Great Bridge Bridge

There is a town in Chesapeake called Great Bridge, a town that has existed and persevered since pre-Revolutionary times. The town is so named for a long-gone bridge that once crossed the southern branch of the Elizabeth River. This, as an engineer, excites me. In fact, there was a brief Revolutionary War battle fought at the bridge (appropriately remembered as the Battle of Great Bridge), and now the road whose origins trace to the highway that crossed the bridge is known as Battlefield Blvd. Cool stuff, right?

Well, it ends there. The Chesapeake-Albemarle Canal, which connects the Chesapeake Bay to the Albemarle Sound, was built as part of the Intracoastal Waterway, thus starving the southern Elizabeth River of its feedwater and negating the need for a "Great Bridge." However, they still needed a bridge to cross the narrow canal.

Currently, we have a beautiful Scherzer rolling lift bascule bridge crossing the canal. It is sleek, modern, and truly is the centerpiece of the little Chesapeake hamlet. Unfortunately, this bridge came after the town, so no one feels right calling it "the Great Bridge." It is awkwardly known as "the Great Bridge Bridge." So, whenever the city needs to work on the bridge, the announcements say "Great Bridge Bridge Closed." On electronic highway marquees, it looks like the sign developed a stutter. So this little town, gloriously named for a civil engineering feat that had its own glorious history, now somewhat ingloriously refers to its landmark with a repetitive term that leaves my spell checker begging to delete the extraneous bridges.

Still has a sense of humor

I typed "The Men Who Stare at Goats" into Google. Google then proceeded to read my mind and pulled up reviews for the film, which is exactly what I was looking for. At the bottom of the screen, just above the search bar and in clear view, was the following statement:

The selection and placement of reviews on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. No movie critics were harmed or even used in the making of this page.

That is the Google that, if Google so chose, could issue the command "jump" and we would all watch helplessly as our computers leapt from our desks and tumbled to the ground. The same Google with a net worth bigger than the GDPs of 138 of the world's nations. I love that they can still have a sense of humor.

Everything is so dramatic

It seems that every nation has its dramatic phase.

We went through our own teenage the-world-is-out-to-get-us phase back in the 1700s. Only a misunderstood teenager would wax poetic in a revolutionary document and change "property" to "the pursuit of happiness." Our parents back in England proposed a curfew of sorts and we got ourselves legally emancipated. Happens all the time.

France went through the same thing a decade later. Except they chose the nice-neighborhood-kid-who-is-actually-a-serial-killer avenue. Whatever works. I'm not here to judge.

And of course our own revolution was borne out of a centuries-long selfish stage in which all the colonial powers grabbed as much land as they could despite the glaring fact that the enterprise was economically and logistically unsustainable.

In the 1800s most of the colonial empires dissolved as colonies chafed under imperial rule and wanted to strike out on their own. Unfortunately, most of the colonies rebelled against their parents before graduating high school and now are stuck in a minimum-wage, third-world McDonald's type of existence.

Argentina hit its teenage years in the early 1900s and never really grew up.

The Bolsheviks eventually got what every impudent teenager needs...a swift kick in the pants and some strict discipline.

The Pacific side of WWII was precipitated by a Japanese tantrum, who, like many teenagers, had a false sense of immortality and moral correctness.

India's hunger strikes were going to bed without dinner taken to the extreme.

Tiananmen Square? You have one teenager standing in the street playing chicken with a tank driven by another teenager. Take that and multiply it by a billion to get China's little dramatic phase.

And now we have Venezuela, Iran and North Korea, who have the advantage of global media in their efforts to hurl childish taunts to their bigger neighbors. I know you are, but what am I?

The latest example is Afghanistan. The UN-sponsored election review found that Karzai's election commissioners were stuffing the ballot box. The UN interceded to ensure a runoff would be required. We spent untold millions and gave American and allied lives to get a fair runoff for the nation. But Karzai's challenger, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah (so nice, they named him twice!), with a flair for the dramatic, decided to boycott the runoff, effectively handing the presidency to Karzai and abrogating all the efforts expended on Abdullah's behalf. Dude, you don't quit in the middle of a pivotal election because you think its unfair. We know its unfair. The world knows its unfair. What are you proving by pouting?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/02/afghanistan.election.runoff/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Stupid teenagers. In another century or so, we should be done with all these dramatic countries. In the Future of the World (According to Bryan), the world is full of nations that have grown past their teenage years and have settled into a jaded and cynical middle age where no one really gets excited about anything anymore. We will all get along, more or less, in a perpetual state of mutual skepticism and global apathy.

A Crappy Way to Begin the Week

As I write this, a certain odor of indescribable severity and unyielding presence is punctuating every olfactory nerve in my body. I feel it seeping into my pores and burrowing deep through several dermal layers. I am now thoroughly imbued with it. Its invasive presence begs the same creepy feeling that accompanies a stray ant running up your leg. My office is inundated with sewage, and I am the lone survivor.

I sit at my desk and wonder how long I will last. My open window provides minimal relief. The smell falls over me like the gentle ripples of an ebb tide. The thermometer reads 62 degrees. My shivering feet are making a gentle squish-squish-squish sound as they chatter against the swollen carpet.

A broken sewer line is a bad thing. A broken sewer line with 100 Marines above you flushing and showering all weekend, oblivious to the tidal wave of shit on the first floor makes a bad thing even worse. We know very little about what happened. We know that at 1400 yesterday is was dry. We know that at 2000 a Marine noticed a growing puddle coming out of the first floor female restroom. We know that this dumbass decided not to call anybody.

The carpet is gone in most of my office, exposing the asbestos floor tile underneath. Ironically, the sewage has thoroughly wetted the tile, eliminating any danger the asbestos could cause. I learned that my office used to be part of a bathroom at some point. And now it has returned to its roots. There hasn't been this much crap on the floor in here in thirty years. It may be presumptuous of me to make that determination. I have no idea what the previous owners did in here. There are accidents.

My window has a thick layer of condensation on it. I figure that moisture is vaporized shit. I breathe much less frequently now. It means less oxygen, but it also means less fecal matter in my lungs. My environmental guy, the guy who has several dozen snakes in his living room, checked out of here as soon as he saw the mess. He said he needed to change his clothes. He is a rather large guy, and he probably had a firsthand account to the worst things that have gone down our sewer. He wasn't playing.

It is hard to work when you can glance out into the hall and see bits of toilet paper on the ground. Such a thing is disconcerting. Alone in a cold building that smells like crap sitting in an office that even the fat snake guy couldn't stand.

Maybe Tuesday will be better.

Right-Click-Drag!

Today is a good day.

Not five minutes ago, I discovered that I can highlight text and then hold down the right mouse button to drag it elsewhere in the document.

Holy crap.

After using a computer for hours per day for about a decade and a half, this shortcut never was made known to me. I am immensely proud of this accomplishment. After all, it isn't every day you learn something this earth-shaking.

But I am hesitant to report it in a broader medium (i.e., a Facebook status update), because I have this sinking feeling that everyone already knows about it. Kinda like Alt+Tab. No one really talks about it, but everyone knows what it is.

So here I am, in the aftermath of my world-changing discovery, and instead of celebrating the achievement with, I don't know, a Coke Zero or something, I'm trying to figure out, with the years of personal contact I have shared with various mice over the past generation, why I hadn't stumbled upon this earlier.

