The Best Laid Plans...

Fortuity can be fiendish. Not always in a good way, either. Such was the case Sunday night. The Girl and I had dinner guests. It had been our plan for quite some time to have them over to make steaks (from Costco!!), because I've finally learned how to make a pretty mean steak.

At least, I can make a mean steak when higher beings don't mess with my time table. I started cooking the steaks around 6:15. The steaks should have been done at 6:31. At 6:21, we ran out of propane for the grill.

So, on a Sunday evening after 6 PM, I went out, accompanied by Lindsay, one of the daughters of our guests. Thinking that somewhere other than Home Depot had to have propane, we started.

Mars didn't.
BP didn't.
Lauer's didn't.
Shell #1 didn't.
Safeway didn't.
Giant didn't.
Shell #2 didn't.

Finally, on stop number eight, Shell #3 had propane. Granted, this was some pretty expensive propane, but it was propane nonetheless. So, Lindsay and I made our triumphant return, propane in hand, at 7:30 or so. The steaks finally got done. We finally ate. Longest steaks ever.

The Girl says there's always something to say, but I don't know what. Today was the first time in probably over a month that I've gotten to just sit on my keister and not be excessively stressed out about anything. It was nice. Despite it, lots seemed to happen today...

• The Girl named her latest scarf, and we all lost our composure. I miss my son immensely
  
• Amanda spent the day here. It was remarkably pleasant, and I'm really glad she did
  
• College roommate Forrest's computer is not fully functional. I feel bad for him
  
• We caught up on Dollhouse
  
• Castle is an awesome show, but ABC's player is so unbelievably bad
  
• We had ice cream for lunch
  
• We had pizza for dinner
  
• We bought tickets to Jonathan Coulton, who is coming to the Birchmere in May.
  
• REI has my climbing shoes, but not in my size, so I can't buy them
  

Of it all, the "pizza for dinner" story bears explanation because Hell may have frozen over. We had pizza for dinner because (1) the Girl chose dinner, and (2) the Girl actually wanted pizza. Neither of these things happens on any given day. Both may as well be a sign of the coming apocalypse.

ABC's on-line video player really irritated me. It stutters. It's useless. Hulu just dumps you to ABC's website, too, so nobody can win.

Yup! That's a relaxing day.

Consumer Hell

Stores are on my hit list. Every retail store in existence has become a waste of time. If not all of them, then at least electronics ones. The Internets are taking over. The only time I ever even attempt to go to a store is when I want something immediately. Today was such a case. I wanted a SATA cable or two. Seeing that crappy vendor one had them online for cheap, I figured I would just stop at the store next time I was nearby. Tonight was that time.

Needless to say, I failed miserably. Or rather, crappy vendor one failed miserably. "We only have it online." Had I known, I'd have ordered it days ago and suffered the shipping costs. Now, alas, I benefit from neither the time with the cable nor the lack of shipping costs.

So, in tandem with Best Buy sucking and Circuit City (not that it was any particular gem) going under, retail electronic stores are dead. I'm not sure whether others are as well, but I'm wondering...

Soccer Food

Soccer is kind of weird. Or maybe it's me playing soccer that is weird. Some days, I can't run at all. Some days, I have a remarkable amount of energy. Today, for instance, I ran quite well the second half. I'm convinced it has to do with what I eat. So, in an effort to analyze this trend, I decided to analyze my soccer fuel.

* Raisin Nut Bran
* 1 cookie
* 1 cup of coffee
* 1 cup of tea
* 32 oz. water
* Pop-Tart
* 6" Subway club on 9-grain wheat
* Cherry Coke Zero
* Twix
* Powerade

Now, maybe next week I can repeat this. We'll see...

I know that this isn't even remotely interesting to anybody, but I needed somewhere to record it.

Random Daily Thoughts

"Penelope is a funny name. Every time I read or hear it, I think 'pen-a-lope.'"

Why do people leave messages at the wrong numbers? Don't they listen to the messages? Can't they hear, "Hi. This is the persons with a different name that you didn't call but that you reached anyway. Leave a message at the beep?" I don't get it.

Don't Panic

It's amazing that nobody thought of it earlier. Or maybe somebody did (probably), but I never ran across it, and it probably wasn't free.

The application is called HearPlanet Free, and it is a tour guide application for iPhone. What more do you need to know? Go somewhere, download tour content, and hear what you should do. I think that's pretty cool.

