hard tomorrow, so i will either wait until evening, or Monday.

all the pieces are in place. i'll put up some pics of the smooth dirt yard later. and should this all fail (too late in the season to plant, deluge washes away dirt/seed, etc), i can just do it again in the fall. all the hard work has already been done. going forward, it's just maintenance.

Operation Rejuvenate Your Crappy Front Yard - Phases 1 through 5

2009-05-10T20:23:00.014-04:00

Andrea and i have been sick of our front yard for a while now. the previous owner either didn't have gutters, or had gutters that served no purpose (which was the case when we bought the house). the result: run-off from the roof cascading down the slope of the front yard toward the street cutting ravines and stealing precious top-soil. what little grass there is grows in tufts and small islands, 2 to 3 inches above the surrounding dirt.

Phase 1 - Infrastructure
we replaced the gutter along the front of the house last year. without that, it would have been pointless to try and do anything with the lawn. this was an easy step, as it needed to be done anyway and didn't require tearing anything up, yardwise.

Phase 2 - Kill
with my Dad's encouragement, I proceeded to the next step from which there was no return: apply RoundUp everywhere and kill everything.

Phase 3 - Till
Two and three go together, really: "Kill 'n Till". but they are two distinct steps, so i've broken them up. Bob let me borrow the Witchger Family Tiller last weekend. Here are some photo highlights:

Before:

During:

After:

Phase 4 - Dirt
we're down to mostly clay and rocks in our front yard. i found a place that would deliver 10 cubic yards of dirt (that's 270 cubic feet) for a reasonable price, which they did this past Friday. check out the action:

Bob and i were mesmerized:

Bob stuck around after the dirt was dumped and helped me blow through that big pile in no time! we got it spread all over the yard in a few hours:

it took me the whole rest of the weekend to recuperate from Friday. Saturday Andrea managed to get to the Farmer's Market and buy some fresh veggies, as well as veggie plants for our garden. we even got them in the ground! Sunday we cleaned up inside and out. but all the while, my back was complaining. Friday really beat me down. Bob, on the other hand, helped another friend of ours MOVE ROCKS Saturday. oh, to be 29.

the next part of this Phase...the 1st Sub-Phase, is to till again, trying to make the 2 layers of old and new dirt into one super layer. the 2nd Sub-Phase is to rent a big hand powered roller to go over and smooth things out.

Phase 5 - Seeds!
not quit there yet. i'll let you know when it happens and expect lots of pics to monitor growth. it's a little late in the season to be doing this, but i've got no choice now. gotta keep moving forward!

Oscar - The First Hundred Days

2009-05-06T09:56:00.003-04:00

it's hard to believe 100 days have passed since Oscar was born. he's gone from a wrinkled red ball with really long fingers to a happy little baby of normal skin tone. he loves to eat and sleep (like his Daddy), as well as smile a lot and sing (like his Mama). he's fascinated by his hands and just last night used his fists to hold his bottle for a few seconds! he likes playing "super baby" and has great core strength, keeping his body flat and parallel with the ground when we hold him up over our heads.

nothing melts our hearts like seeing his smiling face in the morning. or during the day, at night, or any other time. he's a great baby and he's growing up so fast!

all in all, i'd say the first hundred days have been a major success.

My youngest son is a maniac

2009-05-05T15:32:00.001-04:00

M8M clip o' the week

2009-05-02T22:27:00.001-04:00

trippy, man...

Find more videos like this on Middle8Media

Middle8Media

2009-04-12T09:35:00.002-04:00

check the weekly clip. good stuff, as always!

Find more videos like this on Middle8Media

Shark cage

2009-04-11T22:29:00.004-04:00

every year, the squirrels get more bold and cause more damage to my prize Jade and Christmas Cacti. April through October is when they get their prime "outside time" and i can't have a bunch of disgusting animals destroying my plants!! i decided to take a (hopefully) more effective approach to keeping them safe: i give you shark cage.

it's an 8x4x3 box made from 1x3's and chicken wire. Andrea is supportive so far. her only comment was, "so what color are we going to paint that monstrosity??". i'll let her decide.

Documenting a special moment from late 2008

2009-04-11T21:58:00.011-04:00

i used to disc golf. all the time. summer weekends were dedicated to tournaments, mostly local, but occasionally i'd travel. random doubles after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and casual play in between all of that. i never really got "good", but i was ok.

the competition of organized tournaments was fun, but the moments i will cherish the most are the hundreds of rounds i played with my dog, Krusty.

we started in Alabama in the late 90's, early 2000's. back then, i'd shank discs left and right into the woods and i'd send him in one way after them while i went the other way. "Go get the frisbee!" i'd say right before heading into the thicket. most of the time, i would come out of the woods and he would be sitting there with the frisbee on the ground in front of him. who knows how long he'd been sitting there?

we moved to NC at the beginning of 2001 and i started picking up pointers from some of the best disc golfers in the world, so not as many discs for the dog to retrieve, but still lots of fun to be had. he and i have weathered thunderstorms, snow and ice, intense heat and yellow jackets all during a round of disc golf. it's been some of the best times of my life out there, him and me.

he's 12.5 years old now and i didn't play a whole lot of golf in 2008. i'm in the cycle of "i don't have the time or money to play tournaments, and even if i did, i don't have the time to play casually often enough to be competitive in a tourney, so why bother??". it doesn't make me feel to badly b/c he doesn't get around as well and the summer heat really takes it out of him. we get our exercise and playtime in the house, on walks and in the back yard where i have a basket and practice my putting now and then.

i was feeling sentimental late last year and decided to get one last round in before 2009. it would be the only full round i played at my "home course" of Cedar Hills. it was a beautiful December day and the weather was probably mid 50's. i packed up the dog and my golf bag and we hit the course like the old days. he showed no signs of slowing down through the entire 18 holes and did super. luckily i brought my camera, but only managed to get a few shots. i present them to you now:

this wasn't the most memorable round of golf based on my score or spectacular shots, but b/c i know it's one of the last times i'll be out there with my special dog. i couldn't have asked for a better day.

April pics are up!!

2009-04-11T21:41:00.001-04:00

Oscar - April 2009

and March pics have been updated!

Krust: 2009

2009-03-12T23:26:00.002-04:00

Krust: 2009

March pics are up

2009-03-09T22:17:00.001-04:00

Oscar - March 2009

This dog is an American Hero

2009-03-02T14:13:00.001-05:00

or at least a National Treasure

an online gallery of Oscar photos taken in February

2009-02-25T23:07:00.002-05:00

Oscar - February 2009

Last weekend with the Witchger brothers.

2009-02-19T17:49:00.002-05:00

on disgusting things in the back yard

2009-02-07T14:27:00.012-05:00

you've read about poison ivy in my back yard not once, not twice...not even three or four times. but five times! ridiculous, i know.

in keeping with that theme, i wanted to write a quick post about another disgusting thing in my back yard.

next to the "death tree" (see previous poison ivy posts) there was this strange circular concrete looking thing about a foot tall and a couple feet in diameter. i've wondered what it is for 2 years, but never put forth the effort to find out. every now and again i would kick it or poke at it with a rake and a small piece would fall off, but i would lose interest and continue doing whatever brought me back there: mowing, raking or killing poison ivy.

the weather is beautiful today so i went out and finished up some raking i started last week. Bob came out and then Andrea and Oscar...then Steph and Lilly. the whole gang was congregated at the fence catching up, as we haven't seen much of each other since the baby. that was great.

for whatever reason, that mound caught my eye again and i said, "i wonder what the hell that thing is". Bob offered to let me borrow his sledge hammer to knock it apart which i gladly accepted. costochondritis or not, this thing had to go. it's placement in the far corner of the yard made it hard to mow and rake back there, plus it reminded me of the neglect this yard had endured for the last 40 years before we showed up.

it wasn't hard to knock the mystery structure apart. as i gently swung the sledge hammer into it, it fell apart in large chunks. Bob jumped over the fence to check it out with me. look at these disgusting photos of the former inhabitants:

hey there, little buddies!

i just looked up termites and these are definitely not termites, although their home which i destroyed did remind me of an ancient termite mound. i guess it was an old ant colony? i've never seen them moving around the outside of the mound, which was hard packed like clay. it was probably a very rare species of subterranean ant that i decimated with a sledge hammer and a flathead shovel. not unlike the ancient poison ivy i killed, not 2 feet away. both goldmines in the scientific communities...both gone forever.

good riddance!

on fatherhood

2009-01-31T21:40:00.013-05:00

having been a father for going on 12 days now, i think i know a thing or two about the ins and outs of bringing up baby right.

for example: installing the car seat. we have the removable seat that docks to a base (we even have a base for each car! wow!), so getting the base strapped down nice and tight is a must. i remember Stevens telling me how he had his knee in the car seat bouncing up and down on it to make sure it was torqued down nice and tight.

Andrea had been telling me to get out and put the base in at least one of our cars for about a week before she went into labor. naturally, i didn't get started until she was about 8 hours into labor, before we left for the hospital. and i didn't know what i was doing. in fact, after reading part of the directions, i was convinced that neither of our cars (8 and 14 years old) were even capable of transporting children safely.

i finally figured out, or so i thought, how to get the base installed. as we were getting into the car to drive to the hospital, Andrea looked at the car seat and said, "oh, that's definitely not right". under normal circumstances i would've argued with her, but come on: even i'm not that big of a jerk. "we'll worry about that later", i said and we drove on. half way to the hospital i said, "so why do you think it's wrong?". i couldn't help myself. she decided the angle of the seat was too steep and needed to be more horizontal. seemed logical.

after Oscar was born and we were in hiding at the hospital, i went out to the car to see what was up. that's when i noticed the level built into the car seat that tells you if the angle is right. she was correct, it was way steep. i looked and looked, but couldn't figure out how to make it right. defeated, i went back in the hospital room and proceeded to tell her about her steep back seats and how there was nothing we could do about it. she seemed to remember a way to adjust the angle, and immediately i felt like an idiot. "ok, i'll try again".

sure enough, after taking the base out of the car, i figured out how to adjust it to perfect pitch. now, i just needed to re-install it nice and tight again. remembering how Stevens had bounced up and down on his seat, i figured i'd do the same. except, instead of using my knee, i used my chest and bounced myself up and down on the hard, plastic base...driving it into my right ribcage. after about the 5th blow, i felt a sharp pain and was convinced i had broken a rib. luckily, i did not, but it still hurts to take a deep breath, laugh, etc. Andrea can't laugh hard, either b/c of her operation, so whenever one of us makes the other laugh and we both get going, we have to use our very reserved "pain laugh" while saying to the other between breaths, "stop it...stop it...it hurts...don't make me laugh...i'm gonna kill you". she thanked me for obtaining a sympathy injury.

it's been over a week since the injury and it's still hurting. i googled the symptoms and believe it's costochondritis.

don't worry, it's much more painful than it sounds.

