I'm writing this last night, which is actually right now, but is also last night. Hooray for TypePad's "publish this later" thingy!
Still with me?
Okay. I have to stay up another 90 minutes or so while my punkin pies cook. I'm taking them to my brother's house for dinner tomorrow. Why did I just put them in the oven at 10:15 PM? I'm glad you asked. Because I didn't realize that I had about a pinch of ground cinnamon in the spice rack. As this is much less than the required two teaspoons, I drove myself to the market, so I could spend thirty-two fucking dollars (american) on four different stupid spices. It was really funny when the checkout lady saw my spices on the belt and said, "Don't even look at the price. Just swipe your card and get back home before you realize how bad you just got screwed." Apparently, I wasn't the only stupid-husband-in-charge-of-pies who had been in there tonight. When I got home, I turned on the oven to pre-heat, and began the process of mixing my thirty-two fucking dollars (american) of spices together. I reached for the required 2 1/2 cups of sugar . . . and discovered that we were entirely out of sugar.
I walked into our bedroom, where Anne was already tucked in and watching TV.
"We're out of sugar," I said, as if telling her this would get her to release some of the vast stores of sugar she'd been hording in a secret root cellar that I'd never seen in the seven years we've lived in our house. This was a repeat of the conversation we'd had twenty minutes earlier, when I walked in and said, "We're out of cinnamon, ginger, and ground cloves."
"Remember when I called you from the store this morning, and asked you to double check, and make sure you had everything you needed to make pies?"
"Uh-huh."
"And remember how you said, 'uh-huh,' and kept watching Battlestar Galactica?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Do you need anything from the store?" I said.
"Believe it or not, since the last time you asked me twenty minutes ago, nothing new has come up." She said.
"Okay. I'll be right back." I got the hell out of there, hoping that I could somehow convince her that it was all a dream tomorrow. And by tomorrow, I mean today, but really tomorrow.
I drove to a different market this time, and picked up one pound of sugar. The store was swarming with panicked idiot husbands like myself. The atmosphere was similar to the card aisle in the twenty-four hour drug store around midnight on February 13th.
But the important thing is, I have punkin pies in the oven, now, and I'll have to stay awake for another two hours while they do their thing. So instead of playing poker with Shane and Joanne, I'm writing a little bit, then I'm going to get back to reading Blink, which is a fascinating book that I highly recommend to everyone.
Here are a few random thoughts before I get offline:
Following up on my last post, where the discussion is currently all about music (which makes me really sad, because it entirely misses the point of that story): if you are bored to death with the average radio option out there, and if you find yourself longing for an awesome radio station that plays really great music in a format that completely does not suck, you should really be listening to Egg Radio.
"Before you decide that everyone knows something (or no one does), take a second to realize that you're wrong." -Seth Godin.
Carly lists her top ten cheesy movies, including this turkey (har. har. har.):
8. Anaconda
The true star of this movie is yet to be determined, but it’s a tie between Jon Voight’s facial expressions and the rubber snakes that terrorize the crew. Of course, Ice Cube calling one of them a bitch is high on the list.
Carly's number one on the list has got heat.
I took my cat, Biko, to the vet earlier this week. Biko is Sketch's brother, and is the runt of their litter. He's the only kitty left, and he's the one we thought we'd lose first, for sure. The vet said that he was in perfect health, had even gained a little weight since his last visit, and that all his bloodwoork is normal. He will probably live to be one of those very old cats who is over twenty when he dies. The very next day, Anne found out from her eye doctor that she is incredibly allergic to Biko, and he's giving her some sort of allergic conjunctivitis. She told the doctor that there's no way we're getting rid of him, and he gave her a prescription that costs eight hundred gazillion dollars a week. It's funny and a little sad that she's allergic to him, because they totally love each other -- Biko sleeps on her side of the bed most of the day, and he snuggles up around her side at night. She said, "I love him as much as he loves me, so I'll just deal."
Back in the very early days of The Internets, when it was a big deal to telnet into your friends' machine at school or ftp issues of Phrack to each other, my friends and I would collect and pass around really weird and obscure mix tapes. One of my favorites had Buddy Rich freaking out on the tour bus, a bunch of prank calls to Red (the inspiration for Moe on The Simpsons), tons of pre-CD Jerky Boys, and several clips of Casey Kasem freaking out about moving the time of his show, and a long-distance dedication. I can't believe how hard it was to find some of those Casey clips, but here are two of them: "It's ponderous man. It's fuckin' ponderous." and "The Dead Dog Tape." If anyone reading this has access to other outtakes like these, and you're willing to share them, please let me know. Update: These links seem to be down, probably because the link got WWdN'd. I tried to find contact info to apologize to the hosting site's webmaster, but came up empty. If someone has these files and would like to host them, let me know and I'll change the links.
Last night (tonight) Nolan spent close to two hours reading this book that one of his teachers gave to him, and only put it down when he was too tired to keep reading. He told me, "This is way better than TV." When I went into his room to tell him goodnight, he'd fallen asleep, listening to Audio from Blueman Group.
Okay, it looks like the pies are just about done, which means that I am, too. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate this holiday. I hope you get to spend it with people you love.
