2008/03/13 22:30 The big story has been the Governor of New York getting caught in a sex scandal involving high priced escorts, or call girls. The jokes on the late night talk shows have been non-stop. The Governor traveled to the Mayflower Hotel in D.C. for a tryst with "Kristen". Kristen's real name is Ashley Alexandra Dupre. Once her true identity came out her MySpace page got 2 million hits before it came down.

2008/03/16 12:00 I started my web page a year ago tomorrow. It doesn't seem like I've been working on it for that long. This section that I call Rants and Rambles has gotten too big so I am going to stop updating on this page. I am creating a new page which will be Rants and Rambles ( Part Deux ). The cold weather is still hanging around. No snow - it has just been cold. I am still congested. I think once it warms up and I can stand in the warm sunlight I will feel better. I took a half day vacation on Friday and just came home and slept. In fact I felt crappy all weekend and just slept a lot. I hate wasting my weekend sleeping. Karen and I went out for coffee this morning. We went to Freedom of Espresso in Fayetteville. I find that very relaxing. We had our coffee, read the paper, and talked a little. It makes me happy that I still love my wife after all this time. The review I wrote this week was published in the paper today. I only have a couple of weeks left as a "community critic" for the Post Standard. I have been laid off. It was a temporary position. I had fun. Maybe the chance to do something like that will come up again. And of course I will still be writing here on my website and writing on my weekly blog on MySpace.

Once Kristen's pictures were up on the web the jokes continued. On one of the news blogs someone wrote under her picture, "I wonder if she Spitzer swallows?" Too funny. I tried to get Karen to play 'Governor and the Call Girl' but she was only interested in the money part of the game. No fun.

2008/03/04 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Unhitched"

Episode: Pilot

Air Date: Sunday March 2nd 9:00 PM on FOX

When I first saw the ads for FOX's new show "Unhitched" I was looking forward to checking it out. Not because it is by the Farrelly Brothers of "Dumb and Dumber" but because it has Rashida Jones as one of the stars. Rashida Jones, the daughter of Quincy Jones, played Jim's girlfriend on the sitcom "The Office". She stepped into a role where every fan of "The Office" was prepared to hate her. She was getting in between Pam and Jim. You knew things were going to end badly for her character because it was inevitable that Jim and Pam would end up together. She made the character likeable and sympathetic. Given the proper vehicle she can be a star. "Unhitched" is probably not the vehicle and is more like a wreck. In the pilot episode the character Jack is sexually assaulted by a chimpanzee. The attack is bad enough that he needs stitches in his....posterior. One of the other characters is a doctor so the next morning Jack lays on the coffeee table while Dr. Freddy stitches up his...posterior. Their other friends Tommy and Kate sit on the couch and watch? We learn from their banter that they are all divorced. Hence the name for the show "Unhitched". Later Tommy and Jack go to a party. After Tommy tries unsuccessfully to hit on an underaged teen they take one of Jack's coworkers back to Jack's house. She is so drunk she is throwing up and she ends up nearly comatose in Jack's bed. The next morning they joke about having had sex with her. I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most states, definitely immoral, and just not funny. I will have to pass on this show. I like a ribald comedy as much as the next guy but this show crossed a few too many lines.

2008/03/11 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Jericho"

Episode: Jennings and Ralls

Air Date: February 26th on CBS

I like entertainment that makes you think a little. This new season of Jericho is doing just that. The government has been fractured and the part of the government based in Wyoming is now occupying the town of Jericho. The military is relying on a private contractor Jennings and Ralls to do much of the reconstruction. And the out of control security company, Ravenwood, from the first season is back. I'm sure that Jennings and Ralls is based on the real life contracting firm Halliburton. Halliburton is the company that Vice President Dick Cheney worked for that is in the news in Iraq. And Ravenwood is probably based on Blackwater. "Jericho" is making us think a little bit about these contractors and how they operate. We are getting a little different perspective. The new character this season is Major Beck, played by Esai Morales. Beck is in charge of the military presence and charged with keeping the peace and hunting the terrorists that brought down the United States. The show is doing a good job of balancing the action and intrigue with the personal stories. This week Stanley and Mimi were doing some wedding planning.

2008/03/02 12:30 Yesterday we went to Kristin's surprise party at Twin Trees in Solvay. It was a good time.

Karen, Steve Irwin, and Adison in Adison's dorm room. September 6th, 2006.

Missy and Stevie hanging out together in the back yard. September 3rd, 2007.

2008/03/01 12:30 Friday after work I went to the Dewittshire and met Kristin, Mike, Rene, and Zane. Karen didn't go because she was afraid she would crack and spill the beans about Kristin's surprise 30th birthday party. The surprise party is going to happen later today. I was only going to stop for one drink but Mike insisted I stay to see his surprise for Kristin that night. He had arranged for a college friend to come visit. While I was there Sue, that I work with in CPP ( Central Payment Processing ), came in. We had a nice talk. I don't think I ended up leaving until around 10:00 PM. Last night Steve Irwin the guinea pig passed away peacefully in his sleep. I knew last night when I went to bed he wasn't doing very good. He was very lethargic and didn't want to come out of his house. I used to tap on the edge of his cage with a carrot and then he knew he was getting a treat. He would come tearing out of his house and stand up on his hind legs and grab his carrot. Last night he wouldn't come out for his carrot. He looked old. It's hard to explain but he just looked really old. I guess guinea pigs live to be about three years old or so. We don't know how old Stevie was because we don't know how old he was when Adison found him. He was a good little rodent and he and I had bonded in the last couple of months. I will miss the little dude. Today is March 1st. March is the first spring month. It doesn't look much like spring outside right now. There is quite a bit of snow out there.

2008/02/26 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

Episode: Dungeons and Dragons

Air Date: February 18th on FOX

This take on the Terminator story has proved to be my favorite new show. The writers have done a great job with the narrative. There are some interesting characters and they have managed to weave into the story plot elements from the films. Summer Glau plays the 'good' cyborg, Cameron, who was sent from the future to protect John Connor. I think she does a great job with the role. In this episode the best scene was the interaction between her and the paramedic Charlie. He called her a "very scary robot". The character definitely has some agenda that we're not yet aware of and she is, at the same time, menacing and creepy while still looking like a cute young girl. There have been some scenes of the resistance that take place in the future and I hope we get to see some more of those.

2008/02/26 07:30review submitted to the Post Standard

"Prison Break"

Episode: The Art of the Deal

Air Date: February 18th on FOX

The season finale of Prison Break puts the show back on the road. This series changes venues on a regular basis. Season one had Michael and Linc in Fox River prison. In season two they were on the run. In season three Michael was behind bars in Panama in Sona prison. Next season Michael will be the hunter instead of the hunted. In this season's finale the evil Gretchen escaped Michael's vengeance. The show ended with Michael on her trail. The best scenes in this last episode were with Fernando Sucre. He stood up to the sadistic prison guards and refused to give up his friends. In a heroic scene, in a cell phone call, he told Michael that he was fine. I think he knew that if Michael was aware of his predicament that Michael would put himself at risk to help him. Characters come and go on this show and when they go it's usually a violent end. T-Bag killed Lechero and managed to put himself in charge of the inmate population of Sona. This show has managed to stay fresh and exciting for much longer than I thought it would.

2008/02/26 01:00

2008/02/24 21:30 Finally a day off. So sweet. I haven't been able to use my cell phone since we got back from visiting Dave, Caity, and Sage at Christmastime. I had misplaced my charger. I didn't want to buy a new charger. Today I found my charger. Now I can charge my cell phone and use it again. I slept in today. I didn't get up until around 9:00 AM. I didn't go out for coffee this morning. Adison wasn't here and Karen was sleeping and although I do go out by myself all the time I just made a pot of coffee and stayed at home.

2008/02/22 22:00 It has been a long couple of weeks. I am working tomorrow and that will be my 13th day in a row. Last night we went to Red Robin for dinner. We went out to celebrate my getting a promotion at work. My Mom and Dad were there and Adison and her 'friend' Scott ( I don't know if I can say boyfriend or not ) were there and Karen and Michael were there. It was a good time. It is cold today and there is a dusting of snow but really pretty mild for February. There are only 7 more days in February and then it is March. March is a spring month. I had a very bizarre dream last night. I dreamt that Sean and Tina got a new house. We went to see their new house and they had a very strange bathroom. There was a metal toilet seat that was heated. It wasn't a normal toilet and my whole dream was about me using the unconventional toilet. Vey bizarre. Where does the weird stuff in your dreams come from? I am going to work 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM tomorrow. That's the plan. I may work longer than that if I don't get enough done. I have a lot of stuff to do before a 1:00 PM meeting on Monday. I don't want to work on Sunday. I need a day off. I left my building at about 1:30 PM today to get some lunch. I walked to the corner and a car came by and hit a puddle and splashed me from head to toe. The water was cold and wet and dirty. If you were having a good day and you got splashed like that you might be able to laugh it off. Maybe. But if you are having a crappy day then getting splashed like that just seems hilarious. I have to get up early tomorrow so I am going to go to bed now. I can't wait for Sunday and my half a weekend.

2008/02/21 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Jericho"

Episode: Reconstruction

Air Date: February 12th on CBS

The nuts won out and Jericho is back for a second season. At the end of season one the town of New Bern was attacking the town of Jericho. New Bern called for Jericho to surrender and Jake's response was "nuts". When the network announced that Jericho wasn't returning for season two the fans staged a protest that involved mailing nuts to the network. The network relented and the show is back for a limited run. If the ratings support it the network will order more shows. In season one the country suffered a devastating terrorist attack. Homegrown terrorists drove panel trucks loaded with nuclear bombs to major cities where they were detonated. This toppled the US Government. But it is not all doom and gloom. We learned in this first episode of season two that the IRS didn't survive nuclear annihalation. In the post apocalyptic world all debts to the IRS are forgiven. Stanley gets his farm back. The series is taking a different turn this season with the addition of the military. The remnants of the US Military have moved in and are set up to keep the peace. Although so far they seem more like an occupying force than a peace-keeping force.

2008/02/18 12:00 I was supposed to have had a four day weekend. I scheduled a vacation day for Friday and Monday was a holiday. Then I got forced to work on Monday. So, my four day weekend turned into a three day weekend. Then on Thursday I got asked to work on a project and I canceled my vacation day for Friday and I worked Saturday and Sunday. So my four day weekend turned into a no day weekend. No day weekends are the worst. It rained yesterday and almost all the snow is gone. It is very wet and muddy and disgusting out. I have a strong case of the 'I want spring to be here' cabin fever type of thing. I slept in this morning. I don't have to be to work until 3:00 PM today. Sometimes life just sucks and there is nothing you can do about it.

2008/02/11 23:45 It was a semi-crappy weekend. It started out okay. Saturday morning I got to have breakfast with Adison and Amanda. That was fun. I did some pencil sketches for a painting I'm going to attempt and I was feeling pretty fine. I was going to go to the Carousel Mall, ostensibly to make a payment on the Bon Ton charge, but maybe to walk around a little too. I was thinking I would go about 6:00 PM or so. Then about 5:30 I got sick. It came on me very suddenly. I got terrible chills and I started shaking uncontrollably. I couldn't get warm. I got nauseous but never threw up. Then by about 11:00 PM I was fine. It was like a six hour bug. Who gets that sick for only six hours? And why on the weekend? I called the doctor on Monday to get the results of my blood test and my white blood count was normal. And I feel fine now. It's way too cold out and I get to coughing in the cold but that's easy to fix - just stay where it's warm. I got a package today. I haven't purchased anything on e-bay for a very long time. It's probably been 8 to 9 months since I had a package come with something from e-bay. After I won the 300 dollars in Quick Draw I used all the money to pay bills except for about 15 dollars. I bought this shirt for about $10. It's a Cheeseburger in Paradise shirt with a mostly topless wahine in a grass skirt eating a cheeseburger. Karen said, "Real mature. A shirt with boobs on it." No, actually it's not very mature. I don't want to be mature. I can't help getting old but maturity I have some control over.

2008/02/13 16:40 The best thing I did yesterday was to change the bedding in Steve's cage. Last night I cleaned Steve the Guinea pig's cage. I put in fresh bedding and a clean food bowl. I gave him fresh water, a couple of baby carrots, and some bermuda grass. He was a happy little rodent. When he's happy he makes these little squeaky noises. That was the best thing I did all day yesterday. Elsewhere in the world there were, I'm sure, people that saved lives, or fed orphans, that tended to the sick, and that overall in some way made the world a better place to live in. I made a Guinea pig happy. Nothing I've done so far today is better than that. When I left work last night I had a very strong, if inexplicable, craving for pancakes. I stopped at Wegmans and got some Aunt Jemima mix. I came home and made pancakes and sausages. They weren't very satisfying. They just weren't the best pancakes. I should have gone to IHOP. Maybe I'll go for breakfast this weekend and have some pancakes. I took four hours vacation today. I left work at 1:30 PM. It was cold and very slushy out. My feet were soaked by the time I got home. I want spring to be here. I can feel myself getting into a funk. I am getting into one of my moods. I am getting that lost feeling where I don't know what I want or need. At the same time I recognize that I want or need something pretty badly. I think I am going to take a power nap.

2008/02/11 23:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Prison Break"

Episode: Hell or High Water

Air Date: February 11th on FOX

The penultimate episode of this season's "Prison Break" was an edge-of-the-seat suspense fest. Michael and crew are out of prison again and back on the run. But not before an awful lot of tense moments. Some of the plan went according to plan and some of it didn't. The season finale next week promises the big showdown with Gretchen. I've said it before, this Gretchen character is the most evil character I've seen on TV in a long time. I don't know how the actress playing the part pulls it off but she makes her blue eyes just seem so cold; like ice. It is quite rare on this series for any of the characters to ever get a break. Fernando Sucre seems destined to a bad ending and that's a shame. I think he has a good heart and put himself in harm's way just to help friends. I'm not expecting any happy endings in the season finale. We will find out next week which characters are left hanging in the most perilous spots to wait for the next season.

2008/02/09 11:30 Adison spent the night in Oswego last night. She and Amanda came home this morning and they talked me into taking them out for breakfast. It wasn't a hard sell. We went to the All Night Eggplant and I had a half fretta. I was impressed that Adison and Amanda showed up around 9:00. After breakfast Karen and I went to Jamesville for a trash run. Karen is working today and I am driving Robert to work in Liverpool. He has to be to work at noon.

2008/02/04 08:00 It's Monday morning after the Superbowl. The Giants won. Someone must have forgotten to show the NY Giants the script where they were supposed to lay down and roll over and let the Patriots be crowned. It was the best Superbowl I've ever watched.

2008/02/01 08:00 Yesterday night Tristan was over. So was Adison's friend Scott. We all went to Trapper's Pizza Pub for dinner. After dinner I played Quick Draw. I played the same numbers I always play. The numbers are Karen's and my birthdays. I played 5 games on the card and in the 3rd game I hit all 5 of the numbers and won $300. That was sweet. Adison was sitting next to me and she was screaming. It was funny because after I had all my numbers they were still drawing and I was sitting there watching thinking that there's nothing left for me to look at because all my numbers are already up there. Then we went home and watched "Lost". Today is the first day of February. One more month until spring. It is cold out but not much snow. I've only run the snowblower maybe 3 times so far this winter.

2008/02/01 21:00 Today I got a call at work from Dr. Alfaro-Franco. She said she was concerned because my blood test showed I had an elevated white blood cell count. She said I needed to go see Dr. Rajan-George as soon as possible. I called and made an appointment for Monday at 1:00 PM. I'm going to need to go to Web MD and see all the things that might be wrong with me. It snowed today and then it rained. It is particularly nasty out. It is just one big slushy mess. I left work and by the time I got to my car my shoes had soaked through and my socks were wet.

2008/02/02 08:00 It is Saturday morning. We're not going to do the trash today. I'm going to spend the day working on getting things straight with the IRS. It is very ugly outside. Wet and very slushy. Last night Karen and I watched "Jackie Brown" on a DVD from Netflix. The Quentin Tarantino movie is based on the Elmore Leonard novel "Rum Punch". I went through a period where I read a lot of Elmore Leonard novels back to back and "Rum Punch" was one of my favorites. The movie was pretty good.

2008/02/03 08:45 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Superbowl commercials"

Air Date: Sunday February 3rd on FOX

The best commercial was Bud Light and the ability to breathe fire. This was a funny spot and Bud Light, a consistently funny advertiser, delivered the best ads this year. The worst commercial was the car parts in bed ("Godfather"). This was based on an iconic scene from American cinema that no one in my house under the age of 30 got. Plus, who wants an evil car that might go 'Christine' on you. Overall I thought the ads this year were pretty forgettable. Nothing struck me as new or innovative. Some of the ad agencies seem to have taken their cues from Michael Bay and delivered a lot of special effects with no story. No big controversies. The infamous GoDaddy.com just directed people to their website to see an ad with Danica Patrick.

2008/01/30 08:00 Yesterday morning I went to the NY Heart Center and I had a stress test done. Unfortunately, the test was positive. I have stress in my life. I got to the office at about 7:00 AM. That's very early in the morning for this type of thing. At least that's what I think. The first thing that happened is the nurse started an IV. Then I stood with my chest pressed up against some kind of a camera or recording device while the nuclear medicine tech injected a radioactive tracer into the IV. Then I sat for an hour and drank a big glass of water. After the hour it was time for more pictures. But this time I had to lay down on a little narrow table while a massive machine rotated around me. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep and I'm just glad I didn't roll off the table. After these pictures it was time for the actual stress part of the test. The nurse shaved patches in my chest hair and hooked up the leads for the EKG. Then the nurse and the nuclear medicine tech were joined by the cardiac test tech. I had to walk on the treadmill until I got my heart rate up to 144. I was starting at 70. The cardiac tech said the record for last week was 12 minutes. He said since I was a young guy I would probably beat that record. I laughed and he said, "you laughed when I called you a young guy. It's true - 50 is the new 30." As you walk on the treadmill it gets progressively faster and steeper. Once my heart rate was up to the 144 the treadmill was going pretty fast and it was getting pretty steep. Then the nuclear medicine tech took the one arm with the IV and injected more radioactive tracer, the cardiac tech took the other arm and took my blood pressure and the nurse got behind me and pushed me up against the camera. I was just trying not to fall off the treadmill. I went 11 minutes. After the treadmill part it was time to sit for awhile again. I got an apple juice to drink. Then came the most excruciating part of the whole procedure. While I sat in the little waiting room I had to watch "The View". Finally they came to get me for more pictures on the little narrow table. This time I know I fell asleep. After the last set of pictures I just had to wait to see the doctor. The results were good. Dr. Alfaro-Franco said everything looked good. The stress test I had in August of '06 after my heart attack showed an abnormality on one side. In this test that was gone. She was happy that I had gone 11 minutes for the test - I guess that's good. The whole thing took about 5 1/2 hours.

2008/01/28 08:15 review submitted to the Post Standard

"American Gladiators"

Air Date: Mondays at 8 on NBC

I wasn't going to say anything else about "American Gladiators" but here I am. On Monday morning after my review ran in the Sunday Post Standard a co-worker stopped me to say he had read my review of "American Gladiators". He agreed with my assessment. He said that after watching "American Gladiators" he felt he had wasted an hour of his life that he could never get back. He then made the observation that "American Gladiators" reminded him of the movie "Running Man". I have to agree with that. For those of you that don't remember, "Running Man" was a movie based on a Stephen King story that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the 1987 movie contestants competed on a game show that looked a lot like "American Gladiators". The big difference was that when someone was eliminated they were really eliminated - as in dead. In the movie the 'gladiators' had names like Fireball, Captain Freedom, and Buzzsaw. They were played by the likes of James Brown and Jesse Ventura. The story and the movie were meant in part to be an indictment of where popular entertainmnet might be heading. I'm sure that if NBC upped the violence and hence the stakes their ratings would improve. At the end of "American Gladiators" the contestants compete in the eliminator. They jump in the water and have to swim under the surface which is on fire. Instead of having the jousters get pushed into the water have them get pushed into the water that's on fire. Then, when they try to swim out someone can punch them in the eye, "get back into the fiery-water!" (my apologies to Dane Cook, that's his routine). Is this where civilization is headed? I want intelligent scripted shows with drama, suspense, action, and maybe at least some modicum of social responsibility.

2008/01/28 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Funniest Commercials of the Year: 2007"

Air Date: December 26th at 9 on TBS

Kevin Nealon from Saturday Night Live hosted this look at the funniest commercials from 2007. Every once in awhile a network trots out a collection of the funniest commercials. I love these shows. This is kind of ironic because I don't watch very many commercials. Most of the time I use TIVO to fast forward through the commercials. Most commercials are horrible. But there are some entertaining and clever commercials. For example, when I'm going at triple speed through the commercials if I see PC and Mac I'll stop to see what they're up to. I don't know how effective this is as advertising. It's a Mac commercial and I just feel sorry for poor old PC. The commercials selected for this special were funny. The parts with Kevin Nealon weren't. The best way to watch these 'best of' commercial programs is to fast forward through the lame hosting parts and get to the funny commercials. Fast forward through the show to get to the commercials. That's funny. This Sunday is the biggest day of the year for commercials. The Super Bowl (Go Giants!). Everybody will be paying attention to the commercails.

2008/01/27 22:30 Michael and I went to see the movie "Cloverfield" tonight. It was pretty good. My only complaint is that the whole movie was shot in the first person as if it was being recorded on a single camcorder. This meant the action was kind of jerky and I left the theater with a headache. It was a pretty interesting premise though and I thought it was well done. It was like a Godzilla movie filmed from the perspective of someone on the ground. It's Sunday night and the weekend is over. I go to work like normal tomorrow and then Tuesday I have a stress test. I would being lying if I said I wasn't at all concerned about the test.

2008/01/27 18:00 Adison abandoned me this weekend as my morning coffee buddy. I made coffee at home Saturday morning and didn't go out anywhere. This Sunday morning Karen went with me to Freedom of Espresso. Yesterday after Karen and I did the trash run I went to P&C to take back my empty bottles and cans for the nickel deposit. There was a little old lady, she looked to be about 85 or 90 years old, that came up to the return machines after me. I was using the can machine and she started using the plastic machine next to me. She had a plastic bottle of sparkling water and she kept feeding it into the machine and it kept spitting it back out at her. She asked me, "do you think the machine is full?" "No,", I said, "that's a water bottle. There is no deposit on it." She got really mad and started yelling at me. Yes it was soda she's yelling, and she paid a nickel deposit on it, and on and on she's yelling. So, I'm looking at the bottle and it's a Wegmans store brand and she's at P&C. She's still yelling at me. I said you should go complain then. We are talking about a nickel. I've got nothing at stake here and she's still yelling at me. Why was this old woman yelling at me? I must have a cosmic 'kick-me' sign stuck to me somewhere. The universe is getting a big laugh at my expense. I never should have made eye contact with her. Looking back on it now a day later I should have just bought the bottle from her for a nickel and then thrown it out. But, she got me kind of flustered and I wasn't thinking fast enough.

2008/01/26 10:15 It is Saturday morning. It was a long week. I worked overtime this week every night except Wednesday. Wednesday I wasn't feeling well and I came home early and slept about 14 or 15 hours. We haven't had much snow but it has been very cold. I've been looking at some of what I wrote a year ago and I'm not as upset by the weather as I was at this same time last year. I don't know if that's because we've had less snow or because I've had more anti-depressants (LOL - laughing out loud). Yesterday morning I was walking into work and I did this absolutely amazing ice dancing routine. With arms flailing, windmilling, I managed to stay upright for a good 10 or 15 feet and I think the routine lasted for a minute or so. When I settled and regained my balance I looked around and was disappointed to see that no one had witnessed the feat. I wanted judges holding up those score cards. Saturday is one of my favorite days of the week. It doesn't feel like a regular Saturday today. I feel somewhat unsettled. But, life goes on doesn't it? Time waits for no man. I watched the movie "Once Were Warriors" last night. It was my movie from Netflix. I think it was a well done film but the subject matter was depressing. The movie was based on a best selling novel. I never read the book. The film received good reviews and won some awards. The film is about a family descended from Maori warriors now living in a different culture. The film is about domestic violence and substance abuse. I have to check my Netflix queue and make sure I'm getting something a little more upbeat next time. Karen and I have to do the trash run today. Karen is still sleeping and I think I'll need to wake her up.

2008/01/23 08:15 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Prison Break"

Episode: Boxed In

Air Date: January 14th on FOX

In the real world we know that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency destroyed the tapes it had made that showed the harsh interrogation techniques used on suspected Al Quaida operatives. One of the techniques that was reportedly taped was waterboarding. If you wanted to know what waterboarding (also known as "dry drowning"), looks like, there was a pretty accurate portrayal on "Prison Break". It couldn't have happened to a more deserving character. Gretchen has to be one of the most evil characters I've ever seen on TV. The Panamanian General that ordered the waterboarding of Gretchen proved no match for her. His character, like so many before, joined the list of characters from the show that have met an untimely end. Michael is back in the prison and back in the general population and the escape is still being planned.

