armlessbear.com

I Lost the Race

Ever since I received the first e-mail about my clients I knew the clock was ticking. I had 2 interviews that brought nothing to fruition unfortunately.
Then yesterday at 4pm I was called into a “meeting.”
I knew what it was the minute I heard my now former boss say my name.

I get 2 weeks severance pay which is a relief. That means I don’t have to go into full-on panic mode for 2 weeks. Hopefully I can find something temporary in the next 2 weeks. I have an interview already on Thursday and a 3 hour clerical staffing interview tomorrow.

The whole thing is a relief.

That sick, queasy, nauseated feeling I’ve been waking up with for the last month is gone.

Hey! Sometimes I post too

See up there, where it says “submitted by mike”. That’s cause I wrote this.

Some of you commenting people in the peanut gallery need to learn to read the bylines of stories. You know who you are.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

— Mike

The Melting Pot Comes to Madison

Last Friday, the 24th, Mike and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. We’re not exactly sure what we did for the previous 4 anniversaries — possibly 2 trips to Tuscarora Mill in Leesburg, VA (delicious!) and some Italian place in Arlington with a horrendous one-man band singing “pop standards” and some Christmas music.

This year we got reservations to the “Lover’s Lane” section of the Melting Pot — newly opened over on Odana Road. We opted for the 4 course meal including the cheddar cheese fondue(with beer), salad, meat course, and the bailey’s chocolate fondue course.
DELICIOUS!

Thanksgiving (a poultry post-mortem)

We had an interesting Thanksgiving and I learned many lessons.
1)Never, EVER taste the brine, not even by accident and certainly not on purpose.
2)Do not tempt fate
3)Turkey roasters make blonde turkeys.

The brine worked very well and we were able to make juicy turkeys, but the road to the dinner table was a long, dark journey…
We hit Sentry to pickup some additional last-minute items and arrived at home around 11:30am. We started to prepare the birds and get them ready for the roasters. In a short amount of time we got them stuffed with aromatics (garlic, celery, cinnamon stick, carrots, poultry herbs, onions and apples) and put into the heating roasting pans.

Tis the season.... la la la la

This morning I left earlier than usual and stopped at Starbucks on my way to work.

Gingerbread Latte

oh yeah

Tonight we get to do our first turkey brine for our first EVER hosted Thanksgiving in our new house.

It’s a potluck of sorts — we have people bringing the wine, bread, stuffing, cranberries, squash/sweet potato thingy, and my parents are making the pies.

I hope everyone has a wonderful, stress-free, fun filled day Thanksgiving!

(Shopping)Days Til Christmas(Eve): 32

I wanna be a kid again

As the Christmas season approaches, and we are bombarded by messages telling us we should celebrate a season of giving by lusting after material things, I’m drawn to one inescapable conclusion:

They’re doing MUCH more interesting things with plastics these days than when I was a kid.

I mean, when I was a kid, you couldn’t find this, or this, or the marble-game-fridge-magnets I saw the other day, or… well, you get the idea.

I know that when I was a kid, I had the marble-game my grandpa made (that Adam still can’t get enough of), and neckerchief-wearing Fisher Price construction workers, and Lego, and Construx, so I can’t really complain too much, but there’s some neat stuff out there.

Nostalgia...

I used to take off every Thanksgiving weekend and spend a fun-filled weekend in London.
Dark, early nights — cool, not cold, often rainy
Pubs, black taxicabs, and Red double-decker buses
Festive holiday lights lighting the way from Oxford street on down to Piccadilly Circus,
Harrod’s luxurious Christmas displays and decorations
Portabello Road market on Saturdays
Brisk winds off the Thames (but oh, the spectacular view!)
Winding streets that always left me wishing I’d brought a compass,
The Tube and it’s disembodied voices reminding us to “Mind the Gap”
The weight of a pound coin in my hand

Explaining the Elections

The company I currently work for has a significant population of non-US citizens. In fact, one of our main offices is located in South America. Today, my co-worker from Mexico was asking me why I was happy about the elections and someone else was sad. What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
I wanted to say something flip and perhaps a bit mean, but I couldn’t quite do it. So I tried to explain about philosophical differences, and that failed. I tried to explain about the politics of hate, divisiveness and the hijacking of a party by the religious right…. and about a party run by a bunch of pissed-off Nixonians who read George Orwell and learned the wrong lessons… about the party who has spawned followers who send hate-mail and death threats to talk show hosts and politicians…

HooooooooooooRaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Now I can actually relax….
From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/09/va.senate/index.html
Allen concedes, giving Senate control to Dems

and from earlier today:
Montana incumbent concedes tight Senate race
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/09/burns.concession/index.html

YAY!

