Man versus Technology

I am not at all technologically savvy. Plugging stuff in is about as far as I usually can get. So why, two days after Christmas, did I decide to attempt to tackle the universal remote my wife bought me last Christmas?

It's not completely my fault that the universal remote didn't get immediate attention. She bought it for me before we had our new TV. And there was an assumption that we'd upgrade to a receiver or some kind of cool sound system. That didn't exactly happen in the year since we've been in the new home. We still have the old DVD player and Wii that we have to plug in one at a time because the old models have the red, yellow, and white cables and our new LED TV only has one set of plugs. It has tons of HDMI plugs but so far we've used one slot.

I had to dig through three cardboard boxes to get to the remote. It seemed simple enough. There was a charging station on which the remote sat. My first problem is I didn't see where the power cord plugged in. It was in a nearly invisible nook on the underside of the remote station. Every time I've put the remote into the station it goes white for a second and then nothing happens. I turned the switch on the bottom of the charging station so it shows white. I think it's supposed to be green when the remote is completely powered up.

So the remote may or may not be charging. That's like step negative two. I put in the CD that's supposed to have the software that you install into the remote, telling it what all of your devices are and the magical combinations to get everything to work. The CD did nothing. It was supposed to start the software. I opened the CD's contents on the desktop and nothing opened and nothing worked. I went to the product's Web site and downloaded the software that way.

At this point my wife thinks the odds of me succeeding are about the same as the Titans winning the Super Bowl this year.

My next step is to record the model numbers of all of my devices. We have a Samsung TV, a Wii, a Sony DVD player, a Visio Sound Bar, a TiVo and a receiver that probably will not be used. I wrote them down, but can I read my own writing?

The software starts running. Page one shows a mother-of-three type holding a remote looking happy. Her husband probably set it up. I'm not saying that women are incapable of mastering technology. It's just the people most happy with technology are the ones who don't understand the inner workings.

I sign my 100th consecutive software license agreement without looking at a word of it. One of these days we're going to sign away our organs to an evil genius.
I had trouble plugging in the USB cable that connects to my remote. Yeah, I had trouble figuring out where that plugged as well. Hey instruction people, show us where things plug in rather than poorly explaining where.

The software continues. Funny how when this process continues, my brain feels softer. Yeah, I know, bad joke. Oh, look, I have to create an account. Can you imagine trying to explain to a 12-year-old kid in 1955 about Internet logins and how it's going to be impossible to remember all of the passwords? That kid would pray for immediate nuclear winter.

I have to suspend my work as I think the remote needs to be charged before it can plug into the computer. I don't think I'm even up to step one yet.

The wife sensed my distress and during the following day, she input all of the "devices" into the computer and it loaded onto the remote. The remote now knows more than I do. The hardest part of fine-tuning the remote was having the computer upstairs and the TV downstairs. It would ask for the steps it took to play a DVD, for example, and I'd have to go downstairs and mock them and bring the remotes upstairs so I could remember all of the button combinations.

I went downstairs with the darn thing and pointed it at the TV. It worked. I even got the DVD player to work. I had to suspend our watching of John Adams because I plugged in one of the cables incorrectly. I had taken the cables out when pulling the DVD out to see the part number. At least I figured it out, although it was a much longer effort than necessary.

It's a pretty remarkable piece of machinery. I'd prefer it if it would load the DVDs and Wii games for me, and if it would rub my wife's feet I think I would be completely obsolete.

Abandoned by emotion and instinct

Yesterday I did something dumb. I didn't set out to perform this task. Before it happened, my work-to-home commute was going swimmingly. I got a haircut. I picked up some things at Target. I filled up the air in my tires and got gas. After that I followed my usual path home. There's an access road near what we call in Atlanta Spaghetti Junction. It's where two interstates meet and it's always horrible with the traffic. If I get on the access road I can slide through to the end of the junction and it saves me a lot of time.

Saving time wasn't enough. I wanted more. There's an intersection at Buford Highway, home to an amazing assortment of ethnic restaurants. The center lane goes through to the interstate. The right lane goes right and the left lane goes left. I noticed that if I got into the left lane, I could merge with the people on the right. Sometimes I merged early, other times I merged as we were crossing the intersection. This maneuver didn't always earn me friends from the people who did things the correct way and stayed in the middle lane.

Yesterday I had the cat-bird position. I was at the front of the line in the left. It was an easy path. I would time the light and hit the accelerator the second the light turned green and get in front of the car to my right. I had done this a few dozen times without incident. As the light turned, I noticed at the intersection a police car. It was for the City of Doraville. This is when my instincts and emotions betrayed me. I should have been able to audible and turn left, which would force me to make a few time-wasting left turns. Instead I powered through. I think the blue lights came on immediately.

Over the past few months I've saved a lot of time by using the left lane. I didn't know that someday there would be a cost.

That was your Zachrilege dumbass moment of the week. Thank you.

Funeral in Pittsburgh: Part Two

We stayed in Monroeville, which was about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. Leechburg was another 20 miles from Monroeville and seemed like at least twice the drive. I drove back on Friday night, and the constant hills, the windy roads, and the lack of street lights made the trip a white-knuckler. Saturday was better. The sun even made a cameo appearance.

The main players in this weekend's events were the three kids. My aunt is the oldest and brought Grandma Alice to Las Vegas to live with her and her husband. She wore a sling all weekend because of recent rotator-cuff surgery. She travels a lot and the injury was apparently due to the repeated lifting and picking up of suitcases. She had a twin sister who died of cancer as a girl. My dad is in the middle. He is a hippie with long silver hair and has recently become a Catholic. He brought a nun and close friend to perform the eulogy. Grandma Alice reportedly hated Catholics, although no one disapproved of the choice. When you die, you're done with choices. The final child was my uncle. He was the first to move out of town. He's been in Baton Rouge for the past 20 years and sounds like a native.

I wasn't interested in the religious overtones of the ceremony. That's not my bag. It was the bag of the majority of the room so it was appropriate. The moment of the funeral and the entire weekend was when the Sister stepped aside and asked if anyone wanted to speak. Half a dozen people spoke, including all of the children, and each message was sad, hilarious, and poignant.

My aunt, that being my uncle's wife, spoke first. She had a handkerchief that Grandma Alice gave her on her wedding day. It was a token passed on from her grandmother on her wedding day. This underlined the importance of family. This family is spread across the country. We don't gather often. When we do, it's always a lot of fun. This trip was different. You could feel the thread, from Grandma Alice's two surviving sisters to the children to me, my brother, and my cousins to the nephews. There was a bond that never felt stronger. As my uncle said, we can mess with each other, but if someone else messes with us, bam! Yes, he said BAM like that New Orleans chef.

Grandma Alice was the age that my parents are now, 61, when I was born. She was 36 when she had my dad, which is my current age. According to family legend, I was the first grandchild who had a notice in the paper because my brother and cousin were born a little too close to my parents' and my aunt and uncle's wedding date. I might have to get "first legit grandchild" on a t-shirt for the next time we gather. What I meant to say was that I always saw her as an old woman. When we visited it was for a semi-formal Sunday meal. I'd play in the small backyard or in the cluttered basement. I don't remember the meals. I do remember that she introduced me to crunchy peanut butter.

Another thread in the free-form speeches about Grandma Alice was that she was tough. I'll venture that everyone who lived through the Depression is tougher than we can imagine. The toughness led to a somewhat gruff exterior. My uncle visited her in Vegas last month and brought over Thanksgiving dinner. He brought over the entire meal and warmed it up at the nurses's station. When he presented the meal, she said "No gravy?"

As grown-ups we constantly wonder how we became the people that we are. When I throw a withering humorous but in a dry way comment, I know where I get it from. I'd be pissed about the gravy too.

The family gathered at a local restaurant for a meal. I ordered a bottle of wine. Hey now, I shared. We ate and drank and mingled and eventually I got back on those roads for one last trip to the hotel. Since it was Pittsburgh, the city of bridges, we crossed over one bridge before Leechburg. It was a farewell.

Funeral in Pittsburgh: Part One

It was colder in Atlanta on both ends of the trip. Pittsburgh didn’t exactly welcome us to town with cold enough temperatures and plenty of snow when we arrived. Being in Pittsburgh triggered memories but most of them were of visiting Pittsburgh. I lived in Pittsburgh for the first six years of my life. It’s my hometown but I have no real connection to it.

A thread was closing this past weekend. My grandmother died last Saturday, two days and forty years after her first husband, and finally she would claim her patch of ground next to him. Her last home was in Leechburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh that time forgot. I visited her house at the top of one of the super steep hills that are the trademark of the Steel City. Coming back at least 20 years after my last visit, it hadn’t changed at all.

The wake was Friday. There were a surprising number of people there, because as my dad mentioned, Grandma Alice was 97 and outlived most of her friends. My other grandmother, who is a youthful 81, mentioned that the body in the casket didn’t look like the woman she remembered. I agreed. The body wasn’t there for her. It was there for us. It was a reasonable facsimile so we could remember her as a living soul.
My parents thoughtfully provided a picture book. There were pictures all the way back to the turn of the 20th century. I saw multiple pictures of my grandfather for the first time, or the first time that I could remember. He was the only overweight WW2 serviceman that I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I didn’t think that anyone was more than a buck 40 who wore the uniform.

