We were sitting around tonight when my sweetie said, “I want to make cookies.” And she did. And they were good.
I’m a Lucky Guy
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Category Archives: The Great Adventure
My New Cube
Welp, it’s official, I’m a salaried employee of Apple. It’s not that big a change from being a contractor; I’ll be doing the same work as before.
While I was traveling my department moved to a new building, so when I got to my new cube for the first time, this is what I saw:
Balloons!
And yes, I do get a discount on stuff, and yes, they assume I’ll be buying for friends and family as well. So if you need a Mac system or an iPod (no iPads at this time), let me know.
Rich Man’s Disease
Last Tuesday I awoke with a sore big toe on my right foot. It felt like I’d sprained it in my sleep. Weird. I hobbled to work and told the people around me that I had somehow injured myself without realizing it. I limped through the day and wondered how long it would take before the pain subsided.
That night was pretty bad. Even lying in bed, my toe hurt like a mo-fo. Wednesday I went to work but I was miserable. “I’m taking you to urgent care,” my boss told me. I was not going to argue. Whatever I’d done to myself, I’d done a thorough job of it.
James Gillray, 1799
While I filled out the various forms and signed stuff, my boss and a coworker went to fetch food. I thought a Carne Asada Burrito and a Coke would be delicious and easy to handle in the waiting area. “Diet or regular?” Boss-lady asked, and I responded with my usual quip: “I prefer the known health consequences of sugar.”
They came back with the food, and I was just getting the last of the burrito down my gullet when my name was called. After a quick stop at the blood pressure machine (in the normal range, to my relief), I was parked in a room to wait for the doctor. While I waited I gently peeled off my sandal and sock (discomfort trumps fashion), and flipped through an issue of Entertainment Weekly looking for signs of intelligent life.
It was only a few minutes before the doctor came in and took a seat. “Hurt your foot?” he asked, glancing at the unhappy extremity.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You remember how you did it?”
Funny he should ask that. “No, in fact I don’t. I woke up in the morning and it hurt.”
He was nodding. “Gout,” he said.
“Gout!?” I knew pretty much nothing about the gout, except that it’s connected with gluttony.
He took hold of my foot and ran his fingers over the angry, swollen area. “Does it hurt down here?” he asked, prodding the tip of my big toe.
“Not really.”
“More up here?” He gently pressed at the heart of my discomfort.
“Yep, that’s the spot.”
He nodded again. “I’m pretty sure it’s gout,” he said. “We’ll do some tests to make sure it’s not something else. There’s also a test we can do to confirm it absolutely, but…” he hesitated. “We take a sample from inside the joint. It can be pretty painful.” He gently released my foot. “You have pepperoni, lately, or sausage? Liver? Have you started taking any new medications?”
The previous evening I’d feasted on spicy hot links. Man, are those things tasty. It turns out I was speaking with a fellow sufferer. “I found out after taking water pills,” he said.
So, gout: what happens is this. Protein is broken down and one of the byproducts is uric acid. The kidneys are responsible for collecting the stuff and shipping it out to the bladder. It’s what make your pee yellow. If, for some reason, your kidneys fall behind, the uric acid can form crystals, commonly at the top of the big toe. (See diagram above.) These crystals make a fine abrasive, but the pain and inflammation (a form of arthritis) comes from the immune system attacking the inorganic matter and failing epically. When the first white blood cells explode against the unfeeling enemy, word goes out through the body: Send more white blood cells. You can guess the rest.
Ironically, I was sitting there looking at a known health consequence of sugar. (Fructose, specifically.) Mainly I was looking at a consequence of having a big belly. Other bad things: alcohol (especially beer), the aforementioned giblets, possibly seafood, and on and on. I’ve been working on making some lifestyle changes, and now I have a condition that rewards slipping off the diet with a pretty nasty dose of pain. It’s possible that this disease will actually make me healthier.
My sweetie loves to feed me, and I love to eat her food. Her cooking is healthy, but it’s tasty and I’m always happy to pile my plate high. That’s going to be the most difficult adjustment, I think. There’s nothing like sitting back with a belly full of good chow, but I’m going to have to settle for “enough”, now, rather than “plenty”.