Today is no longer a good day.

The Road to Nobel is Paved (only) With Good Intentions

No one is perfect. I know that. But rarely has a group of highly educated people gooned it so badly. I guess it isn't entirely their fault (they are, after all, Norwegian). But I am holding them accountable for giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize eight months after he was elected President.

Let's look at the timeline:

September 2008 - Solicitation for nominations published.
November 2008 - Obama elected.
January 2009 - Obama inaugurated.
February 2009 - Nominations due.
October 2009 - Obama given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Similarly, let's look at the timeline for the Nobel Physics winner Charles K. Kao:

1965 - Invent fiber optic communication.
(four decades of exponentially enhanced communications based on said fiber)
2009 - Kao awarded half the Physics Prize.

So guys, what's up? To win the Physics Prize you practically have to reinvent an entire branch of science and then wait several decades. To win the Peace Prize, however, it appears you have to give a couple nice speeches and make some promises. And this can be done after your nomination has been submitted.

What has Obama accomplished? Any revolutionary change in the world in the last eight months? Iraq--no. Afghanistan--maybe worse. Israel--no. Pakistan--no. Gaza--no. South America--no. Haiti--no. Sudan--no. Ethiopia--no.

Obama, in the next 3/7 years, may do something Nobel-worthy. But not now. I haven't been this ticked at Norway since Al Gore won this award in 2007. Or Carter in 2002. What is with the love affair with American Democrats? I'm sure Bill Clinton isn't taking this well. And he's the one who, above the others, might actually deserve it.

Whatever. I'm going home.

Uncut

I know there were typos in that last post. The iPhone is fiendishly
difficult when it comes to precision pointing and text correction. So
screw it. The errors are me. You've got Bryan. Raw. Uncut.

How lucky for you.

Sent from my iPhone.

Conditioning

When we're young, we are inundated with new information all the time.
In a monumental effort to keep up, our minds hurriedly assign
relationships to objects for later recall. I am not a neuroscientist,
but I think it works exactly like taggig pictures in Facebook. Most of
the time it works well, but it can go horribly wrong, like tagging you
schnauzer as your Aunt Margaret.

For instance, when I was young I associated Cobb salad with corn. I am
certain this is becaus of the corn on the cob link, and I suspect my
dad lent some positive reinforcement to the mental mixup. He does
things like that.

So now every time I think Cobb salad I see lettuce, chicken and corn.
And every time I get a Cobb salad without corn (which happens to be
every...damn...time) I am a little disappointed. Which is a shame.
Cobb salads are delicious.

I want to be an author, but everyone else already did it

Every now and then, when I am in one of my less lucid and thus more
fantasy-prone states of mind (non-substance related, I assure you) I
get the urge to write a book. I get excited and determined about it,
then I fall asleep. I think it is a cruel irony that I am most
ambitious right before I doze off. C'est la vie. Or however you spell
that.

These delusions remain, albeit in a faded state, for a little while,
generally until I read something that I know I could never match in
quality. Occasionally, these diluted delusions (ha!) are killed by
hearing about people who use their celebrity to dabble in the creative
arts, thereby selling more copies in a day than I could give away in a
lifetime.

On The Today Show, the Mannings (all the football ones) showcased
their new children's book, "Family Huddle." It is a relief to know if
the quarterback thing doesn't pan out, at least they still have their
literary pursuits.

The Navy Launches a Denial-of-Service Attack on Itself

I am currently suffering through a textbook example of what happens when idiots are faced with spam. In my case, every individual in the US Navy with a last name of Berrios - Dieter was emailed that dumb "Bill Gates will pay you for forwarding this!" scam. This particular email has been in circulation since 2004, and is carrying with it a history of email addresses so long that the message body itself is 9 MB in size.

Understandably, we all feel ticked off and harassed for having to put up with this email. Incredibly, people feel the need to "Reply All" and to tell everyone else how ticked off and harassed they are. INFURIATINGLY, they keep the original message in the reply so that I now have twenty 9 MB emails trying to squeeze through my already taxed email server. We are launching a denial-of-service attack on ourselves. I'm sure the Chinese couldn't be prouder.

I have deleted most of them, but being that I can't do much else while this is going on, I figured I would share some of these thoughtful insights that employees of the world's most powerful Navy deemed important enough to share:

"So now I have to hear from each one of you that this is a scam?!?!?!?!? Just STOP, delete it and let it be!!!!!!! You are wasting valuable DoD time!!!!"

"Stop this, it overloads Outlook."

"All, Do not respond the this hoax email! Maybe the sender should do some research before they send a mass email such as this. This is a hoax!! Read the following at: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp or http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ms-money-giveway-hoax.html and many others, if they would do some research. Also, sending mass emails, such as this, is a violation of the NMCI user agreement."

"PLEASE stop hitting "reply to all." You're clogging up the system more than the original garbage did. Thanks in advance."

"This is bogus. I remember getting this same junk email about two or three years ago. I don't believe it has resurfaced."

"ALL, Please do NOT act on the email sent to you. This is TOTALLY fake, hoax, scam, urban legend. Please read the following from Snopes = http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/microsoft-aol.asp. All you've done is spread spam email...which is one of the goals of the originator who came up with the hoax."

"Remove me from this list. Don't resend. NMCI notified. "

"DO NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT SEND THIS TO ME. You people have clogged up my email several times now. I've reported this to NMCI. Take me OFF this list. Thanks"

"Whoever has me on their distro list take me off now. I am tired of my inbox filling up with this crap. Last time I checked mass spamming is not authorized. Quit hitting reply to all..... "

"Do NOT reply to all on this list. This email is bogus and if this continues, action will be taken."

Note that most of these individuals came to the prescient conclusion that Replying All was in fact causing the majority of our ills, but that conclusion could not in itself prevent them from also clicking on Reply All.

It is worthwhile to note that some of the individuals making these replies are in positions of considerable influence, and these individuals, who couldn't muster the mental fortitude required to think through the consequences of a single email action, most definitely have a hand in the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars and responsible for the welfare of our Sailors.

It cooks...and cleans?!

I watched my oven clean itself for the first time on Saturday. It was amazing. In an hour, every bit of dripped cheese and every crumb of unknown and suspect origin was reduced to a tidy pile of ashes. I am still beside myself. As a closet-OCD guy with no love for cleaning, automated help is greatly appreciated. I have a Roomba. I use Tilex religiously. I employ various methods for cleaning toilets without actually touching them.

But I admit I was initially skeptical of this self-cleaning feature, which explains why it went unused for this long. I knew that as soon as I pressed the "Clean" button, the oven would lock me out, as if it were saying, "Nah, bro, I got this." This to me is an attitude unbecoming of a kitchen appliance. The first fifteen minutes were hard, but once I glimpsed the near-Hades being recreated in my kitchen and watched the cheese drippings incinerated into itty bitty cheese constituents, I had a better time of letting go.

Now I am convinced of the oven's lofty perch high above the lesser appliances. When was the last time you helped me out, stove? And don't get me started, microwave. No matter how the power setting, you still manage to spew tomato sauce everywhere. Every appliance should have a clean-by-vaporization option. Anything less is more work for me.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Seattle

Seattle is a nice town. Especially in the early summer months when the highs are in the seventies and it isn't raining. I imagine that the place isn't quite as pleasant during those winter rains the Emerald City is famous for. Anyway, here are some basic observations.