Correction

2009-01-28T22:58:00.002-05:00

as my faithful readers have noted, Oscar was not born tomorrow on the 29th...he was born 2 days ago on the 26th!

and just so this post contains something new: Andrea and he are really kicking butt on the breast feeding front. we had a great Lactation Consultant today who showed her a trick or two and ever since, she's been able to get him to latch on and really get all he can. so yeah, that's pretty awesome.

this is our last night in the hospital. checkout time is around noon Thursday. we will miss the royal treatment we've gotten from the staff here at Wake Med Cary, but it's time to start our life together as a family...at home...in the real world.

night y'all!

he's here

2009-01-27T13:55:00.003-05:00

Oscar Lawrence Updyke arrived January 29, 2009 at 3:31am, via c-section. Andrea labored for 26 hours, and pushed for 3. she really did everything she could to get him out w/o surgery, but in the end that proved to be impossible due to his impressive stature. he was 10lbs 15.1oz, but they're calling him an even 11. he was 22in.

mother and son are doing extremely well. she's up and walking and he is sleeping a lot and learning to breast feed. what a wonderful wife and baby i have been blessed with.

it was a great experience for the both of us. we feel wonderful about how things turned out, the options we were given and the decisions we made. and now, a picture or 3:

update

2009-01-25T22:02:00.002-05:00

she's at 8cm and we are looking at a Sunday night delivery. she's holding up like a trooper and i'm really freakin' proud of her. i can't wait to see her holding that gigantic baby boy she's been carrying around for all this time. and i can't wait to hold him, either.

later.

Big Blog News

2009-01-25T16:03:00.002-05:00

Andrea, myself, her mom (Doreen) and our doula (Christina) are at Wake Med in Cary and she's knee deep in some baby deliverin' action. long story short: she's 7cm.

another contraction coming on. gotta run!

Jade Blooms pt 2

2008-12-23T20:52:00.004-05:00

one of the 4 jade plants really came through with the blooms. they all had some, but this one looked the best. check it out:

Jade Blooms!

2008-11-01T13:21:00.007-04:00

i moved all my plants inside b/c of freeze warnings. they are taking up space in the kitchen, which i hope to remedy this weekend.

anyway, they are all succulents including Christmas Cacti and Hunter Jade. i was looking at them this week and noticed the Christmas Cacti are sprouting buds, which is great.

I love the blossoms they produce and it's a reminder of the changing seasons. check out my past glory:

as the subject of this post might suggest, i was amazed, ecstatic, floored, etc., to discover my Hunter Jades are sprouting buds, too!! this is a first for me. i've always wanted a blooming Jade and now i have...4.

i took a few pics. more pics to come as they progress.

Thanks, Daniel!!!

HAHAHA!!!

2008-10-31T12:06:00.000-04:00

Shocking story about McCain-Palin sign stealers and the man who had the courage to stand up to the face of evil and make a difference.

Happy Birthday, Stuss

2008-10-16T20:54:00.002-04:00

Krusty, or "Stuss" as we've taken to calling him, turned 12 years old on the 12th of October this year. i figured what better way to celebrate than scan a bunch of old pictures and upload them on a Picasa album. Sometime in the early 2000's we went digital, so they're not all crappy.

enjoy!

Stuss's Retrospective

Goodbye Polly

2008-10-07T21:26:00.004-04:00

Mom and Sam had to put this little angel of a dog down today:

she was just shy of her 17th birthday. part of me wishes i could've been there, but the other part is glad i wasn't. the long distance insulated me enough to where i wasn't a complete mess today. unlike Mom and Sam.

she called me tonight and told me about Polly's last day and how everything went as well as it could have. the call started off normally, but as she went on, she started getting upset. the small details of how it all went down caused that insulation i spoke of to start breaking away and the emotion hit me, too.

i love you, Polly! i will always remember you.

da midnight choo-choo

2008-10-01T16:17:00.003-04:00

where can i get a pair of tickets??

Similarities??

2008-09-17T12:21:00.004-04:00

hopefully the baby won't have a tail, brown teeth or bite people.

Baby news

2008-09-15T18:11:00.004-04:00

real quickly: Andrea is always having me feel her belly when the baby is moving around, in the hopes i'll feel it. all i ever feel is her heartbeat, but i always try b/c i know one day, i will feel it. and i can't wait!

well, the wait is over: this past Saturday morning, she had me put my hand on her belly and no sooner did the little guy give a really big kick. it was unmistakable! she said "did you feel that?" and i was like, "uhhh...yeah!". then again, and again: 3 big kicks. it was great! last night i laid the ukulele across her lap and played songs for him. he will either love it or hate it as he grows older, but i plan on using that as the instrument of choice to sing to him. it's so easy and fun. go get a ukulele if you don't have one (Thanks Dean and Angie!!)

today we had a level 2 ultrasound. they took some really good pictures of...well, everything...to make sure he's coming along and all appears to be normal. check out this pic from Andrea's Blog: the 1st ever actual picture of Baby Updyke. he looks very comfortable.

that's all for now. thanks to everyone for all the support, be it in the form of advice, books, other stuff, etc. we've got a great group of folks in our corner and i know you'll all be tripping over each other to baby sit for us when the time comes. thanks in advance!

Yacht Rock Revisited

2008-08-21T10:53:00.002-04:00

check out the whole series here. you can also search for "Yacht Rock" on YouTube. very informative. there are some language issues, but we're all adults here.

JD Ryznar is making it happen. kudos, JD!

Chuck doing what he does best

2008-07-24T13:46:00.006-04:00

whatever you do, stay outside the sandbag circle...

I have changed my ways

2008-07-22T13:09:00.003-04:00

For the record: I have not, nor will i harm my new little furry nocturnal friend. he only weighs a couple ounces, so even if he eats his weight every night, it would hardly put a dent in my stock pile of sunflower seeds.

if i walk out there one night and there are 10 of those things going to town, that would be really creepy, but i'd refrain from doin' any killin'. life is precious AND my feeder costs around $40 and i don't want to risk breaking it.

there are 2 types of flying squirrels in the US: Northern and Southern. ours is a Southern, although both live in NC. both are also mainly associated with the Western part of the state, so i'm flattered he has chosen our back yard to plunder.

check out this shot of a Southern flying in its natural habitat. magnificent!!

What the H????

2008-07-21T22:06:00.014-04:00

...is that thing sitting on my bird feeder at 9 o'clock at night??? here's what i saw when i walked outside this evening:

a closer look reveals this seemingly cute, cuddly thing is actually quite terrifying with visibly sharp claws and (presumably) rabies and sharp teeth just waiting to tear into me:

here's a different perspective, which also contains a gratuitous shot of the dog (bottom right):

i'm all for "live and let live" and what not, but take a look at the level of that seed feeder: definitely runnin' on E. i filled it only a few days ago!! behold:

busted!! that's the last free supper he's getting from me. next time, it's gonna be more like this:

btw, after about 2 minutes of internet searching, Andrea and i decided it's a flying squirrel. the "flying" part is cool, but not cool enough to counteract the "squirrel" part.

happy hunting!!

SRH

2008-07-17T13:10:00.006-04:00

Ain't she sweet??

i'm going to be a father, eventually!!!

2008-07-10T21:36:00.003-04:00

sooner than later: we're scheduled to deliver a boy/girl on January 31, 2009, a mere 19.5 years after my high school graduation. some of my classmates have kids that are drinking age by now...but i digress.

mother and baby and father and dog are all doing fine. Andrea's fatigued a lot of the time, but we're counting down the days to the start of the Fun Trimester. only 2 more weeks.

for good reading, pictures and details, check out Andreas blog.

WOOOOOO!!!!!!

it's raining again

2008-06-18T08:45:00.001-04:00

That's my dawg

2008-06-07T19:10:00.001-04:00

Jade Madness

2008-05-18T21:23:00.020-04:00

Daniel Hunter is known for many things, not the least of which is his mighty Jade, which he's had since the mid-1990's and has multiplied into an unbelievable network of Jades spreading from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Northwest. it is a Super Jade. when the mood strikes me, i'll climb up in the attic and pull out some old photos so you can see how far back this thing goes.

the day before he married his lovely wife, Jamie, i found a squirrel munching on my then prized jade (lower case b/c it's of no relation to the Super Jade). i closed the porch door, trapping the squirrel, and proceeded to beat the life out of it with a 6' Cold Steel bamboo staff. for a couple years after that, i was jadeless.

almost 2 years ago, just before Daniel and Jamie moved to Corvallis, they gave me a large shallow pot with the trimmings of one of their Jades. today, Andrea and i re-potted it. it was long overdue, as it has gone from from 4" to 5" in height when they gave it to me to over a foot. here's what it looked like about 6 months ago:

it started getting top-heavy and spreading out over the sides of the pot lately:

Healthy Leaves!

on our way home from church today, we stopped by Lowe's and got a bunch of clay pots and dirt. they didn't have my usual brand of dirt and i had to get Miracle Gro, which i hate. it's just overpriced, chemically treated peat moss! i should've made my own mix, but it's too late for that.

good thing we had leftover vermiculite and peat moss from our garden! we would need it.

the first step was to dump the Jade out of it's old pot and separate the root mass.

this is always the most stressful part for me. this thing was so intertwined and tangled, i definitely snapped some important roots and will be lucky if i didn't kill a few of them. i made sure to keep them nice and moist:

i took this opportunity to consolidate Christmas Cacti (visible in the upper right corner of the above photo) that were originally in the same pot many years ago, but i split out b/c it got too big. i had to free up this great white pot (also from Daniel...seeing a pattern??) b/c i felt it was time to reunite Hunter Pot with Hunter Jade:

i was feeling good:

and then the rains came:

i decided to stay out and finish the re-potting:

...but Andrea wisely suggested otherwise. and check out Krust in the 2nd pic! this is the dog that's afraid of rain and thunder/lighting...riding out the weather with his old man, shoulder to shoulder! i was proud of him.

we took advantage of the rain delay by eating a delicious dinner Andrea whipped up and taking pictures of ourselves:

it finally stopped raining, but was still pretty windy, wet, cool and generally kind of nasty. Andrea came out and helped me finish, which i couldn't have done without her help. check out our new Jade Arboretum:

pretty cool, huh? we got the blue pot intending to make it the flagship Jade, but it didn't go down like that. it never does. whenever i have a big re-potting project, i start freaking out half way through when all the plant pieces are laid all over and i have to try and arrange them in a pot, fill it with dirt and try to keep them from falling over and/or breaking off branches. it stresses me out, man. this time was no different. but unlike past experiences, i had SO MUCH Jade to work with, there wasn't a whole lot of pressure. the Flagship Jade turned out to be the one on the top step, in the middle. it's the biggest pot. the other pots are probably not big enough to handle all the plants we crammed in them. i may be re-potting sooner than i'd like to remedy this, but not for at least another year. the one in the white pot turned out great, too. i'm sure there will be more pics coming as the roots take hold and they get used to their new diggs.

i made reference to the Super Jade at the very beginning of this post. it's funny that i again have a Jade from that line. way back in the day, Daniel had 2 plants and gave me one. i was an idiot and gave mine to a girl who's long gone. so let that be a lesson to those who are now in possession of Super Jade: don't let anything happen to it. there's a 10 year wait to get another one.

a big Thank You to Andrea and Krusty for their help and to Daniel for giving me the love for all things Jade, as well as giving me actual Jades! your lineage is thriving in Raleigh!

