Oh noes! I left my iPhone at home!
When I first discovered this it was all I could do to prevent myself from jumping in my car and making the hour-plus round trip to retrieve it. I’ve been traumatized ever since.
For instance…
- …when I went out for a walk at lunch I had to do it without music.
- …I’m headed south this evening to meet up with friends and I had to print out a map to find the place I’m going.
- …an employee was sick and texted me to tell me and I didn’t see the message
See? Trauma! I haven’t even gotten into the fact that in order to meet up with people tonight I’ll have to coordinate in advance. Can you imagine? It’s inhumane to expect me to function this way!
<sob> Oh, my poor little iPhone. Don’t cry, I’ll be home this evening to save you.
My evening’s plans were unexpectedly changed, leaving me with time at home to make…
- Grilled chicken thighs rubbed with the 1997 Joy of Cooking Cajun Blackening Spice, freshly mixed this evening
- Roasted cauliflower, tossed in EVOO and a spice mix of ground allspice, coriander, cumin, cayenne (invented on the fly)
- Caramelized onions, because they make life worth living
- Bonny Doon 2007 Le Cigare Blanc, because it happened to be in the fridge
Yeah, life is pretty darn good. But not as good as that chicken. Mmm…Cajun blackened chicken…
Internet > router > server, MacBook, Squeezeboxes, iPhone, neighbor laptops..
To get to the right place to serve the blog the router has to forward certain traffic to a specific address.
That address, for a reason yet unknown to me, keeps changing.
Ahem: Grrr!
I haven’t the time/inclination to track it down right now so please just bear with me as the blog availability leans toward the sporadic. If it keeps happening I’ll probably have a look at it this weekend.
Photo by: Max Johnson
There are a lot of meetings on my calendar this week, so during today’s lunch I went for a walk to get out of the office and decompress a little bit.
During my walk I spent a surprising amount of time thinking, “Dang, I could really use some sushi. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sushi right about now? Maybe I can get some sushi when I’m in Mountain View on Thursday. Golly, sushi is swell. I wish I had some right now.”
Eventually I returned and went on to my next (ninety minute) meeting. It was fairly productive, yay, but tiring, boo.
I checked my phone after the meeting and found a text from a friend:
Sushi anyone?
HURRAH! I get sushi tonight!
That worked out pretty well…so during tomorrow’s walk I need to spend a surprising amount of time thinking about how I need a cabana boy.
I admit to being somewhat conceited because I haven’t had TV—broadcast or cable—for the past nine years. Sure, I’ve had a television set, but it’s only used for the DVD player and the occasional Playstation game. However thanks to Hulu, Netflix and my MacBook I’m seriously considering getting rid of my TV altogether.
This thought has been rolling around in my head for a while now. At the moment I’m in the midst of the process of minimizing the stuff I have. Clothes not worn for a long time? Books that’ll never be read? Random items that are taking up space? Out they go. It’s really pleasant living in an environment that isn’t burdened by clutter and a lot of physical noise. Plus I’m finding that my living space is a lot more attractive and just so darn useful when I don’t have to work around all the extra stuff.
The TV finally landed smack in the middle of my minimizing sights a little over a week ago. Though rarely sick I’d managed to come down with the flu and spent three days laying on the couch feeling miserable. During those days I watched movies and videos constantly but only once or twice on the TV. The rest of the time I was watching things on my MacBook. It became pretty obvious that the TV wasn’t really needed.
The idea of getting rid of the TV is gaining appeal for me for aesthetic reasons as well. It’s a mid-size tube TV set housed in a nice dark wood TV armoire. It looks pretty good and I do like it a lot but it’s large. If it goes away then I can use that portion of my living room for seating instead, something which always seems in short supply when I have more than two or three people over at once (a fairly frequent occurrence). And that big swath of wall currently covered by armoire can instead be covered by art. Plus the next time I move my friends will appreciate toting around a few chairs rather than a huge and unwieldy piece of furniture.