We had some sandwiches upstairs and my nephews stayed up there. That’s where my dad’s cookies were, and every time their mom turned her head they ate another two. Eventually the southern boys went outside and had a snowball fight. They threw snowballs at each other and passersby. After a couple of hours we all left and went back to Monroeville.

A family gathering is not such without drinking. We got together in my cousins’ room and opened some wine, beer, and Makers Mark. I knew my brother was in trouble when he drank it straight. I should have known he was in trouble when I saw the sweater with the skull on it.

Once the giant bottle of wine was gone, I was done. I had been up for 18 hours which was plenty. We went to sleep, knowing that Saturday was the main event. It would be the funeral.

Writing > Editing

I'm in a tough spot. I did something that few people have done. In the space of three months, and spending no more than an hour a day, I completed a first draft of a novel. It is by no means complete and ready for gift-wrapping but it does not present any noticeable holes like (INSERT CHAPTER THREE HERE). My issue now is with the first edit. I don't know what to do with myself.

I don't think I have the 30 pages needed to contact an agent. The main reason for that is I want to show the first 30 pages. That presents an issue because my fourth chapter, which starts around page 10, is 60 pages. Each chapter of the manuscript is an episode, generally happening in no more than a couple of days. The majority of them are in the 10-15 page range, which I think is good and there are breaks in the middle for people who like that sort of thing. This chapter probably took more than a month to write. It's the tale of a guy who has to arrange a funeral of a man that he doesn't know very well. I don't consider every word of the chapter to be golden but if I'm honest with myself and cut back some of the fat it's probably still going to be around 50 pages.

I had an idea. I decided to chop this chapter down to normal chapter size, normal being normal for this book. I ended up either summarizing what I wrote in a longer form or doing shortcuts like having my 12 main characters explain something that happens (yes, I have 12 main characters) in the form of a text message or an Internet message board post. That's telling, not showing. I want to show.

I'm not going to say that it's easy to produce what could someday be a novel. I'm going to say that it's hard to know when to stop. I literally wrote a "14th anniversary director's cut" of a manuscript I wrote in college, almost half a lifetime ago. I know that an author can tinker until the end of time. I'm not going to do that in this case. I just don't know if I'm in trim the fat mode or liposuction mode.

Zach writes: Process me

OK, I just wrote 500 words of crap that will never see the light of day. I want to write about my writing process, seeing as I'm working on a manuscript and taking a good amount of my free time and money pursuing it. Yet when I write about it I sound like a Ritalin-addled ten-year-old.

That's actually close to the truth. I just took some generic NyQuil and a Mucinex to crush this cold I got last week. I might have a cold because I drank a Charles River of beer while in Boston. Eating a "jumbo" triple pepperoni pizza with three of my colleagues at 1 a.m. last Wednesday might have contributed a little.

Seeing as my writing process involved me getting up early to pound out a couple thousand words, this trip did not help with my rhythm. Well, I had to write in the afternoon or during lunch or right before bed. I'm not married to writing at any time of the day. I think my mind can find that groove in the record and get back at or close to the spot where I was the day before.

It helps to do it every day. If you want to get good at something, do it every day. At least you get good at doing something every day. I can't say that my writing is better after all this time. It's never a struggle to start writing. I heard a little bit of advice at a writer's conference last Saturday. The idea was if you were daunted by a blank piece of paper, start with the truth. Write about what you see out the window or something that's on your mind. You'll get back to the story.

I enjoyed the little challenges of writing, like figuring out a different way to dispose of ashes in each chapter. I had the dead guy's ashes in a coffee can like in Big Lebowski. But I just saw the ashes in a coffee can trick in an upcoming movie featuring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis. Now it's become a cliche. Yep, I need to find another moderately priced vessel.

The NyQuil is starting to take effect. I don't have much time. It's like I was hit with a dart from a stranger in the corner. Or the cat who's getting revenge for me giving him his daily pill. Either way, I am not long for this evening.

The discoveries of writing are the best. Having your characters do unexpected things is fun. There's a scene in which a married man is set up to have a date on New Year's Eve who is not his wife. He's in a near panic because he's faithful and doesn't even want the hint of infidelity. He finds out that his wife is cool with it, and she even sends him a short video message telling him this. It changes his conflict. Instead of trying to hide, he has to figure out why she's OK with it, and if he's really OK with it.

My ultimate goal is to keep things moving and keep them interesting. This is a guy book. The characters are mostly guys although there is plenty of female influence. I'll always be interested in female characters but the guys are going to be my forte.

ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg...ha, thought I passed out on the keyboard, didn't you? OK, that was a lame attempt. I can't always be touched by the muse. Sometimes my hands just dance across the keyboard and ultimately it means nothing. I'm fine with that. As long as the needle keeps moving.

Zach writes: Making sweet manuscript

In my last post, oh too long ago, I mentioned that I am working on a book. I could say that I'm working on a novel, but what I am supposed to say is that I am writing a manuscript. A manuscript is your pre-publication novel. I wanted to come up with a more pithy version of this laborious word but "mani" and "manu" don't do it justice.

The next obvious thing is for me to give you my elevator pitch for the nov--... boo--... manuscript. I have problems with this. It's not easy to tell the tale of this story, since it's still germinating, in a Tweet-sized bite. I'll start with genre. There is a well-known literary genre called chick lit. This covers most novels written by women about women. I'm sure there are exceptions. My book is on the other end. It's dick lit. This is fiction for guys.

About four years ago I wrote a "year in the life" series of stories that were about a guy named Larry Smith. The stories could together be considered a novel, although I never completely finished the ending. Read it, if you dare. http://ztlwrites.blogspot.com/

This is in the same genre. The Larry Smith story was about a single guy's quest to keep his life the same when events conspire to change him no matter what he does about it. He's in a fantasy football league. One of his friends dies and there's funeral. I did try to shoehorn in some time travel but it didn't really work as much as I loved the idea of writing time travel.

That's what writing can be. What you think is the "good stuff" doesn't work. Every word feels like a new life you have created and sometimes you have to suffocate them.
Anyway, on to the story. About three months ago a friend of my wife's talked about the plot to an Amy Tan novel about a woman going to China after a friend's death.

That was my starting point. I would write about a group of guys in a fantasy football league. One of the league members dies suddenly. They decide to "honor" him by following his beloved Lions around for the entire season. The Lions make an incredible run to the Super Bowl and the guy wins the fantasy championship.

In writing this, I can appreciate why the writers of the FX show The League focus on five guys. This is a comedy about a fantasy football league and it focuses on only a part of the league. It's hard to have 12 "main" characters, including the dead guy. My initial idea was to have each chapter be from a different character's point of view. I can't say that every character will get equal time.

I was in a one-day novel-writing class and the guy said that you need to write every day. He dedicates four hours a day. I give myself one. I don't always write for an entire hour. I have written every day in the past two months and I've missed maybe one day in the past 100. They say that the first draft is the easy part.

I'll attempt to post at least once a week and write about whatever strikes my fancy regarding the process.

Current progress: Just finished chapter 10. 163 pages or 66,937 words.

Say something new, I dares ya

Is originality dead? This is my premise for my first Zachrilege in a while. I can't even spell the name of my own blog so that might need to be dealt with.

I went to a bookstore recently, and what I noticed besides that there are a lot of books out there is an interesting trend in popular culture. We are treading over familiar territory. There are metric tons of vampire fiction out there. Is this a new idea? I admit that the writers of this stuff can come up with new wrinkles on the subject, but there's a lot of standing on the shoulders of giants, or just a lot of normal-sized people.

And don't get me started on movies. We just survived a summer in which nearly every movie was a remake or a sequel. Even bad movies get sequels now. And bad sequels, like Sex and the City 2, will probably get even more bad sequels. I was disappointed that the remake of Red Dawn didn't come out. Maybe it did and I just didn't notice.
My favorite music download of the year is "Strange Arrangement" by Mayer Hawthorne. It's a throwback that sounds like it was recorded in Detroit in 1963. As a derivative, it's a pretty good one.

And we finish with this weekend's Restoring Honor rally in Washington. Having it on the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech made it kind of a super derivative. Say what you want about the Beckster, but if you can get a really big football stadium full of people to watch you speak, you're doing something right. Let's not pretend that he's saying anything dramatic or new.

Perhaps that's the key to this seen-this, done-that popular culture. The Emmy winner for best dramatic series is Mad Men, and that's a big time throwback show. There's nostalgia and familiarity wrapped into one. We have an instant emotional attachment to the familiar. It keeps us coming back for more.

This doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the manuscript I'm working on. That's right. I'm crafting what could become a novel some day. There is almost zero nostalgia involved. It's about a year in the life of a fantasy football league. I'll be posting regularly on my progress. I'm already 100+ pages in, and I would say that at least 20 are good.