Keepin' it Real with Barack

2008-05-09T15:11:00.000-04:00

"Come with me..."

2008-05-07T17:14:00.002-04:00

things i find myself muttering under my breath at work

2008-05-07T11:30:00.004-04:00

today it occurred to me that i mutter the same stuff over and over while doing my day to day activities. here's a quick list in order of frequency, highest to lowest:

- "Sigh...."
- "Son of a bitch!"
- "Gimme a break!"
- "Seriously??"
- "That's Bull$h1t"
- "Whatever"
- "You've got to be kidding me"

you get the idea. i mean, i love my job and my coworkers are cool but every little thing that goes wrong, i feel the need to mutter. then, as quickly as it came, i'm back to normal.

i'm listening to the R.E.M. album "Document" and have instantly been transported back to my Junior year of high school in Yakima, Washington. what a great album! Stevens (who i know is reading this post): should we consider pretending to want to do this one for the Great Cover Up instead of/in addition to "Life's Rich Pageant"??

i'm out.

that time of year (PI-5)

2008-05-04T21:21:00.030-04:00

pre-allergy spring and pre-allergy fall are my 2 favorite seasons. unfortunately, we are now into full on allergy mode Spring which is my least favorite season. close second is full on allergy mode Fall.

but this isn't a post about pollen, sneezing or itchy/watery eyes. if you've read this blog at all, you know the only things i post about with any frequency are barbershop and poison ivy. my last post covered barbershop, so there's your clue.

it's spring, as in "plants spring to life after they laid dormant all winter and fall and you thought they were dead and never coming back". that's right. i've been scouring the yard for poison sprouts...and finding them. sometimes they come up singularly, with their tiny, bright red leaves. other times, they are apart of a 10 foot vine running along the surface of the yard. either way, i've been on a mission all spring to eradicate all things poison ivy from the yard without infecting myself in the process. so far, so good.

yesterday, i decided i was tired of looking at the remnants of last years battle. the vines are dead and dry, the branches brittle and ugly. check it out:

i figured it was time to find some things out.
1. are those dead, dry poison ivy vines still capable of infecting people?
2. just how many of those vines can i rip down with my bare hands?

my goal was to answer the 1st by doing the 2nd.

saturday, after Andrea, the dog and i did the annual Mordecai yard sales, Andrea went to a baby shower, so that was my opportunity. she hates when i mess with the poison ivy, b/c i usually end up with it. assuming i would get it from head to toe, i thought a "before" picture would be prudent:

you can see i'm already in a bad mood.

our neighbor Matt and his little girl were in their back yard shed (you can see it in the pic below). when the 30 foot long "vine" came crashing down on the fence that separated us, it sounded like the whole tree to which it had been attached came down, instead. he came running out of the shed, "are you alright??". i was just standing there, a little shocked and making sure i hadn't just destroyed the fence, which it turns out i hadn't. he threw the the several feet of death-wood that had landed in his yard and i went about my business. it looked something like this:

there was all kinds of dust and bark falling down into my face and sticking to my body as the vine was coming off the tree. the good news is, i think i found the answer to question #1, which is "No". the answer to question #2 is "2". here's what the 2nd one looked like:

now, with the dog thrown in for scale:

i eventually removed my gloves and bare-handed the vine-wood. with loppers in hand, it cleaned up into about 3 piles, similar to this one:

you know how you can count the rings in the cross-section of a tree to estimate its age? check these babies out:

the 1st 2 are from the vines i ripped down. it's hard to distinguish after 17 or 18:

this is near the base. i would like to cut a cleaner cross section with a saw and get a better count. it looks to be about 18 or so rings, as well.

are there any botanists out there that can back me up on this? is this the largest, most disgusting poison ivy you've ever seen? i'll make you a deal: you come out and remove it from my pecan tree and in return, i'll let you study it and what not for as long as you need, provided it's less than a week. and you pay me.

that was yesterday.

today, i went looking for new growth. "new" as in, growth i hadn't seen before, but not necessarily "new", you know? along our back fence is no-mans-land. it's where the dog takes dumps and i dispose of charcoal ash. it's overgrown and i knew there had to be some poison ivy lurking back there unnoticed. my job was to find and neutralize it. and did i ever find it...

i didn't see much growing on the ground, so i looked up to scan the trees and what i saw horrified me: a very healthy poison ivy vine with long branches and very large leaves, probably 30 feet over my head. i was so pissed, i got my gloves on and started tugging on it. most of it came down, but the vine snapped and a large chunk was suspended in the air. Andrea was home by this point and stayed to watch the rest of the show. to get the rest of this new vine, i had to go after it. so up into the tree i went. at one point, the dog was on the ground below, barking and whining, i was about 8 feet up in the air with my right hand firmly grasping a freshly severed poison ivy vine, the majority of which was over my head and threatening to come down on top of me and i was imagining the worst case scenario of me falling out of the tree and landing on the dog...both of us strangling on the vine.

long story short, i made it out with only minor brushes of leaves on my ankles and right arm. as soon as i hit the ground, i ran into the house and showered. let's hope it was enough. behold the fruit:

Nice Flowers

click for super-high res. aren't they beautiful??? my eyes itch just from looking at this picture.

i look forward to the day when little white children can play with little black children in my back yard and not get infected with friggin' poison ivy!! i feel like the whole property should be condemned sometimes. it's not safe. how long am i going to have to put up with this stuff?

When it rains, it pours

2008-04-29T14:57:00.002-04:00

this guy just schooled me:

Ween sighting - spicy food

2008-01-17T22:38:00.000-05:00

Andrea and i went to IKEA near DC last Sunday. it was an all day trip and we had a great time. got a lot of cheap furniture designed by the Swedish and packaged by the Chinese. i really loved the store. it was designed and layed out very efficiently and intelligently. read Andrea's blog for more details.

while there, i'm pretty sure i saw Claude Coleman, the drummer for Ween. i whispered to Andrea "i think i see Claude Coleman!!". she was like "who??" and i said "the drummer for Ween. RIGHT THERE!!". she answered, "take a picture...oooh! look at that bookcase" or some such thing. the 1st stop on their East Coast tour is in on the 25th in, you guessed it: DC. it was totally him. i have now seen "Ween" 4 times in the past 10 years and Claude Coleman 5.

tonight Andrea was in the mood for something spicy, so she made this kung-pow chicken that certainly fit the bill. she put it over rice in our bowls and warned me it was spicy. i licked a spot of juice that splattered on my hand and coughed for the next minute or so. you know how when you swallow something exactly the wrong way? maybe it's just me, but it was as though the fire-juice went directly from my hand to the back of my throat. misery. it was a sign of things to come.

i dug into mine with a nice big bottle of cold water...and boy did i need it. i was sweating and my mouth was numbing but it was great! Andrea ate a couple bites and had to fix herself something else. it was just too hot for her, which worked out great for me b/c i ate hers, too. she was upset with herself b/c she followed the "extra spicy" directions on the box by crushing the dried red peppers into the mix. haha. i ate all mine, hers and all the leftovers on the stove. my stomach is currently gurgling and i do not look forward to tomorrow. i'm hoping the ice cream i had for desert will hook me up, but i doubt it.

job's going good. marriage is going good. dog's good.

let it rain

2008-01-16T08:53:00.001-05:00

Bangladesh

2007-11-17T19:37:00.001-05:00

we got to relieve the people...

a lot going on

2007-11-17T12:46:00.000-05:00

most of my blog titles are something like "it's been a while" or "overdue update", etc. i like to do my blogging in a batch style, as opposed to the more traditional (and effective) "little bit here and there" style. engage stream of consciousness:

the biggest news is probably that i resigned from CSC. having spent 4.5 years there, it was time to move on. the contract is coming up for recompete, which nobody feels to good about, and there are a lot of changes going on there which made my decision to look for something else easy. what made it even easier is that i got an email about my future job, applied, interviewed and was made an offer in the span of about 2 weeks. the company is Peopleclick, Inc, located in downtown Raleigh. they do online careers pages for a lot of companies out there. the position is Operations Engineer, which means for about a year i'll be learning how the applications work, troubleshooting, etc. eventually, i'll be productive and they'll give me a pager every now and then. with a full staff, which they have for the 1st time in a couple years, it will be every 2 months or something. not bad.

the job is really good. i'm excited for a lot of reasons.

i've been there for 3 weeks and have been busy all day, every day: very big change from CSC. i had to look for stuff to do there.
there seems to be upward mobility, or at least the potential for increased responsibility as i gain experience. also a big change from CSC, where i maxed out a while ago.
it's downtown so i can ride my bike! it's about a 6.5 mile round trip. it's just now getting cold, but i rode the entire 2nd week and enjoyed it greatly.
feeling that i'm really doing something, as opposed to trying to look like i'm doing something. i used to feel like i could skip a week of work and nobody would miss me. now, i have a few things i'm expected to do and if i slack off, they won't get done and it will be noticed right away.
i could go on and on.

my sister, Monica, has been with Peopleclick for a couple years now. maybe 3 or 4, i need to ask her. anyway, she kicks ass and has set a high bar for members of our family who work there, so i need to hold up my end of the bargain. so far, so good. i just need to really pay attention and take good notes so i don't need to be told things more than once (or twice).

as excited as i am about the new job, it is tempered against my sadness for leaving friends behind at the old job and my concern for their well being. i wish i could bring them all over to PC, but most of them live out in Durham/Wake Forest/Chapel Hill which isn't a desirable commute. probably at least an hour. so, if you're reading this and you know i'm talking about you, shoot me an email! i want to hear from you.

