Wish List 08

Both my twenty-four(teen)th birthday and Christmas are coming up soon, and people always ask me what I kind of gifts I want. Whenever someone asks me the question, though, my mind goes completely blank. So here I'll keep a running list of things I'd like, so you lucky few who read this blog won't be left in the dark. (A certain amount of analysis can reveal more about what kind of person I am, too, probably revealing more about me than I would like to.)

So, here's my wish list for 2008:

• Caroline Hartig's Clarinet Brillante II. I don't already own this CD from my college clarinet prof, and there's no excuse for it. [Finally bought this, Spring 2009]
• A wireless router (as opposed to a cordless router — we're talking WiFi here) [All right...so I went out and bought this one myself. I still get to cross it off the list!]
  
• A subscription to Games magazine [Thanks, Dad!]
  
• The CD Best of Bowie [Thanks Ginia!]
  
• The Kronos Quartet's Nuevo [Thanks, Mom!]
• Coldplay's Viva La Vida
• Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack [Thanks, Nelsons!]
• Neal Stephenson's new novel Anathem [Thanks, Jean!]
  
• A 26-hour day
  
• Russel Shorto's Descartes Bones
  
• A house in Lawrence township (in hopes that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, et al. surf the blogosphere looking for ways to spend money)
  
• One of those nonclassical-music creation programs, like one of these. [Anyone know of a good Cakewalk guide?]
  
• Effects pedals for an electric guitar (I don't have any, so anything from simple distortion to a wah-wah pedal would be great -- get them used at eBay)
  
• Maybe a new watch (analog, something interesting but not too visually loud) [Even better: an old watch. Two, actually, that belonged to my brother.]
  
• A large donation to the Indiana Wind Symphony
  
• A small sculpture of a clarinetist, to add to my small collection [Not a sculpture, but a nice framed paper silhouette]
• Teen Titans: The Complete Fifth Season [Found this at Fry's]
  
• The New England Jazz Ensemble Wishes You a Cookin' Christmas

A Compliment . . . 16 Years Later

Way back in the early days of the nineties, when big hair bands were giving way to grunge and a Bush-free eight years was just beginning, I took a printmaking class in high school. One of the projects we did was silk screening. I created "my version" of Picasso's "The Old Guitarist," which, hopefully, you can see here:

The original.

This is from Picasso's Blue Period. Thinking of him as "The Blue Guitarist," I gave him an electric guitar and sunglasses and made him "The Blues Guitarist." I made six prints (and I'm realizing now that I never took a picture of them). I have one of them (the first one, which definitely wasn't the best one) hanging up in my office cube.

[AND I'LL INSERT IT HERE AFTER I GET A PICTURE OF IT.]

The complete and total fraud

I had since forgotten what happened to the other five. This weekend, I got a Facebook e-mail from Kelly. Kelly wrote to tell me that I had given her one copy of this print, and that she had moved it around from apartment to apartment and displayed it for 16 years, framed even. As you can imagine, this made me feel quite good.

Honestly, I didn't even remember who this Kelly was. I looked through her photos on Facebook for a while before I recognized her. I don't remember actually giving her the print, but I do remember that she was a pretty red-head, which in those days (okay, still!) would have been enough for me to do anything for her. I was such a pushover for a pretty face and red hair.

Too often, things from our past can come up and bite us. It was nice that something from my past came up and gave me a big hug.

Language Log Blogroll: A Follow-up

I mentioned here that I had suddenly experienced a rise in readership on my other blog, Logophilius, for no apparent reason. Well, I think I found the reason. Logophilius is now listed in the blogroll at Language Log, and some people who read that blog (and there are a large number of them) must have seen it and clicked over.

I hadn't noticed because I get their RSS feed in Outlook, and I rarely click over to the actual Language Log site anymore. But today I did.

I am honored to be included. But once again, this means that I need to keep up with posting.

The Networks Get Smart

It's no secret that, instead of coming up with creative original ideas, TV and movie studios are clamoring to remake hit shows from the 70s and 80s. Underdog, Speed Racer, Get Smart, American Gladiators, Battlestar Galactica Knight Rider, etc.

Well, somebody finally got smart. Instead of putting out the money to create crappy remakes of old shows, someone finally decided to just re-release the old shows instead!

Over at NBC's Wayback Wednesday (http://www.nbc.com/Vintage_Shows/Way_Back_Wednesdays/), you can find episodes of The A-Team, the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Buck Rogers, the original Battlestar Galactica, and a couple of shows I'm not interested in.

I thought it was just NBC, but WOOT!, CBS (http://www.cbs.com/classics/) has The Twilight Zone (the original, with Rod Serling), MacGyver, the original Star Trek, Beauty and the Beast, and HOLY CRAP! MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE SHOW Twin Peaks!

