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This year I made Thanksgiving dinner by myself.  It was the first time I did all of it.  I’ve helped in the past, and have made some of the dishes myself for other non-Thanksgiving purposes, but this was the first time I made all of it.  Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes (both normal and sweet potato-style), green bean casserole, stuffing, rolls…yeah, that’s it.

Oh yeah, and a pecan pie too.

Veronica had to work till 4pm, so I prepared the casserole and the stuffing the night before and then got up around 9 or 10 to get the party started, just like Pink says you’re supposed to do.  I pulled the turkey out of its body bag and washed it and pulled the junk out of the hatches and laid ‘er to rest on a funeral pyre made by some fine kitchen-accessories company.  I then started in on the seasoning.  I remember seeing Anthony Bourdain rub butter and seasoning under the skin of a bird he was cooking and I wanted to try that, so I did.

Oven preheated, turkey rubbed down, a bit of broth poured over it the kick-start the juicy-juice process, and we were rolling.  I even set my watch to go off every 45 minutes so I could baste the bastard.

Anybody who has cooked a Thanksgiving dinner will tell you the same thing I’m about to, except that I will employ hyperbole so as to make it exceedingly humorous to read.  Or not.

I have decided that cooking all that crap for one meal is much like an NBA playoff game.  It starts out slow.  You have plenty of time to surf the internet or pick your nose or whatever it is you do to distract  yourself from the boredom of daily life.  Pretty soon you’re having to be judicious with your bathroom breaks, or maybe you can’t just be doing keg-stands whenever you want, because there’s a little timing needing to be involved now.  At this point, all is still good.  Sure, you’re still paying attention to the bird, and you’re making sure that the next dish is ready to go in when it needs to, maybe you’re getting stuff ready ahead of time in anticipation of needing to make gravy or whatever, but then something happens.

All of a sudden the crowd roars and now everybody on the court is hustling like they actually want to take home a ring.  Both teams are applying full-court press and every inbounds pass is actively being blocked by the opposition.  People are running full speed, and sweat is pouring off of heads like a faucet that just never did work right from day one.

Now imagine what a playoff game must be like, cuz that was me in the kitchen.  Seriously, making that meal was fine and dandy until that one thing, and then it was “waitaminit, what just happened?  Get the 24-second clock back up there!  Oh shit…time out.  CALL TIME OUT!!!”

From 9 until 2pm – nothing.  Star Wars on the TV, and internet searches of Princess Leia in a metal bathing suit.  Right around 2, though?  I realized that I’d forgotten all about potatoes, so I had to peel and boil two varieties.  I was boiling the gizzards and junk for adding to the gravy.  I was prepping the stuffing and casserole to add to the oven when it was time.  The pecan pie crust was thawing out on the counter, which was crowded due to all the prep required for multiple dishes.  In fact, I had no room for anything because I had EVERYTHING out just waiting to go.  I haven’t ever seen college football players this excited to run through that paper ring on their way into a stadium, that’s how ready all the food was for the oven.

Luckily for me, I had planned SOME of the procedure out and had gone to the store for beer about 30 minutes before everything got crazy, so I wasn’t really in that bad of shape.  And in the end, it all turned out okay.  Every dish, while not Pavlovian in its result, tasted good, and I now have a starting point for next year.  First, call Mom and get her recipes for stuffing and green bean casserole.  My stuffing was decent, but MY GOD did the recipe really call for that much butter?  Goose shit through a tin horn?  How about Turkey stuffing through my poor sphincter?  The chain on my bike has never been as lubed as I have been due to all the butter consumed last week.  Jee-zeezus!!!!

The stuffing is now gone, as is the casserole.  We’ll be eating turkey sandwiches for weeks, and there’s still some potatoes left as well.  Overall, a success.  Next year though, I’m bringing home a ring.

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In this day and age, if you possess any level of celebrity, then you are going to be a target. And the worse the scenario, the bigger the target you are. How many Michael Jackson jokes did you hear last year? I rest my case.

So imagine my pleasure when I saw this out there.

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Hey there dear reader. I’ve recently gone through some changes in my life. To get right to it, I’ve started using Mozilla’s Thunderbird email client, and now it’s a lot easier to manage multiple email accts through the one interface. I realize that that’s soooo 2005, but I’m slowly catching on.

The point here, though, is that I’m going to be no longer checking my Yahoo email address, and if you read this and would like to pre-empt the email I’ll be shortly sending out, feel free to text me or send an email and I’ll update you as to how to address any future emails to me.

Thank you for your readership.

