I've been writing a blog in some form or another for a while; probably a year-and-a-half. In that time I thought writing about the weather, nuclear disarmament* and the origins of life** were the sorts of weighty, important subjects that people wanted to hear about. But no. Apparently, based on the number of responses to this post it's all brownies.
Alert Reader and Curds Fan Kitty has suggested, somewhere in the comments there, that we have a brownie round robin. I suggested that was a great idea, because it would involve me eating brownies which is a good thing. If anyone out there is interested in participating, then this is your "call to arms." Or spatulas. Or something.
I'm not sure what the rules will be yet, but if you commit to the process and then break the chain you would likely have seven years of bad luck, grow a mullet, stay at Club Quarters at least twice and get a personal visit from BABO™ - and he wouldn't be very happy.
So make sure you think about it and talk it over with two or three close friends before you email me. If we get at least 7 we'll make a go of it. If not, I'll have to make my own brownie mix. I'll just, you know, try to keep my tears out of it. (*sob*)
I went grocery shopping last night. I normallydon't grocery shop, because frankly I'm not very good at it. There are too many decisions that need to be made at the grocery store, and making decisions creates Brain Fatigue. And the last thing you want is a fatigued brain.
But last night I decided I would just throw caution to the wind and shop. I even went while hungry, which is something they tell you never to do because you look at everything with your stomach instead of your eyes. Things like "Gigantic Three-Meat Bun Length Hot Dogs" actually sound appealing. As a result they say you're more likely to buy things you normally wouldn't even feed your pet. (I'm not sure who "they" are but "they" know these things and should never be crossed.)
So there I am, running amok in the grocery store buying whatever I feel like (I got TWO packages of Gigantic Three-Meat Bun Length Hot Dogs) when I come to the brownie aisle.
I knew before I even got to the brownie aisle that I would just crack and buy a box of brownie mix. See, if you buy the brownie mix there's always the chance you won't actually make the brownies - that the brownie fever™ will leave you before you have a chance to mix the stuff up. (As compared to just buying pre-made Grocery Store Brownies™, which aren't as good but require no mixing.)
In addition to deciding I would just crack and get brownie mix, I knew that I wanted regular brownies. Just plain, ordinary brownies. Chocolate brownies. You know the ones. They went completely out of style back in the early 90s. I must have spent ten minutes trying to find a box of brownies. (See, this is the "I'm not very good at it" part.) I found "Double Chocolate." Then I found "Triple Chocolate." Then I found "Chocolate Lover's." "Fudge." "Chewy Fudge." "Really Chewy Double Chocolate Chunk o' Chocolate Fudge Brownies." "Turtle."
(Turtle?)
I found a bunch of brownie mixes that had stuff in them. Chocolate chips. Chocolate chunks. M&M's®. Peanut Butter Cup®. Nestlé® Butterfinger® Pieces. Gigantic Three-Meat Bun Length Hot Dog Pieces.
I almost (ALMOST) went to customer service to ask if anyone made regular brownies anymore. But that would be...well, too embarrassing. In fact, as people went by I would pick up a box of brownie mix and pretend to be looking it over intently, all while mumbling to myself "Hmmmm, yes, enriched wheat flour, very nice..." My patience and fear of being mocked paid off, however, as I finally found a regular box. It was on the top shelf, in the back. It was behind the hot dog buns.
So it's regular brownies, on me! Just as soon as my brain gets unfatigued and I have the strength to mix them up.
Probably not, but the NOGAPS model below is pretty interesting:
Pretty Interesting NOGAPS model
The T=144h means Time = 144 hours. 144 hours from now is about six days. The map was run at 12Z, Z being Zulu time. The eastern time zone is currently off Zulu by four hours, meaning that this map was run somewhere between midnight and 8 pm. (12Z should be 8 a.m. but I'm sure I'm doing something wrong in there. I can't even set the time on my VCR.
In any event, if you look at the run of the NOGAPS, you see something pop up out of no where and head for the northeast:
Obviously this would be a big ticket news item, but it's only one model, and the NOGAPS at that. (Remember to insert some joke here about the NOGAPS not being able to hit a barn, or forecast its way out of a paper bag, or something later.)
In the interest of not driving you crazy, the above tiny map only animates a few time. If you miss it, just reload the page...
Wednesday afternoon we ("we" being a group of us from AccuWeather) left State College for Philadelphia. Thursday we had an all-day meeting scheduled to do some serious focus group type testing and we didn't want to leave at 5 a.m. to get to the meeting on time. (The meeting was held at 1 South Broad Street, which appeared to be in the heart of the city.)
We were booked to stay at "Club Quarters." This seemed like a reasonable thing to do. For one, "Club Quarters" was located only three blocks from our meeting location. It was competitively priced for being "right downtown" and lastly, our focus group type testing partners had suggested it.
What follows is a review of the accomodations which I hope to submit to every hotel review site on Earth because it may very well be that my only purpose in life is to serve as a warning for others. On the whole I think the review is fairly balanced and presents both sides: the Hotel side and the Shoot Me In The Head With A Bazooka side. I'll let you, the alert reader, decide.
Review of Club Quarters in Philadelphia
Club Quarters (http://www.clubquarters.com/) is the "Smart Hotel for the Sensible Organization." Immediately I felt put at ease because we're certainly a sensible organization if nothing else, and so we were obviously at the right place. Club Quarters is located directly across the street from Liberty Place, which is a collection of shops that most would describe as "hoity-toity." On the surface, being located across from a collection of hoity-toity shops might seem like a benefit but it isn't, really, if you don't have time to shop. Liberty Place was the location of the below-ground parking garage, which seemed to be the only place to park, which is what we did. The garage was fine, except that it was 2,000 degrees and our tires melted.
We checked into the hotel which went smoothly enough. Even though our rooms were booked at the same time, when we checked in we were dispersed to all corners of the hotel. No big deal, so far so good.
I made my way up to my room and was surprised when I got there. I was surprised not like "Whoa! Why is there a clown in my bed!" but more like "Whoa! Who stole the other two-thirds of my room?" When reviewers say things like "small rooms" you think, "Well, how small could they be?" The answer is, "Just a little bit bigger than a bed and a TV." It really felt like someone had taken a normal room and cut it into thirds to make two more rooms. Below is a size comparison chart for the visual learners in the audience.
After coming to grips with the size of the room, which I could accept (all I was planning to do was sleep, not run laps, juggle or play frisbee) I threw my bag down and looked around. The first thing I check (and this will sound silly, I know) is the quality of the free soap and shampoo. So I went into the (tiny) bathroom, which consisted of a tiny sink, a tiny shower stall and a (small) toilet and looked over the soap situation. It was nicely labeled although I didn't recognize the brand. I examined the toilet a little more closely. I'm not sure how to describe this, but the toilet was set under the counter a bit, so that the seat could not be raised fully. That was fine, since I wasn't planning to be in there too often. Then I noticed that it was one of those "public restroom" style toilets, with those metal handles that most people probably just flush with their foot for fear of contracting some horrible, antibiotic-resistant plague should they touch it with their hands. It flushed fine, (my foot fit under there without any problems) so no worries.
The only other point of interest was another door in my room. The handle was broken and it wouldn't open, so I still have no idea what was in there. It may have been a clown however, as I heard a muffled "honk!" and some giggling when I tried to get in.
At this point I would probably give the hotel two-and-a-half stars. (See figure below.)