Hang in there, Los Alamos
As I write this my family is under mandatory evacuation orders in Los Alamos, NM. The good news: the last major fire, which burned the homes of 600 families, left a low-fuel swath around much of the town. The bad news: this fire is fucking crazy.
So, hang in there, guys, and be safe. I’ll write more later, when I’m not supposed to be working.
First Day of Work
I went to bed last night almost-employed, knowing that my start date would be soon. This morning I was awakened by the phone ringing, and learned that today was my first day. I got my act together, shoveled down a bowl of cereal, brushed my teeth and off I went.
I am now an Apple employee. Well, a contract employee working at Apple. I have my own cubicle, a phone (hooked up tomorrow), a laptop and big monitor, and a badge that gets me into buildings I couldn’t get into before. I’ll be putting together tools to help their Finance department to finance stuff more easily. On the side I’ll throw the WebKit team some code now and then.
I am told that tomorrow afternoon I may regret not having a nerf gun.
A (Not So) Simple Task
Even the most reliable cars require occasional maintenance, like changing the battery. Happily, this is a very simple operation — unclamp, remove, replace, clamp, and away you go. Simple, right? Right? It’s not like it’s the kind of task that would take more than a week to accomplish.
A little more than a week ago I was working here in my office when my sweetie went out to run errands. The sound of the car starting wasn’t quite right, but she got it going and away she went. A couple hours later she called from her parents’ house. “My battery is dead. I’ll be home as soon as I get a jump start from Dad.”
The battery is the original that came with the car, ten years ago. Not terribly surprising that it needed replacing. (And it’s worth noting that this is the first trouble of any sort with the car.) I opened the hood to take a look-see. The negative terminal was badly corroded, along with some pieces that connected to it. The pair of nuts that clamped the connector onto the lead battery post were not really recognizable anymore. I realized it was going to be tricky to loosen them.
Although in the end it turns out there was no need; the clamp itself was cracked through. That explains the sudden loss of electricity, rather than a slow decay of battery performance. I would need a new battery terminal connector as well as a new battery.
I looked closer and realized that there were two parts connected to the old terminal – one a fairly typical heavy-gauge wire connected to the chassis nearby, as you will find in dang near every car, and another elbow-shaped copper piece that was fused into a plastic connector that had a pair of other plastic connectors snapped into it. A Dealer Part. The metal was badly corroded, and I thought it would be a good idea to replace that bit, too.
I tabled that thought, however, and ambled off to the local Kragen to get the new battery and a standard terminal connector. I brought them home and set to work loosening the nut that held all the pieces together.
I quickly realized that I didn’t have the tools to loosen a nut that has been corroded almost beyond recognition. Off I went to Sweetie’s Father’s house to borrow his socket set. Home again, to discover that the smaller sockets weren’t deep enough to get all the way down the shaft of the bolt and onto the nut. There were some box wrenches in the set, but they were all too big. I was faced with another decision. I judged that it was time I had a decent set of wrenches of my own, and so away once more I went, this time to the local Ace hardware.
After a long time considering options, it boiled down to two choices: a set of wrenches with both metric and SAE, or a set with a wider variety of SAE sizes. I didn’t think the metric-and-SAE set went small enough, so I went with the comprehensive SAE set (it also had a holder for storage, which in our current situation is a big plus).
Home once more with new wrenches (always good to have anyway), I dove back under the hood and discovered that Americans building cars in American plants are putting metric nuts in their cars now. While overall I’m behind this movement to get in sync with the rest of the world, I still didn’t have the right wrench. It was late, I was tired; I put some penetrating oil on the mess and resolved to finish with the car the next day.
The following day I took another trip to Ace and bought the metric version of the set of wrenches I’d bought the day before. I also bought a pair of vice-grips, in case things got ugly. Home again and back under the hood, things got ugly. The nuts were too corroded, and were chemically welded. The vice grips could lock on with mechanical ferocity, but the material of the nuts was not able to withstand the force necessary to unfreeze them.
