Being competitive is wired into the human psyche, particularly in men, and I am certainly not the exception to the rule. In fact, if anything I exemplify it. As I’ve said here before, I am competitive to a fault. What I haven’t really said is what I mean by ‘to a fault’. The dictionary defines fault as follows: mistake: a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention. Re-read that, adding emphasis to the terms ‘bad judgment’ and ‘ignorance’ and you’ll have a good handle on what I mean.

Lest you get the wrong idea, I am not competitive where it isn’t appropriate or in cases where I am clearly the beginner at something and the other person isn’t. I said I was ignorant, not stupid. People who are like that need help. OK, more help than me, anyhow.

I knew someone like that when I lived in Florida. One beautiful Saturday they came to the beach with a group of us who were going out to play on our jet skis, and they had a romantic interest in another member of the group. Well, everything was all good until someone they perceived as a rival (and who was a very accomplished jet ski rider) came back in from ripping it up pretty good. We all applauded jokingly as the walked up from the surf. Not to be shown up, our intrepid hero jumped up and headed out to one of my skis that was beached there. They’d had all of 20 minutes experience on a ski but that didn’t stop them from going out to try and show up their ‘rival’. They got up to something approaching 40 miles per hour and pulled a hard left trying to skid a turn and throw up a big rooster tail. Now, if you’ve spent much time on a ski you know that, at that high a speed, you best keep your turn pretty shallow and, if you want to remain with the ski, you better lean hard into the turn to keep the outboard sponson out of the water – don’t and it digs an rather firmly (which is a bad thing). Well, they hadn’t spent much time on a ski and didn’t know either of those things so they fully deflected the handlebars with the throttle still at full. Since jet skis turn from the rear by deflecting their thrust to one side to ‘push’ the back end around, this resulted in the ski going immediately sideways. Being not nearly as hydrodynamic moving sideways (read: like pushing a sheet of plywood through the water) as they are going forward the ski immediately stopped. I’m not kidding you when I say that the ski stopped from nearly 40 mph to zero in what I would guess to be 10 or 15 feet. Now, to be fair, they did succeed in producing a very impressive rooster tail; it was the largest I’ve ever seen from a jet ski by far, before or since. It was easily 120 feet long and reached something like 50 feet high at its apex. the problem was that, once the water cleared, the ski was riderless and no one was in the water anywhere around it. In the thousands of hours we’ve spent at the beach and the dozens of riders we’ve let ride our skis, it was the only time I felt anything near a sense of panic. It was full on dread. We were set up where we were because there are good waves there to jump but, with them comes a strong offshore current and this whole incident happened a few thousand feet offshore. My head was immediately filled with news headlines like “the body was never found” and “believed to have washed out to sea.” After a moment of stunned silence we bolted to go out and find them. Everything came out OK in the end. They’d only suffered a badly bruised knee and shin where it smacked into the ski and a badly bruised ego as they were ripped off. The reason we couldn’t spot them was that they’d been thrown nearly as far as the rooster tail had gone. It just never occurred to any of us on the beach to look for them 100 feet from the ski.

Now, that is painfully competitive. I, too, am painfully competitive, just not to that degree. Unfortunately, my general partner in crime, Tim, is just as competitive as I am and perhaps a little more painfully so. He is also my gym partner and there are times when that is not a good combination. As often as not, we play racquetball as our cardio or warm-up. And everything is fine until we get a long volley going or one of us makes an especially good shot, then neither of us wants to be the one that drops the ball as it were, so we will work that much harder to make each successive shot. the longer the volley lasts, the more competitive we get until it eventually reaches a point where making the next shot is imperative. If that means you have to hit the wall hard, you hit the wall hard. The problem is, those walls don’t give at all – not even a little – and neither Tim nor I are as young and resilient as we once were.

Just a couple of weeks ago I made this one shot that is one of those really lucky strokes. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like. OK, like, picture the bullet scene in The Matrix. You know, the one where the bullets just sort of slowly streak through the air and Neo just dodges them all. Got that image now? OK, my shot was nothing like that, but that is a really cool scene, isn’t it? No, my shot was really more of a ninja-like thing straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. OK, no, so it really wasn’t all that ninja either.

Alright, so here’s what happened. Tim’s shot came off the front wall hard, fast and right at my head. Hitting it wasn’t an option; at the rate it was coming there was no time to get set for any shot. My choices were (a)duck or (b)get hit in the head. Given that I’d tried (b) several times before and didn’t much like it, I thought I’d give (a) a try. I was able to duck the ball, but just barely. Then, as I watched in amazement, the ball hit the back wall and rebounded high because of amount of energy it was carrying and the spin it had. After pausing just long enough to mentally thank Newton for his first law and the whole preservation of momentum thing, I managed to nearly dive cross-court and get enough of it to keep it in play. To summarize, I made a shot that any really good racquetball player could make routinely. Given that I am not a really good racquetball player (and neither is Tim) I was feeling pretty good about it.