Looks like FOX and ABC need to catch up...and I can just about get rid of my TV and live on my computer.

You Didn't Say What You Thought You Said

Without looking at your keyboard, can you figure out what's wrong with this statement:

Okay, so there is really more than one thing wrong with this statement — most notably the fact that someone would be making statements about their penis size in a public forum.

This was just too funny. I had to share.

Computers Launch World Domination Plan

Complicated, globally linked computer systems are supposed to be labor-saving devices. But at what cost?

Last week, I went through the Taco Bell drive through for a quick bite and ordered three supreme chicken soft tacos and a medium gluggable. I estimated that the bill would be around (but under) $8, considering I ordered four items, each of which costs less than $2. When I pulled around, my bill was up over $9. I questioned the woman in the window about it. Because "Chicken Soft Taco Supreme" isn't in their computer system, she punched up a fiesta soft taco, minus avocado sauce and fiesta salsa, plus sour cream and diced tomatoes. Each "additional" item cost me 30 cents per taco; but of course I didn't get any "discount" for removing items.

I argued with her a bit. It didn't make sense to me that one taco ought to cost 60 cents more than another with the same number of toppings, as if sour cream (plenty of cows in Indiana) is much more expensive than avocado sauce (plenty of avocados in Indiana?), and — more to the point — that diced tomatoes cost more than machine-processed salsa with multiple ingredients. In the end, she argued that she couldn't change the way the computer rang up the bill.

(To her benefit, I could tell she was frustrated, but she didn't lose her temper with me, and always kept smiling.)

Computers – 1; Humans – 0

Last Friday, I stopped in at Papa Murphy's Take-n-Bake Pizza. The sign out front advertised a large pepperoni pizza for $6.99. I ordered one half-pepperoni, half-cheese and one with pepperoni, chicken, and diced tomatoes (a great combination after I added diced garlic to it at home). The bill: $23 and change. I had been charged full price ($10.99) for the half-pepperoni pizza.

I asked him about this — after it was wrung up but before I signed the receipt — and was told that, because he had to ring it up with "special" toppings (as opposed to, I don't know, pushing the big red "Pepperoni Pizza" button), it wouldn't ring up as the special, so I had to pay full price.

That's right: I paid $4 to have half the pepperoni removed.

(Why didn't I just order a pepperoni pizza and move the toppings around when I got home? Hindsight being what it is, this is what I should have done. I very rarely order uncooked pizza, so I guess my pizza-ordering habits weren't quite ready to make the shift. Plus, I was so excited that they actually had chicken as a topping choice.)

Computers – 2; Humans – 0

Just now I went to Taco Bell again; this time I went inside. The customer in front of me ordered a simple lunch and gave the cashier his credit card. She ran it through the Credit card machine and waited. And waited. And waited. She ran it through again. More waiting. She ran it through the machine in the drive-through area. More waiting. Apparently, the credit card machine broke just before I got to order (I was paying with a credit card anyway). A couple of other people tried things, but nothing worked.

It must have been 10 minutes of waiting. Not until production slowed to halt — because no one else could order — did someone with some knowledge and authority assess the situation. Yup. It's broken. Cash only.

The guy in front of me and the people waiting in the drive-through got their food for free. I only had a little cash on me and ended up spending less than a third of what I had planned at Taco Bell. Production stopped, customers got frustrated, and Taco Bell lost money, all because one little piece of technology stopped working.

Computers – 3; Humans – 0

Keeping all this in mind makes me wonder if I really should be worried about the big atom smasher in Switzerland.

A New Face(book), and a Surprising Jump in Readership

On Sunday night, I finally opened a Facebook account. Why, after avoiding what will surely become another time sink for so long, did I finally decide to do it. Because I had a reason, for once. The Indiana Wind Symphony now has a Facebook page, and I figured I, as president, ought to be in there, too. (I didn't say it was a good reason.) There are probably a dozen or so other IWS members in there, too, that I've already "friended."

I don't know whether it's related, but this weekend saw a (for me) huge jump in readership on my other blog, Logophilius. I got five new comments from five new people in the last three days. I think that just about matches the number of comments I had gotten the entire year before that.

But, now that I know there are actually some people reading it, I'll have to actually update it more regularly. And I don't mean once-a-year regularly. I'll be happy with once a week.

The Abe Martin Lodge

I took this last week before school off to have a little vacation with the boys. Monday, we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum. Tuesday, we were going to go to Conner Prairie, but it rained a lot the night before (and it was raining that morning), and I thought it would be too muddy.

This morning (Wednesday), we got on the road at about 11:00 and drove down to brown County State Park and checked into the Abe Martin Lodge, which is where I'm writing this post.