However, the night was far from over (cue ominous music). At about 9:40 p.m. while I was watching my tiny television from my tiny bed the power went out. It was very dark. This wasn't a normal dark; this was a dark like when you go into a cave and the cave guide says, "Hey, wanna see something really cool?" and then turns off the flashlight and everyone screams, even the clown, because it is DARK like before the sun was made dark.
My first thought was, "Man, it is dark." My second thought was, "Wasn't O.J. Simpson in the Towering Inferno?" Since I was on the eighth floor, which is seven floors higher than you want to be if there's a problem like a fire or O.J. Simpson, I grabbed my cell phone for light, my wallet, and headed down to the lobby.
Ha! In most buildings, you would expect that the stairs would go to the ground floor with stops at every level, right? Not at Club Quarters: Philadelphia. I made my way down the stairs but there either was not a door at the lobby level, or it was a one-way door. So I continued down to the ground level, and it was like I was in different building. The walls were pock-marked, plaster littered the floor, there were boards nailed up here and there, small piles of trash strewn around the hallway and at least one cockroach as big as a Volkswagen.
Finally I found a door and exited into an alley. I was a little disoriented, not being accustomed to exiting into alleys, but managed to circle the building and find the hotel entrance again. Once inside, I tried the stairs to get to the lobby (the lobby was on the second floor) but the stairs ended in a one-way door that no one opened when banged upon. (Although, I did hear a "honk!" and then a muffled giggle, and a sound like someone taking a custard pie in the face.)
So at that point I gambled and got in an elevator. Well, only after watching someone else first try it and go from G to L. (Ground to lobby, I figured.) Normally I wouldn't recommend entering an elevator like this. Once the doors opened I was greeted by Lobby Chaos. The staff (I'm not making this up) was passing out flashlights to guests while trying to figure out what was happening. Guests were milling about, some angry, some amused, waiting to see what was going to happen. I decided to wait a little while in the lobby with the hopes that the power would come back momentarily. About 30 minutes later the backup power, which had been keeping some lights on and running the elevators, shut off. I was seated near the elevators at the time and heard management calling to a group now trapped in one of the elevators.
Shortly after I heard some manager tell an employee to "keep them calm" (i.e. the people in the elevator, not the clowns juggling in the lobby) the fire department showed up. They proceeded to pry apart the elevator doors with their patent-pending Club Quarters Elevator Staff™ also known as a huge crowbar. After the four women were freed from the elevator I watched the Philly FD talk to someone who must have been the building superintendent. Apparently, there had been a loss of power earlier in the day, and someone somewhere, who is responsible for these sorts of things, thought the problem was corrected but the problem reoccurred, and they were trying to get ahold of those people to get it fixed. I did hear that the fire systems were on some sort of battery back up and should work for three hours. (No one asked if the batteries were now drained given there had been a loss of power earlier.) Just then a clown ran through and sprayed the super with a bottle of seltzer.
By now I had drank too much of the "complimentary water" the hotel had made available because of the inconvenience and was experiencing "full bladder." So I searched the lobby area for a restroom but came up empty (so to speak.) The lines to talk to anyone in charge were quite long, and somewhat agitated, so I decided I would head back to my tiny, fire-trap-like room. The emergency power had been restored, (but not the main power) and the elevators were working but after the fire department scene I decided to walk up the six flights to get back to my room. The first two flights were easy, the second two a little more difficult, and by the last two I decided to just lasso and ride a cockroach up I was so tired.
I got back to the room (and thanked Nigel for the ride) and - what do you know! - the power was back on. It was after 11 pm. I collapsed into bed, certain that I would either wake up an hour late, or wake up to being tossed out of the room by the fire department, or wake up surrounded by Nigel and his family. For some reason I didn't sleep well.
In the morning there were only three incidents pertinent to this review. First, when I turned on the water in the morning, only half awake, the faucet gave that roaring sound you get when the water flow is interrupted because of a power outage. I nearly had a heart attack, but I heard a great deal of chortling from the closet I couldn't open. Second, the front desk said nothing about the outage, no apology, no "How was your evening?" or "How was your stay?" and no offer to take anything off of the price of the room. Third, the front desk somehow messed up our group's billing and billed two rooms to one of our party.
Finally, in an effort to be "balanced" I should point out that the restaurant located in the hotel (Davio's) was very nicely decorated, and each table had a candle which came in very handy during the power outage. Also, to the front desk's credit, not a single staff member screamed in terror and ran out of the building when the power went out. And as I mentioned they did give out free water during the power outage.
So what's the final score? I know you all scrolled down here and skipped the good stuff. Get back up there and read! Anyway, here's how I think it all breaks down. (Final score not an "average." These things are subjective, you know.)
So I probably wouldn't recommend it. But then again, I'm not a big fan of clowns.
I'll be leaving town today and will be back late Thursday, so I apologize in advance for the slow posting and slow response to email. As Professor Hinkle would say, "Busy, busy, busy!" Back soon. If anyone sees any interesting news in the interim feel free to drop me a note. Light on the MySpace news, I only have so many brain cells left.
Father's Day occurred this past Sunday. Did you know that the first "Father's Day" was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington? This is important to note, because in just four short years there will be a plethora of stories about the 100th anniversary of Father's Day. If you're not a father now I highly recommend that you have a child before June 2010 so that you can take part in the hysteria festivities.
Father's Day means three things to me, all of which are important, meaningful and weighty. The first is that I try to sleep as much as possible. I figure it's "my" day and there's probably no other day during the year when I can use guilt as effectively. I suppose there's my birthday, but 5 times out of 7 that falls on a work day and, well, you can't sleep until noon on a work day. (At least, not every work day.)
The second meaning of Father's Day, to me, is that it's sort of the "New Year's Day" of fatherhood. Fathering. Parenthood? Well, you know what I mean. It's a time to reflect on my job as a father. How am I doing? Is there anything I could have done better? Are there areas I need to work on? (These are all rhetorical, no email thanks.) Of course there's always room for improvement. I may seem like I have a clue from reading this blog but that's all bluster and clever writing. I actually have no idea what I'm doing. Fortunately, kids are pretty resilient and there aren't too many mistakes that can't be forgiven by the use of high caloric, trans-fat-enriched, carbohydrate bombs.
The last opportunity Father's Day presents is to look back at the fertile ground that was my childhood and dig for lessons learned. I suppose every child who grows up and eventually has his/her own family does this. There are certain events that shape you as a person, certain morals that live with you forever. I've shared some of these with my children - others I'll share with them when the right moment comes. Here's a brief list for those of you planning on having children before June 2010. I'd recommend that you print this out, because I'm not sure the blog will still be around then.
1. Money Doesn't Grow On Trees
This was probably the number one lesson I learned. After weeks of combing neighbor's trees for so much as a $1 bill, it was with great gravity that I was "sat down" and talked to about the real source of money. "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!" I was told. Money, I learned, was actually printed by the dwarves of Middle Earth, and I wasn't allowed to go there or they would feed me to their pet dragon Binky who guards the printing presses.
2. Any Attempt to Air Condition the Neighborhood is Doomed to Meet With Failure
In spite of my best efforts to air condition the neighborhood (by keeping the front door opened, while the air conditioning was running) met with dismal failure. Once, after leaving the door opened for Three Whole Hours, I went door to door and asked neighbors if they noticed a difference. They would look at me, shake their heads sadly, and say "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!" Eventually I was told that trying to air condition the entire neighborhood was a lost cause. However, experiments are still being conducted to this day (primarily by my children, whom I've tried to talk to about this.)