The problem was that this shot happened well into what was already a pretty good volley for Tim and I so we more determined than usual not to be the one to miss it. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow, but it ended with Tim having hit the back glass so hard it left him seeing stars and me with a slightly sore ankle from an awkward landing. Neither injury was enough to make us do more than pause and we both felt fine when we left but that isn’t always the case. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but Tim and I have long since stopped playing actual games. We serve and hit the ball around like in a game, but we don’t keep score. We just keep chasing the little green ball until we are sufficiently tired to quit. The reason is that, when we do keep score, well, if we keep score it becomes decidedly more competitive and we end up hurting ourselves or each other. I don’t mean hurt bad, but at all is bad enough.

And we try not to confine our considerable stupidity to the rather limited space of the racquetball court. I’ve been pretty sore numerous time as a direct result of phrases like “hey, I bet I can do that leg press machine with the pin all the way down.” I really feel worse for Tim, though. I am big enough that I naturally weigh more than your average guy so, for me, the max weight on that machine (something just over 400 lbs, I think) is heavy but not a major challenge. I carry around a rather large percentage of that every day anyway, so I would up the ante by doing more reps. Tim, on the other hand, carries significantly less weight around on a day to day basis so it is a bit of a taller wall for him to scale. He makes up for the size difference with a greater willingness to hurt himself.

We’ve often discussed the very real possibility that he was dropped on his head as a small child, but we agree it would take a larger trauma than that to make him that dumb. You are probably wondering how I talk about my enemies about now if this is how I talk about my friends, but you’ll notice the use of “we” in the above sentence. We, meaning he and I, have these discussions so I’m not talking behind his back. Tim is like a brother to me and without a doubt the most reliable, generous person I know, but he is brain damaged. When he and I were handling all the A/V stuff at the church where we met it was not at all uncommon for me to come in and find him standing on the top of a 25′ A-frame ladder. On his tip-toes. Leaning way out. And the ladder would be wobbling. And I’m not even talking about the top rung, mind you. I mean the top of the ladder. You know, the part that is made of flimsy plastic and has “NOT A STEP” prominently featured all over it? He would be up there re-aiming one of the theatrical lights for an upcoming play or something. If not there I might find him with the scissor lift fully extended to over 30 feet standing on the top of the railing around the platform. You know, the railing that is there to keep you from falling out? And he would be there doing these things with no one else in the building (and he wasn’t even expecting me) so if he fell no one would know it. Oh, and this would be at 10 or 11 at night and his wife had already gone to bed. Since we both commonly worked up there until 3 or 4 in the morning when the stage set was changing she wouldn’t have really been alarmed when he didn’t show up. It would have been 8 or more hours before anyone even looked for him. I still have no idea how he never fell. Now, if that isn’t brain damage, I don’t know what is. You can also see the kind of mentality I’m up against when things get really competitive.

I don’t know if it is normal or healthy to be competitive to the degree Tim and I are, though I suspect it isn’t entirely so. It is just how we are. I do know that being competitive to some degree is important. America wouldn’t be the world’s most powerful nation were it not for competition. I mean, the whole free enterprise system our economy is built on is predicated on competition. That is why I don’t understand why we’ve begun to shelter our kids from any sense of it. I mean, if I attend one more kids soccer, T-ball or football game where they don’t keep score I’m gonna lose it. I am so tempted to carry poster board and a marker up there and keep score myself. We’ve become so concerned that our precious little progeny might get their widdle feewings hurt that we can’t bear the thought of them actually losing at something. Their little psyche might forever be damaged. So we stop keeping score and everyone gets a trophy. I wonder what the kids think they are even playing for.

It isn’t that I want a child to be disappointed. I love kids and hate to see them feeling defeated. But that disappointment serves a purpose. I have a news flash for you: life keeps score. If you never let your kids fail at anything they are in for a rough ride when they get into the real world. Am I the only one that remembers a time when not every kid who tried out for little league baseball made the team? If little Johnny stinks at baseball, let him find that out now and encourage him to find what he is good at. Don’t give him a trophy and the same pat on the head the star player gets. If you aren’t careful he’ll grow up to be a union worker. =o{P

I’m not saying kids need to be taught to be painfully competitive like some of us are. I’m not sure that is something you can teach, to be honest. I suspect it is either in your personality or it isn’t. I know I have it, and I don’t regret it at all. That competitive nature has served me well throughout my life. I am where I am in my career because I was and am driven to be the best. It doesn’t always serve me well at the gym, but in many ways it does; Tim and I both work out harder than we otherwise would if we weren’t competing. And isn’t that what we are there for, after all? So I will keep on competing with Tim and will take the occasional ball to the head or head to the wall. I wouldn’t have it any other way. While I’m on the subject, allow me to pass on one last bit of wisdom (and perhaps the first): If you are going to get competitive at the gym, the hip adduction machine is not the one to do it on. It leaves you sore in ways and places you don’t want to be sore. That’s all I’m sayin’. That’s what I’ve heard, anyhow…

/g

You ever have one of those days? You know the ones. The alarm clock doesn’t go off, you have terrible traffic coming and going to work and work itself is no joy? Those days where it seems like the world is conspiring to annoy you? Like there is some guy, somewhere in a control room in front of a bank of monitors coordinating everyone. I can almost picture it…

