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GPS in the Dark

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For Christmas my parents gave me a GPS unit. It is almost the same one that they have, maybe one version newer. My dad has been pretty into it since he got it and I guess he thought it might come in handy for me as well. I used it this afternoon and evening to drive down to the New Hampshire coast. It served me well.

Typically, if I drive somewhere I have never been, I get directions. I like to figure out where I am headed, to the last turn, before I start the car. But this time I did not do that. I had meant to, but just never got around to it. I was planning to rent a car to head down to save some cash for my organization (cheaper to pay the rental company than to reimburse me for mileage on my own car) so I used the new toy to get me there as I wasn’t sure where it was. That worked great.

Once I had the rental car I sat in the parking lot waiting for satellite connection. It took me a bit to find the location I was headed on the little black box, but once I did I was off down the interstate. Then it told me to just go on that road for 144 miles. Not much action there.

The thing has a lovely woman’s voice. She tells me where to turn right when I need to know. She is just so friendly, that GPS lass. Of course, her confidence can be deceptive. Once, when the family was headed out on an adventure together, the unit seemed to think we were a little off from where we actually were. According to that thing we were driving through rivers and buildings, but she just kept telling us to turn left or right.

It got dark as I headed down, on my own except for the lass, and I dutifully followed her directions. I turned where she told me to turn and ended up at a darkened building. It turns out that was the country club, not the hotel, so I rejiggered and turned about and after half a mile found the right spot.

I am not a huge fan of driving in the dark, especially in unknown locales, but I did manage to find my way, even without getting directions first. I was a little hesitant, and I don’t know that I’d go without a backup plan every time, but it worked. As I walked from my car to the main entrance to the hotel, I ran into a friend who is also attending the conference for which I drove all those hours. She said this: “I don’t know how I got here; I just kept on going and managed to find the place.”

Sounds about right to me.

Ripping One, for Adults Only

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Recently Apple decided to allow its users access to a program that had been banned from the iPhone because it was considered objectionable.  A fairly recent CNET article sums it up nicely:

After initially balking, Apple finally relented to the extremely influential fart joke lobby. . .and permitted applications such as Pull My Finger and iFart Mobile (ranked 3rd and 10th, respectively, among paid App Store applications at the moment) under what was described as a “Mature” section.

That pretty much kills me.  An application designed to provide a variety of flatulatory phrases can only be offered if is labeled “mature.”  Personally, I think fart jokes are immature, which is why I find them the apex of true humor.  Whatever, Apple, but thanks for lightening up a little.  Now it’s finally worth it for me to buy an iPhone.

Off to Town Meeting

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I am off to town meeting just now. I look forward to seeing some of my fellow Hinesburg town citizens and hearing what others have to say about how our town operates. I am curious what others are thinking these days with worries about lower revenues and job losses and so on.

Tomorrow we vote on the budgets for the town, the school and the high school. Hopefully, I will take one of my kids with me. Let them see democracy happening and all that. Now, however, I need to split. I don’t want to miss things getting started.

Coffee Cake and Two Days of Running

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Kid Pic of Morning Goodies

Kid Pic of Morning Goodie

(Originally posted 1/25/2009)

I rose early to rekindle the fire in the stove, to get coffee started for my beautiful wife, and to bake something. I had purchased sour cream yesterday and dumped into the cake above. The photo was taken by my daughter, who ran upstairs to tell me she took a photo of the coffee cake.

It was fairly tasty, although I left off the icing and did not add lemon, which I prefer, since my spouse does not prefer. All in all, however, a fine breakfast food item. It was my first item of the day, the other major kitchen project being the tofu pot pie, which is hard to beat on a cold day.

I ran again today. I have not run two days in a row for quite a while. Leavensworth Road is perfect at the moment, the right combination of temperature, snow and traffic making even the class four section runnable. It was not as cold as yesterday, but cold enough. It was below zero last night but got into the teens by this afternoon.

Since I pulled a muscle at the end of the summer, I have had to take it easy as I slowly recover. I figure I need to keep it down to 20 miles per week for another month. By spring I should be able to turn it up, as long as I take it easy. By the time it gets warm, and running is easier, I am hoping I can get in some long runs. We’ll see.

We have plenty of coffee cake left, and some pie, and even some bread from yesterday. I have an easy breakfast and an easy lunch. Which is a good thing, since I need to be out of here early, and I need to work late. It will be a long day. A long week, even. But I have a new soup recipe I’d like to try. I made some stock today and I have a lot of celery left. That will be a good project for maybe Tuesday. Since my wife works late that day, I won’t be able to run anyway. Might’s well make up some soup.

A Little Less Furriness

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Not the Clown Bear I Knew--Where's the Pointy Hat?

Not the Clown Bear I Knew--Where's the Pointy Hat?

The Vermont Teddy Bear Company just laid off 35 employees today.  Apparently they are still making things work:  Vermont Teddy Bear is a profitable company but a “reorganization” is needed “to gear up for some new initiatives to help capture some new markets in the future,“ reported the Burlington Free Press.  I don’t want to sound like I don’t have empathy for those 35 people, but this is really as bad as it could be.  This company is and has been a great local employer.  I appreciate that.  They do, however, make stuffed animals, not critical medicines or somthing.