3. Touching Car Windows With Your Fingers Will Leave Spots and Cause Brain Damage
As a child I always thought glass existed to be touched. It wasn't for protection, or to prevent the neighborhood from becoming air conditioned, or for seeing through. It was for touching. Why else would human beings create a hard, completely clear material? So I touched all of the glass I could find. The best glass of all was the stuff they put in cars, because that glass would get fogged up and then you could actually draw stuff with your fingers. Usually this only amounted to smiley faces and tic-tac-toe boards (even if I had no one to play with) but then I wasn't an imaginative child. Oh, sure, there was the occasional stick figure - but that was rare. It was years later that I was eventually "sat down" and told that all of that touching left marks behind (yeaahhh) and caused brain damage. To my parents.
4. Character Building is Very Important and Must Always Include Pain
I didn't even understand what character was until I was out of high school. I was always wondering who this character was and when would he/she/it would finally be built. I noticed early on that any time the character was being built something uncomfortable was happening. Clean room? Character building. Shovel the driveway of four feet of snow? Character building. Drive off that hungry bear with a can of Pringles? Character building. And a little foolish, too - those Pringles aren't half bad.
5. No Matter How Badly You're Hurt - Have on Clean Underwear or Don't Come Home
For years I thought that the first thing that would happen if I ever got into an accident, was hit by a car, fell down on my bike, or was stopped at the Mexican border was that my underwear would somehow get checked. First thing! I lived in fear of the underwear check. I thought, "If this car hits me I hope I get finished off because I don't want to go through the underwear check, clean or not." I thought the chances of clean underwear going bad if you're hit by a car were pretty good. Or say you don't have a can of Pringles and a bear approaches. That's right - there's an underwear check in your future! It was really frightening to live with the possibility. I eventually learned, as all kids do, what the truth is about Santa, the Easter Bunny and Underwear Checking.
Good luck out there. I would have saved all of this for my upcoming book but I would have gotten a lot of email saying, "Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!" If you have any parenting tips or bits o' wisdom drop me a note.
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this. I would comment, but it might sway the responses. That, and four billion brain cells spontaneously combusted when I read the article.
In a story destined to blast across the net, new "research" shows that gray-cheeked mangabay monkeys select fruit according to their knowledge of the weather. Link.
A group of Monkey Scientists studied data on monkey visits to fig trees, temperature and sunlight. Ordinarily, you wouldn't think to coordinate temperature and fig tree visits, but this is actually ingenious. I say that because every time it's above 90 degrees here in State College I visit Dairy Queen, which means that I get a tasty ice cream treat but, more importantly, I'm not smarter than your average gray-cheeked mangabay monkey. It also explains why the pimply-faced drive thru boy always yells, to someone in the back, "Mangabey is back!"
In any event, the Monkey Scientists noticed that the monkeys (gray-cheeked mangabeys) were visiting after temperatures were high and the level of sunlight was high. You might read that as, "Monkeys (gray-cheecked mangabeys) tend to not visit figs when it's raining," but it seems to go a lot deeper than that.
I'll now open the comments up to people who want to compare monkeys (gray-cheeked mangabeys or otherwise) to meteorologists. *I*, of course, would never do that.
I was reading up on "Beryl" so that I could be completely prepared for the next bout of tropical hysteria. I also wanted to be on record as having written about something that everyone else will be writing about when they think of it. (Which they won't until the storm gets here. Ha!) In any event, I found that Beryl might just be one of the most appropriate names for a tropical storm I've come across. (I still like my hurricane name list, with suggestions like "Obliterator" but no one seems to be taking that seriously. At all. Not a single phone call yet, even.)
First, Beryl is a mineral - I knew this because as a kid I had all of those educational "rocks and minerals" books and I just devoured them. I didn't want to be a mineralogist at the time, because I didn't know there was such a thing. (I mostly looked at the pictures in the books.) I did want to be a gold panner, because I figured you would put on your big, black boots (for stomping snakes) and go down to the stream, where you would dip your pan in the water and pull it out again, revealing gleaming chunks of gold the size of your liver. I eventually found out that it wasn't so easy. And that the snakes usually got you before you had a chance to stomp them.
Beryl's chemical formula is Be3Al2Si6O18. Sadly I know what most of that means; I say sadly because those are otherwise decent, sound brain cells that now will never have the chance to do anything useful, like memorize the starting roster of the '74 Mets.
Anyway, if you take those letters in that chemical formula you can rearrange them to spell a bise lo, which is actually gaelic for "the yam of great size." But that's not one of the interesting things I discovered.
The first interesting thing that I discovered is that the name Beryl is taken from the Greek beryllos which many websites say means "precious blue-green color of sea water." Sea Water! Get it? Well, I thought that was neat.
The second interesting thing that I discovered is that Beryl is also the name of Beryl Markham. Beryl Markham was born Beryl Clutterbuck and, as you can imagine, she was extremely keen to get married. But the neat thing was that Beryl was the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo, non-stop, from east to west in 1936. (Amelia flew west to east in 1932, five years after Charles flew it in 1927.) The Atlantic Ocean! Get it?
So here we have a name - Beryl - which is taken from the Greek meaning "precious blue-green color of sea water" (Sea Water!) and was the name of the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean (Atlantic Ocean!) from east to west. Now the name is being used for the next tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean - and ocean, I need not remind you, which is a precious blue-green color. Hmm. Dismissed as chance?
Beryl. (The mineral, not the pilot.) (Or the storm.)
Level 12: So-So - Roads are wet and large puddles have formed. Cars driving by splash roadside reporters. Dedicated on-air talent will seek a busy road with large puddles near the curbs.
I'll summarize the scoring with each storm. So far, there's only one, so this isn't much of a summary (in spite of it being labeled "Summary")
Kudos to Alert Reader Barb for passing along this link. Hurricane Bingo - print your card before Beryl gets here, causing newscasters to "hunker down" and Max Mayfield to look worried. Nice work Jen!
Here's the answer to yesterday's LEGO Ninja Hunt, which has no doubt been keeping you up all night. You can click here for the image, as I didn't want to spoil the fun for anyone who hasn't yet played but who still wants to. You can click here for the LEGO® Ninja Hunt™. Unfortunately there are no valuable prizes involved. Management regrets the lack of cool valuable prizes.
Tonight we had drill practice. My LEGO® army and I, that is. The photo above shows them right before drill practice, when they were just standing around all awkward-like trying to make conversation even though they don't know each other very well (different walks of life, and all.) I expect to have them whipped into shape before they go into battle. This is only a small portion of the army. There are actually 23,000 LEGO soldiers off-camera that you can't see. They were milling around trying to make conversation too.
As you know, (if you've been following closely,) I'm amassing a LEGO army to conquer my office. I expect that once Henry is subdued the rest of the meteorologists will fall faster than brownies at a potluck. I've been very fortunate so far in my recruitment efforts - I've managed to secure a red ninja, a black ninja, and Santa Claus, who as we know is a Jolly Old Ninja. See if you can spot all three in the picture above. (I'll have the answer soon...I wouldn't want to leave anyone hanging. In the meantime, if you MUST know NOW, I take Paypal.)
The damage reports are pouring in. It's hard to weed through them and get them on the blog. The devastation is just...difficult to comprehend. Here's an example of what I mean:
Steinhatchee, Florida: Multiple reports of unsecured lawn furniture in a "tipped over" state, and in one case a lawn chair blew into a neighbor's yard, crushing several (4) mums. The neighbor came out at the height of the storm and, with fist raised, yelled "Get yer dang chairs OUT OF MY YARD PUNK!" The neighbor was soaked by the tropical storm, and had to get a towel afterwards and to dry himself off.
