The One Hundred

• Is it wrong that I'm finally ready to start the day at 11AM? That's bad, right? #fb #
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• It's Jacobson Night (the boy's school) at Dilly's Deli tonight. I see a Rueben in my immediate future — and it looks goooooooood. #fatty #
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I started out this past weekend by going to the Chandler Classic Car show (pics available on my flickr here). I was with my photography club-mates, Tony and Mike and after we’d had our fill of classic cars we decided to head over to Gilbert and eat at Joe’s Real BBQ — let me cut to the chase here: AWESOME. So good! The little area where the restaurant was pretty neat too. Very small town America feel. Loved it.

Later that night, the family elected to go out to eat at Famous Dave’s BBQ — possibly because I had unknowingly eaten at a restaurant that everyone else had been wanting to go to. I’m not sure if this speaks more to my apparently non-existent listening skills or if I’m just ignorant altogether — but I guess either way, it doesn’t really paint me in a good light so we’ll just gloss over this by showing you another picture (this one is Famous Dave’s).

As the family made that decision, I feigned horror “Oh no! More BBQ! What ever am I going to do?!?” Famous last words folks. But more on that later.

While we were waiting for our food a question had come up and now that I think of it, I’m not sure exactly *how* it had come up but here it was and we couldn’t remember the answer.

“You know how in addition you get a sum, and in subtraction you get…”

“A difference”

“Right. What’s the word for multiplication?”

And here gentle readers is where we were stuck. Of the three adults at the table, we couldn’t remember what it was (Carla’s Mom offered “quotient” for division and while it was impressive, it wasn’t helpful. At all.).

I wonder how this happens. How can something that is so commonplace at one time in your life seemingly be gone the next? I realize that we can’t remember everything we’ve ever learned. I guess some things will stick — the things you care about be they song lyrics or what she was wearing when you first met her — others, not so much. Like Algebra. But then, I’ve always had a problem – a beef, if you will – with Algebra.

I’ve never hidden my disdain for Algebra. I’ve never understood why we were forced into it in the first place. I understand that there are people out there who possibly/probably use it every day. Hell, I might even use it and not even realize it (again, not listening or just ignorant? Jury = still out.) but if I had to pin down when this “beef” started — it all comes down to one problem. I don’t remember the exact wording but it went something like:

“Bill wants to know how tall the telephone pole is. The shadow of the telephone pole is [unit of measurement goes here]. Using that, how tall is the telephone pole?”

Or some crap like that. Friggin’ Bill. Sorry if I sound bitter but, have you ever looked at a telephone pole and wondered how tall it was — so much so that you used the shadow to actually figure it out? If so, congrats. Me? I look at it and think “Wow, that’s pretty high.” AND THAT’S IT.

Oh, wait — this too: “It would suck to have that fall on you.” but that speaks more to my paranoid nature/fear of big things falling on me so, that’s a whole other Oprah.

I’ve always maintained that for the majority, all we will ever need is addition and subtraction (to a lesser degree multiplication and division) because that’s what you’ll need to balance your checkbook. Have any of you used your higher math functions in daily life? I’d be interested to hear it. I would also welcome math nerds/geeks/whatever they want to be called (how about people, fatty? Sorry. Dorks. Hee!) to tell me if I am using Algebra every day so I can be properly thankful for it. Otherwise, I’m gonna keep looking at the telephone poles and keep on not wondering how tall they are – shadows be damned.

…

Um, wasn’t I in a BBQ joint just a little while ago?

We couldn’t figure out what the word was until we got home and looked it up on the ‘net. Product, in case you are wondering and/or like us and had the word escape you.

Also, that whole “you can never have too much of a good thing” thing? Lies. All of them. BBQ twice in one day — most likely not a good idea. I can attest to that. From 3AM until 6AM Sunday morning I had a lot of time to think about that very thing.

“If John eats 2 pounds of BBQ in the span of 5 hours, how many hours will he spend awake and in agony later that night?”

Hey, is that algebra?

Photography, Whatever

• PRO TIP: When going out to take pictures for your 365 project (or anything) make sure you have your SD card actually *in* the camera #doh #
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• Busy. Not sure how that happened but there it is. #
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The scene: My room/office/room. The lights aren’t on because we rarely turn on the over head lights. I’ve got my headphones on and I’m listening to Groovera’s “Low Mercury” station. I read somewhere, I think it was on Lifehacker, that people tend to listen to downtempo music to get work done. I’m hoping it helps/inspires me to get through this because our blog, is no uncertain terms, is the suck when it comes to, well, being a blog. We rarely write in it. I really want that to change. So here I am with hopefully the beginning of what I hope to be more frequent posts.

It’s been an interesting/crazy/annoying couple of weeks for me. I’m going to bullet point these things so I hope that’s ok with you. If not… *shrugs*.

- Merry Christmas & Happy 2010.
Forget the year, where did the decade go? I’m not quite sure of it but it seems to me that the older I get, the faster time seems to be rolling by. My oldest will be 8 this year. My marriage will be 10. I remember a time when I didn’t have either. I also remember not ever being this happy with my life. Outside of the weight gain.

- Dave moves in
My brother Dave moved into our house. Happy to have him here. Our office is now, once again, in our bedroom. I miss the division of “work” and “home” spaces but knowing that Dave is here with me far outweighs that comfort. Although getting ready for him to be here was and (as you’ll see) continues to be painful.

- Ouch, I hurt my old
So, in order to get Dave here, we had to move a lot of stuff around. The desk in our office, which was just a long table that Carla and I shared, wouldn’t work in here so we now have two separate desks. This is a good thing because now we have our own spaces and we don’t harsh each other’s work flow. That is unless Carla’s trying to get my attention and I have my headphones on. We sit with our backs to one another so I don’t always see her trying to talk to me. She loves this. And by love I mean hate. We also had to move some furniture around to accommodate Dave’s sofa. So the sectional is now in the family room and the love seat is now in the living room with another love seat and Dave’s couch. None of which match the other. Stylish! All of this is my long winded way of saying I’ve been in pain since the morning of the 26th (did I mention we did all of the furniture moving on the night of the 25th? No? Well, I just did.) because I hurt my back moving all of that stuff. This wasn’t a normal hurt back though because I’ve had that before (I’ve moved lots of heavy things that in turn have hurt me, chief among them: my stomach) and this pain is different because it is only limited to my lower left back. This is not what normally happens to me. And the pain when it came/comes, shoots down my left leg. Bonus! Since it usually goes away after a few days, I didn’t think anything of it. Just dealt with it the only way I knew how: move slow, add heat, curse profusely when the pain comes. But it didn’t go away. That’s when I called the Doctor.

- Doctor Happy Pills
I’m staring out the window of the second floor room where I wait for my Doctor to come in and tell me that I need to lose weight. There’s a man made body of water outside. I notice that there’s a bunch of dead fish in there and I quietly wonder who’s job it is to take those out. The doc comes in, asks me what’s wrong, takes some notes when I tell him, gives me an order to go get some x-rays taken and prescription for some pain killers. While I am happy that at least something will help me take the pain away (the over-the-counter stuff — Advil, Motrin, Aleve — was just not doing it) I also wished that I would have had a better idea as to what was going on. As I leave, I notice a man standing next to the lake thing with a net cleaning out the ex-fish. Much like my appointment’s outcome, I guess I was hoping for something a little more elaborate. Fun fact: He never said I needed to lose weight. I later ate two snickers bars while drinking a soda. Doctor’s (non) orders!

- Underwear choice comes into play
After my doctor’s appointment, I pick up the prescriptions and head down to where I’m to get my x rays taken. It’s not too far from home so I take the surface streets. I hate looking for places when I’ve never been there before but I always like going in them (unless they look spooky). Side Note: I like going in these places because if I didn’t have to I probably wouldn’t ever. This feeds into my fascination with the fact that there’s probably millions of buildings that I will never enter in my lifetime but, for other people, these same buildings might be a large part of their lives. I know that I’m essentially saying that I’m amazed that there’s a whole world going on out there but what I’m trying to say is that it’s the size of it that boggles my mind. There’s a lot of people and a lot of buildings out there. A lot of worlds I’m *not* involved in. Fascinating. I’m probably not explaining it as well as I could but it’s late and I’ve already taken the muscle relaxer mentioned in the above bullet point. Whee! end note After some time my name is finally called and I’m taken to the dressing area by a female… nurse? Not sure what to call her. Technician? Anywho, we get to the male dressing area where she tells me “Those pants need to come off” (cue bow-chikka-bow-bow). This statement is then followed by “Keep your underwear on” and “You’ll need to put on this gown with the back open and if you don’t feel covered enough you can put on this second one.” (kill the music). It’s at this point that I remember I’m wearing my Big Dog Las Vegas print boxer shorts. I could have gone with a solid color but no, I chose Vegas and once again, Vegas finds a way to screw me. *sigh* Later, when I’m with the x ray tech, I’m asked to lay down on a table where I’m sure she catches a glimpse of my poorly chosen underthings but she’s too much of a professional to mention it.  Upon later reflection she may have just been glad that I had them on at all.

- Football sucks. Again.
Still a little painful to think about but, the Cards didn’t make it to the Super Bowl. Al Davis has yet to shuffle off this mortal coil so conversely, the Raiders were the suck this year — AGAIN. I was close in my fantasy draft but, once again, no cigar. Re: Fantasy — I wonder when I’m going to learn my lesson almost as much as I wonder how long until the next draft. It’s a sickness.

So what’s the takeaway from all this? I would have to say that it comes down to a few things.

1. If you have to move furniture, don’t. If that’s unavoidable, get help.

2. Doctors occasionally say helpful things. Sometimes they don’t.

3. Porn situations very rarely happen in life. Also: It seems there’s no situation (outside of a funeral) that couldn’t be helped with a little background bow-chikka-bow-bow.

That is all. Cue the music.

Whatever

*Blows some dust off the blog*

Huh. Still here. Cool.

*Blows more dust off*

Well, let’s get to it.

I don’t have a full post for you today (have to learn how to walk again before I can run), but here’s some random thoughts that I’ve chosen to post here instead of over on Twitter where I’ve been micro-blogging like a mad person (follow me, won’t you?) as 140 characters can only do so much.

—

The above image is the fifth image that came up in a Google image search on the word “Random”. The first four images?

Partially naked fellow jumping in mid air in front of a car.
Multicolored abstract image.
Static.
Chuck Norris.

Now you know.

—

I was walking around Target yesterday when I noticed that just about all of the Halloween stuff that was *just* there had been relegated to one aisle now. And Christmas was in the process of exploding all over the store. The Christmas music playing was soft enough to mildly enjoy but loud enough to not be ignored. In the instant that it all clicked – I became aware that I was torn. On one side I was elated and a little mushy (Christmas music does that to me) and on the other, I was *this* close to being horrified. I don’t think I’m quite ready for Christmas just yet — and that feels weird to me. I love it as a holiday and it definitely is something I look forward to, but I believe it has its time. I don’t want it quite so early. It just seems that we’re just barreling toward the end of a year that, to me, still feels like it just got here. “Don’t let the door hit you on your ass on the way out!”. That said, I’m looking forward to St. Noggington’s Day (more on that later) and repeated viewings of “A Christmas Story”.

—

I don’t know if I’m going to get this next part out in quite the way I want to. I’ve been doing a lot of searching lately. I don’t know what it is I’m looking for, so as you might have guessed, that makes the finding a bit harder. It just feels like I need to look for something — like something’s missing. I hope I find it.

I also hope it’s chocolate covered.

—

I’m at the beginnings of an Indian music kick. I blame this squarely on George Harrison and the movie “The Darjeeling Limited”. I should say that it’s not 100% traditional stuff — there’s clearly a western influence to the stuff I’m listening to. It’s indian in the sense of the vocals and musical instruments but there’s also a mix of electronica in there too. I dig it.

And, just because I like you, here’s a download link so you can journey with me — don’t worry, it’s free.

—

“Well, she shouldn’t outweigh me. I also want her to be normal looking — no mutants.”

This was my answer to the question that started our attempt at a mature conversation in my sex ed. class: “What are you looking for in mate?”

I said it out loud.

I was in 10th grade.

In retrospect, I’m really embarrassed that I said that but that moment is crystalline in my mind — so much so that I vividly remember saying it as I sat in the back row of the class, I remember Coach Cato’s (yes, we had a football coach teaching that class — public education FTW!) reply/aside of “This is a mature conversation?” as well as his too tight blue collared shirt, I remember feeling flush because my attempt at humor was not called for, recognized, or funny. I desperately wish that I could go back and stop me from saying it.

I have lots of regrets like this.

I don’t think they bothered or were even noticed by anyone else but I can’t seem to let go of them.

—

One word hints for future blog posts:

Evergreen, Superman, Mask, Jamz

Whatever