During this operation I made another discovery. Normally the clamp that goes over the battery terminal is a separate piece that the ground wire bolts to. Not in this car. The broken metal strap was a contiguous piece crimped directly onto the ground wire. I figured I could work around that, but it was looking more and more like the other Dealer Part was not coming off the car intact. To the Internet I went.
There was no mention of a part like this on any Ford Web site. Finally in a Ford Escort owner’s group I found my answer: the part could only be obtained by buying an entire wiring harness for $350. Say what, now? Also the broken terminal strap that started this whole mess was only included in that $350 purchase.
We ruled out that option and I went back to unscrewing The Nuts That Were No Longer Nuts. Failure, fatigue, and another day lost ensued. That night I decided that bolt cutters were called for, but I wasn’t sure how to get them down into the recess where the nuts lay. Perhaps a little saw would be better. I called Father-of-Sweetie the next day and of course he had all those things. “Do you have a little Dremel tool?” I asked, suddenly realizing what the right tool for the job was.
Sparks fly as I cut through the reluctant bolt.
Success! After cutting through nut and bolt about two millimeters above the surface of the IDP and then slowly carving away at that, at last the bolt came free! Now all I had to do was cut back the main ground terminal so it could be mounted on the new terminal strap, slip on the IDP, and go have a beer.
bits and pieces of the old terminal connector
The place to connect the Irreplaceable Dealer Part to the new terminal connector wasn’t flat enough for the IDP to sit flush. It would have to do, I decided, and cranked down on it to get the best contact I could and forged ahead. Not very far ahead, as it turns out; I dropped one of the nuts for the new connector. It fell under the battery tray. Probes with a magnet were fruitless. Shaking the car didn’t free it. We couldn’t get to the damn nut. We were thwarted for another night.
I’d been thinking about using a good old-fashioned lead terminal connector anyway, rather than the steel one I’d first purchased, so while on another shopping mission we flew by Sears Automotive and got what I thought was exactly the ticket. We got home and I told my sweetie it would only be a few more minutes. Hah.
On with the lead connector, on with the… What the #$%$@#! The corroded and truncated connector at the end of the main ground wire didn’t fit over the terminal post. *sigh* I used a screwdriver, twisting it in the hole, to widen the opening until I could just get it over the terminal. I was worried about that connector, though, corroded and abused as it was. I managed to get the IDP onto the clamping screw, and tightened everything down.
At last, the battery was installed.
I got in and the hazard lights blinked and the chime went “beep-beep… beep-beep” which I took as a sign that a) there was electricity, and b) the car was trying to tell us something. Like, that it had lost power and its electronics needed to readjust. I turned the key.
Nothing. Not even a click.
Well, crap. Back under the hood I went. Primary suspect: The used and abused ground connector. I cut the ground wire and stripped back the insulation. Holey moley – the copper was corroded right on up the wire, beneath the insulation. Powdery light-blue copper oxide fell like snow. I cleaned off what I could and clamped on a new connector that had come with the first terminal connector kit. I used parts from both kits to get the IDP bolted on with good contact as well. This was about as good as it was going to get without replacing the entire wiring harness. Key in ignition, lights came on, beepers beeped. I turned the key. Nothing. Not even a click.
Perhaps the battery didn’t have enough charge to turn over the starter. The Miata was standing nearby, so my sweetie and I pushed the Escort out into the gentle rain to the other end of the carport. We hooked up the jumper cables (using an entirely different ground point), waited a couple of minutes, then turned the key. I think you can guess what happened. Yep, lights flash, beeper beeps, turn the key and nothing — that’s what happened. We pushed the car back, managing the slight uphill better than I thought we would, and I turned once more to the Internet.
After striking out finding any sort of answer myself, I found JustAsk.com, a place where, for a fee, I could ask a certified Ford mechanic what the heck was going on. I went through the preliminary steps, plunked down fifteen bucks, and asked my question to a guy named Chuck.
“Is it a dealer or aftermarket anti-theft device?” he asked.
“I specifically told the dealer I didn’t want any of that,” my sweetie said when I relayed the question.
“Well, you have one,” Chuck informed us. “You need to find the reset button.”