As I get through the rest of these reports I'll try to post a few more highlights. Maybe. Possibly.
Doesn't that sound like the SUV was empty, and just decided to go on a killing rampage all by itself? Does anyone out there with an SUV have experience with them doing their own thing?
I really should go to bed, but have been mulling over this thought recently about blogging and writing and whatnot, and I thought I would throw it out there. When does a blog jump the shark from useful and interesting to "resounding gong?" At some point you're probably just making noise. I wonder when that happens - I suppose it's different for every writer. It would be great if you knew when that was coming and you could, I don't know, take some vitamins or something. Or a vacation to Disney World. Or maybe a giant glass of orange juice AT Disney World, which would be very vitamin packed because they actually pick the orange outside the restaurant and squeeze it into your glass at the table.
Feel free to drop me a note or leave a comment. I'm not even sure I have a decent, coherent question in there but it's time for my monthly, ah, pang of doubt or something. Blogging is interesting in that I don't actually have any deadlines, but I've written more in the last year than I did the proceeding ** years. At a minimum I'm getting a lot of practice.
Hope everyone in Florida is safe this morning...
** would be equal to all of my other years which will remain nameless for those of you who don't know and never checked the unofficial autobiography.
This is PDC (pretty darn cool.) As a creative director, at least in name, I have a couple of minor suggestions though:
(First, take a look. Okay, good.) (Warning - requires Flash and boy is it LOUD.)
1. Around category two I think we should have some animals walk into the scene and blow away. Maybe a goat, or a penguin. Something small and light but easily recognizable. A wildebeest would work.
2. Add a car or two. Everyone has cars. I would add a nice sports car, maybe red. Ooo - a convertible! Have it blow away at some point.
3. This whole animation is pretty intense. I think around 130 mph we should see someone stick their head out of a window and have a little thought bubble thing pop up with something comical. Like, I don't know, "Flood insurance! D'oh!" That will relieve the tension. Ha ha.
4. The roof coming off is a nice touch, but we should see some things in the house. Maybe a couch, and a TV set. A lot of people have TV sets and they're very attached to them, so seeing a TV in there would, you know, bring it all home in a really powerful way. You could even have a video playing on the tiny TV and that could be some sort of advertising revenue.
5. The storm surge at the end, with everything floating away, is great. I would consider having various ocean things come in, so you really understand it's a storm surge. Like big, frothy waves, or a boat, a shark - something like that. Or, just put a big text label that says "Storm Surge Comin'." There, that's fixed.
Honestly, though, this is an amazing depiction of the Saffir-Simpson scale. Pass it around to your friends, especially those that may need a push to get prepared and have a plan ready.
I have to gives Kudos here to Governor Jeb Bush, who doesn't mince words when it comes to hurricane stuff. Florida is all over the preparation thing, with tax-free hurricane days (where you can get generators, plywood and emergency boxes of delicious golden Twinkies® all tax free) (they keep for months!) and hurricane practice drills and a giant hurricane mascot named "Surgie" who travels from town to town yelling "CAT FIVE COMIN'! CAT FIVE COMIN'!" and when people come out to see what the ruckus is he sprays them in the face with a super soaker. I mean, c'mon that will get your attention.
So not only is the preparation thing covered well, but when a storm comes Governor Jeb Bush and team tell it like it is. Today, as Alberto was approaching, Governor Jeb Bush was calm, soothing and authoritative as he told the media and Floridians: "Get out NOW! GET OUT! Don't make me come down there!"
I suspect a lot of this comes from experience, which Florida has in spades. (You know, I really don't know what that means. Is that spades like cards? Does anyone know what that really means? I think it means a lot - at least that's how I meant it.) In fact, in the last three years Florida has been hit by 25 tropical storms and hurricanes. In a row.
In this website photo, Governor Jeb Bush (age: 15) stares serenely at the camera while a giant Florida logo sneaks up on him.
And finally, a bit of trivia. Did you know that Governor Jeb Bush is married? I had no idea; I can't recall one mention of his wife in the media. And her name is Columba. Site here. Floridians, she would like to connect with you. Drop her a note.
Not only is the NHC forecasting Alberto to land as a hurricane, it's also forecasting a huge, monstrous, ginormous National Weather Service Logo to make landfall shortly thereafter. A Big Blue Cloud warning is in effect for the entire southeast United States, and bolts of white lightning are possible. (Nay - likely.) Watch out for badly rendered non-aliased type, particularly the "W" as they're real pointy.
Alberto is trying very hard to become a hurricane and sneak up on Florida, although should he manage it the storm would only be a minimal category 1. Governor Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency today and urged residents of low-lying coastal areas to evacuate. It's possible that Alberto could create a storm surge of up to 10 feet. Gov. Bush also remarked on the speed of the storm reaching land - given the "official" season began only 12 days ago.
The area that Alberto is headed towards usually dodges the bullet. I think the last major encounter with a storm was Hurricane Alma in 1966. Curiously, Alma was also the first storm of the season that year and hit on June 9, which was the earliest a storm had made U.S. landfall since 1825. Of course, 1966 was a big global warming year, with record sales of Hummers and lots of people leaving their refrigerator doors opened. Thankfully 19 days later John Cusack was born, which was a great thing for Lloyd Dobler fans everywhere.
My wife and I usually comment to each other when we see a motorcyclist riding around without a helmet. We live in Pennsylvania, of course, where there was a helmet law at one point but eventually turned into an optional sort of thing. I have mixed feelings about that: on the one hand, I'm all for personal freedom and responsibility, and if you want to drive around without a helmet - Rock On! However, if you wipe out it's going to be messy, and public services could be involved and at that point a person's personal choices impact everyone else.
Today in what may become a watershed moment for motorcycles and helmets, Pittsburgh Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, I mean, Superbowl Champion Pittsburgh Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, was involved in a serious motorcycle accident. Ben is on record stating his dislike for helmets, and his coach Bill Cowher has shared his concern about Ben's riding habits. You can read about it in this NFL.com article from almost exactly a year ago today. To quote Ben from the article:
"Obviously Pennsylvania doesn't think people need to (wear a helmet)," he said. "There's a law you've got to wear it in football."
Around 11:25 a.m. today Ben collided with a Chrysler New Yorker and apparently "lost most of his teeth, fractured his left sinus cavity bone, suffered a nine-inch laceration to the back of his head and a broken jaw, and severely injured both of his knees when he hit the ground, police said." (Pittsburgh Tribune Review article here, slow to respond probably due to Internet traffic.)
Ben wasn't wearing a helmet.
I'm hoping and praying for a full recovery; Ben's only 24 and has a bright future. Whether that's with the Steelers has yet to be seen. I'm about as sports-challenged as any male can be, but I would think his sports career is over.
I'm curious what you think about mandatory helmet laws. Good, bad, necessary? And does a professional athlete have a responsibility to their team to avoid dangerous behavior? Terry Bradshaw apparently thought so, based on the Pittsburgh Trib article. Leave a comment or drop me a note.
I just woke up - apparently I went to sleep sometime Saturday afternoon in our new bed. It's like sleeping on a "cloud of air." Unless that's someone else's trademarked phrase, in which case it was like sleeping on a "really expensive mattress."
Alberto graduated from a tropical depression to a tropical storm and is expected to bring rain to Florida, then move up the coast in a desperate (and ultimately futile) attempt to find vacationing Schaads. You can see an eyepath here on AccuWeather's site. A complete write-up can be found here.
If you're in Florida drop me a note, assuming you haven't boarded up, sold the kids and flown to Iowa.