“OK, team one he’s in the shower. Give him time to get to the soap then cut the hot water. Team two, proceed to the kitchen as planned. Empty out the coffee canister – no, wait, leave almost enough to make a cup but completely empty the creamer. When you are done there, hide his keys. Oh, and hide his left shoe while you are at it. Yeah, the freezer would be a great place.” “OK, he’s turning out of the neighborhood. Team one, do you have the lady in place to back out of the bush? Great, standby. Here he comes. Cue bush lady. Ready…annnnnd NOW! Good work people! It looks like he spilled his weak coffee. Awaiting visual confirmation. Have bush lady go ahead while he cleans that up and have her stall in the middle lane of 85. We still have time to create a solid traffic jam if she steps on it. Team two, he’s almost at the toll booth. Did you remember to remove all the change from his truck? You left him one quarter? Nice touch. Good work, team two. Wait, the microphone is picking up music. Someone get XM on the phone and have them turn off all his channels except the country & western stations and Howard Stern. Make it quick…”

I’m telling you, they are out there. And, man, did that guy earn his money today. It was truly one of those days. And, you know, I knew it was going to be very early on but I went on anyway so I guess I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I’ve learned that there are certain signs that will tell you it is going to be a rotten day – or at least that there is a high probability it is going to be a rotten day – if you only pay attention. If the very first thing you hear when your alarm goes off is the voice of the traffic guy and he sounds like he’s in a panic or if he uses the words ‘overturned’, ‘tractor trailer’, ‘interchange’, ‘acetone’ and ‘fire’ all in one sentence, you’ve been put on notice. When you get out of the shower and go to dry your hair, only to find shampoo still in it, you’ve been warned. If the toaster sets your toast on fire – and I mean actual flames, here – consider yourself admonished. If you see any of these signs, do yourself a favor and take my advice: Rinse that shampoo out of your hair, dry off, fish your PJs out of the hamper and put them back on, extinguish the toaster, turn off the alarm and crawl back into bed. And stay there too. Tomorrow is a much safer place, get some rest.

And remember a few posts back when I said I was looking forward to getting back to work as the holidays ended? I hereby recant. In fact, isn’t it St. Swivens day or something next week? I should probably take the week off. In general, I like my job. I really do. But there are those days like today where I wonder… I’ve got both marketing and sales mad at me over the same project. I normally don’t get too worked up over office politics. I don’t like ‘em, but they are mostly just amusing. Not this, though. And from the “no good deed goes unpunished” department, the project that has everyone so stirred up isn’t even my job! I am preparing a big presentation as a favor for marketing. Sales is mad at me because they don’t like the direction it is taking. Never mind that I am only doing exactly what marketing asked me to do. And marketing is mad at me because I agree with sales on some of it. Never mind that sales does happen to be right sometimes. I am about to hand the whole thing back to them and wish them both a happy St. Swivens day!

And then there is this one account executive who is, well, rather zealous. The truth is, the guy is really pretty nice and he means well. I actually like him but, when he gets on my nerves he does it completely. He caught me in the hall today and we had a conversation that went something like this (as close to verbatim as I can remember):

Him: Hey! Greg! How are ya, man?!?! (he’s in sales so he uses lots of exclamation points)
Me: Good, thanks. And you?
Him: Good. Did you have a good holiday?
Me: Yeah, I did. I actually…
Him: (interrupting) Great, so listen. Remember the ISSA show you spoke at last year in (I forget what city he said; I’d spoken at a lot of those type shows last year) ?
Me: Uhhh, yeah, I think so. What about it.
Him: Well, they loved you, man! They just asked if you would be able to speak to their group again in the near future!
Me: OK, cool. I can do that. Whats the topic?
Him: Dunno yet. When can we do this? I need to give them a date.
Me: Well, that depends. What is the topic?
Him: What’s that matter? I just need to tell them when, not what. We can work that out later.
Me: Well, um, no, we kinda can’t. I can’t give you a date until I know what the topic of the talk is going to be.
Him: Why not?
Me: Well, if it is on a subject I’ve spoken on before we can do it any time. If it is on a topic I haven’t, I’ll need time to prep.
Him: Prep? All you need to do is throw a couple of slides together. C’mon, when can we do this? The sooner the better!
Me: No. It is more than ‘throwing a few slides together’. At least, if you want it credible and not mind numbing it is. Doing what you are suggesting is the best way to be sure there won’t be a third invite. I need time to do research and to do more than a couple of slides, not to mention time to go through it a few times and get comfortable with the material.
Him: Oh, come on, even I could get up and talk for an hour without all that prep. Quit sandbagging. How about (he throws out a date)? Will that work?
Me: You may be able to get up and talk for an hour, but I want to actually say something and I don’t want people rolling their eyes at me like they do at you. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got work to do. Call me when you have a topic and we’ll talk dates.
Him: (to my back as I walked down the hall) Aw, c’mon, man. So, can I tell them we’ll do it on (whatever the date was)?
Me: (without looking back) Not if you want me to actually show up.

