CafeChatNoir

Nope, no iPhone for me. Not that it doesn’t look INCREDIBLY COOL, because it does, but I am just not going to pony up $600 for a phone and switch to AT&T’s service, especially when I already have a perfectly good phone and iPod. (Plus my alarming tendency to be incredibly rough on phones of late.)

But, I really would like to see one up close & personal. However, let’s face it, by the time the riots die down for it, it’s going to be like every other cell phone on display in an AT&T store. The battery will be dead, the screen will be cracked and the video will be in the form of a colored sticker on the screen and a disgruntled clerk telling you to “use your imagination.”

So, if anyone out there braves the whackos waiting in line to see one of these this weekend and gets to see it before it just becomes a battered piece of non-functioning metal chained to a display case, do tell if it seems to live up to the commercials.

Found out about this one via DCist - the first annual Brainfood Grill Off!

It’s this Thursday, 6/28, and there are still tickets available. $75 for dinner, open bar and “entertainment” (which may be the kids setting the kitchens on fire, who knows.)

Brainfood is “a non-profit youth development organization based in Washington, DC. Brainfood has been a community presence in the Columbia Heights neighborhood for several years, and in the fall of 2007, a second Brainfood site was established in Chinatown. The Brainfood kitchen is a place where young people come to have creative, constructive fun. We believe that supervised, fun activities are a young person’s right, not a privilege, and we have found that most of our students do not have access to such opportunities.

In keeping with these beliefs, we have created after school and summer programs that allow kids to be kids, while also challenging them to develop new skills and raise self-expectations. Brainfood is a safe place for teens to try new things, make mistakes, and grow. We reach young people through a positive approach based on one of the oldest and most universal of human traditions: food. Through listening, reading, shopping, measuring, chopping, whisking, roasting, cooling, collaborating, presenting, eating, cleaning and volunteering, Brainfood students learn life skills and have fun.”

Well, damn, I am certainly down for that. Even got little bro hooked in for it. (Which makes me think that maybe dinner tonight didn’t turn out as well as I thought it had.)

Researchers make remake Neanderthal DNA

Oh, the jokes about my ex’s that keep coming to mind…

So, the ruling came down today in the case of the lost pants where a local judge decided he needed to sue the dry cleaners for $54 million dollars.

Well, the dry cleaners (and common sense) won.  And they were saying on CNBC that the plantiff is on the hook for the court costs to boot.

First, can someone tell me what birds like to be singing at the top of their little lungs at 1:30 in the morning? If we had a false dawn going on, I’d understand it, but these buggers are going on in the dark every night.

Well, the Padres lost 2-1 in a pitcher’s duel with Boston this evening, but it was still a good game to watch. Also discovered a relatively large heretofore unknown Angels contingent up at GD’s this evening. (That game had gone into extra innings when I left, no clue who may have pulled a rabbit out of thier ballcap on that one.)

Been a long week. Not bad, just really freakin’ long. Way too much time spent wondering what’s going to be the next big thing that hits, good or bad, and how to somehow steel myself for it. Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m trying to prep myself for change or subconsciously itching for it.

Not helping are the antibiotics I am on for some fun & games at the dentist week after next. If the water & food isn’t *just right* when I take them, I get a lovely bout of seasickness for a couple hours. (And considering that I don’t get seasick, even on a headboat in 6-8 foot waves, that’s saying something.) So far I’ve learned that a half can of soup is not adequate, nor is screwing around and finally getting around to eating 30 minutes later. (And yes, I can still drink beer & take these. Gotta love scientific progress.)

Note to self: Keep Mox on the leash when near my car.

I’m not big on lawsuits, but frankly, if a plane piloted by the FBI ran into my Lamborghini, I’d be contacting my lawyer, too.

And it’s only taken me 35 years, but this week I finally made a decent omelet, that actually looked and tasted like an omelet, rather than the “scrambled eggs with cheese and stuff” that ususally results from my efforts. (Seriously, if you have trouble with omelets, get hold of Alton Brown’s Good Eats episode, “Zen and the art of Omelet Making” - between the awesome dorky science and the visuals, you will be able to do it. It may take a couple times of watching it, but it eventually will sink in.) I still attribute part of the success to the use of bacon grease in the process. Don’t get me wrong - a farmer’s scramble isn’t a bad thing by any means, but when you’re jonesing for an omelet, well, a scramble just doesn’t quite cut it as a substitute.

