April 2004 Archives

Over the years, while working my various jobs, I've had an odd assortment of things that cross my desk. Some have found a permanent home among the large leaning piles of paper. Others are filed in the ol' "No. 6" drawer immediately. I was thinking about the variety of stuff on Tuesday when there were two packages of hot dog buns on it (see entry below).

A lot of offices allow, or even encourage, employees to make their workspaces their own. Some discourge that – and that's a shame. I think productivity increases when there are personalized trinkets on our desks – as long as they don't interfere with work.

Check this out ...

Let me clarify a little bit. Check out my hot dog buns. One of the ladies in the office worked a food booth at an arts festival last weekend. Apparently there were tons of hot dog buns left, so just about everyone here got a few packages. I took two – 24 buns – and then sort of wondered why.

The Cutlet eats hot dogs, but goes bunless when he does. I'm not on a low-carb diet, but still I wondered what I'd do with all those buns. Here's 10 ideas I had:

As always, Casa del T-Bone is a flurry of activity. So far this week, we've had a guy from Lowe's come and measure our existing sliding patio door for French doors, we've had several bids to repave our driveway, we bought a new shower for our bathroom and we threw away a toilet. In addition, we put the Family Truckster into the collision-repair shop to fix the boo-boo caused by a little fender bender. That brings me to the rental car we are now blessed with.

I admit I am a car snob. It's not because I drive something fancy, or really ever have. Even past cars that could be called "nice" were old (my 1985 BMW being the best example). Now we've got the 1995 Isuzu Rodeo and a 1998 Dodge Ram pickup – both with more than 100,000 miles on them. They are in fine, clean shape, however, and are still reliable and fun to drive.

The rental, however, is best described as basic transportation.

In an age when we pride ourselves on open, free communication – heralded by a bevy of information and an avalanche of devices with which to access it – there's an ancient concept that has not given up the ghost. I daresay most of us practice this tangled web of secret codes that are only understandable to others in our professions or hobbies. Nothing says self-importance and high-falutin' like jargon.

My friend Webster defines jargon as "confused unintelligible language" or "a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect" or ... in the case I'm talking about, "the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." Often the technical terms get the point across best among peers; other times, it serves to exclude those outside of the special club.

Here's some examples:

For those of you without lawns, or who don't care what yours looks like, this post will be utterly useless. Um, sorry.

A spring weekend summons the traditional running of the Lawnmower Derby – suburbia's answer to a horse race that offers keeping up with the Joneses as well as making your yard look purty.

As for keeping up with my neighbors when it comes to landscaping, there are a couple of old ladies to the west, and a couple of middle-aged hippies to the east. Both lawns are typically shaved down to nothing, so when the summer oven is on full blast, their grass withers and dies and our St. Weedistine lawn is nice and green (albeit weedy). I'm not one for keeping up appearances, but our yard usually looks tons better than anyone else's on the block. And it's not because of time or money spent on it. There's only one good reason:

I've already blown this week by discussing the art of blogging itself (see "Blog Cycles" below), so I figured another post on the subject wouldn't hurt.

The ebb and flow of people visiting and leaving comments on a blog is like the tide, only less predictable. Some people leave fishy comments (spammers!) or crabby comments (what have I done to you?) or leave whales of tales in the name of laughter, comfort and saying "hey." I've been doing this long enough to know (man, that sounds haughty) that the early part of the week sees more traffic, it drops off by Thursday, is next-to-nothing on Friday and is relegated to only hardcore weekend bloggers on Saturday and Sunday.

There are exceptions, of course. Here are a few facts/lessons to remember (or not, whatever):

Update: Our Family Truckster will be fully repaired courtesy of the insurance company of the dude who pulled out in front of the Petite Filet last weekend. Also, our plumbing problem is fixed – slightly below the estimated cost. Now, if only the PF will feel better (allergy/cold ick) in time for our wedding anniversary on Saturday ... if she doesn't, we'll do something special some other time. Thanks also for the friends-making suggestions. Wish I knew more people like you who lived nearby!

Not much else to say today other than "Have a nice one" and "Don't let the spiders bite your nose."

Alternately titled: T-Bone Rants

We're making a lot of lemonade lately at Casa del T-Bone. And it's not because we like it; it's because we have no choice. Lemons are being hauled to us on flatbed trailers. And tenacious monkeys are using bazookas to shoot them at us.

Here's what I mean:

Just like human conception, gestation, birth, infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolesence, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond – blogs have life cycles. Most blogs, however, tend to evaporate sometime between toddlerhood and childhood. Maybe a blog's legs never fully develop and it can only crawl around, bonking its head on the furniture. Or maybe it matured too quickly – running out of new ideas and becoming relegated to senility and bonking its head on the furniture.

