In which I experience new things and stuff myself to the gills at the same time

It’s pretty rare that I enjoy being proven wrong but when there is food involved I’m up for anything. I must give many, many, thanks to the lovely Cathy for introducing me to North China Gourmet despite my insistence that “there’s no good Chinese food in Tallahassee”. As a result, the total on my “Chinese restaurants where I could take my father without shame” list has been bumped up to two.

Continue reading In which I experience new things and stuff myself to the gills at the same time

Babygirl: Year one

Hey babygirl. I’m late as usual but you might as well get used to it because I doubt I will change much. A year ago May 1st, I got to see you come into the world. It wasn’t exactly a pretty sight but I’m still glad I was there. Things started out a little rough though. You had various ailments and didn’t want to respond to the doctors they way they thought you should. Since nothing more serious ever developed, I’m convinced it was just a first exhibition of a mile wide stubborn streak that you certainly got honestly.

just waking up
Continue reading Babygirl: Year one

Home remedies

Ok so I’m sick. I’m convinced that somehow I ingested the flu bug in it’s raw form through some sort of chemical warfare testing accident involving homeland security, stem cell research and Red Lobster’s fried shrimp plate.

It all started with a harmless throat tickle of the sort you get when there is an errant dust mote exploring your respiratory system. By the end of the day there was a cold lumpy chunk of unpleasantness sitting in my chest that refused to be budged by normal means such as coughing and spicy foods. That gradually dissolved into debilitating (I love that word) body aches deserving of a steam roller reference and a negative amount of energy which meant that even changing the channel on the telly required a rest period. Fever and chills stopped by for a visit but seem to have been scared away by clogged sinuses and the sore throat from hell. The fact that I currently sound like the love child of a penguin and a seal being chased by a nightmare could also have something to do with it.

I could make this into a post about all of the horrible tv I’ve seen in the last 4 days or about the odd things Nyquil does to my head but I’m desperately craving a return to the world of the living so I need some advice. Now in the past four days… I’ve done

  • Nyquil (you’ve seen the commercials)
  • Dayquil (ditto)
  • Comtrex (deep chest cold)
  • Aspirin (to keep my heart healthy…. right)
  • Aleve (in hopes it would do something about the aching)
  • Halls honey lemon mentho-lyptus cough drops (not nearly as helpful as the name might suggest)
  • Cepacol (supposedly like novocaine for the sore throat. It might have worked if my throat were on my tongue)
  • and a random dose of Robitussin that I found in the bottom of my medicine box

As scary as this list is… there is still more. My family has always been big on alternative health options and I’m not one to turn up my nose at the home remedies that turn up in families that have ever (a) lived in the country (any country… doesn’t matter) or (b) gotten sick. This is where you come in. So far I’ve done

  • Onions (no biggy… I like onions… not sure that they helped though)
  • Honey
  • Lemon juice
  • Various herbal tea blends especially formulated for helping the body fight the evil that is sickness… including “Cold and Flu”, “Throat Coat”, and “Echinacea something or the other”
  • Pickle juice
  • Salt water
  • A red tin/tiger balm neck wrap (If you don’t know what it is… just know that it’s highly dangerous and also smelly)
  • Heating pad
  • Orange juice / Grapefruit juice / Vitamin C
  • Chicken soup
  • Lots of liquids
  • and various combinations of the above

In addition to this list I know that pot liquor works but I’m not cooking. Someone from work suggested a hot toddy which I haven’t a clue how to make. Someone else from work suggested hot Captain Morgan and honey. While it seems entirely likely that this would cause me to pass out or puke, either way invoking some healing magic, I’m not about to buy an entire bottle of rum just to put it to the test. Although I may very well regret this… what suggestions do you have?

Mas N Steel: Spring 2005

That time has come again. Time to see me and mine get down with our bad selves and groove hard. It’s going to be a righteous good time.

  • What:Mas N Steel / Korean ensemble (joint) spring concert.
  • When:Sunday, March 10th. 8pm
  • Where:Opperman Music Hall. FSU Music Building (corner of copeland and call streets)

Get there early, seats fill up fast. Korean goes first and we bring it home. Besides, how can you resist this picture? I’m so freakin’… young.

Rage and technology

This is an exercise in taking two different concepts and bringing them into togetherness and love. Please keep your divs inside the allotted browser window. No malformed code allowed, not even in the comment box. Today’s post is brought to you by the letters “ooooooooh” and the word “lovely”. Lets now commence with the sense making.

Rage

For the past few weeks I’ve been watching my good buddy (you know the one with too much spare time) whenever he can pull himself away from the PSP as he manuevers the incredibly hot (and viscious) Kratos on his quest to kill Ares the God of War . What a sentence.

Now some of you might be thinking things like “that’s got to be boring” or “normal people would prefer to play the game themselves”. Not at all. This game is awesome and has only been made more awesome by the fact that I don’t have to worry about being eaten by Cerebus puppies and can pay attention to things like the lovely tilework and the fact that in a certain room you get three warnings before the floor opens up and you fall to your death.

Kratos looking hot and bloody

Also it can rest heavily on someone elses concious that we missed the sex minigame or that to progress past a certain point requires “the ultimate sacrifice”. I rather enjoy the decapitations and breaking of necks and the ripping off (and out) of vital body parts. I even think it’s humorous that Kratos can kill the innocent run-around-in-the-middle-of-the-fight-with-my-hands-over-my-head bystanders for some more rage. but the sacrifice thing would have probably taken me a couple hours to figure out and sort of threw me off. The really odd and addictive part is that we’ve got to be almost to the middle of the game and and I’ve learned more about the story from the splash page on the game site than from the 8 or so hours of (watched) gameplay.

It does cause a tiny bit of anxiety that Jordan’s method of gaming is to go immediately to the most obvious next step (say killing all 600 medusas) and never look back whereas I tend to explore every accessible unit of space before weighing my options (ooohh you mean I can get past them without actually killing them all?) and moving on. Jordan has been very good about sensing my anxiety when it reaches critical points and going back to explore. Over all it’s a pretty synergetic mix of running commentary, sarcastic interjection and proper appreciation that reminds me of the good old days of web dev.

The Technology

In other news.. I have joined the masses of people in Tallahassee (and around the world) that own a cell phone. I’m rather happy about it even though it wasn’t my idea and left up to me would have probably never happened. But it wasn’t left up to me and I picked it up at Greyhound package express almost a week ago. I almost have my number memorized.
Samsung e105. Sleek and pretty
It’s a lovely little flip phone with no camera, no keyboard, no intergalatic remote control… it’s just a phone. And I love it that way. It does have the capability for instant messaging and web browsing but I’m not impressed. I’m currently doing both of those things quite well on a 19 inch flat panel monitor with a nice full sized keyboard and wireless mouse. The thought of switching to an almost-two-inch cell phone display with a number pad is not appealing.

We’re using T-mobile and my phone is Samsung and between the two they have the worst user manual and written documentation ever. Ok it’s not the worst ever but kinda bad isn’t as dramatic. Basically I’ve been trying to figure out how I need to enter numbers into the phonebook so that they work when I try to call them. Seems like it should be a pretty basic need but I appear to be wrong since no help exists on the site or in the rather thick (and mostly useles) user manual for the phone. Such is life.

In conclusion…

So thats the news from Lake Sparkalyn. Where all the women are geeks, all the men are obsessive and all the cell phone manuals are a waste of time. Images taken from ign.com and samsung.com respectively.