That sounds really medical, sorry. "Carl, I'm afraid you have Possible Alberto. Use this model spray twice each day..."
I'm not a professional Model Interpreter, but it looks to me like Bigfoot IS in fact real and living in southern Texas. I mean, it looks to me like something is headed to Florida. Which is nice, since they need the rain, as long as it's a modest storm and not some monster. But the timing seems to be somewhere around the Monday-Tuesday frame, which wouldn't give this much of an opportunity to strengthen. Of course, stay glued to the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center for the latest.
There's a great mini-interview with AccuWeather's Jesse Ferrell in the St. Pete Times here. Give it a look-see when you get the chance. The article has an interesting premise - that the web is FREAKING OUT about some rain near the Yucatan. I alluded to this in Yesterday's Post about Alberto, inasmuch as everyone including your Grandma had probably already told you about the potential for Alberto to form. I don't know if this attention is due to "First Storm Syndrome" or because of the record-smashing season last year or just a symptom of our collective fascination with the weather. I suppose anything that heightens our awareness of weather, particularly hurricanes, is good for public safety and good for the private weather industry. I just don't know if I could take this sort of thing all season long. I'll have to drop the weather posts completely and stick with Bigfoot and BABO™ (Did you know they're cousins?)
This is part two of my Dental Day post, you can find the first part here.
First, I have to clear something up. I made up that whole thing about Gary Coleman being my dentist. Sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time - you know, the ideal cliff hanger: "What? His dentist is GARY COLEMAN?" Again, sorry. I'm not even sure if Gary Coleman has gone into dentistry, although I'm sure he would make a fine dentist.
My actual dentist took a look in my mouth and told me that I had broken a tooth. It was at that point that I handed him my Ziploc® baggie full of tooth parts. I don't know what I expected. "Hmm, I'll glue these together right away!" was probably not the response I was looking for, but I thought I would get some sort of Boy Scoutish credit for saving the pieces. Or maybe a discount. But none of that happened. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what happened to that baggie. I suppose, if this was a movie, we'd cut to a scene of my dentist typing up his eBay entry "L@@K! Blog Hero Tooth Parts - Mint in Baggie! No Reserve!"
After we all agreed that my tooth was gone and there was a giant smoking crater where it used to be, I was told that we would have to put a post in and then put a crown on the post. This is a dentist's way of saying "I thank you. My Mortgage thanks you. My Kid's College Fund thanks you."
Dentistry is one of the few fields where the professional involved gives you specific advice and asks you what you want to do, but you and the professional both know that you have no choice and you're going to do whatever he says. For example, when the dentist says, "Well, you have a hole in your mouth and the only solution is to put a post in and a crown on that" he doesn't expect you to say, "Hmmm. Well, let me take my toothless maw home and think about it." No, you're pretty much putty in the good dentist's hands at that point.
So I (believe it or not) decided to go ahead with the dentist's proposal. I got twelve shots of Novocain (three of these were actually in my mouth) and the dentist started working. Of course, I was an unplanned appointment, so they did some work, left for a little while, did some work, and so on. All told I was in the Chair for about three hours that day. It went rather well, except for the fact that I was conscious. Some things can't be fixed by a shot of Novocain, such as hearing the dentist say to the assistant (and I'm not making this up):
"Hand me the knife. No, the sharp one." Pause. "We're going to need a new blade for this."
That was when I almost lost all control over my bodily functions. But, I held it together and mumbled through chunks of gauze:
Generally when you see a story about MySpace in the news it's not good, or it's very weird, or (usually) both. I read them with trepidation because they usually make me mad. Today this story came along, and it was no exception.
Apparently a 16 year old "straight-A student and student council member" tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew off to the Mideast to meet a West Bank MySpace buddy. I don't even know where to begin. I blew about five million brain cells reading the article. But, for the sake of you - the Alert Reader - I'll try to put my feelings into words.
How in the world do you get a passport for your child and not know where they're going? Do any of these parents talk to their kid's friends?
What possesses a 16 year old to deceive her family and friends and leave the country for the Middle East to meet someone for the first time?
How does a 16 year old buy a plane ticket? Did she borrow mom's credit card, or does she have her own?
Unbelievable. But the best part in the article is the revelation of WHO IS ACTUALLY TO BLAME:
"I just don't understand with all these new laws protecting America how a 16-year-old kid could get out of the country."
That's right. It's not the Parent's fault. It's not the West Bank Guy's fault. It's not the Girl's fault. IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S FAULT. It's interesting to note that this was said by the father - the parent commenting for the article - but the daughter apparently lives with the mother.
Sorry, I had to get that out. I'm better now and will be okay until the next such MySpace news item, which will probably appear tomorrow.
The above image is taken from the PSU models page, also called the "Experimental Forecast Tropical Cyclone Genesis Potential Fields" page which immediately lets you know it was made by Important Scientists, because I don't even understand that much, let alone the rest of the stuff on the page. You can find it here. The image shows a capture of a specific frame from four different models. These are pretty good models too - the kind you would see in, say, Elle as opposed to Family Circle. Not that I'm busting on Family Circle Models, I'm sure they work hard too and are really swell people.
As you can see, these models are starting to swing into agreement that some Lowe's and Home Depot's in northern Florida are going to get emptied. And see - this is why I love weather forecasting. Weather helps us with critical decisions every day. So any Lowe's or Home Depot employee in northern Florida should call up a friend and say, in a sort of sly manner, "Phil, can you take my shift in three and a half days? Uh, yeah...I've got to clean up my basement. Not for any kind of flood or storm or anything. You can? Great!"
The modeling on this storm is still young in the process - later than having Just Been Born, but earlier than Ready For Eating Peas. Since we're all so in tune with hurricanes this year just ask the mailman or office cleaning crew; they probably already know more than all of us.
Also fwiw, the timing of this looks to be somewhere between 84 hours from now and 2,914 hours from now. Give or take.
People are going to be all over these (potential) storms this year, probably weeks in advance. So you won't hear anything here that you haven't heard elsewhere before you get here, like at the water cooler, the grocery store, from Grandma, etc. But above is a model snap for a potential storm that may or may not actually happen sometime in the future. Joe Bastardi is concerned about possible development, and seems to think it's more of an western eastern Gulf thing than a eastern* western Gulf thing. Check with the AccuWeather hurricane center for the latest.
One of my teeth exploded at 12:45 a.m. this morning. This is a great time to have a tooth explode, because there's no one anywhere that can help you. The best you can do is call the dental office and listen to the voicemail of the dental office manager telling you that the office isn't opened. Sometimes it's reassuring just to hear the message reminding you that yes, they ARE in the office between 9 and 5 and NO, they are NOT in the office at 12:45 a.m. Thank you for calling. If this is a Dental Emergency we're in the office between 9 and 5.
The explosion happened during a bowl of Chocolate-Road Gravel Extravaganza™ Ice Cream. It's a new Ben and Jerry's flavor: chocolate ice cream, marshmallow bits, toffee, caramel, shredded cutlery, world war II bullets and gravel from construction sites. Before you say anything, yes I eat around the toffee bits, those things are brutal on fillings.
Okay I made that up. It was a home made concoction of vanilla ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. Not frozen at 38 Below (ha) Cookie Dough, but relatively soft and harmless not-really-even-chilled cookie dough. I was sitting there, all defenseless like, when one bite later I knew I either had split a tooth into several pieces or someone at the factory had slipped china into my ice cream.
(I'll give you a few minutes now to get your Super Wince™ out of the way. I, myself, need to get more Kleenex®. Okay, let's continue.)
