The best conversation of the week

Coworker: There is a cheeseball for you in the fridge.
Me: A cheeseball?
Coworker: Yes. A cheeseball. Actually, it's in the freezer since you weren't here last week when they were handed out.
Me: There is a Planter's cheeseball in the freezer for me?
Coworker: What? No, a cheeseball, as in one of those balls of cheese you stick crackers into.
Me: Oh, a cheeseball. I didn't realize it was an italicized cheeseball, thanks for the clarification.
Coworker: What?
Me: Nothing.

Frozen Tundra

Minnesota is the reason God created the Caribbean.

I have returned from the sub-arctic frozen tundra that is Minnesota. The wife and I went up to visit her family for the holiday. We had a great time, too, so long as we weren't outside. It was below zero for most of the week, and everyone blamed it on us because it apparently had been balmy before we arrived. Right. To Minnesotans, balmy is 15 degrees.

Anyway, the week was fun. We caught up with family, caught up on some movies, and got some nice gifts. The holidays are a good time to catch up on movies. In my middle-20s cheapness, I don't go see as many flicks when they're in theatres because it costs an arm.

So this week, we saw the most recent Harry Potter movie (pretty good), The Cooler (excellent!), The Last Samurai (very good except for the very end), and then our movie theatre trip was to see Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was excellent, a great role for Jim Carrey.

What else. Well, my favorite gift was the vintage Boomer Esiason Cincinnati Bengals jersey that the wife hunted down for me. It's absolutely huge (too big for Boomer even, I'm sure), but I love it. I wore it all weekend and will probably make it my official weekend attire for some time.

The family time we had was awesome. We played endless amounts of board games and card games, ate lots of fantastic food, and more.

We finally got home last night, and had planned our flights well enough to miss all the big storms that hit this week. Tuesday The Cat was insanely happy to see us, and proceeded to drool all over herself as we babied her all evening. She then slept between us on our pillows, almost as if to make sure we wouldn't leave again by keeping an eye on us at all times.

My boss, who took care of the mischievous Tuesday while we were gone, had even gotten the cat some great Christmas gifts. Tuesday now has a water fountain for her water dish, and her favorite gift is the string of four leopard-print hot dog-shaped cloth catnip thingees. She's been high for about 24-hours straight now. I expect that when I get home from work this evening, I will find her passed out in a bag of Doritos.

For now, back to reality. Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Pittsburgh Notes

I'm back from snowy Pittsburgh in one piece. My little Ford Focus rental car was an appropriate sleigh for the week, what with my only having gotten in four accidents while in town.

I'm kidding. The driving was fine, for the most part. On my way into town, it didn't snow until right when I hit the city limits -- a sort of "Welcome to Pitt!" from the city. It was very sudden. First a first snowflakes, then I noticed that I was rapidly approaching wall of white.

Fortunately, Pittsburgers seem to be able to drive when it snows. I worry about my first snow in Maryland, as apparently people treat it like the end of the world down here when it snows an inch or so.

Anyway, some general notes;

#1- I am so very tired of Christmas music. I thought that my rental car would have a CD player, so I brought CDs. Then upon getting the car, I saw that it only had a tape player. Oh yes. A 4 and 1/2 hour drive with only the radio to rely on. So beyond realizing that the majority of radio stations outside of the Baltimore area west are country stations, the rest played Christmas music non-stop. I think I heard that George Michael song "Last Christmas I gave you my heart song" about 3,000 times.

#2- Related to #1, just because Pittsburgers drive well in snow doesn't mean they are nice drivers in general. During one attempted merge onto the highway, several cars just would not be polite enough to let me in. So, I launched into my usual solo driving habit of yelling obscenities at other drivers. My windows were up, of course, as I'm a wuss and wouldn't yell these foul things at people to their faces. They're for my own enjoyment, really. I like to see how creative I can get.

I'm sure other drivers like watching me yell in my car when they don't know what I'm saying. When I see other drivers doing this, I like to imagine what they're saying. Maybe it's, "I'D LIKE TO BUY YOU SOME FLOWERS!!" or "THANKS FOR CUTTING ME OFF, YOU POLITE DRIVER!" or "I ENJOY IT WHEN YOU DRIVE SLOWLY, IT REMINDS ME OF HOW I SHOULD BE A SAFER DRIVER!!" or even, "DON'T YOU LIKE THE MANICURE I JUST GOT FOR THE NAIL ON MY MIDDLE FINGER?!!"

Anyway, while launching into a foul-mouthed tirade at people not letting me merge, I noticed that "We need a little Christmas" had come on the radio. This made for an interesting juxtaposition that made me wish someone had been filming it. There I am, yelling phrases combining swear words and miscellaneous zoo animal names, while a jolly holiday choir sings out "Bring out the holly....Well we need a little Christmas, just a little Christmas...."

#3- The second cheap hotel I stayed by choice of my boss was a Super 8. It was in a more scenic area of the Pittsburgh region, so upon entering my hotel room, I thought, "Hey, this is a nice scenic area with mountains, and my room doesn't face the parking lot, so I bet I have a nice view!" I went over to the window, drew back the curtains, and revealed my scenic view: A wastewater treatment plant. Mmm. Fortunately it didn't smell.

#4- State troopers must love how people react upon seeing them. I saw plenty of them while driving, but I really don't speed so I don't have to worry too much. One time one trooper car did startle me because it just suddenly appeared right behind. They always seem to do that. Anyway, his lights weren't on, but I got out of his way because he was tailgating me like crazy. Why do cops always speed?

But as I watched him move up behind other cars, it was really funny because no one wanted to speed up to get out of his way. He kept getting stuck behind cars that would take forever to move to the right because they did not want to speed up in order to let him pass. People are that paranoid. I was, too. It took me a little bit to be able to pass the car on my right before I could move. I wonder how irritating this is to cops and state troopers.

