A Running Tally of Metaphysical Phenomena

I knew I would do that eventually…

MaskdBagel — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:56:29 +0000

I ghost write blogs for Windows Live as part of my job. And one of the things I cover is Hotmail (which, to be honest, I don’t really even like that much). And I use this blogging program on my work computer to do it. And I knew, I just knew, that I would eventually misfire and put some nerdy thing about Hotmail on my own blog. And I did exactly that today. Woof. I’m going to get fired.*

So if you checked in on my blog to see if I’d actually posted something new, or if you’re seeing this, as well as a previous post about Hotmail, in an RSS reader, no, I haven’t really posted anything new (although I realize I should, and I’ve been thinking about it), and that Hotmail post was an accident. Sorry and thank you.

* – Settle down, I’m not really going to get fired. Maybe if anyone read my blog, I might get laughed at by one or two people that work on Hotmail (but then they work on Hotmail so I would submit that the last laugh would be my own), but as it is, everything’s fine.

You guys have a Netflix account, right?

MaskdBagel — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:52:52 +0000

I thought this was funny:

The first (and so far, the next to last) time I saw House, I thought that Dr. House looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. And then I saw that it was Hugh Laurie, which rang some bells. I didn’t remember him by name as Bertie Wooster, but I knew that the name Hugh Laurie should mean something to me. I knew of him, and that he had done a bunch of stuff, and that people in Lorryland respected and liked him. But I couldn’t tell you much more about him.

I guess I knew a little bit more about Stephen Fry. I knew he narrated stuff and voiced video game characters that I recognized as him. I knew he liked gadgets and was super smart and amusing. But if you challenged me to name more than a handful of specific things he wrote or acted in, I would have been in trouble.

I did know that these two guys were friends and that they had done some things together. I watched a little Jeeves and Wooster in high school (enough to make me wonder where I recognized Dr. House from, but not enough to make me remember immediately), and a little more as Kirsten was reading through the books not too long ago. And, you know, you just read about what people are up to sometimes. Recently, though, we’ve discovered that their sketch comedy show from the mid 70s (actually the early 90s, but it was on BBC, so you know…), A Bit of Fry and Laurie, is on Netflix Instant Watch! With the very rare mediocre bit aside, the sketches vary in quality from better than almost anything ever on American TV to sublimely great and better than definitely any American television ever. The show also ranges from perfectly silly and harmless to mildly coarse in a yes-but-their-accents-make-it-easy-to-forgive sort of way. I’m not sure what the popular opinion of the show was in the UK or what the remaining presence in the public consciousness is, but it’s a crime that this whole show isn’t legendary over here. Especially with Hugh Laurie being all huge here now. But then, most people don’t realize he’s not American.

Here are my two favorite bits so far. Stephen Fry, you guys. Amazing, y/y? (And by the way, if you’re reading this on Facebook, for goodness sake, go read it on the actual blog. Facebook messes up my videos.)

The best traditions are mostly gustatory in nature

MaskdBagel — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 23:29:39 +0000

Well, Merry Christmas, everyone.

I was going to hop on here and tell everyone that at a little more appropriate time, but I was too busy being on a short vacation and enjoying everything too much, so I never got around to it.

“Well, since you ask, I’m sitting here hitting refresh every few seconds to see if Kent ever says Merry Christmas before it turns midnight. Could you paste my toothbrush for me? I’ll be up in a minute.” – Everyone

Growing up, there were two Christmas traditions that I really, really didn’t like. The first was having my older brothers go through my whole stocking while I was still sleeping and then getting me up.* The second tradition was having lunch (lunch!) and doing the dishes (!!!) before opening presents.**

Now I have a family of my own, and since that will mean Christmas at our house at least some of the time (but we’ll get to VA as soon as we can!), it means that we get to pick out our own traditions, which is a little bit of a weird feeling of oldness, but it’s fun. I wanted to share with all of you a few traditions that we enjoyed this year, and if any of them sound fun to you, please feel free to use them yourself, except where noted.