The anti-theft module we didn't want
To emphasize: Frontier Ford of San Jose sold my sweetie a car that would become completely disabled any time the battery was disconnected. What if she’d been out in the middle of nowhere when something happened to interrupt the electricity? What else might have activated the device? The irresponsibility of the dealer is simply mind-boggling. There really are no words to express the depth and breadth of my anger, and it pales next to the world-class ire my sweetie felt.
After a couple of hours tracing wires, we called it a night. At least we knew the problem. I would be able to remove the module, but I needed wire and connectors to restore wires that the anti-theft module interrupted. The next day I went out to the car again and got my only pleasant surprise of this whole endeavor: merely removing the plastic anti-theft module but leaving all the wiring in there actually allowed the car to start again. I’m a little surprised at this outcome, but I’m not questioning it.
When she heard her car start, my sweetie came down and hugged me and congratulated me on getting the damn thing fixed. Honestly, though, when you consider I made six trips, bought wrenches, vise-grips, multiple redundant parts, had my sweetie pushing a car in the rain, and torqued my back, all to change a battery, it doesn’t sound so great. But there it is.
Birds, Hands, and Bushes
Less than a week ago I was uncertain where I might be picking up enough work to pay rent. I wasn’t too worried, to be honest, but there was a lot of unknown. Monday I was contacted by my good friends at TEK Systems, a contract placement firm, wondering if I would be interested in a job at Apple. I responded with an enthusiastic affirmative. From all I’ve heard, Apple is a great place to work.
Karen and Brian at TEK Systems set up an interview for me on Tuesday. Brian met me outside the building, took care of introductions, and I met with the woman who could potentially become my manager. The job was interesting; doing rapid development of Web-based tools for Apple’s financial group. I kicked butt in that interview, and left feeling that I’d probably landed myself a job in the land of Jobs. I got home and kicked off my shoes and called my TEK pals and told them I thought it had gone well, and that if Apple offered the position TEK Systems could accept on my behalf.
Later that evening, I checked my email. There was a message there from a recruiter at Apple, saying that the WebKit group had seen this page and wondered if I’d be interested in a full-time position as a WebKit developer. Cool! I’d be doing what I’d already been doing only now getting paid for it.
If only one of the jobs had been at Apple, my decision would have been easy. I mean, what are the odds of getting interest from another group at the same company on the same day, anyway?
So then I had a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand I had hit it off really well with the boss in the first interview, on the other hand the second opportunity was doing something I feel passionate about in an environment where I could grow a lot more personally. I haven’t had anyone to review my code in a long time. I wrote back to the Apple recruiter that I would be interested and quickly contacted TEK Systems to tell them of the wrinkle.
Wednesday I spoke to one of the WebKit guys, who asked me a few programming questions but mainly just wanted to get a feel for whether he thought I would fit. I passed that hurdle, the next step was another more technical phone meeting with another member of the team, on Thursday. I told everyone involved that time was critical.
Somewhere in there — Wednesday evening, maybe? — the first Apple group formally said they wanted me to work for them, and they want to get started as soon as possible. (Although my potential future boss was totally cool about me talking to another part of Apple. She’s a believer, and will be happy for me no matter where I end up — as long as it’s at Apple.
Wednesday night I didn’t sleep much. I had an offer for a good job with some cool people. They wouldn’t wait forever for me to decide. “I could just take the job,” I thought. “I’ll have my foot in the door at Apple and the flexibility that contract employment allows. Plus, I can keep working on WebKit in my free time.” That last thought made up my mind. WebKit is where I want to be, but I’ll be plenty happy with either.
So, Thursday I cleared the second hurdle for getting a full-time WebKit job. After the technical phone interview the Apple recruiter called me and asked if I still wanted to move forward. “Yes,” I said, but told him that I had a standing offer elsewhere at Apple and I didn’t want to jerk them around too long. He understood, and thus there was Friday.
Friday. Wow. The interview process for a permanent job at Apple is not trivial. Eight meetings, two interviewers per meeting. Many of the sessions involved solving coding problems on a whiteboard, which can be stressful to say the least. Because the whole thing was put together on zero notice, there were no breaks between interviews. I sat in the conference room (other meetings were moved to accommodate this process), and they came at me two by two (although they were all very friendly about it).