We had come here with Grandma for Easter dinner back in the Spring. At that point, they were in the process of creating a little indoor waterpark (which they laughingly call and "aquatic center"). Now the waterpark is done, so it seemed like the perfect place for a vacation. When we get tired of the waterpark, we're in the middle of Brown County State Park, where we can go hiking, or find a playground, or even leave the grounds and go over to nearby Nashville, Indiana.

So we checked in a little before 2:00. I discovered when I got here that the normal check-in time is 4:00, which I thought was really weird. Luckily, they had a room ready for us anyway.

We spent about an hour in the waterpark after we unloaded our stuff. It's a neat little place: one water slide, a little water volleyball "court," a splash area with all sorts of falling and shooting water, and a hot tub that isn't too hot for kids. The deepest part of the pool is the water volleyball "court," at 5 feet. The majority of the pool is 3.5 feet, including at the bottom of the slide, which means Hollandbeck the Elder has a full run of the pool (he even went down the slide a dozen times, after I talked him into it), and Hollandbeck the Younger has a lot of room to splash around in and have fun.

I have heard that the residents of Nashville are a little pissed off about the waterpark because it isn't open to the public; only registered guests can use it. After being in there, I see why that is a wise choice. If you've ever gone to a public waterpark during the summer, you probably remember how crowded it was — lines for the water slides, people running into each other underwater, all the chairs taken. A waterpark of this size just couldn't handle that many people. You could certainly cram that many people into it, but very few people would have a lot of fun there.

Anyway, it's a nice little place. The rooms are nice, and they're done up in a rustic look. The beds have quilts instead of comforters, and the pillows have quilted covers with a picture of (in our room, at least) big owls on them. The entertainment center, tables, chairs, and headboards are all woodsy, with a lot of bark still on the wood.

Oh, and they have free WiFi. But no free breakfast.

Oral Topography

Talk about a horrible day . . .

 

About a month ago, I discovered a big gap between a couple of molars. I thought one of my old fillings had broken, creating the gap. I let it go because it was just a nuisance at the time.

A couple days ago, it really started to hurt, and the pain expanded through the whole right side of my jaw and up to my ear. It got to be so bad that I left work early and drove over to the Immediadent clinic at Castleton Mall. This was the bad news:

I had a cavity eating its way under an old filling. The sudden gap was most likely caused by a chunk of my tooth falling out and the filling shifting a little into the space left by the cavity. The pain started when the cavity ate its way down to the nerves in the tooth.

I had two options:

• A root canal, which would cost nearly $2,000 and involve a minimum of two visits to the dentist.
  
• I could have it pulled for $288.
  

I mulled it over for a while. It was a tough decision. I hope I made the right one. I had it pulled.

I got to see the tooth after it was pulled. (I wanted to keep it, but apparently the law doesn't allow it.) Teeth are apparently like trees: there's more below the gums than there is above. It seemed like it was huge!

I guess, in the grand scheme of things, I've done well. I went 33 years without requiring any stithces — at least that I can remember. Still . . .

 

Talk about a horrible day . . .

Heather B and Bad Prom Night Memories

[Written on July 10, but posted late.]

I wasn't always the well-adjusted, polite, thoughtful megalomaniac that you know and love today.

Wednesday night, after rehearsal, I stopped in at Starbuck's for a cuppa and ran into Heather B, who was working there part-time. I went to high school with Heather B, and very nearly went to the senior prom with her. In fact, I asked her to go, even though I really didn't want to at the time. But time was running out, and in my teenage mind, getting to the senior prom was a very important thing to do. And there it was, the week before prom, and I didn't have a date.

I found out that Heather didn't have a date yet and asked her. I found out soon after that Stephanie, the German foreign exchange student, didn't have a date either. So I snuffed Heather and asked Stephanie. Now, I don't remember the order in which things happened, but Heather actually said yes to my offer, which means I basically dumped her, leaving her dateless the week before the prom, to take Stephanie.

I felt bad about it at the time, but, if it's possible, I feel worse about it now. It was a really idiotic, selfish, small-minded thing to do. But I think I paid for it. Stephanie was carrying a torch for one of the Schatts twins — maybe even the one who was, at the time, dating my future ex-wife. She (Stephanie) had no interest in me (well, I had no real interest in her, either). I was little more than a way for her to get to the prom without going stag. (Do women go stag? Or do they go doe?)

On top of that, I went with a group that included my own ex-girlfriend, for whom I had mixed feelings. I was definitely the odd man out in this group.

So, Heather B, if by some stretch of the imagination you stumble across this blog post, I apologize for how I treated you during this whole senior prom process. I was a real dick. If it's any consolation, I had a horrible, expensive time, and I'm sure I would have had a better time with you.