What if I do it and don’t like it? What if I find I get really sick of watching things on my 13″ MacBook? Hell, I can just save up and buy a nice new plasma TV later, right? It’s not like this would be a decision of no return. And, really, it’s not like this comes anywhere close to an important decision. It’s just a TV, for crying out loud.
Anyway, I’m not completely off the fence on this subject yet but I think we all know which direction I’m leaning. Still thinking. We’ll see.
After a great deal of yak shaving the blog has finally been updated, software, theme and all.
You’ve likely noticed that I’d stopped posting. This was mostly because I kept saying to myself, “Oh, I’ll do it right after I upgrade the thing.”
Now that I’ve done that I have almost no excuse not to start posting again.
So, hey, watch this spot for new and exciting blogging.
Unless you’re very experienced in such things or you just don’t give a flying fig, when planning a dinner party you can expect to pass through the following ten stages:
- Inspiration A brilliant idea hits you, one which you wish to cook up and share with other people. You picture your event as something worthy of a four-color glossy spread in Gourmet Magazine: beautiful people in a beautiful place saying beautiful things with beautiful drinks in their hands and noshing on beautiful foods.
- Exuberance Bubbling over with ideas and excitement you invite everyone you know, ignoring for a moment that you only own four chairs, eight plates (on a good day) and not enough silverware to both serve food and eat it.
- Realization Of the ‘everyone’ on the invite list ‘everyone minus two’ agrees that your dinner is a great idea and that attendance is required. You start doing the chair/plate/silverware math. You start sketching out the realistic requirements for your grand plan. Your eyes start to widen.
- Panic Common thoughts entering your mind at this stage include, “What in the bloody hell was I thinking?” and “Maybe I could contract hantavirus before then so I don’t have to follow through.”
- Resignation Fate is a swift beastie and you recognize that you can’t outrun her. Heavy sighs are heaved, a few teeth are gnashed and perhaps a garment or two is rent but in the end you admit that you have to see this through and hope either that your death from shame is swift and painless or that you emerge stronger at the other end of the ordeal.
- Planning There are those who mistakenly place this stage near the top of the list, somewhere between Inspiration and Exuberance. These people are fulltime residents of their own personal fantasy lands. This stage cannot occur until you have met your enemy and have realized that it is you. This normally occurs sometime shortly after reviewing the newly-devised menu.
- Execution Contrary to the sound (or your desire), this stage does not typically involve any killing but it is comprised of much hunting as you search high and low for the ingredients required for the ambitious menu set forth in the previous stage. This stage also contains the first forays into food preparation and cooking.
- Panic It is the day of the party and you are as organized as a three-year-old who breakfasted on Fruity Pebbles topped with Red Bull. Hercules himself never faced a labor so hopeless as the task before you and the stables of Augeas are pristine compared to the state of your home/kitchen/mind.
- Disbelief Your first guest arrives, inevitably moments after you deem the home worthy of guests and moments before you notice the dirty underwear you missed when making the clean sweep of the bedroom which will hold the coats. Dinner goes off with hardly a hitch, but that’s because your friends are there to hang out and enjoy themselves and wouldn’t mind if you just ordered out pizza and served cheap Trader Joe’s wines.
- Collapse Everyone has gone home. A fun time was had by all, yourself excepted. You stare blankly at the piles of unwashed dishes and opt to knock back a good stiff drink and then melt into bed, saving the washing up for the morning.
For the record, I’m currently entrenched in Stage 6. Stages 3, 4 and 5 were a real bitch. I can hardly wait to reach Stage 8. That one’s always a trip.
I walk up to my door, later than usual. Grab the mail. Acknowledge the unintelligible greetings of my neighbors with a big smile and a wave. Fumble for my keys as I open the screen door…and a small box falls out.
“Box? Huh?”
(more after the jump)
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Main | VM Brasseur | 
2009-07-2 15:32 | 
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