The Christmas Concert

A couple of years ago, shortly before Greta was born, we were confined to staying in town, and since Kirsten had been on bed rest, it was wise to stay in and keep things low key. We were both getting bored, though, so we invited our friends Meghan and Ryan over for a more or less impromptu Christmas concert. We “performed” some songs together, then snacked and painted Christmas ornaments. Last year, we had just moved into our house a couple of months before, and things were still crazy and broken and smelled weird, so we expanded a little but still had a somewhat limited list of invitees (so don’t feel bad if you’re reading this and you weren’t among them!). We were a little more organized about it, though, with food and drinks and games. It was a smashing success, so we did it again this year with an open invitation. Better than ever! It’s firmly entrenched now, and I’m already looking forward to next year. The rules are simple:

We’ll make the food. You just show up. We have to make it tasty.
Everyone has to “perform.” Because none of us except Kirsten’s cousin Sarah is a very serious musician, our standards for what constitutes a “performance” are very, very forgiving. Songs, skits, readings, interpretive dance, you name it. We’re cool with it. We shook car keys to “Jingle Bells” the first year, so pretty much anything is OK.
No one’s allowed to apologize for the sound of what they’re doing, the lack of practice beforehand, or anything else about their performance.

It’s a silly time, and a fun time, but it’s also a very sweet time with friends. This year, a spontaneous “O Come, All Ye Faithful” started between acts, very much in earnest, and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to just sit for a minute and sing together and appreciate the holiday, the birth of a savior, the sounds of each other’s voices, and the warm company. I highly recommend this as a tradition in your own home, unless you’re one of our friends in the greater Seattle area, in which case, shame on you for competing. Just come to ours.

The Chex Mix

My grandmother smoked VERY heavily from her teens up until the last few years of her life, when she suddenly quit cold with no help, no gum, no patches, and no cheating, just like the headstrong and sassy Southern matriarch we all knew she was. It was glorious. In the years between the start and the sudden stop, though, her sense of taste was pretty much non-existent, which was sad in its own way but made various foods more delicious from her hand. Her chili was excellent and would purify your soul from the inside out. And her Chex mix, other than The Great Lemon Pepper Experiment of the Early Nineties, was just about as awesome. With eight cousins, seven aunts and uncles, three grandparents (including my mom’s grandmother while she was still with us), and various guests around, we ate Chex mix by the ton around Christmas. It’s still a very strong association, so when Kirsten asked what I wanted to eat over the holiday week this year, this was one easy answer. Here’s the official recipe, corrected appropriately (trust me on this):

3 cups 1 box Corn Chex
3 cups 1 box Rice Chex
3 cups 1 box Wheat Chex
1 cup mixed nuts distract worthlessly; everyone knows this
1 cup bite-size pretzels have a distracting texture and are too salty
1 cup garlic-flavor bite-size bagel chips
6 tablespoons 2 – 2 1/2 sticks of butter or margarine
2 tablespoons 1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt is offensively redundant when there’s Worcestershire sauce
3/4 teaspoon 2 tablespoons garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon 2 tablespoons onion powder
two to three tablespoons hot pepper sauce

Melt the butter (NOT margarine; I will be disappointed and will scold you most severely donottestmeonthis), then add everything else (except the Chex) and stir. Add it to a huge container with all the Chex and do your best to shake it until everything is covered. Bake it for an hour at 200 with a good stir every fifteen minutes. Eat.

The Pull-Apart Bread

This one is from the more recent years at my parents’ house, and one tradition I was very excited to keep up from the get go after we got married.