Faith restored in the Apple Store

Faith in humanity is in flux. If you get cut off on the interstate or have bad service in a restaurant, the entire human race is painted poorly. It's how we are. At least when something good happens, we should give it the same positive response.

This morning I had a task. It was a critical task for me and far less important to others. My iPod petered out a few months ago. I could get no more than the Apple logo to appear on the screen. A simple solution was to borrow my wife's rarely used model. She had the next generation Nano, which had a radio tuner, an external speaker, and the annoying habit of randomly switching to a song when it barely moved in my pocket. I could tell that even though she didn't use it much, there was a bit of resentment that I was taking it to work every day. I left it at home a couple of days this week as a compromise and a reminder to get my machine checked out.

I got to the mall at 10. There was a line outside. If there's a positive bubble in the economic downturn, it's at an Apple store. At 10 a.m. I was able to get an appointment at the "Genius Bar" at 11:15. Say what you want about Apple, they know how to name stuff. I made a short side trip to Trader Joe's and thought I might be able to sneak in early. No chance. The store has at least 30 employees and each one is constantly busy. There have to be hundreds of people there. Even the huge anchor department stores may not have that kind of traffic.

I did get in a few minutes early. After explaining my situation, the attendant attempted to download new software to my machine. It downloaded really slowly. I attempted a dial-up joke but this guy might not have been born when AOL was in its heyday. He told me that if this didn't work I could get a replacement machine for $79. Ugh. I really didn't want to spend any money. We sat and waited while I used my inferior Blackberry. The software loaded. All that was left was to restore my machine and I would be out of the store for no cost other than my melted groceries in the car.

The restoration failed. Crap. Oh well, this iPod had a good year and a half life. It served me well. It allowed me to isolate myself from society just a little more. This was the turning point. The guy told me to get the Apple Care extended warranty the next time I bought an iPod. He then extracted another model exactly like mine, brand new, and put my broken Pod in the packaging. I signed my name a couple of times and left the store before he changed his mind.

How about that. A random act of kindness. It makes me more likely to want to go the extra mile and take the extra step for others. It makes me less likely to get more upset than I should about relatively small things like LeBron, politics, or the scattered details of my life. We can all use an act like this when we're so easily put down by random acts of ignorance.

Third site is the charm

Image caption: This was the original background image for tripmakersonline. Sadly, it didn't fit with the rest of the design.

I created my third site! tripmakersonline.com is live. Here's how it came to be.

Months ago my wife volunteered me to create a travel site for my in-laws. My mother-in-law is part of the dying breed of travel agents. She's based out of Chattanooga. I told them that I would work on the site in my spare time. Spare time was hard to come by. I decided for ease of uploading to create one page with tabbed panels. Tabbed panels is a Dreamweaver trick that creates JavaScript to allow you to click different tabs to access specific content. I used this technique when creating my second site, thehoeyfirm.com.

I was dying to create something cool looking for the site's background. I thought of an old travel standby, the postcard. I found a bunch of cool looking old style postcards and stacked them jigsaw-puzzle style to make a coherent background. It didn't go over well with my testers (wife and in-laws). Sadly the creative part was good but it didn't work with the rest of the design. I instead used a background image of sand. We all like sand. It indicates vacation in a way few images do.

Today I got the green light to upload the site. My wife bought the hosting account through godaddy.com and I uploaded the files. It took a few tries because in godaddy.com 's file upload system you're unable to upload new content after uploading once. I'm sure there's a way around it but I have to log out and log back in every time.

The site's live although there are some steps to take. The forms go to my e-mail address because I need to set up the e-mail account through godaddy. I don't have meta tags yet. SEO isn't a big deal yet since traffic will come through the in-laws contacting customers directly. We may even do an e-mail campaign.

It's fun to create and it's even better when you can get the site live for the world to see. Now it's time to re-design my own page, zachlawonline.com.

Sweat equity

I welcome summer on a day when I cannot stop sweating. I'm not an uber sweaty person by nature. I don't sweat at work, or in the car, or on long elevator rides. I sweat when I exercise. Yesterday I hosted some friends to watch the USA/England soccer match, because draws are so quaint, and I overindulged in food and drink. This was a long burn, so instead of drinking five beers in two hours it was more like seven in four. Plus there were sausage rolls from our Scottish friend, a full on grill meal and two boxes of Keebler cookies that prove I will eat anything if it's dipped in fudge.

I felt like fudge this morning. It didn't help that we stayed up until one in the morning in part because I had to watch the NFL Network re-air of Super Bowl 34 and we had one more episode of Big Love to watch before turning in the Netflix disc. The cat puked at 6. He's very prompt that way. I had to purge.
I mowed the lawn first, because home maintenance is important. I knew that the logical follow-up to a lawn-mowing would be a run. I'm no super athlete. The lawn takes about 20 minutes to mow and is more of a warm up.

As my eyes were bigger than my stomach yesterday, my brain was ahead of my body in terms of running. I usually start running cold, without a warm-up, so running after mowing had me going at a good pace. It was only when I reached the point of no return which is a huge hill that's a lot more fun to run down than up that I knew this was going to be a challenge. It was about ten in the morning and in Atlanta summer is here in full force. That means heat and that means humidity. I had a lot more shade on the way in than the way back. As I talked myself into another 100 seconds and another I felt really hot.

It took me about 30 minutes outside reading the AJC sports page to slow down. I went inside and started a load of laundry. The sweat continued. I'm writing upstairs, which is the warmest part of the house. Sweat continues. Right now I feel like I could sweat for the next eight hours. It's no longer cooling. It's annoying.

Falling down blue

If someone asks me who my favorite band is, I pause. I do so because saying the name means I'm going to have to explain who the band is to a party that will generally get less and less interested the more I go into detail. I have two favorites, but the one for which I have expended the most emotional energy is called Blue Rodeo. Their music has been described as roots, which means good music that isn't going to get a lot of commercial play. When the fiddle and lap steel are prominent, you are looking at a niche band, at least in America. Yep, they're Canadian.

I would assume that a large percentage of Canadian Atlantans were at Smith's Olde Bar last night. I could get bitter and complain that such an accomplished group has to play in a venue that fit maybe 200 in a room last night. But honestly I'm glad that I can see them in such an intimate setting. The band's been together since 1984 and belies the common rock myth that two alpha dogs can't co-exist.
I discovered the band along with my college roommate in 1993. He would not stop listening to the ballad "Now and Forever", which was a song about regret and loss after a breakup. He was going through a breakup and I assume that it helped.
Blue Rodeo often uses the imagery of ghosts in their songs. I don’t think of ghosts as real. Instead they are our own creation manifested in painful memories of the past.

Consider gems like this: “I was happy for a while. Then I started chasing your stone cold heart. I was happy for a while. Then everything started falling apart.”

Or, better yet, check it out.

The band has become like a good friend who's known me for nearly 20 years. How can you overstate such a relationship? I can't wait for their return in 2012.

Fast as a slow comet

Having a hobby is an expensive prospect these days. I have a friend who owns a bike. He can't just have a bike, though. He has the bike, a bike shirt, bike shorts (hopefully worn under other shorts), shoes, gloves, a helmet, and a rack for his car. I'm not ready emotionally or financially for such an investment. I'm good with my shoes for running. Today I joined him on Georgia's Silver Comet trail today.

We didn't do enough research, apparently. For those who are out of the state, yeah, Georgia's kind of shut down on Sunday morning. The bike rental shop didn't open until 10:30 and we got there at 9:30. It was a 30-minute drive to get there so we waited. The folks started putting their bikes on the pavement outside but would not serve me until 10:30. I had a choice between a "speed" bike and a "comfort" bike. The speed bike had a seat that was a molded plastic monstrosity that would have destroyed my personal seat. I took the comfort. Mr. Funk suggested a 20-mile ride. No problem. I started quickly but it didn't take long for me to realize that there are muscles used in bike riding that I don't usually use. My thighs were killing me. When we got within a mile of our turnaround point I felt saved. I had miscalculated and we were two miles short.

A rest gave me enough energy to continue. Don gave me one of those gel packs that tastes horrible but is supposed to give you energy. Does that mean tons of caffiene? On the way back we passed more than passed us, which was nice. Only one spandex-clad guy gave us guff for taking too much room. Bike shirts are weird. They're like football jerseys but of anything you like. Don had an AC/DC "For Those about to Rock" yellow shirt. I saw one Cat in the Hat and a Froot Loops selection. Lovely. My generic $10 white wicky shirt from Target will do for now.

We finished in less than two hours. Our time was pretty good for 21 miles until I realized that world-class marathoners run faster than we biked. We may do it again soon, but on a Saturday this time.

Hey there past, it's me, Zach

I wonder how many times in my life I will have to tell the story again. It’s the best story I have to tell, and as someone who’s written books and short stories to fill a hard drive, I’ll never top it. It’s a reminder of my mortality.

My primary doctor suggested that I visit a neurologist. Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis needs no further explanation.