Andrea and i continue to settle into our life together. we both feel like we have so much catching up to do, in terms of just being married, but we need to be patient and just let it happen. that last comment pertains mainly to me since i've been the one to gripe about how we're not doing enough of this or that... we analyzed why that seemed to be the case and decided i came home from my old job everyday bored and unfulfilled and tried to get fulfillment from working around the house. now, i get home and i'm tired! so i've definitely slowed down a bit. but giving credit where it's due, it's a lot easier to slow down when you have a wife who picks up your slack every day. Andrea's been great about cooking every night and helping me clean up afterward, and just doing a little here and there, instead of both of us waiting until the place is a mess and needs a big cleaning. that is a huge deal to me b/c a lot of Saturdays i've felt the need to clean (FUN!!) and today, she's out doing errands and i built a fire in our new Chimnea and mowed the grass since the house is already clean!

my new hours are 9 - 6 and with the time change, it gets dark so early. last night Andrea had set up a little date night for us, but i'm always a baby about coming home and leaving right away. this is b/c i hate getting the dog all fired up that we're finally home and then leave him hanging. so, long story short, she called and asked if i wanted to meet her somewhere straight from work b/c she gets home a lot earlier than i and could take care of Krust for a while. that sounded good to me. she had me pick up a pizza and meet her at Fletcher park. when i got there, she had a little pick nick blanket set up with candles, beer and the dog!! it was a nice surprise. she totally knows how to make me happy. i need to try harder to do that kind of stuff for her. she deserves everything!

photos of the past month or so

2007-10-27T13:16:00.000-04:00

The Dog

Old Man Stuss wants to know, "where's your Halloween spirit?":

here he is after destroying every room in the house after a thunderstorm. "destroy" is a bit extreme, but the fruit couch might argue that point:

note the guilty head tilt. i put him in a "down-stay" and walked out of the room. he hates that. we eventually made up, but this whole thunderstorm destruction cycle must be broken...or his legs will be. maybe i'll start with his teeth, then move onto the legs. i haven't decided yet.

Squirrel Patrol '07:

he actually caught a baby squirrel a couple weeks ago. if not for me intervening, it would surely have suffered a chaotic, less than desirable death. lucky for the tree rat, i was feeling soft hearted and commanded him to let it go, which he did. i will live to regret the decision.

OHIO

we went up to OHIO last weekend for my Dad's 60th Birthday. it was a surprise. we left around 6:15am Saturday morning, spent the day at my Aunt Linda and Uncle Jerry's and left Sunday after brunch. we had a great time! i have a lot of wonderful childhood memories from spending time at their place. here are a few pics:

My Homeland:

Robby, Alison (sibs) and me and my baby:

Hayride!!

on the way to the farm, we went through McConnelsville. my Mom's Mom (Grandma Glenna) lived there. Andrea shot this at a stop light. there's one in the middle of the town square, too. i had never read the plaque before. it's a WWI monument. neat.

group photo:

my Dad and his wife (Karel) on the front row with his parents, Grandma and Grandad, in between. back rows: Dad's kids/kids-in-law on the left, Karel's kids/kids-in-law on the right.

The man: Uncle Jerry

our new neighbors

2007-09-27T10:28:00.000-04:00

Andrea and i were doing yard work a few Saturdays ago. you may remember Tropical Storm Gabrielle brewing in the Atlantic. i wanted to be prepared in case we got a lot of rain so i was on the roof cleaning out the gutters.

don't get me started on the gutters...they are worthless. the 1st time i cleaned them, we didn't have a hose. i pulled out all the big leaves and sticks, then Andrea handed me up a 2 gallon watering can, filled. my plan was to flush out the small stuff. we did this twice and the gutter, in addition to said small stuff, now held 4 gallons of water. thank goodness for the leaky seam, or that water could've been there forever!

during the gutter fiasco and subsequent yard duties, a moving truck pulled into the yard next door and several people started unloading. this is the house where Carlos and Sophie, the border collie we adopted over the fence, lived. we walked over to introduce ourselves, but they were pretty busy so we didn't hang around. over the course of the next week, i noticed a bunch of kids playing in the back yard. i love kids and ever since moving from Cary, where i was the adopted (creepy?) uncle, i've been jonesing.

these kids are great. 3 boys and a girl, ages 3 to 10. Zaria, the girl, is 3. she is adorable. the youngest male, DeShawn, is your typical 5 year old. at least, i think he's five. and he has braids! Markel (pronounced Mar-kell) reminds me of Chris Rock. he's funny. the oldest is Jeremy, aka, TJ. he's pretty quiet and introspective. at least, this is what i surmise after talking with them for a total of 1 hour.

when i hear them in the back playing, i go out with Krusty and they flock to the fence shouting "Krusty! Krusty!". it makes me feel good. they take turns throwing the ball for him and once they practiced throwing disc golf putters at my target over the fence. but what i really enjoy is talking to them, more importantly, listening to what they say. they are really funny.

Markel was asking me about Krusty...how long i've had him, where i got him, why i named him Krusty, etc. then out of the blue, he says "do you think it's wrong to kill nature?". i asked for clarification. "like spiders and stuff". i wanted to be a good example for him b/c kids are very impressionable and said "well, sometimes when bugs get in the house we squash them, but sometimes we catch them and let them go. i mean, i don't go around looking for bugs to kill or anything".

YEAH RIGHT! as the words were coming out of my mouth, i thought twice about saying it. i hope he doesn't see me out his window at night kicking the recycle bin scaring up roaches to squash. that's my nightly routine. i abhor roaches.

the conversation continued.

markel - "do you think it's bad luck?"
"to kill nature?"
m - "yes"
"i dunno. what do you think?"
m - "i don't know either"

it was awesome.

Zaria is so tiny, she has to climb up the chain link fence to be able to throw the ball, but it goes right in Krusty's mouth every time. Andrea came home from work one day and stepped out back. Krust ran towards her to get some love and Zaria asked where he was going. "he loves his mama", i said. now, everytime she sees the dog, she asks "that dog loves his mama?". so cute! TJ was looking at me and said, "he loves is daddy, too". he's a good kid.

before i came out last night, a squirrel fell out of a tree and landed in the middle of our yard. they told me about it, complete with sound effects, and that got us talking about squirrels. in addition to roaches, i hate squirrels, too. maybe i'll explain why one day. suffice to say, i was upset the squirrel survived the fall, which they told me it did.

TJ - "has Krusty ever killed anything?"
"yep. two squirrels"
t - "in this yard?"
"no, no. it was in Atlanta a long time ago"
t - "how did he do it?"
"a squirrel got out in the middle of a big field and he saw it. he chased it down and shook it to death"
t - "what about the other one"
"we came over a hill and there were two. one got away and he got the other one. come to think of it, it wasn't dead after he attacked it so i had to kill it"
t - "how did you do that?"
(stomping the heel of my foot into the ground) "like that"
t - "yeah, i guess that's how you'd do it"

it just goes to show that kids are kids, no matter what ethnicity, income bracket, nationality or anything else. they just want to be happy and have fun. maybe that's why i like spending time with kids b/c when i'm in that environment, it makes me appreciate the simple things, too.

Bob's forensic analysis of video

2007-09-18T10:18:00.000-04:00

this is great. you should click over and read it from the source, but in case you're too lazy, here's a copy-n-paste:

Highlights include:

Seth smiling and smirking his way through the whole affair, as he does with many things in life.
Mrs. Updyke looking like the happiest bride in the world.
Mr. Updyke, with beer in one hand and woman in the other, looking like a seasoned barbershop professional having a little fun.
Me mostly sort of looking like I am in pain, which I was not. I was having the time of my life, but I was also trying to concentrate and not mess up.
-02:57: Jerry assuring Seth he was playing the right note on his pitch pipe. Seth never grew to fully trust that pitch pipe. He always thought it was playing him the wrong starting note.
-02:52: Me not sticking my opening note. If you’re going to be solid on any note, it should be that opener. And I swear I always hit it in our practices. Oh well. Everyone else stays right on key and I recover ok.
-02:05: Jerry holding up his ring finger when we sing “Place a wedding band upon your hand.” This is the extent of what we could come up with, choreography-wise.
-01:49: The crowd interpreting a pause as the end of the song and going wild.
-01:02: Mr. Updyke leaning in to the mic and really emphasizing the crazy low note he hits here. People being greatly amuzed by this. (check out the look of horror on Andrea's face as I lean in...i think she thought i was passing out or something. then, when she sees all is well, she snaps back into a smile and continues singing. my personal favorite part of the whole video)
-00:54: That’s right. Key change.
-00:18: Seth taking us out with a cool-looking, commanding “bam!” hand motion that was actually a signal for “I’ve been holding this note for a long time and I am now out of breath.”
-00:15: Seth, Andrea, and I coming in for some love and Papa Updyke shoving us away. He later explained to me that he was trying to get us to spread out and take a bow, but then came to the realization that it was too much to orchestrate. (in retrospect, it would've been nice to have mentioned my plans to you all. instead, it has a "Get the hell away from me!!" look about it. couldn't be further from the truth!)
-00:09: The four of us celebrating the culmination of several months of work, and our shared musical bond, by warmly embracing each other.
-00:04: Me getting a face-full of Updyke’s boutinerre, because he is so freaking tall.

i added my own thoughts in bold...

that'll do, Bobby. that'll do.

he promises to go back to writing about other stuff soon, which is good b/c he's got so much material. i promise to go back to not writing for weeks at a time, then pop in with the occasional rant about something dumb.

finally

2007-09-16T22:18:00.000-04:00

by popular demand...

here's my first crack at posting a YouTube video. it's from our wedding reception on August 25, 2007. me, Andrea, Bob and Seth singing "Didn't Want To Fall".

sneak peek: Honeymoon pics

2007-09-07T15:30:00.001-04:00

Warning: high resolution and unmodified. i.e., huge.

coming in for a landing in San Francisco, or "Frisco" as the locals like to call it:

sea lions at the wharf:

Frisco's infamous South Side Segways (SSS):

GGB:

Napa:

sunset from our B&B in Ft. Bragg, CA:

Andrea, the Mustang and some Redwoods:

a few of the Oregon coast:

some of the best tags on YouTube

2007-09-07T08:21:00.000-04:00

Realtime
2005 Quarter Finals
"Yesterday I Heard The Rain"
Tag at 4:09
by far my favorite live performance of all time and the best tag in history.

Glory Days
2007 Quarter Finals
"Do-Re-Mi" Medely
Tag at 4:20
fun song. they finish with the "Tonight" tag.

Storm Front
2006 Finals
"Bare Necessities"
Tag at 2:25
the Lead passes the post off to the Bari at 2:43. pretty cool. these guys are really funny and got 3rd in 2007.

more to come, so be sure to check back...as if i need to say that.