#5- The Ford Focus can handle snow drifts between one and two feet tall, if you get enough of a running start. And I brought that car back dirty as all get out. The rental car employee who checked me in stared at the car in amazement -- since there's no snow here in Maryland right now. "Where were you driving?" she asked. "Oh, it was snowing quite a bit in Pittsburgh," I answered as she walked around the salt, grit, and mud encrusted car-shaped thing with wheels. She couldn't even tell if any damage had been done to it because it was so dirty. I smiled with pride.

Thus ends the update.

More travel

Ah, Pittsburgh in December. I'm in the frigid mountains for work this week. I need to visit this city when it's actually warm. Every time I come here it's cold, grey, and dirty. It'd be nice to see the city when it's warm, grey, and dirty.

I'm staying at an interesting hotel. I had been concerned because my higher-up boss wanted me to start staying in cheaper hotels on the road. I found that funny because it's not like I'd been staying at wonderful five-star hotels complete with fuzzy robes and in-room hot tubs, etc... I've been staying at Holiday Inns and such.

But, whatever. I was worried about this place, but it's not too bad. Besides having to waste my new laptop's ability of wireless, I'm doing alright. Tonight I ate in the hotel's lovely restaurant. Actually, I ended up sitting with a bunch of locals in the bar. Not too bad a place, the usual dark wood paneled walls, dimly lit, the latest edition of Golden Tee, a bar-top video poker game, a tv blaring the news, and then a hardened group of locals lined up at the bar.

It was interesting to watch them watch the news. They grunted about certain things (John McCain criticizing Donald Rumsfeld), yelled about others (another guerilla siege in Falluja "That place'll never be calm"), laughed at some parts, and then turned the channel over to Jeopardy at 20 past the hour so they could shout out the wrong answers. I had a fun time watching.

That's all for now. Will post more soon.

Thanks for all the comments about loud neighbors, they're all hilarious. I think my favorite "over-hearing the wrong part of a couple's discussion outside your window" phrase is the following (heard while in my first-floor apartment in Boston):

A man and a woman are chatting at about 3am - both are obviously drunk. The guy is telling the gal that no matter what she does, he'll always be her friend. It was annoying until I heard him say the line, "I don't care if you have an upside-down orgy, I'll still be your friend."

Now that's friendship.

Neighbors

I've told stories about upstairs neighbors before. We've had new upstairs neighbors for some time now, which is nice. I'm hoping we don't have to worry about anymore odd poultry defrosting accidents.

Yet the folks who live upstairs now have a band. A full band, complete with a full sound system as well. Fortunately, they are not like the horrible wanna-be indie rockers I lived downstairs from while in Boston. Those guys were horrible, and we let them know. I had a roommate who would regularly knock on their door when they started their usual 10pm rehearsal times and say things like, "Hey, could you guys stop playing shitty music? It's late, and you suck." And things like that.

Our new upstairs band is a full blues band. They play loud enough to sound like they are in our living room. I've gone upstairs before to tell them to keep it down, but they were playing so loud they didn't hear me banging on the door. And then one time when I went upstairs to bang on the door, the music stopped and there was shuffling around inside, but no one answered the door. Am I really supposed to believe that no one's there? Come on, folks. That's like that old thing we gals did to our parents when having a loud sleep-over where mom would come knocking on the giggly girls' door, open it, and then we'd all pretend to be sleeping. You know, suddenly every single 10-year-old girl in the place snored while they slept, just to prove we were sleeping. Rrrrright.

In any case, the Upstairs Blues Band has not been playing much together recently. Maybe their was an inner-band rift. Maybe one of the guys got all pretentious and alienated the others. Maybe the harmonica player's heroin addiction got out of hand. Maybe the bass player slept with the drummer's girl (thus defying the order of band hook-ups). Whatever it is, they aren't playing much anymore. Fine by me.

What our upstairs neighbors have started upon recently is a trend of very loud, middle-of-the-night sex. This is disconcerting to wake up to because when you're half asleep it takes some time to figure out that the people upstairs are not rhythymically hitting a puppy.

No, I'm not a prude. Enjoy yourselves people. Seriously, have a good time. Love is nice. I just thought that the move from the Upstairs Blues Band to the all-night nookie club was an interesting switch. I think we need thicker ceilings.

I've decided that if they wake me up again with the *wink, wink, nod, nod, knowhutimean*, I'll just clap very loudly when everything is finished. You know, like I've just listened to a stunning operatic piece.

"BRAVO! BRAVO! Amazing! Marvelous!!"

If I knew either of their names', maybe we could cheer them on like at a sports' event. Or, we could harass one of them, like how fans used to chant "Daaaa-rryl, Daaaaa-rryl" at Darryl Strawberry at baseball games.

Or maybe I'll just wear earplugs.

Anyone else ever been an unwanted listener to neighbors or roommates?

Go UCC!

I am so proud of my denomination, the United Church of Christ, for standing up for what they believe. If you've not read up on the whole flap over NBC and CBS deciding not to air the UCC's ad, check out Amy's blog for some more details and links to the ad and all the hubbub.

I've already called both NBC and CBS to voice my displeasure about their decision to not run the ad. If you agree with me and Amy and so many others, you should do the same. Their decision is a complete double-standard. I could rail on and on about this, but I think I'd be preaching to the choir here.

Click here for the appropriate contacts at the networks.

Click here for a fantastic editorial from The Baltimore Sun about the whole issue (requires registration, but well worth giving them an email address).

Let your voice be heard, gang!

Revenge

I eat so much turkey that I am sure that - someday, somewhere - the turkeys of the world will rise up against me.