utenzi

This is what happens when you keep a camera next to your bed. Above you can see the book I was reading last night until I decided to take a break and go grab a soda. Unfortunately I then decided to start taking pictures instead of getting right back to reading. I started off with pictures of the book and then migrated to pictures of myself. The hairy nipple (isn't that the name of a drink???) picture was just one of many to result from this departure from good taste. Sorry everyone. Hairy Nipple 1/2 oz. Butterscotch Schnapps 1/2 oz. Baileys Irish Cream 1/2 oz. Vodka

Last night witnessed the beginning of the 13th installment of The Amazing Race (TAR). Like usual, I wasn't very thrilled with the first episode. There's too many people to really get a feel for any of the teams. It isn't until after the first 3 or 4 teams get eliminated that the show really picks up interest for me. I wasn't surprised at the team that got eliminated last night but I was hoping that they'd last at least the first few legs. They were one of the more interesting teams. Frankly, the only person that I liked much in the interviews was the mom on the mother/son team. Maybe some of the others will grow on me, but I don't have a good feeling about this season. :-( And another thing, usually the first episode involves some background on each team. This time they barely gave any background at all. Just a short one or two minute interview. Since the show depends a lot on being interested in the folk on the show, this seems like a bad strategy for TAR to...

I've been spending the evening reading--with a little chocolate to keep me company. Earlier I made a chicken dish from some breasts that I bought Thursday and didn't want to spoil. I had 8 Romano tomatoes that were getting overly ripe so I chopped them up and tossed them into the pot with the sauteed chicken and a can of tomato paste, some diced bell pepper and onion and had a quasi chicken cacciatore dish as a result. Not great but it was edible. The chocolate I'm having with my reading--I love the nuggets 'cause you can unwrap them one-handed while reading--is a lot tastier than the chicken was. Today, there were a lot of episodes of House on USA Network HD. From now on I want to watch them in semi-order so I just recorded them all. I've only watched about half the episodes that have aired in the past 4 years and would like to catch up by Xmas time. There's 8 episodes I've not seen from the first season, 13 from the second season, 22 from the third season...

Many people seem to think that the most difficult part of making an omelet is folding it at the end. That's just not true. Here's an omelet that I made this evening for my meager little supper. It's comprised of 3 eggs at room temperature, a few ounces of feta cheese and one slice of ham, diced. After you dump the beaten eggs--I don't add anything to the eggs when beating them other than a pinch of salt--in the pan, let them sit for a couple of minutes to firm up. Don't have the pan too hot else the eggs will burn. I use one notch below the medium setting on my stove. Of course all stoves are individuals so take that with a grain of salt. Add fillings onto the egg once you can shake the pan and the eggs will slide. The eggs haven't completely set at this point. Most guides want you to add fillings after the eggs set all the way but I like to give the cheese more time to melt. Once the eggs are completely set, fold the first edge over by moving a spatula undernea...

Back on the 17th I speculated about my future given that I seem to not be able to hold a relationship together. Several folk commented that I need to work harder at it. Personally I think I just need to wait it out. It'd not surprise me if Lee and I end up married or something way down the line--of course given her age I'd best not wait too long. :-) If you're curious about why I say that. It's a fate thing. Now normally I don't give "fate" a whole lot of credence but in this case there's just too many wild coincidences involved. Here's a little comparison so you know what I mean. Lee is 10 years older than I am. Her father worked for the park service so her childhood was one of frequent moves. She lived all over the place. In her teens, say 15-18 she lived in this very small town--only a few hundred people--in upstate NY. From there she left for college in a town 5 hours away in western NY, not far from Rochester. After college was a marriage, so...

I got 6 hours sleep last night. Finally. The last time I had more than 4 hours sleep was on Saturday and I really needed it. I might have to ask my doctor for some sleep drugs when I go to see her again in December. I watched the first episode of The Mentalist last night. It was... interesting. I don't know if I liked it or not, I'm a little on the fence about that show. I'll watch one or two more episodes before deciding. On the other hand, two days ago I watched the first two episodes of this season's House and I really liked them a lot. The Wilson-House drama is playing out well and the new character, a private detective, works well with House. Upcoming is some good stuff on the tube. Actually, it's not a tube anymore is it? Good stuff on the LCD sounds odd tho. In any case, on Sunday is the season opener of my favorite reality show, The Amazing Race . Here's some info from Wiki : In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Bertram van Munster revealed that ...

