May 2006 Archives

OK, I know I'm in trouble. As a dedicated Mac user, it's hard for me to cross over to the dark side and actually get Microsuck software to do what I want it to do. I'm sure you who dwell on the dark side have gotten used to it, much like a clumsy carpenter gets used to hitting his thumb every time he swings a hammer. My computerized life is spent in a state of bliss where peripheral devices magically work the first time they are plugged in, to "un-install" something I toss it in a trash can and my machine hardly ever crashes without a little help from me. But it's quite likely my next job carries with it a desk draped with a dreaded Windows PC. That means I'm going to actually learn the hard way of doing things. Crap! Has the world gone completely insane?

Good news, though: I have leads. Solid leads on new opportunities. I could bore you with the awful things that happened last week at my current job, but why dredge that up? I was about ready to quit Friday but remembered, hey, suck it up, bucko! You've got a wife, one-and-a-third kids, a dog, a house, responsibilities. Stop complaining, nitwit. You have a job. Half the free world wants to be in your shoes. Sorry, self, I want a new pair of shoes, footwear that doesn't give me blisters the size of Rhode Island or smell ike yesterday's garbage. Does that make me a bad person?

"Something has happened. I feel funny. All I know is I can't wait to see how it turns out. I also know I can't stand to wait much longer."

My grandmother wrote those words in the early 1930s, before she married my grandfather, in a journal she started in 1932 as a sophomore in high school. There's no followup entry that explains what happened, or what she was waiting for. Maybe this was a sign love was blooming and her wedding day was on its way. A first kiss? A whispered promise?

She also wrote a poem in her journal called "Try Again," which I won't attempt to recite here. Altering any of the nuances of her words (not having the journal in front of me) or merely typing them instead of sharing the romantic cursive my grandmother exhibited back then and on every card or letter she ever wrote me, would just be wrong. The poem, as the title suggests, is about never giving up even when it's all you want to do. The verse ends, and in parantheses are the words "My first attempt." How fitting is that?

Sidenote: my grandmother used to love breakfast. Help me with my "Breakfast Project" by sending me your favorite morning-meal recipe!

A few years ago, I did something called "The Dinner Project" that collected recipes from the readers of this blog. It went very well, and I created a little downloadable cookbook of the results.

Earlier this year (shoot, or was it late last year?), I attempted to do "The Breakfast Project" using the same technique. My blog traffic being down because, let's face it, I used to be a lot funnier and was able to Net-work at work at my former lame-o job resulting in lots of return hits here, where was I, oh yeah, gee this sentence is getting long and hard to punctuate. Whew! What? Oh yeah, fewer people breeze through here these days, and apparently even fewer eat breakfast.

However, if you do eat breakfast and would like to share either a breakfast recipe, favorite breakfast or interesting story about a time you ate breakfast, now is the time to do it. I'll keep this open for a while to collect more morning-meal recipes on top of the five or six I collected the first time I asked. I will also try to remind those who stop by in each post for the next several days. Please help! The Cutlet is becoming a Pop Tart® kid, and that is a trend that should be halted with something nutritious and made (quickly and easily) with love.

I don't want to hear any whining from the ladies about how their boyfriends, husbands or otherwise male significant others don't help around the house. If this is the case, you need to either 1) motivate them in some way to do a few chores (use your imagination) 2) let him do his own laundry or 3) kick the lazy guy to the curb. Men, be men and help out. Some of us on the front lines have no choice because our wives are pregnant, still feeling kind of morning sick, contracted pink eye (it's really gross) and then got sick on top of that.

She'd also be among the first or second to admit she doesn't really keep up with the housework anyway. How a borderline neat-freak such as myself ended up with a borderline slob-freak is beyond me. I guess you don't marry the one you can live with, it's the one you can't live without.

If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean. If you've got time to whine, you've got time to shine. If the house smells like crust, it's time to dust. I have this sinking feeling that after Kiddo No. 2 comes along, I will still have to be the one who picks up the dirty clothes off the bedroom floor and puts the dishes away. Anything to get me out of diaper duty.

Got a call Friday after getting home from work that the camping trip was canceled. Everyone else bailed out. I was tempted – briefly – to go by myself. But it's not safe or all that interesting to go solo around here, despite the lovely photography depicted in your friendly neighborhood REI catalog. The excursion is supposed to be on in a few weeks, but we'll see.

We got some icky news last week. Apparently, unlike most companies in the civilized world, the Petite Filet's employer doesn't offer paid maternity leave. What this means, folks, is that she has to use all her paid time off to get only half her time paid. That leaves us with about a month of unpaid time. Note that we pay the mortgage with her salary (other bills and grocery money fall to mine), so it puts us in a bind. Thankfully we have many months to figure something out. We do not live in a castle, nor do we live extravagantlly in any other respect. There might be that whole "not eating for several weeks" that can offer a neat prospect for budget savings. But it's a blow to us, as is our crappy health insurance that isn't covering much at all (70 percent, which is better than some).

I need to find a way to bring in some more cabbage ...

I'm going camping with some buddies this evening after work. It's been a while since I've been, mainly because of the time (posted about in May 2003, if you care to wade through the archives) during which the Petite Filet and I got sunburned, were kept up by the wind buffeting the tent, got the boat stuck in the mud and lost our keys in the lake. Also, I had ditched my tent a few years ago because it was starting to smell funky, and no amount of Febreeze® would cure its stinky ills.

I'm finding that primitive camping is requiring a whole lot more forethought – and stuff – than I figured. There are some questions I'm trying to answer.

Petite Filet+T-bone Baby 2.0 was ready for his or her closeup yesterday. It's amazing how just about everything needed to make a little person is all there at nearly 10 weeks. There's a brain, nubby limbs, internal organs and a strong, thumping heartbeat. All the pieces just need to develop and get much bigger. Despite not having ears, the baby has already developed a love of music. See for yourself ...