I worked for Vermont Teddy Bear Company for a few months when I moved to Burlington, fifteen years ago this month.  It was one of the most fun jobs I have ever had.  I was hired as a temp for the Valentine’s Day rush.  It seems they advertise more at certain times of the year and Valentine’s Day is one of them.  It was back in 1994 as well.  Vermont Teddy Bear Company was in a different location in those days and they were rapidly growing.  They were growing so fast, in fact, that I had to work in a different building altogether.

The company was located next to the Yankee Doodle Motel on Route Seven in Shelburne.  There wasn’t enough room in the main building so they stretched computer and phone cables across the lawn, through the snow,and through the window, and set up workstations at make shift desks.  I reported to work in the morning, and we milled around until someone let us into our hotel room to get to work.  Kinda like a prostitute.

I worked there during a cold snap.  Temperatures got down as low as 39 below at night.  I commuted with my housemate, Melissa, who also worked there, and neither of us had a heater in our car that worked especially well.  We laughed over that even while we froze our little buns on our non-heated seats.  We laughed a lot in that job, in fact, especially when we dropped the phone because they gave us these old fashioned phones due to a lack of headsets.  It wasn’t easy to type with that thing stuck into my shoulder.

There were all these specialty bears for the holiday:  The Cupid Bear, the Lover Bear, what have you.  They were prepared for this.  They stocked up on the cute little outfits.  But things were busy.  Every day we would get a list of what was out so when someone called we could tell them things were out of stock.  I guess the lines under the snow made for poor computer systems so we couldn’t check stock live.  There were two sizes of bear, the fifteen inch and the twenty inch, and sometimes they would be out of one but not the other.

Every night Melissa and I would laugh over the conversations we had with customers.  Since we were temps, we did not work on commission, so it didn’t matter how many bears we sold or how long the conversations were.  We would chat for a long time with people, trying to help them decide on just the right bear.  We were called Bear Counselors, after all.  I kid you not.  That was the job title.  This one night we agreed that the best bear on the menu was the clown bear.  It was perfect for any situation.  Got a sick mother?  The clown bear will cheer her up!  Just broke up with your girlfriend.  Make her laugh with the clown bear!  Boss riding your ass?  Send him the clown bear to lighten things up!  Then we decided to push the clown bear.

The next day we sold scores of clown bears.  Forget Cupid.  Too tacky.  Too predictable.  Show her you love with the clown bear and you’ll be getting some tonight!  That, at least, was the idea.  It worked, too.  The next day, the 15-inch clown bear was on the unavailable list.  The day after that the 20-inch clown bear was out of stock.  We had freed him!  The clown bear was flying to every corner of the USA.  As soon as it was available again, we pushed it again.  The clown bear had a good season.

Frankly, however, even though we got to have some fun and make some cake during the coldest time of the year, it felt a little hollow.  I mean, who needs teddy bears?  It was one of those things that pretty much no one needs, at all, ever.  It is nice to have one, yes.  And they were, at least to some people, nice teddy bears.  But no one needs one.  Need some furriness?  That’s what beards are for.  And stray cats.

So 35 people fewer to get teddy bears made?  Well, things could be worse.  It could be a school closing down.  It could be some company that makes solar panels on (as I heard Chrysler described on NPR today) “the brink of collapse.”  It could be 35 fewer people to sell McMansions.  Well, maybe that last one isn’t such a great comparison.  Anyway, I hear animal shelters are getting more former pets than they can handle.  Maybe those 35 people can give away cats.

Bowl of Snakes

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I used to remember my dreams a lot more than I do now.  I think part of that was that I had more restful sleep.  I wake up in the night more often now, and I have to get up, too often, before my body is ready to get up.  But last night I had a dream that was one to mark down.

I was in my house but it was really my parents house.  If you have ever remembered a dream, then you know what I am taking about.  The layout was my parents house but the stuff was of my house.  Anyway, that detail is really just to demonstrate the dream-ness of the dream.  On the kitchen counter was a box of cereal.  The box was labeled “Bowl of Snakes.”

I find it hard to imagine that a cereal named Bowl of Snakes would sell well.  We have a pretty solid irrational fear of snakes here in this great United States.  People kill snakes just for the sake of killing them.  There are snake festivals where hundreds of snakes get slaughtered (such as the Sweetwater Roundup).  So such a cereal would be shunned, I am sure.

In my dream, it wasn’t just the name of the cereal that was reptilian.  Pouring out the box into a large white bowl resulted in a large white bowl of live snakes.  There were three of them:  a rattlesnake of some kind, a striped harmless snake, and a pale green snake with a protruding forehead and seemingly no eyes.  This last one had exceptionally long fangs.

I was in the kitchen with my children.  We watched the bowl of snakes with interest, but not fear.  While we watched, however, the blind green snake stretched intself out toward us, mouth open, to a length of perhaps eight feet.  it was long.  It wasn’t threatening, perhaps just curious about us.  It did, however, startle the children a bit.