In your culinary/religious news (a bit late, but noteworthy regardless…) - Flying Spaghetti Monster on Toast. (To be perfectly honest, when I clicked I expected a misidentified softshell crab sandwich.)

And to finish off this long and occasionally surreal week, I just got an email from one of my former partners-in-crime at the software shop - the same person I was thinking today, “Damn, I need to poke him and see what he’s up to.” We always were on the same freaky wavelength. (Probably why there seemed to always be some dumbass affair rumor going around. Sorry, but if you paid attention, we were too busy debugging software together to do anything else.)

Aussies repelled gunboats in Persian Gulf.

Having had the privilege of working with the Australians back in my days of greasing the wheels of the military industrial complex, this does not surprise me one bit.

“Highly colourful language” indeed.

And now we know why the Vatican had to put out it’s driving commandments:

Priest, recently out of rehab, crashes car into restaurant and is charged with DWI.

I wasn’t sure the US version would be as good as the UK version, but they’ve done a fine job. Now I’m just wondering how on earth this actually made the 8PM time slot for the following three reasons:

- The ice luge (why you have to watch what is going on in the background)
- “soft porn”
- “Go fuck yourself” (appropriately silenceed, but still…)

That are about 2 hours late, but hey, that’s how I roll.

To be perfectly honest, I have found the easiest way to deal with family holidays with both my folks being gone is to just ignore them. Healthy? I don’t know, but it works for me. We all have our ways of coping.

Saturday evening I was out with the boys, and a round of Sambuca showed up and a toast was made to the Dads. All I could do was look skyward and say, “Dad, I hope you’re proud of me.”

It’s been over 10 years since my Dad died, and a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of him in some way or another. Honestly, I think he’d be tickled with all the strange turns my career and life has taken, as he did the same. (Well, career wise at least.) 20+ years in the Navy, a stockbroker stint and then found a place in banking that fit him just right. For me, it was accounting & finance, some day trading thrown in that I loved, more accounting & finance, then software support, and suddenly I find myself with actual trading capital. So, stock trading is how I pay the bills and the bar tab now. And considering Saturday’s Den Mother evening, it seems to be working. :)

I really think he’d love the fact that I’ve turned what I’ve got into trading capital. (And am ahead of the game, to boot!) He was the one that introduced me to the stock market in the first place. I remember back in 7th grade we had some chick from EDS come into our Civics class and we had a stock trading competition. Dad & I pored over the stock pages looking for stocks for me. (This was back in the day when it wasn’t unusual or unacceptable for parents to help kids with homework, because it was actually “help” and not “doing it for you” or complaining to the teacher that the assignment interfered with soccer practice.) I went back to class with a request to go short on Alaska Airlines. Sadly, shorting stocks wasn’t allowed, but Dad & I kept track of it anyway. If I recall correctly, Alaska Air tanked, as we had thought it would.

I remember when he was working in the city with Shearson Lehman (which has since morphed into Citigroup Smith Barney.) He had access to a QuoTron!!![1] Holy crap, Batman!! We both thought it was the coolest thing EVAR. Today, I have real time charts and quotes right here on my laptop. I think his head would explode if he could see that. I’m also fairly sure he wouldn’t even bat an eye at the fact that I will head up to the bar with a handful of stock charts to sit and review over a Guinness and SportsCenter. (He’d probably be happy at my multitasking abilities.)

He was a workaholic, no two ways about it. (I got that from him, too.) But somehow, he managed to do that and always be there for us whenever he could (US Navy not always conducive for “being there”, but when he was a civvie, it was never a question.) I remember when he died and his boss brought back the things from his desk (a task I would not wish on my worst enemy) he seemed very upset/concerned/something about the fact that there weren’t a ton of super-personal things. First, he wasn’t in his office *that* much, he spent a lot of time running around town for the job. Second, it’s hard to explain to a civilian that hey, he gets to come home every night - the personal items that some folks may have on their desks to remind them of their family, well, his family was only a few miles away at that point instead of on the other side of the world. I remember telling his boss, “Yep, he was a workaholic and still managed to be a kickass Dad all at the same time.”