The Chronicles of Harmony-a

2007-09-05T12:37:00.000-04:00

last year some time, i had a hankerin' for some barbershop. i don't remember what prompted it, but i went looking for an album to buy online and found "4 Voices" by the quartet Four Voices. it was my first exposure to modern barbershop. up until then, i (falsely, but understandably) assumed it was a genre performed exclusively by guys with big giant mustaches, straw hats and matching red and white striped blazers. and sometimes canes.

after becoming enthralled with with the Four Voices album, i started looking online for more information. the Barbershop Harmony Society website has a bunch of good stuff. that's where Bob found the learning mp3's of "Keep the Whole World Singing"! (the recordings of us singing that are somewhere between awful and terrible...we were just kids then). i also looked on YouTube and found a ton of entertaining stuff...including people who film themselves singing the 4 different parts of Barbershop "tags" and splitting the screen, Brady Bunch style, so you can see them all at once. hilarious. and brilliant. this guy was the first, as far as i can tell. raw and unproduced, which i like. conversely, this guy is the reigning king, but sounds a little too perfect for my tastes. no question he's good, though. i digress.

my plan was to listen closely to the Four Voices version of "Didn't Want to Fall" and record the individual tracks using a keyboard, a computer and a Bass Podxt. i borrowed Matt Wood's keyboard (still have it, in fact) and got the first couple measures done, but then the parts pretty much became indistinguishable. particularly, the Baritone part. wow. what an awesome part! if i were to join a quartet (rather, another quartet) that's the part i would want to be. in my opinion, it's what makes a quartet a barbershop quartet. all these great 3rds and 7ths...

so i had the first measure or so recorded using the keyboard. in addition to sounding like crap, everyone else in the project let me know that it wouldn't be all that useful to them. but i wanted to do it anyway b/c i knew the way my brain works and i would benefit from it. eventually, i got wise and contacted the fine folks at the Barbershop Harmony Society and purchased the sheet music to the original arrangement of the song by Joe Liles. it's slightly different from the Four Voices version, but close. between the two, i figured we could make the version we wanted to perform.

on May 22nd, i gave the music to our resident musicologist, Matt X. and asked if he could record the four parts from the sheet music onto four tracks using a piano. with that, i reasoned, i could tell which part was which and make the minor changes between the 2 versions and record them onto one learning track for us to use. "you don't even have to sync them up", i said, trying to make it easier on him. what i got back was masterful.

he recorded the song, string quartet style, using violin for the tenor and lead, viola for baritone and cello for bass!! it was amazing! and he delivered it in 24 hours! but...it was in the key of F and the Four Voices version is in E. X even asked me before he started if i wanted him to do it in E to match 4V, but i declined. big mistake.

at this point, i had

the CD version as done by Four Voices
1/4 of the song done keyboard style
the full Matt X. string quartet version in F
a live version of Four Voices singing it in E and
yet another live version by a quartet called Joker's Wild (in F)

it was getting confusing keeping track of all the different versions and instead of making it easier to learn the song, it was making it much harder for everyone.

we needed a definitive recording people could use to learn their part, myself included. throwing caution to the wind and confronting my insecurities about singing, i began the process of recording myself singing the 4 parts of the song using the same multi track recording program i had used with the failed keyboard project. it's a good thing my studio is so advanced or else it might not have turned out so good: a crappy PC mic that's the size of half a roll of Life-Savers, a mic stand made of a rubber band and a bottle of Windex, and a paper towel, folded in half and stretched between my hands, held in between my mouth and the mic to reduce the popping sound of hard consonants. watch your back, Taylor Roberts! i'm coming for you!!

after getting about half the song done, up to the bridge, i sent it out. the plan was to give it to them incrementally and i would keep working on it until it was done.

the first crack was awful. my technique was to listen to the Four Voices version (and when necessary, the Matt X version, followed by using the keyboard to modulate down from F to E), record 4 or so measures of bass, then go back and do the same for lead, then bari, then tenor. everything was going ok, sort of, until i played the Four Voices version along with mine. i was getting flatter and flatter with each additional recording segment. i was enraged.

without headphones it was hard to really hear what was going on. and being in the apartment, i couldn't turn the speakers up OR really belt it out during recording (those insecurities i mentioned). so i scrapped the whole thing and started again, much to the chagrin of the group. they were like, "no, it's fine, we can use it", but i am stubborn like that. i mean, if i'm gonna record it, i want it to be in key, you know? and i was a little angry...at myself and at Barbershop for being so hard.

but at this point, my confidence was blown and it was much, much harder for me to do the 2nd time around. i couldn't seem to find the pitch and was flat over and over. my blood pressure was rising. i would tell Andrea, "I'm gonna work on the song tonight" and the next day, she'd say, "Did you finish?". finish?? Finish?? HA. i'd just give her 'the look' b/c i had only gotten 4 or 8 measures done in 2 or 3 hours. this period was pretty upsetting. i began to question whether i could even do it or not...and whether we, as a group, could pull it off.

yadda yadda yadda, i got it done all the way to the very end. i had the 50 or so different segments of the song merged into 4 and everybody had a mix of their part, plus multiple combinations (3 parts in the left, your part in the right, bass-bari, bass-lead, bass-tenor, tenor-lead, etc...), but all the mixes were originating from the same 4 tracks, so it wasn't "confusing", per se.

the lead and bass parts were pretty easy to hear and record, but i still couldn't figure out the baritone and tenor parts at the very end of the song. the Four Voices ending is different from the Joe Liles arrangement, and trying to meld the 4V tenor part, which Andrea liked, with the original Bari part (4V does this crazy thing where the Bari takes it up an octave, which we didn't want to use) was tough. so Bob and Andrea were kind of on their own. they came through brilliantly.

barbershoppers like to finish their songs with tags, defined as "...usually the last four to eight bars, and often considered the best chords in the song." during the tag, it's not uncommon for someone to hold out a long note while the other members sing around that note, finally resolving at the end and holding it out for a while. this is called the "post". that was my favorite discovery in my barbershop journey; the first time i heard a post (the double post on the 1st song of the Four Voices album, "It's a Brand New Day". the lead starts it off for 4 bars, then the tenor picks it up and finishes it off. it's extremely sweet). Seth was nervous about the post and was afraid he wouldn't be able to hold it out, etc., but if you were there, you heard with your own hears that he nailed it. he really did a great job. way to go, Seth!

i have since gone back and finished the last 2 parts and the song's done for now. it's funny how the 2nd half is all sloppy compared to the 1st half. when time was getting short, my perfectionist nature gave way to "get it done, already!!!". with better equipment and some spare time, i would like to do it again with fewer track segments, so as to have a more consistent mix from segment to segment. i already have folders on my machine called DWF, DWF2, DWF3, etc... what's a few more??

Barbershop?

2007-09-04T17:19:00.001-04:00

"that ain't been popular since ought-6...dag nabbit!!"
- Bart Simpson

so, anybody who's interested in the story of our Wedding Reception song performed by myself, my wife, Bob and Seth, should just go to Bob's website. the link is on the right. there's nothing substantial i could add to his recounting.

i will say that Andrea and i had so much fun hanging out with Bob and Seth practicing over the months. as time became short, we were making them come over 2 or 3 times a week...on top of all the work they poured into doing all the other reception music, which kicked ass. those two guys, plus the other 2 Witchger men (Kevin and Bob, Sr.) are the real heroes of our wedding day.

so yes, everything Bob says in his blog is true (except the part about him not being a "...rare, undeniable, dyed-in-the-wool musician." oh, he is. you better believe it). it was pretty rough during the Feasibility Testing phase of the project. i'd say if we hadn't locked in on a few of those "Keep The Whole World Singing" chords, we may not have pursued it. but as they say, that's what keeps people coming back to Barbershop! that feeling you get when you really ring one out!

i can't say it enough times publicly how indebted we are to Bob and Seth. we are very indebted to them. they would say, "no, it was fun!" or some other deflecting comment. but i don't even know how much work they put into our wedding. only they know. hours and hours and hours...more time than i've put into anything recently.

thank you guys!!

too much to write about

2007-09-04T17:06:00.000-04:00

so instead, i'll just post this picture.

it's been a while.

2007-08-15T17:50:00.000-04:00

due to an overwhelming lack of an overwhelming response to my blog inactivity, it remained inactive for much longer than i intended. we've been crazy busy trying to get this wedding ready and as i move my eyes slightly to the right at the counter, i see we're under 10 days. wow.

things are moving along at a furious pace. we've heard from a lot of people we're excited will be coming next week and a few we're sad won't be able to make it. but it will still be awesome. that is, if i can shake this cold. summer colds are the worst. it started 5 days ago just in time for the weekend. hit me like a ton of bricks: sinus congestion, sore throat, headache...the usual.

turns out it's not so much a viral thing as a late season allergy attack...unlike any allergy attack i've ever experienced. thanks to medical staff at my beck and call, i'm on the mend.

i've been liquidating a lot of the junk i've been dragging around for years. you know you've underpriced something on Craig's List when you get 13 responses for it in a day. conversely, you know when you've overpriced something, too. no takers on my old Army BDU's. unbelievable.

with the $20 i scored for the La-Z-Boy, Andrea and i went to AC Moore to get stuff for, you guessed it, the wedding. $19.99 for some brown bags and fasteners for the programs. easy come, easy go.

i'm actually about to get back on Craig's List and put a bunch of stuff in the "For Free" section. yeah, it's old and cheap but it has history. i'll be a little sad to get rid of it: the coffee table and end table were bought by my Mom and stepdad after they got married in 1984. i used them all through college and beyond. every burn mark and gouge has a story. a story that i will blog about one day. i bet you can't wait.

i'm out.

OK I admit it.

2007-07-17T22:29:00.000-04:00

Andrea blogs more often than me, she is better at it, AND she leaves comments. She is the greatest almost-wife in the whole wide world.

Clairvoyency Watch - 2007

2007-06-29T12:12:00.000-04:00

i want to update my estimation of being 1 in 100 in the history of mankind to pull this stunt (see post immediately below). i submit i am roughly 1 in 1, i.e., the only person alive or dead. that's if you narrow it down from "predicting what song is playing on the radio" to "predicting 'Feels Like The First Time' by Foreigner is playing on the radio". however, when you get down to that level of specificity, it becomes less special. like, you may be the only person ever to watch an episode of "Cop Rock" while eating a hot pocket and drinking strawberry Yoo-Hoo. you get the idea.

oh, on my way to work this morning i flipped to 100.7 again and Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" was playing. but "Feels Like the First Time" came on immediately after. no lie. i hope they're not in the middle of some Foreigner contest, like a ticket give-away and they play that song 100 times a day. while detracting slightly from my sense of accomplishment/achievement, i would still feel the need to talk about how awesome it was every now and again.