Sales guys are from Mars, Engineers are from Venus…

Then I tried to schedule a service call for my laptop with Dell. It is done via online chat with an actual dell person. The first one made me go through all this completely unrelated stuff then remotely sent a BIOS upgrade that wasn’t needed (it was the same version I already had and had TOLD him I had) which rebooted my machine…the machine I was chatting with him on. So, when it came back up I had to start all over with yet another rep and explain the problem in detail to them. He subsequently sent the SAME BIOS upgrade that the last guy had – that I had told him the last guy had and that I’d told both of them was unnecessary – which again rebooted my machine severing the connection. The third rep I got on the line wanted to take control of my machine but I refused to let him. So, three hours later (and right through lunch time) I got them to schedule a service call for the exact problem I told them I had when I first contacted them. It is a known issue and I’d already troubleshot it and told them what was wrong. Oh yeah, and during all that I got word from my wife that AT&T had cut off my home phone over an unpaid balance. That balance is for a long distance bill that is in dispute. It is a non-regulated service so, even if I’d just not paid it they legally can’t turn my phone off for it. But that wasn’t the case. I’d spoken to them several times and was waiting for them to research it and get back to me.

Then there was the commute back and forth to work. It was especially charming today. I spent a combined total of almost 4 hours commuting. The worst of it was that so much of it was caused by stupid drivers. Down this one heavy stretch of road I was watching with frustration as EVERY cycle of the light people were blocking the intersection almost completely. And, because they were doing that for 4 or 5 consecutive lights and because those lights are all within about a half mile stretch, it effectively shut down that section of road. And did any of these brain surgeons figure out it they’d just stay clear of the intersections so traffic could actually move we’d all get out of there faster? Noooo. They most certainly did not.

Oh, and my XM radio was messing up. Both of my favorite stations were clipping in and out. The country and western station next to one of them worked fine. Well, as fine as a country and western station can be, anyhow. All of it was just too much on the drive home. At one point I realized that I was so distracted that I didn’t have a clue where I was. I stopped and studied my surroundings for a moment and realized that I was on highway 29 not two miles from my house. It is a stretch of road that I am on twice a day. I’d just sort of driven on auto-pilot for the last few miles while I brooded. When I got home I had to sit in the driveway for a few minutes just to get my attitude right before going in the house. Fortunately both kids were in great moods and cheered me up a bit rather than testing my self control. =o/

And for the coup de grâce, this is the second time I am writing this little missive. The first time through I spent a couple of hours and it was a little less bitter…then my machine crashed and Wordpress ate it, previous saved version and all. Talk about irony. If I were a drinker, this would be one of those three martini evenings. I can promise you this: the next time I find shampoo in my hair outside the shower, I’m done. I’m taking my own advice and calling in sick. And if I ever find that control room with that guy in it, well…

/g

..at least that’s what the bumper sticker claimed. It was on the drop in toolbox in the back of a beat up little blue pickup truck that I was briefly behind on the way home from work. The sticker had an outline of a rodeo bull on it and it shared the space with two other bumper stickers: “I -heart- the South” and “I -heart- R|+\^”. You had to see that second one to understand. It last word looked as though someone tried to scrape it off with something sharp; perhaps a pocket knife. I’m reasonably certain that it once read “I -heart- Ruth” before it was mutilated. I guess Ruth didn’t fare as well as the South. Long live Dixie, eh?

I’m not really sure what “I the South” even means. I mean, is it the weather they -heart-? Sure, it was 67 on the way to work yesterday morning (early Jan) but that was a fluke. Mostly, the weather is either too hot or too cold here. Is it the local flora and fauna? Is it the lack of Jersey and Brooklyn accents? I dunno. But it does imply to me a certain rural existence that just isn’t to be found in Atlanta (which isn’t really the South anymore anyway).

I have to admit, I’ve never ‘gotten’ the whole country living thing. I would lose my mind. I mean, how many times can you sit on the porch swing? Sure it is relaxing and all but I need more input than that. I understand that the country dwellers do more than sit on the porch swing, but the simpler life they live just holds zero appeal for me. You know, I’ve had country folk call me a city boy (which I am) in a derisive tone as they explained some finer point of mounting a horse or starting a fire or cutting down a tree or any number of other similar activities. And, you know, if we were living in an agrarian economy still I would get the derision, at least a little, but we aren’t; haven’t been for close to a hundred years now. I don’t need a horse, I have a truck to get around. I happen to own several Bic lighters and have several large cans of gasoline outside too. Trust me when I tell you that if it needs burnin’ I can make it happen. And, guess what? I have absolutely no use for the ability to tell the age of a deer that has passed through by examining it’s, um, droppings. And when I need corn or sweet potatoes or beef I drop into the grocery store. Heck, I even have some flashlights that run on that electricity stuff.

I mean, I like to go out in the woods and set camp and make fires and hunt bears as much as the next guy. OK, I was exaggerating about the hunting bears part, but I like those other things a lot. And I like to get away from it all for a week or two here or there like we did last summer on St George Island in Florida; there wasn’t a store to be found that carried more than basic staple foods within a half hour and not one that sold clothes within an hour and a half. But, you know, that was for a week. I can’t lie; by the end of that week I was positively dying to go see what items WalMart had rolled back the prices on this week. OK, so not really WalMart specifically, but you get my point. I don’t get how living a life where so many of your daily activities require far more from your brain stem than from your cerebrum is even tolerable. It just seems to me that your brain would eventually get tired of waiting for something stimulating, pack an overnight bag and wander off looking for something more interesting to do.

