A few posts back, I talked about how I seemed to have no time to write posts. I suppose that’s the case with a lot of bloggers. I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but sometimes I feel like I put too much pressure on myself to post. Pretty soon, I build it up so much that I just say fuck it, and watch some crappy TV show or goof off on the web.
I went to Albertson’s after work one day and, among the groceries, bought an egg timer. You see, my plan is to give myself fifteen minutes to write a post. If I am still yammering on after that long, I will wrap it up. Sometimes, of course, a post must go on longer than a quarter-hour. When I talked about The Price is Right, or my NCLEX experience, those posts took one or two hours if I remember correctly.
So far it has taken me five short minutes to write the above two paragraphs. By the way, this is the first post where I have tried timing myself. Also with the utmost honesty, I will tell you that the steady tick tick tick of the timer is freaking me out. I thought that egg timers made a low grinding growl. This one actually ticks quite rapidly. I feel like my heart is going to blow up.
Mr. Wizard died yesterday at the ripe old age of 89. Here is the intro to his 1980’s Nickelodeon show. It is pretty cheesy and aged…or is it? i still remembered every bit of theme music. I even remember the variation to the music in the closing theme.
I was joking around with my girlfriend over the phone a while back. If I remember correctly, I had a series of days off from work, and wanted to sequester myself in my house. I wanted to be a poor Howard Hughes. In fact, that would be the reason to buy a house. That way, I can amble around inside of it with a bathrobe on and a big beard. It sounds like fun for a while at least.
Anyway, I didn’t want to leave my house. I realized that I had enough food, and that got me thinking about the contents of foodstuffs in my house and how they ended up there.
Confused? Well, how about this: Think about your pantry, cupboards, freezer. I was looking through my cupboard during this phone conversation. I have a can of pears that I have had for years. For some reason, I bought it, but never ate it. An errant can of enchilada sauce and Campbell’s split pea soup. What was the reason for buying the soup? Seemed like a quick meal at one time. I also have a Costco-sized box of Top Ramen Oriental flavored noodles and a similar sized box of Pop Tarts, assorted flavors.
In my freezer, I have those Tina Microwave Burritos and a Marie Callendar’s Cheesy Chicken pot pie. I don’t know what made me think that frozen cheesy chicken would taste good. I have Hot Pockets that I have had for years that I do not like but have never thrown away. Has it been years? Maybe it is time to toss ‘em.
My fridge has really no food. Anything saved in there has to be eaten right away. I do have a bottle of champagne that is a good four years old as well as assorted bottles of chick booze that have ended up at my house and into my refrigerator. I also have one solitary bottle of Rolling Rock.
I finally got called on my dearth of posts by both Hoat and Black Dog Jones. What can I say? Sometimes, you just aren’t feelin’ it. Actually, there are several reasons for my dearth of posts. Mostly, its been a lack of time. I got a new girlfriend and have been spending time with her when I am not working. When I do work, that’s all I do. Sandwiched between two 12-hour night shifts is sleep. I can’t type posts when my girlfriend is visiting over a weekend because that would require me to go upstairs alone and clack away on a keyboard, leaving her alone downstairs. That won’t fly for most women. I guess I could type downstairs using the laptop, but then she would probably want to read what I was writing as I was doing it. She knows I have a blog but just doesn’t seem interested. Otherwise, she would hound me about the address.
No, mostly I have been thinking about blog posts like writing a term paper is for a procrastinator. Before I know it, I have no time so what’s the point? I should buy an egg timer, set it for fifteen minutes, and limit myself to just that slice of time. It would certainly diminish my anxiety when it comes to blog posts. Whatever I had after fifteen minutes would get posted more or less. I would label this as a Crazy Scheme. I have a couple of other Crazy Schemes in mind. Maybe that will be a new feature on this blog.
I did make it to Las Vegas over Memorial Day weekend, although I procrastinated and the news became flat. Here was my weekend in a nutshell.
-Arrived on Friday
-Ate dinner at Rainforest Cafe with virtually my entire family who had all arrived in Vegas in an incredible string of serendipity.
-Slept
-Won some money at computerized BlackJack (maybe $30)
-Visited Bodies:The Exhibition at Tropicana
-Took a nap that turned into 12-hours of sleep. Woke up at 0200 (Only slept six hours the previous two nights).
-Got in trouble by my girlfriend for sleeping away a Saturday night in Vegas.
-Called in sick to work sitting in my hotel room at Excalibur heh heh.
-Went home. Got diarrhea, presumably from Corned Beef and Hash breakfast at Sherwood Cafe.
I still had fun, especially since I can play Blackjack and Roulette on the computer and not with some gesticulation at a card table.
Call me nuts, but did they used to play this before a feature at the long-forgotten Cinema Valley Plaza? I vaguely remember seeing a “feature presentation” trailer with a cartoon projector but the music was different. Anyway, just a chance to see if I finally figured out how to embed Youtube videos. Thanks Webmaster!
I had a couple of more experiences with teppanyaki cooking these past couple of weeks, but with better results.
I visited Tokyo Garden with my sister, dad, and his girlfriend a couple of Sundays ago. Tokyo Garden is a much more open restaurant than Akira’s. Then again, we visited during the daylight hours and it wasn’t the middle of winter. Anyway, we had a cook that must have been very experienced. He was flawless with all of his maneuvers: flinging spice onto the rice from across the grill, flipping bowls of packed rice around, cracking a tossed egg onto his spatula without losing the shell into the food below.