He instituted what came to be known as the First Friday Club. Once I was out in the big wide working world, the first Friday of every month we would meet up for lunch. Working in Old Town at the time, we always had plenty of options. I will always remember when we hit SouthSide for lunch (about a block from my office) and I told him we would be eating at the bar (cause that’s where I always ate when I was there) and I got the freakin’ Norm treatment when we walked in. He went to the men’s room and the bartender asked about him (OK, I was showing up with someone who was quite literally old enough to be my father and they’ve never seen him before with me) and I explained it was my Dad. Dad returned from the men’s room and the bartender looked at him and said something along the lines of “I’ve never seen your daughter before in my life.”

I think as far as the running & tris go, he’d shake his head and say, “You’re nuts,” but be right up front at every race. He proved his worth as the best jockstrapper ever when I decided that I was going to do the July 4th 5K on the base in Japan many, many years ago. I’m quite sure I was the only racer that had a support crew - he biked the entire course with wet towels for me whenever I needed them. I think if he had been able to be at MCM, he would have figured out a way to be at every damn mile marker with a cooler full of whatever I needed or wanted at the time, including the steak in peppercorn sauce I so desperately wanted after running through G-town with every damn restaurant kicking off the kitchens for the day.

I wish he could see what a red wine fiend I’ve become! He loved red wines, and it just took me a while to really get into them. He would LOVE Il Vino, and I think be pretty happy with the fact that I can walk in there and if I haven’t been around in a while, Massimo asks, “And where have you been??” I realize now that I also got a lot of my foodie tendencies from him - though he wasn’t a heavy duty cook (but did love cooking with fire, as every Dad should [2]) he did truly appreciate good food and wine. I think he would have loved the cooking school weekend I did down at the beach, and would be exceptionally proud of the fact that I had absolutely no problems with dealing with prepping live softshell crabs for lunch. (Where do you think my first thought of “we should have races to decide which crabs become lunch!” came from?)

I wish he could have been around longer, but the time he was here, he really was a kickass Dad. Not perfect by any means, but kickass nonetheless. I still miss him terribly, even after all these years - there is so much I wish he could have seen, but I just hope somehow he knows I’ve managed to accomplish, and can see how much I am really enjoying life right now.

[1] At the time, the only way to get real time quotes, not available unless you were working at a brokerage. The little people had to either look at the closing prices in the paper or be updated by their brokers as things progressed during the day.
[2] I will never forget the evening that we looked out on the deck to see my father doing a spectacular imitation of the Statue of Liberty. It would have been absolutely spot on had Lady Liberty’s torch been fueled by flaming kielbasa.

6 pages knocked out and with enough time to make a decent dinner. Final edit on it tomorrow and it’s outta here. I have to do a survey for the class and I’m not exceptionally enthused about it, it’s kind of been an “eh” class for me. Not much of anything I didn’t already know from doing my last paper. Ah well, they can’t all be fireworks and “OMG!”

Final exam next week then nothing else until August. (Works well since I don’t much want to be trying to do papers at the beach next month…)

Nothing like being able to just go for the phrase “empire building in the intelligence community” and get a nice handful of good potential sources for your paper.

Even better is when the paper overlaps nicely with another paper you’ve done, and you were smart enough to keep track of all those sources you looked up before as well.

4.5 pages down, 1.5 to go, 30 hours to finish. (Most of those hours I’ll need to get the citations formatted right.)

They’re doing a segment on Dad’s day gifts. So far we have…

a $2,400 jacket
a $5,000 bottle of cognac
a $12,750 watch
a $3,300 briefcase

We usually got my dad a pair of shorts and a new polo shirt.

But all I find is weird and annoying.

Why do I see Homeland Security somehow getting involved in this and confiscating the monitor and placing charges of illegal wiretapping? A baby monitor in Chicago is picking up NASA video.