And, if you’ll forgive the tangent, there is the whole Southern Pride issue that is so prevalant here, particularly among the non-city dwelling demographic. I especially don’t get that. You see those rebel flags and “I the South” stickers an awful lot around here. Unfortunately I think the vast majority of those type declarations are thinly veiled delarations of racism. In so many areas in the South the “War of Northern Aggression” – known in other parts of the country as the civil war – hasn’t quite ended. In my opinion you just don’t fly a Union Jack in the South for too many different reasons. You know, I understand that the problem of racism cuts both ways these days (though it isn’t politically correct to say so), but I just don’t get it. Particularly where the Southern white man is concerned. I mean, you lost the war, move on. In their defense a lot of them just don’t know any better; they are raised ignorant (boy, if that wasn’t an underhanded compliment), but we all have a brain and a responsibility to use it. Enough about that. That’s a whole other post of its own.

I’m not making fun of country folk, by the way, in spite of the fact that most of them around here are rednecks or good ole’ boys. I know and like a number of them – in fact a few of my very favorite relatives are as country as pecan pie – though mostly the good ole’ boys. The difference between good ole’ boys and rednecks is esoteric. If you’ve lived in the South you understand and if you haven’t I’m not sure I could explain it to you, but I’ll try. A redneck drives down the road in his old pickup with a shotgun rack in the back window and tosses his beer cans out the window onto the road. A good ole’ boy drives down the road in his old pickup with a shotgun rack in the back window and tosses his beer cans out the window into the back of his truck. See the difference? I warned you it was esoteric. For both, the rebel flag is an frequent, though optional, part of the equation and the trucks tend to get prettier the closer to a city either of them lives, but they share more traits than separate them by far.

It isn’t that country people are stupid – they aren’t – they are just simpler. While I could stand some simplification in my life, that degree of simplicity certainly falls into the ‘too much of a good thing’ category. I mean, oxygen is pretty important for me as well but, even oxygen is toxic to humans in sufficient concentrations. Look up “oxygen toxicity” if you don’t believe me.

I guess to be fair, they don’t understand me any more than I do them. They probably wonder how I stand all those people jammed up all around me and all those red lights and traffic. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll find a middle ground. Until that day I’ll continue fighting traffic and deciding which of the 8 WalMarts I pass on the way home I’ll stop at to grab that last minute grocery item, and they will continue…I dunno, chewing pieces of hay and saying yyyyyep a lot (or whatever it is they do) and we will keep on, each not understanding the other.

Now, as for the chicks diggin scars thing, they could have shared that little tidbit years ago, back when I was still dating. I have a doosie on my leg from an injury when I was nine that should have gotten stitches but didn’t. And I’ve got a number of them on my hands from turning wrenches. And now I have a really impressive one on the forehead but I guess I can’t really count that one since my wife gave it to me. And here I was leading with the wrong thing all along and never knew it. I shoulda been showin ‘em my scars. Who knew? Maybe that’s why that girl in high school repeatedly turned me down back then. What was her name? I had the biggest crush on her. It began with an R. Oh yeah, now I remember, it was Ruth. Wonder what ever happened to her…

/g

Well, here we are at the start of the new year and, man, am I tired. Recovering, but still tired. So, indulge me if you will, this sort of catch-all post. It is a little mental housekeeping exercise for me; sweeping out the cobwebs and dropping in here those few random items I’d intended to include elsewhere but never did.

The holidays are finally over and I’ve begun to slowly re-focus on real life. With the exception of a few last minute things I had to get knocked out, I’ve been basically on vacation for the last two weeks. That may not seem like a big deal to some, but it is the first time since my junior year in high school that I’ve had that long off with neither work nor school. I’m frankly a little concerned about my return to work. I think I may need to be re-trained.

I was talking to a friend of mine a couple of days ago about the holidays and she described their Christmas. They spent it with an elderly couple they know and she told me how serene it had been. There was the old school Christmas music playing and the gentle snowfall outside the window. I didn’t ask her, but I bet they had cocoa. I didn’t ask because I don’t think I could stand it if they did. In my mind’s eye I keep coming back to something straight off Norman Rockwell’s sketch book – the kind of scene destined to adorn a Coca-Cola promotional tray – and part of me yearns to step into that scene.

Understand, I love our Christmas traditions – they generally involve a large group of family and the chaos that follows this particular group anywhere we go – but part of me longs for that simpler scene. Not that I want to or plan on changing anything. I mean, our family Christmas might also have been a Norman Rockwell scene, only one destined for the New York Post with a humorous undertone. We had a total of 14 people (all family) and all of them brought their gifts to each other with them. I am still not done breaking down all the boxes that came out of that. It was chaotic as I mentioned here and here but it was good. Very good, in fact.