2008/01/14 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"American Gladiators"

Air Date: Mondays at 8 on NBC

Don't watch this show. Don't encourage these people. I just don't get this show at all. It is a manufactured 'sporting' event that nobody should care about. I just don't find it at all entertaining. Change the channel to Spike TV and catch "MXC". "MXC", or "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge", now that is entertainment. The Japanese had a game show called "Takeshi's Castle" that aired from 1986 to 1989. The show had contestants competing in physical challenges that were admittedly a little more stupid than American Gladiators. Spike TV took the show, re-cut it, and using the comedy troupe The Groundlings dubbed in new dialogue. The new narration and dialogue has nothing to do with the original show. The result is hilarity that is filled with double entendres and the mocking of celebrities and politicians. I think we should ship American Gladiators to Japan, let them dub in some funny stuff, and then they can enjoy the show. Seems like a fair trade. My votes: American Gladiators - no, MXC - yes.

2008/01/20 21:08 This past week went by pretty quick. I started feeling sick Monday night. I went to work Tuesday morning but left around 11:00 AM for a doctors appointment. When I left the doctors office I went home and slept for three hours. I went back to work in the afternoon but still didn't feel very good. I came home Tuesday night and then went right to bed. Slept all night. I did feel better on Wednesday. Wednesday night I went to the SU basketball game with Marguerite. SU was playing Rutgers and we were in the VIP box with National Grid. I had drinks and dinner in the box before the game and then we watched SU beat Rutgers. The game wasn't close at all, it was pretty much a rout. The next day Marguerite asked me if I was losing weight. I lost about 5 pounds when I was sick. I said I was going to patent a new weight loss technique. Instead of getting a flu shot to prevent the flu - you get a flu shot to give you the flu. No appetite and a nice fever to burn off some calories. If you're lucky the only thing you can eat is a little chicken soup and - voila! you've lost 5 or more pounds. It might be hard to get FDA approval though. Thursday night I worked overtime. I worked until 11:00 PM. After work on Friday I met Karen at the Empire Brewing Company for dinner. Her bowling team was there. It was a fun time. I sat next to Rich, who I learned works for Time Warner. He works in the same office with the people that I work with from Time Warner. It's a small world. It's funny, I work with people that I talk to on the phone and send e-mails to but that I've never met in person. Saturday morning I picked Robert up at Ariel's and then took him to work. I went to Freedom of Espresso for coffee before I went home. This morning, Sunday, Karen had me get her up and she went to Freedom of Espresso with me for coffee. It is very very cold today. It is going to be a very very cold night tonight. I'm watching the Giants in the playoff game right now. There are 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter and the Giants just went up by 3. It's been a nail bighter.

2008/01/20 23:00 The Giants won in overtime. The Giants are going to the Superbowl.

2008/01/21 08:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

Episode: Gnothi Seauton

Air Date: January 14th on FOX

The timeline of this new series on Fox falls between "T2" and "T3" in the universe that is the Terminator franchise. At the end of "T2" Sarah Connor had destroyed Skynet. Skynet was the defense computer network that would become self-aware and attempt the extermination of humankind. So, the world is safe. Or is it? Sarah and her son John are on the run from the law and they face new threats from the future. The series debuted on Sunday after the NFL playoffs (Go Giants!) and then settled into it's regular time slot on Monday night. I was a fan of the Terminator movies and I like how this reinvention has started. It has a strong cast. Lena Headey, who plays Sarah, was the best part of the movie "300". She got the biggest audience cheer in the theater when she dispatched the crooked politician. Thomas Dekker from "Heroes" plays John Connor. The 'good' machine, sent from the future to watch over John and Sarah, is played by Summer Glau. Summer is a "Firefly" alumnus and anyone connected with "Firefly" has a headstart with me (I'm still unhappy they canceled that show). I think there is plenty of new material to be covered in the series. One of the conventions of the Terminator movies was that nothing from the future that wasn't covered with flesh could be transported through time. So, no future weapons could be sent back. In the series we learn that Cyborgs have been transported through time and they have re-built the technology they couldn't physically transport. There have been times in history when the TV series has eclipsed the movie it was based on. Does anyone remember there was a "M*A*S*H" movie or that there was a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie? Fox is betting that the Terminator franchise can transition to the Television screen. So far it looks good to me.

The front of my house looked like a used car lot this morning.

2008/01/13 12:00 I was listening to Garrison Keillor on the Prairie Home Companion yesterday on NPR and he dispensed a little weather philosophy. He was explaining why people in Minnesota, Lake Wobegon, were more comfortable with winter. Summer never lives up to expectations. Summer could always have been just a little bit better. But in contrast, no matter how bad the winter is, it could have been worse. Last Sunday Adison had us go out to eat at Tully's in Cicero. Karen and I had dinner with Adison and her friend Scott. I bring this up now because I was thinking about the sandwich I had. I had this sandwich called the Dublin. It was warm corned beef, coleslaw, and russian dressing on a roll. It was the best sandwich I've had in quite awhile. It was so good I was thinking about it this morning. How funny is that? I went to Freedom of Espresso in Fayetteville for coffee this morning. I went by myself. I let Adison sleep in. When I left Freedom of Espresso I passed Marty who was walking to P&C. A little morning exercise. I gave him a ride the rest of the way to P&C. Today the NY Giants play Dallas in the playoffs. My parents are coming over for pizza and wings. We haven't gotten together to celebrate Christmas yet. So, we'll do that today and watch the Giants beat the Cowboys. I got the Sunday paper. One of my reviews is published in the paper this week. I haven't been in the paper for the last few weeks. I was in a writing drought.

Karen's bottle of Boylan's orange soda being used as soap dispenser.

Adison and Scott outside Freedom of Espresso after enjoying morning coffee with Khan Tiki Mon. Scott took his bottle of Boylan's orange soda home with him as a souvenir to remember the morning. Adison used to have a bottle of Boylan's orange soda but she gave it to Karen to use as a soap dispenser. No one knows yet if Scott will use his bottle of Boylan's orange soda to dispense soap or not.

This morning I had to drive Robert to work. I wanted Adison and her friend Scott to go get coffee with me. Going to get coffee with Adison on a weekend morning is the highpoint of my week. She didn't want to get up this morning and so I left without her. She and Scott met me later at the Freedom of Espresso in Armory Square. Nobody got a sticky bun. Adison and I had a muffin and Scott had a bagel. Then when we were leaving Scott got a Boylan's orange soda in a glass bottle (Boylan's is sweetened with pure cane sugar). After coffee Adison and Scott were going to the Sound Garden. I couldn't join them because I had a trash date. After trash I came home and made myself an English muffin and Karen went to work. It has been a full day and it is only noon. The rest of the day holds so much promise. I might take a power nap before I embark on the remainder of the day.

2008/01/12 12:00 It looks like March outside. It feels like March. It's the middle of January. I am not complaining. It's Saturday morning and life is good. Last night we went to the Spaghetti Warehouse for our annual Christmas dinner there. It was a most enjoyable evening. My wife and I have been friends with another family for a very long time. We've watched each others kids grow up over the years. For the last 7 years we've had this tradition where we meet every year around Christmas at the same restaurant. It's never quite the same cast of characters as the kids are around and then they're not and then they are. I've been an amateur photagrapher for years. Started with a Honeywell Pentax and my own darkroom - ancient history. Today I have a digital camera although I still resort to film from time to time. I was going through my photos about four years ago and I discovered that I had let someone take my picture at the annual Christmas gathering. The restaurant is decorated with antiques and I noticed that I had been photographed with the same antique for three years running. I had gravitated to the same antique. After that it was no longer an accident. Every year I have my picture taken with the same antique. It has been seven years now. Eventually I'll have a set of photos with me aging and the antique staying the same. Pretty Twilight Zone huh? After I started this picture series I discovered an artist who's work I really like. Her name is Heather Watts and she has a painting entitled "Insert Coin" that would go well with this whole series of pictures. If the IRS ever gives me the money they owe me I'd like to get one of her limited edition prints.

2008/01/10 21:00 I am in desperate need of some relaxation. I can feel myself just getting wound up tighter and tighter. If you wind something tight enough it's going to snap. I don't even know what I really want. Tomorrow is Friday. That is always a good thing. TGIF and all that. I slept on the couch again last night. It's a sleeper and I opened it up. There was enough room for Missy and Elsie to join me. They slept with me at least part of the night.

Sometimes I feel so uninspired.

Sometimes I feel like giving up.

Sometimes I feel so very tired.

Sometimes I feel like I've had enough.

Sometimes you feel like you've been hired.

Sometimes you feel like you've been bought.

I don't know who's losing and I don't care who's winning.

Hardship and trouble following me.

Traffic - (Winwood/Capaldi) The Traffic "On the Road" album was recorded live in Germany in the early 70s. This is my all time favorite Traffic album. I bought the album on vinyl when I was in college maybe 1978 or 1979. The band could really jam and the song "Uninspired (Sometimes I Feel So)" is the best track on the album. A jazz-rock fusion that just came together in a great performance. And it's kind of different hearing the crowd yelling in German.

2008/01/09 22:00 Tuesday was like a spring day. The temperature soared to a record 70 degrees. I took 3 hours vacation. I left work and started walking to my car. I wanted to just keep walking. I got in the car and started driving. It was so warm I rolled down the window. I wanted to just keep driving. I wanted to drive to someplace where I could sit by water; the ocean, a lake, a stream. I wanted to sit by water and drink wine. Or maybe a cocktail or two. I wanted to be in the South Pacific drinking rum and painting pictures of girls wearing nothing but flowers in their hair. I went home and had a can of soup for lunch. Two weekends ago I took Adison to a new coffee house for coffee on Sunday morning. I had read an article in the Post Standard about Sugar Pearl. Sugar Pearl is a new coffee house on Burnet. The owner has Vegan food and the place is quite alternative. At least that's what I gathered from the article. When we got there and Adison saw some of the people going inside she wouldn't go in. She got scared. Damn, those skinny Vegans can be fairly intimidating. So, we went to Freedom of Espresso in Franklin Square instead. All the snow is melted. The last two days have been like spring in the middle of winter. And it is almost dead center in the middle of winter. I figure there are about six to seven weeks of winter left. I slept on the couch last night. Karen says I snore. I don't know if I believe that or not because I've never heard myself snore. I'm thinking about my favorite song by Traffic; "Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired". Sometimes I feel like giving up.

2008/01/06 10:40 Happy New Years to all. I can't believe it has been just about a month since I wrote anything here or added anything to my website. I spent Christmas in Pennsylvania. We went to Dave and Caity's house. We drove there on the Saturday before Christmas. Adison and Michael were messing around in the back seat. Michael complained about something and Adison said, "it's a family vacation, it's not supposed to be fun!" I absolutely love that line. Karen backed into the van last weekend. She walked down the driveway and got into the Saturn and then backed right into the van parked directly behind the car. Wow. It's not the first time she's backed into a vehicle behind her in our own driveway. The last time it happened she was in the van and she backed into the Saturn. I was in the Saturn at the time. I blew the horn but it was too late. She hit the Saturn and then she asked the kids in the car with her, "what am I hitting?" Oh, that would be the other car in the driveway. It is a little chilly today but not as cold as it could be. Winter is one third over as far as I'm concerned. There is just January and February to go. Last night Karen and I went see Pete and Leslie. We had pizza and salad and it was a very nice evening.

2008/01/07 06:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"According to Jim"

Episode: Jim Almighty

Air Date: January 1st on ABC

The show "According to Jim" gets no respect. Every time I read a review of this show it seems the reviewer is amazed the show is still on the air. The series debuted in 2001 and it is still going. Well, all I can say is it makes me laugh. It is stupid and the character Jim is boorish beyond belief but it's funny. The new episode "Jim Almighty" has Jim meeting God, in the form of Lee Majors, and being granted the power to reinvent women. You know that's not going to turn out well. I think one of the reasons that the show works is that Jim's wife Cheryl, played by Courtney Thorne-Smith, is just as bad as he is. She is as big a schemer as Jim is. The funniest part of this episode was the role reversals. The girls got to act like men, meaning all the worst stereotypes. And then Jim and his sidekick Andy got to act like women. I think this show for me would fit in the category of guilty pleasures. It is not a great show but it delivers the laughs.

2007/12/09 18:00 submitted to the Post Standard

"The writers' strike"

We knew dark days were coming with the writers' strike. That was confirmed for me when I saw ads about how pumped NBC was about the return of "American Gladiator." For those of you that don't remember the show from the 90s this was the one with guys in spandex with names like Nitro and Thunder. They stood behind big cannons that fired foam balls at wannabe Nitros and Thunders. I just can't get into reality shows. In my opinion I get enough reality in real life every day. I want something more in my entertainment. I tried watching "Survivor" and to me, basically, it's just some people sitting around the campfire. "Do you want to sit on the hammocks here by the fire or should we go hang our feet in the lagoon?" "I don't know, do you want to break a stick in half?" Yawn! And friends tell me, no you don't get it, it's like office politics. Perfect, I don't like office politics when I'm paid to be there. I don't want to come home from work and watch without being compensated. In my opinion, boring is the best you can say about reality TV. Shows that exploit train wrecks like Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears are just feeding on the bottom. These shows let you know that you don't have to elevate yourself if you can find an individual or group to look down on or ridicule. I don't think the strike is going to be resolved soon. And people like me are part of the problem. I have a confession to make. I am a TV critic for The Post-Standard and I don't watch TV. I do watch the shows I review but I watch them on TIVO. There is a big difference and it has an impact on the television industry in two ways. First, with TIVO, I don't watch commercials. The whole economic model that the TV industry is based on relies on a revenue stream from advertising. In the past, advertisers have picked popular shows and then put their ads on those shows. Second, I don't watch when I'm supposed to. I time shift. Remember "must see Thursday"? Networks used to agonize over schedules, what shows went up against what other shows and which shows got the best night. I don't care. Put two shows I like on opposite each other. Put them both on Thursday night. Maybe I'll watch one on Friday night and the other Sunday afternoon. The networks are responding. First, with product placement. I made jokes about the season premiere of "Heroes" and the Nissan Rogue crossover SUV. The car was part of the storyline. If you are not going to watch the commercial, they will make it part of the story. We're probably going to see more of that. Second, there is content that spills over to the web. In the case of a show like "Battlestar Galactica" there were actual mini-episodes that were broadcast only on the Web. And there are some shows that are streamed entirely over the net after initial broadcast. Characters from a popular show may have a blog online. If you don't watch the commercial on broadcast television then maybe you'll click through a pop-up ad on the Internet. But here's where things get messy. There is no history to show how revenues work online. The writers want a piece of the revenue pie from the Web but nobody knows how big the pie might be so it's hard to divide it up. So, how do we cope with the writers on strike? I don't know yet. I'm going to wait and see what the networks offer up.

2007/12/04 23:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Criminal Minds"

Episode: True Night

Air Date: November 28 on CBS

Frankie Muniz, the actor who played Malcolm on the series "Malcolm in the Middle", guests this week as the un-sub. Un-sub is law enforcement jargon for the unknown subject of an investigation. Muniz plays Jonny McHale, a comic book artist who draws in the style of Frank Miller. There are some action scenes of the killings being investigated by the BAU that have been filmed in the style of the recent Frank Miller movies "Sin City" and "300". In case you didn't catch onto the homage to Miller, late in the episode Penelope Garcia asks Morgan if he knows who Frank Miller is. Morgan doesn't and then Garcia quotes a line from a Miller comic. Muniz does a great job as the tortured artist. We learn through flashback that the brutal murder of McHale's pregnant fiance by a street gang is what triggered the artist's psychic break and his descent into murderous rages. On the plane ride home, after Jonny has been caught and is in a mental ward, Prentiss states with sadness that the un-sub wasn't really a bad guy. He was just a victim of circumstances and was a sick individual. The newest member of the team, Rossi, basically states that all the un-subs are really sick. Yeah, I think some are just more sympathetic than others.

2007/12/04 11:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Unit"

Episode: Gone Missing

Air Date: November 27 on CBS

In this weeks episode of "The Unit" Bob Brown has to deal with questions of conscience. I like the show because not everything is always shown as simple right and wrong or people as either good or evil. In the episode where team member Hector Williams lost his life the team was forced to take a family hostage. One of the hostages, a young man, helped in the battlefield surgery on Charles Grey. When this young man made a break for freedom Bob shot and killed him. Now, Bob is haunted by this young man and other people he has killed in the line of duty. The team is tasked with a sniper job in Montenegro. Bob is one of the primary shooters and before the mission he visits the chaplain on base. The chaplain is turning out to be an interesting character. It seems he is a former special forces soldier. He talks with Bob about the differences between murder and killing. On the mission Jonas senses something is wrong with Bob and he explains everyone has had the questions and doubt that Bob is wrestling with. Jonas just expresses surprise that it took Bob so long to get there. Bob "Cool Breeze" Brown gets his head back into the mission at hand, makes the shot, and the mission is accomplished. On the home front we learn that Jonas's wife Molly has a dark family secret. Also, daughter Betsy aced basic and is bound for officer training school.

2007/12/03 17:00 I have too many doctors. And sometimes they seem to have different agendas. I went to University Hospital to have the packings removed from my nose. The ENT doctor Dr. Kelly seemed kind of PO'd that Dr. Alfaro-Franco took me off the Plavix but not the aspirin. He was grilling me about why I didn't stop taking the aspirin and I wanted to say, "well, since I never did graduate from med school I tend to just listen to people that did." But I didn't. I was a little afraid that when he took the stuff out of my nose that I was going to start bleeding again. I didn't. I was kind of disappointed that I didn't immediately feel a lot better when the stuff was removed. If the truth be told my nasal cavities still feel a little violated. I think I am going to need a little more space in time before I'm back to whatever passed for normal last week. It's not like when I dislocated my finger. That was a lot of pain but I've got to say that when they reduced the joint the feeling of relief was very very pleasurable and very immediate.

2007/12/03 08:30 The NY Giants and Eli Manning pulled it out of the fire last night and ended up winning. The end of the game was pretty exciting. Last night was one of the best nights sleep I've had in awhile. Even with all this crap in my nose I managed to sleep through the night. I haven't slept through the night since last Tuesday. About 5 hours until I get this crap out of my nose and out of my body. I cannot wait much longer. If they pull this stuff out and I start bleeding again I don't know what I'm going to do.....

2007/12/02 11:00review submitted to the Post Standard

"Tin Man"

Episode: Part 1

Air Date: December 2 on SciFi

"Tin Man" is a miniseries airing on the SciFi network. It is an interesting reimagining of the "Wizard of Oz" story. Here Oz is the wasteland known as the Outer Zone or O.Z. Our heroine is DG, a young girl who is transported to the parallel dimension where the O.Z. exists by a manufactured storm. The storm serves as transport between the two worlds. She teams up with a man who has had part of his brain removed by the evil sorceress that rules the O.Z. They rescue a lawman from an iron coffin of a prison. Lawmen in the O.Z. are called 'Tin Men' because of their badges. The last member of their party is a hairy empath who has some psychic skills. The show is interesting in a quirky kind of way. It is not as hard boiled as I had hoped. From the previews I was hoping for something a little more "film-noirish" but it's interesting enough that I'll see it through. No flying monkeys. The evil sorceress has some flying creatures that look more like bats.

2007/12/02 19:00 One more night with this stuff in my nose. In about 19 or 20 hours I'll have this device removed from my nasal cavity. Hopefully there will be no more bleeding and I can get my life back to normal. It is very cold and snowy outside. Winter is here. The NY Giants are losing again. Eli Manning is not having a great day. I've missed 3 days of work so far and I'm sure to miss Monday at the least. I haven't missed this much work since my heart attack when I missed 12 days. Before that I never missed more than 2 days in a row going back 20 plus years. Of the last 18 years I had at least 6 years without any sick days at all. Perfect attendance. I don't like being sick.

They sent us home about midnight. I spent an absolutely miserable night. I could not lie down. As soon as I reclined past a certain point the blood would pool in my throat and I would start gagging. I was in a lot of distress and I didn't feel I could make it until Friday. Karen got me an appointment to see Dr. Alfaro-Franco, my cardiologist, at 2:00 PM on Thursday. I was a mess. I hadn't slept, I hadn't eaten, my stomach was full of blood. Dr. Alfaro-Franco told me to stop the Plavix and she said I needed to go back to the emergency room. They didn't have an ENT doctor at St. Joes so she sent me to University Hospital. I got a room at University Hospital much quicker than I did at St. Joes. The nurse was very nice. She was starting the IV and that's when things went bad. She stuck me once and couldn't get the blood flash. She tried a second time, no luck. I think it was difficult because I was so dehydrated. She tried again and I passed out. My blood pressure had taken a precipitous drop. I came to and heard her on the intercom calling the doctor, yes it was kind of an emergency she said. I felt very strange and very scared. I felt like I was becoming detached from my body. My body was letting me down and I was losing control. I felt all at once that I was going to throw-up, my bladder was going to release, my vision was blurred, and I felt warm flashes coursing through my body. It was actually scarier than anything I felt when I had the heart attack. The nurse said I was never in any danger and I'm sure she was correct but it was an experience I would just as soon skip in the future. The nurse got an IV established and got some fluids into me and I bounced back. The doctor was there now and they laid me back. I was afraid I would start gagging but the bleeding had finally stopped. I slept on the bed in the hospital. The doctor decided the best course of action at this point was to leave the packings in place. He felt that if the bleeding had stopped it was best to leave well enough alone and he decided to leave everything in place until Monday. It is amazing how your body can adapt. By this point the packing that was so painful the first night was now tolerable. I've been sleeping a lot. I try to get some fluids in me to stay hydrated. I have not been very hungry and I've been losing weight. I am scheduled now to get the packings out of my nose on Monday afternoon. If all goes well I should be back to as normal as I was before this incident. The ER nurse at University Hospital said she used to be a nurse in the cardio cath lab and she said I need to get back on the Plavix as soon as possible. She said, "you guys always end up back in the cath lab." I am very much looking forward to getting back to my old self.

We had leftovers for dinner at my parents house on Sunday and said goodbye to Paul, Sam, and the girls. It was back to work Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday after work Marguerite and I went to Beth Anne's retirement party. Wednesday morning I woke up and Karen said it seemed too cold in the house. The furnace was on and blowing but it was blowing cold air. The temperature in the house was down to 58. I was in the basement checking on the furnace when my nose started bleeding. It just started bleeding. First it was just the left nostril but then the second one started as well. I don't have normal blood anymore. My blood looks like colored water. That's because of the blood thinner I take. I couldn't get my nose to stop bleeding. After two and a half hours of bleeding Karen called Dr. Rajan-George and she said I should go to urgent care. I went to urgent care in Dewitt. This was the same urgent care where I went when I had my heart attack. It is very close to my house. They put a salve in my nose that acts as a nasal constrictor and they packed my nose, both nostrils. They packed my nose with long pieces of a guaze like material. I thought it was kind of unpleasant, which is funny looking back on it now. I didn't know what was yet to come. They said if it started bleeding again I would need to go to the emergency room. I went home and waited for the furnace repair guy to come. I waited bundled up on the couch as the temp dropped down to 56. My nose was still bleeding and I was starting to feel pretty miserable. The furnace repairman came and it turned out we needed a limit control switch and he got the furnace working. I went to the emergency room at St. Joes. I got there about 3:30 PM. I told Karen not to come right away, there didn't seem to be any point. She went to visit Katie at University Hospital and then came to see me when she left Katie. I think she got there just before 10:00 PM and they still hadn't seen me. When you first come into the emergency room you see a triage nurse almost immediately. I think the purpose of that is to determine just how long you can stand to wait. I was feeling pretty miserable. The blood was dripping down the back of my throat. It was making me sick to my stomach. After Karen got there they took us to a room. The doctor said he was going to repack my nose but with something more heavy duty. He said a name for it but I don't remember what it was. While he was going to get ready the nurse said it was kind of like a Tampon for your nose. Well the doctor came back with this 6 inch long tube soaking in a plastic cup filled with some kind of liquid. I thought they must put it in your nose and then cut off the excess. Nope. Once he started I realised he was going to shove that whole thing up my nose and up into my sinus cavity. As he was pushing it into my head I kept thinking there must be something he wants to know and if he would just ask I would gladly tell him anything he wanted to know. But there was no deal to be made that entire thing got shoved up my nose. Then there was a tube dangling from the inserted part and he put a syringe on the end and inflated the thing in my nose and sinus. That was a lot of fun. There was a good deal of miscommunication. I was in a lot of pain with this thing that seemed way too big shoved up my nose. The doctor said it had it to stay in for half an hour and then he would come back to check on it. I thought that meant he was going to take it out when he came back. No such luck. I was supposed to go back to see a doctor on Friday to have the packing removed.

2007/12/01 12:00 A lot has happened to me since the last time I made an entry here. Saturday after Thanksgiving Karen and I took Ericka and Amie to see the gingerbread houses at the Erie Canal Museum. I like looking at the gingerbread houses. I find it very relaxing. After the Erie Canal Museum we went to the MOST (Museum of Science and Technology). It was a lot of fun. There were displays of kinetic sculptures made from K'Nex; ferris wheels, roller-coasters, and other thrill rides. After we were through with the museums we went to Panera in Cicero for lunch and to see Adison. It was a very nice day.