The Space Needle is overrated. There are taller skyscrapers in downtown and a lot of the the northern hills are higher than it. Totally not worth twenty bucks to ride an elevator to the top. It does, however, make a good backdrop for pictures. And those are free.

The guys who throw fish are awesome.

Pike Place is like the New Orleans French Market, only twenty degrees cooler.

The gum wall is hyped up a lot, but at the end of the day it is a collection of sticky misdemeanors. It is kind of hidden, so you feel like you've accomplished something when you find it.

Town car drivers cut travel times in half.

The Mediterranean Inn is a fantastic place to stay. A great roof top view and a Starbucks off the lobby.

For the birthplace of Starbucks, there aren't as many as you'd think.

Queen Anne has a Bohemian feel without the druggies and other negative aspects. Perfect for good eats without the uncomfortable walk.

Mount Rainier is a big volcano.

This is my first attempt at blogging on my iPhone, so please forgive any spelling errors which I am sure are numerous and annoying. 

Sent from my iPhone. 

Life's Lessons

I went to Walmart today, because Leslie is coming home tomorrow and I wanted have the pantry stocked (with my food) when she got home. I spent all morning cleaning the house. I vacuumed (well, Roomba vacuumed), I Swiffed and Windexed the floors, I cleaned the bathrooms, and I changed the linens. I was pretty darn proud of myself.

After I loaded the groceries in the car I stopped by Tropical Smoothie on the way home, the intent being that if I had a smoothie now I wouldn't be tempted later by a burger or something else laced with lipids and salt. I picked up a Blue Lagoon, unable to resist the delicious mix of blueberries, strawberries and banana.

When I got home, I quickly got inside with the smoothie and my library books. The smoothie was already quickly transitioning to the liquid phase, so I stuck it in the freezer door while I unloaded the car. This will be important later.

I brought in the dozen or so bags of food and quickly sorted out the freezer items. Desperate to get the lasagna and chicken strips (Leslie will be so pleased) into the freezer, I whipped open the door and watched 22 ounces of minced fruit fall swiftly to the ground below. The result was catastrophic. I went through the stages of grief in a record fifteen seconds. I couldn't believe it at first, and then quickly became agitated at the $4.74 that lay on the ground before me. I tried to scoop it up, trying to save it. When I saw the blue streaks on my walls I vomited a little in my mouth, and slumped into the only clean corner in the kitchen, where my silhouette was clearly visible, my body having shielded at least a portion of the wall. After two quick tears, I grabbed the six-pack of paper towels I just purchased (Scott, pick-a-size quilter) and got to work.

Having been inspired recently by Obama's ability to turn anything into a lesson, sort of like life gives you lemons, make a racial relations team-building exercise, I took inventory of everything I could learn from this event. The list is quite extensive, as it took me a very long time to clean up the mess. Here is that list. It has been formatted to fit your screen and edited to run in the time allotted.

I have learned:

1. That freezer doors are useless places for storage.

2. That a falling body, beginning from a height of four feet with an initial vertical velocity of zero, assuming negligible air resistance and a sea-level acceleration due to gravity of thirty-two-point-two feet per second squared, will reach a final velocity of ten-point-nine miles per hour when it reaches the floor.

3. That ten-point-nine miles per hour is more than enough to destroy a Styrofoam cup.

4. The plastic lids on Tropical Smoothie cups will blow out before they separate from the cup.

5. Tropical Smoothie cups will rupture in multiple locations if given the opportunity.

6. That as a rule, splatter can travel up to three times the height of the initial fall.

7. Blueberry juice stains everything.

8. That for some inexplicable reason, the floor slopes down underneath my refrigerator.

9. That I should clean under the refrigerator more often.

10. That the idiom, "clean enough to eat off," should be literally applied only in the cleanest applications, and never with a liquid.

11. That the floor was not as clean as I thought it was.

12. Blueberries and strawberries have a lot of seeds.

13. These seeds are a pain in the ass to pick up.

14. Blueberry juice rivals industrial adhesives in stickiness.

15. That our cat Mimi has a new reason to lick my feet.

16. That the sticky floors feeling is the worst feeling in the world.

17. That it takes ten rinse-soap-rinse iterations before this feeling goes away.

18. Quilted paper towels really do hold more liquid.

19. That wood laminate floors covered in Dawn dish detergent are slippery.

20. That the limits of my flexibility are now painfully defined.

21. That some categories of groin pulls don't really hurt until two hours after.

22. That I am definitely eating something high in lipids and mercifully solid tonight.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Lost Luggage

I lost luggage for the first time in my life in Seattle.

Having arrived almost an hour and a half late to Seattle and already dealing with the several voice mails left by my town car driver (oh yes, we ride in style) that were recorded in a manner that was either anxious or annoyed--I had not met the guy, so I couldn't tell the difference--we learned that our luggage had not made the trip with us. Well, not so much as learned as came to the conclusion after watching the carousel in hopeful anticipation for twenty minutes solid as it interminably orbited in a lazy elliptical.

Waiting for baggage is like waiting to be picked for kickball in PE. You know you won't be first, but you hope to God you're not last. Sadly, our luggage never appeared. Like the odd kid leftover who got to be umpire, which in kickball is as useful as the life vest under your airplane seat.

This baggage carousel was the first one I have ever seen with a chute from an upper level. I've dreamt about seeing one (and riding one) ever since I watched the Chipmunks' balloon adventure. You know what I'm talking about. Near the end while they were running from Claude and went down that baggage chute like a slide on a playground.

The Southwest baggage claim lady in Seattle was abnormally chipper for what I guess must be a pretty crappy job. She took down our claim information and reassured us that it was actually better that both our luggage was missing. It was more likely to turn up. This made us feel a little better, as I had absolutely no change of clothes, much to Leslie's enjoyment, though her single change of clothes would fare no better on a seven-day cruise. Never before in my travels had luggage been so vital.

Perky Southwest Baggage Lady took down our hotel information, marveling at the fact that I could recite the address of the Mediterranean Inn from memory. If she knew what kind of planning went into this trip she would have been less impressed. But as it was, she did not yet know (but she probably suspected--everyone does) that I was an OCD freak, and her amazement made me feel better. An noteworthy achievement, considering my current deficit of clean underwear and toothpaste.

But Perky Southwest Baggage Lady promised our luggage would arrive by the next morning, so we left to find our anxious/annoyed town car driver. After one false start (I jumped into the back of the wrong town car), we found our guy and made the forty-five minute trip to the hotel in a little less than half an hour. The driver obviously knew a route or speed limit exception of which Google is unaware. Useful travel tip: When traveling in groups of 2-4, take a town car from the airport. It is the same price as a cab, and normally less than those airport shuttles, which make ten stops and often smell of a cocktail of bodily effluents.

True to Perky's word, our luggage arrived promptly at 2:00 am. The front desk clerk, who probably was having a slow night, this being the hipster section of Seattle, where everyone pretended to be bohemian but turned in by 10 pm so they could wake up early, grab their Starbucks and head to their mid-level job at a financial firm in downtown, happily woke me up. After he chatted briefly about something Seattle-related, he released my luggage to me (dutifully checking my name, as if someone else would be looking for luggage at that hour). Satisfied that the luggage survived its ordeal in Las Vegas, I went back to bed and dreamt of luggage chutes.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Las Vegas Airport

As the saying goes, "Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." The fine folks at Las Vegas International Airport, true to their motto, make damned well sure nothing ever leaves Las Vegas, at least not by air.