I promise that I went through my blog history and could not find an entry on the subject, so here goes. This is the tale I told the neurologist who looked more at least as much like a grandmother than a doctor. In August of 2001 I started to feel badly. I felt so bad that on August 14, after being in the office for about an hour, I called my agency to say that I was going on short-term disability. That’s the last thing I remember until the first week of September. I was in a coma for three weeks as my body fought a Staph infection and a blood clot that shut down my lungs. As shocking as that is to read, imagine waking up in a hospital having not remembered entering the hospital. I had back surgery to remove an abscess full of the bad stuff. Over another two months, I eventually recovered. I didn’t completely recover. I have numbness on my left leg from my waist to my toes. I can feel some but not all of it. For example, the arch of my foot is fine but the heel is nothing.

It’s almost eight years later. Will the feeling ever come back? That’s what I want to find out. The neurologist suggested two MRIs. One on my lower back and one on my brain. It’s another golden opportunity to self-deprecate. Noticing that I’m off mentally would be like being able to tell when a cat has been drugged rather than being sleepy.

I could have some scar tissue causing the numbness. It could be something completely different. I want to know, as long as my insurance pays for most of it.
For me, it’s time to make a full inventory of what “normal” is. Normal seems to be a moving target.

Cashing out

Where does morality come from? Some assume that it's God-given. If it weren't for God and the various books written in his name, we'd be savages beating each other with sticks. Or could it be part of our upbringing, our internal values, and the people we hold close to our heart?

I know. What a pukingly sappy start. I am about to close a checking account with a bank that has recently been purchased by another bank. I don't need the account anymore. All of the automatic deposits and bills have been removed, so all there is to do is take the six bucks or so I have left and invest it wisely.

Something strange happened on the way to my final withdrawal. On April 13, there was a deposit. Someone came into a branch and put $950 in cash in my account. I've had accidental deposits before, and within a day or two the transaction would be stricken from my record. Two weeks passed and nothing happened.

I was in a quandary. If the money was in my account, wasn't it mine? I had a brainstorm, which means I decided to do something stupid. I went to the ATM and took out $300, the maximum, in cash. I intended to do this three times, not exactly thinking ahead to what I was going to do with large wads of cash. After this, I could close my account without the deposit being an issue.

During this time I obsessively checked my balance. I knew that the money would be gone any day and now that I had taken out more money than I technically had, I could get into trouble, or in banking terms, get fee-d to death.

Something weird happened. Another deposit. It was cash, and for $1,250. I had more than enough to cover my withdrawal. One deposit could be a fluke but two was just plain strange. Clearly someone had access to my account now and that was a scary proposition. The cash withdrawal plan was about as smart as the guys in A Simple Plan. I went into the bank the following day, deposited the cash back into my account, enough to ensure that if the accidental deposits were removed that I would not be in the red. The teller told me that the bank was going to start charging a $25 fee for the overdraft protection that they signed me up for without my consent. It's hard to want to do the right thing when corporations are being bastards.

A fun side note about closing accounts is that it's difficult to do. I had to call the 1-800 number to get the overdraft account closed, with the fee expunged. Closing the checking account would require me going into a branch and doing it in person. I told the rep on the phone about the questionable deposits. She told me that she would send me copies of the deposit slips via mail. I waited.

I got them. The handwriting wasn't mine. The first deposit slip simply had my name and my account number. The second one didn't even have the account number. OK, that was weird. At least I knew for certain that the money didn't belong to me. I wanted it gone. Gosh knows I could use an extra couple of grand.

The following week ended the mystery. A bank rep called and said that there's another Zach Law in Atlanta. We should start a Facebook fan group. Someone came in and wanted to deposit into the other Zach Law's account but the undertrained teller used my account instead. The nagging feeling that I had to solve this issue was correct.

It wasn't a voice in my head and it wasn't a higher power. It was me figuring things out. I didn't do the right thing the first time, but in the end my conscience was clear. That's the moral to this story.

Just add balls

Paintball, oh how do I compare thee? One billionth as intense as war seems like an insult to war. It’s a gathering of men, although there were some girls this time, shooting circular projections at each other. Firepower may vary.

A group of friends decided to play paintball about a month ago. Most of us had never played. I had, but it was so long ago that Bill Clinton was President. I don’t recall a lot of strategy and I think that we left pretty quickly. It seemed less fun than it was. Because those circular pellets really hurt.

We drove to Lithonia, which was a simple shack where we signed up and got our gear, and to the right there were a series of fields to play on. Some had you hide behind inflatables, and others had you hide behind wooden structures. There was a big field where they played something called “City Game”. We weren’t ready for that right away.

Some of my friends were able to keep their glasses on with the goggles, but I was not. I wear my glasses about 100% of the time, so not wearing them is a bit like being drunk. I eventually cleared up enough to see blobs that I shot at.
Here’s the setup. You get a set of goggles and mask, a gun, and insults for team you cheer for by the guy working there. He didn’t like my Titans shirt.

The gun is rifle-esque, with a neon orange barrel stopper that probably wouldn’t stop a paint pellet if it were in there. It had a hopper on top for the paint balls and a CO2 canister on back to make them go fast when you pull the trigger.

I thought it was perfect that the first yellow-shirted ref that approached our group had a Hulk Hogan mustache. He told us the rules, which were simple. On the short field games, everyone lines up on opposite sides and when the refs yells to start, you start. When you get hit, you lift your gun and go back to the net to wait for the game to end. The game ends when one team is out of players.

I was not prepared for the first game. I took three steps and got hit in the arm. For the first few times I was running too high and not able to aim worth a damn. I wondered if I was going to hit anyone all day. Plus those damn pellets hurt. I took one in the inner thigh, which might have been the toughest one all day.
Eventually I got the kill. I had a head shot that exploded with paint, and looked pretty cool. I got the final kill on one game when I flanked the remaining guy. Hey, those history books are right, flanking works.

The toughest game of the day was the City Game. This was the largest field on the lot and included broken down cars, two-story wooden structures, and various small places to hide behind. The first game was just one side versus the other, and the kids with the automatic paint guns were leading the charge. I didn’t know what to expect and stayed back. Our team won but I stayed far from the front and barely dodged a pellet. Later in the day we returned, and the rules were different. There were two sides, and our group was the majority of one (first bad sign). In this game if you were hit, you had to go back to your “base” and continue. The game ended when you ran out of pellets. Getting hit hurts, but multiple hits really makes you wonder. There was a delayed start and I followed one of the professional looking guys flanking to the left. As we got to the first building, a barrage of bullets took me out. I was hit at least four times and as I went to the ground, my hopper opened and most of my pellets rolled out. Screw it, I thought. I’m out. I was the first to leave the game.

Yeah, so my white Titans shirt wasn’t the best choice. As you can see, it looked like a modern-art masterpiece by the end of the day. We finished the day and used most of our remaining pellets one a 3-3 game. By the end I was good at finding my spot and taking guys out. We ended the day with a one on five because the one had his own paintball company and was the mayor of Avondale. I got the flank and took him out, which was a good finish.

We sat in the shade and drank a beer to end the day. I came home and showed off my wounds. Chicks may dig scars, but the jury’s out on paintball welts.

Moment of magic

“The moments of magic are just too short. They’re over before they begin.” Blue Rodeo

It’s a beautiful Saturday in the semi suburbs. I like to call where I live the semi suburbs because we are just inside the critical boundary in Atlanta called the Perimeter. If you’re outside, you are a goober hick who thinks a hot time is going to the Wal Mart on Saturday, eating a slice of pizza and buying the latest Dane Cook movie to watch in full screen mode. If you’re inside the perimeter, you go out to watch cutting-edge cultural entertainment. Sometimes there is a clown involved. Us ITPers like to drink beers with hard to pronounce names like “Samuel Adams” and “Stella Artois”. We like the latter because it sounds more like a sexual scenario than a generic Belgian beer.

I went for a run. I’m a little compulsive about my exercise. When I do the elliptical I very much pay attention to my calories burned, even though each machine can vary so much that it’s a futile exercise. Literally. I do want to know how far I’ve traveled. I ran a course that I assumed was around three miles, then I got into my car to ensure that I went as far as I thought I did. I did.

I don’t always warm up properly, because warming up can feel like a wasted effort. I’m generally a warm person. I walked a bit today before my run. As I turned the corner from my street to the next, I saw a lot of pink flowers on the right side of the road. I didn’t know what they were. They continued to the next mail box. I still didn’t see the source of the flowers. Finally I turned to my left and there it was. A giant tree with pink flowers, shedding so much that it fell like snow. It was beautiful.

Then I thought about what a pain it would be to clean. Like I said, the moment was short.

Rebalancing myself

I want to apologize. I did something that I often make fun of. I joined a group on Facebook. I was emotional and didn’t think straight and I feel like I have a tattoo that I’m not proud of. Gee, I ended two sentences with a preposition in one paragraph. I owe the grammarians an apology as well.

I wasn’t balanced today. Don’t you feel unbalanced sometimes? This morning the huge health care bill passed. Many people were pissed. Many people were ecstatic. When the majority is on an extreme, I try to take a step back. I understand that people have legitimate reasons not to like the legislation. Some people have reasons to dislike the legislation that have nothing to do with the truth as well. That’s what bothers me.