2007/11/26 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Battlestar Galactica"

Episode: Razor

Air Date: November 24 on SciFi

War crimes, guilt, and redemption. Fate versus free will. Revenge and forgiveness. No other show on television tackles weighty topics like Battlestar Galactica. We haven't had this show for a long time and it looks like it's going to be a long time before we get season four so "Razor" has to hold us over. And "Razor" was certainly up to that task. The show takes us back to the start of the second Cylon war. We see the story of the Pegasus from the perspective of a new character Kendra Shaw. When Lee Adama assumes command of the Pegasus he promotes Kendra to XO, his second in command. She is Cain's legacy. We learn in flashback that the Cylon-six agent that was on the Pegasus as a spy at the time of the attack had actually seduced Admiral Cain and had obtained access codes. This might not excuse the rape and torture subsequently visited on the Cylon-six but we now understand it better. Under Lee Adama the Pegasus is tasked with a search and rescue mission. A raptor has been lost. The Pegasus stumbles upon some Cylons lost since the first Cylon war. Now, I watched the original Battlestar Galactica series back in the late 70s. These "older" model cylons encountered were from that TV series. That was a treat. We learn through flashbacks that the burden Kendra is carrying is that she killed civilians in cold blood. She has a lot to atone for. At the end she sacrifices herself but not before we get a hint of what's to come in the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica. She meets with the Cylon-hybrid and is warned that Kara "Starbuck" Thrace will lead the human population to the apocalypse. Kendra attempts to warn the Galactica but can't get a message through before she detonates a nuke and destroys the Cylon ship, the hybrid, and herself. Season four is scheduled to start in March of 2008.

2007/11/24 11:00 comment posted on Kevin's MySpace page Kevin recently moved from Syracuse to Massachusetts and this seemed appropriate.

"This guy moves to the Boston area. One day he is out for a walk and he sees two boys playing hockey on the pond on Boston Common. Suddenly, one of the boys is attacked by a vicious Rottweiler. Thinking quickly, the guy grabs a hockey stick and manages to wedge it down the dog's collar and twist, luckily breaking the dog's neck and stopping it's attack. A reporter who is strolling by sees the incident, and rushes over to interview the guy. "Bruins Fan Saves boy from Vicious Animal..." he starts writing in his notebook. "But, I'm not a Bruins Fan," the guy says. "Sorry, since we're in Boston, I just assumed you were," said the reporter and starts again. "Red Sox Fan Rescues Child from Horrific attack..." he continues writing in his notebook. "I'm not a Red Sox fan either!" The guy says. "I assumed everyone in Boston was either for the Bruins or the Red Sox. So, what team do you root for?" the reporter asks. "I'm a Yankees fan!" the guy says. The reporter starts a new sheet in his notebook and writes: "Vicious Bastard from New York Kills Beloved Family Pet." Thanks for the add - let me know when you're in NY and we'll have a cocktail."

2007/11/23 10:15 It is the Friday after Thanksgiving. I had a full house yesterday. My parents were here, Karen, Adison, and Michael, my brother Paul and his wife Sam, my nieces Ericka and Amie, Robert, Ariel, and my grandson Tristan. Thirteen people. I did say I had a full house. I had a horrible nightmare last night. I dreamed that Robert bought a three masted sailboat. He was going to sail it by himself around the world. I told him that he must not do that. He had never sailed before and he should start with a small boat first and a shorter trip. He wouldn't listen to me and I watched him sail out to sea. His boat floundered and sunk in the surf. I swam out and looked for him and I couldn't find him. The coast guard came to do a search but they weren't helping at all. Then Karen was there. She told me to attach a rope to her with heavy weights and then toss her into the sea and she would look for Robert underwater. I thought if anyone should be thrown underwater it should be me but I didn't say anything. Instead I just weighted Karen down and tossed her into the sea. Then I woke up. I heard Adison getting ready for work. When I got out of bed Adison had already left. I didn't see Elsie so I figured she must have gone out when Adison left. I opened the front door and the cat practically fell into the house. It is cold outside and there is a dusting of snow. I don't know why I feel kind of lost today. I would like to go see my therapist but I am out of visits for this year. My insurance only allows 20 visits a year and I went 23 times this year. Oops. I am going to take Michael shopping today. I am thinking I might go to the Christmas tree lighting ceremony downtown tonight.

2007/11/19 16:30 When you have a three day work week like this week, because of the Thanksgiving holiday, then Tuesday is the new 'hump' day. How cool is that? Most of the snow from this weekend is gone. It is supposed to get up into the 50s for Thanksgiving day. My front porch is quite treacherous because there are pumpkin guts splayed out on the deck wet from melting snow. It is pretty slippery. The squirrels are certainly enjoying the pumpkins. I took a couple of hours vacation today and all I did was have a bowl of soup and do some writing. I am actually a wee bit tired and I feel like laying down on the couch for a little.

2007/11/20 19:00 One more day of work and then it is the Thanksgiving holiday. Four days off from work. I can hardly wait. I am going to go do some shopping tonight. I will get some of the stuff I need to make Thanksgiving dinner. My brother Paul, his wife Sam, and the girls got here okay. They are out at my parents now. After work tomorrow I will go out to my parents for dinner. I am going to stop after work and get Dinosaur Bar B Que take out.

2007/11/18 22:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Prison Break"

Episode: Bang and Burn

Air Date: November 12 on FOX

I wasn't sure I was going to watch "Prison Break" anymore. I was quite upset when they killed off Sara Tancredi. However, the show is still compelling TV. Michael now knows that Sara is dead. Lincoln finally told him the truth. Michael is still motivated to breakout Whistler in order to save his nephew but someone is going to pay for Sara's death. The first escape attempt went awry. Fernando Sucre has been working with Linc on the outside and in a truly heroic act put himself in harms way to save LJ. Sucre and Linc failed in the rescue attempt and LJ remains a hostage. Susan gave them four more days to secure Whistler's freedom. The company was not as patient as Susan and they ordered a "bang and burn", an armed helicopter assault on Sona prison. We learn that Whistler is somehow part of the company when Susan, visiting to tell him to prepare for the assault, orders him to kill Michael, who has become expendable. Michael manages to disrupt the helicopter assault but the military moves in and removes him from the prison. All of this sets up a lot of questions that we are going to have to wait a long time to get the answers to. The show is now on hiatus with the next new episode not scheduled until January 14th.

2007/11/18 22:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Criminal Minds"

Episode: Lucky

Air Date: November 14 on CBS

"Criminal Minds" is one of the better police procedurals out there. The show centers on the work of the FBI's BAU ( Behavioral Analysis Unit ). The BAU employs profilers who have been trained to think like criminals in order to catch them. The show is in it's third season and has lost some good characters and talented actors. The character Elle Greenway, played by Lola Glaudini, left after crossing the line and killing a suspect. Mandy Patinkin played Jason Gideon whose character left after his girlfriend was killed by a serial killer the BAU was searching for. Stepping in to replace Jason Gideon is Joe Mantegna as David Rossi. My daughter watches the show with me and she wanted to know where she knew that voice from? I suggested that maybe she knew it as the voice of Fat Tony in the Simpsons. It turns out she remembered the voice from "Baby's Day Out". Neither role did justice to the actor Joe Mantegna. My wife likes the actor but not this role. The new character of David Rossi is a retired profiler who has returned to active duty. He definitely has some agenda that we viewers don't know about yet. In this episode the team is looking for a satanic serial killer that also happens to be a cannibal. While the team gets the perp and saves a victim, the real story this episode is the team's computer expert Penelope Garcia's date from hell. A guy she met in a coffee shop doesn't kiss her good night, he shoots her instead! We will have to wait for the next episode to find out what was up with that.

2007/11/18 22:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Unit"

Episode: Play 16

Air Date: November 13 on CBS

In the last episode Charles Grey was gravely wounded. Hector performed heroic emergency battlefield surgery and saved Grey's life. Just as the team was pulling out Hector was hit by sniper fire and killed instantly. The team now has to deal with the loss of one of their members while they still have ongoing missions and responsibilities. At home the wives are planning the memorial service. For me, the most moving part of the show was when Bob's wife Kim is meeting with the chaplain and he comments about what a good person she is the way she is helping with the services. "No, I'm not", she says, and she means it. She explains that everytime Bob goes on a mission she prays that if someone has to die it not be her husband. She believes God answered her prayers with the life of one of Bob's best friends. It seems there is more than enough survivor's guilt to go around.

2007/11/14 20:30 My brother Paul, his wife Samantha, and my nieces are coming to visit for Thanksgiiving. I haven't seen them in what seems like a long time. It should be fun. Thanksgiving dinner will be at my house. I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I haven't decided on the whole menu yet.

2007/11/17 10:20 I awoke yesterday to the first snowfall of this winter season. We got some pretty substantial flurries although not much stuck to the ground. It snowed more last night and this morning there is a good 2 to 3 inches of snow on the ground. It's Saturday morning and I'm watching "This Old House". I just made a pot of coffee and I've got some english muffins for breakfast. Karen and I are going to take the trash out to Jamesville pretty soon. Last night after work I met Karen and some of her friends from work at Tully's for happy hour. That was fun. After happy hour we went to The Christmas Tree Shoppes and did a little shopping.

2007/11/13 19:20 Well, it was back to work today. I enjoyed my three day weekend but it was over much too quick. Yesterday my Dad came over and we worked some more outside. We got the fascia on the front and back of the big shed. The shed is now squirrel proof for the winter. We worked on the door for Karen's shed but we ran out of daylight. Still have to finish that before the snow flies. My internal clock got all messed up this weekend though. I was up very late writing Sunday night. I still got up at 8:00 AM Monday morning so I didn't get very much sleep. I took a nap on the couch. That night I was watching TV with Karen and I thought she went downstairs to sew. I stayed on the couch watching TV and I thought it was around 10:00 PM. I kept waiting for Karen to come back and she never did. I finally got up to check and she wasn't sewing she had gone to bed. It was almost 1:00 in the morning. All day at work today I kept thinking it was Monday. Three more days of work this week and then three next week and it's Thanksgiving already. The year is almost over. Time just seems to fly.

2007/11/12 02:00 This Sunday morning my Dad came over to help me with some projects on the house. First we went to breakfast at Pardzee's. Adison got up and went with us. When we got back from breakfast we got the weatherstripping installed on the garage door. Then we got the J-channel on the shed installed. Finally we worked on the door for Karen's shed. It was a little chilly out but it wasn't that bad. I started out working with my coat on but once we were in the backyard working on the shed I was comfortable just working in my sweatshirt. Two of my reviews were published in the Sunday paper. That's kind of exciting. I wish I could just write all the time. I wish that was how I made my living. I don't have to work tomorrow and since I don't have to get up in the morning I've been up all night writing.

2007/11/12 01:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Mysterious Human Heart"

Episode: The Silent Killer

Air Date: October 22 on PBS

At its best, television has the power to educate and inform us. The recent PBS series "The Mysterious Human Heart" is an excellent example. This installment, "The Silent Killer," was the third in this three-part series. The silent killer refers to atherosclerosis, the blockage of coronary arteries. This can lead to heart attacks that can be devastating and fatal. Every day in America 3,000 people suffer a heart attack. Sixteen million people in the United States have coronary artery disease, CAD. This show takes us back to the 1950s when 400,000 Americans were dying of heart attacks every year. It was an epidemic. At the time we didn't know what the causes were or how to treat or prevent them. A landmark study, called the Framingham Heart Study, was started in 1948. This was an ambitious decades long study. A publication from the study in 1961 called "Factors of Risk in the Development of Coronary Heart Disease" is considered to be one of the single most important publications in 20th century medicine. All of this is of special interest to me. I had a heart attack just over a year ago. I was very lucky and my long term prognosis is quite good. Knowledge is important if we want to make correct choices. This series was very informative.

2007/11/12 01:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Quarterlife"

Episode: Part 1

Air Date: November 11 on MySpace

Television on the Internet? You have been able to watch full episodes of your favorite shows on the Internet. Now there is a new twist. Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of the shows "My So Called Life" and "thirtysomething" shopped a new series they called "Quarterlife" to the TV networks. They were turned down or they didn't agree to changes asked for by the network (I've read both takes on the story). The series was reshot with a new cast and broken into eight minute segments. The first episode aired Sunday on the social networking site MySpace. The series will air new episodes every Sunday and Thursday on MySpace and then the following day on Quarterlife.com. This blurring of the lines between TV and the internet is one of the things fueling the recent contract dispute involving the Writer's Guild. So, how does the show look? Quarterlife refers not to a midlife crisis but to a "quarterlife" crisis. Get it? The show is about some twenty-somethings. The central character is Dylan. She is blogging about her life, her work and her friends. I think the best line was when she said, "A sad truth about my generation is that we were all geniuses in elementary school but apparently the people who deal with us never got our transcripts because they don't seem to be aware of it." Maybe making sure all the kids got a trophy wasn't the best idea we came up with in the 90s. I have to say I'm intrigued by the show. It definitely has high production values. The intimate subject matter seems especially well suited for the small screen. And, if we can go by past history, the unknown actors may be stars tomorrow. Let's remember Claire Danes got her break on "My So Called Life". I'm going to watch and see how this plays out.

2007/11/10 11:15 Last night Karen went to visit friends. On the way home she called and asked if I wanted to go to El Canelos for dinner. It is a Mexican restaurant and she had a coupon. Karen was at the Verona exit of the thruway when she called and before she got home Adison came home from work. I asked her if she wanted to join us at El Canelos for dinner and she said no, that she didn't feel like Mexican food. When Karen got home she checked her coupon and it was only good on Monday and Tuesday night so, change of plans, we decided to go to Chili's instead. With the change in venue Adison decided to join us. The three of us had a nice dinner and a nice conversation at Chili's. Adison explained what she was looking for in a man. It was informative. This morning I got up and took Michael to Shoppingtown Mall for his five hour class he needs to get his drivers license. I dropped him off before 9:00 AM. I tried to get Adison up to go get coffee with me but that was a losing battle. Karen said she'd go get coffee with me and she wanted to go to Bon Ton at the Carousel Mall (she had a coupon). We went to Freedom of Espresso next to Franklin Park. I like that location. I had a coffee and a scone and Karen had an iced coffee and a sticky bun. I like saying sticky bun. That is a really fun word. Sticky bun, sticky bun. Not as much fun writing it. After the sticky bun we headed to the Carousel Mall. We saw Laura and Kathy there. While we were waiting in line to check out there was a chatty old lady in line behind us. It was funny because she must have known 6 or 7 people that came in to shop. Karen said, "she seems to know everybody doesn't she?" After we checked out I talked Karen into going up to the sky deck and checking out the construction. I like watching the construction. If I was retired I could go watch the construction more often. I have accepted the fact that I'm not going to get the early retirement package. It really doesn't bother me as much as I thought it might have. I do actually like what I do at work and as long as that is the case then so be it. It must have rained last night or else early this morning. Everything was wet this morning when I woke up. I think that it is supposed to be nicer tomorrow and Monday. I'm planning on working on the sheds with my Dad tomorrow and Monday. I'd like to get the one shed sided before it gets too nasty out. Well, I think I'm going to get to work now.

2007/11/05 20:20 Yesterday we watched the "game of the century". They certainly hyped up the match-up between the Colts and the Patriots. It was the highest rated regular Sunday afternoon game since 1987. I was pulling for Indianapolis and Peyton Manning and they lost 24-20 in what was a very good game. It might not have been the best game of the weekend though. Listening to NPR this morning they were talking about the Navy - Notre Dame game. Navy and Notre Dame were described as having the most one sided rivalry in college football. Notre Dame doesn't recruit players they select players. Navy football players receive no special treatment. Recruiters for the Naval Academy have to answer questions from parents about how likely it is that the kids will be sent to Iraq upon graduation. None of the Navy players are going into the NFL but they will be going to active duty. The last time Navy beat Notre Dame John Kennedy was president and we hadn't started the war in Vietnam yet. Roger Staubach was the Navy quarterback back then. Navy won again this weekend. That might have been the real game of the century. On Friday after work I left my cubicle and when I exited the front door it was bright and sunny and it was just a beautiful day. I left my cube today and exited the front door and it was very dark, it was rainy, and it was night. Changing the clocks this weekend made it feel like I was in some kind of a time warp. I don't ever remember such a stark difference from the time shift. I read today that Giada from the Food Network is pregnant with her first child. She is 37 years old. Karen isn't feeling well today. She is definitely coming down with something. I hope she feels better soon and doesn't end up with whatever nasty bug Michael had. I got my flu shot last Thursday and I think today is the first day since then that my arm didn't hurt.

2007/11/09 19:20 It is Friday night. It is the start of a three day weekend. Sweet. It seemed like a long week. It seemed like it took a long time to get to this weekend. On Wednesday I felt terrible. I was sick to my stomach and had a massive headache. I toughed it out and stayed at work and finished the day. I came home and fell asleep early on the couch. I slept all night on the couch. I woke up at around 5:30 in the morning. The cold woke me up. I woke up shivering. I have a programmable thermostat on the furnace and at night the temperature is set back to save money. On the couch with just an afghan for a cover it got pretty cold. In the morning I felt okay so I went to work. By noon Thursday I was feeling pretty crappy again and so I left about 1:30 PM. I took 4 hours sick time and came home and settled in on the couch with a movie and a bowl of chicken soup. This morning all was right with the world and I felt my old self again. The big news is that today at work the company announced they had reached a deal with the union on a VERO package. Now, the last VERO for management you had to be 52 years old. Our contract runs through 2011 but the company only promised in the contract to keep the contact center through 2010. I had it all figured out that the company was going to offer early retirement to everyone in the contact center that was 52 as of March 2010. I'd be all set since I'm 50 and a half now. But I miscalculated on 2 differents points. First the offer is for age 55 and second the date is Decmeber 31st 2008. On December 31st 2008 I'll only be 51 and a half. I will miss the early retirement by 3 and a half years. C'est la vie. No sense dwelling on it. Since it doesn't matter anymore I'm not going to be 50 and a half anymore, I'm going back to being just plain 50.

2007/11/04 23:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Battlestar Galactica"

Episode: Crossroads (Part 2)

Air Date: March 25 on SciFi

In my estimation Battlestar Galactica is one of the best shows on television. The show works on many levels. It is a political parable, it can provoke religious debate, it has action and drama, and boy, do they know how to do a cliffhanger. During season two when Helo and the Chief were scheduled for execution and Commander Adama scrambled the vipers... now there was a cliffhanger. It was hard to wait for the next episode. There were episodes where Cylon prisoners were tortured and executed based on the fact they weren't human and weren't deserving of fair and proper treatment. Later in the series, during the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, human suicide bombers were used in the resistance. These themes are played out in current events like the war in Iraq and questions now being asked about the use of torture. The season three finale was the big reveal. We found out who the Cylon agents were. And who or what in the hell is Starbuck?! I am anxiously awaiting the next season. The fourth and final season is not scheduled to begin until April 2008. So, why am I writing about Battlestar Galactica now? If you are a fan you will be excited to know that there is a special 2 hour prequel that will air Saturday November 24th at 9:00 PM on the SciFi channel. The special, titled "Razor", will show a young Bill Adama in the first Cylon war. It will also bring back Admiral Helena Cain with scenes on the Pegasus that take place before her death and that Battlestar's destruction.

2007/11/04 23:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Unit"

Episode: Inside Out

Air Date: October 23 on CBS

In this weeks episode the team is tasked with recovering a computer chip that may have information on it to prevent a terrorist attack. When the team locates the man carrying the chip they soon realize he is just a hapless mule. He rented out his body and the chip has been surgically implanted in his chest. The team cuts out the chip, then decides to re-implant it in order to set a trap, and then ultimately cuts it out again. The guy should have had a zipper sewn in. When Jonas is ready to sacrifice the mule to advance the mission Mack ends up intervening and saving the mule's life. The mission is still a success. On the homefront at the Brown household Kim, who is pregnant again, needs some help with the kids. Elsewhere on base the Gerhardt domicile is a mess. Mack has been restricted to the NCO bachelor quarters and is not allowed to visit his girls without an escort. Tiffy has been fired from her teaching job. Faced with tough financial times Tiffy becomes an exotic dancer. I think maybe she should have tried to cut back a little first, maybe cancel the cable, before rushing into that profession. Apparently there is a shortage of middle aged moms pole dancing near the base because Tiffy has no problem landing the job. As soon as Tiffy was set to start Mack shows up at the club. In the inevitable confrontation that follows Tiffy asks Mack if the reason he is unable to help out more is because he is spending all of his money on strippers. Ouch! What a disfunctional family. In contrast, and I suppose that was the point, was the healthy and stable home life we witnessed at the Browns. After a couple of missteps Kim and Bob work through their issues.

I had wanted to write a Halloween story and share it with everyone. I didn't start it soon enough and by the time I had the ideas I didn't have time to finish. I'm still going to finish the story and then save it for next year. I've titled it "The Ghostly U-Haul". Michael was sick this past week. He had a pretty nasty stomach virus. He threw up a lot. I didn't catch it and apparently no one else in the family did either. Michael is pretty stoic. I've been playing with my MySpace page and trying to learn a little HTML. I was finally able to put a link in my profile to my web page. I got it to look the way I wanted and that was pretty satisfying. I had a doctors appointment today with Dr. Rajan-George. She's really got a very nice bedside manner. She is very patient and explains everything. I got a flu shot today. I have never gotten a flu shot before. She said with my history of CAD (coronary artery disease) it was really a good idea to get a flu shot. So, I did. This weekend we start daylight savings time. On Saturday night we turn the clocks back an hour.

2007/11/04 07:30 I've always been an early morning riser. The last month or so I've been having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. I still wake up like I used to but I don't get up and then often fall back asleep. This morning my alarm clock went off at 7:00 AM and I lay in bed. I probably would have laid there until I fell back asleep but at about 7:30 I heard rain. I remembered I had left a project outside, the door for Karen's shed, and so I got up to bring it in out of the rain. It wasn't really 7:30 it was really 6:30 because of daylight savings time. Anyways I'm up and it feels good to be up and awake. Last night Karen and I watched the film "Capote". I enjoyed it. It was very well done. I never read the book "In Cold Blood" and now I think I may have to. I thought the forecast was for rain this evening and not this morning. I did get a lot of work done outside yesterday. I mowed the front lawn and got all the leaves up. I did the side yard as well and I took 5 fifty gallon trash cans full of leaves and yard waste out to the mulch pile in Jamesville. So far it is not raining hard and so I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to work outside today or not.

2007/10/27 09:15 It is Saturday morning and I'm feeling pretty good. I think it's a good day to be alive. It's raining outside. Not a heavy soaking rain but a steady drizzle type of rain. A lot of the leaves have fallen from the trees and they are all wet and soggy on the ground. It's a typical rainy day in Autumn. I like this type of weather. Karen is still sleeping. I love my wife. I probably don't tell her that often enough. I have decided to write a Halloween story and then e-mail it to everyone in my address book. I only have a couple of days before Halloween. I have some characters and scenes in mind for the Halloween story but I don't have a plot yet. Adison is going to visit Amanda today. She's going to take our car, the Saturn, because her car needs brake work done. My parents just called and we're going out for breakfast.

2007/11/02 18:00 How old are you? How many times in a lifetime do you answer that question? I was thinking about this the last couple of days. Ask a child how old they are and you are likely to get an answer like five and a half, or six and three quarters. Those increments are important when you are young aren't they? By contrast, for example, when you are 43 years old you are just 43 years old. If it is your 44th birthday in 2 weeks you are still just 43 years old. Lately at work there have been rumors circulating about a new VERO (voluntary early retirement offer). In the past for VEROs offered you had to be 52 years old. Suddenly I am no longer 50 years old. I am almost fifty and a half, soon to be fifty and three quarters. The increments are important again. It is another Friday afternoon. Another work week is over. Here comes the weekend. It is November. We are well into Autumn. The weather for this season has been really nice to date. This past Wednesday was Halloween and what a beautiful night it was. For the second year in a row the neighbors, Tony and Mary Kay, brought their fire pit out into the parkway and we all sat around the fire and waited for the trick or treaters. We didn't get many visitors but it was a pleasant evening.

2007/10/26 18:30 Today there was an article on MSNBC.com that was titled, "Is Your Job Making You Sick?" I felt like the article could have been written about me. Here's part of what it said:

" Your job can make you sick. From uncomfortable workspaces to poor air quality to depression-inducing stress, there are plenty of opportunities to come home feeling worse than when you left in the morning. In fact, work-related stress has a powerful impact on employees. A study in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health demonstrated a significant relationship between work stress and depression. Dr. Emma Robertson Blackmore, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center and a co-author of the study, says that those with possible symptoms of depression — anxiety, headaches, a curbed appetite, insomnia and general dissatisfaction — sometimes fail to attribute them to depression and work stress. Increased stress and depression have been linked to a number of chronic and non-chronic health issues like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart attacks. According to findings compiled by researchers at the Healthy Lifestyle Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, one-fourth of employees view their jobs as the No. 1 stressor in their lives. Dr. Bruce Rabin, the program’s director, says that it’s critical to change responses to stress, noting that consistent anxiety can change the brain’s chemistry and lead to depression."

I really think the stress was a major part of my heart attack and my clinical depression. I feel very lucky to have survived and I'm glad I've taken advantage of the help I had available to me. I feel that I've turned a corner and that better days are sure to follow. I'm feeling pretty good right now and I'm so glad it's the weekend.

2007/10/26 07:45 TGIF! Thank god it's Friday! Everybody's workin' for the weekend! Yesterday I went to the bathroom around noon and I was at the sink washing my hands and I looked in the mirror and I thought something doesn't look right. I had my shirt on inside out. I walked around all morning at work with my shirt on inside out. Nobody said anything. Karen said that I'm such a fashion plate that probably no one even noticed. I can't wait for the weekend.