How did I do? I’m not sure. There are certainly places I could have done better. My C++ skills are atrophied. But I’m pretty good at problem-solving and eventually I came up with good solutions to the problems they threw at me, which is the main thing they were testing me for. Ultimately, however, any programmer should be able to solve those problems. Did I distinguish myself enough from the pack to make them choose me?
The one meeting they couldn’t schedule on Friday was the one where all those people get together and decide wether to hire me. Monday morning, they tell me. Meanwhile I haven’t had direct contact with the other Manager who already offered me a job. She’s been waiting a few days now for my answer, and she needs someone in there quickly. How long will she wait? Hopefully at least until noon tomorrow.
Brief coda: TEK Systems has been great for me, and even though they don’t make any money if I take the full-time job they have been very supportive. I can strongly recommend the company, especially Karen Do, who is my primary contact there. She has been terrific.
Christmas Cards Ready to Ship
Yep, the cards are printed, they are here, and now all we need is a bunch of folks to buy them. Remember, this is to raise money for Salvation Army and Pinup Angels, a group dedicated to adding holiday cheer for our troops overseas.
The cards came out great (though a little heavier than our shipping calculations assumed), so order a bunch! Get your friends to buy them too, and you might earn yourself a special thank-you gift.
Order now! Remember, our boys ‘over there’ are counting on you. It sure seems like we have a lot of cards in the living room right now, but there’s no telling how long they will last.
Want to donate but don’t need the cards? I’m sure we can work something out. Honestly, though, you’ll like the cards.
Planning Dinner
“What should we have for dinner?” my sweetie asks me fairly often.
“Um…” Think! What haven’t we had lately? What complements the weather? Do I have a hankering for something? How much work will it be to prepare? “… chicken?”
“OK, how about chicken with a buttery-garlicky sauce and spicy mashed potatoes? We can have a salad later. Would that be all right?”
Would that be all right. My sweetie is funny sometimes. So after the anguished seconds it takes me to simply name an animal, she dashes off a complete menu that she pulls from thin air, along with a schedule.
I’m eating well these days.
Excitement in the Neighborhood
The other day both my sweetie and I were hard at work in the office when the piercing sound of a smoke detector rang in our office. It was not in our place, but somewhere nearby. That happens now and then, of course, but this time the smoke detector did not stop, nor did we hear the inevitable sound of someone cursing at the thing.
The acoustics of our apartment are rather unfortunate; our unit faces another like ours, with a paved driveway between and parking directly beneath our floors. Sounds that occur nearby are amplified and injected directly through our windows. My sweetie and I have learned to be very quiet, which means that our new neighbors on the other side of the cone of loudness probably have no idea that we can hear every word they say. They should be good for a few stories…
Anyway, I went out to see if I could pinpoint the source of the still-screaming smoke alarm. Outside the sound was diminished, but eventually I established that it was indeed coming from the apartment opposite ours, unit six, where our neighbors were still settling in. While I was out there, I ran into the occupant of unit seven, who shares a wall with the screaming unit six. I tested the air and smelled like burning food.
There comes that moment of indecision – it’s probably just something in the oven overcooking. They left the house and were delayed and now dinner is turning into a blackened, crispy, not-very-tasty lump. But they’re new neighbors, and I don’t have a phone number for any of them.
The door onto their little balcony was open. I know because that’s where I first saw smoke coming out. Another of unit six’s smoke detectors joined the chorus. I mentioned that I saw smoke and both the neighbor and my sweetie called the fire department.
The firemen are stationed right around the corner; the list of questions my sweetie had to answer before the call was sent out took about as long as the deployment itself. Shortly the truck pulled up in the street and while one crew began assembling a long hose to reach back to unit six, an advance scout jogged down the driveway. “The door on the balcony is open,” I said. I imagined that if the firemen used a ladder they could spare the neighbor’s front door. (In retrospect, I realize that the fireman was not going to forego causing minor property damage if it meant not having the best possible egress from a burning building.)
The fireman jogged up the stairs and with two sharp whacks from his axe the wood splintered and he was in the apartment. The other crew had a hose laid and partially pressurized when the advance guy reemerged to shout “It’s a pot on the stove!” Then the advance guy plunged back into the smoky and loud apartment.
Then the guy reemerged with a surprise. He had with him Joe, my new neighbor, who had been inside sleeping through the whole thing. It had never occurred to me to, say, knock on the neighbor’s door before calling the fire department. I expect that anyone sleeping through two smoke detectors would not have heard my knock, but sometimes certain sounds get through where others don’t. The fireman never tried the knob to see if the door was unlocked. It probably was locked, but it’s funny the assumptions we make.
Joe was groggy, and a little sheepish. He passed me on the way to get checked out by the firemen and I introduced myself. “I had some beers earlier,” he told me. When the firemen were done with him, he chatted for a bit with the assembled neighbors. Nothing like a visit from the fire department to serve as a neighborhood icebreaker. Joe’s had brain surgery, has been stabbed a couple of times, and various other health crises over the years.
A day later I overheard him say that he had mixed up his medications, and he had put some hot dogs on the stove and fallen asleep. Let this be a lesson to all of you: If you’ve had brain surgery, stay away from hot dogs.
As I type this I hear the sirens and horns as our local firemen (who were very cool) head out on another call. Let’s hope it’s as benign as something charring in the kitchen.
Pinup Fundraiser
Santa has excellent modeling talent
The holidays are upon us with a vengeance, as Madison Avenue tries to convince America (and the world) that November now qualifies as last-minute when it comes to your gift shopping. (One chain has advertised four Black Friday sales – on Thursdays.)
This is also the most important time for many charities to raise funds, and this year my sweetie and I thought we would help. We recruited Harlean Carpenter and Santa Claus for a photo shoot, fed them sandwiches (although Santa is on a very careful diet these days), and the above image is the result. It turns out that was the very first picture we took, out of well over two hundred. Go figure. It was a fun day, for sure. (Thanks also to Rick Markus for his excellent work with the reflector.)
Now you can share in the Christmasy fun and support two worthy charities at the same time!
The charities:
You are all familiar with the Salvation Army, and they get a chunk of dough for each pack of cards sold. The other beneficiary is a group called Pinup Angels, who will use the money to send care packages to troops serving overseas.
How you can help:
The first way to help, obviously, is to buy cards. A pack of 20 cards goes for only $15 – a ridiculously low price if you ask me. All we need is a shipping address and an email address. We will bill you though PayPal (no PayPal account is necessary) and send you your cards. It’s easy!
If you’re old-fashioned or the name “PayPal” makes your head rotate 360 degrees, I’m sure we can work out alternate payment, but the system really is pretty seamless these days.
Shipping is free in the US. For Canada, add $1US for the first pack and $0.50US for each additional pack. For European shipments add $3 for the first pack and $0.90 for each additional pack.
The second way to help, the way you can be really, really cool and earn some badly needed karma after all the things you’ve done this year is to help us sell the cards. To be honest, we’re depending on help from all our friends to get word out and flog these things far and wide. So please, please, hit up your co-workers and friends with a light but persistent pitch. Collect email addresses and we will do the rest. (We will never, ever, use the emails collected this way for anything other than billing. There shall be no spam.)
Help Now!
Here’s the link to the official Web site, with contact information and whatnot. Order your super-awesome cards and start feeling good about the holidays.
Sweating in Style
“I will always love you more than anything,” my sweetie said, “but this is close.”
Just what is it that is threatening to usurp my position at the pinnacle of my sweetie’s affection? Another man? A cute dog? Nope. An exercise machine. It all started a while back when we decided that we needed to get more aerobic exercise on days we didn’t get over to the exercise room at my sweetie’s folks’ place.
(“We” in this episode is a slippery concept; while on paper there were two of us involved in the decision, one of us (won’t say which) did pretty much all the thinking and deciding, while the other’s role was agreeing. We all know how onerous that can be.)
My sweetie went online and found what appeared to be an excellent deal on a compact elliptical trainer. It arrived in its great big box and we assembled the thing eagerly. “Wow!” we thought, “for that price, this thing is excellent!”
In fact, we were absolutely right. We started using the machine regularly, and more-or-less wore it out. There was a design flaw where one of the bolts on the pedals should have been left-handed, and the pedal would come loose. Things got bent, and eventually more parts started failing. It just wasn’t sturdy enough for the amount of use it got in our home. We decided it was time to upgrade, and off to the stores we went.
We wound up at Sears, who carries a selection of NordicTrack equipment. We were looking over what the store had to offer, and it turned out that the local repair guy was there at the same time, tuning up the floor models. He was a friendly guy, and he told us about the machines from a repair man’s perspective, with no vested interest in what we bought. (In fact, now that I think of it, he would probably benefit more if we bought a less reliable machine.) He also showed us that some of the machines folded up. We looked at one of the machines he liked in the folded configuration and I said (quite wrongly), “That’s about the same size as the one we have now.”
We bought it.
Our Elliptical Trainer, Fully Deployed
I assembled it with only a small amount of cursing (the electronic console is still a little loose), and we beheld our new machine. “It looks a lot bigger than it did in the store,” I said. We rearranged some furniture in the bedroom and wheeled the beast in. It fit just right in its corner. Now came the big test.
Our Trainer, Tucked Away
Yep, burning calories at an accelerated rate now qualifies as “taking a break”. That’s pretty sweet. We have both been using the machine regularly for a few months now.
One word of advice to those who might consider the NordicTrack E5Vi Elliptical trainer: go ahead and spring for the AC adapter unless you’re absolutely certain you won’t be using the built-in fan (but you will anyway). My one quibble with this device: You have to remove the battery compartment door to plug in the AC adapter. Now there’s a tiny screw and a plastic door to keep track of in a drawer somewhere.
An Afternoon at the Movies
My sweetie and I have been an item for a long time now (years!), but yesterday marked the first time we ever went to a movie together. How is this possible? I just don’t know. There’s always something else to do, I guess.
Despicable Me came out while I was off on my adventures, but the light of my life turned down an invitation to see it with friends so she could watch it with me instead. It took more than a week, but finally we managed to chuck all excuses into the “later” bin and off we went.
To watch the movie in 3D: $12:50. The same movie in 2D: $5.50. 2D wins! (3D for me remains a gimmick to cover for the lack of a plot or at least interesting characters.) We went to the little cinema, paid the afternoon price, and plopped down for the flick.
My sweetie began laughing about two minutes in, and is still giggling today. The minions just kill her. I laughed too, but maybe not quite as hard.
The story is, of course, entirely predictable. Curmudgeon + adorable kids can have only one outcome. The fun of a story like this one is in watching the transformation of the grumpy old man, and of course in the completely over-the-top silliness of his minions. Oh, yes, in this case the curmudgeon is an evil genius complete with minions, and they are ridiculously funny.
It was a good date. I even stole a kiss right there in the theater.
My Better Half
Easter S’mores
The Easter Bunny paid a visit last week, leaving a treasure trove of yummy goodies on my nightstand. For whatever reason the leporidal spring icon snubbed my sweetie's nightstand, but being the guy I am, I'm happy to share. Thus it came to pass that we found ourselves with Peeps and chocolate bunnies to munch. As we contemplated our sugar-laden feast The Light of My Life looked at me with round eyes. "We have graham crackers!"
Cracker, bunny head, and peep, ready for the microwave
As every red-blooded American knows, marshmallow+chocolate+graham cracker = s'mores. Traditionally smores are eaten around campfires, where one heats the marshmallow over the flames and then wedges it into a sandwich were the hot marshmallow softens the chocolate. We lacked a campfire, and used our trusty microwave oven instead.
Many of you may be aware of what happens to marshmallows in a microwave. With Peeps it's even better. Let me tell all of you now: Drop whatever you are doing, go to the store, buy some peeps, bring them home, and put one in the microwave. Do it! I'll wait...
You're back? Great! Wasn't that the funniest thing you've ever seen? Ever? Unfortunately, my attempts to photograph the peeps while in the microwave failed, so those of you who did not drop everything to put a peep in the microwave will just have to perform the experiment later.
Once the peep and the chocolate were all gooey and yummy we slapped on graham cracker lids and sat in front of the television stuffing our faces with sugar. And that, dear readers, is what Easter's all about.