Blogger-to-Be

Last night while speaking with my parents my dad mentioned that he was thinking of starting a blog. I know he's completely full of it, but I think it would be entertaining nonetheless. He'd definitely fill a niche that I haven't seen... retired, ex-Marine, Republicans unite! I know my Mom reads this blog, and even if my Dad doesn't, I'm sure she passes along all the good bits to him (HI, MOM!) so I think the internet needs to lobby Homer to start a blog!

My parents will be visiting the first weekend of March, and I'd even be willing to help Dad set up his blogger account at that time if he were interested.

You Say It's Your Birthday

So, apparently, my brother shares his Birthday with Wolfgang Amadaeus Mozart. Well, 213 years later. If the movie Amadaeus is at ALL accurate, it seems oddly fitting.

Superbowl Predictions

I didn't post it, but my predictions for this week's playoff games both came true. My two quareterbacks were playing for the winning teams, I have no Broncos and only the Carolina kicker, so it's easy to see that I'm not making that up.

I also went back and made first round predictions based on my interest in teams, and it ends up I would have been 7-3 had I made predictions all the way through.

Next week I'm predicting Seattle will win. As much as I love Big, Bad Ben, he is but one Steeler, and I ended up with BOTH Matt Hasselback AND the Seahawks defense at the end of my fantasy football season. Oh yeah, and home team and all that jazz.

Now excuse me, I have to avoid all local media for the next two weeks, because although I may agree with them in how I want the game to turn out I don't want to listen to it all.

The Scarlet Letter

Sweetie is watching the 1926 silent film version of The Scarlet Letter right now. I can't look at the costumes or sets without being transported to that episode of The Brady Bunch where Greg makes a movie about the first Thanksgiving.

How Not To Sleep

Normally when I'm up late and can't sleep I end up tuned into the infomercial du jour and my problems are solved. Ron Popeil is way more effective than counting sheep.

But 30 minutes of old guys speaking double entendre about a vaccuum pump that will give them an erection so they can have sex. I may never sleep again.

Fearless NFL Playoff Predictions

I received the helmet of champions yesterday (part of my reward for winning at fantasy football this year), so I'm in a football frame of mind. That, and procrastinating the housework I have to do to prepare the house for dinner guests tonight.

For the record, we're TiVoing the games, although I know the results of the first half of the Seahawks/Redskins game.

Seahawks Redskins: aka Matt Hasselbeck vs. Santana Moss. Gotta' go Seattle here, since I've got good players in both games so have to go with the home field advantage. And Shaun Alexander WITH a concussion can still kick major ass.

Broncos vs. Patriots: I have no players on either team, so no rooting interest there. But I find Tom Brady's butt chin very disturbing. Especially since the chin strap appears like the back of a pair of tighty-whities. Everytime they show him on camera I imagine these little legs sticking out of the legholes of the underpants and it just disgusts me. That, and I'm sick of the Patriots winning the Superbowl. So we're going Broncos here.

Colts vs. Steelers: aka Dallas Clark vs. Big Bad Ben Roethlisberger. Dallas Clark is not a quality football player, and was the last member of my team picked up, so I could care less about him. Big Bad Ben is one of my stars. That, and I find Peyton Manning's audibles annoying to watch. So we're going Steelers here.

Carolina vs. Chicago: aka John Kasay vs. Thomas Jones. A running back is more valuable than a kicker, so I've got to go Chicago.

Sweetie has Superbowl bets on both the Colts and Carolina, so if my predictions play out that means those bets were a waste of money. But I'm just trying to position my players to be as valuable as possible, so I have some good keepers for next season and can maybe make some preseason trades with the other guys.

Knit One, Purl Two

Last night was my first knitting class, and I may already be an addict.

As class was starting I was near terrified. I had bought a reference book recommended by the knit shop a week earlier, and flipping through it I figured there was no way I could ever learn this stuff. I just had to keep reminding myself that I'm a very tactile learner, which is why I wanted to take a class in the first place.

The class I'm taking is a beginners class, claiming that you need never have picked up a needle before to succeed. Hey, that's me! But the other four members of the class all had more experience than me. Three had brought projects they were working one. One finished her project, a lovely hat, during the class.

But it was a fabulous class, and the teacher heaped mounds of praise on me, so I'm feeling good about things.

For now I'm just practicing knitting and purling, but next week I'm going to start my first project. I think I'm going to do a scarf... a hat seems to complex to me at the moment. One thing at a time and all. This weekend I'll go in search of a pattern and perhaps some yarn.

So be prepared come the holidays, all gifts may soon be of the knit variety.

Bearing Witness

There is no sound I know of that is quite as terrifying as that of two cars colliding when at least one is traveling a moderate speed. Even if you are not in the drivers seat (which, today, I was not, thankfully) it just grabs at your very soul and squeezes it like a dirty dishrag.

I've been on the victim side of that noise three times in my life. The first was a case of two teenage drivers, both of whom probably still had a lot to learn about things like reaction time and gauging the speed of other cars and such, on a rainy Friday during rush hour.

The other two were thanks to idiots running red lights. In both of those cases I had a witness to attest to the facts.

The first was very early on a November morning. I was sitting alongside another car on a side street, waiting to cross a major arterial (on 33rd headed northbound across Sandy, for you Portlanders out there). The light turned green for us, so I went. Right into the side of a truck that was flying down Sandy. The person sitting next to me pulled over to call the police and give me her info as a witness. As we were waiting for the cops to arrive she mentioned that she had previously been victim to an idiot running a red light, so was always a little extra cautious when lights changed. I've been equally cautious ever since.

The second incident was less than a year later. On a major arterial crossing over an Interstate during rush hour in early fall, when it was still bright out at that time. (heading west on Glisan across I-205). I had started my way through the intersection, when the idiot coming off the freeway decided he didn't need to stop at the red light as he was turning left onto Glisan, and nailed my front passenger side tire. A LOT of people witnessed that accident. At least one person rolled down his window as he was driving past and called out that he had called the police. Lots of other people weren't driving anywhere, as my car was blocking traffic, and with the front wheel caved in it wasn't going anywhere until the tow truck arrived. One pedestrian, who happened to be crossing the interstate at that moment, stopped and gave me her name, address and phone number. No one else, just her.

She got flowers from me a few weeks later, as I was going through the grand inquisition with both his and my insurance companies, and it looked like we were headed to court. The phone calls were constant and annoying as all hell, with everyone in the world wanting to hear my story of what had happened that day. Then one day my insurance agent called me up, "Repairs have been authorized, his insurance company is handling it all." I questioned them as to why things had been so ugly just a day earlier, and now everything was smooth sailing. His insurance company had just gotten around to calling the witness, and realized they didn't have a pot to piss in.

Today I was on my way to the local strip mall during my lunch hour. The light at the entry to the mall was red, but the car in front me of me was also turning into the mall, so I likely wasn't going to have to wait long. Then I noticed the car in the left lane wasn't slowing down. It's been rainy lately, and I didn't get much sleep last night... did I register the color of the light wrong? Nope, it's red alright. And about that moment the truck pulling out of the mall slammed into the car that was probably traveling at least 30 mph.

That noise just chilled me.

And the driver in front of me almost gave me road rage. Because rather than pulling into the mall and parking his car he decided to stop on the side of the road, halfway pulled into the mall parking lot, on his cell phone. Presumably calling the police. Which left me sitting out on the street with my rear end hanging out, begging for another accident to happen. Perhaps he thought that since the police and paramedics would be there shortly we might as well make things worth there while.

I made my way around that idiot, jotted down all my vital information on a sheet of paper, then stepped up to the accident to give my information to the victim. People were streaming out of nearby offices at this point and no one seemed to be in imminent danger, so I opted to continue on with my lunch rather than hang around and rubberneck.

The police officer called me later this afternoon to hear my story. I told him, to the best of my memory, what happened, and it appears that my story corroborated with the other reports he had heard.

I'm just paying it backwards.

The Diva of Data

Currently at my job I'm working on the following projects:

• Entering 900 names into our database over a period of 8 days.
• Cleaning said database while doing the data entry
• Creating year-end reports from data that was entered into the database by someone other than me, and didn't organize it in a very user-friendly format best I can tell
• Contemplated how we could improve the database so I could easily pull the reports next year. (At one point today a co-worker thought my head was about to spin around a la The Exorcist)
• Creating a spreadsheet that contains 120 months worth of data over a period of 3 days

So then I come home and try to figure out our summer vacation plans. Which involves traveling to baseball games in as many states as possible over a short period of time.

Pardon me while my head explodes.

Sisters of the Road

A request to the charitable sorts out there who've got some money to give in the month of January:

Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon, will receive a $15,000 grant from The Collins Foundation IF they can raise $15,000 from people who have not donated before in the month of January. Sweetie and I donated for our wedding, so we are ineligible.

Sisters' mission is to build authentic relationships and alleviate the hunger of isolation in an atmosphere of non-violence and gentle personalism that nurtures the whole individual toward changes that will reach the root of his or her homelessness and poverty and end it forever.

They provide jobs and inexpensive meals ($1.25 for a meal or .25 for a drink) to anyone who might need one, but mainly focused on those who are homeless or suffer from poverty. They've been a saviour for my brother in the past - when he first was diagnosed as mentally ill and living on the streets my parents were able to set up an account for him, so he was always guaranteed a hot meal. I believe he's also worked there in the past.

I strongly encourage any of you who might have the means to do so to donate to Sisters. Also, if you're in the Portland area and want a way to help panhandlers, you can purchase meal coupons to hand out that will provide them with a meal at Sisters, and may help them get in contact with other services they need.

The holidays are often full of opportunity for those who are less fortunate than ourselves, but often the charity dries up come the new year. Help others have a happy 2006 as well.

OK, I'm climbing off my soapbox now...

Home

Today, while at Whole Foods, I was checking out with one of my B/C list checkers*, and as he started scanning my items he greeted me with, "It's so nice to see a familiar face." Made me get all warm and fuzzy inside and feel like I've actually put some roots down in Seattle.

* A list checkers are my preferred checkers, that I have psuedo-relationships with, and carry an ongoing conversation with through frequent trips through their line. There are two of them.

B list checkers are those I'll go to if the A listers aren't there, or their lines are too long, and we've got face recognition, but no real relationship (or, in the case of one, her English isn't strong enough to have the insta-conversation while my 5 items are being scanned).

C list checkers are those I recognize, but don't have face recognition with (or, in the case of one guy, don't WANT face recognition with).

D list checkers are those I've never seen before and couldn't pick out of a line-up if I had to.

Resolutely

I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions. The only resolution I can even REMEMBER making, and definitely the most recent one I made, was in 2000.

The resolution: "I will not get in a car accident this year."

This resolution was spawned out of idiots running red lights in both 1998 and 1999 that resulted in major car accidents. Accident #1 totaled my 1995 Subaru Imprezza and accident #2 did about $5,000 damage to my 1996 Nissan Sentra. I am happy to say I kept that resolution.

This year I don't have resolutions, but I do have projects for 2006.

1. Learn to knit. Thanks to my in-laws I have a gift certificate to a local knitting shop, and will be signing up for classes soon. I can't even tell you WHY I want to learn to knit, but I'm looking forward to it.

2. Transfer my tapes and albums onto my computer. Thanks to my parents I have the hardware and software necessary to do this task. Now I just need to move the desktop computer out to the living room and connect it to the stereo and start in on it. I have a LOT of tapes and albums (not counting those I threw out before I knew such hardware existed for this little project), so I'm HOPING I can get this project done this year.

2a. Create myself a database of all the cover tunes I own. Maybe post it online. Because it amazes me what cool stuff I've got in my collection, and it keeps expanding. This is inspired by two things: The local radio station I generally tune into when not listening to NPR has started a new feature of playing a cover tune every night right in the middle of my drive home. Also, look at the cool covers that have been added to my collection over the last month:

• A complete cover album of The Beatles' "Rubber Soul." Norweigan Wood blows, but the rest of the covers are pretty good.
  
• Johnny Cash covering, among others: Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Simon and Garfunkel, The Beatles, and The Eagles.
• Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco covering Comfortably Numb, and
• A Bluegrass version of Sweet Emotion

My prediction is that #1 will be completed, #2 in progress and #2a begun and abandoned in 365 days, but check back and I'll let you know. And when you remind me of #2a I'll probably resurrect the project, as this is not the first time I've had this pipe dream.

Happy 2006!