2007/10/25 18:30 Tomorrow is Friday!! Another work week bites the dust. It rained quite a bit on Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday morning I had my umbrella open on the walk from the parking lot to my office and a couple of times I thought I was going to take off like Mary Poppins. I have a new friend on MySpace. I now have 3 friends. I feel pretty special.

2007/10/23 07:45 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Unit"

Episode: Every Step You Take

Air Date: October 16 on CBS

The rangers of The Unit have beaten the false allegations leveled against them and the team has been reassembled (last weeks episode Pandemonium - part 2). As if there was ever any doubt. In this weeks episode Bob "Cool Breeze" Brown, Mack, and Hector are tasked with rescuing embassy personnel from Abidjan. On the home front Jonas learns his daughter Betsy has withdrawn from college and has enlisted in the Army. Jonas takes Betsy out into the wild for some tough Army love. I was watching the show with my twenty year old daughter. As Jonas Blaine, played by Dennis Haysbert, instructed his daughter my daughter said, "How could anyone not listen to him with that voice?" We have had an actor in the white house; one Ronald Reagan. We've got an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the California governor's mansion. There's an actor, Fred Thompson, running for president this year. If ever there was an actor that seemed presidential it has got to be Dennis Haysbert. He is so trustworthy he was tapped by Allstate insurance as their spokesman. He does a great job with the character Jonas "Snake Doctor" Blaine. And it's a great character for him to play. In last weeks episode Colonel Ryan states the need to rescue Mack before he breaks. Jonas says, "Break? He won't even bend." Who doesn't want a supervisor that backs him up with such complete confidence. I hope the character Betsy shows up more often.

2007/10/21 15:00 Saturday morning I had coffee with Adison at Freedom of Espresso. It had been awhile since we'd gone for coffee. It's one of my favorite activities. I love going for coffee with my daughter Adison. Saturday night Pete, Leslie, Sean, and Tina came over for Adison's birthday. I got chinese food and Karen made a cake. It was nice to see friends. I slept much later than I wanted to this Sunday morning. When I did finally get up Karen wanted to go get pumpkins. We went out where we usually go and thirteen curves was beautiful. The leaves are changing. It was a warm day and you really couldn't ask for a better day weather wise. The pumpkins were plentiful this year and they were good sized. It must be a good harvest this year. I was looking forward to spending the time with Karen and unfortunately I let her derail things when she started talking about our tax problems. I should be able to let her vent a little and then move on but I have a problem in that area it seems. I really wanted to relax with her and I think I resent the fact that she needs to interrupt what are special times for me by dragging me back into painful realities. It's not fair to Karen. I understand she's upset and I think she needs reassurances that I seem unable to deliver. I need more happy times. I feel sometimes I don't get any time to be happy. I really feel that I need to enjoy the time I have more than I do. Looming over me now is always the thought that the time I have right now might be all the time that I'm going to have. Our lives are really so fragile aren't they? I look forward to the weekends and the freedom I think I'm going to have and then when it doesn't work out the way I had hoped I'm disappointed. I worry that as I look forward to retiring I may find the same pattern holds. That's why I am convinced I need to enjoy every moment and not postpone my hopes for a day that may never come. It's easier to think about change than it is to actually make the changes happen.

2007/10/20 22:00 Today, several times, I was thinking about stuff that I wanted to write down. Of course now that I have time to sit down and write I can't remember what I wanted to say. I need to make notes. It seems I can't remember stuff anymore without notes. I went to the grocery store this afternoon and spent over twenty dollars and came home without the one thing I went to get.

2007/10/16 08:00 For some reason yesterday I was thinking about the weeks immediately after my heart attack. For certain there was some anxiety on my part. The feelings I experienced were all new. But overall it was a happy time for me. I enjoyed a sense of freedom. I can remember getting up in the morning and walking by the canal and there was nowhere else I had to be. It really felt good to be alive. I'm missing that feeling.

2007/10/16 07:30review submitted to the Post Standard

"Nova"

Episode: Secrets of the Samurai Sword

Air Date: October 9th on PBS

Much of human history is also the history of violence. We may wish that more of our history was about art and philosophy but we are ruled by conflict. At times the instruments of violence have become objects of art. This has been the the case with the samurai sword. In feudal Japan the samurai were the warrior aristocrats. In much the same way that America romanticized the cowboy with his sixgun, the Japanese did the same with the samurai warrior and his sword. The samurai sword, in addition to being considered a work of art by many, is a scientific marvel. In this episode of Nova the craft of the traditional Japanese swordsmiths is examined. For a long time I have had an interest in Japanese cinema and samurai films in particular. In feudal Japan the principle religion was Shintoism. Shintoism is a form of animism where objects can be deified. In this way the sword was said to be the soul of the samurai warrior. The Japanese in feudal times were making steel of amazing quality. I was fascinated to learn from one of the experts on the program that he credits religion with the quality of the blade. The making of the steel and the forging of the sword were conducted as religious rituals. Attention to detail that is part and parcel of religious ritual provided the quality control that enabled the art to reach such a high level. On the program we watch modern masters create a sword in the same way it was done centuries ago. Nova is the most watched science series on television and I like their eclectic program choices. The popularity of the character Hiro on the TV show "Heroes" and the subplot in feudal Japan shows there is still an interest in the samurai. For anyone with an interest in the samurai and his sword I would recommend this highly informative episode of Nova.

2007/10/13 11:00 It's Saturday morning. I'm home alone. Karen is off on her girl's weekend. Michael is working and so is Adison. It's getting cold enough that I turned on the furnace Thursday night. My house was built in 1957 which is the same year I was born. Coincidentally my house is the same age as me. Just like me my house is showing it's age. I'm not sure which is falling apart faster; me or the house. My bedroom window had cracked glass. Recently a whole piece of the glass fell out. I sure could feel the breeze last night. I've replaced some of the windows in the house but haven't gotten to the bedrooms yet. I have a new part myself. I have a metal part in my heart. The stent in my heart keeps my front artery open. Last weekend we went to Media Pennsylvania to visit Karen's brother and his family. It was my nephew Sage's birthday. We left Saturday morning and came back Sunday night. Adison didn't go because she already had plans with her friends. On Friday Amanda and Elizabeth were at the house. I had never met Elizabeth in person and I didn't realize she was my friend on MySpace. It finally dawned on me and I remarked to Elizabeth that I hadn't recognized her in person at first because she seemed taller on the internet. With no hesitation Elizabeth said, "I am taller on the internet." I really liked that.

2007/10/13 16:30 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Prison Break"

Episode: Good Fences

Air Date: October 8th on Fox

Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen the episode Good Fences that aired Monday October 8th and you want to be surprised and shocked then read no further. And when I say spoiler I mean as in they spoiled the show for me. They killed Sara. And I mean she's dead as in they cut off her head and put it in a box. Now, the show has always been edgy drama. In the first season when they killed LJ's mom and stepfather I was shocked and I knew then this was a dangerous show. Lincoln's girlfriend Veronica was killed. The lawyer she was working with was killed. John Abruzzi died in a hail of FBI bullets. The US President's brother committed suicide. Governor Tancredi was murdered and it was made to look like suicide. Agent Mahone killed Tweener and Haywire. And on and on. I get it. It's a dangerous show and no one is safe. But in my opinion they went too far when they offed Sara. The character of Sara Tancredi was sweet and innocent despite the drug abuse in her past and despite what she'd seen working in the prison. She'd survived a harrowing murder attempt by agent Kellerman and if anyone on the show deserved to survive it was her. I don't know if I'm going to watch the show anymore.

2007/09/29 18:00 Tomorrow is Karen's 50th birthday. I'm married to an old lady. Ha ha. That's pretty funny. I am married to a grandmother. How did that happen?

2007/10/03 08:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"The Unit"

Episode: Pandemonium (Part 1)

Air Date: September 25 on CBS

When last we saw the intrepid rangers of "The Unit" last season the unit had actually been disbanded. Mack and Hector were in prison, the stockade. Jonas and Charles were on the run and Bob was working for the CIA. Up until this point I would have described the series as a special ops procedural. I think that's fair. If "Law and Order" is a police procedural then "The Unit" was a special ops procedural. The show was split between the missions of the men and the lives of their women on the homefront. I thought the parts with the wives didn't work as well but overall I liked the show. At the end of last season the show took a turn. It became more of a spy, espionage, who sold out the team? - something more along the lines of "Alias". I had my doubts but I have to admit I really liked the first part of the season premiere (it's a two parter). It was a fast moving and exciting story. The characters are still just as interesting. I always liked the fact that Bob seemed out of place. He's not what he appears. In the season opener Charles is questioning Bob's allegiance and he admits he could never figure him out. He tells Bob, "I never bought the whole Boy Scout thing." Bob replies that maybe he just likes shooting guns. "No," says Charles, "If that were the case you'd go hunting on the weekends. You like people shooting back." Of all the wives I like Kim the best and she actually got to play a part in the whole espionage thing. Stay tuned next week to see if the rangers can put their team back together.

2007/09/24 23:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Heroes"

Episode: Four Months Later

Air Date: September 24th on NBC

Heroes is back! The season premiere brought to you with limited commercial interruption by Nissan. Did everyone catch it when Claire's Dad gave her the keys for her new car? "Oh Daddy, not the new 2008 Nissan Rogue, the new crossover SUV with intuitive all-wheel drive?!" Shameless product placement aside the return of Heroes didn't disappoint. We have the continuation of stories from last season with familiar characters. And there are some new stories and new characters. Detective Parkman is back but now divorced from his wife. Apparently, as superpowers go, being able to read minds can put a strain on a marriage. I really like Hiro's friend Ando. Here's a guy with no superpowers and for my money he's the most earnest of the bunch.

2007/09/23 09:00 I buried Prudence yesterday. When Willie died Adison and I buried her in the garden by the side of the house. I marked the spot with a statue of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals. Adison must have been around 9 or 10 at the time. She's 19 now and a strong and forceful young woman. On the way to the vet to have Prudence euthanized we discussed burying her. One of the things that I've been working on in therapy is my passive aggressiveness. I have a problem with passivity in general. At the vets the doctor was very nice and she described the process for euthanasia. She asked me, "do you want the ashes?" I said that yes we would take the ashes I guess. That's not what I wanted but I didn't say anything. Adison said to wait just a minute. She said no, we're just going to take Prudence home. The vet started to say something about the regulations for pet burial and Adison said, "you're not going to burn up my cat." By now she was crying. The vet left with Prudence to put in the catheter and Adison asked me why I didn't say anything to the vet. She said you know what we talked about on the way here. I told her, "that's why I needed you here". We left with Prudence just as we had discussed. Karen and I buried Prudence yesterday. We buried her in the same garden near where Willie is buried. Prudy used to sit on the window ledge in the dining room and look out on this spot. We buried her with some of her superballs. Last night Michael and I went to the movies to see "Resident Evil: Extinction". It was the 3rd movie in the series. It was pretty good but it was way too loud. The theater could have turned down the volume just a tad.

2007/09/21 22:20 It's been kind of a strange day. A couple of days ago I broke a tooth. I was so preoccupied with Prudence being so sick I didn't want to go to the dentist. I went to the dentist this morning and he said I'm going to need another crown. I just had one done on the other side. He said, "thanks so much for keeping me in business." I can't just have it fixed because it has to be approved by the insurance company first. It's going to take about 5 weeks for the paperwork. It's uncomfortable and it hurts if I eat or drink anything cold but I can last 5 weeks. Tonight on the way home from work there was a story on NPR about a truck driver in Europe that was in a motor vehicle accident. The responders filled out the wrong paperwork and he got sent to the morgue with a request for an autopsy instead of to the hospital. The coroner stopped the autopsy when the guy started bleeding because he realized then that this corpse was still alive. They'd told his girlfriend he was dead and then she found him on a stretcher at the hospital. I trust my paperwork will be done correctly. I didn't make it into work until about noon and so I stayed at work until 8:00 PM tonight. I got a lot of work done. I think I was the only one working in the building tonight. There were no distractions and I got caught up on a few things. Karen is out for a girls night. I called home and asked Michael if he wanted to go to a movie but he already had plans to go to the movies with some of his friends. Adison is visiting her friends up in Oswego. So, it's just me, the dog, one cat (Elsie), and Steve the guinea pig. I miss Prudence. Missy is acting very strange tonight. She's extremely restless and has been going in and out all night. When I got home I checked the Syracuse.com website and my first review has been posted there. That's kind of exciting. I feel sort of lost. I'm not sure what I want to do right now.

2007/09/20 20:00 It was a sad day today. I just came back from the vet where my cat was humanely euthanized. My last cat, Princess Wilhelmina (Willie for short), lived to be 18 years old. She was named for Prince William; they were born on the same day. When she died I was very sad and I said I didn't ever want another cat. About 7 years ago on my birthday I got a call at work from my wife. She had locked herself and our three children outside of the van with the keys inside and the engine running. How she managed that I don't know. They needed to be rescued. My kids at the time were 14, 12 and 10. They were calling from the SPCA. They had planned on getting me a kitten for my birthday. Of course the surprise was ruined but since I was there to open the van for them I got to pick out the kitten myself. I named her Prudence. I had always wanted to have a daughter named Prudence. As a child I loved the show "Nanny and the Professor". I thought Juliet Mills as the nanny was so beautiful and so sweet. Her character's name was Prudence. My wife said absolutely no, under no conditions, would our daughter be named Prudence. I did get a Prudence in my life, she just turned out to be feline. My daughter says if I had named her Prudence she never would have forgiven me. Prudence was an indoor cat. She never went outside. She was content to stay in the house. She was a one family cat. When we had company over she would disappear. After the visitors had left she'd just be suddenly sitting next to you. We used to feed her on the counter. She couldn't eat on the floor because the dog would steal her food. I never got tired of watching her jump up on the counter. It was so effortless. She'd be on the floor one minute and the next she'd be on the counter and it was like she'd always been there. I used to think to myself that if you filmed yourself standing on a table and then jumped backwards off the table and then showed the film in reverse you might look like my cat jumping up onto the counter. At night when I went to bed Prudence would race up the stairs in front of me and jump on the bed. She was a vocal cat. She pretty much demanded to be petted. I would scratch her and pet her until she'd had enough and then she would nip my arm to let me know we were through. In the morning she'd get into the tub and before you could take a shower you had to let some water drip out of the faucet so she could have a drink. She loved catching the drips from the faucet in the tub. When she was hungry she'd sit on the counter and bang her food bowl until you fed her. She loved playing with little rubber superballs, but only if no one was watching. At night you'd hear her in the hallway. She would carry the ball in her mouth to the top of the stairs. She'd drop the ball and let it bounce down the stairs. She made this throaty yowl as she chased the ball. If you came into the room when she was playing with one of her balls she would immediately stop and act like she had no interest in the ball at all. She was so good natured. Even when she'd gotten sick she was so sweet. At the end she was so weak she couldn't stand but she'd lift her head when she heard her name and her tail would start to move. My daughter, now 19, really took care of Prudence in her last days and made her feel safe and loved. My daughter, my yougest son Michael, and I were with Prudy when she passed. I'm going to miss that cat. The price of love is often grief.

2007/09/10 22:00 I had a meeting tonight at the Post Standard for the community critics position. I wrote here a couple of weeks ago that I wasn't selected as one of the community critics for the movie team. It turns out that I was selected as one of the TV critics. There was a meeting tonight at the Post Standard for everyone that was selected for the team. I met Emily Kulkus who is the editor. She seems quite nice. I think this is going to be fun.

2007/09/18 17:00 review submitted to the Post Standard

"Burn Notice"

Episode: False Flag

Air date: September 13th on USA Network

Burn Notice is a summer series on the USA network. A burn notice is what spies get when they're fired. They're dumped in a city with their assets frozen, no credentials, and left to fend for themselves. The series stars Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen. Michael takes whatever jobs he can find that match his unique skill set. All the while he's trying to discover who burned him. He wants to get back into the spy game. When he is dumped in Miami he ends up reconnecting with his old girlfriend Fiona played by Gabrielle Anwar. I was so happy to see this actress again. She starred in the film "Wild Hearts Can't Be broken"; one of my daughter's favorites when she was a pre-teen. Suffice it to say I saw that film on VHS tape on more than one occasion. The character Fiona is described each week in the opening credits as Michael's "trigger happy" ex-girlfriend. She's just a wisp of a girl but always ready for a fight. In the episode "Fight or Flight" she's babysitting two of Michael's clients when she gets word from him that assassins are on the way. The look of glee on her face when she realizes she's the only one there to defend their wards is priceless. She ends up hurling spur of the moment molotov cocktails at the would be assassins. When Michael arrives the action is over and he says, "Geez Fiona, it looks like Fallujah out there." Playing Michael's friend and partner Sam Axe is probably the greatest "B" movie actor working today. Ask Bruce Campbell and I bet that's what he'd say. Bruce starred in the "Evil Dead" trilogy that ended with "Army of Darkness". As a friend of Sam Raimi he scored three nifty cameos in all the Spiderman films. He's even written a book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor." Rounding out the cast is Sharon Gless as Michael's chain smoking hypochondriac of a Mom. In this latest episode, "False Flag", we gained a little more insight into Michael's character and what makes him tick. The show uses an effective voice over to impart background information and to deliver tactical explanations. Michael had a rough childhood and an abusive father. When he takes a case that involves, on the surface, an abusive father Michael breaks one of his own rules and gets a little too emotionally invested. The guest star this week was Lucy Lawless as the client who turns out to not be what she seemed. Each episode in this series operates on two levels. There is a story line based on that week's case and client, and then there is a story line that moves forward Michael's attempts to discover who burned him and why. "False Flag" is what fake papers, passports, id, etc. are called in the spy biz. Michael needs new papers for a trip he's planning to Washington DC. This series was a hit this summer. It has already been picked up for next season. The two hour season finale airs Thursday night September 20th on USA at 9:00 PM.

I don't know. The people on the Lexapro box look happy don't they? It must be okay.

2007/09/09 08:30 It's been two weeks since I wrote anything here. There has been a lot going on I guess. Two weeks ago we went to Rory and Krissy's wedding. It was at the Fountainbleau on Cayuta Lake. It was a beautiful summer day and it was very hot. The chapel was a short walk away through the woods and it was not air conditioned. Did I say that it was very hot? The service was nice. Rory really seemed to be enjoying himself and he was pretty funny joking around during the service. The reception was a lot of fun. I had too much to drink. And I mean I had way too much to drink. I probably haven't been drunk like that in 15 or 20 years. The next day Karen said I wasn't very nice to her on the way home. That's not like me at all and that really bothered me. It was the subject of my next therapy session. I like my therapist, Dr. Jeannotte, and I think the sessions have been helping me. During this session she let me know that she had decided that I'm clinically depressed. That's her diagnosis. I've probably been depressed for a long time and I've just been dealing with it. After the heart attack I've been less receptive to the idea of just dealing with it. Of course once she came out and said I was clinically depressed I had what I assume was like an anti-placebo effect. I immediately felt worse. Acting on her advice I went to my GP and my GP, Dr. Rajan-George, prescribed Lexapro for me. Lexapro is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Of course I tend sometimes to overthink things. If I have a chemical imbalance and it changes me then is that all I am; a chemical reaction?

2007/08/24 18:00 It's another Friday night. Seems like it was a long week. Next week is the last week of August and the end of summer. The seasons seem to pass so quickly these days. Where did the summer go? Why does the passage of time make me sad? I guess because I feel like there were such big plans I had and they all came to naught. Nada. My time seems so finite now. I'm reminded of the song by the Alan Parson's Project. In it a boy's mother tells him how far he'll go, so much farther than his father, because he has time on his side. Then, "before he could build any castles in Spain, the time slipped away". I've been looking forward to the NY State Fair. I can't quite place what it is that I like so much about the Fair. Next week is Labor Day weekend. The Fair ends on Labor Day. It's like the official end of summer. And Labor Day weekend is a three day weekend. I love three day weekends. Adison called me at work today to tell me that she doesn't have to work tomorrow until 11:00 AM and so we can go out for coffee in the morning. That made me happy today.

2007/08/25 08:00 I got notified yesterday that I didn't get the position of community film critic. The e-mail said they had 150 applications and only 20 were selected. I take some consolation in the fact that they probably never even read what I submitted. I say that because they sent the response to the wrong e-mail address. If they had read my application they would have sent the response to the correct e-mail address. I prefer to believe that rather than the alternative which is that there were 20 people they found more interesting than me. This was a good exercise though. I think before I started therapy I wouldn't have even applied and if I had I wouldn't have handled the rejection as well as I am. I'm making progress. Karen and I are going to a wedding today. We're car pooling with Mike and Kristin. That should be fun. When we went to Theresa's wedding on Long Island we car pooled. There were a bunch of us going down from Syracuse and we took two cars. I drove our van, the red Plymouth Voyager, and we followed Mike in their silver Grand Am. Karen brought two walkie-talkies so we could stay in contact. As soon as we started out Mike was on the walkie-talkie, "Silver Bullet to the Big Red Fun Van." I was driving and everyone else in the car fell asleep. All I had to do was follow the silver car in front of me. We got off at an exit and I thought, "we must be getting gas." We drove by all the gas stations and so I thought, "maybe Mike wants to get some beer for the hotel." Although I thought it was odd we wouldn't have gotten it before we left. Then we turned up a side road and we were on our way to "Big Bass Lake". At this point Kevin woke up and said, "where the hell are we?" I said, "we're following Mike up to Big Bass Lake." Kevin said, "that's not Mike in front of us. That's not even a Grand Am." In my defense it was a silver car. Or maybe gray. We managed to make it to Long Island and the correct hotel. We all stayed at the same hotel. The night before the wedding Karen was tired and she wanted to go to bed. I was wide awake and so I went out and found the rest of the gang at Dave and Buster's. They had all been drinking and so I volunteered to be designated driver and took everyone home. On the way home Jen asked if I could play one of her CDs. We were blasting Def Leopard and everyone was singing along. Jen said to me, surprised that I knew the words, "Scott, you're into retro?" It wasn't retro the first time around when I learned the lyrics.

2007/08/23 23:30 It rained pretty hard today. When I left work it wasn't raining but everything was damp. I walk the same way everyday and today was the first day I noticed the moss on the trees that line the sidewalk I use to get to my car. I think because everything was damp the moss really showed. It's funny how you can walk right by something everyday and not notice it. I did notice the sign for the business on the corner. I notice that everyday. It intrigues me. The sign says, "Walt's Custom Auto Upholstery, Brake Service, and Tattoo Parlor." What's the thinking there? "Yeah, while I'm waiting for my brakes why don't you put a rose on my ass?"

2007/08/21 17:00 I woke up this morning and I realized that I hadn't set my alarm clock. When I looked at the clock there is a little red light that's on when the alarm is set and the light wasn't on. No little red light. That was strange because I always set my alarm before I go to sleep. Even on the weekends I set the alarm. I wasn't afraid that I had overslept because it was just after 6:00 AM and I never set my alarm for before 6:30 AM. What was stranger yet was how disoriented I became. I could not remember what day it was. I was unsure if it was a weekend morning or a workday morning. I lay in bed and tried to remember what I had done the day before and I couldn't remember. Eventually it came to me that it was in fact a Tuesday morning. The realization that I had four more workdays ahead of me before the next weekend slowly began to sink in. That made me sad. It was a strange feeling not knowing what day it was and it made for a strange morning.

Gnarly bruise from my boogie board mishap in the angry sea.

2007/08/19 09:00 Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my heart attack. One year ago at this time I was in the hospital recovering from the catheterization after the stent was placed in my heart. I felt pretty good yesterday. I worked on some stuff in the Tiki room. I finished mounting my shark jaws and I think they came out great. I had a nice day. The last few days I've been reflecting on the heart attack and what it has meant for me. I'm reminded of the Woody Allen movie "Love and Death". Woody Allen's character is scheduled to be executed. He muses, and I paraphrase, "everyone knows they're going to die. The difference is I know I go at dawn." I don't know when I'm going to die but now I've got a better idea of how I'm going to go. I have coronary artery disease and there's a pretty good chance that that's going to have something to do with how I go. About twenty seven years ago I sat with a friend when he died. His name was 'Burkey' and he was at least 90 years old. He had lived a colorful life; he had a somewhat checkered past that included 2 terms in federal prison, one of which was for bootlegging. It was New Years Eve and I was at the restaurant where I worked as the manager and he had a heart attack. I sat with him while we waited for the ambulance and I'm pretty sure he passed while we were talking or shortly after they put him in the ambulance. He was unresponsive when the paramedics arrived. He was in a lot of pain. The last thing he said to me, he asked me, "What did I do to deserve this?" I had no response for that. I still don't have a response for that question after all these years.