For the “I’m so proud of our city” files - Judge suing dry cleaners for $54M. The case has been around for a while and should be finished up in the next week. What I would really like to see is this: Defendant pays for a replacement pair of pants. Plaintiff has to pay all court and legal costs of all parties for bringing forth such a freakin’ ridiculous lawsuit that should have never gone anywhere besides small claims court.

More toxic toothpaste!! This time it’s in the US, it’s counterfeit and branded as Colgate.

Kids, don’t drink, get naked and drive.

You’re stranded on a desert island - which would you rather have: Unlimited books or unlimited music?

(And don’t taunt me with “how do you get the books and music if you’re stranded?” - it’s freakin’ magic, OK?)

Me? Music.

TiVo Alert: BBCAmerica will be running 6 episodes of Creature Comforts from 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM on Monday morning.

Careful with the topical sports cremes: Teen dies from too much use of it. They don’t specify exactly how much is “to excess” - but I’m guessing it would have to be a lot.

ESPN is doing all day horse racing coverage from the Belmont track - no mentions at all of any dippy blonde chicks.

And just some cuteness (courtesy Yahoo):

and wireless and the ability (and temps) to post from my deck in the middle of the night.

It’s been a long week. Funny how being there for a friend who may be going through something big & scary can take as much, if not more, out of you than if you were going through it yourself. A professional chauffeur would have been much less affected by the entire situation that I was…

Went out for drinks tonight and made a new friend, in a matter of speaking. She’s a friend of a friend and apparently had a VERY rough week and as happens with those types of weeks, her regular Friday night drinks hit her like a Mac truck. Given that our mutual friend is a guy, and her gentleman friend is a guy (well, being a “gentleman friend” kinda says it) when it all came down on her like a ton of bricks, guess who was her escort to the ladies room for the remainder of the evening? Bless her heart, she was mortified (as we all are when such things occur) and I spent a lot of time reassuring her that we have ALL been there. I just finally flat out said, “Not to pry, but have you had some ugly emotionaln upheaval this week?” - and the answer was a resounding, ‘oh, hells yes’. Bingo - that type of thing will flatten you faster than any number of Jagerbombs will. (Been there, done that - puked my guts up at my granddad’s’ 80th b-day after a couple drinks and a toast that indicated he’d not be around much longer…)

She had arrangements to get home that were superseded by the bartender calling one of her daughters (of age) and I spent a couple minutes letting her daughter know that her Mom was mortified, and bless her, she said the same thing I had told her Mom - we’ve ALL been there. Yay for kids who understand but would otherwise never admit to their parents: that emotions + a few drinks = puking.

I did have someone ask me why I even speak w/ Cpt Jackass* anymore, as in his eyes, ‘he treats you like crap’ - to be honest, I couldn’t even tell you, but I find that I’m happy and I tend to look at the world differently when I’m around him - and I like it - so who knows. And frankly, he’s never asked me to change, which I can’t say of any other guy I’ve ever been involved with on any level.

And as I’m sitting here on my deck, I get a text from the Captain telling me how he just managed to pet a wild fox that wandered into his yard. Why am I the one that gets that news vs. anyone else on the planet? Well, hell, draw your own conclusions on that one, cause I am just going with jealousy over the fact that I have NEVER gotten to pet a fox around here.

* Someone that I’ve come to know & expect his ups & downs. For those of you that are familiar with the poem of “people come into your life for a reason/a season/a lifetime” - he probably only qualifies in the “reason” category, but it wouldn’t bother me if I was wrong on that one.

Well, the legal system may not be perfect, but it isn’t as screwed up as I had feared. An administrative cockup that had already been fixed was met with “have a nice day” vs “here are some nice bracelets for you for the next 90 days”. (Yes, the 90 days was a potential outcome.)

Another observation: People really don’t seem to dress appropriately for court anymore. I was only there for moral support and *I* even ditched my normal “just escaped from prison” look for skirt & heels.

Also saw a good judge in action. On more than a few occasions, he looked at the defendant and flat out said, “You’re going to need a lawyer - go get one and see you next month.”