But if I’m not helping the problem, I’m part of the problem. At almost the same time as I thought to myself, “Hey, didn’t Rush Limbaugh vow to leave the country if the health care bill passed?” one of my Facebook friends joined a group called Waiting for Rush Limbaugh to Leave the Country. I thought it was funny. Limbaugh made that vow when it seemed highly unlikely that the bill would pass. I do not have anything to back this statement up, and that’s the point.

I think the country needs Rush. He speaks to a large audience every day and gets paid better than Peyton Manning to do so. He’s not getting this chunk of cheddar living in Costa Rica. I have no idea what kind of government Costa Rica has, but I can guarantee that it doesn’t have the ongoing narrative ripe for Rush’s brand of entertainment. And as a wannabe comedian, we need the funny. We need Rush ranting, and we need people calling him out and more importantly, making jokes at his expense.
I had a friend honestly ask who Glenn Beck was. The responses were great. Half of the people thought he was the devil and the other half thought he was fantastic.

Her response was balanced and respected both sides. We need more of that. We don’t need to poke people with a stick when they’re down and we don’t need to overpraise those who are honestly excited about what happened in Washington this weekend. We need to understand one another. My joining a funny but ultimately hateful group on Facebook does not contribute.

I’m done apologizing. I dis-joined the group. I am now only a member of the Emory Capstone program, which I actually completed, and Zealots Field, which is a group of fantasy football leagues of which I am an active participant. No one was harmed in the joining of these groups. I feel cleaner somehow.

Mass hysteria

I don’t want the health care bill to stop. I want the hysteria about the health care bill to stop. At this point I don’t care whether it passes or not. I think Obama has to get it passed because he promised change and people think that he’s done nothing in the past 16 months except play basketball, smoke, and appear on TV a lot. He signed a jobs bill this week, but no one gives a crap.

What irks me is that people are acting like this is a line in the sand. Do you know what the best part about lines in the sand is? They are easily erased. If Obama passes this legislation, and it’s not solely up to him despite what people say, it doesn’t mean that socialism wins and that freedom loses. It means that a bill passed. It won’t be perfect. I don’t even know what perfect is. Since there are Americans who believe that Obama should be impeached, for what exactly I’m not sure, and there are people who think that he’s the last great hope for America, and these people can still get a beer together, things are OK. I don’t know how much longer that’s going to last.

There was hysteria about Bush, but that was based on what he’s done. Most of the Obama hysteria is based on things that he hasn’t done, lies told about him, or distortions.

Here’s an Impeach The President!!! article. The article states that Pelosi is considering using something called the “Slaughter Plan” which is a way to pass this legislation without a strict up and down vote. Let’s be clear on this plan. It has not been completed. I assume that if a commentator is talking about it, it has been used before, probably by the other party.

It seems that the article is stating that if Obama is behind this procedural rule, which is something that Congress would do, he should be impeached. You can’t impeach someone just because you don’t like him. The Republicans pulled that off with Clinton but he actually broke the law. There are a lot of people who haven’t liked Obama from the start. That’s fine. I didn’t like Bush from the start. He did not grow on me, and I doubt that Obama would grow on most of the haters. When you have a set opinion on a person, it’s hard to change.

Once again I say, why the hysteria? A government-run system means that private industry gets cut out. Private industry usually means soak the consumer, like our current health care system does. Anyone who says our health care is best in the world, as this article does, is full of shit. If it’s the best, why are we less healthy than other countries and pay more for the privilege?

I’ve decided to move forward on this issue. Anyone who states that Obama should be impeached is going to get the “nah nah nah I’m not listening to you” treatment while I plug my ears. Anyone who plays the “America is the best country in the world and it’s never done anything wrong” card gets the same treatment. Have a legitimate reason to dislike legislation and the men and women who wield political power and I’ll listen. I’ll listen if the other person is willing to listen. I don’t hear any of that going on now and it’s scaring me.

Not that kind of package

The modern world is shaped, in theory anyway, to avoid all inconvenience. That may be the design, but it's not the practice. I will use the Wal Mart of online stores, Amazon.com, as an example. Last week I ordered three items. May I have ordered the third item to get the free shipping? Sure. I can't see that free shipping is any kind of a win for Amazon. Because of that, one would assume that if you order three items that Amazon would wait until all three items are in stock to ship. That's not how they roll. My first item shipped. I assumed that meant that items two and three were on back order or something. Nope; item two shipped the same day (yes, really) and item number three shipped the following day. This would be like me going to Target, shopping, driving home and unloading, then repeating the same process with Kroger and Publix even though the stores are all close to each other.

Items one and two arrived a day apart. Item three seemed to be lost. Amazon sent me an e-mail stating that no one was home to sign for the item when it arrived via USPS. I've never had to sign for an Amazon purchase. What the Hades is going on here? The e-mail was vague. It only said that my item was at the nearest Post Office.

I went to the Post Office home page. There were four offices in close proximity to my home. The closest one was a mile away. The downside was that their hours are 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. How convenient. I had a window this afternoon and took it. I went to the PO and stood in line, like I always do. After waiting ten minutes the lady told me that this post office didn't receive any mail. I had to go to another office five miles down the road. I went. I waited. People snuck in and out of line with no regard for the rest of us. It was hellafun. When I got to the front and explained my situation the guy looked at me like I asked for a certified letter when I clearly only needed second day air. I pretend that I picked up some of the lingo during my extensive time in Post Offices today. He had nothing for me. I was supposed to get something tangible in the mail telling me that my item was there, and I did not have that. I left frustrated at the world.

When I got home, the package was on my doorstep. Amazon.com may not be efficient, but they get the job done.

Change ain't easy

The Obama mantra was capital C change. Everybody craved it. Frankly what people craved was no more Bush. He got into office. He started to work. Now it seems like people don’t really want change.

Everybody’s pissed. It’s about the only thing people can agree upon. On one end change isn’t happening fast enough and on the other things are moving too fast. The point of agreement is on the health care bill. It must be stopped. Ask someone what they think about the actual content of the bill and the most likely response is an untruth. Death squads are untrue, although to be frank, some of you old people need to step aside. A mass government takeover is just silly. What doesn’t the government already control? Are you really going to notice an attempt, overpaid and probably misguided as it will be, to regulate the insurance industry? When people think that an industry that has created the most expensive and wasteful health care system in the world needs protection, we’ve gone off the deep end.

If there’s a way to get the bill passed, it’s going to get passed. It’s not going to make a lot of people happy. I guess there aren’t as many married people out there. Married people have to compromise. You don’t do it because you’re whipped, at least we hope not. You do it because compromise is a positive result for both parties. Nothing ends up the way you plan. Think about your career. Has it gone exactly the way you envisioned at age 21? I doubt it. This bill is not very different from the rest of life. It’s a starting point. It’s a campaign promise realized. That’s what people asked for. They seem to have forgotten that.

Errand day

I like to run errands. There’s something about having a large to-do list and checking off items. Even though I have a moderate commute to work every day, I don’t mind spending a lot of time in the car. I have podcasts to listen to. Weekends are when I play catch up.

The main focus of today’s errand journey was the end of one long project. I recently finished my Emory Web Design Certificate program. I actually didn’t know that I had finished. I thought I had one test to pass but found out that was unnecessary. All that was left was for me to pick up the parchment, or whatever they made the certificate out of. I talked to the guy running the program. He said swing by on Saturday.

I figured that while I was out of the house, I might as well do other things. What started out as a trip to pick up a piece of paper and restock the liquor cabinet became an odyssey.

I don’t like to have things perfectly scheduled. I understand that when I’m getting groceries that it’s a good idea to stick to the list. I can’t just do that. I have to buy one or two things off-list that we may need or “just because I can”. Today’s trip was like that.

Wifey asked me where the dry-cleaning bag was. That wasn’t a hint, but I took it anyway. My initial stop was at the dry cleaning shop. The dry cleaning shop always looks like a sweatshop but I know that they're doing fine. Dry cleaning owners do nothing but work all the time so they have no time to spend money.

While I drove to Emory I listened to Sports Guy and Chuck Klosterman discuss the last season of Lost. I don't always like listening to Klosterman. Maybe I'm just confused by people who make a living in part due to their encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture. I like it when he’s coming up with theories about Lost. The bottom line was that even though Lost may not always make sense and you don't know where it's going, it is an enjoyable hour of TV.

I thought it funny that they said in advance that a person who isn’t caught up on Lost shouldn’t listen, but when they referenced a character from The Wire dying, they bleeped it out. I can only assume that this means The Wire is greater than Lost and there’s no debate about that.

I made a pit stop for liquor. Earlier in the week I heard the same Sports Guy discuss how he liked flavored vodka with sparkling water. I had a hankering even though I’ve never tried this drink combination. I researched flavored vodkas online and found the best. The best was expensive. It costs about five times as much as what I like to pay for wine. I said screw it. It’s Saturday and the weather’s nice and I’m wandering through Atlanta. What could be better than that? I bought Hanger 1 Mandarin and I will review it later.