I ordered the chicken filet mignon combination dinner. That meant that I would get a little bit of each meat to go along with my fried rice. Let me tell you something, this dinner was the best food I have tasted in a long time. I am not just throwing this out there; it was mouthwatering. The chicken and steak melted in your mouth, no stringiness or dryness.
I went back again with my new girlfriend. This time, I got a much more novice cook. He made a few mistakes with the cooking maneuvers mentioned above. The food was not as juicy and I felt kind of rushed. It also didn’t help that we had a bunch of loudmouthed roidheads with their wives sitting at our table. The cook from the previous Sunday was cooking over at the table south of us. That’s when I realized that our cook was not as seasoned. Still, the food was quite good and it beat just about anywhere else in terms of taste.
So if you want to splurge a little bit for some tasty food, go to Tokyo Garden in the old Zody’s shopping center (although Zody’s has been closed for twenty years.)
They are still talking about the Virginia Tech shootings and Cho a good nine days after the incident occurred, and to be honest, I’ve taken to fast forwarding through the news coverage with my TiVo. I get the point; this nutball went bananas and shot up a bunch of people. Then NBC News gave the man additional glory by playing his listless taped confession and showing photos of him hamming it up for the camera.
Stories like these really bring out the nihilist in me. NPR and the Today Show both talked about some of the victims. One guy had three majors and was just weeks from graduation. Some type of stellar grade point average. Another lady was a beautiful dancer.
I’m reminded of other crime stories that stick to my brain after watching too much Court TV or Bill Kurtis. Remember that guy in Idaho that kidnapped the girl and brother after killing their family with a hammer? Not much any of them could’ve done to avoid that, they didn’t even know the guy as far as I know. Did you know that this same guy walked up to a group of boys on bikes somewhere here in California, grabbed up a kid right in front of his friends, and took him away. The kid ended up dead, of course. Shit, what the hell can you do to avoid that? The kid did everything right, used the buddy system. Still didn’t help him.
Yet another lurid story I remember involving the Railroad Killer, the Mexican guy who traveled via train killing people in a number of states who has since been executed by Texas. One of his first victims was a lady doctor. Her sumptuous house was located near some railroad tracks. This guy broke in right before Christmas, raped and strangled her in her own home, and even opened up and stole some wrapped Christmas presents. So this lady spent her whole life striving for perfect grades and finishing medical school and a pain-in-the-ass residency, only to be raped and killed by a migrant bum. Fuck, the dude even stole the Christmas presents! She could’ve spent her adulthood fucking around, just like the triple major and interpretive dancer in Virginia could’ve done.
I’m tempted to take a page out of my patients’ books. Smoke, drink, fuck and make babies, eat fatty foods, drink Pepsi, go to collections, lounge around watching Maury, Springer, and Vida TV. Sure, I might end up with congestive heart failure or rampant Diabetes, but some of these folks live into their 70’s anyway. Pretty good ride if you can stifle the judiciousness. Then again, you might just end up as a poor bum lamenting how you’ve wasted your life. Some of my patients do that too.
I have someone from Idyllwild, California that has been spending two hours reading my blog just about everyday for the past couple of weeks. He or she reads in spurts, eight mintues here, twenty-five minutes there. . I’m pretty sure it isn’t a spammer, although anything is possible. Most spammers come to my site through some type of funky search of text or image. They are often from the four corners of the earth. Idyllwild comes to the site from the front page and stays on the front page. Who are you, Idyllwild?
EDIT: The lurker is my dad, a regular visitor to the blog. For some reason, his ISP is directing him through Idyllwild…
I had the joy of playing the longest UNO game in my life last night with three other people. It was one game – two hours. That’s it. One game that took two hours. We reshuffled the deck about five times.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the game, but it is easy enough so that if you don’t, a quick Google search will fill you in. This particular game started out without much fanfare. It’s not that hard of a game; a card is put down and you must match the color, match the number, use a Wild card, or start picking cards from the deck.
It ended up that each person at one time must have had twenty cards in their hand. It was getting ridiculous at times. I’ve never had a game last more than twenty minutes, but then again, I don’t play UNO all that much. I once had a hand that was half green cards, and half yellow with a couple of reds mixed in. I’m guessing that the other players had something similar. It seemed like the other players would place a Wild card and choose blue, so that I was picking even more cards. I was in despair and certain I was going to lose.
UNO has no real strategy but one that I can see. I got on a lucky streak where I had three or four Wild cards, including one of the Wild+4 cards. The girl next to me called out UNO! My hand consisted of the wild cards and one card of yellow, red, and green each. I could’ve played one of them, but chose to play the Wild+4 card to get some cards in my opponent’s hand.
A few turns later, I found that my strategy had worked as I had only two Wild cards left. There was virtually no way that I could lose. Nobody, of course knew what my cards were; I keep ‘em close to my chest. I placed a Wild card down, called out UNO!, and chose the color blue. No particular reason. I didn’t have a blue card. Even if my succeeding opponent did, she still had four or five cards she needed to clear out. The turn went to the next person and she placed down a card. The only thing standing between victory and me was the next player. If he placed down any number card, success was mine. Only a card requiring me to pick more cards would hamper my chances, at least for the time being.
He placed a number card down. A red card. It didn’t matter what color, or what number. I put down the Wild card. I won. Two hours later and after having a hand at one time of twenty cards, I won. So the moral of the story is: collect the Wild cards.
