Archive for the ‘Living’ Category

It started last year when my Save Hiatus buddy Adam Levermore mentioned to me that he'd always wanted to see a shuttle launch, and I told him I was 2 hours away from them and could watch launches from my front yard.

Then this summer he mentioned he had a plane voucher and didn't know what to use it for since he had no cash for anything once he went somewhere. I reminded him of the shuttle launches — which will be ending soon as the program winds down — and said I had a couch. And the plan was made… only I didn't have a couch, so we figured we'd improvise.

Then it got better; NASA announced on their Twitterfeed that they were going to hold a tweetup and the 1st hundred people to register could attend. Adam and I both got in; his two friends who were going to accompany him didn't, and elected to stay behind rather than split the party which, as we all know, always results in death and creepy music.

The deal with the tweetup was that we'd get a day of talks and touring, and watch the launch the next day (weather and pesky fuel lines permitting) from the press area, the closest you can get if you're not rescue crew or actually sitting in the shuttle. We were psyched. This was going to be great, we'd get to see a lot of cool stuff, we could put up with the no-doubt boring talks, we'd get to see the launch, it's be great.

As it turned out, we were wrong. It was much better than that.

I posted a gallery of the trip and the launch here, with commentary.

So it's Halloween night, National Novel Writing Month just began, and I'm thinking about… caps.

Specifically, flat caps. Also called ivy caps, cabbie caps, golf caps and driving caps. Popular since 14th century Britain and Ireland, where they were mandatory. Also popular among some rock stars, actors, rappers and skin heads. And, lately, me.

I've seen them in stores and though I kinda liked the look on me, I also thought they'd make me look like I should be stalking the moors or leaning over the seat to ask some tourists if they want uptown or downtown. Instead I wore baseball caps for shade and rain cover, but I've finally come to grips with the fact that I'm simply not a baseball cap person. Nothing against baseball cap people, mind you, they're fine people, won't hear a word against them, some of my best friends wear baseball caps… but as I do not look as if I would be remotely interested in either throwing a baseball or watching one being thrown, I never felt comfortable in a baseball cap. I knew that at any point someone — and here I'm thinking the hat police, or possibly an armed federal milliner — would unmask me as an impostor and I would be publicly decapitated and ashamed.

I admit I like the Indiana Jones style of fedora, but that looks even more ridiculous on me, try as I might. Bowlers, while suited to my face shape, only work well for carnival barkers and Magritte paintings.

And then a month ago I was killing time wandering around Burlington Coat Factory while Teres browsed everything they had ever even thought of carrying, and I found a flat cap marked down. And, like always,  I tried it on. But this time while I can't say it looked good on me — nothing that still permits my features to be seen can be said to look good on me — it looked less bad. (That's the hat, seen on my head, on the right. On the left is Jason Mewes, which is enough reason to post the pic all by itself. Mewes, man!) Since then I've added a black one for variety and I have my eye on a charcoal gray one for formal occasions.

I've also discovered that there are flat cap communities out there. Flat cappers get intense about their hats; what time of the year is right for wool, whether it's permissible to wear them backwards (never under any circumstances unless you are delivering a calf or you're Samuel L. Jackson), what it means to wear fluorescent patchwork tweed (mostly it means you're a prat), etc.

I get some odd looks, but no more than usual. My head remains dry and unsunburnt. I have something to doff at ladies. The average flat cap can easily be crumpled and shoved into a pocket or backpack without damage. I'm almost but not quite trendy, which is as close as I've ever been. Other men who wear them nod silently at me, as if welcoming me to their sensible number. My older son, visiting for his birthday last week, mentioned that he's started wearing them himself independent of my discovery, which was kinda cool. And now my friends and family have a new thing to buy me too many of for holidays, so I've got that going for me. I have found my hat.

And now I must stalk off to the moors to start my NaNoWriMo novel.