I watched that hour long show tonight at 8pm on NBC that introduces the new season of Heroes. It was soooooooo boring that I had no interest at all in watching the two hour season opener that aired right afterwards. I sure hope the show is better than the overly long commercial that preceded it. Else it'll be a one episode season for me. That show burnt a lot of bridge with that annoying fiasco last year.

I didn't sleep last night. No, it wasn't the mortgage thing that kept me awake but seeing a segment on CNN did make me fume a bit. Since I couldn't sleep I stayed up all night watching 5 episodes of House. Now I've watched all of the first season and a good part of the second season. Eventually I'll get caught up. In any case, during one of the breaks between episodes I saw a few minutes of a CNN segment. They had something like 6 guests on plus the "newsperson" and the topic was how regular people were being screwed by the finance companies. You see these were people that were in danger of losing their homes because of foreclosure. I wish I could be amused by things like that--but I can't. Now don't get me wrong--I love to place blame on government and large corporations as much as the next guy, but most of the people facing foreclosure bought more house than they could afford using special forms of mortgage in which the interest rates were artifi...

Mad Men and 30 Rock took their respective categories. No huge surprises there though personally I don't think that 30 Rock is the funniest show on television. It is pretty good though. I can't believe that 2.5 Men keeps getting nominated. Is there blackmail involved? Mad Men is a great show in many ways but I stopped watching it two episodes before the end of last season. While the acting is superb, the writing is at least as good as the acting, there's incredible production values and fidelity to the time period---but not a single character on the show is likable.  At least on House you have Cameron, Foreman and Wilson to like and Cuddy to sympathize with. As the first season of Mad Men wore on, the writers systematically made each and every character flawed past likability. It might be realistic, but it's not my cup of tea. The food thing? I dunno. Maybe I should try eating the stuff again. I've spent two weeks just drinking soda and eating only candy, kid...

Anyone out there that loves to eat breakfast should pick up the current (October '08) issue of Saveur . It's a special issue dedicated from cover to cover to the joys of breakfast food from around the world. You know the famous line out of Jerry Maguire where Renée Zellweger says "You had me at hello"? Well this issue of Saveur had me at page 44. That's the first page of an article on Southeastern USA that focuses on Waffle House. Hello! And their wonderful hashbrowns. Them's good eats. I've never been a fan of Eggs Benedict but the full page picture on page 33 is quite seductive. It almost makes me willing to make some right now. Too bad I don't have any Canadian bacon on hand. Of course I do have ham and that might do in a pinch... I'm almost finished reading Bart Ehrman's recent book God's Problem . I really enjoyed his previous book Misquoting Jesus and this book is even better in some ways. In case you're curious what the problem...

I couldn't sleep last night. As a result, as I laid in bed I did what I normally do when I don't have a lot to do---I thought about numbers. Usually the numbers are related to the stock market or work but last night I was thinking about past relationships. Usually when thinking back on past relationships I quantify them in regards to how long they lasted. A temporal criteria. In that sense my longest continual relationship was with Renée with just under 4 years though Lee edges her out in total time since we had nearly 4 years while we both lived in Atlanta and then, after nearly a 10 year gap, almost another year here. For some reason last night I was thinking in terms of sex tho. And I came to a surprising conclusion--at least to me--while Lee might have surpassed Renée in terms of time, she hadn't in terms of sex. Now I admit my counting method here had to be estimated but I do pay attention to these types of things---for example Chris has the record for frequency divide...

I finally pulled the plug on my pay channels. When I started up my satellite service I received a nice starter deal that gave me the pay channels for a mere pittance but the past 3 months I was paying full price. Ouch! That's something like $45 a month just for those channels and I was only watching a few shows and maybe 8 movies a month. That's nearly $5 a movie! I'd be better off with Netflix. Anyway, today I canceled those channels to bring my bill down to a more reasonable $50, which still strikes me as high, but HD is so pretty on my LCD television that I'm willing to break from my parsimonious tradition and pay what it takes to keep those lovely shows coming. Hell, even Hogan's Heroes is fun in high def. And I've been going nuts watching USA Network's syndicated House shows this past week---who needs pay channels when you have House in HD?