One stick of butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon or so of cinnamon
A bunch of walnuts (not pecans; they’re not as good, and it’s hard to tell whether you’re eating a nut or a shell)
Frozen, not-yet-risen dinner rolls
One small box each of Cook & Serve (not instant) butterscotch and vanilla pudding

Right before you’re ready to go to bed on Christmas Eve, put twelve of the frozen dough balls into a Bundt pan and pour one of the puddings over them. Then add another ten or twelve and put the other pudding over that. Melt the butter and mix in the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts. Pour that over the whole thing, and then cover it as tightly as you can with foil. Go to bed. When you get up the next morning, it will be all risen and huge. Poke it down until it’s roughly even with the top of the pan (but don’t be too violent with it), and bake it at 350 for a little while. Best Christmas breakfast ever.

The Miscellaneous Other Stuff

Really dry, hard salami with great cheese (chevre!), chives if you have them, and plain (this part is important) water crackers.
Ham from Trader Joe’s. The best ham, the easiest ham. Ours was at the Christmas Concert, and that bit in itself I think may end up its own tradition. Friends, songs, and ham? One adult for the Christmas Concert, please.
Actual cubes of pure animal fat, refined sugar, or butter, because why not?

As we go on, I’m sure we’ll pick up more and more traditions, and I welcome them. It’s already been a ton of fun, and as a family, we’re only a few Christmases in.

I know it’s a little bit clichéd to directly ask for comments on a blog (right?), but I want to know what your traditions are, what you eat at your house around Christmas, and what your favorite parts of the experience were when you were growing up. Or this year. Speak to me, won’t you?

To the family and friends who were and are such a vital part of making the whole season merry and bright and what have you: thanks very much. We love you, and we’re so grateful to know you and have you as friends and family, which are just about the same thing anyway.

* True story: the first year that we did Christmas at home, where Scott had the room over the garage, I actually camped out on the hard laundry room floor against his outward-opening door so that this wouldn’t happen again. I managed to fall asleep just long enough for my parents to sneak stuff into the stockings. When morning came, I got my reward, which was absolutely not worth the discomfort. If I remember right, though, my brothers either got even more discreet after that or stopped the stocking shenanigans altogether.

** When I was younger, we were at my grandparents’ house in Georgia and—calling a spade a spade here—had to wait for the in-town aunt, uncle, and cousins to show up, which took FOREVER, at least to a kid. The sun was often low in the sky before the first gift wrap came off. When I was a little older, we started having Christmas at home, and things got a little better, but we still had to clean up all of a big lunch and clean up the kitchen, which was torture. Eventually, we wore my parents down and started going earlier. So by the time I exited my childhood (and I’m speaking technically/legally here; I’ll leave my childhood practically when I feel like it, thank you very much), all our Christmas traditions were lovely.

Now, obviously, having someone else look at one’s numerous gifts, or actually waiting a while (the horror!) before opening one’s numerous gifts ranks rather low on the list of unfortunate situations in which one could find oneself come Christmas morning. I can and do appreciate the reality of Christmas around the world, and I’m more grateful than I can express that my Christmas looks anything like it does each year. You understand.

Christmas time is here

MaskdBagel — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 04:51:52 +0000

Look what came in the mail today! Everyone loves this album. Everyone.

“If you don’t love this album, you are not someone.” – Scientists

So with the sounds of Christmas in the air, and all sorts of yummy things in our tummies, we are taking it easy and getting our Christmas on. Work has been super slow with everyone on vacation, so I’ve brought my computer home and worked in the living room the last couple of days. Kirsten’s dad is here hanging out until Monday or so, and the four of us are going to stay in on Christmas, wear pajama pants, and stay off the road and out of everyone’s way. It’s very relaxing, and while I’m looking forward to evening things out and spending some holiday time with my family in VA as soon as possible, this year’s quiet time at home sure is low hassle. It’s all Chex mix, board games, Greta learning new things, homemade chili, great music, and simple evenings together. (Also, someone bought The Phono Stage, so now I get to make another one, starting tomorrow!) And I played a game of Risk last night, and won! Life is very, very good.