2007/08/13 20:00 "The sea is very angry." That's what Adison said when she and Amanda came back from the beach on Saturday. They had only stayed a few minutes at the beach and left. The surf was very rough. We went shopping. Adison, Amanda, Caity, Karen, and I went thrifty shopping. We went to some thrift stores, to an antique mall, and to a vintage clothing store. When we got back, around 6:00 PM or so, Karen and I decided to take one last trip down to the beach before we were to leave on Sunday morning. The beach was deserted and the surf was very very rough. Earlier in the day Laura's brother Vince had got pummeled in the surf and he ended up with a cut on his forehead and on his nose. It was bad enough that he and his wife and kids quit their vacation and left a day early. I think if I had known that at the time I might not have ventured out into the surf myself. But I didn't know that and so I borrowed Julian's boogie board. I strapped the tether to my wrist and went out into the surf. Karen stayed on the beach where it was safe. It wasn't but a few minutes before I was in trouble. A big wave got ahold of me and I think I did two or three underwater somersaults. As I turned helplessly underwater completely at the mercy of the wave the tether for the boogie board wrapped tightly around my leg. With the boogie board now cinched tightly to my leg I couldn't stand up and as the waves crashed ashore I was dragged up the beach. I was finally able to extricate myself from the board, the tether, the waves, and I staggered exhausted back up the beach to where Karen was. I woke up the next morning with a gnarly bruise on the back of my leg where the tether had dragged me. Of course the bruise looks worse I'm sure because of the medication I'm on. I bruise easier now. It was a long trip home. The traffic was congested and there were long delays. I can't drive all the way anymore like I used to. I get tired and Karen drives for awhile. Again, I think it's the medication. As much as I enjoyed the vacation it's nice to be home.

2007/08/11 06:30 I couldn’t sleep this morning. I went down to the beach. I decided to watch the sunrise from the beach. It was just about 5:00 AM when I put my toes in the sand. There wasn’t another soul as far as I could see. I decided to sit on the sand even though I was concerned there would still be some crabs scurrying around. I figured the crabs would be more scared of me than I was of them. As I sat there I felt something brush my arm and I jumped thinking it was a crab attacking me. It was just the strap from my camera bag slipping down my arm and I felt silly. Even though I felt silly I still decided to stand up. I stood in the darkness. The waves were relentless. They never cease. The sound of the surf is somehow calming and reassuring. Slowly night passed to twilight. I love twilight. It’s such a magical time. It’s that short time between night and day or between day and night. As it got brighter the birds started to arrive. The seagulls were the first on the scene. Then some pelicans flew overhead. Soon there were a lot of smaller birds that, together with the gulls, darted in and out of the surf as they fed. As I walked up the beach the birds would fly off. They were no doubt perturbed that I was interrupting their morning routine. Lights started to come on in some of the houses along the beach. I saw two other figures now walking the beach. From the distance it appeared to me to be a mother and daughter. At least that’s the relationship I imagined. I headed back to the house and made some coffee. I’ve been at the beach house now for 6 days. It has been a nice vacation. Yesterday, Friday, I went to Okracoke Island. I was hoping to take my nephew Sage but that didn’t work out. Marty and Phil were going to go but in the morning Marty called and said Phil wasn’t feeling good and so I ended up going by myself. I left about 7:45 AM. Thursday night there had been quite the thunderstorm in Duck which is where we’re staying. Michael and I were coming back from the movies at about Midnight and at times the lightning flashes were so brilliant that it was hard to see the road. On the drive south I could see evidence of the storm but it didn’t get south of Hatteras Island. I made the ferry queue at about 9:45 AM. I didn’t have to wait too long. It was very hot and hazy. The heat index was supposedly around 115. The temperature was in the high 90s but with the humidity it felt like 115. It was very hot on the ferry. The sweat was just dripping off me. At times there was a decent breeze and the sea air smelled so good. I got to Okracoke about 10:30 AM. I went to the Flying Melon for brunch. The Flying Melon is a cute little café that I’ve eaten at now for three years in a row. They have the best biscuits. The biscuits are big. They’re bigger than most biscuits. They’re brown and flaky on the outside and moist on the inside. They’re just perfect. I had a couple of eggs and homefries and real country ham. The ham was a little salty but I think that’s what you expect from a real country ham. The Flying Melon has kind of a Rooster theme going and I know Karen would like it. I hope that someday she decides to make the trip with me. After brunch I parked the car and walked around the village. I bought a couple of little things. I got Karen a glass ornament with a mermaid on it for the upstairs bathroom. I got two glass floats for the Tiki room to go with the shark jaws. Karen said she’s going to smash my Tiki stuff if I don’t get it all displayed. She doesn’t understand. I picked up a picture I wanted; a view of the Outer Banks taken from space. I headed back to the ferry landing. On the way I stopped and took a walk out to the beach. The surf seemed much rougher than it was back in Duck. The beach was very secluded and there were only two couples on the beach as far as I could see. The ferry ride back seemed even hotter than the ride earlier in the day. I was the last vehicle on the ferry that trip and so my van was on the back of the ferry. There was a kid that started feeding the gulls Ritz crackers. It was pretty funny because it was amazing how many gulls he attracted. Then I realized that with all the gulls hovering around the back of the ferry they were all pooping on the back of my van. I guess it was still funny. After I got off the ferry I went to the shipwreck museum. The first time I went to the shipwreck museum it was under construction and only the lobby was open. That was at least 2 years ago. The museum is still under construction and only the lobby is open. I decided to stop and have a cocktail and I discovered something I didn't know. Hatteras Island is dry. You can only get beer and wine on Hatteras Island. No cocktails.

2007/08/09 08:00 e-mail to Barb, Joanne, and Marguerite I left for North Carolina on Saturday. I spent Saturday morning getting packed up and making lots of lists so I wouldn’t forget anything. My daughter Adison’s friend from college Amanda was going with us to spend the week on the beach at our house. She drove to our house from Remsen and once she got there we left. We were driving to Pennsylvania. My wife Karen’s brother Dave lives just outside Philadelphia. We were well into Pennsylvania when I realized I had forgotten all my medications. After the heart attack I take about 8 pills everyday. I have two pillboxes with sections labeled for the days of the week. I have one box for the morning and one for the night. I left them both on the counter. Karen said, "you managed to forget the only thing that was really important." Cell phones are really amazing devices. Karen called my parents because they have keys to our house. She asked them to go to our house, get the pills, and then Fed-Ex them to us in North Carolina. Then she called the real estate company in North Carolina to get the address. We are renting a house that’s only a few houses away from some friends of ours from Syracuse. Marty and Laura were going to a family reunion on Saturday and then leaving late Saturday night for North Carolina. So, change of plans. Karen called my parents back and told them to put the pills in the mailbox. She then called Laura and asked her to get my pills out of the mailbox and bring them down to the beach house. We spent the night outside Philly and then left Sunday morning after loading up Karen’s sister-in-law Caity and our nephew Sage who were also staying at our beach house. I have this ridiculous hat that I wear all the time. I don’t think it’s ridiculous but everybody else seems to. I get Chinese food almost every Sunday night at the same place and Adison kids me that the girl that works the counter there is my girlfriend. She always gives me extra things like an eggroll or something. Once she forgot part of my order, a beefstick. The next time I came in she gave me the beefstick she owed me and an extra beefstick and that’s her pet name for me. When I walk in the door she yells, "Beefstick, Beefstick." I explained to Adison that she wouldn’t recognize me without the hat. No hat no free eggroll. Anyways, we stopped for gas in Virginia at someplace like a 7-11 and Marty and Laura passed the gas station. Laura told Marty, "you have to go back, that was Scott at the gas station." Marty said that was ridiculous and then said something about the odds of running into us and how many people there are on the east coast. Laura said, "with that hat?" They made a u-turn and by then we were back on the road. After some cell phone calls we made a transfer and I got my medications in Virginia. I’ve been having a great time here on vacation. I have been having a hard time connecting to the internet. Before I left I was debating whether or not I should get a new laptop. I have 5 computers now, not counting the laptop. I never use the laptop. The battery was shot and so I could only use it if it was plugged into an outlet which kind of cuts down on the portability which is the whole idea behind a laptop. A new battery was almost $150.00 and I could get a new laptop for probably $500.00. I ended up deciding to get a new battery. That was a big mistake. I don’t have an internal wireless card for my laptop because it’s so old (probably 4 years old which is ancient in computer years). I have a PCI card for the wireless modem and even though I can detect the WiFi hotspots I can’t connect. My daughter has her laptop but I can’t use it unless she’s there to supervise me. She must have something on her laptop she doesn’t want me to read. So, if I want to connect to the internet I have to take Adison and Amanda to the coffeeshop where the nearest WiFi hotspot is and then I have to buy them coffee. But they don’t just get a regular coffee they get iced vanilla caramel lattes with a shot of espresso and blended with homemade fudge made on the premises and so every time I connect to the internet on my daughters laptop I have to pay a $15.00 coffee tax. It’s going to cost me close to a hundred dollars in iced lattes plus the one hundred and fifty for the battery and so I’m getting closer to the cost of a new laptop. Plus my daughter’s laptop is broken and the ‘y’ and the ‘7’ don’t work. I’ve been trying to do a little freelance writing, maybe have a second career when National Grid is through with me, and I had a deadline to submit something on Wednesday. I have to type it on my laptop, because I do use the letter ‘y’ from time to time, and then use a jump drive to transfer to my daughter’s laptop so I can send it. It has been very hot here. Yesterday it was in the mid 90s but the heat index said it felt like a 113. Barb called me when I was in my van and driving Adison and Amanda over to the beach access at Marty and Laura’s house. It’s about a 3 minute drive so I was still talking when we got there. I got out of the van, walked down to the beach, and I was still talking to Barb. Cell phones are amazing. I was talking to Barb while I was standing on the beach. My daughter was after me to go into the ocean. I burn up in the sun. I need sunblock that a vampire would use. So, my daughter sprayed me with this maximum sunblock she has in a spray and I dashed out into the surf and started swimming out to where my wife Karen was floating in a tube. Guess what was in the pocket of my bathing suit? That’s right, it was my cellphone. So, if you call me now it just goes right to message because my cellphone is inoperable. It could have been worse because the electronic key for the van was also in my pocket but that still works. I love travelling but I hate being away from home. That’s quite the paradox isn’t it? A week away seems to be about my limit. I’ll be back soon. See you then, Scott.

2007/08/08 20:00 Karen talked me into applying for this position of community film critic for the newspaper. She saw an ad in the paper and she thought it would be something that I’d like to do. If you are selected you get free movie tickets. You go to see a movie that is assigned to you and then you write a 150 word review that goes into the paper and on the paper’s website. Karen knows I like movies and she knows I like writing so she put me up to applying. I spent a lot of time writing the application and the two sample reviews. I probably spent too much time on it. Here is the application I submitted and the two sample reviews.

Are you applying to join the Movie Team or TV Team?

The movie team is my first choice but I am applying for both.

Year you graduated high school:

1975 - if you do the math that makes me 50 years old this year.

Do you have writing experience? (please be specific):

I haven’t done any formal writing. I write memos, policies, and procedures for work everyday. When I was in college I wrote a paper for a class. I took a ‘Writing Themes About Film’ class. The final assignment was to compare and contrast two films of our own choice. I strayed somewhat from the assignment because I chose 3 films. "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", "A Clockwork Orange", and "Quadrophenia." The films have similar themes involving disaffected youth and in all three films language becomes a way that the kids in the movie are separated from the people around them. My professor, who wasn't known for saying nice things if they weren't warranted, said that my choice of films was truly inspired and that the paper was one of the best he had read. I haven’t written anything like that in a long time.

MOVIES:How many movies do you see in the theater per month?

I see a lot of movies. I have seen a lot of movies. All my family and friends know if you need some film trivia that I’m your go to guy. I grew up watching John Wayne in John Ford westerns. I loved westerns in general. When I was a kid and it was Saturday morning we were watching "Western Jamboree". "Western Jamboree" had a different western movie every week. These were the films of "the Duke", Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott, Jimmie Stewart, and others. This was during the days of three broadcast channels that signed off at night and then back on in the morning. My brothers and I would get up so early on Saturday morning the TV station wouldn't even be broadcasting yet. We'd sit in front of the blank screen and watch the 'snow'. The rule was we couldn't wake up my Dad until the test pattern came on. There was a period in my life, back in the 70s, when I was really into Japanese films. Back then there were no VHS tapes or DVDs so it was an effort to see Japanese films. I went to a lot of 'art house' theaters. There was a great series of Japanese films that ran on PBS. There was commentary that accompanied the PBS series of Japanese films and I feel I learned a lot about Japanese culture and history that way. I’ve always loved foreign films (subtitles please – no dubbing). When boys my age were pining for Farrah Fawcett and Daisy Dukes I was more intrigued with Genevieve Bujold from "King of Hearts". I saw all the Star Wars movies on opening day both the first time around and then the re-releases. For the re-releases I took my kids. I’ve been to a lot of drive-in movies including a dusk to dawn marathon with all the "Planet of the Apes" movies back to back. I go to the movies about once a week now, mostly on Friday or Saturday night. I also see a lot of movies on Netflix.

TV: How much television do you watch per week?

I watch probably ten to fifteen hours of television per week. From my perspective TV is much different today than it was when I was a child and it’s even different today than it was five or six years ago. When I was growing up there were three broadcast channels. What this meant was that when you went to school everybody at school had seen the same shows that you were watching and at the same time. I had to run from the bus after school and I’d still miss the first couple of minutes of the Mickey Mouse club. And whatever else might happen to you you couldn’t miss Fess Parker as "Davy Crockett" or you’d be an outcast on the playground. Last week was the 40th anniversary of the Elvis special broadcast live from Hawaii via satellite that something like half the population of the world watched all at the same time. Nothing like that is ever going to happen again. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t give up my cable and all those choices or my VHS tapes and my DVDs. And the thing I miss the most on vacation is my TIVO. I’m just saying things have changed. Lately in TV land the competition for viewers has become so intense that new shows aren’t given a chance to find an audience. With the success of "Lost" the networks are trying more serialized shows. Nothing is more annoying than making the commitment to a show and having the network abandon you. I started watching "Vanished". It was canceled without even showing all the episodes that they’d made. I started watching "Daybreak". It was canceled without even showing all the episodes they’d made. There are more and more shows like that. I think the big networks are driving viewers to the cable channels. It seems like the expectations that channels like SciFi and FX have, as far as the number of viewers watching goes, are much lower and so they’re more likely to stick with a production.

TV: What two TV shows do you watch regularly?

I watch a lot of shows regularly including programs like Everyday Italian with Giada DiLaurentis on the Food Network and This Old House on PBS. Those probably are not the type of shows you’re looking for. On a regular basis I watch Lost, Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica, The Unit, Jericho, Burn Notice, Painkiller Jane, The Office, My Name is Earl, The Simpsons, and more. How would I choose two? Are you looking for the two I watch the most regularly? Does when you watch them count? Some shows I only watch on TIVO. I guess the two shows I watch first, that rarely I wait for TIVO to capture them, are Lost and Prison Break. Why would you make a good community critic? I love films and popular entertainment. I like all genres. I think a good film can be a work of art. The last films I saw on Netflix that I really liked were "Whalerider", "The Station Agent", and "Stealing Beauty". But I’m not so ‘highbrow’ that I don’t laugh at Adam Sandler in the "Waterboy". I go to the movies or watch a program to be entertained and enlightened, not to find fault. I have an open mind going in. When I don’t like something it’s usually pretty bad.

MOVIE TEAM APPLICANT: Write a review of the last movie you watched in a theater.

Transformers. The last movie I saw in the theater was "Transformers". It was a good summer blockbuster. It must be tough to helm one of these summer behemoths. If you make a movie with all action and no plot or characters the film is going to tank and the studio will be out a bundle. If the movie is all plot and great characters you might win awards and accolades but you won’t cover the budget. Shia Labeuof did a great job making this movie personable. And it’s really all about the characters. If you saw "Jaws" when it first came out it isn’t Bruce the big rubber shark you remember as being scary but the late Robert Shaw’s character " Quint" describing the shark attack on the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. The computer generated action in the movie, the fights between the Autobots and the Decepticons, is just a little too frantic and I don’t think most of the time the audience had any idea what was going on or which robot was winning. Again, it was the scenes with Shia Labeouf that carried the movie. He’s got big things ahead of him as heir to the Indiana Jones legacy.

TV TEAM APPLICANT: Write a review or commentary of the last TV show you watched.

It is not the last show I watched but I’d like to write about Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica is one of the best shows on Television. It works on so many levels. It’s a political parable, it can provoke religious debate, it’s action and drama, and boy do they know how to do a cliffhanger. In season two when Helo and the Chief were scheduled for execution and Commander Adama scrambled the Vipers; that was a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger only works when you care about the characters and it seems anything is possible. The best season finale I've seen lately was the end of season three. A lot of shows now use music in the show. They end up looking like MTV music videos and most of the time and they just don’t fit the program. Battlestar Galactica’s use of "All Along the Watchtower" was awesome and it was part of and integral to the plot. Most people think of Jimi Hendrix when they hear that song (I've got a great version by Dave Mason). Whoever did the version for "Battlestar" it was very nicely done and fit what was happening in the show. The season finale was the big reveal; who the Cylon agents were. And who or what in the hell is Starbuck?! I can’t wait now for the next season. If you haven’t been watching you need to get the show on DVD and get caught up before next season.

2007/07/26 22:30 Haven't written anything lately. I find that kind of disheartening. I never seem to find the time of late. Last Sunday Mike and I went to the range in Pompey. When we got in the new van Michael asked me what the plastic plug in the floor between the drivers and passengers seat was. I said I had no idea. We went to the range. It was busier than usual. When we left we only got about 100 feet down the road and I knew something was wrong. We had a sharp stone that we had picked up in the parking lot that had punctured the right front tire. I got the jack out of the storage compartment. I told Michael I thought we had a problem because I couldn't find the spare. We have the stow and go seating and where the spare would be normally is where the seats store when folded. I had Mike look under the back of the van and no spare. Michael got out the owners manual and we discovered that the plastic plug he was asking about earlier covered the winch that lowers the spare from its' storage carrier under the van between the drivers and passenger seat. Now I know what that plug is for.

2007/08/07 07:30 I’m in North Carolina. I’m on vacation. We left Syracuse on Saturday.

2007/07/21 09:30 It's Saturday morning. It is overcast and damp out. It's one of those mornings where it looks like it could go either way. I'm hoping for a little sunshine to warm things up and dry things out. The pool is looking great. I'd like to get the deck cleaned up and do a little cleanup around the pool.

2007/07/22 09:00 Two weeks from today at this time I will be in my new van driving to my vacation house in North Carolina on the Outer Banks. I just can't wait. Yesterday my Dad and I got started installing the new passage door on the garage. We got the old door out. The wood frame underneath was rotted and so we replaced a lot of the underlying structure with new pressure treated wood. We had to use the electric plane and a chisel to get the opening a little bit larger to fit the new door and we got it to dry fit. Today we're going to concrete patch under the door sill and then fasten in the new door. I painted my mailbox yesterday. I have the biggest mailbox in the neighborhood. I wanted a big mailbox to fit packages in. Plus when I get a magazine the mailbox is big enough that the mailman doesn't have to fold or roll up the magazine. The magazine will lay flat. I've had the mailbox for a long time and it was getting rusty and then the door fell off. I ground out the rivets on the mailbox door and replaced them with bolts and I used nuts with the plastic lock washers built in. That should work fine. I painted the whole mailbox with rustoleum. I used the rustoleum with the hammered metal finish. It's expensive. It was ten dollars for a small can and it's kind of funky paint. It doesn't seem like it's mixed right no matter how much you stir it. Once you put it on though you get a nice finish. The mailbox looks rejuvenated. It has a new lease on life. I want to put a new knob on the box and I need to paint the flag with some red rustoleum and then it will be a fine looking mailbox once again. A couple of weeks ago Karen and I were at the Christmas Tree Shop and they had a Heart CD "Magazine" in the bargain bin for $4.99. I got it. Heart's album "Dog and Butterfly" is one of my all time favorite albums. I also like their first album with "Dreamboat Annie" and I like the album "Little Queen". I didn't care as much for some of their later stuff. Anyways I don't think I had ever heard "Magazine". I listened to it yesterday in the van and it was really good. There is a song on the CD called "Mother Earth Blues" and it seems to be a live jam and near the end it turns into a Led Zeppelin cover and it was awesome. There is a song on the CD "Just the Wine" that is reminiscent of the style I like so much from their first album and from "Dog and Butterfly". I enjoyed listening to the CD and discovering some new Heart music that I liked. I've got a big day ahead of me. Lot's of stuff to do. I do love the weekends.

2007/07/20 07:30 It is Friday. Thank God. I have to work two more weeks and then I am on vacation. I am so ready for a vacation. It's been raining off and on the last couple of days. It has been cool for the end of July. Nice weather for sleeping at night. Last weekend on Sunday Karen and I went to the Finger Lakes with Sean and Tina. We went down the west side of Seneca Lake. It was fun. I bought some mead wine at Earle Estates. I have a lot to do this weekend. I hope the weather is nice.

2007/07/14 09:00 It has been almost two full weeks since I put anything on the website. Have I really been that busy? Yesterday was Friday the 13th. Nothing of particularly bad luck seemed to have befallen me yesterday. I bought a new van and we picked it up yesterday. Actually we bought a used van. It is a 2006 and has only been in service for 9 months. So, it's close to new. It was just about half the price that it was new. Wow. Seemed like a good deal to me. I hate buying vehicles because you never really know if you got a good deal or not. We got the new pool liner installed. Michael was a big help with that. The pool is filled with water and now I need to get the filter hooked up. Actually the pool is more than filled up. All the rain we've had recently has put too much water in the pool and I'm going to need to pump some out today. I tried to take some pictures of some of the birds at the feeders this morning. I don't think the pictures came out very good. I'm going to need to set up the tripod. There were a couple of new birds I haven't seen before. They had red faces. I'm going to need to look them up in the bird book. We had a Woodpecker out there this morning. I'm about 3 weeks away from vacation. I am in desperate need of a vacation. After not having written anything here for two weeks you'd think I would have more to say but I guess it has just been pretty boring of late. Karen and I are taking a trip to the Finger Lakes tomorrow with Sean and Tina to visit some wineries. That should be fun. I've got a lot of work to do today. I guess I'd better get started.

Detail taken from Tiki shirt that was deemed too controversial for Catholic church.

2007/07/01 09:00 July first. Today is the first day of July. We are now half way through the year 2007. Time is flying by. Time is flying by too fast. Yesterday morning there were so many birds at the feeders. There were 2 Cardinals; a male and a female. There were about 4 or 5 Goldfinches, a BlueJay, and some Nuthatches. It was a beautiful morning. Adison and I went to the bank and then stopped at Starbucks for coffee. We stopped at the Starbucks off Carrier Circle. There is a beautiful patio outside and we sat by the little pond. It was cool outside but as long as the sun was shining on you it was quite pleasant. There was a huge bullfrog, or at least one would assume it was huge (we never actually saw it), just a croaking away. Adison was quite terrified by the unseen bullfrog. Karen and I were going to a wedding that afternoon. Karen's good friend from work, Debbie, her son was getting married. Karen told me I could wear a Tiki shirt to the wedding. After the wedding, but before the reception, we had a graduation party to attend. So, Karen said go ahead and wear a Tiki shirt to the wedding. She asked me to give it to her so she could iron it. I gave her one of my Rietveld Tiki shirts and Karen was ironing it when she said, "You can't wear this to a Catholic church!" I guess the idols and the torches and the skulls were too much. I changed to a Paradise Found Hawaiian shirt with some non-threatening and inoffensive parrots on it and peace was restored. The graduation party was fun. Ron knows how to throw a party. When we got to the graduation party there was a "Cornhole" game in session. Karen and I are having a 50th birthday party this year and Karen wants to have a set up for the Cornhole game at our house. We first saw the Cornhole game about a year or so ago at a graduation party. It's played similar to horsehoes. Instead of horshoes there are bags filled with corn; like bean bags. The targets are inclined pieces of plywood with round holes in them. You get 1 point if the bag stays on the plywood and 4 points for one that goes through the hole.

2007/06/19 22:30 There's a pretty bad electrical storm in the area. Thunder and lightning and rain. My DSL internet connection is off and on. It's pretty annoying. I've got an auction on E-Bay I want to check and I keep getting knocked offline. My stupid cat Elsie is outside in the rain. Stupid cat. I don't like it when she hasn't come in before I go to bed. She stayed out all night last night. Stupid cat.

2007/06/23 07:45 It's another Saturday morning. I do love my Saturday mornings. The last heavy rain we had flooded my garage. It was really nasty. When I say flooded we're talking probably a half inch of water. I don't know how I'd handle something like what the people in New Orleans went through with Hurricane Katrina. I have a storm drain in front of the garage that was just overloaded. I've lived here for 19 years and only recently has this been a problem. I've never had the drain cleaned. I called the Drain Doctor. The company was Aalco Services and they have a Drain Doctor franchise. If you build a house today you can't have a storm line that empties into a sewer line. It's environmentally unfriendly. In times of heavy rain the sewage treatment plants get overwhelmed because of all the storm runoff. Well, I was told when I bought the house that my storm drain in front of the garage emptied into the manhole in the cul-de-sac and it was okay because it was grandfathered in. So, I called the Drain Doctor to come and clean out my storm pipe. The guy that came was very nice. He called me at work when he was on his way and I left work, taking 3 hours vacation, and met him at the house. He came in a large panel truck which is basically a large pumping station on wheels. They feed a hose down your pipe with high pressure water jets on a rotating head that cleans out your pipe. He started feeding the hose down the pipe and there was dirt, and mud, and stones, and all kinds of crap blowing back out the entrance to the pipe and all over the side of my house. It turns out I don't have a storm drainpipe. The drain in front of my garage just leads to a leech field. What a mess. The entrance to the leech field may have been plugged and he may have fixed it but I won't know for sure until the next heavy rain. Happy happy joy joy.