Today I attended Ratha Yatra (Festival of Chariots) on Daytona Beach, the first time this ancient ceremony has been held here. The idea is that it simulates a trip made by Jagannath, Lord of the Universe (also called Krishna), while on vacation to the countryside to his aunt's home. Ratha Yatra has been celebrated for thousands of years in the Indian holy city Jagannathapuri and is probably the oldest and largest religious ceremony around.

We saw hundreds of devotees singing, chanting, drumming, and pulling a brightly-colored chariot covered in flowers, food and red and yellow cloth, bearing the effigy of the Lord for all to see. They were to pull the chariot 2 1/2 miles down the beach to Sun Splash Park, where a feast awaited.

And they would have too, except for one slight, 1,000-foot problem: the Daytona Beach Pier.

Pics and more details are in my Flickr set here. While I'm sure the organizers were frustrated, no one yelled, festivities continued anyway and the celebration went on. Here's the beginning of the festival which explains it much better than I did, shot by news-journalonline.com's Ron Hurtibise:

So after a solid day and a half of consistent and aggravating abdominal pain I started getting fevers, and that's never a good combination. Up till that point I was assuming constipation and all the laugh-a-minute joy that comes with that, but a fever meant something was blocked or something was septic or something was about to blow up, and I didn't see Ex-Lax or Pepto helping that, much.

My fevers were around 100.7 – just enough to worry, not enough for an obvious ER visit – and we weren't positive that it would be considered an emergency and therefore covered by my insurance, so we went to an urgent care place first to let them make the call. Doctor there took my money and said get to the ER and let them make sure my appendix wasn't about to blow, and hie us hence we did.

At the ER we got in fairly quickly (i.e. under an hour) and the nurses were great. The admitting nurse told us to call the next nurse we'd see "Candy," because they had all decided upon their "hooker names" today (the admitting nurse was "Bambi," we found out later). After I was shown to a room and given a robe "Candy" came in, set some IV stuff down, and said this was going to hurt a bit. "Ah, you're that kind of hooker," I said. She laughed, and Teres and I both agreed that hookers with needles were a bad combination.

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I'm an automatic uploader. Can't help it. When I see that there's a new version available, I nab it without thinking, that's just how on-the-edge and kinda stupid I am.

And WordPress, the blogging software I use for my sites, is excellent in that regard. It wasn't terrible to upload before, just time-consuming, and ever since an automatic updater was developed it was ridiculously easy to keep those little version numbers current. Just hit the button, click OK a bunch of times, and you're golden.

This morning they launched v2.8. And I clicked. And suddenly the post editor fizzed out and just showed me little red lines where the timeless prose used to be. And I had a momentary freakout, because, as I said, all my sites are WP-driven.

Fortunately the support forums – which are now lighting up like an upgraded Christmas tree – supplied some suggestions. I deactivated all my plugins, manually deleted and uploaded \wp-admin and \wp-includes, and then reactivated everything one by one. (The Social Media page plugin is still broken, by the way) But judging from the other posts in the support forum, I may have gotten off lucky. So before you upgrade your own blogs, go skim the forum and make sure you're ready, and be sure to upgrade manually.

Or just wait for 2.8.0.1 or whatever to come along.

Spotted at Whedonesque, these fan cakes are perfect for snacking while you're making evil plans, sharing with the homeless, or using as a delicious shield while thwarting evil plans. Mostly, they're just cool. Cake goggles? Amazing.

We're about to go rejoin the Y in the hopes that putting ourselves in the proximity of lots of exercise machines and a pool will somehow frighten our bodies into toughening up. Problem: there's a pool.

Which is good, because Teres and I both love to swim and it's good for you. But I haven't bought of pair of swim trunks for many fashion cycles now –  jean shorts, which aren't allowed at our Y — have served me well for decades now, and I'm at a loss. What to buy?

Last time, years back, the style was for fairly short shorts that now, compared to the usual knee-length versions I see around me, make me look like a pervert who's temporarily misplaced his trenchcoat, and this is not the image I wish to portray (we'll leave the accuracy of it alone for a moment). But should I get the knee-length ones?