Tuesdays on the bus: special Thursday edition, 12/9/2010

MaskdBagel — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:22:30 +0000

I actually got almost all the way through Tuesday and realized that I hadn’t ever written something on the bus on the way to work. I was busy.

See, I got a new phone recently (Microsoft just released a new mobile OS, and they paid for a new phone for anyone who wanted one, so I figured I’d give it a try since it was free), and one of the things that happened with that was unlimited data on my phone. So I’ve been enjoying Netflix on the bus. Which, can we just stop and talk for a minute about how ridiculous that is? Because that’s ridiculous.

I have this thing that just fits right in my pocket, and with no wires and no difficulty, I can just pull it on out and watch Marlon Brando transform acting. That’s so crazy. And I’m not that old. I share my lawn, and I listen to music with drums. I understand on a pretty intricate level how this stuff works. So it’s not like I’m King Arthur to the Connecticut Yankee of technology.

I just still think it’s super cool.

But anyway, Marlon Brando. My goodness. Have you guys seen On the Waterfront? Seriously, go see On the Waterfront. It’s on Netflix Instant, which is how I’m writing this in the first place. I was so caught up in that movie that I didn’t even remember it was Tuesday. (That and the change in phones meant I lost my calendar with the alarms, at least until I rebuild it.)

What I knew about this movie: Marlon Brando plays a guy who used to be a boxer and coulda been a contender. There is corruption of some sort, and he wants out, or wants redemption, or something.

What I assumed/guessed/thought about this movie: his character was past his prime, maybe in his late 40s or something? And it was a boxing movie. Made in the 70s at some point.

Now, I’m not a huge cinemaphile, and there is plenty of stuff I don’t know too much about or haven’t seen. But yikes. For this being a winner of eight Oscars, I sure didn’t know much about it. Things I had wrong:

It was released in 1954.
If Marlon Brando ever had a prime (and I know he did [ladies!]), this was it. 30 years old.
There are a few punches thrown, but it’s not about boxing at all.
I wrongly assumed that it would only be “great,” not completely incredible.

The basic premise is that a bunch of longshoremen in New Jersey are under the control of a corrupt union boss who skims pay and only lets his favorite guys work. He’s ruthless and mean, but Terry (that’s Brando’s character, the boxer) is one guy he likes and gives work and errands to. But Terry starts to get itchy about working for the mob, and things get more and more dangerous as he responds to the pressure to testify (and the pressure not to testify) about the murders and corruption at the docks.

If I’d thought about it a little bit more, I probably could have placed this in 1954. I knew the 50s were kind of the transitional period between the older style of movie acting that came from the stage, where you needed to show everything to the cheap seats (and Katharine Hepburn, who was great, used her stupid “transcontinental” accent), and what we’d consider "modern" acting, where people speak and emote more like humans. I knew that being the first legitimate Stanislavski method actor is Marlon Brando’s mark of distinction (I just dug up a quote I’d read before from Martin Scorsese: "He is the marker. There’s ‘before Brando’ and ‘after Brando.’"). And I knew that this was one of his biggest and most influential movies. I just didn’t put it all together.

Anyhow. In summary: so impressed. You should really watch this immediately, and if you do, or if you already have, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I just moved to a new office (more on that later, possibly, if I can find a way for it to actually be interesting) that’s a shorter bus ride, which is nice but also leaves me with less bus time to write on Tuesdays. Like I’ve mentioned many times before, my handwriting is really slow, so I’m not sure exactly what this will mean for our favorite Tuesday series. We’ll have to see. Stay tuned.

Tuesdays on the bus: 11/30/2010

MaskdBagel — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:07:30 +0000

Tuesdays in the snow: 11/23/2010

MaskdBagel — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 04:58:33 +0000

We have snow on the ground! And while that’s great fun, and something everyone loves, it did mean six and a half hours to get home yesterday (I could easily have walked it three times), so today, I stayed home, along with pretty much everyone else I work with. I mean, they’re not at my house. You get it.