Classic Rock

2007-06-28T16:58:00.000-04:00

real quick: Andrea and i pretty much keep it locked into 91.5FM, which is the local NPR station. it's #1 on my radio. #2 is 100.7 "The New River". i liked "The Old River" better, which used to be a pretty good station that played classic rock, but not the cheesy rotation consisting of only Boston, Frampton and The Eagles. they had a much deeper rotation. until a year or so ago when they went totally cheesy. the other cheesy classic rock station went country and the "new rock" station (96.1, #3 on my saved list) now plays "everything that rocks", which means all the crappiest songs you can think of from the past 25 years. i have the NC State station all the way over on #6, but i never listen to it. i'm too old for college radio. give me my news and the occasional rockin' 70's or 80's tune and i'm happy.

so, we were coming back from Cary last night listening to NPR and i blurted out "FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME - FOREIGNER!!" and hit #2 on my radio. and what song was playing? on my mothers eyes, it was "Feels Like The First Time" by Foreigner. i about went off the road. it was awesome.

it's not like i've done that same trick every day for a year or anything. even if i had, the chances of catching it at the exact moment the song was on would be low percentage. truth be told, i've only ever tried that one other time: yesterday. i said "FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME: FOREIGNER!!!" and hit #2, but it was The Cars, i think. so i'm 50%. not too shabby.

i figure that exact occurrence has happened maybe 100 times in the history of mankind. but the radio didn't get big until the 1900's, so it's not that big a deal, right? wrong!! it's not my fault humans were too dumb to invent it sooner! so yeah, i'm one of maybe 100 people in the world to do that. not counting the time a radio station was changing its format from country to classic rock and played "Stairway To Heaven" for 24 hours straight, back to back. i imagine plenty of people could guess what song was playing on that station at any given time, but were probably not as excited as i was to be correct.

please don't leave a comment telling me how you "thought of a song" and then turned on the radio, only to hear it. no witnesses = it didn't happen. i'm talking about pulling a Babe Ruth, in radio form.

you just don't know how excited i was when i heard Foreigner playing my song. hehe, "my song". like i love that song or something. i do now, i can tell you that much!

it doesn't take a whole lot to get me excited.

The Onion

2007-06-22T15:27:00.000-04:00

the content filter at work blocks The Onion, YouTube...all the good sites. but that's OK b/c i have The Onion headlines on my personalized Google start page. my "iGoogle Page", if you will. and even though i can't follow the links, i enjoy reading them...imagining how much more funny they would be if i could go there and read/listen to them. but another part of me (the part that adjusts to things that don't work properly, i.e., a burnt out light bulb, a squeaky hinge, improperly functioning brakes, etc) just enjoys them as is: stand-alone funny headlines that make us laugh:

Cult Leader Pretty Cool, Actually
Bar Skanks Announce Plans To Kiss
[audio] Area Man Mows Around Dead Body

that's good stuff. i also like the "American Voices" section.

Entertainment Update

2007-06-21T14:20:00.001-04:00

our friend Seth called us up to see if we wanted to see "Knocked Up" with him last night. Andrea had some cheap movie tickets she got through work (good for movies that have been out for 2 weeks or more) so we decided to do it. it's kind of a big deal for us to go anywhere or do anything on a weeknight, but i'm glad we did. it was hilarious. we laughed and laughed and laughed.

without spoiling it for you, she dies at the end. j/k. it's a filthy movie, from a language perspective. but if you can get past that and just enjoy it for what it is, you won't be disappointed.

here is my ratings analysis:

acting: 7 out of 10
plot: 6 out of 10 (it ain't "Gone With The Wind"...it ain't even "A Mighty Wind")
script: 9 out of 10 (very well written. dialog is what makes this movie a masterpiece)
hilarity: 12 out of 10
Overall: 9 out of 10

stop what you're doing and go watch this movie right now. unless you don't like foul language, in which case you should steer clear.

Operation Goatee: Mission Aborted

2007-06-06T15:13:00.001-04:00

i shaved it off this morning. it wasn't working out for me OR Andrea. i gave her a kiss last night and she yelled for no apparent reason. turned out one of my chin hairs poked her in the follicle. ouch!

not much else going on. i'm still playing ukulele all the time and getting more familiar with the chords. i taught myself Stairway to Heaven the other day! it's pretty easy. come to think of it, most stuff is "easy" on a ukulele which is probly why i like it so much. me and Seth jammed on a little A-D-E thing Monday night, as well as a few classics. he was on 6 string, of course. he's good! he's gonna teach me "Big Love" by Lindsay Buckingham, which rocks...AND ROLLS.

i want to get some pickups for the uke so i can plug in and share it with the world. or at least the neighbors. Andrea has a set that fit in her old acoustic, but i'm scared to put them in. not only would it involve rendering them useless for future use in a guitar, i don't want to render the uke useless, too! i'm not the handiest dude on the ranch.

in summation: my Lanikai LU-11 is best Christmas gift in a long time. thanks Schuster's! (and Baby for suggesting it)

i'm "in the band"

2007-06-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

as in, my wedding band is here! it's a little tight on my fat finger. guess i need to get it bumped up to a 10.75 or go on a finger diet. but snug or not, i'm glad it's here. i've been stoked about the prospect of finally getting to wear jewelry without anyone being able to give me a hard time. who knows? maybe i'll really like it and this will be but the first step in a journey of 1,000 rings.

Slight Topic Change
i have the stubble of a 13 year old, except now instead of being reddish-blond, it's coming in gray. that's awesome. anyway, i took advantage of the weekends worth of growth to try my hand at growing a goatee. it's a big step for me to actually leave the house with facial hair, as can be seen by my 1st and only attempt at growing a full beard a couple years ago:

before that, i went for the "Shaggy" look:

wow. i haven't aged at all in the 10 years between those photos.

anyway, here's what i'd look like if i could grow a mustache like Matt Wood:

that's Matt's actual mustache, which he donated and we had surgically grafted onto my face early last year. it turned out great. sadly, my face rejected it and i'm back to looking like i'm 13.

Long-as-there's-a-record-deal-we'll-always-be-friends!

2007-06-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

"friendship is rare. do you know what i'm sayin' to you? friendship is rare."
- The D

screw that. i have the "burden" of trying to keep in touch with a lot of friends spanning the entire country (and the past 20 years of my life). it's awesome! i love my friends. if it's true you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, i'm the most squared away person around. all thanks to my friends!

speaking of which: i was an engineering student at Auburn University, as were most my friends at the time. "birds of a feather", and what not. back then, Chemical Engineering was the hot major in terms of salary for grads. that being the case, we all couldn't wait to get out and start making that money!! it was also considered one of the more difficult majors b/c of all the math and chemistry. i figured since i was in such a hard program, i was entitled to act superior to folks in other majors. looking back, i can see what a jerk i was. my ego got the best of me. i didn't respect liberal arts majors b/c their curriculum wasn't "hard enough". i'm ashamed! especially considering those same people are now my closest friends and the ones whose talents i respect the most! not to mention i wouldn't last a semester majoring in philosophy, any kind of art, sociology, etc. screw all you chemical engineers! (except Hao. he's alright).

most of my Raleigh friends are exceptionally talented folks in things other than math and chemistry, thank God. it's awesome having artistic friends! lucky for me, they don't judge based on my artistic talent the way i judged their ilk when i was in engineering. which, by the way, i gave up on after 1 year in the real world.

in conclusion: everybody stop being arrogant jerks and get to know people for who they are and what they have to offer the world.

PI-4 (finally, with pictures)

2007-05-16T10:11:00.000-04:00

got the photos off Andrea's camera last night. they aren't "all that", but it will give you an idea.

recapping:
2 pecan trees with respective poisonous vines. the first one i chopped up around Christmas time with a borrowed axe and ended up infecting my eyes, face and neck. here is what that vine looks like now. i wanted to include the ground in the first one for scale purposes:

this one shows how it forks off and what not:

the death tree i worked on a week and a half ago, which ended up infecting both my arms, neck, hands, etc., is here:

look at that! i've never seen such a disgusting display of poison ivy anywhere else, ever. that's insane. most of them were small enough to chop with lopppers, but the big tangle in the middle required chopping with a hatchet. that's what got me this time around.

i mentioned how there are branches coming off the vines several feet with giant leaves and flower clusters. check it out:

all the wilting leaves in the foreground are what i'm talking about. this was the day after, so they were already starting to die (YES!!). the branches are roughly 71/2 feet off the ground and between 5 and 8 feet in length.

here's another one where you can sort of make out the flowers. they're beautiful. to bad they're all dying, Andrea and i could've used them for our wedding:

sorry they're all so dark. the sun was setting and i wanted to get this documented before the leaves die and fall off. although, the wind storm i told you about caused a large number of leaves to fall off, which i had to rake up to keep Krust from tramping all over. here is the pile, with my shoe included for scale:

that's all i have, except for this one Andrea took on my way out to do the chopping with Kari's hatchet and machete. the only reason i include it is to point out the only place i was exposed (arms) are the only places i got it. imagine that! also, i like the look the dog is giving the camera.

i just viewed the post and noticed when you click on the pics, they get huge, which is good and bad, i suppose. i'm leaving them as is b/c you really need to zoom in to see what i'm talking about. and in looking at the dorky picture of me with the hatchet, i saw in the background something else: the tree in the background and all the poison vines it had sent out in all directions that i pulled up on Sunday:

i had to get those up before i mowed, lest i contaminate Jessica's mower to the point it would have to be condemned. plus, the ground would have been covered in poison juice, rendering it unusable. a superfund site, practically. all the vines you see on the ground were traced back to the trunk of the pecan tree. there's not much left to do but douse the severed trunks with Ortho poison ivy killer which we purchased from Home Depot recently. that will be fun, except now i'm scared of the giant red ants that live back there, too. can't win for losin'.

again, this was a hasty post and not my best work. not much worse than my best, but still: not my best. if you want to read quality, check out Dean or Andrea's blogs. if you want crap, keep checking back here.

Hurricane Season

2007-05-10T16:17:00.000-04:00

yesterday, a storm system surprised everyone and formed 3 weeks before the official kick-off of Hurricane Season. it was crazy: i looked out the window at work and it was cloudless and sunny, the next minute, lightning and sheets of rain. then it repeated a few more times. the culprit behind all this precipitation? Subtropical Storm Andrea!

i thought that was funny, so i called up Andrea to let her know. her dad beat me to it. he also pointed out that our relationship is golden b/c her new initials will be AU, the symbol for gold on the periodic table. the best i could come up with was "Auburn University", my alma matter. so kudos to Les for being on the ball!

anyway, i thought it would be neat if this year there was a Hurricane Jerry, too. slim odds, i know. but i think i'm gonna go buy some lottery tickets today b/c after 20 seconds of internet research, i discovered the following:

2007 Hurricane Names

Andrea
Barry
Chantal
Dean
Erin
Felix
Gabrielle
Humberto
Ingrid
Jerry
Karen
Lorenzo
Melissa
Noel
Olga
Pablo
Rebekah
Sebastien
Tanya
Van
Wendy

what's up??? that's pretty cool. there have been 3 Hurricane Jerry's before, the last of which i remember was in 1995 after Jerry Garcia died. (there was one in 1989 and one in 2001, also). i can't find any record of a Hurricane Andrea. so it's official: this is our year. or as Andrea said, "We're taking 2007 by storm!". when i suggested maybe it meant we are in for a "stormy relationship", she fired back, "no, it means we will 'weather the storm'". this could've gone on and on. she's good like that.

anyway, how many of you out there can say you married your spouse in the year each of your names was associated with a severe weather phenomenon? just us and our friends Humberto and Chantal. so eat that!!

PI-3

2007-05-10T12:47:00.000-04:00

this will be a quick one since the poison in the yard hasn't tried to make a comeback...yet. this is more an update on the rash i got last weekend.

they say poison ivy rashes don't "spread", i.e., that scratching them won't make you break out elsewhere. everything i've read supports this: you break out in the areas you were exposed and the blisters you get are filled mainly with watery goodness, but not contagious juice. that being said, it seems to be popping up in new places on me.

i got a new patch on my left forearm, right forearm and right bicep! and this morning i see a little itchy bump on my left thumb! what's up? it could be that i am encountering remnants from the weekends work, like from my shoes or something. or maybe from a dog toy. who knows. maybe it's actually contagious.

i was sitting in my cube Monday or Tuesday and my spots were itching. i decided to "scratch" them without really scratching them by turning over a can of compressed air and blowing subfreezing compressed gas on a couple places. it was neat, but didn't help all that much. the skin froze and i gave myself a mild case of the frost bite, but in the end, i was no better off. i don't recommend doing it.

hopefully PI-4 will have more exciting news. better yet, hopefully there won't be a PI-4 b/c i will never have to speak of it again.

PI-2

2007-05-08T09:51:00.000-04:00

follow up: we had a very windy day yesterday. i got to Andrea's after work to get ready for Home Group, which was at 7pm. me and Krust were playing in the back yard when i noticed them...the ground was covered with giant poison ivy leaves. the wilting leaves from the vine i severed Saturday were being blown off and scattered everywhere. good thing there's a brand new rake in the shed: i went to work piling up the leaves, being careful not to let them touch me. i photographed the pile next to my shoe (for scale). pictures are still on Andrea's camera, but i'll get them on here. when you see the picture, keep in mind i wear a size 13. it looks like a child's toy next to the mammoth pile of green death-weed. madness.

in other news, i can now verify 7 rash spots from the weekends work.

1 big cluster - left "bicep"
1 medium cluster - left forearm
2 small clusters - left forearm
1 tiny spot - left hand
1 tiny spot - right wrist
1 medium cluster - right shoulder/neck

it's not awful. next time i'll put on a long sleeved shirt. my mistake.

my friend Nancy at work asked a Botanist friend of hers whether my gasoline technique would kill the root system. the answer was no. the good news is there are special poison ivy killers on the market. using the same process with said killer will supposedly do the trick.

more info, and hopefully pictures, coming soon.

Poison Ivy!!!!!!

2007-05-07T11:17:00.000-04:00

where to begin.

poison ivy is one of the banes of my existence. i hate it. it's one of the few material things i can honestly say that about. it does nothing but make me itch. or worry about itching. just talking about it makes me itch. i also hate ticks.

so i don't like poison ivy? join the club, right? it's more serious than that!! it's personal.

poison ivy grows pretty thick in North Carolina. i play my share of the disc golf, which means being out-of-doors. that equals bad news for my exposed body parts. i keep it in the fairway these days, for the most part, but back in the diz, i had to go hunting in the woods for bad shots. i got it so bad on my legs several years ago that i stopped wearing shorts. REI Sahara pants became the norm for me year round. and so it is today. i decided it wasn't worth the risk and changed my ways. but dealing with it on its turf is one thing. when it invades my personal property, that's something completely different. and so begins my story...

Andrea bought a house in Raleigh late last year. it was a great find: 3 bedroom in a decent neighborhood and a great back yard. the yard needed some attention, but i was looking forward to getting on it. the sellers mowed and picked up the big limbs, but there was still plenty to do. lots of trash all over the place and broken glass. the glass collection is an ongoing project.

one of the things that caught my eye were 2 of the big pecan trees in the back. they both were home to very large, very healthy vines of some sort. one of the trees had a significantly larger vine system than the other, but both were quite healthy and old. they had been left untouched for years and years. how many, i could only guess (1,000?). i don't recall thinking they might be poison ivy right away, but for whatever reason, i came to suspect it.

Andrea's dad came over with some tools, so just before Christmas 2006, i began chopping one of the vines with an axe. it was like chopping down a small tree: wood chips were flying. with every swing, i was saying to myself "if this is poison ivy, it's the likes of which i have never seen!!". well, it was poison ivy, as my swollen face and watery eyes would attest days later. each flying wood chip that bounced off my face carried with it a large amount of urushiol which caused said puffiness and wateriness. it wasn't until i went home for Christmas that i got relief in the form of a steroid shot. looking back, i was extremely lucky. there are some nasty photos of P.I. rashes out there on the internet. there's no good reason my rash wasn't 100 times worse. thankfully, i now know i am not allergic. like most people, though, i am susceptible.

fast forward several months. instead of using an axe to take care of the other infested tree, i got a pair of heavy duty loppers. with these, i could sever the lifeline of each vine up to about a 9" or 10" circumference. that was all of them but 1. there was one big daddy roughly the size of my leg (below the knee) and i needed to do more chopping to take care of it. i borrowed Kari's hatchet (the neighbor), protected my face with a dust mask and a towel and headed into the yard. it was hot and trying to chop the fat vine with all that headgear on with a camping hatchet was tough. but i managed to get it done with minimal exposure. again, there were lots of wood chips, but this time i ran in the house after finishing and took a long shower, including wiping myself down with alcohol squares. even with the precautions, i was sure i was going to contract it again. not helping matters was the allergy attack i was having. i crawled into bed like a scared little girl and awaited the rash.

thankfully, it didn't come. the next day, Andrea was out of town, so i went back to her place to tempt fate yet again: the first vine i chopped, back in December, had sent out about 50 vines radiating outwardly from the trunk of the tree along the top of the yard in a last ditch effort to sustain itself. as old and huge as the vines were, i can only imagine how vast the root system is. if so, i may be dealing with this for a while. years, maybe.

i put the gloves back on and started pulling up vines. they varied in length from a few feet to as many as 20 or more. when i was done, i had quite an impressive pile. every time i felt a leaf touch me, i ran into the house to wash my hands. that happened 7 or 8 times. i was being overly cautious and i think it may have paid off. the yard is, for the most part, free of poison ivy and i only managed to contract it in about 6 or 7 places...a few spots on my left arm, my right shoulder, my right wrist. and maybe a little on my face and in my ear. i'm again very surprised and lucky i didn't contract it all over my face and neck.

my project now is to keep the vines off the yard by pulling them as soon as i see them. my theory is that without leaves, photosynthesis can't happen and the root system will die in the ground. how long will that take? a while. i'm hoping the gasoline i poured on the exposed root will bring death more quickly. no matter, i'm nothing if not patient. and next time i'll wear long sleeves.

i have pictures to include. i'll modify the post to include them when they're ready. i went looking for pictures online of nasty poison ivy, but nothing i found compared to what's in the back yard. nothing. i read how, when healthy and mature, the vines can have branches "up to 3 or 4 feet in length". the branches coming off the vine in the back are upwards of 8 feet or more. it's horrifying. but now, i am pleased b/c the leaves on those branches are already wilting. it doesn't take long for them to die. but as i learned with the 1st vine, the roots stay active and it's only a matter of time before it sends out the emergency shoots seeking to preserve its life.

with any luck, i'll be there to pull the plug.

Check the counter

2007-05-02T11:10:00.000-04:00

if you have been paying attention, you saw the counter on the right was set to expire at midnight, January 1st, 2008. it will now expire at midnight on August 25th, 2007. this means 2 things: first, that on Friday, April 13th i asked Andrea to marry me and she accepted! the date was set for August 25th. second, it means i'm very slack about keeping this blog updated with pertinent information. you can read all about how it went down at Andrea's blog.

in fact, i'll go ahead and say if you want any information at all about what's going on in either of our lives, go to Andrea's blog. if you want to read my little rants about all things unimportant, check back here. but not too often b/c as i said before, i'm slack about updating.

we're both excited about our future together. our good buddy Geoff Wood took several pictures in the back yard, one of which we used for our "Save the Date" mailer. you probably already got yours. i hope i got your address right b/c i forgot to put return address labels on the ones i sent to my peeps. woops! invitations forthcoming.

speaking of invitations, my future Brother-in-Law, Dean Schuster, will be helping out with invitations. and by "helping out", i mean "doing them all by himself". thanks Geoff and Dean!

also, thanks in advance to everyone we haven't asked for help yet. your days of not helping are numbered!!

Blades of Glory

2007-04-05T10:30:00.000-04:00

greatest movie of all time, except maybe for 'Tenacious D in "The Pick of Destiny"', which i haven't seen yet.

see Blades of Glory...or die trying. it would be a noble death.

Google

2007-03-26T09:51:00.000-04:00

pronounced "gYOOGle".

if you don't have a google account, find someone who does and get an invite. they're cranking out the best web services available and it costs nothing to use. one such service prompted me to make this post:

i was on my personalized start page which has different widgets like weather, news, etc. mine consisted of a couple news outlets, weather for several US cities and The Onion headlines. they have it now where you can add multiple tabs within the page, so i added a new tab and named it "News". my plan was to go in and add a bunch of news widgets, right? when i clicked in the newly created tab, it was already full of all things news. cable news headlines, newspapers, AP, etc. so i created one called "Sports"...same thing. then i did "Entertainment"...same thing. it's quit a time saver. check it out. this article, of which i have read 1/2 of the 1st sentence, says it much better than i.

i won't go into all the other neat things you can do while on google, like gmail, analytics, calendar, shared documents, etc, etc. i think for $50 a year you can have a business account which ups your mail storage, removes ads and a few other features.

i'm out.

Scoutin'

2007-03-20T16:23:00.000-04:00

that 12 year old Boy Scout who was missing for 3.5 days in the hills of Western North Carolina was found today...alive! i was all worked up about it and was worried he would turn up dead. thank God he is alright! what a great, feel good story. of course, that means i am now free to make fun of him with impunity.

here are a couple quotes that caught my eye today when reading about this little boy:

from Spokesman Review:
Michael had stayed behind with an adult leader Saturday morning while the rest of the troop went for a hike "because apparently he wanted to sleep in," said David Bauer, a ranger with the Blue Ridge Parkway. Michael was there when the troop returned for lunch, but the group of about 10 Scouts and their three adult leaders soon noticed he was missing, Bauer said.

[His father said] "He ate lunch, chatting with the boys. He was walking around with I think some Pringles and a mess kit. The next moment, sounds like a blink of the eye, he was gone."

Searchers found Michael's mess kit late Saturday within a mile of the camp site, and White said they had also found a candy wrapper and a potato chip bag.

after being found, the first words out of his mouth, from CBC News in Canada:
"He just said, 'I'm hungry,"..."He wanted peanut butter crackers and water."

and perhaps best of all, from FoxNews:
A two-year-old dog named Gandalf from South Carolina led search-and-rescue officials to Michael's location, which was about a half-mile northeast of the campsite where he was last seen.

i apologize for being insensitive and would he have perished in the woods, i would never state these things publicly, but come on! he skipped the hike to sleep in and hooked back up with his buddies for lunch...then he wondered off with a can of Pringles and a candy bar...got lost for 3.5 days, and when found (a half mile from the campsite!!!), immediately requested peanut butter crackers!!

wow.

if i've learned anything from this story, it is: this kid is a litterbug. and it saved his life. he left a trail of cellophane and cardboard in his wake so thick, all 'ol Gandalf had to do was follow it straight to him. so i ask you all to litter. litter like there's no tomorrow. it may be our only hope.