A comparison between Normal T-bone and his wild, outdoorsy (and fictitious) altered ego.

1. T-bone worries that some of the trees in the back yard are growing into the power lines and could cause a fire or power outage.
Macho Manley whips out his 18-inch HairyChest™ 2000 chainsaw and turns the offending nature into kindling.

Having spent most of my life trying to avoid processed cheese, imagine my confusion when having to buy a brick of Velveeta® yesterday while grocery shopping. Checked the processed-cheese section with no luck. Checked the real-cheese section, again stymied. Was going to flag down someone in a blue smock when, to my chagrin, I found the stuff ... it's not refrigerated! Not that it needs to be, seeing as it has nothing organic or remotely cheeselike in its composition. For those who care, the crockpot queso was good, and our guests for the evening enjoyed it without incident.

Happy Day to all the moms out there. Didn't get to see my mom today, but we'll probably get together with her, my dad, sister, husband and their bodacious brood soon enough. There's only so much fake cheese a person can handle in a week, right?

When the Petite Filet took a trip a few weeks ago, she picked up a little trinket during a layover at the airport (Chicago Midway) for the Cutlet. Being a boy, he absolutely loved it.

Slang is a linguistic means to keep the uninitiated from knowing what on earth is going on. Elevated to a professional or technical level, it becomes jargon. But, of course, slang is cooler because it's often the young, hip on the street who are throwin' down the verbal code to keep The Man, The Establishment and Old Fogeys at bay.

The suburbs are unfairly blamed on so much that is wrong with today. We have long commutes to urban centers to work (SUVs! high gas prices! pollution!), pass by all those fast food restaurants (large guts! unoriginal food choices!) and spend our leisure time doing uncool things (mowing lawns! going to youth soccer games!). For goodness sake, there are even suburban residential development projects that mimic urban settings, one of which sold its $450,000-$750,000 Brownstones in a matter of hours. Why is that important? It shows that some people in the suburbs don't really want to live in the suburbs. It's uncool.

That is why we suburbanites (or expats who now live in cities) must fight the good fight. We must have our own slang. To wit:

So, I forgot to tell you, but I rode something close to 10 miles last Thursday. Took the Petite Filet's vehicle in for some service, got there and was told it would be the rest of the day before it was done. Whuh? Fortunately, I had taken my bicycle with me because I'd figured I could pedal around for a few hours and get some got exermecising in. Well, it turned into a trip back home – all back roads with little traffice. And it was terrific!

Bicycles can change the world, reduce pollution and vehicular traffic, get us all back into great physical shape and reduce our stress. Fact is, not all of us can or want to ride bikes. But there are some people who have died doing it – precisely because most American cities are geared for motorized traffic. Bikes ridden for recreation and as a mode of transportation, unfortunately, sometimes get in the way. And sometimes riders pay the ultimate price with their lives.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this site, which is for bicycle rides conducted in this country and across the world to honor bicyclists who have been killed while riding. The first event was conducted in 2003 in Dallas. There will be a ride in Fort Worth, for which I've requested information to participate. Other locations are listed on the site. All of them are free, and are scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 17. The object is to ride in silence and at a slow pace, a show of solidarity and support and a time for pedaling and reflection.

I hope you will join me by participating in a ride near you. Or, on the next sunny day, dust off your bike (or rent or borrow someone else's) and take a slow ride around the block, or maybe a couple of blocks. Other than possible sorebuttness, I bet you'll have a good time. And it might even change your life for the better.

I've heard from more than one source that some videos geared especially for infants are like "baby crack." Babies can't get enough of them, laughing, giggling and spacing out on a cosmic – through crib-bound – level. As a parent, I've seen the effects. And I'm here to warn you that baby crack is merely a gateway drug to the sordid underworld of home movies.

Yes, friends, when they get a little older, some kids like to watch home movies, especially of people they know or – GASP! – themselves. I liken it to toddler heroin ... easily addictive and apt to put us all in a deep, dark pit of despair. It also bends reality by making time nearly stand still while said movies are playing (at least to the adults in the room).

Together, we can turn the tide. Make your kid go outside, run around with the dog, run his yellow Power Wheels Jeep into trees, whatever it takes to break the habit. I also learned that I could live a long, happy life without ever seeing myself on TV or ever hearing my recorded voice again. It is a modern cliche, but I can blame my mother: she was holding the video camera.

I overhead two ladies today talking about houses they and their husbands were building. I'm interested in that sort of thing, although we opted (and our finances demanded) that our first and current house be modest and old. We've done a lot to make it feel like home, though, much of which I've chronicled off and on here. There are bold colors throughout ... reds, yellows, greens, blues and – in what is obviously an argument I lost – a light purple bedroom. New flooring. New plumbing. Gutters. Vinyl siding. An extra large shed in the back yard. Sorry excuses for landscaping. Wild tree removals. New garage door. New front door. I'm just getting warmed up!

Anyhow, they were discussing that during get-togethers and parties at their homes of the past that everyone tends to end up in the kitchen where the food is. Reminds me of an article I read just a month or so ago about how large kitchens could be leading to our nation's growing obesity problem. That, of course, is utterly silly unless we are actually eating the square footage itself. It all goes back to the things we cook in our kitchens, how often we eat and how often we get our butts in gear to do something other than watch TV or consume entire buckets of Cool Whip™ at one sitting.

I looked at our smallish-yet-efficient galley kitchen and wondered that if the article has any truth in it ... why am I not in better shape? Then I looked inside the refrigerator, which was mostly empty. Must be because we've been eating out too much lately ... and those restaurants must have big kitchens.