2007/06/26 07:45 I don't get as much time to work on my website as I would like. I did get some stuff up yesterday. Yesterday after work I stopped at Tarson Pools and got a new liner for the pool. Hopefully this weekend I can install the new liner. That will be a big job. I've still got painting to do in the Tiki room. I can't move some stuff until I get the painting done. Last night Robert, Ariel, and Tristan came to visit. It was fun getting to see the little grandson. I wish I didn't have to go to work today. I've got so much more important stuff to do at home. Oh well, it's time to make the donuts.

2007/06/27 07:30 It's Wednesday morning. It's 'hump day'. That's cool. Yesterday it was hot. Got up into the 90s I think. The forecast today calls for some thunderstorms. Over the weekend I was listening to NPR and they were doing a piece on aging. These scientists think we have a gene, or genes, that cause us to age and die. I found this totally fascinating. They were experimenting on these worms. The worms have a life cycle of 14 days. They found a gene that they nicknamed the 'grim reaper' gene. When they messed up or disabled the grim reaper gene the life cycle of the worm went to 28 days. They doubled the life expectancy of these worms. Cells in general without this 'grim reaper' gene might be immortal. It seems we are programmed to age and die.

2007/06/28 08:00 I have to make it through two more days of work to make it to the weekend. They are going to be two very long days. I am in desperate need of a vacation. I cannot wait for August and my house on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It's just over 4 weeks away. That seems so far.

2007/06/19 08:00 Mr. Wizard died last week. He had a science show for kids in the 1950s. He laid the groundwork for the likes of Bill Nye the Science Guy. They had some interesting stories about him on NPR. He always had a couple of kids on the program. One of the interviewers on NPR had said that when he had met Mr. Wizard he had asked him why in all the years that he had done the show he had never used his own kids on the program. Mr. Wizard said, "You can't fire your own kids". The goldfinches have discovered our birdfeeders. When I was laid off from work in 1994 I really got into feeding the birds. Lately we haven't filled the feeders. Last weekend Karen and I got seed and she filled all the feeders. We have one feeder that we fill with thistle or niger seed. The goldfinches love it. It doesn't take long for the word to get out. There were at least 6 finches at the feeder. The nuthatches go for the safflower. Yesterday I read a very interesting story in Newsweek about Angelina Jolie. You've got to admire the woman. She is not, as some people have accused, a dilletante playing at charity. She's the real deal. She gives away a full third of what she makes. I was moved to read what Colin Powell had to say about her. Anyone that can command the respect of Colin Powell has got to be okay. There was an incident in India where she is filming the story of Daniel Pearl and his widow. Some of her bodyguards were accused of hitting some kids and making racist comments. She was deeply offended by the accusations. She said you could write anything you wanted about who she was supposed to be sleeping with, cheating on Brad with, but to say she would ever be racist or hurt a child or employ someone that would be racist or hurt a child really hurt her. When I retire I want to do some charity work. Nothing on Angelina's level. Again, you've got to admire what she's done, what she's doing, what she's accomplished, and the goals she has. Plus she's still hot.

2007/06/18 08:00 Back to the grind. It's Monday morning. I had a nice weekend and it was somewhat productive. I missed Karen. She was gone all weekend. She was supposed to come back last night and I was going to pick her up at the airport at midnight but she missed her flight and so she's not coming in until 10:00 AM this morning. Adison is going to pick her up at the airport. My Dad, Michael, and I worked on getting the overhead garage door up this weekend. We got the new door in and in the track. It doesn't work yet. You can't open it but it looks nice. We'll tinker around with it this week when I get home from work and hopefully we'll get it operational. Sunday morning, Fathers Day, we went to Mom's Diner for breakfast. My Mom and Dad and my daughter Adison all went out for breakfast. I had my heart set on Eggs Benedict but it wasn't one of the specials. The homefries were awesome. It was a nice morning. Sunday night I went to Pizzaria Uno for dinner with Adison and Michael. They got me a T-shirt from Old Navy, some Guinness glasses, and a cast iron dutch oven for Father's Day. The T-shirt is the annual $5.00 flag shirt from Old Navy. I have gotten one every year. They have the year on them. I've wanted a dutch oven because I'm going to try to do some cooking in the Tiki Fire Bowl. It was a nice Father's Day.

2007/06/15 07:45 It's Friday again. I made it through another week. The weeks keep getting longer and the weekends keep getting shorter. I hope to put a new garage door on this weekend. Actually 2 doors. The overhead door and the, what would you call it?, the person door. Yeah, I'm going to replace the car door and the person door in my garage. Although a person could use either door while a car couldn't. Not without doing a lot of damage. Karen is gone this weekend. She left last night. She flew to Long Island for the weekend with her friend Theresa. She's going to be like an au pair for the weekend I guess. I like it better when Karen's here with me. I miss her when she's not here. Even though sometimes she's a huge pain in my ass I still miss her.

2007/06/16 10:40 Adison and I went to Freedom of Espresso this morning for coffee. We passed the chinese restaurant on the way that has the large sign outside saying, "All You Can Eat Sushi - $19.95." That just seems like a really bad idea doesn't it? Last night we went to the Rescue Mission and to the Salvation Army. Adison got a couple of shirts at the Rescue Mission. I got a Hawaiian LP for .59 cents. I've been buying Hawaiian and Exotica LPs lately. Last week I got the Martin Denny LP "Quiet Village" on E-bay. I'm bidding on Arthur Lyman's LP "Taboo". I really want the LP that has the Mark Ryden artwork on the cover but everytime they come up on E-Bay they go for over $60.00 which is way over my price limit right now. At the Salvation Army I got a Hawaiian shirt. Then we went grocery shopping after which we came home and watched "Stealing Beauty" on DVD. I have had the movie from Netflix for a really long time and haven't been able to watch it. It was really good. At least I liked it. Adison said it was okay. She said the movies I like are boring. I really liked "The Station Agent" and she said that was just okay. "Stealing Beauty" was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and has a young Liv Tyler as the central character. She did a very good job.

2007/06/14 20:30 Yesterday morning I went out to the Tiki room. I had left 3 starfish on the futon out there. They were starfish I had brought back from our vacation on the Outer Banks in North Carolina last summer. As I walked into the Tiki room I saw something on the floor. I was afraid that one of the cats had puked on the floor. As I leaned over to investigate I discovered that it was a starfish leg surrounded by starfish crumbs. I don't know who ate my starfish. It could have been the dog and it could have been one of the cats. Or maybe they each had a starfish and had like a little dinner party. I guess I'll never know for sure.

2007/06/11 20:00 I am so excited. I got my first friend on MySpace. My new friend is Rocket Boots. I sent this message to her:

      Thank you for being my friend. I am no longer friendless. I signed up on MySpace on April 1st and everytime I looked at my account it said, "You have 0 friends". Seemed kind of harsh to me. You have zero friends. I mean, I thought how does MySpace presume to know that? Maybe I have a friend that MySpace doesn't know about. But, no, everytime I checked MySpace it said the same thing, "You have absolutely no friends". Not that I didn't have offers. Adison warned me. She said if you sign up for MySpace then random creepy people are going to want to be your friend. And she was right. Well, anyways, I'm no longer a loser as far as MySpace is concerned because now I have a friend. Cool. Adison says you may be coming to North Carolina with us? Hope so.

2007/06/12 07:40 It's my birthday. I am fifty years old. Happy Birthday to me. Last Friday night we went to Trapper's Pizza Pub. Marty and Laura were going as they knew people in the band. The band was called "No Limit". Trapper's has an outdoor patio and beach volleyball courts. The band was set up and playing when we got there. The band was outside and under the awning on the patio. It was a beautiful summer night. The sun hadn't set yet but it was low in the sky and it was approaching twilight. I like twilight. Twilight happens twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening. Twilight is that time between night and day when the sun isn't there but some sunlight is. We got a drink at the bar and were standing outside when the weather changed in an instant. The temperature seemed to drop 10 degrees. The sky darkened like someone had flipped a switch and a strong wind blew in. The staff quickly ran around pulling table umbrellas and my eyes started to sting from the sand blowing off the volleyball courts. The lightning started and the band had to quit. Then the rains came. This transformation happened in a matter of minutes. The lightning was fierce and impressive to watch. It seemed to be some of the longest lightning flashes I've seen or at least remember. They hung in the air and really lit the sky up. The band couldn't resume playing. I think they popped some fuses during the lightning storm. We hung out a little longer and then left. I was reminded of the last time I saw the Glengarry Bhoys play live. This was a few years ago. They were playing at Colemans for a block party. I went to Colemans for a retirement party, not knowing the Glengarry Bhoys would be playing outside. It was a pleasant surprise. I went outside and listened to their first set. They were awesome as usual. There was quite the crowd and things were going great until the storm blew in. It was an electrical storm and the band was forced to shut down. Most of the crowd drifted off and then instead of packing their equipment up the band started to play acoustic. The first time I saw the Glengarry Bhoys they didn't have a fiddle player. They added her later. That night she was there and she had a young girl with her that I assume was her daughter. They were dancing jigs together. It turned out to be quite an enjoyable time and probably more noteworthy because of the storm and the bands response to it. It was a special moment and made a lasting memory. The power of music. That reminds me of a time even longer ago. I was in college and I was visiting friends in New Jersey. We went to a club to see Zoot Sims. This was at the end of Zoot Sims career. He had played with the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman. He was in his early 50s then and definitely the salad days of his career were over. It was a small club and close quarters. I think the air conditioning must have been broken. Or maybe the heat of this August night coupled with the number of people packed into the small club was more than the system could handle. It was stifling in the club. Hot and stuffy. The crowd was listless, uncomfortable, and unenthused. Then, I'll never forget, he took out his soprano saxophone and started playing a jazz improvisation of "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas". The temperature was the same but it was like a cool breeze had blown in. He did a complete set of Christmas songs. You could feel the mood in the crowd shift. People that were on the verge of walking out were now into the performance and it turned out to be a great night. I'm sure he had played for bigger crowds and I'm sure he had played for more money but I doubt he ever gave a better performance. The power of music.

2007/06/13 07:20 So yesterday was my birthday. I'm now 50 years old. I had a nice day for my birthday. At work I had some visitors that came to see a presentation of my project. They came all the way from Albany, a three hour drive one way, to see me and my project and they ended up signing up all their accounts. It was a huge success for me. It will end up adding about 80 million dollars a year to my program. It's huge. I was a little nervous before the presentation. The day before I had bought new shoes. Karen is always after me that my shoes are so ratty. I hate buying shoes. I'd rather spend the money on Tiki mugs. I bought a $15.00 pair of brown dress shoes to wear for my presentation. The next day for my birthday I got a pair of new casual shoes and 2 new pairs of deck shoes; one white and one blue. I got 4 new pairs of shoes within 24 hours and previous to that I probably hadn't gotten 4 new pairs of shoes total in the last 2 years. My brother Paul and his wife Sam got me a mirror for the Tiki room. It's nice and I like it. After work my parents came over and we went out to dinner for my birthday. It was my Mom and Dad, Karen, Robert, and Michael. Adison couldn't go because she was working. We went to Delmonico's and it was a nice dinner. I had a nice day for my birthday.

2007/06/06 07:15 It's Wednesday morning and it's hump day. Half way through the week. I've been busy working on other parts of the website and I've neglected to write anything here. Had a good weekend. Karen and I went to the Taste of Syracuse Saturday night. It was a beautiful night for it. The whole premise of the festival is that local restaurants have tents set up where they offer a sample of their food for a dollar. They also sell full entrees but you can wander around all night eating a little of everything for a dollar at each place. It is a fun time. I always look for the Jerk Hut. They have this awesome Jerk chicken. It's really hot and spicy. A lot of hot food is just painful. The chicken from the Jerk Hut is hot and flavorful. I eat at the Jerk Hut twice a year. Once at the Taste of Syracuse and once at the NY State Fair. I was always going to visit the Jerk Hut at their restaurant location but I was afraid I'd be the only white boy there. Then last week I think someone got shot in the parking lot. Karen says I should go and just get take-out. We ran into Pete and Leslie who we hadn't seen in a long time. Pete is Adison's godfather. We went to Clark's Ale House in Armory Square where we could sit and talk. Adison was working that night but she had the car. We called and told her we were with Pete and Leslie and when she got out of work she came downtown and met us at Clark's. Sunday morning we went to the AIDs walk. We gave Scott Hayes a ride to the AIDs walk and he walked with us. Karen called him before we went to pick him up because when we made the plans at the Blue Tusk he had just fnished two bottles of wine and Karen was afraid he might not remember the plans. He did. I wanted to get coffee before we went to the AIDs walk. I tried to get Adison up but she just wouldn't budge. Scott lives in the Westcott section of Syracuse and I stopped at Mom's Diner for coffee. Never been there. Mom is an immigrant, or at least that's my guess because I don't think that English is her native tongue. I couldn't place her accent. Middle Eastern somewhere was my guess. I just got coffee for myself and an orange juice for Scott to go. They were very very friendly at Mom's Diner. I think I'm going to have to go back there for breakfast some morning. I'll try to drag Adison out of bed. They had a sign that said one of their specials was Eggs Benedict. That's one of my favorites and it's hard to find someplace that does it right. I'll give Mom's Diner a try. When I worked in the restaurant business 25 years ago we made an awesome Eggs Benedict. The cooks used to hate it. They used to hate making it. It was so funny how mad they would get at the waiters bringing in the order like it was the waiter that was responsible. It's a hard dish to prepare when you've got other stuff on the line. You have to time the poached eggs and the hollandaise just right. The AIDs walk was at Beaver Lake Nature Center. It was a hot day but the walk was through the woods and around the lake. It was a lovely morning and the trees gave shade and there was a pleasant breeze off the lake. On the walk I was thinking of my friend Timmy. When I was probably about 23 or 24 years old I started working in a trendy restaurant downtown. Actually the trendiest restaurant in the area at the time. I had never known anyone that was gay and then I started working in a restaurant as part of the waitstaff where I was one of the only guys that wasn't gay. It was a different experience for me. I got to be good friends with Timmy. I used to joke that I was the only waiter in the restaurant. Everyone was something else, no one was a waiter, it was just something temporary. I worked with actors, dancers, writers, musicians, and artists. Timmy was an antiques dealer. And he was good at it. His niche was toys. I learned a lot from him. He used to tell me that you made the money in the buying. If you paid too much for something you'd never make a profit. And he had a client base. He never bought something if he didn't already have in mind which of his collectors was going to buy the item from him. One time there was an item he wanted but the seller had the items in a lot. In the lot with the item he wanted were some racist toys from the 30s. He bought the lot and then felt he had to sell the other items in order to turn a proper profit. He didn't feel right about selling the racist items. He ended up finding a new client and selling the item to him. The collector was an African-American who collected racist toys for an historical perspective. Tim felt that was okay. It opened a whole new market for Timmy. I remember after we'd been friends for awhile it was his birthday and Carolyn, a girl that we worked with, asked me to go to the Bunkhouse for Tim's birthday. The Bunkhouse was a gay bar downtown. I'd never been to a gay bar. I told Carolyn I didn't think I'd go. She gave me a hard time about not going and finally I said okay but only if I could keep my hand on her ass all night just so there would be no confusion as to my orientation. She bought it and so I went. There was a night that I went to a party after work and I had way too much to drink. I woke up with a terrible headache and I didn't know where I was. I did know I was in the most comfortable bed I'd ever been in under a comfy down comforter. The room was very neat and very well decorated. I got up, looked around, and found out I was in Tim's apartment. He had seen what bad shape I was in the night before and he looked out for me and he took me home and he put me to bed. He had slept on the couch. I remember when his Dad died and I went to the wake. I found out at the wake thet his Dad had been a NY State Trooper. Not a profession that you would expect to find people that are tolerant of different lifestyles, at least that was the case in the early 80s. I never talked with Tim about his Dad but I always hoped that he had accepted Tim for who he was. After the AIDs walk, that Sunday afternoon, we went to the Hardy's for Matt's graduation party. He graduated from high school at CBA and will be going, I think, to the University of Rochester.

2007/06/08 06:45 It's another Friday morning. Here comes the weekend! I'm going to take a half day vacation today. Can't wait. This weekend will be my last weekend as a forty something person. Next weekend I'll be fifty years old. Wow. I reserved a house for summer vacation last night. We will have a house on the Outer Banks in North Carolina the first full week in August. I'm looking forward to that. I have big plans for this weekend. There is a lot of stuff that I want to accomplish.

2007/06/02 07:15 I woke up at 5:00 AM this morning. Didn't go back to sleep. I've been up since 5:00 AM. Last night after work I came home and picked up Karen and we went to the Blue Tusk for happy hour. It was fun. We walked through the Taste of Syracuse but we didn't stop to get anything to eat. Trevor and Michelle showed up at the Blue Tusk. Michelle was wearing a low cut top. Scott Hayes said, "Michelle, I see you decided to let the girls out to play." Scott was in the process of finishing two bottles of wine by himself. He's also gay. It was pretty funny. He said, "I can get away with saying stuff like that. You all were thinking it but couldn't say it."

2007/05/28 23:45 Memorial Day is over. Memorial Day weekend for 2007 is one for the record books now. It wasn't a great Memorial Day but it wasn't too bad either. The only thing I wanted to do this weekend was the stamping in my Tiki lounge. Didn't get to that. My Dad came over and we got most of the soffit done on the shed. We'll finish the rest of the soffit next weekend and then put on the fascia. Then we'll need to do the siding and make new doors and the shed will be complete and will be squirrel proof. It's back to work in the morning. Michael has two more weeks of school and then 3 regents exams. Then he's done for the summer. Adison took the car to visit her friend Amanda. She was gone for 3 days. She came back tonight and got on the Thruway with .73 cents which wasn't enough to pay her $1.10 toll. She pulled over to scrounge for change and the NY State Troopers came to investigate. She got totally rattled and ended up going to the tollbooth in tears and practically hysterical and the woman in the tollbooth paid her toll. Nineteen years old and the first time with the car. Karen and I were visiting friends last night and I was telling them about the cashier asking if Adison and I were brother and sister or husband and wife. Karen said that the reason people mistake Adison for my wife is becasue of the way she treats me. She doesn't treat me with respect and she bitches at me so people think she's my wife. Huh? My wife says if a woman doesn't treat me with respect and bitches at me then they're going to be mistaken for her? It's getting late and I've got to get some sleep. I'm really tired today. I hate not knowing if I'm really tired or if it's the medication making me tired.

2007/05/30 07:45 Today is Wednesday. What with it being a short week and all today is already hump day. Cool. I started cleaning out the garage last night. I've got a lot of projects that I want to get working on and I need the space to work. So the first order of business is cleaning the garage and organizing my tools. We had Chinese food for dinner last night and I broke a tooth. Actually I think it's just the filling came out. It's the tooth that the dentist wants to put a crown on. I've been putting it off until I had the money. It's going to end up being an emergency if I don't do it soon. It's amazing how disconcerting something as small as a tooth can be.

2007/05/30 23:30 I learned the most interesting thing on NPR today on the way home from work. Once in a blue moon. You may think you know where that expression comes from but most likely you'd be wrong. In 1946 Sky and Telescope magazine printed an incorrect item. They reported that a "blue moon" was the second full moon in a month. It has been reported incorrectly since then so many times that it has become accepted that that's the definition. It's not. A "blue moon" is actually the 4th full moon in a season. Each season typically has 3 full moons. And each moon has a name. For example "Snow Moon" and "Harvest Moon". On the rare occasion that there's a 4th full moon in a season that full moon doesn't have a name - hence the "blue moon". Today was hump day. I have to work 2 more days and then it's the weekend again. That's sweet!

2007/06/01 06:45 It's the first day of June. Summer is here. Sweet. The weather has been great the last couple of days. I hope it's as nice for the weekend. This weekend is the Taste of Syracuse festival which is held downtown. That's always a good time.

2007/05/26 11:00 I'm back from doing the trash thing this morning. We went to the trash plant in Jamesville earlier than usual because Karen had to work today. The big news in my universe is that my daughter got her drivers license yesterday. That's kind of scary. I hope my daughter doesn't read that. Actually, she'd be the first to admit she's not the best driver and she actually seems to take that into account and is very careful. I just worry about her. My Dad is coming over this afternoon and we're going to work on my shed. We never finished the siding on it and that's what allowed it to become the squirrel playhouse and winter retreat that I had to clean up from last weekend. Hopefully the shed will be squirrel proof for next winter. I started a new page on my website yesterday. I'm going to put all my Coco Joe's stuff on that page. I'm hoping over this weekend I can actually start doing some of the stamping for the faux tapa paint effect I'm attempting in the Tiki lounge. I'm still thinking that sometime after my birthday I'll start sharing my website. Maybe in July, or August. I might wait until I get back from vacation in August.

2007/05/27 00:25 posted on TikiCentral - What made you happy today? Music. Music made me happy today. It frequently does. About a month ago Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died. For his obituary piece on NPR they played clips from interviews he had given on the radio over the years. A couple of years ago he said, "Let his epitaph be that all he needed to prove the existence of God was music." It's Memorial Day weekend and things weren't going quite the way I wanted them to. I was feeling sorry for myself. I started a fire in my Tiki Fire Bowl and turned up the stereo. If I had to pick the best song ever recorded live I would pick "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin off the album "The Song Remains the Same". John Bonham's syncopated drum beats, John Paul Jones providing the bottom with the pedal bass, and Jimmy Page's soulful guitar. What a great piece of music. And my dog was there. Everybody in the world can think you're an asshole but your dog is still gonna want to sit with you and hang with you. Man's best friend. So, I've got the fire, and the music, and my dog, and things don't seem so bad. Made me happy. I had a couple of cocktails too. The day ended okay.

2007/05/28 08:30 It's Memorial Day. It's been a nice weekend. I got some work done yesterday before it rained. I worked on the shed I'm building for Karen. She wanted a gardening shed and so I've been building her one. Started it last year. I was accused by Karen of building her a "palace" and not the shed she wanted. I guess it's too nice. Karen came out yesterday and helped work on the shed. The inside is now done except for some shelves. I need to make the door and finish up some stuff on the outside. It is a nice shed. My neighbor says, "if your wife gets really mad at you for something you might end up sleeping in the shed. You're a wise man to make the shed so nice." I was reading Entertainment Weekly last night and they have a section called Soundbites which is quotes from TV shows the previous week. This weeks issue had a quote from the Gilmore Girls, which I don't watch. Emily says to her husband, Richard, as he begins to wax sentimental about his daughter, " Oh, please don't become one of those 'I had a heart attack, let me express my every thought' types". That's funny. I wonder if that's me? I do find I need to talk about things more since I had the heart attack. Doesn't seem to work as well keeping everything bottled up inside of me anymore. I don't really care if that annoys people. C'est la vie. I have two sheds. My Dad is coming over today and he's going to help me work on the first shed. That one is not done either. That's the one that was squirrel party central this last winter. Karen was complaining that her shed has too large a step up to get inside. I didn't dare tell her that I'm building a small deck on the front of the shed and then putting a small brick patio below that. If she thinks it's too nice now I guess I'm going to be in real trouble. I may end up sleeping out there yet.

2007/05/25 07:00 It's Friday once again. This is a Friday before a long weekend. Those are special Fridays. And I have a half day vacation today. Today truly is 'Special Day'. I stole that from Tiki Bar TV. Lala didn't have a mug for her cocktail and it was 'Special Day'. That's from the episode "Snake".