It’s official.

Woo....hoo?

OK, so the god-awful embarrassment of a marriage amendment passed in Wisconsin….

But…

We’re just waiting for Montana and Virginia to make my day complete.

Let’s hope we can actually be the good guys and do good things and stop Bush and his cronies from destroying what’s left of our democracy.

A Rant That Bears Repeating

On a news aggregator/blog/humor site I read someone posted this about why he’s voting Democrat even though he isn’t one.
The website is called Fark.com and you’ll notice the word Fark is used as a filter-friendly substitution for another 4 letter “F” word. This guy ought to write speeches or something. He calls himself “Prank Call of Cthulhu”

Prank Call of Cthulhu
I don’t like the Democrats. But I’ll not be so much voting for them, as against the Republicans. As far as I’m concerned, “they’re not Republicans” is a good enough reason.

Republicans are the party of gay-bashing, creationist, anti-science racist dumbfarks. They’re the party that decided, after a couple of whack-jobs that spend most of their time pooping in caves in Afghanistan, that we should destroy the Taliban (a reasonably good idea), and then all of a sudden (OMG! Ponies!) got ADD and decided that blowing the crap out of Iraq because one time some guy that worked for the Iraqi government had a meeting with some guy whose cousin was in Al Qaeda would be a really good idea. They’re the party that decided to go in with no exit strategy, but because they wanted to believe we’d be greeted as liberators, be in there only a couple of months, and only spend couple billion bucks decided that their wishes would become Truth.

DID YOU VOTE?

If you did, give yourself a pat on the back.
If not, GO VOTE NOW BEFORE YOUR POLLS CLOSE.
Our polling place had a line at 7:30am which hopefully is a good sign.

It’s going to be a rough day. I fully expect Diebold (may they burn in hell) shenanigans in Florida and Ohio.

What’s it like to have to always cheat to win? How do they live with themselves?

Is Democracy dead in our country?

Quizzes... we don't need no stinkin' quizzes

To tell me what I already knew:

Your Vote Score: 20% Republican, 80% Democrat

You fit well with the Democrat party, and you should almost definitely vote Democrat this election.
In fact, you’re so strongly Democrat, a political career (or at least some activism)may be in your future.
Should You Vote Republican or Democrat?

You Aaaaaaaaare Radio Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

I know that having The Buggles stuck in my head isn’t the worst song that could be running through my head.
I think I feel sorry for Adam who seems to get songs stuck in his head already and can’t pull out an iPod and listen to the damn song to make it go away.
Ooh-wa-oooh
I met your children
Ooh-wa-oooh
What did you tell them…

His newest development is this cute-but-annoying phrase.
“Adam, time for bed.”
“oh man…” (except it sounds like me-aan)
Adam, you have to wear socks, it’s cold out.”
“oh, man…”

This is a lot better than the other disturbing trend of saying “na-na boo boo,” some scatological reference… “you’re a poopy butt!”, or his other disturbing trend of having things making shooting and exploding noises.

The Turning of the Year

The passing of Halloween marks the passing of one of the two most important days in the year for the ancient Western Europeans (the other being marked in the modern calendar by May Day, clear at the other end of the year). For people of an agricultural bent, this was the time of year when the harvest was in, and people needed to settle down for the long winter ahead. November thus marked the start of winter, even though the astronomical signs (the shortest day of the year) were still six weeks away, and there may still be some warmer days.

The point of this rambling is that in modern society we see the physical signs of the year’s changes as little more than an inconvenience. We keep our houses and offices at 70 degrees, winter and summer, and largely the only notice we make of the weather is to complain how the heat/cold/rain/excessive sunshine/cloudiness doesn’t fit into our plan for the day.

VOTE!

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for… but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that a truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.

— Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long