Then we had a great New Year, if rather unexpectedly. Christy was on the phone with her bff the morning of New Year’s Eve and they were lamenting how we both planned to just hang around our respective houses again this year. Just the night before, Christy and I had been talking about how we used to be cool in the not-so-distant past; we always did something interesting on New Year’s. At the stroke of midnight of the 1999/2000 New Year, for instance, we were standing in the middle of the intersection that marks the middle of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. We’d rented a house in the garden district with a bunch of old friends we hadn’t seen in a while and took the week to catch up. The actual turn of the millennium the following year we were in Vegas, again with friends. New Year’s in Disney was also amazing. Fast forward to this year and we are home alone. So, in the course of the phone call, they decided that it would be more fun to do nothing together. They also invited two other couple we are friends with (all of us having small children) and they both came as well. So, at 10:00 am we had no plans and at just after 6:00 pm we had a house full of people. There were 8 adults and 10 kids.

We hung out with the kids until 9:00 pm when I hooked my laptop up to the TV and replayed the New Year’s countdown that had happened in London an hour before. The kids all put on their party hats and grabbed their party horns and blew in the new year before we shuffled them upstairs and put them to bed. The adults then got to just hang out and catch up. Each family had brought enough food to feed the whole group practically, so there was no shortage of good eats and almost everyone in our little group is very outgoing so we had a blast. It was really very relaxing and a lot of fun. It was also just what I needed.

Just a little cleanup the next morning and we were on with the new year. And speaking of cleanup, now that I finally have trash service again (new update posted there) I was able to haul the dozen or so bags full of wrapping paper and stray packaging, along with the foot thick stack of flattened boxes out to the curb. I spent Thursday taking down Christmas. I had something close to 7000 lights in total, drawing enough power to deform the plug on the timer it was hooked to (can you say fire hazard? I knew ya’ could) but spread over a pretty large area. So that is now almost completely boxed up as are all the wreaths and garland and ornaments. Once those holiday totes are safely back in the attic all signs of the holidays will be gone. The post holiday funk is lifting and am actually looking forward to getting back to work. I can go back to the daily grind and get some things done that have been on the back burner over Christmas.

One of those things has been the blog. Partly I’ve been too busy and partly I’ve just been uninspired. Hopefully both of those are changing for the better. In the mean time, I warned you this would be a sort of catch-up/clean-up post so I’m tacking on a few items surrounding the holiday I’d meant to post but hadn’t. So, until next time, Happy New Year!

/g

note: as usual, you can click on any image to see a larger version

A belated Merry Christmas

I’d intended to put up an electronic version of the Christmas Card we sent out for all those who I might have missed or whose addresses I didn’t have, but I forgot to post it earlier. Well, better late than never. I’ve had a couple of people ask me where the picture was taken. It was on St. George Island, FL this summer where we spent a week. It is an amazing place if you’ve never been there. The nearest grocery store is over a half hour’s drive and the nearest Wal-Mart or similar is almost three times that. It really lets you truly get away from it all. There aren’t any hotels I don’t think. We rented a house for a week. I sat the camera up on a tripod set to take repeating shots as we walked away. This was one of my favorites.

And while on the subject of Christmas, here’s a shot of the little ones’ visit to the guy in red this year. They are always so giddy it is cute.

Oh, and we found these glasses (at a local home improvement store of all places) that look like the paper 3-D glasses but the lenses just look hazy. When you put them on and look at any small bright light source it becomes a snowman! I held them over the lens of my camera and took this shot toward our tree. The further away the light source the bigger the snowmen appear. I put them on in the car and the distant oncoming cars looked like pairs of giant snowmen coming our way. Oh, and I was a passenger at the time. I don’t recommend them while driving!

Falling Georgians

So while we were all home for the Christmas break we thought it would be fun to go ice skating. I’ve not been since I’ve lived here so I was startled at what I found. Let me summarize by saying that few things are sadder or funnier than an ice rink full of Georgians. The most crowded place in the whole building was along any wall with ice next to it. There were adults who wouldn’t let go even to let small children past. I have no proof, but I suspect the local hospitals subsidize the rink to keep it going. It must be a constant source of business for them.

Justin hated it until the very end when he grew to just dislike it intensely. He kept telling us he wanted to “get off this ice cube.” It turns out that Courtney had told him it was going to be a huge ice cube before we went. He was riveted by the Zamboni, however. He watched intently and kept asking me when he was gonna get this spot or that as he made his way around the rink. By the end he was explaining the pattern back to me. What a little engineer he is.

Courtney loved it and wants to go back and took to it pretty well. We had a lot of fun watching people trying to get up, but the funniest moment of the day was when this guy who had the least business on ice skates of anyone there – he was like a cartoon character with his arms out flailing around the whole time – asked grandma if she used to be a figure skater. We are still laughing about that one. All in all it was a lot of fun and something we’ll be sure to do again now that there is a rink nearby. The ice stank when we got there but was OK after the break.

Grandma helping Courtney get the hang of it…

…and Courtney venturing out on her own, paying attention to everything in the place but the ice in front of her. Oh, well.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Courtney had a play date today and was gone with mom for several hours leaving Justin and I to our own devices. We jointly decided it would be fun to play trains and cars. The race car set was his big present this year. The GeoTrax train stuff he has been collecting over the past year and change. I decided to try and see if I could use every single piece of track he had. I missed by two. More importantly, we had a blast!