The woman at the Emory admin desk was friendly but not helpful. My certificate was not present. Instead of whining or complaining I merely left a note for the guy in charge and asked that he mail the certificate to me. I took my first class for this certificate in 2007 and committed to it in 2008. I want that paper.

Next I visited the old neighborhood. You don’t know how you feel about a place until you leave. It’s like someone you dated and years later you can’t even remember her last name. I could take or leave Buckhead. The location formerly known as the Home Depot is now a cheap furniture store called The Dump. That’s some excellent marketing. I stopped to check the wife’s P.O. Box.

I said I wasn’t going to go to Target but it was right there so I went inside. They did not have my hair product and I decided just to walk out. When all you need in life is hair product and mouthwash, you’re OK in waiting another day to get a refill.

Next was my last trip to the Fulton County Library. I’ve officially made the switch to DeKalb and I’m in library love. Fulton County was there when I needed it and I learned a few things about myself during the process. I probably checked out a hundred books during the seven years I lived there. It’s time to move on.

My list was complete but I had to make one more stop. The wife and I are having a third date tonight. I know that sounds strange for two people who have been together for close to a decade. Sometimes in a relationship you have to press the reset button on the odometer. No one will know except for the four people reading this. I stopped to buy tulips because she likes tulips and while I was at Trader Joes I got some pita chips, bananas, and wine. I have needs, too.

On the way home I transitioned to Adam Carolla and realized I needed to make one stop. What’s the sparkling water and vodka without the sparkling water? I stopped at a Publix. I had four planned stops on this trip and made seven. I was out for about two hours. Now I’m at home. It's the one with the yard cats and the huge pot hole out front and the friendly bundled up walkers.

And it's the one with my name on the mortgage.

Rip off

I’m going to set a schedule. Once a week I will write on a topic of which I have no expertise but my own meandering experience. I will make zero cogent points at best and will insult and/or confuse readers at worse. I expect this to be a lot of fun.

Some call the 1950s the Golden Age of Television. I think it’s now, but either way in most aspects of American life there is a period of unprecedented growth. It never lasts forever, but since old people are around to tell us about it, we’ll never forget.

This is the Golden Age of ripping people off. In American history there has not been a bigger percentage of the economy based on screwing people over. There are times when we are taken by the small print. There are times when we are just dumb. We have been inundated with fees and restrictions that affect our every move.

Recently banks have complained because people have to “opt in” to be charged a fee when a person makes a debit card purchase that exceeds the balance. This is, of course, referred to as a courtesy and something the bank is doing to help the customer and encourage commerce. You’re getting ripped. See, banks used to make money by interest on loans. Their CEOs probably didn’t make eight figures. You could go into a branch and not be charged to talk to a person. I’m surprised that they haven’t created a “look at your account online” fee. They might have and I wouldn’t know about it. It’s not enough anymore for them to make interest money off of the so-called cash in my checking account.

Credit card companies are big fans of the fee. Now that people are using credit cards less and less, the companies have to be more creative. You can be charged for not using your card. There are enough double billing cycles and holds on your funds to make sure that people never pay the card off.

I have a gym membership. I signed up on a simple contract. I was to pay $20 a month. No problemo. There was one problemo. They charge each member a $29 fee at the beginning of the year for “equipment upgrades”. Isn’t that why I pay the monthly fee? Instead of building the annual fee into the monthly charge, they throw it in there. They could just kick me in the balls instead. The feeling wouldn’t last as long that way.

Speaking of my banking example, could the economy survive without these rip-offs? I wonder. We don’t sell products anymore in this country. We sell services. Services are nebulous and so are the charges.

The ultimate rip-off is the double wars we’re in. Since we seem to add a new country to the list of “recently bombed” every month, maybe we’re at war with everyone. If we decided to pack it up and go home, what would the contractors do? How would they survive without charging $100 an hour for a job that a solider used to do for $12 an hour? What will the stockholders think if they can’t charge $10 for a bottle of water?

I’m being tongue in cheek, but this is a serious issue. We understand that we’re getting ripped off, expect it, and quite possibly enjoy it in a perverse way. It’s because beating the system is the American way. And if someone else is doing it, even at our expense, at least they’re sticking it to the man.

As my final thought, I'm totally cool with Ronald Reagan kicking Ulysses Grant off the $50 bill. I have one caveat. The $50 should only be worth $20 in honor of Reagan tripling the federal deficit while he was in power.

The host with the most

I have hosted for the first time. One of the many joys of owning a home is having people stay over. During the first couple of days my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law stayed, but that was more of a live-in worker situation. Having my dad in the house meant a few things. I'd have to clean. The guest bed would have to be prepped. There were little things, like what kind of food/beverages that he needed. I assumed that having coffee and wine would suffice and I was pretty close to right.

There are times when being an adult is nothing but a pain. There are times when it's pretty fun. It was fun to host my dad, cook on the grill like a big boy and have him drive me to and from poker night. Sure, it afforded me an opportunity to drink more than I usually do at such events.

You never think of your parents changing. They're pretty much ready-made when they have you and that is that. Of course that's ridiculous. Just look outside for five minutes and you know that everything is in constant change. One major change in my dad's life is that he re-joined the Catholic Church. I won't get into the specifics of religion or how I feel about it. It added community. It added meaning. Just that alone makes it a positive. I found it slightly more unnerving that he's ahead of me technologically. He has an iPod touch. I just have the lame Nano. Let's not mistake ahead technologically with actually being able to understand the technology. He tried to get hooked up to our wireless network at the house and had server issues. I didn't know how to help. He seemed OK with it.

My dad's making iPod playlists. And they're good. This is the same man who skirted his high school "no jeans" policy by wearing Madras pants. I've seen the shorts and deemed every man wearing them a douche. The pants are probably making a comeback.
When we got home from poker last night, well past both of our bed times, he wondered where the coffee was for the morning. My smart and ahead of the game wifey had written instructions next to the coffee maker. The best part about being a host is having a co-host.

We're taking this whole hosting thing to the next level this afternoon by having the brother, sister-in-law, and nephews over. The nephews will be fine as long as they can plug in their DS games. I'm grilling, because that's what a man does. That's what I do, anyway.

Facebook fun

For the most part, I enjoy Facebook. It’s cool to keep up with people I do not converse with on a regular basis. I could do without a lot of the Villes, but that’s a personal preference. The inspirational quotes get old too but the brilliance of Facebook is you can clear out anything that you want.

I’m going to comment on a couple of posts that especially caught my attention. They are political and talking politics is a good way to end any constructional conversation. I just couldn’t help but comment on the posts and the comments to the posts.

One of my Facebook “friends” intoned that he didn’t understand why Obama continued to pursue health care reform when no one wanted it. This friend hasn’t met my father in law who lost his job last August and is about to lose his Cobra coverage. He gets no health care. This Facebook scribe had a comment from a friend that said something regarding getting high, eating watermelon and chicken, and other original thoughts. I was a bit taken aback. The racism was casual but I was more offended by the bad humor. If you’re going to throw out a racial stereotype, dig a little deeper, people. I fear for America if our racists are getting lazy.

Another quality Facebook post involved the right to vote. There’s a pet peeve about everyone having the right to vote. It’s hard to speak in favor for the voting public when they vote in a guy who cheated on his wife with his mother-in-law. That’s a good point, but it says nothing of the man’s opponent or the positive reasons for voting for him. I admit that the mother-in-law tap is pretty egregious, but if cheaters were kept out of public office we might run out of politicians.

Snow, darn you, snow!

Yesterday we waited and waited in Atlanta. At least three times we’ve been just south of winter weather. Trust me, we really don’t want a big snowfall. We just want to see the pretty stuff fall.

At work I have a weekly Friday meeting at 11. It was moved to 3 p.m. Friday afternoon meetings are the worst kind of corporate “we own your soul” moments. We assumed that the meeting wouldn’t take place. Snow was supposed to fall starting at noon and surely our panicky building supervisor, fearing lawsuits, would send us home.

The snow refused to fall. I checked the Weather Channel satellite image and we were surrounded by green, pink, and blue. Nothing would fall. Work slowed but did not stop. I made a lunchtime trip to Trader Joe’s and the place was about three times as packed as usual. Half of the people were buying supplies for the “big snowstorm” and the other half were getting Valentine’s Day supplies. Trader Joe’s prices are reasonable but when I saw a pound of long-stemmed strawberries for $9, even I paused. Yes, long-stemmed strawberries were recommended for the fondue recipe I’m trying on Sunday. The regular stem ones will go just fine.

The snow started around 1:30 p.m. We could barely see it at first but by 2 it was coming down heavily. There was legitimate concern for the ride home. Bad weather plus drivers not used to snow is a tough equation. We got the “building is closed” e-mail. There was a groan when everyone read the contents. 4 p.m.! By that time, the roads would be clogged. We were stuck.

I would say about 15 minutes of work was completed during the next hour. We had our meeting, which was noticeably shorter than usual. It was time to hit the eject button.