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So here I am, on the throne
Quietly crapping, all alone
And as I type on my website (they’re all the rage)
My girlfriend is commenting on my Facebook page

I posted something, and she went to see
And posted her comment right back to me
If she’d spoken to me, that’d been just fine
But in this day and age, it’s all online

And so I wondered, “what’s the appropriate play?”
How to respond in just the right way?
The answer came quick, cuz I’m no chump
I wrote me a poem while taking a dump

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It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything on this here blog. Funny thing is that I’ve been in front of the computer a LOT in the last few months, and I haven’t thought about this website a whole lot, and the few times I have been working with it, it’s been behind the scenes trying to get a new look in place. That’s been frustrating me to no end. It’s a really cool look that I want to work with, but the main reason I like it is a specific feature that I can’t seem to get up and running. DAMMIT! To that end, I’m now installing a MAMP server on my laptop in order to test the entire website on my computer before I upload it to the internets. That way I can both save lots of time by making sure what I want to see is what you see, and so that what you see IS what I want you to see. For now you’ll see what you currently see, and that’s subject to change without your approval. Take THAT!

So if I’ve been at the computer and not blogging, what the hell HAVE I been doing?

I recently got my hands on some more software and have been learning how to use the Pen tool in Adobe Illustrator, for one. I taught myself to use Photoshop, and while I’ve gotten very familiar and fairly proficient at it, I learn new stuff all the time. One thing I’ve learned in the last year or so is that Photoshop is excellent at what it’s designed to do, which is manipulate photographs. What I’d been doing (and what a LOT of people do) though, is I’d been trying to use it as an image CREATION tool, and Photoshop falls short in that arena simply because that isn’t what it was designed for. So learning to use Illustrator and its Pen tool has been consuming most of my computer time recently. At least the time spent in front of the computer that wasn’t actually work-related, that is. I’ll probably add a page for illustrations and designs I’ve come up with once they start getting better and I stop feeling like a newbie at it.

That’s all for the moment, as MAMP and WordPress have finally downloaded and I have to install them and get set up.

Till next time

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One thing I’ve noticed in daily life is that humans place some importance on The Greeting and The Farewell.  I suppose all social animals have some sort of ritual concerning this, but me being a human, I’ll only comment on that.  Besides, I don’t want to write a dissertation about butt-sniffing just yet, so….back to the subject at hand.

You can tell a lot about how familiar two people are with each other, and indeed their perception of their social standing within each other’s circles just by how they greet and/or say goodbye to each other.  For example, with my inner circle of friends, if I haven’t seen you in a while then I’m likely to give you a hug as a greeting.  If I have seen you recently, then I may shake your hand on arrival, but I may still hug you on my or your exit.  If I see you all the time, then you’re just as likely to get the finger as a quick high-five or even a fist-bump.  Each of these gestures mean the same thing: “Hello friend of mine.  I value your friendship highly and enjoy spending time with you.  Please be at peace with yourself and to show you that I mean all of these things, here is a little physical contact to cement those emotions.”

The funny thing of all this is when shit gets lost in translation.  I’m almost 40 years old and I have friends who range in age from their 50s and 60s down to their 20s.  When I greet people older than myself, it’s all about the ‘old guard’ and ‘respect’ and whatnot, so a simple, firm handshake does the job.  But when I run into buddies who are 10 years younger than I am, shit gets all awkward and hilarious.

…oh shit, I gotta leave soon cuz I have to work early in the morning.  There’s Francois, and I’m gonna have to let him know I’m leaving, but I have no idea how he’s gonna shake my hand!  Is he gonna give me the standard shake?  Is it gonna be the homie handshake?  Is a fist-bump involved, and if so, does it come at the head of the shake or the tail end?  And what happens if I’m confronted with a grenade or a twizzler or a Cleveland Steamer?  Oh shit, what the fuck do I do???

These are the kinds of things that run through my mind when leaving a dinner party and quite frankly it’s terrifying.  I don’t care about appearing to be unhip or old or some crap like that, I just don’t know how to accurately convey my heartfelt and sincere gratitude for the camaraderie and fellowship that was shared during the preceding few hours.  I don’t want to seem cavalier or disingenuous, due to my inability to “shake like the kids these days”, so a lot of angst and trepidation is involved during those moments just prior to leaving a social event with friends of varying ages.

Take a look at the video here and ask yourself, “How, exactly, did that one evolve?”  Imagine leaving a swanky dinner party sponsored by the Golden State Warriors and running into this guy on your way out the door.  I think I’d pass out from sheer fright.