I went up to the landing and asked him to get in the middle so I could take his picture. This is what he did.

I took this one of him being all boy. He loves it when the train drops over the hill at the top of the clock tower (as it is in the photo above). He thinks that by pushing the handle forward extra hard, leaning forward and making a go fast face it will somehow run down even faster. He may be on to something.

Greg’s Knockoff Lemon coolers

Every since Nabisco bought Sunshine Bakeries and subsequently stopped making Lemon Coolers a couple of years ago I’ve been searching for a replacement. If you aren’t familiar with them, they are a cookie that is almost shortbread, but not quite, coated in powdered sugar with a light lemon flavor. They were (are) my absolute favorite cookie. Recently I decided to figure out how to make them. I found a number of recipes on the Internet claiming to be them but none were quite right so I set out to figure it out. Many, many batches of cookies later I’ve finally nailed it. Everyone who has had them agrees. I’ve had a couple of people ask me for the recipe so here it is:

Here is the batch I made for the group coming over on New Years.
See, they even look like the real thing.

Cookies:
1/2 c – Powdered sugar
1/3 c – White sugar
1/3 c – Shortening
1 – Egg
3/4 tsp – Lemon extract
1/8 tsp – Salt
1 1/2 c – Cake flour
2 tsp – Baking powder
1/2 Tbsp – Water

Sugar coating:
1 c – Powdered sugar
3/4 tsp – Unsweetened lemonade kool-aid powder

1. Lightly grease two 10×15 cookie sheets and preheat oven to 375
2. Creme together the sugars, shortening, egg, lemon extract and salt
3. Add the flour, baking powder and water and mix until it forms a dough ball. It should be dry enough you can handle it without flouring your hands. It should be very light and pliable
4. Pinch the dough off and roll into approximately 3/4″ balls. Place them on the cookie sheets with about 1 1/2″ between them
5. Partially flatten each ball. They should spread out to around 1 1/4″. They don’t spread very much at all when cooked so if you want flatter cookies, squish them a little more
6. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes until they are a light golden brown
7. While they are baking mix the powdered sugar and kool-aid mix in a gallon ZipLoc bag
8. As soon as they are out of the oven throw them into the powdered sugar mix and shake them around to completely coat them. Time is important here, you want them in there while they are hot. Be careful puling them out, though, as the sugar is a good insulator and they will still be very hot.
9. Put them on a wire rack to cool if possible. If you put them directly on a plate it causes condensation on the plate that makes the coating stick more to the plate than the cookie.
10. Let them completely cool. These cookies are really only done when they’ve dried out a little bit. I pop mine into the freezer for a couple of hours as soon as I’m done making them to accelerate the process.

A few notes:
- The recipe makes 50 cookies
- I list 3/4 tsp of lemonade Kool-Aid powder in the recipe. That actually makes them slightly more lemony than the originals. Given that I always wished they were just a hint more lemony I’m good with that. If you prefer the lighter lemon flavor of the original reduce that to 1/2 tsp and it is pretty much spot on.
- If you have a convection oven bake at 325 for 14 to 15 minutes. They are slightly crisper out of the oven that way (which is why I do it) but it after they’ve cooled and sat for a couple of hours there really isn’t any difference.
- The recipe calls for cake flour but it isn’t strictly required. I prefer the texture of the cookies with cake flour, but I’ve made them with all purpose and even bread flour and they were only slightly different, but still perfectly good. Use what you’ve got and you’ll be fine. Only thing is, if you use all purpose or bread flour add another 1/2 tbsp of water when mixing it.
- Don’t worry about overworking the dough. It isn’t like we are making biscuits here. In fact, I mix mine beginning to end in a mixer and I’m not exactly gentle with it either.
- The dough is less sticky and more workable if you use less water and it lessens the need to cool the cookies as long before they crisp up. The down side is that the cookies are a little harder. I suspect the moisture content may just be too low to get the baking powder doing its thing. They are good either way, though.
- Because time is important in getting them in the sugar I’ve found that the best way to make them is to pop the first sheet of them in the oven as soon as you have them rolled out. The other sheet goes in 4 or 5 minutes later when you’ve completed it. This gives you time to finish tossing the first batch in sugar before the second batch is ready.
- ZipLoc bags do NOT like powdered sugar. If some gets in the zipper (and it will) it will not stay shut. Hold the top tightly closed as you shake unless you like that snowfall look in your kitchen
- ZipLoc bags also don’t like hot cookie sheets. They have a way of burning large holes in them rather quickly. Make sure you don’t get the bag against the pan or you’ll also get snowfall in the kitchen

Here are some photos of the various stages as a reference for size. Note that when I was making this particular batch I rolled the dough then went to get my camera only to discover the battery was dead. While getting the new battery I remembered something else I had to do. Twenty minutes later I got back to the dough which had been sitting right in the steady warm air flow my oven emits when it is in convection mode. This had dried them out pretty good so the cracked badly when I squished them. They normally don’t do that quite so bad. The four photos are of the cookies rolled up, squished, baked and powdered. In the last one it is hard to tell but there is a cooling rack in the cake pan so the cookies aren’t directly on the bottom. The pan just makes it easier to move them around without leaving a trail. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

I have but one New Year’s resolution this year and it is the same one I make every year; I resolve not to make New Years resolutions next year either. That’s because, personally, I think they are silly to make to begin with. I mean, if there is some monumental change that needs to be made in someone’s life why haven’t they already been working on it? The ones that amuse me most are the “I know I need to (stop smoking, lose weight, stop using my credit cards in a dangerously irresponsible way, stop kicking puppies, insert vice here) and have known for some time now. I’ve been planning on doing something about it, it just wasn’t January enough for me to fix it before” resolutions. I mean, really, do people think there is something magical about January? Is it self control month and I’ve just been missing it? Yeah, I didn’t think so. And yet, so many people are planning out their resolutions.