I finally got to see the snow falling through our bay window. So that’s why you have a house. The driveway’s going to be frozen and we might not be able to leave the house tomorrow. That was fine. I had survived the great Atlanta snowstorm of 2010.

Virtual greatness

Every time I play a game of video football, I wonder if it’s going to be one of “those” games. Most of the time the game is uncontested or lacking in drama. Since I got back into Tecmo, I had one of those games. As San Francisco, I routinely have been blowing teams out. When I played the Colts, and not a particularly good Colts team, I struggled. My offense couldn’t do anything and my defense gave up big plays. When the Colts scored to make it 19-7 and there was about a minute left, I thought there was potential for a dramatic finish.

My previously horrible offense scored quickly. It was 19-14. I needed a stop or an interception. I got an interception on the second play. With about 25 seconds to go, I got inside the ten. I had four plays. In Tecmo, if the defense “calls” your play, it’s not going to work. They called my play three out of the four times. I had one scramble by Montana but could not score. I was short.

Since this is a video game I re-played the game and won easily. Of course. Now I get to play the championship game versus Cleveland (of all teams). Let’s see how it goes.

It went well. My Wii did not react well to our brief power outage yesterday morning. I couldn’t get it to power back up. The only way I got it to work was by unplugging it from the surge protector and plugging it into the other outlet.
I assumed that the team I played in the Tecmo Bowl would be good. The Cleveland Browns did not offer much of a struggle. Because there’s almost no such thing as a breakaway in the game, your best defensive strategy is to make the other team sustain long drives. Sooner or later you’re going to guess right and get an interception. In the first half I had three interceptions and a blocked field goal. I took a 17-0 lead into the third quarter.

This was not a classic Joe Montana performance. I threw four interceptions, including two in the end zone in the third quarter. The Browns scored a TD to make it 17-6. Pretty soon thereafter I scored to make it 24-6 and the rout was on.

I kept stats for this game. In honor of his Hall of Fame induction, Jerry Rice caught 14 passes for 210 yards. He couldn’t get in the end zone. Roger Craig had 13 carries for 54 yards and three touchdowns. Montana ran for the other touchdown.

The 1989 49ers had one of the most dominant playoff runs ever. In the Divisional round they beat the Vikings 41-13. In the NFC Championship they beat the Rams 30-3. In the Super Bowl they pounded the Broncos, scoring a record 55 points. That’s three playoff wins by a combined 100 points. My 38-12 victory pales in comparison.

Blood type: O positive. Blood drive experience: Oh negative

You never notice a trauma while it’s happening.

I used to be really afraid of needles. Once when I was in college I donated blood. The “for a girl” part should be assumed. I got so nervous that my vein collapsed midway through. After being stuck many hundreds of times in every vein from my back of my hand to the usual spot on the underside of the elbow, I was past that. Still, I have small veins. It’s not something I’m proud to admit. It’s hard to find them.
At least it’s hard for Red Cross volunteers to find them. I went probably half a dozen times in the early 00s and finally gave up. It took too long. They would try one vein, pull out and want to try another. The initial needle stick hurts for such a brief time that by the time your mind registers it, you’re done. When the needle is inside you and the so-called expert is pushing it back and forth, it really hurts.

I saw the e-mail for a company blood drive last week. I thought what the heck.

I made an appointment for 8:30 because 8 and 8:15 were full. When I got to the room, they were still putting it together. I assumed that the procedure was not much different than the last time I tried and I was right. Instead of them asking you weird questions about diseases you’ve never heard of, they let you fill out a survey on a battered laptop. I finished, got up and sat down on one of the portable chairs, which look like the worst beach chairs ever created.

I told the nurse that my right arm was the better arm for veins. She found one initially but moved to the left. Before applying about a quart of iodine to the crook of my elbow, she said “that might work”. There aren’t too many times in life when you hear “that might work” and you are filled with confidence. Does Jack Bauer ever say “that might work”?

The stick wasn’t bad. One the red stuff started to flow, the nurse told me to keep squeezing my left hand. I more or less squeezed continuously for an unmeasurable amount of time.

When you give blood, the following probably shouldn’t happen:

You are given enough bottles of water to equal the amount of water you’re supposed to drink for an entire day.

The needle is adjusted while in your vein. It’s a nice, subtle feeling like electroshock.


Someone checks on whether the blood is still flowing. This happened about every 12 seconds.

The room is so cold that by the end of the process, your entire body is shaking.
You should not be able to compare the process to 30 minutes of the Bataan Death March.

I don’t think referring to “30 minutes of the Bataan Death March” is insulting to anyone who survived or died during that horrible atrocity. Admit it; 30 minutes of the march wouldn’t be bad. It would be unpleasant. And it might seem like a lot longer than 30 minutes.
There are times when you want to do the right thing, the proper thing, the thing that’s for the greater good. It can be uncomfortable. It shouldn’t be intolerable.

In the end, I gave slightly less than a pint of blood. I wondered when you would actually need less than a pint of blood. Would it be the equivalent of going to the dealership and getting your fluids topped off?

I arrived at the blood drive at 8:15. I left after 9:30. It shouldn’t have to be like this, I thought on the way to my car, enduring the worst weather of all, the cold rain. Actually I didn’t think that. I was traumatized and the only thing I wanted to do was not feel cold. When you get so cold that you can’t think of anything else and can’t even imagine being warm, everything else gets shut out.

The Nutter Butter didn’t help. The juice didn’t help. A Diet Dr Pepper didn’t help. Going out for pizza helped a little. It’s a quarter to ten and I’m wiped out.

Welcome to the Grill House

I lit the fire last night. The grill sat dormant for too long. Don, proprietor of the Don Funk Sports Grill where I watch most of my football, donated a propane tank to the festivities.

I’m trying to think of the proper comparison to the moment right after you’ve started the gas and turned on the burners and are about to press the electric igniter for the first time. Prom night? Wedding night? There’s a lot of anticipation for this event. It promises to be memorable. I clicked the button and nothing happened.

It’s no fun when your lighter won’t light. Luckily I had a quick solution. I don’t understand why, when you buy electronics, that they either come with no batteries or batteries from a company that no one has ever heard of. You’re guaranteed to have to replace said batteries quickly. I took out the off-brand battery and replaced it. I heard the beautiful clicks and we had one, two, three, four burners going with that pretty blue flame.

I burned the time for the grill to warm up by continuing the amazing undefeated season of the San Francisco 49ers on Tecmo Bowl. I played the Cowboys. This was the 1989 1-15 Cowboys. Daryl Johnston had 212 rushing yards that year but in this game he had about 150 yards and two touchdowns. I won but didn’t feel great about it.
The grill has a temperature gauge. I set all the burners to high because that’s what men do. The temperature was at the top of the gauge, 600 beautiful degrees. I had to cool it down to almost the minimum to get the temperature to around 450. That much heat instantly seared our steaks. Don had his Don style, which is about 30 seconds warmer than uncooked. Mine were in fairly rare so I gave them another minute.

The steaks were good. I had a few sweet potato fries. I even ate a couple of grape tomatoes. Speaking of grape, Don’s a big fan of the Cab Sav and I have been known to partake so we drank. And ate. And played Wii golf. I won twice, but Don blamed his controller for a poor performance. Real men don’t blame the controller. They blame the controllee.

I now have the uber TV and the uber grill. And the uber wife, of course. She smartly avoided our man cave grunt-off.

What else could a man want? Um, how about an HD TiVo. Because real men don’t watch commercials.

Closing time: A retrospective

I never did write about closing day. It was like the last Colts Super Bowl. Kind of anticlimactic. We got up early and waited. Alison had already printed directions to the law office, conveniently located 20 miles north of our condo and 20 miles west of our new home, DeKalb County Water and Sewer, and Georgia Power.
Utility bills were going to be in my name for the first time in a long time.

The lawyers were smart. All I had to provide on closing day was the big check (not novelty size as I had wanted) and a driver’s license. We got to the office and waited while the seller signed papers. I looked at the Sports Illustrated cover in disgust. Can we stop encouraging Americans to be dumb by putting headlines like “Dynasty” on a cover about Alabama, a team that has won one championship in a row?

The process was lovely. There was light conversation and a container of “fun size” candy bars. No, wait, that was everyone else. They chatted while I signed seven copies of everything. I didn’t notice until page 20 that I was signing and the lawyer was entering the date. Is that part of the bar exam? The 85-year-old who used to live in the house was there. I’m sure we would have bonded, but I was there for one reason. I finished in about 30 minutes after severely devaluing the street value of my autograph. We left. The seller’s agent, whose primary goal seemed to be playing road hump to every thing we wanted to accomplish, forgot the extra set of keys.

I stopped at the house long enough to say hello. I had errands. It was my intention to eat lunch, but I shifted to making lunch my goal. I went to the water department. Both at the water department and Georgia Power, which were almost too quick, I was the only white person. I don’t say that for any reason other than it was unusual. At Georgia Power I was told that I had a good payment history in 1999, which was the last time my name was on utilities. I lived in a crappy condo in Doraville at that time.