The next thirty seconds (as I tried to figure out what just happened) were very stressful. Traumatic, even. Twenty-eight seconds were spent considering all of the possibilities and options, and running through the price tags like a contestant on the Price is Right. ("And I'll buy three Rice-a-Ronis...") The last two seconds was when I actually ran my tongue along my teeth. Yup, big hole.
I don't know about you, but one of my frequent reoccurring dreams is the All of Your Teeth Just Fell Out dream. I'm not sure why I have this. It's probably a very well-known reoccurring dream, like the dream where you're sitting in a diner and you want to order a bacon-lettuce-tomato burger and then the waiter comes up and it's Gary Coleman from Diff'rent Strokes and you realize that you are, in fact, Todd Bridges and Gary looks at you and before you can even order says, "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" So having a tooth explode for NGR (no good reason) is just going to make me have that dream all of the time now. (The dream about the teeth falling out, not Gary Coleman. Try to keep up.)
I summoned all of my Boy Scout™ Skills, collected what was left of my tooth in a little Ziploc® baggie and did what every Boy Scout does in this sort of a situation. I cried like a little girl. Okay I made that up. Really. I went to Google and started searching for things like "Broken Tooth," "What Do You Do If You Have a Broken Tooth at 12:45 a.m.," "How Do Dentists Fix A Broken Tooth and How Much Will It Cost Me," and "What Does That Dream About Gary Coleman Being My Waiter Mean?" I actually found a great deal of useful information, all of which prepared me for the Dentist Visit I was going to have later in the day.
With nothing more to do and my appetite for ice cream dampened, I went off to bed. The first thing in the morning I called and scheduled an appointment. They were able to squeeze me in at 10 a.m. (how fortunate!) Alert Reader Tammy, who may or may not be my wife and who has great teeth, took me to the office and I was promptly escorted to the back. I settled into the comfy dental chair but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
I came home today and found an ugly doll on my keyboard. My first thought was, "Someone in my family bought me an ugly doll." My second thought, which followed almost immediately, was, "Someone is probably making obscene amounts of money selling ugly dolls."
The ugly doll in question is BABO. BABO likes potato chips, according to the card that's attached to his mid-section. BABO also has "my back covered" which will be useful with a homicidal cat running about.
It turns out that Alert Reader Tammy, who may or may not be my wife, bought BABO for me. She picked him from many other ugly dolls, all of which you can see here at the ugly dolls website. At first I wasn't sure about getting an ugly doll - is that a good thing or is someone trying to tell you something? But BABO has grown on me. After doing some research and "googling" I discovered that the BABO ugly doll is actually fashioned after BABO, PURPLE POTENTATE of PERDITION, who fought Godzilla in that classic GODZILLA vs. BABO. As you'll no doubt remember, BABO ended up switching sides and becoming a good monster who helped GODZILLA destroy ANDROID GODZILLA, saving countless Japanese soldiers and power lines. BABO has since become something of a world traveler, and has visited a number of important tourist spots.
BABO is highlighted to help you find him
Look for the regular feature, "POSTCARDS FROM BABO" in future posts.
Kate Bilo is working on a new video show at AccuWeather, and is soliciting questions to be asked of AccuWeather Personalities™. Of course, this would not include me, since I have no personality, but those of you who are weather-obsessed may want to avail yourself of the opportunity. For example, you could ask Kate to ask Henry about the Snowblower thing, which really does need to be explained. Or, you could ask Kate to ask Jesse about his cam, which also should be explained. OR, you could just ask a serious question, like what she plans to do about the coming LEGO® Armageddon.
You can reach Kate at bilo@accuweather.com. She's one of the more creative people at AccuWeather, so if you're inclined take a moment out to email her and help out. You can copy me on the email if you'd like and I can follow up with Kate, or bug Henry and/or Jesse. Thanks!
I don't know why, but I find this funny. It's probably the thought that a crab's only purpose in life is to pinch. That, and saying "I want to pinch" is addictive. Go on, say it. Okay, now try not to say it again. You're dying, aren't you? Okay you can say it again.
Share this with friends. That way, you can pinch them any time you want. When they say, "OW! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" just look at them and reply, "I want to pinch." Then they'll remember, and start laughing. And they won't even realize you got a free pinch.
Cassie had a recital Sunday night. Carl and Music Recitals are like Superman and Kryptonite. First Carl gets weak, then collapses, then turns green. I really do try to be the supportive parent. And for two minutes I was extremely interested, and the recital was interesting and I paid close attention. (These were the two minutes that Cassie was playing her flute. And she did a marvelous job, too.) The other 98 minutes were pure torture. But I did manage to make a few observations I want to pass along.
The first thing I discovered was this: If my last name was Moon, and I had a son, I would name him Spoon. Why? Because Spoon Moon would be an awesome name. He would likely be a first round draft pick for the NFL, given that he survived adolescence, high school and college. I discovered this because there was someone on the program with the last name of "Moon" but with an otherwise ordinary first name.
The second thing I discovered was this: 99.9% of kids are not music savants, despite what their parents might think. There was one kid at the recital that was definitely some sort of genius. I think he was six, and played this complex piano thing that was amazing. I was watching his hands and they were just a blur. In ten years time, given that he sticks with it, he'll likely be brilliant. Of course, while he was playing my brain started arguing with itself over whether this was great genetics at work or something else. He was so young that it seemed very unlikely that his skill was due to years of hard work and practice. But if it was genetics, is that something extraordinary or a gift? Do you applaud something like that if it's just genetics, or are you applauding the one who gave him the gift? And did I really need those fries with lunch? Probably not. Oh wait, he's done time to clap.
The third thing I discovered was this: People are pretty self-absorbed, except me of course. Okay I made that up. I mean about me not being self-absorbed, not about other people being self-absorbed. I noticed this whole thing because there was a gentleman who was planning on video taping their child's performance, and so this man sat at the end of a row and then plugged his camcorder into the wall, stretching the cord across the aisle people had to walk down. Now, I KNOW you know where this is going. And as soon as I saw this happening I knew where this was going, but did HE know where it was going? Of course not. And sure enough, after two people stumbled over the cord (the first two to pass by, incidentally) he unplugged it. Why did I know that was a bad idea, and everyone reading this knew it was a bad idea, but he did it anyway? Did I really need those fries with lunch? Probably not.
Finally, according to Albert Einstein and time dilation everyone at the recital must have been traveling at the speed of light because time slowed to a near stand-still. I had to actually give my watch to my son to save his life, because otherwise he would have asked me what time it was so often I would have exploded, killing him and probably everyone around me, including the guy with the camcorder. We had cleverly planned to have dinner after the recital, for some reason I can't understand, and that helped time to move even slower. However it did eventually end, and everyone slowed down returning time to its normal flow, and to everyone outside of the recital it only appeared as though one hour and forty minutes had passed. This time discrepancy left me with one question though.
(This is a reprint of something I wrote a long, long time ago. I wanted to get it into MT so it was searchable and whatnot. My apologies if you've seen it before :)
Some say that the culture is coarsening. They say we're in moral free-fall. I've done some study on the subject, and I'm afraid to report it's all true. You can see for yourself, and you don't have to go much farther than the nearest supermarket.
The sign says it all. "Ten Items or Less". It's not hard to understand. There are no asterisks or footnotes. No directions to the nearest customer service desk. We can all do the math: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. What could be easier?