2007/05/24 07:45 Yesterday morning I had my alarm set for 5:00 AM. I had to get up early because I was doing a presentation about the project I've been working on for the last three years at a customer meeting in Oswego. I must have been a little more nervous about getting up for it than I thought because I woke up at 4:30 AM. Lately it seems that it doesn't matter what time I set my alarm because I'm going to wake up about a half hour before the alarm goes off anyways. I was taking a shower to get ready for the day and in my shower there are about a thousand bottles of stuff on the shelf. I live with two women, my wife and my daughter, and probably most guys would agree that it seems women need a lot of bottles of stuff in the shower. Anyways, you have to be careful showering because if you turn around wrong you send a whole bunch of bottles cascading onto your feet. That happened yesterday but one of the bottles was a can. A can of what I can't say for sure but it cut my foot. I had a hard time stopping the blood flow. I guess I have to be concerned about bleeding because of the medications I'm on. My cardiologist gave me some medical advice which was, "try to avoid car accidents". Seems I'm more likely to bleed out in a car accident now. It's a good thing she mentioned that because I had been thinking it had been awhile since I was in a fiery car crash and maybe that would be fun. So, I was in the shower trying to stop the blood flow. I didn't want to put on my socks and shoes and then be bleeding in my shoe while I was making my presentation. I made it to Oswego and gave my little talk at the conference room in the Econo Lodge by the river. I'd never been in that hotel and it was actually quite nice. The bar and restaurant is nicely appointed and has a beautiful view looking over the river. When the meeting was over I went to lunch with some of the people from my company that were there. We went to Rudy's for fish sandwiches and our vice president Melanie bought lunch. I think she's nice and she's very supportive of the project I've been working on. Lunch was nice. After work Adison and I went to Wegmans to get something for dinner before the "Lost" season finale. A funny thing happened when we were checking out. I should start by explaining something that happened three years ago. Adison was going to Costa Rica for 7 weeks over the summer. She wanted to brush up on her Spanish and wanted to take a conversational Spanish class at the local Adult Education school co-operative. The co-op doesn't allow children under the age of 18 to take adult ed classes unless they're accompanied by an adult. I said I would take the class with her. So once a week at night we went to this class in conversational Spanish. The teacher was an ex nun. She had spent her "nun" years in South America. She was pretty funny but she seemed kind of racist for a nun. She told us in one class if we went to South America not to eat any food that grew below waist level, like strawberries for example, because the men in South American countries piss on everything like dogs. Seriously, that's what she said. Well, anyways about 6 weeks into the class she asked me a question and then referred to my wife. Adison, as a then 16 year old girl, was completely grossed out that someone could mistake her father for her husband. I joked that it was just because I am such a young looking guy. Secretly I was kind of flattered that anyone could think I had a young "trophy" wife. Of course I think the whole point of a guy having a "trophy" wife is that he's made it, is now a huge success, and has got lots of cash. Then he 'trades up' to a younger wife. So you actually have to have a pot to piss in at the very least in order to attract a "trophy" wife. I wouldn't qualify. Not that I'm looking. I'm quite comfortable with the wife I have. The wife I have is 'predisastered'. It's like Garp in "The World According to Garp" when he buys the house after it's been hit by the plane. After being with someone for so many years and having gone through so much, both good and bad, I don't see how you could give that history up. I've caused my wife a lot of pain and suffering, all of it unintentional, and she's still stood by me and continues to stand by me. Why would any man give that up? To get back to the original story, Adison and I were checking out at Wegmans. We were bickering. Adison said I should buy more bags because I only had one bag with me. I explained that I had two more bags at home that I had just forgotten to put in the car. The cashier asked, "Are you two brother and sister or husband and wife?" I must look like I'm about 30 something? That's what I think. Adison says the cashier is just a major flake. We went home and watched "Lost". The season finale of "Lost" was awesome. Easily the best season finale of the year. It edged out the season finale for "Battlestar Galactica". At least both those shows are coming back. I got burned a couple of times this season. Started watching "Vanished". Canceled. No they're not going to show all the shows they made. Started watching "Daybreak". Canceled. No they're not going to finish showing the shows they've already made. Started watching "Jericho". Canceled. It's probably better to wait and just watch stuff on DVD. I don't pay for HBO and I still watch stuff like the "Sopranos" I just wait for it to come out on DVD.

2007/05/20 00:30 It was a full day. After I got back from the Race for the Cure I cleaned out my shed. What a mess. A whole lot of squirrels spent the winter in my shed. I have a dog, 2 cats, and now a guinea pig living under my roof. My daughter brought home a guinea pig from college. Someone had abandoned it in the hallway of the dorm and my daughter adopted him. His name is Steve Irwin. My daughter named him for the Crocodile Hunter. She was a big fan. Steve has a cage and my daughter puts bedding in the cage and Steve poops and pees in the bedding. Once a week or so, I don't really know how often, my daughter changes Steve's bedding. When she's late cleaning his cage you can smell it. Sometimes when it's time to change Steve's bedding she just lights incense instead. But that's getting into a different story. Anyways, imagine a cage 10 feet by 12 feet filled with god knows how many squirrels and it hasn't been changed all winter. That was my shed. One of the most disgusting jobs I've ever done. These squirrels pooped and pissed on everything. Everytime I thought it can't get more disgusting than this - it did. Everything was sticky with dried squirrel urine on it. The smell was really something. I thought the absolute worst was going to be my finding a deceased squirrel in some stage of decompostion. Luckily I was spared the ultimate in disgustingness - no dead squirrels. Have you ever been to Bass Pro Shops and seen the towel or shirt or whatever that says, "the worst day fishing is better than the best day at work"? I spent 6 solid hours cleaning up squirrel excrement and, compared to work, it's all good. How sad is that? My wife says I'm the most pathetic man in the world. I don't like my job and I hope I can keep it. Actually I like what I do at work I just don't like being underappreciated. I'm just hanging out for the buyout. If it comes. Don't think I'll make it to retirement. After I was done cleaning the shed I cooked some pork on the bar-b-que and I had a fire in the Tiki Fire Bowl. One of my best fires ever. I had Heart "Dog and Butterfly" on the stereo, a great fire, and for about a half hour or so I think I achieved an almost total state of complete peace and contentment. That album, "Dog and Butterfly" by Heart is some of my most favorite music. It's really spoken to me over the years. I put my head back tonight, felt the warmth of the fire, and looked up into the sky. There wasn't a star to be seen. It was totally overcast and the clouds made everything a dull gray. I felt I was looking at a sky that could be anywhere or anytime. I'm sure there were nights a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago that looked the same. For me, it doesn't get much better than today.

2007/05/20 22:30 The weekend comes to an end. Sunday night and it's all over. Adison and I went for coffee this morning at Freedom of Espresso. After that we went to Wegmans to get a few things including the morning paper. I was telling Adison about the seagull pooping on me Friday after work. At the time the seagull paid me a visit I just thought it was some bad mojo. It wasn't until I was telling Adison about the incident that I realized the seagull poop was a harbinger of things to come. I did spend the weekend with squirrel poop. Coincidence? I don't think so. That was some mystical stuff. Or not. Maybe it was just a bird pooping on me. It's always the same for me on Sunday night. Looking back I just didn't get everything I wanted to do squeezed into the weekend. But, there's always next weekend. I think when I can't look forward to the next weekend it's time to pack it in.

2007/05/21 22:30 I took an hour vacation today to go to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. There should be a word other than vacation for when you use vacation time to do something that's very unvacation like. No one would sit in the DMV for pleasure. I was there for two hours so I could stand at the window for two minutes and get my registration. It's chilly tonight. It's supposed to be in the 80's if not tomorrow then Wednesday. I hope the nice weather lasts through the long weekend. Memorial Day weekend is this weekend coming up.

It was a nice day for a walk. We walked just over 3 miles. This morning before the walk I was on the computer and I went to my MySpace site. I still have zero friends. Actually, I could have had 2 friends. I had 2 people request to be my friend. They were Alexa and Myra. I found out Alexa only wanted to be my friend because she thought she could make my penis larger. I don't want to be objectified and have someone that only wants to be my friend for parts of me so I said no to being Alexa's friend. Myra was a little different. She's been reading what I wrote on MySpace for the last 2 weeks and based on that she has a crush on me. Now, considering that I only wrote 2 sentences on MySpace and it took her several weeks to read them I figure she is, how do you say it politely?, mentally challenged. Aside from the fact that she's mentally challenged what I wrote on MySpace was about the weather so she must be incredibly shallow as well. I decided not to be Myra's friend. So, as of this morning, on MySpace, I still have zero friends.

Karen and I have been going to the Race for the Cure for a couple of years now. Every year it gets larger and larger. This year was a record turnout. Karen wears the name of a college friend that is a survivor.

2007/05/18 19:45 It's Friday and it's the weekend. About time! I left work today and I was walking to my car and I was thinking it wasn't too bad a day. Not great but not too bad either. I thought to myself things could certainly be worse. Then out of nowhere I got hit. Pow. At first I thought someone had thrown something at me or maybe I had been shot. I felt a wetness on my arm and I instinctively checked for blood. I wasn't injured I was just covered in seagull poop. I took that as some bad mojo. I came home and mowed most of the lawn. I figured if I got most of the lawn done today then I'll have more time tomorrow to do what I really want to. I've got a gin 'n tonic going and I've got Giada De Laurentiis on the TIVO. She is so hot. I could watch her cook for hours. I find watching the food network extremely relaxing. And Giada is so hot.

2007/05/19 12:35 Karen and I just got back from the Race for the Cure walk for breast cancer research and awareness. It was an absolutely beautiful day for it.

2007/05/07 07:00 It's another Monday morning and there is much sadness. Time to start another week at work. The weather was nice this weekend that has just passed. Overall not a bad weekend but not a great weekend either. There's always next weekend. I started cutting the styrofoam for the stamps I'm making for the faux tapa paint effect I'm going to attempt in the Tiki lounge. I ripped some old plywood I had that I'm going to use for the blocks the stamps will go on. I bought the styrofoam glue to glue the stamps to the blocks. I bought the paint for the border. I need to cut the plywood strips to length to make the blocks. I need to glue the styrofoam to the blocks. I need to mark out the border and paint the undercoat. I'm close to getting all that done.

2007/05/09 07:45 It's Wednesday and it's hump day. Half way through the work week. The weather has been beautiful. I've got to put down some grass seed after work today. There is so much that needs to be done and so little time.

2007/05/12 08:45 It's Saturday morning. It's Saturday and it's May 12th. Exactly one month from now I will be 50 years old. I didn't see that coming. It snuck up on me from out of nowhere and 'bang' I'm 50 years old. I had to trim my beard this last week. It was getting kind of long and straggly and it had, has, a fair amount of grey streaks in it. I was at the gym and when I was walking past the basketball courts I could hear the young kids that play there making fun of me. They were implying that I bore some resemblance to Saddam Hussein. The wild and crazy looking Saddam that they pulled out of the spider hole. Definitely time for a trim. I can't spend too much time writing this morning. I can't spend as much time writing as I'd like to. I've got a lot to do today. To quote that American classic "Smokey and the Bandit" "We've got a long ways to go and a short time to get there". Makes me remember I was watching "My Name is Earl" a couple of weeks ago. Burt Reynolds was a character on the show and Norm McDonald was playing a character that was the son of the Burt Reynolds character. So, Norm was doing a Burt Reynolds impression to play his character. Now that's some funny stuff. It was like in the Austin Powers movie and they went back in time and Rob Lowe did a Robert Wagner impression to play a younger version of the Robert Wagner character. That's some funny stuff. Well, I have to get moving. Time marches on. Time waits for no one. We are all just travelers of both time and space.

2007/05/17 07:30 It's Thursday morning. One more day until the weekend. I can't wait. I've been working a little here and there on the faux tapa paint effect for the Tiki lounge. I have got most of the undercoat for the border painted. I'm going to try and finish that today after work. I need to assemble the stamps and then start the more 'artistic' part. I'd like to finish the stamping this weekend. Last night was the next to last episode of "Lost" for the season. Now we have to wait a whole week for the 2 hour season finale. Adison and I agreed that last week's episode was so good that it could have been the season finale. The best season finale I've seen lately was "Battlestar Galactica". Their use of "All Along the Watchtower" was awesome and it fit so well. I'd like to get a recording of that version. Most people think of Jimi Hendrix when they hear that song. I've got a great version by Dave Mason. Whoever did the version for "Battlestar" it was very nicely done and fit what was happening in the show. I was making dinner last night and Karen and Robert went to Kinkos. I wanted to know what time they were coming back before I put the garlic bread in the oven. I called Karen's cell phone and it rang in the living room. She had left it home. I picked up her cell phone and went through her listings looking for Robert's cell phone number, which I don't have on my cell phone. I found a listing for 'Rob's cell phone' and I called that. There was no answer. I didn't realize I had called Rob Barne's cell phone. A couple of minutes later Rob Barnes called back to Karen's cell phone. Adison answered the phone, saw 'Rob's cell phone' on the display, assumed it was her brother, and said "Where the hell are you. I'm hungry." And Rob said, "Who is this?" It was all pretty funny but maybe you had to be there. I have to work today and tomorrow. Then I have the weekend off. Next week I have the Friday off before Memorial day which gives me a 4 day weekend. Excellent.

2007/05/06 08:30 It's a beautiful Sunday morning. I haven't been writing much lately. The weather has been so nice I've been getting out and doing some stuff. Spent a lot of time at the gym this last week. Went on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, skipped Thursday, went Friday and Saturday. I'm planning on going later today also. I read an article in Newsweek on exercise bulimia. It's the new disorder of choice among many co-eds in college. I guess it's so bad that some colleges have installed software to monitor how much time you spend on the treadmill or on the stairmaster. You have a card with a chip in it and then you have to scan it before the treadmill will turn on. I figure after the trip to the gym today I will have spent about 8 to 10 hours on the bike, treadmill, and stairmaster this week. It's like a part time job. Lucky for me no one's going to accuse me of an eating disorder. Eating too much maybe. I shouldn't make light of it, I know. Some years back when my daughter was a teen I spent several years coaching girl's soccer. I had a girl on the team that was a track phenom. She could run. She could also eat. She packed it away like a lumberjack. Actually a couple of lumberjacks. I figure her metabolism had to be working like a blast furnace. We were playing in a tournament and she was hungry between games so I took her to McDonalds and she had 2 meals. She told me she usually had 2 lunches at school. I asked her how she managed that because I knew for a fact the school cafeteria wouldn't sell 2 meals to anyone. She laughed and said, "There's always some anorexic girl that's not going to eat her lunch."

2007/05/02 23:00 Mark Twain said that a banker is someone that will lend you an umbrella on a bright sunny day and then ask for it back at the first sign of rain. I'm not fond of banks and bankers today.

2007/04/29 20:00 posted on TikiCentral I'm a guy and I hate buying cars. I bought a Saturn the 2nd year they were out because the price was what it was. No haggling. Drove it for 10 years and then bought a new Saturn Ion. Had the new Ion for 6 months and my teenage son totaled it. Drove through a telephone pole. I went to the crash scene and every single door on the car still worked perfectly after shearing off a pole and having the pole crash on the roof of the car. My son walked away wothout a scratch. He was wearing his seatbelt. The insurance paid off the car loan and I got a check for $32.00. Goodbye $5,000.00 down payment. I went back to Saturn and said your car saved my son's life I'll take another one but I don't have any money left. So, they sold me a used Saturn. An S car. Well, they called the next day and said the financing won't go through because there's not enough equity in the car. But we really want you to have a Saturn and so we're going to give you a better car, an L series, one year newer and less mileage for the same price. They said we'll bring it over to your house. I said, "Send it." I called my wife and she said, "What color is it?" I don't know what color it is I bought it over the phone.

2007/04/27 18:45 TGIF baby! TGIF. It's a rainy April afternoon. Nothing wrong with that. April showers bring May flowers and all that good stuff. It's the weekend. I was so tired at work today around 2:00 PM or so. Seemed like the day was never going to end. But it did end and now it's the weekend. I've been looking forward to this. Sometimes I feel bad that I build up my expectations so high that a let down seems almost inevitable. Still, I can't help myself. It's the weekend. TGIF baby! TGIF.

2007/04/28 08:30 Well, it's another beautiful Saturday morning. The day is so filled with promise. I love mornings. The day lies ahead and it's perfect. A day as yet uncorrupted by reality. Everyday will be what you make of it. What is on the agenda for today? When Karen gets up we're going to take the trash and recyclables to Jamesville. After that I don't think I have any obligations. I want to start working on the faux tapa paint effect I'm going to attempt in the Tiki room. Got some cleaning up to do. If it doesn't rain I'm going to cut up some of the scrap wood I've got in the back that will be burned in the Tiki Fire Bowl. A little puttering around, this and that. Doesn't take much to fill a day. Karen and I are going to meet Sean and Tina for coffee tonight at Barnes & Noble. I'm getting ready to start working on s short story. I have 2 novels and a screenplay in process but lately I've been thinking I should start something on a more modest scale. Something I can finish sooner. I'm going to write a short story and actually see if I can get it published. When I tell my therapist that I want to do something she says, "Why don't you?" I need to try stuff and if I fail then I fail. Although I don't think I am as afraid of failure as I am of success. Change seems to scare me. If I try something different and I'm successful then things would change and that is probably what I fear the most. My therapist says I'm comfortable even in the things that make me unhappy. There is a comfort level in the familiar. Better the enemy you know than the scary beast hiding in the dark, right?

2007/04/28 09:30 The human condition. Does anyone really know what that is? I mean I know what I'm thinking. I know what my thoughts are. I don't know what anyone else is thinking. No one. I might know what people tell me they're thinking but that's not what they're really thinking, is it? Everyone has masks they wear for different people and different audiences. We don't let everyone see the real us. Do we let anyone see the real us? If I let people see who I really am then no one is going to like me. Is that true? Does anyone think that? Does anyone think that sometimes? Or all the time? If you don't really know what anyone else is thinking then how do you know if anything you're thinking is normal? Does it matter?

2007/04/29 10:00 The older I get the better I was. I have a t-shirt that says that. It's pretty funny. Probably some truth there. When I was in college I wrote a paper for a class. I don't have a copy of the paper. I wish I did. In my memory it's the best thing I've ever written. In my memory it has reached a kind of mythic proportion. I wonder if it was really as good as I remember. The assignment was to compare and contrast two films. Writing themes about literature would be the usual assignment but this was substituting film for literature. I strayed somewhat from the assignment because I chose 3 films. "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", "A Clockwork Orange", and "Quadrophenia." My professor, who wasn't known for saying nice things if they weren't warranted, said that my choice of films was truly inspired and that the paper was one of the best he had read in his entire time teaching. Memory is a funny thing. We tend to idealize the past. We have a word for it; nostalgia. Pain doesn't get remembered the same way. Pain fades from memory. It's raining more today than it was yesterday. It's a kind of melancholy rain.

2007/04/26 22:30 I've been thinking about my doctors appointment all day. I'm not going to drop dead suddenly. No matter what trials and tribulations I might have going on in my life I'm not going to drop dead suddenly. I've got that going for me. I should have asked my doctor if that means I'm going to linger and be a burden? That's cool. Healthcare now is all about numbers. Blood pressure, weight, heart rate, cholesterol, etc. My blood pressure and my heart rate are right where they are supposed to be. I need to work on my weight and my cholesterol. I've been slacking off on my weight loss program and now it's time to get started losing weight again. I really want to be under 200 pounds by my birthday in June. That's a plan.

2007/04/25 23:15 I am 49 years old and I had a heart attack this last August. Here's an interesting statistic. The half life of the American male is 50. What that statistic says is that half of the male children born in the USA will die before the age of 50. I almost ended up on the wrong side of that statistic. I guess I'm not out of the woods quite yet. I have a few months to go. Of course the flip side is that if you make it to 50 then statistically you have a really good chance of making it into your 70s or 80s. When I had the heart attack I weighed 245 pounds. That's the most I have ever weighed in my entire life. The goal I set for myself was to get down to between 180 and 190 pounds. The doctor didn't give me any specific weight goal. By Christmas I had lost 35 pounds. There was some backsliding during the holidays and so I'm now carrying around about 10 extra pounds of Christmas cookies. I haven't had a beer since I had the heart attack. Karen says I'm scared. She doesn't understand that I could never be scared of a beer. Well, that's not entirely true, I do find Bud lights kind of terrifying but then again I don't really count those as "beers". I haven't had a beer because I said I wouldn't have a beer until I lost 45 pounds. That was to be my incentive. Incentive is not the correct word. Almost dying would be the incentive. Beer would be the reward. I didn't think it would take me this long to lose the 45 pounds. I do miss my Bass Ale. I had a friend of mine that died during a stress test years ago and I think about him from time to time. He was an English professor at LeMoyne College. He used to come in to see me when I was bartending at McGroartys'. He came in on a regular basis. We had some pretty good discussions. He was a self proclaimed fan of the "back street ballet" as he used to put it. He would go to one of the clubs, the Alpine I believe, once a week or so. He used to stop into McGroartys' after that. We shared an appreciation of Bass Ale. I alerted him to an article in Esquire magazine about Bass Ale and the British army. It seems that the officers in the early days of the British empire, which were a privileged class, used to divide foreign postings into those with Bass Ale and those without. You didn't have as much rank or privilege if you got posted with no access to Bass Ale. I brought the copy of the magazine into the bar and kept it there for the next time the professor came in. He brought an art book from the library with a painting he wanted to show me. He's the one that turned me onto the Manet painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere." In the painting, which is from 1882, the bottles of Bass Ale look very similar to those of today. The Bass Ale red triangle is the oldest licensed trademark in the world. Anyways, that's how our friendship started. He came in one night and it was two nights before he had a stress test scheduled. He confessed that he was very nervous about it. I didn't see him again and found out a couple of days later that he had died during the test.

2007/04/26 10:30 I went to see my cardiologist this morning. Her name is Dr. Alfaro-Franco. I like her. She's pretty frank. Pretty straightforward. The last time I saw her she didn't like where my heart rate was at. She increased my Toprol from 100 mg to 150 mg. She was pleased with the effect today and declared, "You're not going to drop dead suddenly." That's always good to know. Very reassuring. The Toprol regulates my heart rate and if I was to have something go wrong and my heart were to start beating really fast the Toprol would slow down the heart rate and allow it time to accumulate the blood it needs. Thus avoiding a heart attack I guess. One of the side effects is tiredness. I just thought I was depressed or had the blahs but maybe it is the medication. I also noticed at the gym that after upping my Toprol dose I can't get my heart rate up over 120 no matter how much I try. I can't run myself to death on the treadmill or stairmaster anymore. I think I'll still carry my Nitro pills just in case.

2007/04/24 23:00 I went bowling after work today. I haven't been bowling in a year at least. Haven't bowled since I was in the league with Michael. Robert wanted to go bowling. So, Karen, Robert, and I went bowling. I did pretty well. At least for me it was okay. I bowled a 140, a 124, and then a 131. I had a good time. After we were done bowling we went to Red Robin for dinner.

2007/04/25 07:45 This morning I'm feeling like my favorite song by Traffic; "Sometimes I feel so uninspired, sometimes I feel like giving up". Got a real bad case of the blahs. I need something to get me jump started. I can't blame it on the weather anymore because it's going to be another beautiful spring day. It's not going to be as warm as it was this past weekend but very nice indeed. I'm hoping after work I can get inspired to do something. Anything. Once I get going I know I'll build some momentum. It's Wednesday, hump day, and "Lost" is on tonight. Well, time to make the donuts.

2007/04/23 23:15 Mondays make me sad. I went back to work today. I didn't get anywhere near as much done over the weekend as I would have liked. I really look forward to going to get coffee with Adison on Sunday mornings. This past weekend she wouldn't get out of bed. I missed my Sunday morning coffee adventure. Now I will have to wait another whole week for the next chance. A pretty good thunderstorm rolled through the area tonight. The thunder was so loud at times that it shook the house.