I had time between work things to take some snow breaks and have fun, so on this day when the high was 25 and the low this evening is supposed to be, basically, a theoretical number, we got to go outside with our sled, and our little family had a snow day! Greta looked super cute, obviously:

And even though she was a little unsure about sledding (“All deee!” pretty much immediately) and her fingers got a little too cold, overall, it was a great time.

Shameful but true: this was my first sledding experience. I grew up in Texas and then Florida, and then later, when we moved to Virginia Beach, I was even given a sled just in case, but on the rare occasions when we got any snow, what we didn’t get was ground that sloped. At all. Virginia Beach is flat flat flat. Maximum height: 42 feet, at a manmade hill over a landfill.

And then, when I was in school, there was one pretty good sledding hill on campus, but I never had a sled, and I was too shy and too busy enjoying the other snow related activities to ask for anyone else’s sled. But anyway, I’ve sledded now, and hey, I really recommend sledding, you guys. It’s a lot of fun! Put it on your bucket list.

Now we’re all inside with toes that are still a little cold, Greta’s sleeping snug in her small, warm room, and Kirsten and I are both hungry for things that are a short drive–which is a long drive today–away.

OK, one week on, and now for six weeks off. Perfect.

MaskdBagel — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 19:13:24 +0000

The experiment has ended, and with pretty good results, I guess. This week:

About 18 miles run in total
That’s back and forth between H&H Bagels and Zabar’s 629 times, for you East Coasters, or, roughly, my house to Seattle via Mercer Island, for those of you closer to the area.
About 2100 calories burned
About 420 jalapeños, some negative amount of celery, or, less inspiringly, two chicken burritos (and this is five days we’re talking about) from Chipotle. I’m just doing all of this because I think I should be in better shape, not because I’m going to turn into an orthorexic calorie Nazi, but it’s still interesting to track.
12 feet of vertical climb
I just tried the incline setting on the treadmill at the very end of today’s run. I set it to 0.5 and was like, “is that, I don’t know, good?” And then I looked around and spotted a 60ish year old lady briskly walking backwards on her treadmill (seriously) with the incline set at 9.6. I showed her, though. Set mine right to 2.0! Because I don’t mess around.

Pictured: me, basically
Four days on the treadmill and one on the elliptical, and I have no idea what the “Mets” measurement is. Anyone?
My legs feel used but fine. I eventually said to heck with it and just ran like Grover the last couple of days, and my shoulders feel much better! (On the treadmill, it’s just “This is near… um… This is… neeeeeeeaaar.”)
My entire abdomen feels like one big bruise. Which is probably a good thing, really, but I’m not sure how that happened either. It seem like the muscles more directly involved with running should be the ones to hurt a little. If I went one more day, I’m sure my fingers and scalp would feel pretty whipped.
One great day of Pandora (yesterday: Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, two Police songs, Slowdive, and The Ramones, among other things) and one pretty weak one (today: nothing I can even remember except “What’s On Your Mind” by Information Society, which I don’t love). Definitely going to turn on the BPM column in iTunes and do some digging.
According to the morning news that I see without accompanying sound, literally nothing newsworthy happened in the world except that Prince William remained engaged to Kate Middleton.

My reasoning behind the one week free trial to the gym was to figure out if the morning schedule, the bus runs, and the difference in sleep would work out for me to start going regularly when my benefits kick in and I have a real membership starting in January. If anything, it works almost too well, so I guess I’ll be going for it.

I only get home twenty minutes later than I used to, which means I still feel like a husband and dad worth keeping around. I just have to get up a bit earlier and catch the earliest bus at 6:40. Not too bad. I guess I’m ready to go in January. Now, as for consistently going all five weekdays… Well, we’ll see about that.

Some tips for better exercising

MaskdBagel — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:43:52 +0000

If you’re about 5’ 10”, and you run the same way I do, then– Well, OK, first of all, I feel sorry for you. Because you’re lousy at running and have managed to have perfectly normal feeling legs and incredibly achy shoulders, of all things, over the last little bit.