Unfortunately, there are those that either a. don't get it, or b. refuse to get it. So they try to maneuver around the rule. We've all seen them. Here are a few:
Grandma with Cat
She's the cute, elderly woman, doesn't seem to hear well, may be legally blind. She pulls in front of you as you approach the check out aisle with your loaf of bread and jug of milk. You smile politely and wait for her to get in line ahead of you. Then you see it: The cart must have 139 cans of Purina in it. (And, oddly enough, 1 can of chewing tobacco.) She slowly begins placing them on the conveyor belt, ONE... BY... ONE... You're certain that the cat will be long dead, with rigormortis fully set in, before she gets home.
The Rule: Age is no excuse! That's AGEISM and we WILL NOT STAND FOR IT. GET BACK GRANNIE! BACK!!
Bonnie and Clyde
Ever see this one? The couple in front of you seem to know each other. Maybe they shop here often? Must be a coincidence. He's in front of her, so he puts his stuff on the belt. But then, amazingly, I mean amazing like "Parting the Red Sea amazing", she puts her stuff down too! They not only know each other, but they're married and are shopping together!!
The Rule: 10 + 10 STILL equals 20. TRY ANOTHER AISLE, YOU IDIOTS!
Captain Vegetables
How about this one: Young college student, in sweats and torn t-shirt, dumps 8 cabbages, 14 onions, a dozen tomatoes and a kiwi down and waits for his total. What? They have baggies in the produce aisle? I didn't know!
The Rule: 14 onions are 14 items, unless YOU BAG THEM YOU FOOL! GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL! DO NOT PASS GO!
Ms. 'Rules Can Be Bent'
Mom-type with two noisy kids. Does a careful count of her items, as do you over her shoulder, has ten, proceeds to check out. Son grabs a snickers, screams loudly that he must have it or he'll tell EVERYONE about that time you overfed "Twinky" the pet goldfish and had to flush him, and throws a royal fit until Mom adds the candy to the total and hastily checks out.
The Rule: Sorry Mom! 10 + 1 = 11! Try flushing your son's bad manners instead and GET IN THE NEXT AISLE OVER!
So what to do about this problem? Unbelievably, the solution where I shop for food is - I am not making this up - changing the signs to read: "ABOUT Ten Items or Less." What is THAT? New Math? Look, 10 is 10. Putting ABOUT up there is just the same as putting "Ten Items or less or more or SHUCKS, WE DON'T CARE! BRING IT ON!!" This is no solution.
So, in the interest of helping society out, or at least making MY grocery trip less annoying, I've come up with a new, simple, easy-to-understand system of checking out in the TEN items or less aisle:
First, and most importantly, the sign should read: 1-10 items. I mean, let's say what we mean.
(In smaller print: "or else". There. They were warned.)
Second, we need to have a graduated list for how to score items:
Veggies are separate items unless YOU BAG THEM. Then they are one item per bag.
Any items attached together are 1 item. Bananas - 1 item a bunch. Case of soda? 1 item. Gizzards? 1 item.
Cigarettes are the exception. They count as 1 item/cigarette. Hey, smoke on your own time buddy.
Any meat by-product is 1 item + 1 item/pound. Man, that stuff is gross.
Cans of Pet Food count as 1 item/can. Careful Grannie, they add up fast!
Milk is a freebie. That's right, 0 items. I mean, they put it way in the back there. I hate that.
Certain combinations can get you in trouble. Watch out for these - they result in automatic rejection:
Ice Cream + Meat Product + Anything For Foot Care
Anything Fatty + Tums
Diet Coke + Light Chips + Lard
Drano + Bacon Bits + Organic Produce
And now, even though we have these simple, easy to understand rules, what should we do with the scofflaws? And make no mistake - there
will still be those who try to "get ahead" of the rest of us law-abiding citizens. Well, that depends on the seriousness of the offense:
First Offense:
Total = 11 items: 1 Slap upside the head with the Stupid Stick
Total = 12-15 items: 2 Slaps with the Stupid Stick, 5 minutes public jeering
Total = 16-20 items: Everyone behind you in line gets a turn with the Stupid Stick
Total = 21+ items: Everyone IN THE STORE gets a turn with the Stupid Stick
Second Offense:
Total = 11 items: Wallet gets emptied, kicked out of the store with loud jeering
Total = 12-15 items: Your wallet and glove compartment get emptied, and your shoe laces are tied together
Total = 16-20 items: Your wallet and glove compartment get emptied, head gets shaved, and you are forced to wear a placard that reads
"HOW MANY items?" while pacing back and front in front of the store
Total = 21+ items: Your items are rung up as usual, then passed around the store for the clerks to sample, while you are
lead away to serve 10 to 20
Alert Reader Tammy, who may or may not be my wife, is making me sleep on the floor. Of course, there's a perfectly rational explanation for this, which I've gone to great lengths to diagram and explain here. I'm doing this for NGR (no good reason) although Tammy says that this is amusing.
If you consult figure 1, above, you'll see the Great Circle of Furniture, which was immortalized in that song by Elton John. The Great Circle of Furniture is the story of how furniture gets used and reused until it eventually dissolves into potting soil, which then is eaten by worms that are used in the making of foot stools and ottomans, et cetera and so on.
In figure 1, which again is above in case you weren't paying attention, you'll see the three main characters in my story. After we purchased the new bed, which you can read all about here if you haven't and I highly recommend that you do because it's very amusing, we came home and got a great flyer about a future bedding sale we would not be attending. We then went upstairs and stared at our old bed with tremendous disdain, at which point two supporting boards fell out from under the bed. This started the Great Circle of Furniture.
For you see, the old bed (this would be "A" in figure 1, which is above) was going to be passed to our son to replace his bunk bed (this would be "B" in figure 1, which is also above.) The bunk bed would then be donated to someone worthy, and we would get our new bed. I had planned to do all of this at some Later Date, because I put off things that I don't want to do, or that are impossible, or both. However, because our bed shed two supporting boards Tammy suggested that we start the Great Circle of Furniture immediately because at a minimum we would have to fix these supporting boards and, well, why not just do everything now.
So we took apart our bed and then I started taking apart my son's bunk bed. This was the impossible thing I was putting off, because the bunk bed is actually one solid molded piece of iron. I had to use a screw driver, hammer, hack saw and eventually an acetylene torch to take it apart. It was after I had disassembled the bunk bed that I realized I didn't know what the master plan was. Because if we gave my son our bed, and we didn't have the new bed, where would I sleep? It was then that Tammy explained, rather matter-of-factly, that we were only giving him the frame and box spring, and he would keep his mattress for the time being, and we would just sleep on our mattress on the floor. (This would be "C" in figure 1, which is around here somewhere.) Then the Twilight Zone music started playing, and I heard Rod Sterling say:
"You are looking at Mr. Schaad. Until now he's lived an ordinary life, with his house, family, cat and fourteen-year-old bed. But Mr. Schaad is about to take his bed apart. Why? So that he can sleep on the floor. For you see, Mr. Schaad has entered another dimension, not only of dust and carpet fuzz, but a dimension slightly closer to sea level. Mr. Schaad has regressed to his college years - next stop, the Futon Zone."
I shook the Rod Serling out of my head and finished my assembling and disassembling heroics. Now my son has my bed and I'm trying to survive my dust allergy for the next week. But see, this way I didn't have to fix those two supporting boards and then just take the bed apart again next weeked. Or, as Elton might sing:
Some say eat or be eaten,
Some say live and let live,
But all are agreed, as they join the stampede,
You should never take apart your bed before the new one comes..."