My lunch reward was a burger from Five Guys. I always tell myself that I’m not getting the fries at Five Guys because they aren’t to my level of crispiness and when you order them to go, you get five pounds. A piece of grilled onion landed on my dress shirt as I ate and drove back to the condo to pick up items to bring to the house. On Monday morning, I would wear that dress shirt to work because in a weekend full of moving, I did not get another dress shirt to the house. The stain wasn’t that noticeable.

I’ve had some great memories at the condo, and it will always be a spot of nostalgia because that’s where I fell in love with my wife. How can I forget my first visit when she told me that the cat fetched paper balls? She told me this, threw a paper ball, and the cat looked at her like “you’re on your own”, refusing to move. This house is truly ours, and according to the paperwork, mine.

LED for you, LED for me

Imagine that you have recently purchased a new home. This home is complete with all the necessities, like a grill and a large TV. The problem with the TV is that your wife decided that it needed to stay at a friend’s house until you moved into the home. The TV has to be retrieved. This is traumatic, like when you find out your starting running back is inactive and it’s too late to change your starting lineup.

Oh, wait, that’s not traumatic to sane people.

The TV is back, and your family has the temerity to ask you to eat dinner before installing the TV. Sure, it was time to eat, but this is important! I ate quickly, pouring Franks on everything because either peanut butter or Franks goes on everything.

I went downstairs with my brother-in-law to get the TV set up. He’s an electrician, so unlike the rest of us, he’s useful during this move. We get the TV out of the box. It’s 1.177 inches thin. “Wow, that’s even thinner than mine,” he said. Yes, this is a rare occurrence when a man is jealous of a lack of thickness. We took the TV out of the box. We found the stand upon which the TV would sit. When we looked at the instructions, they cleared stated not to take the TV out before putting the stand in place. I held the TV while bro-in-law screwed the base into the stand. The TV was supposed to click into the stand. There was one tab, with a sticker next to it saying “yes, there is only supposed to be one tab” and two slots. There were two silver prongs on the bottom of the TV clearly created to fit in the stand.
Only it wouldn’t fit. We gingerly lifted the TV and put it down. It wouldn’t click. We tried about 15 times with no luck. In my previous job, it was my job to test test test until I figured out was wrong with an application. We moved the TV sideways and tried to click that way. We brought in the women. It wasn’t clicking. Would I have to lay my TV on the carpet to watch it tomorrow? There was only one thing to do. Unscrew the base. It was the only thing we had done so far and maybe we did it wrong.

I unscrewed. I took the base off the stand. We had looked to see which way the base was supposed to go into the stand, but we had not looked to see which way the stand was supposed to be. It was backward. I put the screws back in and it took about three seconds to get the TV in place. We screwed the TV to the base and we were done.

There were a couple of issues. One is that we didn’t have our satellite hookup yet. That was fine; I had brought my Wii out of storage for this occasion. I opened the Wii box and found everything. Except for the power cord.

There’s a reason why when we’re younger, we move every year and when we get older, we move much less often. We even do insane things like agree to pay for a place over 30 years so we might never have to move again. This weekend was a weekend for moving. It’s not over yet.

Change = not always a good thing

Is change good? I have to question the assumption. My gym was a pretty run-down place. The equipment and the clientele were old. I didn’t care because even though half of the elliptical were always broken, I could find one and get in my miles.
I woke up early on Sunday to go to the gym. I knew that no one would be there at 8:30. I was right. What I wasn’t prepared for was the new equipment. They had cleared out all of the machines and replaced them with new ones. I saw a row of elliptical that looked completely unused. I thought what the heck; try the new ones and then finish with the old.

Not every elliptical is made equally. On the ones that I was used to, I had to go as fast as I could to exceed a ten-minute mile. When I was going fast, I could burn 19 calories a minute. I never really trust those numbers, but they are the numbers I have. With the new ellipticals, I could do a mile and a half in ten minutes and burn about 15 calories a minute. I felt like I was moving at a different angle. Maybe I was a little more straight up with this one as opposed to leaning a bit. I struggled at first but completed seven miles in 50 minutes. I had to do this because when I stopped to go back to my old reliable, I saw that the row behind me also had the new machines. My old reliable was gone. I had no choice.

When I woke up the next morning, walking was a problem. My right calf belt like someone had kicked it repeatedly with a steel-toed boot. I limped around all day. Today is day two after operation new elliptical and my calf is still tight and sore.

I’ll recover, but for now change doesn’t seem like such a good thing.

The Hidden Costs

Nothing in life is exactly what it seems. We love to obsess on the surface and frankly have no time to go deeper. It's only when we have to go deeper that we learn the true cost of things.

The obvious first example is the house. The first thing you do when you want a house is make an offer. It's not just a dollar figure. There are closing costs, rodent removal, septic systems, electric, plumbing and dozens of other considerations. And when you get what you want, thinking for a moment that you've pulled something over on the other side, you realize that's not the fact, jack. The house has twice the square footage than our current place. We need more furniture. The bathrooms don't have electrical outlets. We can't live without those.
I'm a man and therefore must have a grill. But even a grill's not just a grill. I'm not going to double the price for the grill with the extras like gas, a cover, and utensils. It's going to be higher than the sticker price.

We bought the man-sized HD TV and wouldn't you know, it needs more than a place to sit in the man cave. We need to upgrade our cable or satellite to HD. We need HDMI cables, which you can't get at the dollar store, to hook the tellie up to a DVD player (Blu-Ray of course), cable/satellite box and any kind of surround-sound system that we get. And don't forget the Netflix subscription.

I listen to the NPR Fresh Air podcast, and two of their episodes were the hidden costs of the wars we have going on. Everyone knows about the army of contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq. We look down on them, almost to the level that returning soldiers from Vietnam were treated. I learned that the contractors have to get their own insurance, which can be as expensive as their salary. That's OK, though, because it's paid by the government. When a contractor gets injured, they may get military transport out of the "hot zone", but it's not guaranteed. And when they get home, while their insurance claims are also paid by the government (paid to the insurance company, not the contractor), they do not have the veteran support structure that regular soldiers get. There's a big hidden cost to that bloated salary you might get to drive a truck in Afghanistan.

Speaking of trucks, another NPR podcast told the tale of bribes contracting companies pay to the Taliban in order to get the supplies over the sparsely defended roads in order to, yeah, fight the Taliban. Most of the countryside is controlled by warlords, and since contractors can only defend themselves with AK-47s, they go the payout route instead. At least in this case, and it really is a least, some Afghani businessmen are making a lot of money out of the deal in protection.

Most of the contractor costs aren't made public. We'll never really know how much the war costs. It would make more sense to have everyone under the umbrella of the army. That would probably require a draft, and we're not going for that again. We're OK with people profiting on the suffering of others, though.

If I ever meet a contractor who has been injured in a war, I'll give them the same respect I'd give to a veteran. It's the least that they deserve.

Burn, baby, burn

I had an extremely brief career as a stand-up comic. It lasted less than five minutes. I did one set and immediately retired. If I had stuck with it, I could have used last night’s events as fodder.

I went to the gym yesterday afternoon. I followed that up by going to the grocery store. Alison had written a list of grocery items. As usual, she put items on the list that I had never before purchased, and in some cases had never seen (stuffed clams?). Going to the grocery store after working out is the worst. You stink and while your mind thinks that it would be a good idea to eat everything, your body is still saying “no, thanks”. While at the store I thought that this would be a good night for a fire log.

We have a fireplace in our condo. We do not use it often. When we do, we go with the fire log. Your average fire log is probably five percent wood and 95 percent unknown chemicals that will eventually cause one of us to grow a third arm. They are wrapped in paper that you can burn to get the fire started. A week ago I purchased a six-pack of a generic brand, thinking that we’d easily burn through them before we moved since it’s been freaking cold in Atlanta for more than two weeks.
When I got home, Alison had started the fire. She complained that the log wasn’t burning. She was correct. Most of the paper was gone and the charred outer part of the log would not stay on fire, save a small portion of the left side. I had a brilliant idea. Add a second log to the mix.

That log wouldn’t catch. I poked it with the handy fireplace poker, tried to light it again and nothing was working. My last-ditch effort was to get a piece of cardboard from the fire log box and ignite that. Success!

Perhaps there was too much success. The double fire logs caused a heat wave that made the surrounding furniture so hot that we moved it back. Despite the flue being open, there was a little smoke. And we had a lovely plastic smell, not the great wood smell you usually get from a fire. I was on the computer but Alison was so worried that I had to watch, poke, and taunt the fire until it gradually burned down.
An hour after the fire was finished, I closed the flue and fireplace. Alison told me that there was smoke, so I re-opened it. In the morning I closed it and we were fine, other than a lot of fire loggy ashes.

Alison actually ridiculed me on Facebook (although not by name, as she claims in her best lawyer-esque tone) for almost burning the house down. I get it.

This morning, as I was gathering my things, I told her that I was going to throw away the rest of the fire logs. Obviously their usefulness had expired. We’re moving to a new house in a week and it’s actually starting to feel like an Atlanta winter outside. Her response, which would be the punch line to my imaginary comedy routine, was “you’re not going to throw them away, are you?”