Notice that not only does he get his shake on with one of the venue’s staff, but he’s able to pull of that handshake while NOT EVEN PAYING ATTENTION! He’s yelling at some other guy the whole time, not even looking at the guy he’s shaking hands with.

Good on ya, mate!

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Well, here’s how that works.  For a long time now, I’ve been pretty lax on posting to the site, and recent history hasn’t shown any different.  However, let’s review the tape from last week, shall we?

Firstly, we’ve had some cold-ish weather recently, and one night, when there was a good temperature inversion and it was foggy, I took some pictures of the sky.  That was fun.

Then, a few days later, Whitty had a birthday.  The whole deal was this:  He was turning 40 and since he grew up in AK where men are Men, and since you should be a Man by the age of 40, well he was going to have a Manly Birthday Party!  So he and a friend of his and I all decided that we were going to be Manly at his birthday party.  And we all went Redneck Style for whatever reason.  Knowing that the wardrobe is limited, I decided that I would up the bar a little bit.  So I shaved my head to look like male-pattern baldness.  OH YEAH!  Here are the photos of the party.  Please to enjoy…

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Hey there crimestoppers!

I was eating a schnitzel sandwich last Thursday when I heard a firecracker go off, or maybe it was the ice cracking under my feet.  Funny thing is, I wasn’t hiking on a glacier, nor was I playing with explosives.  No, I was eating my dinner.  So when I heard the noise, my brain said to me something like, “Hey, there’s that noise you hear in your dreams sometimes, but I think this time it’s for real.”

It was for real.

Of course, my first course of action was to get the Denial Machinery up and running.  “OH NO YOU DINT!”  But after sending my tongue out to do some intel gathering, I found out that, “OH SNAP!  YOU DID!”

I had cracked one of my molars such that about 1/3 of it had calved off into my mouth.  Oh goody.  I say that because I am one the many Americans who are going to be affected one way or another by the current health care debate going on around us.  Mainly because I don’t have any insurance.

The next day I made some phone calls and found that the University of Washington School of Dentistry takes patients and, since you essentially end up being a walking training session for some post-grad wannabe dentist, the rates are cheaper than going to a private practitioner.  Hey, I live right by the UW, let’s go!  It’ll be fun!  Especially when I found out that they were going to have to install a crown.  Me?  A CROWN!?  I know my name is a kingly name (not Chewy, my real one), but this is AWESOME!!!  When I’m king, I’m going to make everybody ride a bike for a year before getting a driver’s license and I’m going to make Rainier available to every – what?  Different crown?  What the hell?

No, this sucks.  I don’t want them to cut into my mouth and chop my gumline down to install a cap on my toof and…it’s going to cost money too!?  Oh jesus…

What’s the moral of the story?  Chuck E Cheese pizza is terrible, don’t eat it.  I realize that it doesn’t relate at all to this post, but it’s a good maxim to live by.

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Here I am, surfing the iPhone app store. I recently switched to AT&T so that I could start getting used to the iPhone, cuz Dave wants to write apps for it. So every day I try to think of what might make for a good app and then I search the app store at iTunes.

Recently I was looking for bicycle-related apps since I’m a bike dude, so I was searching terms like “cycling”, “bicycling”, “bikes”, “bicycles”, and when I typed in “cycle”, I found a bunch of apps concerning the ‘menstrual cycle’. WHOA!!! I mean, I guess that just makes sense, cuz that’s kind of a big deal for a number of reasons, all pertaining to one BIG thing that most young people want to avoid, so okay…there’s a bunch of apps for it. But you know…I got curious. So I downloaded one of them.

I feel like I just read my girlfriend’s diary or something! I opened some sort of Pandora’s box and it can never be closed again! This app is CRAZY!!! Okay, sure, you can type in the start and finish dates of your last period, as well as how long in between cycles it usually is, and then as time passes, it will become more predictive for you as to when your friend will next show up. That would seem to be standard fare. But delve a little further and it starts to make one (if male, like myself) feel a little crunchy, like I furnished a false password and am now in some place that I shouldn’t be. AND I’m about to be found out at any moment!

When you open the app, it asks you to furnish when you had your last period, and when you choose any specific date, there’s an option to choose whether you had intercourse or if your period started on that date. I chose intercourse. It then asked me if it was protected or unprotected! WHAT!!! Who are the dirty whores downloading this app?

Well, me, for one. But I digress.