Our mad shopping spree continues unbated as we've just added a bed to the list. I decided several days ago, when I got out of bed and every bone in my body hurt, and then simultaneously broke, that it was time for a new bed. I asked Alert Reader Tammy when we bought our current bed, and apparently it was back in 1992 and was a "Five-Year Bed." I don't know what that means; maybe after five years it was supposed to explode or turn into dust or something. But we figured we had the bed long enough so I began the Great Schaad Bed Hunt of 2006. This started with me calling Bed Stores:
Carl: "Hello, do you have any beds?" Savvy Salesperson: "Why yes, we do." Carl: "Do you have any free beds?" Savvy Salesperson: Long pause. "What do you mean?" Carl: "I mean like beds, but they wouldn't cost anything, because that fits best in my budget." Savvy Salesperson: Longer pause. "Um, no. You have to pay for these beds." Carl: Pause. "Do you have any special deals where I can arrange for no payments until 2016?" Savvy Salesperson: "Well, we do have an 18 month payment and interest free period..." Carl: "Sold! Wrap one up, we'll be right over."
Okay I made that up, but that was my initial thought. If we could get something free, or payment free for ten years, I figured I would probably be dead by then and - HA! - joke's on them. But trying this sort of arrangement in the past and then having so many customers unexpectedly croak probably soured them to the entire thing.
So we went to the furniture store, which was quite impressive and filled with lots of beds. Being hapless consumers, we flopped down on each bed and made "oooh" and "aaah" noises because, unlike our current bed, each one did not feel like flopping onto a box of rusty, poorly sharpened potato peelers. And since they were all a dramatic improvement over what we had, all that was left to do was haggling with each other over the price. We could get the cheapest thing they offered, which is what we would normally do, but where's the Exciting Debt Challenge in that? Fortunately for Tammy and I a Savvy Salesperson came along just then.
The Savvy Salesperson confessed that he was a wood worker at heart, and if we wanted to buy a wardrobe he could bore us to death and this feature and that feature and intricate wood working facts. But since we weren't buying a wardrobe (alas) all he could do was to tell us to flop on all of the beds and wait for three minutes (the exact amount of time, I've learned, it takes for the human body to sink into a new mattress) and decide what we liked best. This sort of Reverse Psychology of Selling always baffles me, and it was right before lunch so I became a little stunned. Sort of like the male lion who has just been hit by the tranquilizer dart. Not quite down yet, but getting woozy and as a result pretty much disinterested in eating the film crew.
So I was prepared to start flopping when the Savvy Salesperson asked if we wanted to do the Kingsdown Sleep To Live DormoDiagnostics Sleep Study. Ordinarily if someone walked up to you on the street or in a store and said, "Hey! How would you like to do the Kingsdown Sleep To Live Domodiagnostics Sleep Study?" you would run, or hit them, or scream like a little girl. But being a little stunned I said "Yes." Now Tammy became stunned because I said had yes to such a bizarre thing.
The KSTLDSS involved entering some basic demographic information into a computer, such as height, gender, SSN, if you've ever brought something into the country you haven't declared, favorite foods, and the last four movies you've rented, and then lying down on a Space Age Test Mattress. The KSTLDSS scans your body, or claims to, and prints out a color profile of what the computer sees when it scans you (or claims to.) The Savvy Salesperson then asked Tammy to undergo the KSTLDSS and she did, surprisingly, probably because she was also stunned. Afterward we compared our body scans (or what the KSTLDSS claims were our body scans) and sure enough mine was larger and more lumpy. This in in line with all of the other body scans we've done and compared, so perhaps it was on the up-and-up.
What was the point of all of that? Well, other than knowing we've recently rented The Seven Samurai and Pride and Prejudice, (which would make a GREAT cross-over combo) the KSTLDSS gives you a number. This magic number corresponds to a specific, insanely expensive mattress in the showroom that is Your Perfect Mattress. Perfect as in the little mattress elves had your unique physiology in mind when they crafted it from the finest elven gold and mythril. (Mythril is a difficult to find elemental metal, MY on the periodic table, that is firm yet springy in all of the right spots.) So we walked over and flopped on the Just Right Mattress and waited for three minutes.
Oooh. Aaah.
While we were waiting, we noticed a sign hung above the KSTLDSS site, which explained that Bad Mattresses, aside from being the work of the devil, were the cause of things such as "Premature Aging," "Insomnia," "Acid Reflux Disease," "Renting Movies Such as Pride and Prejudice," and "Death." Fortunately a decent, made-by-elves mythril mattress of the appropriate number would cure all of these, particularly Death but probably not the video rental issue (once that takes hold not even a good mattress will shake it loose.)
Three minutes and nine seconds after we started sinking the Savvy Salesperson came back and asked us what we thought. We confirmed the Pay Nothing Until 2008 thing and said we'd take it. The only caveat was, since we couldn't get out of the bed that they had to deliver it with us lying on it.
Okay I made that part up. Several Savvy Salespersons used these electric cattle prod things and kept shocking us until we got up, and then about eight of them corralled us towards the payment desk.
So now we have a new bed arriving in a week. This is very exciting, although it wouldn't be a True Schaad Story™ unless there was some sort of sick twist at the end. So, here you go: When we got home we checked the mail, and there was a letter from the exact same furniture store.
It was about their Friends and Family Event this coming Saturday, June 10th, wherein you (that would be me, or would have been) would receive "incredible savings on every piece of furniture, bedding and accessory item" as well as free refreshments and raffle prizes. They are even going to give away free copies of Pride and Prejudice. Life can be cruel sometimes.
We have a lemming leader in our neighborhood. I don't know who it is yet, because s/he is always outside way, way early in the morning, sometimes even before 9 a.m. A garbage lemming is a person or persons who disregards the Official Garbage Pick-Up Schedule and takes the garbage out to the curb every Thursday, no matter what. Sometimes his/her plans are very transparent - such as when Christmas falls on a Thursday. Sometimes they're much more insidious, such as this past week.
This past week started with a holiday - Memorial Day - on Monday. This is a perfect set-up for the garbage lemming to strike. Memorial Day isn't one of those high profile holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving or Flag Day. It also always falls on a Monday, and by the time you get to Thursday you've completely forgotten about it.
So the garbage lemming got up bright and early and took his/her garbage to the curb. What happened next? You guessed it. All of the OTHER lemmings started waddling out of their houses with the garbage. Pretty soon almost everyone on the street had taken their garbage out - including yours truly - even though no one was coming for it. Because the week started with a holiday, which moves pick-up forward one day.
Somewhere, behind some window curtain, the lemming was laughing at the chaos s/he wrought. Laughing, and looking forward to July 4.
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Father's Day occurred this past Sunday. 
Alberto is trying very hard to become a hurricane and sneak up on Florida, although should he manage it the storm would only be a minimal category 1. Governor Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency today and urged residents of low-lying coastal areas to evacuate. It's possible that Alberto could create a storm surge of up to 10 feet. Gov. Bush also remarked on the speed of the storm reaching land - given the "official" season began only 12 days ago.
I came home today and found an ugly doll on my keyboard. My first thought was, "Someone in my family bought me an ugly doll." My second thought, which followed almost immediately, was, "Someone is probably making obscene amounts of money selling ugly dolls."
Our mad shopping spree continues unbated as we've just added a bed to the list. I decided several days ago, when I got out of bed and every bone in my body hurt, and then simultaneously broke, that it was time for a new bed. I asked Alert Reader Tammy when we bought our current bed, and apparently it was back in 1992 and was a "Five-Year Bed." I don't know what that means; maybe after five years it was supposed to explode or turn into dust or something. But we figured we had the bed long enough so I began the Great Schaad Bed Hunt of 2006. This started with me calling Bed Stores: