Monthly Archives: November 2003

Yesterday wasn’t much fun. I was pretty much incapacitated with a headache that felt like someone was trying to nail one of my eyes shut. I’ve still got a bit of an achy remnant, but I’m better enough that I’m at work. I’ve got lunches ready to go for quite a while too. Monday night I’d put a crock pot together in preparation for doing some beer-based chili, and I was feeling well enough late Tuesday to finish it off.

I don’t tend to use a fixed recipe when I’m making chili… I consider it more like variations on a theme. So long as the basic motive of tomato and bean are there, I can improvise a fugue with the meat and spices along with a counterpoint of additional ingredients.

Ok, ignore that last bit. I sound incredibly pompous…
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Helped out some friends of ours on Sunday while they ran their game at U*Con. They’ve got a six month old baby and we acted as baby wranglers, keeping her busy and distracted so that her mom and dad could concentrate on the game. It’s a remarkable workout… Baby lifting reps, aerobic bouncing, buggy laps… It’s like a miniature triathlon with occasional diaper changes.

‘Way back in November of last year when I first started this thing up, I posted a bit about anonymity and the internet. Basically, it had more to do with some reminiscences of when I was on the radio and had to deal with the occasional creepy caller at three in the AM than with cyberstalkers and the like… But I guess it’s worth digging the entry out of the archives, since there seems to be some confusion.
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Thanks to the miracle of modern science, last night I was able to watch someone in Japan iron a shirt, live, over the internet.

Seriously.

I was working late at the office on the Mini Smithees (an important part of your U*Con experience) and I had iChat open in the background so that my wife could pop in and say hi from home. Suddenly there was a blipping sound, and a message popped up from an old friend of mine, now living in Japan. A quick cable swap and some mouse clicks later we had a video conference going. I was able to show him a bit of my insanely crowded and cluttered office (we’re set up for studio portraits this week, so everything is askew and there are light stands scattered about) and he was able to take a break from typing and get on with ironing his shirt before heading off to work.
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Last night I was asked some of the stupidest questions that I’ve ever heard… I’d just walked in the front door of the brewpub with a big pink laundry bucket containing an empty keg and a tapper, and the greeter turns to me and says, “Are you returning a keg?”

Pause.

“Well, I hope so. I could take this back to the truck, but it’s a heck of a hike.”
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I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m feeling kinda poorly today. There’s a couple of possible reasons. It could be the combination of rich food, good drink and late hours that have me feeling poorly, or it could be that two of the people we stopped by to visit yesterday are ill now, and were possibly contagious when we saw them.
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Ages ago, one of my friends got the “Beauty and the Beast” soundtrack. One of the songs on there was about the villain, with his comic sidekick providing occasional commentary. I don’t remember the name of the song, the actors, or any of the melody. The only reason that I remember this at all was the one time I heard him play it, there was a cat hair clinging to the CD causing it to skip… The result was a five minute span where we were paralyzed with laughter while the comic sidekick repeated the phrase “More beer?” over and over…

That phrase is no longer funny.
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