When I went back into the setup portion (always start with a new program by setting up your preferences, it helps one understand just what the program in question is capable of) to adjust parameters, it asked me to input my Luteal Phase. Off to Google I went and found out what that shit meant. Then I was asked if I wanted my Fertile Days to be displayed. Uh, no.

So that was interesting to say the least. However, I was still doing research for the brilliant app that I have in mind and so I went back to the app store. I typed in more search terms and saw many apps that made differing levels of sense in my mind, from the idiotic-but-I-suppose-that-matters-to-some kind of apps to the (like the above-mentioned app) holy-crap-I-had-no-idea-because-I-don’t-live-there kind of apps. At one point though, and I suppose it just makes sense, I did stumble upon a couple of apps that were based on the sex-offender registry idea. Holy shit! If I know ONE thing, it’s Never Look Up Sex Offenders Online. Why? Because you’ll find out where they are! And they are in your neighborhood! Now…I don’t have children, so I don’t worry as much about this as some, but I don’t wanna know that shit! I’d like to think that the nice person walking their Akita at night in our neighborhood simply has that dog because it’s a beautiful animal, and not because they are fiercely loyal to ONE person and will fight to the death for them…and that maybe this person is a sex offender and they need that kind of protection. No thanks, I’d like to think otherwise as the dog (who is as big as a fucking horse) looks me right in the eye and silently challenges me every time I walk by. I’m stupid enough too, to fall for that shit…and I stare right back and the owner has to physically pull him along, cuz this dog ALWAYS wants a piece of me. Funny thing is…I KNOW that dog would rip me a new one too, but I can’t stop letting him know that I’m still higher on the food chain, or totem pole or pecking order. Whatever…try to light a lighter, pal. Try to hitch-hike. Not so easy with paws is it? Fuck you, I’m going to the bar!

Anyway, I learned something new today at the ol’ app store. There is always something out there for you, no matter what your taste.

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I don’t know what the deal is, but the past 9-12 months have not been happy ones for Chewy’s ribcage.  Let me elaborate…

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m going to be starting with Incident #1 or #2, but sometime in November of ’08, I did something to crack a rib.  It’s been a while now, and I don’t remember the specific incident, but I don’t think it happened due to a bike crash.  In fact I think I tripped on something in the dark here in my room, and hit the deck, my chest-cavity bouncing off of something on the way down.  The point here being that when I went up to AK for the month of December, I clearly remember having some decent rib pains for the first week or so.  I’ve cracked ribs before, so I know what it’s like and I also know that they don’t really do anything about it…you just have to hope you don’t cough, sneeze or hiccup until it heals.  So that was my Winter ’09 Juneau trip.  Kinda…

The last night that I was up there, Zeno and Aaron and I tore it up pretty good.  When we got here to my place, I realized that I’d done something awesome to some ribs in a different spot.  Imagine how excited I was to know that it would a couple more weeks of hoping I wouldn’t cough, sneeze or hiccup while a different rib, or ribs, healed up in its/their own sweet time.

Fast forward to the past!  Specifically, in fact, one week ago, roughly.  Thursday evening.  Not last Thursday, but a week prior.  WHATEVER!!!  RECENTLY…I had reason to be riding my bike home from a buddy’s house.  I’d decided to take a different route to get there and so I was returning along the same route, as it took me through more residential neighborhoods, and less along motor vehicle arterials.  In other words, I deemed it to be a safer route.  Along the way I came into a cul-de-sac that had recently been re-surfaced with chip-seal.  As I turned into the cul-de-sac from the sidewalk, I was leaned into the corner, and having been freshly-applied, the surface was not unlike a basketball court covered with marbles.  Marbles that turned into jacks once I went horizontal and hit the deck full-force on my side.  Normally when you hit the deck on pavement, you slide.  That sliding action actually deflects some of the impact of hitting the deck.  I didn’t slide very far.  And it hurt when I went down.  Okay, so there’s that.  Now I have a bruise on my side and scabs on my leg, and my forearm looks like I tried to pick a fight with Wolverine.  My upper arm, however, looks kinda cool.  All the little pebbles scratched me up in multiple deep, short slashes that look like I got a tattoo of a meteor shower.  YIPPEE!!!

But the point of this long-winded post is that guess what?  Yep, the ribs on the right side have been on a slow burn ever since then.  And guess what else?  Yep, I sneezed today.  But this wasn’t just a normal sneeze, this one was one of those ones where the entire system was sealed up airtight, so my lungs, and therefore my chest (i.e., my ribs) took the full force of the blast.

DAMMIT, that hurt!

I’ll just end by saying that injuring your ribs sucks.

Toodles!

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