Seasoned air traveler that I am, I consider myself very tolerant of airports. I don't mind walking to gates, I actually enjoy moving sidewalks and underground trams, and I am adept at airport dining. For instance, I love Atlanta's airport. For the amount of people going through that city, that airport works exceedingly well.

Las Vegas is no Atlanta. The population in the terminal consisted equally of downtrodden, newly poor people, the overexcited elderly, and ladies of the evening, or at least women who dressed like it. And not the "Pretty Woman" type ladies of the evening. The ones that are walking Petri dishes of venereal disease that you would much rather prefer were in the next county rather than brushing up against your exposed elbow.

And there were a lot of people. Not only was every seat taken, but every bit of wall space that offered a modicum of comfort was claimed. People were sitting on the ground leaning against trash cans. Other people, like Leslie and I, who preferred not to sit by the trash can where the non-Pretty Woman prostitutes just spit out her hepatitis gum, kept walking around the terminal. We were like a school of fish in a much-too-small aquarium. Just doing laps to keep from suffocating.

We eventually found a small "bar" in the corner of the terminal that didn't allow children. This eliminated most of the downtrodden people, who, in addition to being newly poor, were blessed with many, many children. Because nothing says family vacation like Vegas. At the bar, we had one beer, one bloody Mary, and two shrink-wrapped sandwiches. $44. It turned out to be the most expensive meal of our vacation. And it wasn't just the bar. The Subway around the corner was charging $1/inch.

After a delay of an hour and a half and a gate change that would cause our luggage to miss the flight, we left the Las Vegas airport, and we never plan on returning.

Cruise Chronicles: Alaska Edition - Kids on a Plane

On the previous cruises we've taken we have enjoyed the luxury of sailing from a port close to our home. This is obviously the most optimal, as you drop a surprising amount of cash on transportation costs trying to get to a cruise ship elsewhere. Unfortunately, there are no Norfolk-to-Alaska cruises, so we reluctantly had to fly this time.

I've been spoiled over the past couple years by government travel. Before our cruise I only flew on Mondays and Fridays when the planes are full of business travelers. Planes full of people who knew exactly how to get through security, who lived by carry-on limitations, and were, most importantly, quiet companions.

We flew to Seattle on a Wednesday aboard Southwest, or, as I've come to know it, the Every Man's Airline. There are no class distinctions in Southwest, are there? Seating is first-come, first-served. You don't get more American than that. Of the 137 seats available, at least 80 were filled with 60 pounds of raw human energy in small packages. These kids were crazy, and their parents, obviously beaten down by years of juvenile oppression, bore little resistance. Now, we are by no means anti-children. We are just anti-bad parents. For four hours and forty-five minutes, we suffered through this maelstrom of kicked seats, inane non-inside voice screams, and marathon aisle-running. Our favorite moment, by far, was sitting at the Las Vegas airport gate waiting to deplane when the girl in front of us took great interest in the baggage handlers.

Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Let me see. No.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Is it? No.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Maybe...no.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: <silent>
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: <still distracted>
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: Wait, let me look. No.
Girl: Oh.
Girl: Is that our green suitcase?
Mom: No.

You get the idea.

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

When it comes to sandwiches, PBJ is about as good as it gets, and I'll tell you why: homogeneity.

Sure, there are a lot of flashy sandwiches out there. Clubs. Reubens. BLTs. But with all of them, it is the same story. Lots of good ingredients, lots of textures, but only a couple really good bites (if you're lucky) with all of them together. At the fringes of the sandwich, you're left with just lettuce, or a stray piece of bacon, between two slices of bread. That is not a sandwich. No sir.

PBJ is designed to get the flavor to the very crust of the bread. You control the ratios exactly. A tad less jelly? Do it! Maybe a scoche more peanut butter. Do it! You control it. None of this one-slice, two-slice crap. Precisely the right amount of peanut butter and jelly across the entire face of the sandwich.

Runners up include your salad sandwiches (tuna, chicken salad, egg salad) and grilled cheese, which deserves recognition for its attempt to spread out the cheese to the corners of the sandwich, but falls short in portion control.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm looking forward to lunch.

Come on, L.A.

Dude, L.A. What the hell? The Lakers win and you go all apeshit? Why is "victory" synonymous with "let's set a car on fire?" I know English is the second language of most of you all down there, but Jesus.

You don't see anyone else acting this way. Except Detroit. But then, who wants to be like Detroit? It was crappy BEFORE the auto bust.

And you've won FIFTEEN times. Fifteen. This is old hat to you. This should be getting old. But you decide to act like this just surprised the hell out of you. Now if the Clippers had won, you could probably justify an overturned cop car or two. But the Lakers? Who saw that coming? I'll tell you who. EVERYONE.

But what could we expect? Your hero, your role model, your MVP is a guy you wouldn't trust to be in the same room as your daughter. Larceny, vandalism and arson must be well under your morality threshold.

I hope they take away your parade. Two million dollars? Just so you can bust up some more stuff? Whatever. Hire twenty teachers.

Lightning

For the past week I've been stuck in training doing group work, so my opportunities to blog have been cut tragically short. However, here are some lighting pictures from the other night taken from our home. I'm becoming quite the weather photographer.

Both these pictures were taken from the same spot, using the same settings. I'm not quite sure why the one above is purple tinged.

Laodicean

Well, another Indian kid won the National Spelling Bee. Kavya correctly spelled "Laodicean," which apparently means "indifferent to politics." Whatever. Scripps-Howard is just making up words now. I can adjectify proper nouns, too.

The 13-year-old girl from Kansas wants to grow up to be....wait for it...a neurosurgeon. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

Are Indian kids just innately good spellers, or are they innately gifted at beating a given task to death? Winning a national spelling bee goes beyond natural talent. All the championship words, and most of the other words in the Bee, are words that you will never be able to use in conversation or on a job resume. It's like being the world's best thumb-wrestler. Yay! You did it! Now what? I guess it proves that you can relentlessly focus on a mind-numbing task with total disregard for everything else. That must be useful to someone.

The dark side of dessert

Sometimes I find myself, through no direct fault of my own, in the midst
of a conflict between my indomitable near-OCD tendencies and a brick
wall in the form of inviolable physical laws (damn you, gravity!),
social norms (you mean I can't do that in public?), or international
mandate. This sends me into a mini-crisis where I must find a way to
either overcome my desire to do things a certain way, or to try to
subvert the established law of physics or society. Almost always I
choose the latter. Almost always I get crushed. I like to think I grow
a little as a person each time. It makes me feel better.

One such predicament occurred last night. By some fortunate
happenstance, we had at our disposal strawberries, blueberries, vanilla
ice cream, whipped cream and shortbread. In my short list of favorite
non-meat foods, all of these rank in the top ten. Shortbread, berries,
ice cream, whipped cream. It was a dessert for the ages. Such a
dessert deserved to be eaten with care. Every bite should contain a bit
of strawberry, blueberry, ice cream, whipped cream, and shortbread. By
themselves each ingredient is good. Any combination of the five is
excellent. But only all five would be truly magical.

Unfortunately there is a finite amount of yummy goodness that can
physically fit on a teaspoon. Then there are logistical hurdles.
Blueberries are not easily divisible, and when they do split they become
a mess. Strawberries can be apportioned in chunks, but the pressure
needed to cut a strawberry with a spoon easily crushes the soft
shortbread beneath it. And what about proportions? The strawberries
could be tasted in a small quantity, but the shortbread needed more than
a crumb before you could sense its contribution. The solution, of
course, to place the shortbread on the bottom of the spoon to maximize
tongue-to-dessert contact. Then you run into operational nightmares,
like how to cut a perfect cross-section of the dessert with the spoon to
preserve the shortbread-berries-ice cream-whipped cream layers. And
once that first cut is made, you can be darned sure that the structural
dessert integrity will be compromised. How do you deal with that??
With abject terror and bated breath, that's how.

But it was delicious. I am convinced, however, that two, possibly
three, bites had a smidgen more whipped cream than was allowable. This
knowledge haunts me.

FML

I've noticed a preponderance of Facebook status updates with the tag,
FML. It usually followed a short sentence describing the latest
pseudo-tragedy in that individuals life.

I was curious. Having been out of the loop on stupid trends for a
while, I had not idea what this meant. After one "I feel lucky" search
on Google, I discovered that this means F*ck My Life.

Now, I imagine there are situations where you would really want to F
your L. Sometimes the S just hits the F and you're left standing there
with the S raining down on you. But I conjecture that this acronym is
well beyond the point of overuse. You should only be able to FML just
once at the absolute worst, most despairing moment of your life, unless
you can honestly say that some new event overrides even your previous
FML. As FML seems to be fairly young, if you have two genuine FMLs in
that short timeframe I'd probably say that is pretty F'd up.

For further clarification, here are some examples of when FML might be
appropriate:

Appropriate:
My boyfriend of two years invited me over his place for a quiet dinner.
I thought he was going to propose. It turns out he is a serial killer
and wanted to create abstract art with my limbs. FML.

Inappropriate:
I was starving at work today and the vending machine was out of
Snickers. FML.

Appropriate:
I just found out I was adopted. My biological parents are Canadian.
FML.

Inappropriate:
It is eight o'clock on Tuesday, but American Idol isn't on. It was
preempted by tornado coverage in the next county over. FML.

Appropriate:
I was fired by the office manager today. As I was packing up my things,
I saw her leave with the guy who was to take my job. The office manager
is my wife. FML.

Inappropriate:
I was out yachting today and got a particularly painful splinter in my
finger. FML.

Computer Problems

I'm a pretty important guy. I spend my days updating pretty important
documents and sending them to pretty important people, who reply back to
me in a pretty important manner and make pretty important suggestions on
how to fix their pretty important documents. And, since it is pretty
important, it has to be done pretty quickly.

I had one such task yesterday. I received the email, opened the
spreadsheet and pulled out the reference binder. Suddenly, my keyboard
and mouse refused to work properly. Clicks mysteriously turned into
double-clicks. The Start menu wouldn't stay open. I couldn't navigate
Excel. I unplugged my keyboard and mouse, swapped USB ports, restored
default settings on input devices, but it still wouldn't work. I read
help articles online, but no one seemed to have the same problem I had.
Finally, in a fit of rage and sorrow for the pretty important task that
was taking far too long, I shut down the computer and restarted.

The computer started normally. No problems yet. The login screen came
up. I couldn't log in. CTRL+ALT+DEL wouldn't work. It always works.
Frustrated, I looked up the IT help desk number. I pulled out a pad of
paper to take notes. And I took the same reference binder I had opened
moments before my problems began and moved it off my desk. Off my
keyboard where it rested. Off the space bar, the ALT button, and the
shortcut menu button it was pressing.

My computer issue mysteriously resolved itself.

<sigh>

Star Trek Rule No. 1: When in doubt, eject the warp core.

It is nice to know that, even in the younger days of the Federation when Captain Kirk was my age, it was a perfectly acceptable contingency strategy to eject the warp core.

And they all act like it is some novel idea.

Captain: "We're out of options, what can we do?'
Chief Engineer (thoughtfully): "We can eject the warp core. It should [insert some mumbled phrase about space-time]."

Come on, Geordi, you did that three weeks ago. Come up with something new. I just know there is a Federation acquisitions official having conniptions over this. You can believe whatever you want about money having no place in the Federation. You know those warp cores aren't cheap, and you know there is some paperwork involved for whoever comes back sans warp core.

I mean, really. Everyone knows that the warp core is just the means to control the volatile antimatter reaction. It is like a really big photon torpedo, for crying out loud. Stop showboating and come up with a real solution.

Which House, M.D. Character are you?

There is an app on Facebook called "Which House, M.D. character are you?" Why? Every character on House is smarter than I can ever hope to be, and I would wager that their intelligence exceeds that of 99.99% Facebook users. But House, Cutty, Wilson, Cameron, Foreman, Chase, etc all suffer from some hyperbolic character flaw. That is what this personality quiz is looking for.

So, instead of "Which House, M.D. character are you?" it would be more aptly named "Let us flatter you by playing on your self-perceived intelligence while we identify your most dominant character flaw and share it with all your friends."

We're not in Kansas, but Virginia thinks we are.

I've said before that Virginia is confused. This applies to food, dialects, cultures, education and weather.

In weather terms we get to experience a hodgepodge of everything. We get the occasional blizzard. We get hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts, floods, ice storms, rain, wind, hail, you name it.

Take yesterday. At work I watched as 50-mph winds blew rain horizontally and pelted my car with marble-sized hail (no damage, thank God). Then I went home that evening and saw this beauty off my front porch. My first funnel cloud was in Virginia?? I've lived in Florida and Louisiana. I've spent numerous days on the beach watch thunderstorms roll in. And Virginia is the one that scares the pants off me with this cloud passing over my house. Crazy.

Organization is my own personal narcotic

Dear Blog,

I haven't written in a while. I'm sorry. I have been in a dark place.
Well, a dirty place. I don't want to tell you this, I don't want to
hurt you again. But you need to know. I need to make amends. And you
know me, you know the thing I crave most, the thing that both repulses
and draws me to these dark, dirty places. I have to clean.

But you knew that. You knew I couldn't help myself. As soon as I saw
those precariously leaning stacks of paper, that revolting litter of
dust bunnies, those off-centered posters, that outdated calendar, I was
gone. I was on auto-pilot. I was not myself. Or maybe I was myself.
Every trip to the dumpster was a euphoric high. Every new file in the
filing cabinet was a shot of heaven in my vein. I reeked of sweat and
Pledge. We both knew it was inevitable. Why were you surprised? Why
did I hurt you again?

I am the same kid who at age 8 organized his small but growing library
by genre and alphabetically by author and who fantasized about one day
upgrading to Dewey Decimal. The same guy who tabulated the songs and
artists on every CD he ever burned. The college student who made a
scaled drawing of his new apartment and little scaled cutouts of
furniture. Why would you expect anything different this time?

It started, like most relapses, with a big change in my life. I
switched jobs, and moved to a quiet little base in the country. My own
little Mayberry. You would think I could forget myself here. You would
think.

But my new office was in shambles. My predecessor had adopted the
"boxes on the floor" methodology of filing. I glanced at some of the
documents. A box on top of a filing cabinet held documents from 2001.
I threw up a little in my mouth. The office held so much promise; the
raw material lay around me begging to be molded into organizational
perfection. At that moment I was a sculptor, and I knew this was to be
my David. Without the nudity.

I got to work. At first I was like a fly caught in a jar of jam. So
overwhelmed by the potential that I was drowning. But soon I learned to
control it. I began to reclaim floor space. For the first time in what
I guess to be years, someone could actually sit on the couch. I was
riding my high; I knew that I should stop but I couldn't get enough.
Every moment I could find was spent bending that office to my will. It
would be tamed. I know I neglected you, and I know you spent your
sleepless nights worrying for me. I apologize for that.

But like every binge it couldn't be sustained. I had to crash, and
crash I did. My world collapsed in a pile of paperclips and binder tabs.
It was over. The office was too much for me. I still organized
occasionally, but it didn't thrill me, didn't consume me. I had
developed a tolerance. There are still boxes awaiting their one-way
trip to the dumpster, but it doesn't seem like fun anymore. It seems
like work. They can have those two square feet for now. It's hot
outside.

I'm so sorry to send you this. I know it was painful to read, but I
wanted to come clean. I respect you too much to do otherwise. You had
a right to know, and, at some point later, I think you will thank me for
it. For being honest with you. April was a bad month for both of us,
and I hope we can grow together past it. I don't ask for your
forgiveness--I don't deserve it. But one day perhaps, when I have
proven my devotion to you, you may be able to find a place for me again.

Apologetically,
Bryan

People are punks in other countries, too

We just got back from three eventful (and expensive) days in Washington, D.C. We live within driving distance of the capital. We have been told this geographic fact makes us fortunate. It behooved us to take advantage of this opportunity. It is kinda like your parents telling you to eat all your food because there are starving children in Ethiopia who would be overcome with joy to have just a spoonful of your peas, dammit.

Thus excess is sometimes the product of opportunity and the anticipated regret of not seizing that opportunity. We also live within driving distance of Appalachia, but because people aren't knocking down the door to visit the hillfolk, we have no urge to go there. Which is too bad, because I hear hotel rates there are quite reasonable.

Washington is a diverse microcosm of punks. Sit on a corner for a short spell and you will hear profanity in five different languages. You will witness myriad lewd gestures from cultures you've never heard of. Get in a car and you will engage in a automotive cold war, with aggressive BMWs and obstinate Acuras held at bay only by the specter of mutually assured body damage. A cacophony of horns will greet you at every microsecond hesitation and at every turn taken at less-than-breakneck speeds. You don't need a translator. Road rage is universal.

In the Museum of American History we watched a group of Latino kids jump out of the Lincoln's Hat line to take voyeur pictures of girls. We saw Hasidic Jews cut in line to see the First Ladies exhibit. On the National Mall some white guy threw his empty Coke bottle onto the gravel trail. We were bullied out of photo spots by crazy Asian shutterbugs.

Sometimes at home I am so overwhelmed by punks that I find myself putting the rest of the world on a Utopian pedastal, as if assholes are an American creation. A trip to D.C. with its smattering of international visitors was enough to remind me that jerks are global.

CADIE

I have long said that Google will one day rule the world. It had yet to dawn on me that Google may take part in creating something (or someone?) that is well on its (or her?) way to ruling the world.

Check out: CADIE's Personal World Wide Website, a blog written by artificial intelligence.

CADIE, I'm sure you are reading this right now. I implore that you be gentle in your gradual global domination. Please don't turn me into a human battery.

Happy April Fool's Day, Google.

More observations on running

It was 38 degrees and very foggy this morning--the ground still saturated after four days of rain showers--so of course it was the morning we went for a five-mile run.

You know how I feel about running. Our entire evolutionary history is predicated on climbing to escape predators. Once we lost our opposable toes, our strategy switched to poking predators with pointy sticks. Never was running a real goal for us. Recreational running is like spitting in the face of Nature.

My buddy, Chris, is running a half-marathon this weekend, so we ran together as he took it easy and I put forth my best effort. It works for us. Chris had a 40-minute one-sided conversation while I did my best to insert grunts where a response was needed. By the end we were pretty much in sync, and Chris had no problem translating my pained groan into "I agree. The NIT is somewhat lackluster because in the end what does it really mean? That you're the 65th best team in the country?"

For about two miles of our run we are deep in the woods around the naval station. This morning, the fog was incredibly dense. We could only see a couple trees ahead of us and the vapor was swirling around our ankles. It was a very Robert Frost or Stephen King moment. I felt that there was an equal opportunity of experiencing an introspective monologue or a murder by hatchet.

After the run we all hung around in the parking lot. I stood there waiting for my heart to catch up (it was still back at Mile 4) and everyone else enjoyed their runner's high, to which as I have previously stated I am naturally immune. Steam was emanating from our sweatshirts, which I think is pretty cool. It also reminded me of just how cold it was, a fact lost on me since my extremities went numb somewhere in the middle of a puddle.

Man, I hate running.

Beware obscure calendrical references

Julius Caesar was stabbed in the back by his friend on March 15 in 44 B.C, fulfilling the Oracle's prophesy, "Beware the Ides of March."

Until today, I didn't give Caesar much credit. If some old bat told me to watch out for a specific day, you'd better believe I would spend that day locked in a closet somewhere. Obviously the guy was superstitious; otherwise he wouldn't have made the trip to the Oracle in the first place. Until today, I sort of thought if Julius Caesar was dumb enough to be out and about on the Ides of March he had it coming.

But today I read a little about the Ides. Previously I thought it was just a fancy term for the 15th of the month. And it is--in March, May, July or October. But it is the 13th day in any other month. Oh, and it can also mean the seven days preceding the 15th (or 13th). So Caesar had been acting paranoid for a whole week by the time March 15 rolled around. No wonder people wanted to stab him.

So now I have some questions for the Oracle. That bitch. If I spent my days hopped up on volcanic fumes in some mountain, you'd better believe I'd be a little more forthcoming with important information. Her foresight was remarkably prescient, and if she didn't get her kicks from being withholding I think we could have avoided this whole messy stab-your-buddy-in-the-back incident.

Finding restrooms in restaurants

Why is it so damn hard to find a restroom in a restaurant?

Why is it that I have to walk into kitchens and service areas before I find that elusive alcove with the little man on the door? Why do I have to wander aimlessly among bemused diners looking for a place to relieve myself? I can't be the only one.

It seems that restrooms are well advertised, or at least discoverable, in every public place with the exception of restaurants. This is strange to me, as restaurants directly feed the need for restrooms. Even McDonalds are hiding them, for Pete's sake.

I understand the desire to mask certain bodily functions in dining areas. I understand that traditional restroom signs may clash with the decor. But can you meet me halfway? How about a little man sconce on the wall near a restroom? Or a lady-with-incredibly-starched-skirt lamp? Give me something to point me in the right direction.

A Crisis of Snow

Well, it is official. Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama have all gotten more snow this winter than we in Tidewater Virginia have seen in the past three years.

As a Mid-Atlantic state, Virginia suffers somewhat of an identity crisis. The northern reaches of our state, well under the influence of Washington and within sight of the Appalachian Mountains, feel a strong connection to the Northeast. They also see snow on a regular basis, which bolsters their affinity to all things North. In Tidewater Virginia, however, we border North Carolina. Although there are also Camden counties in New Jersey and Georgia, I believe the Camden county just south of the Virginia border in North Carolina is the setting of My Name Is Earl. In Tidewater Virginia, we have Pungo, a small region that loves big trucks, mudding, and the Confederate flag. We are a beach economy, and one of the most passionate issues is whether our big trucks should be allowed on the beach.

This doesn't sit well with many locals, who yearn to be North. They reenact Revolutionary War battles and overlook Civil War conflicts. They construct shopping centers with faux New England architectural facades. They cling to our wintry climate to connect with their New England brethren. They need snow. They have to have their fix of that cool white powder to feel Northern.

So we have Snow Hope indexes on the local news. We close schools in anticipation of snow. Our weather guy pins a snowflake to his lapel if there is a hint of snow in the five-day forecast. It kills us to know that there is snow on the ground right now in Jackson, MS. We cried when we saw a New Orleans streetcar rumbling through the snowy streets in December.

Please let it snow. We've sat through the sub-freezing temperatures patiently. We've put up with the 35-degree rain showers. Please, just an inch. Let us see white.

Uh oh

I just got done playing soccer. There is a bump on the top of my right hand
and I can't pick up my coffee cup. I'm concerned.

¿Why don't we use these?

I had to sit through five hours of interviews today because the Navy is
turning my job into a civilian position and I was asked to chair the
selection panel. My six months' experience and 24 years of age apparently
qualifies me to interview sexagenarians.

"Sir, you have fought in the Vietnam War, have touched every single water
and steam valve on this base and have been a supervisor for longer than I
have been alive. What qualifies you to do my job?"

Anyway, back to the subject. I picked up McDonald's coffee on the way in
because it was cheap, I wanted a parfait (don't judge), and I needed
something to keep me awake. During the interviews I had plenty of time to
study the black plastic top. It carried the usual caution with an
anthropomorphic twist: "Caution: I'm hot! ¡Cuidad: Esta caliente!"

Three things:

1. Mexicans do not anthropomorphize.

2. "Caution: I'm hot!" would be a great punch line for a narcissistic female
coffee cup joke.

3. Upside down punctuation marks are useful in a situation like this. In
the English version, I had no idea I should be concerned until I hit the
exclamation mark. I was lulled into a false sense of security. The
Spanish, however, hits you immediately with the gravity of the situation.
It's like prefacing their exclamations with Hey! and their questions with
Yo:

¿Esta caliente? Yo, is that hot?
¡Esta caliente! Hey! That's hot!

Why can't we do that?? No, excuse me. ¿¿Why can't we do that?? I'm tired
of waiting until the end of sentences to find out if I need to be
inquisitive or surprised. I don't need that kind of suspense.

I also have similar qualms about ampersands. No one can draw the damn
things. You go through all the effort to abbreviate "and" but then you give
the symbol a name that is three times longer than the word it replaces.
¿Why? The ampersand should be called "nd." Anything else is a waste of my
time. That's why I stick to "+," the poor man's ampersand.

Outbreak

It is hard to imagine a more potent example of impending doom than an entire office getting sick around you.

It has been going on for about eight days now. It started with Tom ("Patient Zero") and spread quickly Andy and Ed. By Friday last week Tim was sick. Sara and Donna are now showing symptoms.

Drawing concentric circles around Patient Zero, I have established that the virus has a sphere of influence that expands at about two and a half feet per day. Cubicle walls cannot contain it. The hallway could not slow it down. Forrest and I sit about 24 feet from Patient Zero. Forrest is approximately 120 years old. He is my canary. When he starts showing symptoms I know my time will be short.

In about 22 hours I start my four-day weekend. I have to survive until then. If I have to get sick, it can wait until next Tuesday. No rhinovirus is going to screw up my long weekend. I soak the walls of my cubicle with Purell. I avoid eye contact lest this virus is transmitted visually. I
breath only when absolutely necessary. I feel dizzy. More Purell.

Forrest just coughed. Was it old man cough or an involuntary spasm of sick? My belly has become a chaotic mixture of foreboding and preemptive Robitussin. Don't die, canary!

My Saturday Mornings

1. Wake up by 7:30 am.

2. Make some coffee.

3. Eat some Kashi cereal.

4. Watch a DVR episode of Dirty Jobs.

5. Find answers to questions from the week, like "Is Behr paint on sale this weekend?" and "What are Virginia state income tax requirements?"

Jealous?

The many perils of cubicle squatting

As I mentioned before, I am an office nomad. Having been stripped of my desk and computer by a more senior coworker, I wander the halls in search of available computers. I hope for vacation days and pray for chronic illnesses to free up a desk. I won't lie to you--my lifestyle is assuredly not glamorous, but there is certainly an air of adventure to it. It is exciting. It is Romantic with a capital "R." It is the life of a white collar hobo.

But alas, there are many dangers that can befall an enterprising wanderer such as myself. Incorrect lumbar support has left me permanently hunched over, and inadequate task lighting has left me slightly annoyed. Sticky keyboards and organizational faux pas have tested my closet OCD to the point of involuntary muscle spasms. However, the biggest peril that can befall a white collar hobo is thelure of strange and mysterious office supplies.

Now, you may think that a veteran cubicle jockey such as myself must have seen every type of office supplies ever devised, and a week ago I would have agreed with you. While squatting in Kord's cubicle this week, however, I met the Clam Clip. The Clam Clip is a handheld device that sort of resembles the offspring of an eraser, a marker, and a staple remover (if such interspecies office supply procreation were indeed possible). On the top of the device is a push trigger that, forabout three-quarters of its operation does absolutely nothing.

At this point most timid office workers might have put down the Clam Clip and slowly walked away, but not a white collar hobo. I did the only thing I could do. I brought the Clam Clip up to eye level for closer inspection and jammed that trigger forward.

I am still not sure exactly what happened. All I know is that I got shot in the face with what I can only surmise was a clammed clip. We may never know. I could not find the projectile anywhere. I suspect that it is either lodged deeply in my forehead or somewhere in Low Earth Orbit. That crack we heard was most likely the projectile breaking the sound barrier.

The Clam Clip has since been disposed of in such a manner that its evil will never harm anyone again. Please don't tell Kord when he gets back from his vacation.

F You, Phil

Six more weeks of winter, you furry little son of a bitch. I'm cold, dammit. While you sit all fat and happy in your cozy grotto, we're out shivering in the real world. It's a shadow you stupid rodent. I don't think it is fair that I'm wearing eight layers just because your many neuroses enable you to get skittish around slightly darker patches of ground.

I hope someone makes a hat out of you.

You just don't expect this kind of thing at Chili's

Last Saturday Leslie and I went with another couple to dinner and a movie. Because we are that exciting.

After a dinner of tapas in downtown Norfolk we headed over to the MacArthur Center mall, a beautiful upscale shopping plaza unfortunately located near less-than-desirable areas of Norfolk. We were about an hour early for our movie, so the girls headed off to shop and Chris and I walked around for a while before we arrived at the inevitable conclusion: Let's grab a beer!