Readin'

2007-03-20T14:28:00.000-04:00

i don't read nearly as much as i should. every now and then i'll try to motivate myself to get back on it. sort of like college when i would voluntarily choose an 8am class over a later one thinking, "it'll be good! it'll be different this time! i'll get up and get going, be done with classes by noon and have the whole rest of the day to kick ass!!". makes sense. good theory. except that i'm not a morning person and however good my intentions, i would skip that class more often and put myself in a much worse situation by having to catch back up. the only ass that got kicked was mine.

2 years ago, i decided to ask for books as Christmas presents. i specified Patriots, on the recommendation of a great friend (and patriot) Bob Hutchins, as well as Ben Franklin's Autobiography and yet another book about Benjamin Franklin. that was apparently during my American Revolution kick. that kick has since ended, but not before reading none of the books all the way through.

the friggin' Autobiography of Ben Franklin is tiny, people. it fits in your pocket. literally brochure style. didn't finish it. the other two are mammoth. started Patriots, but it had so many names and dates...the other BF book was very intimidating. huge.

i even got a library card late last year. of the 3 or 4 books i checked out, all were returned late, but none were not returned unread.

i'm back on a reading kick. this time, i'm starting with small and realizable goals. Thurston loaned me "V for Vendetta". it's a comic book. i finished it. a friend from work loaned me "Marley and Me". it's a 'Man and his dog' type book. after a few months, i finally started it and it's pretty good.

why do i want to be "a reader"? it's cool, i guess. people say, "hey have you read such and such? no?" and they turn away to go find somebody who's read it. it's neat to talk about cool books you've read. the coolest i ever felt was when somebody saw a movie and i was able to honestly say, "yeah, the movie was pretty good but i read the book and it was much better". who cares that it was "The Firm" by John Grisham? i was finally able to say those words: The Book Was Better.

in conclusion, i see that i'm not so much "pretentious" as "wanna-be pretentious". that's much worse!

climate change

2007-02-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

read this article by George Will that appeared in the February 12th issue of Newsweek.

he has a point: people complain that the US walked away from Kyoto, but let's face it: it's not in the interest of hundreds of millions of Americans to lock ourselves into this thing without really knowing the impact economically AND without holding China and India, specifically, accountable to make the same commitments! they're spewing an awful lot of stuff into the air, too.

check out what this other guy has to say here:

"The Kyoto agreement does not apply to China as a developing country! By placing more and costly regulatory burdens on Japanese and European industry-- whose governments unwisely signed the Protocol, it will drive more manufacturing out of those countries and into Kyoto-free China. "

interesting. we're having a tough enough time competing with China without giving them another leg up.

Stock Market

2007-02-28T11:32:00.000-05:00

several months ago, i listened to a financial guru on NPR talking about what you and i, the little people, can do to achieve success in the market. he was rattling of ways to diversify: 15% here, 30% there...i about went off the road trying to write it all down. luckily they posted it online and i 'll paste it at the bottom for your review.

yesterday i decided to log onto my 401k page and move stuff around, as per this guys suggestions. i moved money out of my company's stock and into an International Equity Fund, as well as some Bonds. this morning i logged back on to verify the change had gone into affect and noticed i had lost several hundred dollars. what the??

turns out i chose to mess with my stocks on the biggest losing day since 9/11/01. what timing! it may work to my advantage, if things rebound quickly. that's a big IF.

diversify!!!

***********************************************************************************
* Domestic Equity (30 percent): Refers to stocks in U.S.-based companies listed on U.S. exchanges.

* Emerging Market Equity (5 percent): Refers to stocks from emerging markets around the world, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

* Foreign Developed Equity (15 percent): Refers to stocks listed on major foreign markets in developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan.

* Real Estate Investment Trusts (20 percent): Refers to stocks of companies that invest directly in real estate through ownership of property.

* U.S. Treasury Notes and Bonds (15 percent): These are fixed-interest U.S. government debt securities that mature in more than one year. Notes and bonds pay interest semi-annually. The income is only taxed at the federal level.

* U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protection Securities, or TIPS (15 percent): These are special types of Treasury notes that offer protection from inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. They pay interest every six months and the principal when the security matures.
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post Oscar wind down

2007-02-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

i'm still mad about Melissa Etheridge winning the Oscar for best song. without rehashing the incident, it appears the Academy is now awarding top honors to people for splattering dung on a piece of paper and calling it a song. in this case, the dung in question was apparently organic, in keeping with the whole "Green" theme.

i predicted below there would be backlash. i am hard pressed to find any. that's too bad. but if i'm honest about it, it's not that surprising. talk about un-PC: verbally bashing a gay woman who won an award for a song she wrote about environmental responsibility?? might as well kick some puppies while i'm at it. but seriously...who could make that up??

Oscar fever!

2007-02-26T00:41:00.000-05:00

yeah, so my buddy Oscar at work has been out sick with a temperature of 102! just kidding. i need to make this post quick and go to bed b/c unlike some people, i don't have a 4 day weekend.

i don't know what's more annoying: the old days when people used the opportunity of an acceptance speech to pump out political crap (Michael Moore, et al) or now with the whole "Green Movement". don't get me wrong, i'm all for the "Green Movement", and i ain't talking about what happens after you eat too much spinach. collectively, thousands of individuals can make a change. but the pessimist in me says we're all doomed. people can't even commit to going to the gym or to quit smoking, what makes anyone think we can radically shift the whole nature of the world economy and the daily life of billions who, incidentally, have more important things to worry about (like where their next meal is going to come from) than about the environment? i'm not saying it's not necessary: just not possible.

everybody loves Al Gore now. i still see him as a stereotypical politician (rich, white, boring, Brylcreem). he's found his niche and he's working it. i'm just pissed b/c Melissa Etheridge won an Oscar for that piece of crap song that goes along with his movie. it was bullshit. Andrea and i were both stunned. we had already made fun of Etheridge and her band during their performance of the song. we were later wowed by a pretty awesome Dream Girls medley. the two were not comparable.

but we all know the one holding the Oscar isn't always the one who deserves it. i think there will be (or at least should be) outrage on real blogs and infotainment sites about what a rip off this was.

Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth

that drivel will get you a gold statue, people!! looks like my songwriting career may have some hope after all:

if you care about global warming and glaciers forming,
hurricanes storming and locusts swarming,
Al is still boring and Melissa's performing:
the crowd is roaring but i'm pissed b/c Dream Girls should've won.

2 minutes on RhymeZone. how long did she spend writing hers???

music

2007-02-12T11:07:00.000-05:00

i've been playing bass for a little while. been through periods of "high" activity and periods of no activity. i use "quotes" around "high" b/c it's a very relative term. i wasn't on retainer for a studio or anything. it has to do more with my interest in playing. the interest has gone up a couple notches recently, which can be attributed to 4 things.

1 - Church
i've been in North Carolina for 6 years now. upon arrival, playing was limited to upstairs jam sessions with my computer. more often than not, Iron Maiden. anyway, in 2002 i volunteered to play bass at the church i was attending. meanwhile, my buddy Daniel was the 1st and only bassist at Vintage21. my church had a good rotation of great musicians, but V21 was still very young and used a lot of the same people. to try and help keep Daniel from burning out, i offered to sub for him once in a while. that lead to a busy period of playing alternating Sundays at both churches. in 2004 i jumped ship and went to V21 full time. we now have a solid rotation of talented musicians and i play there once or twice a month. but most of my friends go to Vintage, which leads to reason #2...

2 - Side Projects
i go to church with a lot of very creative people. without mentioning names, Matt Wood is one of them. he writes and records a lot of music (an album every month, in fact) and recently decided to take the act on the road. the resulting side project is called Dujour Presents. "recently" means a year ago, by the way. the lineup consists of Matt, his wife Lisa, me and Andrea, Katrina and Kevin. we've done a few shows and it's fun.

another side project involving Matt Wood is The Whale Watchers. this is me trying to fill Daniel's shoes again, as he was the original bassist for these guys. they're just coming out of a long hiatus and are now a 6 piece (added keys and a full time rhythm guitarist). Matt is now free to dance around the stage and sing, ala Jim Morrison. he certainly has the chest hair for it.

other side projects involve playing bass tracks for people doing home recording stuff. it's not an everyday thing, but i'm doing 2 of them now. it's a lot of fun. i'm not the best at coming up with cool licks, but i'm alright at reproducing something inside someone's head. if they can hum it or whistle it, i can usually play it. and the pay is great, too! i've been fed terrific Chinese from P.F. Chang's and given a couple beers. it's more than i get for playing with The Watchers. i end up paying for beer with those guys! they say it's part of the initiation process. which explains why it's a 6 piece now instead of a 4 piece. next practice, i'm expecting there to be a 7th...ceremonial 12-pack in hand.

3 - Equipment
it's fun to get toys. i recently got a Line 6 Bass PODxt. it's a digital effects thingy that models all sorts of classic amp/cab combinations and has 1,000,000 stomp box models (distortion, flange, delay, etc). i don't know that it was entirely necessary, but it allows me to run direct into a PA and sound like i'm playing through an Aguilar® DB750 amp with a 4 x 12 Hiwatt® Bass Cab, for example. or some other amp and some other cab. or you can make your own signature tone, which i won't do b/c it would take too long, by combining all the different effects. or you can just download tones created by other users. i doubt i'll get into all that. oh, i can also use it to record on my computer. these attributes make it a nice addition, but messing around with all the annoying sounds it makes during practice and pissing everybody off makes it a must have.

i traded a guy my Rickenbacker for his Fender Jazz. we are both pleased with the transaction. so getting that bass has got me playing a lot more. i also put together another fretless "Frankenbass" comprised of various parts. it's alright and requires practice to get intonation down. otherwise, you're always sharp or flat, which is where i'm at now. oh, and i finally got a real practice bass amp. i've been using Peavey Audition's for years and they sound terrible. this baby packs 15 Watts of window rattling power that will make the neighbors say "do you hear something? no? ok.". the main thing is being able to get an idea of what i will actually sound like when plugging into a real rig. so far, so good.

4 - Desire to improve
this is the one i need to concentrate on. i want to be a better player, which could mean making less mistakes at church, being more creative when making new music, being more technically capable, or any combination of the 3. whether that means lessons, or just practicing smarter, i don't know yet.

that's about it from the music perspective. i'll talk about the ukulele and banjo next time!