I'm humble about my blog. If anything, it still hasn't learned to walk some days, and then on others it's stuck in assisted living waiting for someone to feed it some mashed potatoes. At best, it's a sure sign of an immature blog when it turns to talking about blogging itself. Well, at least I think so. But like I said, I'm humble.

Here's a typical blog life cycle:

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Or at the least, you can hurl the tart yellow fruit at the source of your delimma. That feels better, doesn't it? I'm just taking a break from my Sunday afternoon work-on-the-house projects. They are numerous, almost too numerous to list. But I'll try anyway.

This weekend, the Petite Filet and Cutlet are leaving AGAIN, this time to go to a baby shower for one of the PF's best friends. My family will be gone only two days, but it's hard because it's two days I'm essentially "off work." Of course, ever since we bought a house four years ago, "off work" means working on some aspect of our property. Oh well, I suppose this will be another weekend of great progress on that front. *Sigh*

Because of the Petite Filet's continual travel this month, we are postponing a planned five-year wedding anniversary trip until next month. We were married on April 24, 1999, in Tulsa, Okla. That night, we drove to a small town north of Tulsa and stayed in a fabulous bed-and-breakfast. My plan had been to book a night in either the same room or maybe the best room that place has. We still may do that, it just won't be on April 24.

This is the first year the date has once again fallen on a Saturday since we were hitched – so that means we can at least get a baby-sitter and have a night on the town. Fifty years is a golden anniversary, twenty-five years is silver. Is five years mulch? If so, I'm all set for that.

Marriage is a constant learning process, but here's some of what I've already learned in five years of matrimony:

The egg pops and sizzles when it hits the pan. I let it cook a little, the whites turning from transparent to opaque, before I mix it up with a spoon. I like my eggs scrambled in the pan – as opposed to beating them silly in a bowl and then pouring 'em onto the griddle.

The difference? Prescrambled eggs are boring, uniformly yellow and homogenously perfect. I like them scrambled in the pan because that allows a little bit of cooking, which gives the eggs a marvelous, different texture throughout. There's egg whites and bits of yolk mosaicly mixed. Either way tastes about the same, and the ingredients are exactly alike. It's the added texture that makes them special.

Life is like that. We can make changes to ourselves, to our living spaces and our relationships by using the same ingredients to include a rich texture. Maybe it's a new hairdo. Maybe we rearrange the furniture. Maybe we enjoy a new hobby with our friends. A little texture goes a long way. Here's a few textures in my life I've noticed lately:

Here's The Cutlet "hunting" eggs after church on Sunday. Actually, there were thousands of them just spread out on the grass. It was cold, so he grabbed a few and we ran to the car.

Good grief! Have you ever had one of those days when you get a whole lot of stuff done? In light of how much else we have to do, it's but a drop in quite a large bucket. But progress is bliss! The following list also does not include other things we got done during the weekend. This accounts only for Monday:

I watched FOX's encore presentation of "The Swan" last night and came away with an unchanged opinion: television is only getting worse, and this show proves it. Unlike ABC's "Extreme Makeover" – which I think strives to help people and cares about what the patients want – The Swan is led by a team of butchers (albeit wealthy, highly trained butchers) who basically have their ways with the female contestants. Then, if that wasn't enough, they torture them for three months by not letting them view their new appearances in a mirror. No, friends, that's saved for a special "reveal" time captured on tape. Even further, they make over the women two at a time, and then one is given the news that despite multiple surgeries, fat-sucking procedures, pain, anguish, strict diet and comprehensive exercise regimen, one of them isn't good enough to compete in the beauty pageant. Ugh. Figured I'd give it a chance. Now, on top of Daylight Savings Time, I've lost another hour I'll never get back.

On another note, for some reason during my morning jog I was thinking about how titles and characters in literature and popular culture have become such a part of our vocabulary. Makes me wonder if a rose by another name would be as oft-quoted. For example, here's a list of altered works. See what you think:

Someone was having a ball. It sounded like a young woman, or a girl, I couldn't really tell. Her screams intensified as the gravity gave her that my-stomach-has-now-fallen-to-my-toes feeling. For me, I don't know what would be more harrowing: the feeling that carnival ride would give me, or the rickety nature of the ride itself. Adrenaline, and lots of it!

The gypsy carnival has rolled into town once again, parking its long-suffering machinery in the parking lot of the vacated Winn Dixie grocery store across the street from my neighborhood. They must have gotten there in the middle of the night, because there was no sign of them about 9 p.m. the night before (when me and the dog take our evening stroll). Last time, the weather was cold and rainy. This time, there's the regular threat of a springtime thunderstorm, but it's Easter weekend and the school district's waning days of Spring Break. Ah, the fun ...

My family comes back Wednesday night!

How much wood would a T-Bone chip if a T-Bone could chip wood? The answer: about three trees’ worth of branches. Sadly, not quite all of it, because I ran out of energy and daylight before I could finish. I had to leave time to wash the wood chipper off or I’d be subject to a $50 cleaning fee. Yeah, like pardon me if the wood chipper isn’t clean enough to eat off of! Buy a table, Paul Bunyon!

Didn’t realize how many muscles I normally don’t use. A job like shredding tree branches involves lots more stooping, lifting, heaving and agility than I normally employ as a desk jockey. It’s a humbling experience; you think you’re in decent shape, but no! You are a weak weak little monkey boy! So sore. So scratched up. So tired. But manly: the chipper was LOUD and I got to use my new chainsaw (the precursor to which was stolen).

I need to find activities that give me a real workout. None of that fancy-nancy gym stuff for me. No, sir. I wanna be in shape like the pioneers. Chiseled. Smelly. Strong with a capital Oh Baby. Which means I need to ...

We can sit around all day and lament how "reality" television is making it easier to read, exercise or grocery shop – anything to get away from the boob tube. However, we can't discount the phenomenon that has erupted from the reality TV culture. In a sense, it has created its own reality.

Look at shows such as Survivor, The Apprentice, American Idol, The Bachelor – and all the related spinoffs. I caught the finale of "Average Joe: Adam Returns" last night – mainly because I had already spent the entire day in the yard and was ready to have my brain numbed along with the rest of my body.

Few of the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows have resulted in a lasting love: only one pair I heard of has gotten married and seem to be happy. That's not a great track record for these shows, and I think it's because of the environment it creates. Such a setup is a game, a grab for camera time and a bent reality comprising glamour and corporate (TV network) money. It's easy to get swept up in that world and lulled into a feeling that feelings are genuine.

I equate the result to contestants on the long-running game show "The Price is Right." Something about being near TV legend Bob Barker, or Barker's Beauties, or the warm lights of the spotlight – so near to winning prizes that can unlock our dreams, wash our clothes and decorate our living rooms. Contestants become frenzied when the doors open and reveal a car – doesn't matter what car it is – could be a 1977 Buick Riveria full of bondo. I'm on TV! It's a car! I can win it! I'm awesome! I have to pee! Or maybe they're going to play Plinko – during which they can win a lot, or win absolutely nothing.

So on "Average Joe" last night, although Adam seems like a nice enough guy, he's probably not worth the hoops and hoopla the hopeful women "contestants" had to endure for his hand. We can't be sure because we only know him in the context of TV. The woman he chose is beautiful, but we don't really know that much else about her, either. The other finalist pointed out that the process the show featured was not conducive to showing her passion for Adam. The question is: why did she have passion for him? Why put yourself through such an ordeal? If you're as great as you seem, why do you need a TV show to find a good man?

We can't always judge books by their covers, but a well-designed book gives a sense about what it's about. Reality TV obscures the cover and the storyline itself. It makes me wonder how much worse these shows can get (My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance was, oddly enough, not the lowpoint). The shows already play to our basest of emotions: the majority of people on these shows will be branded as losers, and that's fun to watch.It makes me glad there's a library full of books not far from my house.

I know you're feeling it too – this robbery they call Daylight Saving Time. We "lost" an hour overnight, and it's one we won't get back until Standard Time returns in the fall. What was a fairly brilliant plan to take advantage of the longer daylight hours in our summer feels like a violation. This is most true for any of us who have problems sleeping. The monkey has thrown a wrench into our routines!

Dragging today. Good thing I don't have to go into the office on Mondays, or I'd really be in a world of hurt. As it is, I'm stuck with a list of honey-do's long enough to wrap around my house twice. Before I get back to work, let me share with you a divergent thought about archaeology in the future.

Hey does anybody ever read the titles to people's blog entries? Do you ever get ticked off when the entry has nothing apparent to do with the title? Yeah, me too. And, whew, sometimes when a blogger uses too many words in italics. Yek. Makes me want to shave my head and move to bananaland, lemme tell ya.

Oh, that's better. Now, here's something I've done several times, but because I'm lonely (and hungry – on that note, what's for dinner, T-Bone? Oh, I don't know) while my family is out of town, I'll subject anyone who'll read this to yet another installment (my, this sentence is getting really loooong) of what I'll be doing while my family is out of town for a few days:

The Petite Filet is packing her bags, and she and the Cutlet are leaving me.