2007/04/21 18:00 Karen and I went to the Heart Walk today. Last year at this time the Heart Walk would have been different. That's because last year at this time I wasn't a survivor of a heart attack and my Dad hadn't had open heart surgery. What a difference a day makes. The last time I saw my cardiologist she referred to me as having CAD. I asked, "What's that?" CAD is coronary artery disease. I have an initial disease. I don't mean to make light of it really. I tend to joke about it most likely as a coping mechanism. For anyone that hasn't heard my story here's an excerpt from my journal: 2006/08/19 04:30 I am writing this at 4:30 AM on the second floor of St. Joseph's Hospital cardiac wing. To tell this story properly I need to go back a year and a half or two years ago. At that time I had two friends, about my age, that had died from heart attacks. I was particularly sensitive to the fact that it was very important to report any symptoms of heart disease as early as possible. Waiting, or toughing it out, I knew could be fatal. So, about two years ago I had some chest pains at work. It was more a discomfort than pains but it was a feeling I didn't recognise so I went to my primary care physician. He referred me to a cardiologist and I went and had an echocardiogram stress test done. I ran on the treadmill and then a sonogram of my heart was done. At this point I was given a clean bill of health as far as my heart went. I next went to a gastroenterologist and was diagnosed with an ulcer. Recently it has been determined that a majority of ulcers are caused by a bacteria. Of course I had the stress induced variety. I was prescribed HCTZ for borderline high blood pressure, a statin for high cholesterol, and Prevacid for the ulcer. I also had an endoscopy done to fix a stricture in my esophagus and a colonoscopy. I was good to go. Over the next year and a half the stress in my life just kept increasing. It came on two fronts; both from work and at home from my oldest son Robert. This brings me up to Thursday morning August 17th at 6:30 AM. I woke up and was feeling fine. I was feeling a bit anxious about work perhaps but I was feeling fine. I started moving around, getting ready for work, when I felt a pain in the center of my chest. It lasted about ten minutes and then went away. I decided it was my ulcer acting up. About ten minutes later the pain came back. My wife Karen gave me four Tums antacid chewables and the pain went away. I told Karen I was fine and told her to go to work. She left for work and I got ready to take a shower. Before I could get in the shower the chest pains came back and this time I was having a hard time breathing. Also, I now had a pain in my left hand. This bothered me because I knew that one of the symptoms of a heart attack is a pain that radiates down your left arm. I called Karen, got her voicemeail, and left a message for her to come home and take me to the emergency room. As soon as I was done leaving the message the pain went away. I decided it was the ulcer but took an aspirin just in case. I figured it couldn't hurt. I got in the shower and felt fine. I figured when I got out of the shower I would call Karen and tell her to disregard the voicemail I had left. I got out of the shower and that's when the pain came back with a vengeance. Now, in addition to the chest pain, the pain in my hand, and the shortness of breath, I felt like I was going to throw up. I called Karen again and this time she answered the phone. I told her to come home and take me to the emergency room. I was waiting for Karen and now for the first time I started to think that I might die. The pain wasn't subsiding. I tried sitting. I tried lying down. I couldn't find any position that brought any kind of relief. For some reason that I don't recall I decided to start walking. I walked out to the end of our street and that's where Karen picked me up. She said, "Where do you want to go?" I was thinking St. Joe's, but at this point I wasn't sure I'd make it there. Karen suggested urgent care at the Dewitt North Medical Center and I said okay. So, that's where we went. Karen dropped me at the emergency room door and then went to park the car. Right from the start the nurses and the doctor at urgent care seemed the most concerned by how much I was sweating. I told the nurse I had just gotten out of the shower and that's probably why I was damp. "Oh honey," she said, " you don't look good." They laid me on a bed there and the pains went away. The chest pains I had then have never come back. I felt fine. They insisted I be transported to St. Joseph's Hospital and an ambulance was called. They did an EKG while we were waiting for the ambulance and everything looked fine. At this point I thought it was a false alarm. The doctor said better safe than sorry. He told me that a higher percentage of heart attacks are fatal at my age, late forties, because your body hasn't had time to develop "work arounds". When you are in your 70s or 80s and you've had blockages build up your body has had time to compensate with other vessels. When you are 49 you just die. They tried to start an IV but were having a lot of trouble. After sticking me 4 times with no luck the ambulance had arrived. They decided to let the EMT start the IV in the ambulance. The two people from the Fayetteville Fire Department ambulance put me in the back of the ambulance. They started the IV, first time, and put me on oxygen. I felt really stupid riding in the ambulance because at this point I felt completely fine. There was nothing wrong with me and I was wasting everybodies time. That's what I thought. At the St. Joseph's emergency room they did another EKG and they wanted to start a second IV. The nurse had a terrible time trying to start the second IV and after sticking me another three times she called an IV specialist. The specialist was able to get the second IV site established. The cardiologist came in to see me. He said I was not presenting as a heart attack. My EKG looked fine. The first blood test had come back fine. He said it was probably my ulcer but that they were going to keep me overnight for observation. He said on Friday they would give me a stress test and then depending on how that looked they might take me in for a heart catheterization. I told Karen to go back to work. She was missing lunch at Red Lobster with her co-workers. Karen decided to hang around a little longer. The doctor came back in and at that point everything changed. I guess something was now showing in my latest blood work. It was definite that I had had a heart attack. We were skipping the stress test and going directly to the heart catheterization and it was to be ASAP. Dr. Alfaro-Franco, who was going to do the the heart catheterization, came in to give me the odds and to get the consent forms signed. I didn't have much time to think about any of it. One in a thousand dies during the procedure. Three of every thousand lose a limb. I signed a consent form that said if they couldn't fix things with the heart catheterization they could crack me open and go to open heart surgery. On two occasions I've had lunch at Trappers Pizza Pub, played quick draw, and won enough to cover lunch and then some. The odds for that are more than a thousand to one. As I lie in the emergency room waiting for the procedure what kept popping into my mind was a scene from Taladega Nights. I had just recently seen the movie. The character Ricky Bobby, played by Will Farrell, is in the hospital after a car crash. He's lying in the bed and his wife and the doctor are standing at the foot of the bed. His wife says, "I know it's a hard decision to make but I've decided I want to pull the plug." The doctor says, "He's sleeping." The wife insists, "I want to pull the plug." "No," says the docotor, "He's just sleeping. He's not in a coma. There is no plug" I had to tell that to all the nurses. They wheeled me up to the catheterization lab. There were at least 7 people working on me and that's before the doctors got there. They were going into the femoral artery through the groin. A couple of the nurses were arguing over who was going to shave me. Apparently shaving my groin was one of the good jobs?? That's about the last thing I really remember from the cath lab. I wasn't under general anathesia but I wasn't feeling too much. Afterwards the doctor explained that I had definitely had a heart attack. There was damage to my heart. I had a 99% blockage in my front artery. She said the blockage I had is called the "widow maker." They were able to insert a stent and open up the blocked artery. The hardest part of the whole thing was the next six hours. For the heart catheterization they had gone in through my groin and the femoral artery. They plugged the site with collagen and a suture. You have to lie still, flat on your back, for six hours or risk popping open the wound site. Karen fed me that night like a little bird while I lay flat on my back. It must still be true love. Friday morning two undertakers came to my room. You could tell just by looking at them and the way they were dressed that they were morticians. I thought, "Gee, maybe the doctor didn't tell me everything." But, they were there to visit my roommate and not to measure me for a new wooden wardrobe. Apparently my roommate was buying a vintage car from these guys and they were up to make sure the deal was going to close. After they left my roommate called his wife and started screaming at her, "What the "F" is the matter with you sending "F'in" undertakers to the "F'in" cardiac wing." His wife had called 911 when he had chest pains against his will. It had turned out that he didn't have a heart attack or heart problems but had separated one of his ribs from his sternum while shoveling. His wife had spent ten hours sobbing hysterically and had called every possible person she could think of to tell them her husband had had a heart attack. Well, she and this motley crew came to visit him. Officially it wasn't visiting hours, this was around noon, and there were four of them. They were drinking, and they had brought beer, wine, and liquor to the hospital. They were getting pretty rowdy. It was entertaining listening to them discuss the various felonies they had committed including dressing up a 15 year old girl to look like her mother, feeding her valiums, and then sending her into the bank to forge her mothers signature and clean out her bank account. Part of a divorce settlement I assumed. His big concern was getting out of the hospital in time to make the bank in order to get the vintage car from the undertakers. Once they were gone several people from the hospital, of increasing rank, came to my room to apologise for the boorish behavior of my roommate. Apparently the hospital frowns on drinking and partying in the cardiac wing. I figured them to be some real lowlifes and so I was amused when one of the nurses told me that my roommate was the chief of police for a local municipality. The nurses told me once the IV was out I could get up and move around. They pulled the IV and so I decided to get up. I had electronic leads attached to my chest because I was on constant heart monitoring. I expected to be tethered to something but found out I was wireless. I could walk anywhere on the floor and I was still being monitored by a wireless connection. I bet they didn't have that a few years ago. That brings me up to early in the morning on Saturday the 19th. I couldn't sleep and I've walked down to the lounge where I am writing this. The moral of this tale is that there are really some marvels of modern medicine out there. But all of the wonderful medical technology we have is of no use if you don't go to the doctor. I am extremely lucky. Looking back on this I should have called 911 right from the start. I feel like I have a second lease on life and I plan to take full advantage of it. Everyone at St. Josephs has been absolutely wonderful. The nursing staff here is top notch. 2007/04/21 18:00 The walk this morning was at Long Branch park in Liverpool. It was an absolutely beautiful day for it.

2007/04/22 08:00 It's Sunday morning. Looks to be another beautiful day today. I didn't get as much done yesterday as I would have liked. Spent the morning at the Heart Walk. When Karen and I got back from the Heart Walk I took Adison bike shopping. We were successful and she got a new bike. That chewed up most of the afternoon. While we were waiting for the bike shop to make adjustments to the new bike Adison and I went to the Brooklyn Pickle for lunch. After we picked up the bike I dropped her at work and then took a short nap until it was time for Karen and I to go to a party. We went to the 'grand opening' of Tony and Jen's home bar.

That was a fun party. Last week the neighbors had some deliveries made by Home Depot. They got some garden sheds and they didn't want the pallets the sheds came on. I'm taking the pallets and I'm going to cut them up this morning so I can burn them in the Tiki Fire Bowl. After I get the scrap wood cleaned up I will get Adison up and we'll go for coffee. After that I'll come back and get Michael to take him to the show at the New York State Fairgrounds. It's going to be another busy day.

2007/04/21 07:00 I watched the film "Hidden Fortress" directed by Akira Kurosawa last night. Got it on Netflix. I really enjoyed that one. I don't think I ever saw the film before. There was a period in my life, back in the late 70s, that I was really into Japanese films. Back then there were no VHS tapes or DVDs so it was an effort to see Japanese films. I went to a lot of 'art house' theaters and then there was a great series of Japanese films that ran on PBS. There was commentary thet accompanied the PBS series of Japanese films and I feel I learned a lot about Japanese culture and history that way. I felt with the commentary I had a better understanding of and appreciation for the Japanese films. In Japan they were as fascinated by their feudal period, the samurai film, as we in America were fascinated by our period of western expansion and the 'western' film. I had long been a western fan before I got interested in the Japanese films. What I found fascinating also was the crossover or sharing of ideas. Most famously the great samurai film "The Seven Samurai" became the classic American western "The Magnificent Seven". As rumor has it George Lucas was inspired by the "Hidden Fortress" to make "Star Wars". I think you can learn a lot about a culture by viewing their popular entertainment. In much the same way I feel I learned a lot about English culture by watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus". I'm not saying you should replace reading history with popular entertainment but if you know history the popular entertainment fits into context. I have some more Japanese films in my Netflix queue.

All I needed was some raw meat to throw on the coals as the fire burned down. Except I was burning up the floor from a kitchen remodel job. Too many carcinogens. I'm going to have a salad for dinner.

Happy Spring to all.

The faithful beast was with me. My wife is off for a girls night out which left the beast and I to make fire. Man, beast, and fire. Nothing wrong with that. Primeval.

2007/04/19 23:30 I feel a lot better tonight than I did last night. I think the weather extremes were really messing with my sinuses. I came home sick yesterday. I lay down on the couch to watch some TV and it ended up I slept for 8 hours. I didn't have any trouble after that going to bed and sleeping another 8 hours. All that sleep I guess I needed it. The weather forecast is for a great weekend. The weather man on NPR said it should probably be at least a week or so before there's any more serious snow accumulations. The asswipe probably thinks he's funny. I am psyched to get some stuff done this weekend. We have some social engagements but even so I should be able to get some stuff done. I have a vacation day scheduled for tomorrow but I'll just take a half day. I'm looking forward to it.

2007/04/20 20:00 Happy Spring! Spring has finally arrived here in my land of sometime ice and snow. Today for me is the first day of spring. I haven't accepted the notion that spring is a date on the calendar for a long time. Spring never comes on the same day each year because Old Man Winter doesn't loosen his grip based on the calendar. When it's spring you just know it. There is a smell in the air that's different. It's fresh and it smells like Spring. Spring was a long time coming this year. Came later than usual. For those that don't live in a land that sleeps part of the year under a blanket of snow I don't think Spring has, or could have, the same importance. When I was a lad in college we celebrated Spring by blasting Robin Trower on the stereo and consuming beer while we stood outside in the sunshine. Today things for me are more subdued and more reflective. This year Spring is all the more exciting because it has been so late in coming. I honor the first day of Spring with my first fire of the year in my Tiki Fire Bowl. I stood outside by the fire today with a Dark and Stormy ( Gosling's Black Seal rum and ginger beer with a wedge of lime ) and gave thanks for Spring.

2007/04/19 07:00 Most of the snow from the April aberration has melted. I was sick yesterday. I think I was having sinus problems. I had a severe headache and it was making me sick to my stomach. I have a little bit of the headache left this morning. I need to go to the gym tonight and sit in the sauna for awhile. Dry these sinuses out. I've been working on this webpage for just over a month now. I started it on St Patrick's Day March 17th. At some point I'm going to want to make it public. I'd like to have enough done that I could start sharing it by June. That's a plan. We watched "Lost" last night. It definitely wouldn't be as much fun watching "Lost" without Adison. She really gets into it. I've got to go back to work today and catch up on what I got behind on yesterday.

The weatherman on NPR described it as "a tulip toppling, crocus crushing, April snow storm". Apparently we get an April storm like this about once every 25 years. The snow was very very heavy. Lots of water in the snow and later in the day the snow turned to rain. Lots of areas in the Northeast experienced flooding. On the news they said that Central Park in NYC got 7 inches of rain within an hour or two. It should warm up shortly and dry this all up but it's going to take awhile.

I don't believe that money can make you happy. I do believe that the lack of money can make you unhappy. And having the US Government unjustly taking your money can definitely drive you crazy. Adison and I had a nice talk at Freedom of Espresso over coffee and muffins. She said that I need to stop taking things so personally. Exactly. I take everything personally. Including the weather. This crappy weather is aimed at me and I just feel sorry for all the other people caught in the crossfire. I explained the faux tapa paint effect I want to do in the Tiki lounge and Adison said she'd help me with it. That's something I can look forward to.

2007/04/17 07:15 The Nor'easter came yesterday. It was nasty. We got about a foot of wet heavy snow.

2007/04/15 12:00 Adison and I just got back from Freedom of Espresso and from grocery shopping. I guess the snow this morning was not the Nor'easter which is still on its' way.

I decided last night that I'm going to try doing a faux tapa paint effect in the Tiki lounge using stamps. The first step is going to be making the stamps. I haven't decided if I'm going to use styrofoam or sponges to make the stamps. I can't really get started on too many projects in the Tiki lounge until the weather breaks. Because I have no heat in the Tiki lounge I really need nicer weather to work on any projects there. I can start on the stamps because I can do them inside. Last night Karen asked me, "Just what is it you do when you're on the computer?" I explained that I write in my journal, I work on my fiction, and that lately I've started working on a website. "What makes you think you're interesting enough to have a website?" If the truth is to be told I am probably pretty boring. But, I don't write for anybody except myself. I have no need of an audience. My fiction may never be done and I don't know if I'll ever share any of that with anyone. I'd probably be more apt to let someone read my journal but that's not going to happen any time soon either. What may see the light of day first would be the website. I don't get as personal or controversial here in these ramblings as I do in my journal and so I might actually put this out for people to see at some point. Or not.

2007/04/15 09:00 It's Sunday morning in the middle of April and we've got some snow on the ground. Not much. Looks like the Nor'easter missed us or hasn't gotten here yet. I'm going to try and get Adison up in a few minutes and we'll head over to Freedom of Espresso for coffee.

I've got plans to go out for coffee tomorrow morning with Adison. That's if I can get her up. Last weekend I had a hard time getting her going in the morning. I think we'll probably head to Freedom of Espresso and have coffee and a scone. That's if the Nor'easter don't get us first.

2007/04/13 18:20 Everybody's workin' for the weekend. The time between weekends seems to get longer. This week really dragged for me. I scratched off my lottery ticket today and I won two dollars. I'm going to reinvest it today, this Friday the 13th, in another lottery ticket. This could be my lucky day. The weather outside is really crappy. There's a good chance it's going to snow tonight.

2007/04/14 08:00 I love the weekends. It's Saturday morning and I've got a fresh pot of coffee and "This Old House" on the TIVO and so I'm all set. I didn't sleep very well last night. That's unusual for me. I woke up at around 4:00 AM and I was having some very disturbing nightmares. I very seldom remember my dreams. I hate the feeling right after you've had a really disturbing dream. You know it's not real but whatever it was, no matter how far out there it was, you know some part of it had to have been bouncing around in your brain. In my dream I was cremated alive. I went to a room where there were a few people waiting for me. They were in business suits and seemed to be people in authority. I emptied my pockets, turned in my personal items, and got into a coffin and I was pushed into the incinerator. Then I was standing in a line. There were other people waiting in the line with me. The same people in authority seemed to be running the show. Each person in line would empty their pockets and turn in their personal items. They would then fill out some paperwork and then be taken to a room that was flooded with water and they were drowned. When my turn came I filled out the paperwork and then entered the room and waited for the water. Next I was in an office with these same people in suits that had some kind of authority and I was being given a choice of how I wanted to die. I don't know what any of the other choices were but I picked dying of exposure in the desert. Then Karen came into the room and she had to die with me. Then I woke up. Wow. You always try to analyze your dreams. I suppose this one isn't too difficult. The guys in suits are the government; specifically the IRS. There was a Katrina survivor being interviewed on NPR this week. He said the scariest thing he can think of is having a man show up at your door who says, "I'm with the government and I'm here to help." Yeah, right, shut the door and bolt it. You know I'm right. I have to leave now to take the trash and recycling out to the OCRRA (Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency) trash burning plant and recovery center.

2007/04/14 23:30 On the six o'clock news tonight they suggested having flashlight batteries ready and having food and water in the house. Got to be ready for the big Nor'easter coming. Wind and snow and rain and snow and all headed this way. You have got to be kidding. I did go to the store and get some supplies. Used my new bags.

2007/04/11 21:30 "The time for a hero has long since passed." I once heard a man say those words in despair. He had had the chance to do the right thing and he let the oppurtunity pass. He let the responsibility pass. Too late the hero. It's not always easy to be the hero. Sometimes it is. I remember the first year my daughter was in girl scouts. There was a father daughter dance and I took her. The theme that year was a pajama party. The fathers and their daughters were to attend the dance in their pajamas. My wife made me a pair of pajamas especially for the occasion. They were bright green and had large Daffy Ducks on them. We went to the party and there were probably 100 girls there with 100 fathers. Do you know that I was the only father that showed up in pajamas? Not one other father showed wearing pajamas. My daughter and I won all the contests. We won best costume and best spirit and best whatever else they were giving out that night. The mothers that were there as chaperones looked at me like I was the biggest hero they'd seen in a very long time. My daughter was so happy. It was such a simple thing and yet I felt the triumphant hero. I knew in my heart that I really couldn't take too much credit for it because it had never even occurred to me not to wear the pajamas. My daughter had asked me to. Sometimes it's hard to be the hero. When my daughter was in her nasty teen years, the time I refer to as when she crossed over to the dark side, I had occasion to play the hero. One night she was out past her curfew. Her mother and I didn't know where she was or who she was with. She called on the phone, lied about where she was, and refused to come home. She said, "You don't know where I am and there's nothing you can do about it." I used the caller id to get the phone number she was calling from. I did a reverse look up of the phone number on the internet and then drove to the house where she was. She was having dinner with a boy that was much older than her 14 years and I told his parents, "You need to know my daughter is only 14 years old." She didn't speak to me for a couple of weeks at least. It was no fun being the hero. There are probably times we needed a hero and there was none to be found. You try to tell yourself that you did the best you could given the circumstances. Regret has a bitter taste and it's hard to swallow. I don't know what set off this funk I find myself in tonight. I went to the gym after work and I pushed myself a little farther than I did last night. It will take me a couple of weeks to reclaim the level of fitness I was enjoying before I slacked off. It is still just too damn cold outside.

2007/04/12 18:15 In the news this morning it was reported that Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had died. On NPR they played clips from interviews he had given on the radio over the years. A couple of years ago he said, "Let his epitaph be that all he needed to prove the existence of God was music." He was a POW in World War II and he was housed in a slaughterhouse. His experiences as a POW and his first hand observations of the fire-bombing of Dresden became scenes in the book and film "Slaughterhouse 5." I saw the film when I was in college way back in 1976. I remember that I really enjoyed the movie and I put it on Netflix today so I can watch it again. I remember Ron Liebman had an interesting little part in the movie. I had a very aggravating day at work today. Large corporations are such soulless entities and totally lacking in humanity. There should be some kind of social responsibility demanded of these large organisations that have such power over both their employees and their customers. Not likely to happen.

2007/04/13 07:15 I just now realized, when I started this entry, that it is Friday the 13th. Traditionally that's a very unlucky day. It seems that I'm always unlucky so maybe I'll be lucky today. An opposites thing. I'll have to scratch off my lottery ticket today. I always carry a lottery ticket with me now. I buy a scratch off lottery ticket and then I carry it around with me for weeks. Until I scratch it and discover that I'm a loser there's still the possibility I've got the winning ticket in my pocket. Being an eternal and hopeless optimist having the ticket in my pocket means there's always a chance I'm carrying around a thousand dollars a week for life or some other huge prize. I resist scratching the ticket because once I scratch it off and find I'm just another loser all the possibilities are over. Once I have confirmed I'm a loser I buy another ticket and I'm good for another couple of weeks. I'm doing better than I thought I would at the gym. It's not going to take as long as I thought to get back into shape.That's a nice feeling. TGIF. I am so glad it's Friday. I am so glad it's Friday even if they are predicting a huge storm for this weekend. More snow coming. This is so ridiculous. I heard on the radio that the Cleveland Indians had to move their season opener to Milwaukee where there was a domed stadium because of the snow. Still hangin' out and waitin' for Spring.

2007/04/10 22:45 I made it to the gym. It's definitely been at least 3 weeks since I've been to the gym. My first obstacle to overcome in getting back in the swing of things was my combination lock. I was afraid I wasn't going to remember the combination. The grey matter hadn't completely atrophied and so I was able to work the combination. After my workout I made the mistake of leaving my glasses in the locker when I went to the shower and I was afraid coming back from the shower I wasn't going to be able to work the combination. That was only because I can't hardly read the numbers without my glasses. I played it smart for my workout and didn't try to pick it up where I had left off all those weeks ago. If I had someone probably would have had to call 911. I'm just easing back into it. I'll slowly work back up to where I was at. I enjoy the sauna after working out. I wasn't sure about going in the sauna tonight but I decided to just limit myself to 7 minutes. It felt really good. Cleans out my sinuses. The guys in the sauna were definitely giving me some weird looks. It's very disconcerting to be mostly naked and have guys give you some weird looks. Not that I'm homophobic becuase I'm not. Being mostly naked and having cute girls give me weird looks would be just as bad. Maybe worse. It wasn't until I got to the shower that I realized what was going on. I am as a rule a pretty hairy guy. But for the last week I've been sporting the look that Steve Carell's character in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" tried to popularize after his aborted attempt at having his chest waxed. At my last doctors appointment I had an EKG done and they shaved square patches in the hair on my chestal area. Steve Carell wasn't able to pull off the look and I'm afraid I don't fare much better. I'm especiallly pasty white in the areas devoid of hair which makes the spots in the black hair really stand out. Okay, mostly black hair. I'm not going to say there aren't a few gray hairs mixed in there. Overall I have to say that the trip to the gym did me a world of good.

2007/04/10 18:45 There is a little bit of the Easter wine left. It's very nice after having been open for a couple of days. It's mellowed nicely. It was much warmer coming home from work today than it was this morning. The snow that was here this morning has all gone. I can only hope it's gone for the season. Spring, are you here? I have not been to the gym in awhile. I was going at least three times a week and sometimes four or five times a week and now I haven't been in three weeks. I really need to get back into the routine. When I'm going to the gym on a regular basis I have more energy and I'm not nearly so depressed.

2007/04/10 07:30 This morning the ground is covered with a dusting of snow. It probably would have been pretty right before Christmas. It's cold and there is snow on the ground and it's the middle of April. I mean, c'mon, it's the middle of April. I went to the grocery store last night and I forgot to take my bags that I bought to help save the environment. That makes me very upset. The first time that I was going to save the planet and I fell down on the job. I'm going to put the bags in the car this morning on my way to work so they will be that much closer to the job at hand.

2007/04/08 07:45 It is Easter morning and it is colder today than it was for Christmas. There is more snow on the ground for Easter than there was for Christmas. I'm still hangin' out waitin' for Spring.

2007/04/08 22:00 I made a pretty nice Easter dinner today if I do say so myself. And I do. Cooked a ham. For the glaze I smeared the whole ham with honey mustard. Then I packed on brown sugar. I took a spray bottle and soaked the brown sugar with Jack Daniels and then I covered the whole thing with ginger snap cookies that I pulverized in the food processor. Came out great. I made a potato au gratin for one side dish. I made a green bean casserole with fresh green beans and with asparagus mixed in. And last there were some sweet potatoes. I served a 2004 Los Vascos for the wine. Los Vascos is a Chilean wine. The winery is owned and managed by the Rothschild Lafite family and it's a nice bottle of wine for $7.99. At the top end of my price range the way things have been going lately but that's a story for another time. I'm having a glass of the wine that's left right now and then I'm going to bed early. I had lost my reading glasses weeks ago and I just found them yesterday. They had fallen off the nightstand and were on the floor under the bed. I can read without the reading glasses but not as comfortably as I can with the reading glasses. My everyday glasses are bifocals and they are just not comfortable for reading. I still think it is way too cold here for this time of year. This weather is ridiculous. So, I'm just going to go to bed with my warm PJs on and get under the down comforter and do a little reading.

2007/04/07 22:00 Plastic grocery bags are bad. Sometimes it seems that the cashiers want to put each item in its' own plastic bag. I have to re-pack the groceries before I leave the store so that I don't come home with too many plastic bags. The store I frequent, Wegmans, has a new push on to cut down on the amount of plastic bags used. They are selling very nice reusable grocery bags for .99 cents. The idea is that you bring your own bags to the store and just keep using the same bags over and over. For .99 cents I feel like a good citizen of planet Earth. That made me happy today.

2007/04/07 09:30 My wife says I need to stop complaining about the weather. She says it's not really the weather that's bothering me. She's probably correct and it must just be that lately my life really sucks. Although I still think I'd be happier if I could stand outside in the sunlight. I signed up for a spot on MySpace. When I go there it says "You have 0 friends". That's funny!

2007/04/07 00:16 It has been very discouraging the last 2 days. There has been snow on the ground both days and it has been way too cold. I am ready to get outside and get a fire going in the Tiki Fire Bowl. Spring is long overdue.

2007/04/01 22:50 I added a MySpace listing for myself today. I don't know much about MySpace so I asked my daughter. She said, "It's creepy. You put your profile up and then random creepy people want to be your friend". My MySpace URL is MySpace.com/khan_tiki_mon

2007/03/21 17:30 Spring is very close. On the way home from work today I was listening to NPR and there was a piece on Spring. The woman was describing Spring in the forest and she said Spring was the season of "light, leaf, love, and life."

Khan Tiki Mon's Rants and Rambles

What's Going On?

2007/03/17 20:45 Today is St Patrick's Day. I woke this morning to three to four inches of new snow. I had hoped that spring would be here by now.

2007/03/18 09:20 This morning there was another three or four inches of fresh snow. It seems spring is long overdue. I am anxious to get outdoors. Spring is a time of re-birth. We go outside in the springtime and see what survived the winter and what didn't.