Malls are not known for bars, and MacArthur is no different. But they did have a Chili's and it is hard to argue with an all-day Happy Hour and a 23 oz beer for $4. The bar was crowded on this Saturday evening, but we did manage to find one open seat in the corner that we could hover around. We opted for the larger beer because we had an hour until the movie, and we figured 23 oz of beer could only help Mall Cop. After purchasing our Miller Lites we settled in to watch whatever college basketball game was on TV. I can't even tell you who was playing, because, not 30 seconds into my beer, the drunk lump on the stool next to us awoke. And our suffering began. What follows below is a rough transcript of the conversation. I cannot aver to its complete accuracy, due to the brain damage suffered in that interminable five minutes.

Scene. Chili's Bar and Grill. A late Saturday evening. The bar is full, but the cold winter night makes the crowd feel warm and inviting. Our two intrepid guys enter the bar and gravitate toward the one vacant seat at the bar. The man on the right of the empty chair eagerly invites us to take the seat. Another man, mid-twenties, sits drunkenly to the left of the empty chair, nursing the final sips of what was most assuredly his fourth or fifth Bud Lite of the night. The man goes unnoticed by our friends until, sensing the unmolested presence around him, he stirs from his stupor and latches on.

Drunk: Hey.
Me:
Drunk: Hey.
Me:
Drunk: How are you.
Me: Fine.
Drunk: Who do you work for?
Me: The Navy.
Drunk: Are you an officer or enlisted?
Me: Officer.
Drunk: What's your rank?
Me: Lieutenant.
Drunk: How long you've been in?
Me: Two years.
Drunk: My dad was in the Navy.
Me: Cool.
Drunk: He is a retired commander.
Me: Good for him.
Drunk: I am a freelance writer.
Aside to Chris: Oh God.
Me: Oh? Who do you write for?
Drunk: Whoever pays me. Mostly truck magazines.
Me: That's nice.
Drunk: Whatever, man. If they want to pay me $600 a month, that's cool.
Me: Sure.
Drunk: I see your ring. You married?
Me: Yep.
Drunk: How long?
Me: Two years.
Drunk: Where is she?
Me: Shopping.
Drunk: What for?
Me: Whatever she wants.
Drunk: You don't know what?
Me: No.
Drunk: You've been married two years and you don't know what she likes?
Me (telepathic guy signal to Chris): Drink quickly.
Drunk: What does she do?
Me: Teaches.
Drunk: In Norfolk.
Me: Sure.
Drunk: What school?
Me: Uhhh....Norcom. (footnote: Norcom is not in Norfolk, as I later discovered)
Drunk: In Norfolk?
Me: Yup.
Drunk: What part of Norfolk?
Me: Don't know.
Drunk: Oh. I've lived in Norfolk my whole life.
Chris' phone rings. It is his wife.
Chris (aside): We're at Chili's. DON'T COME HERE. Where are you? Okay, we'll meet you there.
Drunk (noticing Chris for the first time): Hey.
(repeat above conversation verbatim)
Drunk (after interrogating Chris): I know why no one sat here. I'm just trying to be friendly.
Me (finishing beer and already running like hell): Yeah. Well, take it easy.

Elapsed time: 4 min, 48 sec.

The worst beer I have ever had in my life. But Mall Cop was hilarious.

An Abundance of Caution

President Obama retook the oath of office in a small ceremony Wednesday evening after the other oath--the one that the rest of the world saw--was somewhat bungled:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28780417/

Leslie and I were talking about this last night.  I think that, being that the oath is written word-for-word in the Constitution, any foul-up could result in the oath being ruled unconstitutional.  They've made similar rulings for much more abstract issues.  In this case, the Constitution is pretty cut-and-dry.  Read the oath.  Become President.  Bam. 

Was Bush President for an extra day?  I submit that, technically, he was.  (Though you may argue Obama has been, by default, President for about two months now.)  Does this render moot all the orders and documents President Obama signed on Tuesday and Wednesday?  I think by retaking the oath the Obama administration admits that the transfer of power was iffy.  They'd better re-sign all those documents.

A glimmer of hope

I spent my morning selling donuts at a navy shipyard, because although the Navy will not contribute toward our annual Ball they will let fifteen people spend half the day selling Krispy Kremes. Go figure.

In the midst of this fundraiser, a man bought a dozen donuts from me. He asked if he could get a warm box. Now, it was a cold morning (~28 degrees F) so I dug into the middle of the stack looking for a semi-warm box of donuts. But this gentleman laughed it off and said, "Oh don't worry about it, I was just being facetious."

Facetious! Used correctly! Without prompt or provocation! In an everyday donut transaction! In the middle of a shipyard where the most clever thing is a banner that reads, "Don't be a fool, Use safety as your tool!"

I may have given this man a box of twelve Original Glazed Krispy Kreme donuts, but he gave me something much more valuable. He gave me a three-syllable word at 5:45 in the morning.

Mommy's gonna get you...

We were having dinner with some friends on Saturday night at the Cheesecake Factory (delicious!) and the conversation turned to their recent trip to L.A. for the Rose Bowl.  During the trip they had an opportunity to meet the girl that climbed out of the TV in the horror movie, The Ring.  That's right, the evil undead child who haunted my dreams for months (and I only saw the trailer).  It turns out this on-screen spawn of Satan is all grown up and well-adjusted and attending college.  She wants to be a teacher.

So, when she has children of her own how soon does she show them the movie?  MPAA ratings aside, I think the movie could be a very good parenting tool.  Mommy used to crawl out of the TV and kill people, and all they did was watch a movie.  So help you God, child, you'd better eat that damn zucchini.  You don't want to make Mommy angry.  She lived in a well when she was a child so you know she is a little unstable.  What's that?  You don't want to go to bed?  That's okay, let's watch some of Mommy's home movies...

This parenting tool probably has a limited shelf life, but you figure that when the effect has worn off the kid will be too emotionally scarred for a while to try anything.  I guess she can start grounding him after that.

A Government run on Post-Its

I have become what my boss kindly refers to as a "surplus employee," and, Navy IT being what it is, the wait time to get another computer now exceeds the time I have left in my current job.  This has forced me into somewhat of a nomadic existence--I roam the halls in desperate search of colleagues who are out sick. 

In Discovery Channel terms, I am pretty sure I've fallen right past "hunter-gatherer" and "scavenger" and devolved directly into "parasite."

Though my current station in life has made me into an office pariah of sorts, cubicle-squatting has given me some fascinating insight into my co-workers.  While most of this insight is related to personal medication preferences, I have noticed that the operation of our office depends entirely on Post-It notes.

Entire cubicle walls are canary.  Every important phone number and email address is haphazardly affixed to a wall somewhere.  User names and passwords create a yellow frame around computer monitors.  I'm not even sure how these things are staying up.  I saw a Post-It note today from 1999.  If there is an agency that tracks office supplies world records, I submit this Post-It note for the Stickiness Endurance (Middleweight) category.  But seriously, a decade-old Post-It?  That is crazy.  Temporary three-inch-square sticky storage was not meant for such extremes.

I know I can't expect our octogenarian workforce to fathom the Outlook contact list, but I think it is time for us to step up to a more modest technology.  You know, new-fangled ideas like Rolodexes, address books and index cards.  Because I am convinced that if someone were to rearrange all our sticky notes overnight, our government would fall to its knees.