According to eHow.com, hell no:

Pass on the board shorts if you are big in the belly. These have a tendency to hang low under the gut emphasing it more than you want.

As I resemble an albino manatee, they recommend something called "volley" shorts, in dark colors, no stripes, all cotton, possibly with warning buoys to ward off speeding motorboats.

Personally I kinda like the old-fashioned look (see above), but only if I can find a straw hat to go with it. What do you think? What should a fat man wear to the pool?

So, went to the doctor today. Overall cholesterol still good and well within the safe range, but good cholesterol isn't as high as it should be. He's suggested other things before such as fish oil and walnuts and whatnot, and today he mentioned the report that a daily glass of red wine can improve cholesterol and help lessen the chance for heart disease.

I'm willing to try most anything, except… I don't drink. Not because I have anything against it, I just really hate the taste of alcohol in any amount. While sampling some with friends I managed to find combinations of fruit juice and sangria that were palatable — essentially an extremely weak homemade wine cooler — and a friend introduced me to ice wine one night that was as good as any I've had, but for the most part I've been disinterested in finding ways to stomach something I didn't really want anyway. "The winter grapes add a rich overtone to this kerosene…"

But if it does in fact help my health, I'm willing to give it a shot. Which beings me here, with a question. What should I try?

Ideally I'd want something that resembled a strong sweet fruit juice, with as little alcohol taste as possible. Recent reports from the UK suggest that sherry also has the cholesterol-lowering properties, although not the lowering-heart-disease ones, and that might be an option. And it can't be a budget-breaker.

Any suggestions?

I'm still deep in the "add 5 cool apps, delete 4 after trying each one once, immediately add 5 more" phase of my iPod Touch love affair. My little mini-desktops are constantly spinning with apps that zoom in just long enough to wiggle the others aside before I bore of them and consign them to iTunes hell.

And yet, even with the amazing time-wasting bonanza available to me through the iTunes store — and that's not even counting the new world open to me if I ever hold my breath and jail-break the thing — there are still whole categories of applications I can't find. So, with a hopeful hint to restless programmers who just need a direction, here are the apps I want.

RealTip

I want to enter the total of my dinner and get the amount of the tip. But, and this is important, only after I check off boxes to describe my waitperson's performance, which would then positively or adversely affect the amount of the gratuity. Did she smile and remember everything, but spill ketchup on my wife's head? Was the food present, warmer than room temperature, and more or less on the plate? Were we treated to unwanted dinner theater involving our waiter and his ex-girlfriend-who-still-lives-with-him? Were we left waiting less than the time it would have taken to hunt, kill, and prepare the food ourselves? RealTip should take it all into account and give me a total I can live with.

GeoPerv

Not sure about your new neighbor? Shivering whenever you walk by your new babysitter? Wondering why your date seems so creepy? Snap a surreptitious pic of him and GeoPerv will instantly compare it to the local sexual offenders database (determined by geolocation) and "To Catch a Predator" reruns.

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One year ago today, I was marching in a circle with many of my television heroes and an awful lot of people I had previously only known as screennames. Me and some friends managed to organize a gathering of 450+ people to picket FOX Studios during the writers strike, and Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson helped make it a themed strike by inviting writers (and stars) from their various shows to come out. Here's what I posted at SerenityStuff afterward.

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Sorry for the delay in reporting. I've been recuperating from being, in QuoterGal's perfect phrase, "blissed out."

So. When last we left our hero, he was taking off for Los Angeles to attend Mutant Enemy Day when fans from the four corners of the globe would be gathering to show their support for the writers' strike by marching along with writers and actors from Mutant Enemy, Joss Whedon's former TV production company. Oh, and some Joss fellow.

The flight was uneventful, aside from the med student in the seat next to me who spent the time studying descriptions and full color images of surgeries and some extremely unfortunate man with a rather spectacular genital-based disorder.

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