This is just a quick post to show Amy how Blogger works. Html tags work, blah blah blah.
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Saturday, February 09, 2002Wednesday, February 06, 2002
Coworker and pal Bryan told me today (in a joking sort of way) that PiBB stands for "Prune Based Beverage." Obviously an urban legend, but funny how it fits. The Mr. PiBB history page doesn't provide much insight into the PiBB name, but it does say that Mr. PiBB was introduced to the world in the summer of 1972. Yup, Mr. PiBB and I are the same age. Fortunately, 30 years old is much too young to feel that one needs to draw parallels to a brand of soda-pop that is being replaced by something younger and more exciting.
Why the morbid fascination with the demise of Mr. PiBB? You tell me. Got our lives packed up for the great drive to Orlando tomorrow, and then up to Hilton Head day after that. It ought to be an interesting weekend. I'll try to keep the updates coming, but will definitely hit you with the news when we get back. I've got all the electronic recording gear a young man could want, so there will definitely be some evidence to share. Don't think I'll get much cooking done, but I'll let you know how the "men's breakfast" at Cracker Barrel goes. Oh yeah, and I got the third Barry Ween collection yesterday. Laughed my ass off. I do love that little dirty-mouthed boy genius and his dumb friend Jeremy.
Okay, now I'm thoroughly depressed. Woke up late, dragged into work, and discovered that Mr. PiBB is being retired in favor of something called "Pibb Xtra."
Now, I'm not a PiBB devotee or anything – it's a sugared cola, and I don't drink those often – but darn it all, it was kind of comforting to know that Mr. PiBB was there if I wanted him. I don't even know what "PiBB" means or why it's capitalized that way, but I know that I don't want it to disappear forever. What a bummer. Amy says I should put one of those new-fangled comment things at the bottom of each entry. I'll have to see how one does that. Tuesday, February 05, 2002
The packrat thing has hit a wall. I am just about at the end of my sanity with the clutter in this apartment and in my to-do list. Between packing orders for Planet Patchwork, dubbing and shipping tapes for Stomp Tokyo, trying to sell my crap on half.com, trying to get our B-Fest diary up, writing a review for Stomp Tokyo, holding down a day job, and finishing up our book, there are just too many details to deal with. I swear to St. Peter, if I still feel like this in the morning I'm scrapping half of these projects.
Simplify. The half.com items are coming down, and the tapes are either going away in one big auction or I'm dumping them on the "gimme" table at work. The B-Fest diary may get tabled for a few weeks. I need to get the edits done on the book so I can move on to the next stage of its production – get some galleys printed and get this sucker out for review. Screw shipping out copies of The Indian Superman and The Star Wars Holiday Special, I've got better things to do. Bigger fish to fry. You're damn right. Cooking? Went to Red Mesa, a nouveau-Mexican type place, for Jyotika's birthday. Jyotika is a super-cool friend who seems to know someone everywhere she goes. We ran into some people at the restaurant who knew her. Jyotika's world is especially small, but don't place any silly bets on the fact that she'll know someone at a particular party. Jyotika is also a member of our video night group. I've never really had a good meal at Red Mesa before tonight, but the menu has changed since I was last there 4 or 5 years ago. We had a decent meal, and a decent waiter, even if the bill was a bit hefty. Just one more night of cooking this week – we depart for Orlando on Thursday night as a stopover before driving to Hilton Head for the weekend – and I still don't know what I'm going to do with that vat of cheese sauce. Monday, February 04, 2002
My laziness reigns supreme. It was a "scrounge for leftovers" kind of night. Good thing sweet corn bread pudding reheats so well. (Second best reason to own a cast-iron skillet.) That and some Morningstar Farms meatless corn dogs... it's dinner! Christina won't touch the meatless stuff. I think she had some leftover pasta and the last of the macaroni and cheese from the other night.
That reminds me, I've still got a bunch of that cheese sauce left. Maybe I should take it with me to Hilton Head this weekend and feed it to the relatives. "Geoffrey and Jen, we got you a great wedding present... a tub of cheese sauce! Mmmmmm!" We keep saying that we're going to get rid of the big green bean bag chair in our living room. It's torn and patched with duct tape, but a few things keep delaying us. A. Our tabby cat Suzie loves it. When Otis goes to the vet for a few days, she never complains. But if this bean bag were to disappear, I have a feeling she'd wander the apartment, howling. B. It's comfy. C. It would be one hell of a thing to stuff into a dumpster. I have a problem with trashing inanimate objects of any sort. If it is of more value than an expired catalog, I want to save this precious thing because you never know when you'll want that very thing. It's a disease, I know. I think of my parents' basement, with its miles of assorted odds and ends, my mother's outgrown sewing projects and my father's monstrous wooden bookcases, and I think to myself: where did I get these packrat genes? Not that my wife is much better. We have stacks of board games in our living room that we play a few times a year. Christina loves board games, and I'm sure would play them a few nights a week if there were anyone to play with. I can only take a few rounds of "Sorry" before my eyes glaze, I think the rules of "Scrabble" are dumb, and I will never, ever play "Monopoly" again. Well, not for a long time at any rate. We have Star Wars Monopoly and I'm such a lousy player that I end up in horrible debt, defending the lonely ice-encrusted snowball planet Hoth from voracious seekers of real estate. I don't like to talk about it. Where was I? Right, packrat-itis. I'm trying my best to get rid of things I truly don't need while getting something back for them. I have hordes of old VHS videos that have long since been replaced by DVDs. They're slowly going up on half.com to seek buyers of less discriminating taste. Even if I get a buck or so for each of them, I can say that someone else paid me to get it out of our house. I always laugh internally when I see the before and after pictures on Trading Spaces, because I just know that all the crap the homeowners were hoarding in that room previously is now piled in the garage. Sure, your den looks nice now, but just wait till you open the hallway closet. Tonight I discovered that my oven heats about 50º hotter than it's set. At least, when it was set to 350º F, the oven thermometer I had hanging in there read 400º F. That explains why things always seem to be done a few minutes early.... |
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