I have only one condition. It has to say "Don't Panic" somewhere within.

Random Daily Thoughts: Introduction

Pretty much every day I think something very strange. I decided today that'd I start recording them and writing them down. I'm not sure why. Some of them are funny. Some of them could drive a crazy person sane. Some of them might cause birds to explode spontaneously. I never know.

So, today's random thought:
- If you were going to start a direct competitor to Super Fresh, would you call it Ultra Fresh? I mean, isn't that immediately better?

Differential Brewing

I'm not very good with subtlety; particularly when it comes to flavors. I can tell when something tastes different, but I can't necessarily identify why. If I could tell the difference in recipes with something other than the food analog to a sledge hammer, I'd be a much better cook. It would mean I'd be able to make Frankenfood. I could just mash the right ingredients together and rock the tasty buds. I envy Karina for this. She's very experimental in cooking, and it always tastes good.

I think I'd be good with differential cooking. If I could line up multiple, slightly different meals next to one another and eat them sequentially, I might learn something. I don't think this would work, though, because I don't think I ever want to eat three meals simultaneously, even though this is probably what happens whenever I eat Chipotle or Chinese takeout, or pretty much sit down at any restaurant. Even though trying to eat multiple meals to satisfy my scientific curiosity won't work terribly well, it doesn't mean that I can't apply this concept in other arenas. Amanda and I discussed this last night with beer. We're apparently both particularly fond of reds. The experiment lives! When things settle down, we're going to experiment with beer ingredients. After all, who can't drink multiple beers in a night? It's always a win when alcoholic beverages get to satisfy scientific and experimental tendencies.

The experiment! Batch one will be the control group. Batch two will be the group with the grains varied. Batch three will be the batch with the hops varied. The beauty of it is that drinking three beers can be nice, and should give us some insight into the psychology of beer. Time to put some beer on a sofa and pick it apart...

Everyday Things

Sometimes it's remarkable what those among us in the world can create. Sometimes it's also remarkable what has yet to be created. I look around and see what we've been able to do as species. I looked at a car on the road today and saw the subtle nuances in just the exterior metal, just the things that make one every car look different from the next. I thought about how that piece of metal had to have a history, had to be designed, had to go to a factory to be formed, and had to be just right to be put on the car. I thought about how every car is just so different, but has a history similar to the next.

I then thought about how, despite the fact that we've been able to create such things, we have not been able to do some things that I thought would be natural by now; some things that seem obvious. For instance, creating a car capable of obtaining greater than 30 mpg on average but still have decent power. Once we make a breakthrough, we're stuck. The corporate world then prevents that breakthrough from evolving.

The world can be such a phenomenal place and such a depressing one all at once. I'm sitting with my laptop, connecting with many friends wirelessly. I'm drinking a beverage we've known how to make for hundreds of years. I'm imagining what the future holds. I'm remembering what the world was like before cell phones.

It's all so amazing. Sometimes it's really not, though. I guess every person goes through experiences that gives him a subset of the "real world view." I just hope yours is the most amazing one.

Couldn't We Just Win The Lottery Instead?

This friggin' blows. This page says that MTHFR deficiency, which I'm convinced is the reason that we are in a world of hurt right now, occurs in only about 200,000 people in the US. The girl has it.

I'm not going to ask what comes next, because I'm actually afraid somebody or something will show me, and I'm afraid it'll just get worse.

Well, Gosh, Sort of a Lot Has Happened...

I feel like I haven't blogged in a bazillion years. The reason is that, in the spirit of "kick him while he's down," life has been a little cruel of late. After New Years, we've both been messes on and off. The last week or so, I've been under a remarkable amount of stress. I've been struck by the friggin' plague, I've been trying (and failing) to work really hard, and now there's a new wrinkle.

The Girl has a fibroid. The doctors say "take it out" (surgically). She's nervous. I'm nervous. I think, though, that if she decides to do it, it will ultimately be OK. She also has MTHFR (pronounced to me "motherfucker"). I mean, why not pronounce it how it looks? It's not good. Genetic to boot, too. Might as well call it what it is. That particular malady is bad. I personally think it's to blame, but there is no way to prove that.

I was down, I was bruised, and now I keep getting kicked and I think maybe a rib is broken, metaphorically speaking. I don't want to ask "what next?" because I'm afraid then something will actually be next. We don't want something to be next. We just want to escape the rest of the first half of this year relatively unscathed. Even the most optimistic part of me can't seem to believe that, though...