We looked away at one point and looked back to find only the striped snake in the bowl.  The other two had disappeared.  We searched all over for them, under the appliances, behind doors, in all the various cabinets.  We failed, however, to find them.  This resulted in lots of questions about what to do.  Should we call someone to help us find them?  Would they be dangerous if found cornered?  Did it matter if we never found them but someone else did?

After searching, we discovered that the third snake had disappeared.  Now there were three snakes missing, although the striped one we knew would cause no one harm.  We searched some more but found no snakes.  Our bowl was empty.  I was proud of my children for not being afraid, simply cautious.  They were curious and not scared.

I am guessing I will never actually encounter a bowl full of snakes, unless I attend the Sweetwater Roundup or something like it (see below).  Even if I do, I will likely refrain from using milk for that bowl of  cereal.  That would just be unkind.

Sweetwater Roundup Snake Pit

Sweetwater Roundup Snake Pit

Ankle Biter, Face Biter

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We did have a snow day after all today. This meant I had more flexibility in my schedule than I had planned, so I went for a run mid-morning. The snow had let up, but started again after I left the house. It was slippery but things started off well.

Gravel Road, Easy Running

Gravel Road, Easy Running

I ran down Leavensworth Road. Two cars (two!) passed me before I got to the section that is not plowed. Then it got interesting. I was doing that thing that dogs do when they come outside and don’t know about snow, picking their feet up high and looking ridiculous. I had to step high.

End of the Plowing

End of the Plowing

I have run in snow before and usually I find it fun, but we got a crust of ice, a thin one but a crust, between layers of snow. It cut my ankles. I took it for a while, tried to be tough, then realized that this was silly. Why hurt myself while getting wet in the falling snow?

Running in the Snow

Running in the Snow

So I turned back and ran down O’Neil Road, plowed the length of it. That was fine, except by then the snow had turned to sleet. It slapped me in the cheeks, except the little grains were so tiny it felt like it was biting me rather than slapping me. I took that for a while too but turned back again. By now I was laughing out loud–for real–the situation was so absurd. Why do I do this? I asked myself. Oh yeah, it’s fun.

Back Home

Back Home

It was snow falling again by the time I returned home. I appreciated the warm fire all the more when I got inside. Of course, I had to shovel a bit before I went in. That made me laugh as well. Ah, snow. How can I help but laugh?

Links to Animated Randomness

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Here are a few links to check out that you may or may not find intesting.  They are, in any case, humorous to me, and, as the title above promises, random.  Enjoy!

Savage Chickens

This site offers “cartoons on sticky notes by Doug Savage.”  Every day offers a new cartoon written on a yellow sticky note.  Most of the heroes are, you guessed it, chickens.

Doug Savage Snowman Cartoon

The Comics Curmudgeon

This site offers commentary on newspaper cartoons.  The name says it right.

Marvin 12/2/08

i081202marvin

Speaking of emotional devastation, I was pleased to see Marvin’s grandparents left completely shattered as their plans for retirement fall to pieces around them, but that’s just because I hate Marvin and want all of its characters to suffer horribly. Maybe they’ll have to move in with Marvin’s parents! And everyone will get on each other’s nerves, and Marvin will poop in his pants while thought-ballooning wryly! Oh, the hilarity.

Angry Alien

Angry Alien Productions offers some good animated humor.  Here is a link to a 30-second version of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life starring those cute little bunnies.  And there are plenty more 30-second clips in all movie genres.

That’s it for today!  See you on the funny pages!

Pumpkins on the Railing and on the Table

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We have a dozen pumpkins on the railing of the deck.  These are the fruits, so to speak, of our gardening labor.  I have baked up a few of them so far, to use in muffins and soup.  I made two batches of muffins this past weekend.  One was great, the other flopped.

The flopped batch came from missing one ingredient.  It took me quite a while to realize what it was.  Then I remembered that I forgot the baking powder.  It is great to remember that I have forgotten something.  It is far better than to forget that I have remembered something.  The second batch was the progeny of the flop of the first batch.  I was excited to make these pumpkin apple muffins and then I ended up with these somewhat tasty but way too dense things.  The next batch was a winner.

I also made soup this weekend.  It was part of a simple meal:  fresh bread, fresh soup and apple pie.  The pie was a group effort (my mother and niece worked on that) so the meal was truly a family dinner.  The bread was pretty much dee-lish, if I may say that about my own honey oat perfectly risen perfectly baked warm buttery yeast creation.  And the soup was dang good as well.

My wife and I went out to dinner a few nights ago and had some squash soup that was really amazing.  It just folded into your tongue and wrapped around your taste buds in a teasing caress.  It was hard to get enough of that.  I though I might take some cues from that soup and, while I had no illusions that I would replicate it, try my own version.

My version was a pumpkin (duh!) soup, with cream and honey and cinnamon and sage.  It was creamy and smooth and sweet.  I made a lot but it was consumed, even by two young children and a teenager.  That was accolade enough for me.

There are still many pumpkins left.  I will bake and freeze a few and I will make more bread and more soup.  And maybe another batch of muffins.  We still have a bucketload of apples left as well.  Our oven won’t be idle for a while.