I finally stopped deliberating over catalog items and placed an order for the painting supplies I need to get started. Back on August 30th I mentioned that I wanted to start doing some art work again. It's been about 20 years since I've done anything like that and I could use the creative outlet. In my late teens and 20s I worked with oils but I don't want to do that again. Too smelly, to be honest. It is the medium that I found best suited for me at the time but this time around I'm going to go with acrylics. And ordered some watercolor stuff also since I love the way they look on good paper. In any case, just before placing the order tonight I did an Internet search on the company's name and "coupon" and I found one for 15% off. I love the net. It makes shopping so much easier!

If you've seen the 1996 movie Mars Attacks , by Tim Burton, you'll know what inspired me to make this somewhat unusual picture of myself. Actually, just the head is me. "Ack, ack!"

Back on September 3rd I wrote a post in which I observed that I was getting old because I had to start taking a medication every day. Well, now there's a second entry in that nasty getting old category. Tuesday night, while watching Fringe , a commercial came on for a movie, Nights in Rodanthe , that is about to be released. While watching the commercial I thought to myself that the couple in the movie were very charismatic and well suited to one another. And I thought to myself that the lead actress was quite attractive despite her age---but I couldn't place her. As it turns out, it was Diane Lane , and her co-star is Richard Gere who's a very well preserved 59---16 years older she. Back in 1979 I saw her first movie, A Little Romance , when I was a freshman in college. I immediately had a huge crush on her. She was so pretty despite being only 14. Which, of course, makes her 4 years younger than I am. That phrase despite her age is coming back to haunt me. So if she...

Most years around this time my tv watching schedule explodes. After a quiet summer of contemplative reading there's suddenly a mania of once again watching my favorite shows as they start their new season and sampling many of the new shows that the networks are rolling out. This isn't most years. Not even close. Last year a lot of my favorite programs took what I thought were wrong turns and I stopped watching them. Examples, you ask? How about My Name is Earl ? Anyone out there really wanted to see him in a coma a third of the season and in prison, embittered, the rest? Not me. That was just stupid. I stopped watching ER also. Numb3ers was wearing on my patience too. I didn't like all the male bonding during the latter part of 'Til Death 's season nor the whole fucked up arc in Heroes , ditto for Dirty Sexy Money . And Ugly Betty 's romance between the accountant and Betty got way, way too old. As a result I'm not watching any of them this season---oh wa...

Tonight one of the shows in the new Fall lineup on Fox premiered. As you can probably surmise from the title of the post, the name of the show is Fringe . According to the co-creator of the series, J.J. Abrams, the influences for the show include Michael Crichton, The X-Files, Altered States, and The Twilight Zone. That's quite a pedigree and you could easily see each and every one of those influences in this first episode. And this show was up to those high standards, I might add. I anticipate a very heady continuing adventure on Tuesday nights this season as the research scientist Walter Bishop, his genius son, and FBI agent Olivia Dunham (ably played by the lovely Australian actress Anna Torv) try to track down the source of a series of inexplicable events that may prove to be humanity's scourge, AKA the Pattern. The parallels to the film Altered States occur several times and made me wonder if the casting of Blair Brown, lead actress in Altered States, was a coincidence. If...

My boss has finally gotten digs of her own. We were awarded the lab space a few months ago but the "former tenants" were very slow to move. In fact, one post-doc is still there so I had to arrange things around the desk that he's using and the bench space he's holding onto. Hopefully he'll be gone by January. And if you'll allow me to gripe for a minute, the bastards never cleaned up their lab. I don't mean dust and a few chemicals either. The surgeon that had the lab space departed for a position at another school and decided to not take any equipment or personnel---so the lab was just abandoned. I had to sort through everything and toss out, surplus, or adopt everything there. It made for a long and annoying week! Okay, I feel a little better now but I still might whine a little, at random intervals, but I'll keep it short. The picture above is the new lab that we were piling our stuff into. The desk in the back is mine and the desks closer are those...

My doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning launched me into my waning years, I'm afraid. Now I admit this isn't the official way to define the "golden stage" of life, but to me once you have to take a drug everyday you're old. Today I picked up some statins to control cholesterol and they have to be taken every day. But it could have happened sooner. My doctor wanted me to take high blood pressure meds a couple of months ago. I had to talk her into running a 24 hour BP monitor instead. Fortunately that test (it checked BP every 15 minutes for a total of nearly 100 datapoints across the 24 hours I had the monitor on--which is a lot more accurate than taking just one BP reading at the doctor's office) Today also marked the second time in recent weeks that people have peeked inside of me. Today it was an echo cardiogram. I was surprised at how much detail it showed. For the most part I was facing away from the screen but the last 5 or 6 minutes I could watch...