Mox was awesome at the party. My realtor throws it every year for his clients, and I should have expected that it would be catered - as I recall, his wife is an exceptionally practical woman and I am sure put her foot down on the first go-round on this and said, “You want a party for your clients, you get it catered.” :) One thing we did discover about Mox is that he has become well conditioned in certain situations, especially when it comes to food. Every time one of the servers came around with food, he would sit down the second he saw her, so no worries on him tripping someone for a mini country ham biscuit. He also is pretty much the only dog we’ve owned that has an actual sense of his size.

Today I’ll get to see if the legal system actually functions in the best interest of society and actual justice or if it’s just “if A, then B” check the box system. Should be interesting.

In a couple hours, my brother and I will be taking the hound to a birthday party. A dog birthday party. (Not quite as weird as it sounds, basically an excuse to have a summer cookout and get all the dogs together to play.)

The catch? He’s never done anything like this. He runs up and down the fence with the dogs next door, but I don’t know of any occasion where he’s gotten to really play with other dogs. (I haven’t gotten up the nerve to take him to the dog park.)

I’ve been telling him all day that he has to BE GOOD tonight. So, he’s spent the entire day being a bit of a brat, barking at the cats, barking at my brother, and generally not being a dog I want to claim as mine. There’s going to be some serious ball playing in the next hour to see if we can’t wear him out a bit before the festivities.

After discovering that I need to check my toothpaste to make sure it’s not made in China, that was the first question to pop into my head. Of course, I already know the answer - money & politics.

Completely setting aside the money/politics aspect of it, there really isn’t any other reason we can’t make just about anything in the US. I’ve tried in the past (and still do) to buy things that are made locally and/or in the US - and fail miserably most of the time.

Not that product contaminations and such can’t happen in the US, because they do, but I am getting a little tired of the crap coming out of China at the moment.

Personally, I think it’s critical in life to have safe places you can go to and just exist with no questions asked on a regular basis. Sometimes it’s IRL, sometimes it’s virtual, in the form of a blog, a friendly forum, whatever.

One of my safe places is GD’s. It’s someplace I can go completely alone and never even think twice about it. I can go in, have a beer, watch a game, catch the box scores on SportsCenter and no one hassles me. I find it amusing that when Pink’s song “U + Ur Hand” came out, my brother said, “That makes me think of you at GD’s.” Spot on - I’m there for a beer and decompression and little else, so sod off.

Not that I am a hermit beeyotch there, I have completely accepted (and embraced) my role there - we all have them, even if we don’t know it - early-onset-mildly-aging-hockey-junkie-barfly who loves sports and always has an extra smoke for anyone that needs it. And I’m OK with that. I’ve met a ton of good people and even when the connections seem to be nothing more than superficial, it’s good to go somewhere and have a sitdown and check in with everyone and make sure they’re doing OK, and they do the same with you. I’ve met some fantastic people there and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

That’s why at the end of a long (but technically short) week, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be to kick back and celebrate the fact that we all made it to Friday.

Have a good weekend, kids.

Current Music: The Ballad of John & Yoko - The Beatles

Courtesy gerg:

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool

Opening Credits: Mysterious Ways - U2
Waking Up: Jenny Says - Cowboy Mouth
First Day At School: Separala Tambien - Tito Puente (I suppose if I was going to school quite some time ago…)
Falling In Love: It Had to Be You - Harry Connick, Jr. (Yes, it really came up next.)
Fight Song: Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
Breaking Up: Nostalgia - Cracker
Prom: Sway - Dean Martin (Again, if I had gone to prom oh, 40+ years ago)
Life’s OK: Don’t Stand So Close to Me - The Police
Mental Breakdown: Inside Out - Eve 6
Driving: Just a Girl - No Doubt
Flashback: Shine - Meat Puppets
Getting Back Together: Talent Show - The Replacements
Wedding: Dancing with Myself - Billy Idol (Given the chances of my ever getting married again, pretty appropriate)
Birth of Child: Hoodoo Voodoo Doll - Brian Setzer Orchestra (damn I will have some screwed up kids)
Final Battle: Different Drummer - Black 47
Death Scene: Best of You - Foo Fighters
Funeral Song: In My Mind - Yamakazi
End Credits: Kiss It All Goodbye - Garageland