But my real point was that if you’re on a treadmill and you’re 5’ 10” and run like I run, then 6.2 is a perfect setting for “Walking On the Moon” (which you’ll wish you were doing) by The Police, and 6.5 is ideal for “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”. I guess if you were an Olympian or very lazy/cooling down, you could either double or halve the tempo (approximately), respectively. But the 6 range is a more realistic exercising kind of pace. The More You Know.

Also, everyone knows that exercising is better when you have good music, but seriously, try this. The effect is compounded when you’re keeping time with Stewart Copeland. Or anyone else, I guess. Once I get just *this much* more fit, I’ll move to some more advanced material.

Tuesdays in the office: 11/16/2010

MaskdBagel — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:41:40 +0000

Things have been a little different this week, so today is different as well. A little while ago, Kirsten and I had an agreement that if one of us started going to the gym, the other would start going to the gym as well. So a little while ago, when she started breaking up her day and beating her cabin fever with a trip to Gold’s, I knew my days were numbered. One of my benefits at work is an optional free membership to the Pro Club, the nation’s, and maybe the world’s, largest gym. (300,000 square feet, plus 200,000 square feet of parking.) I didn’t join last year during benefits enrollment since the retail value is taxed as a benefit and Microsoft gives me a few dollars on each pay check if I don’t join. I knew I wouldn’t go often enough to make it worth it.

But this year (as they say, especially in relation to fitness) will be different. Benefits enrollment started at the beginning of November, and the new benefits kick in at the first of the year. I wanted to make sure the morning schedule and everything would work out, so I went over last week and asked them if they’d give me a free week to try things out. Sadistic monsters that they are, they said yes, so I’m getting up early this week and going before work. Since the bus ride is broken up now (roughly in halves), I would only have about enough time to click my pen before I’d have to stop writing. Twenty minutes at my writing speed means about three lines, so today, I’m on the computer like normal blogs. I thought I’d give you my first impressions of the Pro Club.

It is very very fancy. There is chamber music playing in the locker rooms, rather than Jock Jams. Seriously. It’s actually uncomfortably nice, polished, and luxurious. I feel a little bit ill at ease. But that is also related to the fact that not all of the showers in the locker room have curtains. (I dare you to be at ease with that. Actually, nevermind, no I don’t.) And also the fact that the sauna shower area has a tile floor and steam and showers, and that’s a bad enough combination that someone you know personally may or may not have fallen in front of a whole lot of people in various (but generally pretty thorough) states of undress on the first day. (Don’t look at me! I’m not looking at you!)

Some actual things said by staff when I came to see the place as a prerequisite to my free week:

“We do have an auto detailing service over on the far end of the facility, so you can have that done while you exercise.”
“You may be interested in our club room. It’s a full service restaurant and cocktail bar for 21 and over.”
“Craig [the tour guide] will be a few minutes.” (This was at 8:51, before a 9:00 tour.) “I apologize. Would you like anything from the café? Here’s a voucher for a beverage of your choice.”

The first day, I went in and ran a little under five miles (in forty minutes! Semper Fi or whatever…), and I felt pretty good. No weights or swimming or anything. This morning, when I got up, my legs and knees weren’t sore. Just my shoulders, oddly. Not what I would have expected. I think I tense my upper body too much when I run. I try not to, but if my arms flop around, I feel like Grover. And I love Grover, but you know…

My knees aren’t always super strong, so I went on the elliptical today instead of the treadmill. I hate that thing. It’s too much like dancing, and I keep on getting uncoordinated and making it go thump and whump. Don’t know how “far” I “went,” but I just kept it at my target heart rate for thirty minutes and called it good. I think I’ll go back on the treadmill and do weights tomorrow.

I have a feeling I’ll be reporting on this more in the future. Stay tuned. Happy Tuesday!