Every year I can’t help but hear all the talk of resolutions floating around the office. There is the same guy who every year resolves to quit smoking. What that really means is you will want to steer clear of him until you catch that faint aroma of stale smoke on him once again; until then he will be a little touchy. That is generally on or before the 15th of January. Once he falls off the wagon he will have satisfied himself that he gave it a good try and will be more or less content to continue smoking. Well, at least until next January 1st anyway. Then there is the woman who will have committed herself to an extreme diet to shed those pounds she has been resolving to shed every New Year’s Eve for the past 15 or so years. You’ll want to avoid her for the immediate future as well. The best indicator of safety in this case would be to watch for the telltale straws from fast food cups peeking like little periscopes over the edge of her trash can. Those usually appear even before that other guy starts smelling of smoke again.

And then there is the “I’m gonna get in shape” crowd in general. Each year I am annoyed by the extra glut of people I have to work around at the gym. You have to wait interminably long times at the more popular machines or weight stations and you can’t get a racquetball court at all unless you plan on going in very off hours (which I do). It doubles the time it takes to work out. Alas, the biggest group of them will be gone in two weeks and things will be pretty much completely back to normal by the middle of February. And the only thing getting lighter will be their wallets thanks to membership contracts. Pity.

Now, it may sound like I am happy that these people are failing in keeping their resolutions, but I’m not; I think that most of the resolutions people make are ones worth achieving and it is a shame they don’t actually pull them off. I am just tired of the delusional mindset that surrounds the whole phenomenon. We have to put up with someone being a jerk for the same few weeks every year because they are relying on the magic of January to help them stop smoking, stop overeating or stop spending every spare minute on the sofa. Want to impress me? Quit in May or August or October. Quit because you know the behavior is self destructive, not because you are now writing a new year when you write the date on your checks. Does anyone actually write checks anymore, by the way? Back when I did write them I remember starting to put the new year on ‘em. That was usually sometime in mid-March, but I digress.

As for the gym crowd, I wish them all success. I would be perfectly delighted if all of them showed the will power to continue going beyond February; then the gym chains would build more locations and bigger gyms to accommodate the crowd instead of cramming them all into the existing facilities every January. Then too, maybe all those people would all feel better so they might actually have a better life in general. That, and they would all be in shape so there would be more attractive people to look at. Win-win, right?

The truth is that studies have repeatedly shown that people don’t keep New Year’s resolutions. I mean, if you’ve paid any attention to people at all you already knew that but the actual statistics are enlightening. The one that is most telling is this: only 19% of people who make resolutions have any success at all. Any. That isn’t to say that all of those were 100% successful; very few are. So one in five have any degree of success meaning 4 out of 5 completely flop at it. And if 4 out of 5 dentists recommending Listerine is as compelling as it feel on the commercial then 4 out of 5 in this case must be really, really bad.

So why do people insist on continuing a tradition that obviously doesn’t work? Well, probably for the same reason that they are able to keep advertising the Chamwow! on TV and the same reason BowFlex is still updating their commercials some 25 years later and the same reason people still buy lottery tickets and go give the casinos in Vegas all their money. People want to believe there is an easy way to accomplish their goals. They want – we want – something for nothing. Well, as they – whoever ‘they’ are, that worries me sometimes – say, “There’s no such thing as a free ride.”

If I were running a pharmaceutical drug company and I really wanted to become the next Pfizer I’d forget about all the research into cancer treatment and AIDS research and all those other, you know, life threatening ailments. I would throw all my research staff behind developing a pill that creates willpower. You couldn’t keep em on the shelf. Every day could be January 1st for weak-willed people worldwide. And I’m lumping me in that along with the next guy, by the way. Sign me up. Give me the ’script and I’m heading to Wallgreens right now.

If I had those pills or, absent that, had the magical January will power that others seem to have I would make many many changes. First off I would do less dumb stuff. I would elaborate, but we don’t have that kind of time. Let it suffice to say that that one alone would free up copious amounts of my time. I would spend less and save more. I would make significant progress on the honey do list. I would spend more time with my wife and kids just doing whatever they wanted to do. I would have a much neater desk. I could go on and on. Not unlike anyone else, I have too many things I’d like to change to easily list them all.

But, alas, there is no such pill. That, and January is not magical, so I’m left to work on those and other things as I get around to them (which, coincidentally, is the same approach I currently have toward the honey do list) and make baby steps forward among the occasional huge stumble backward. If I end up with forward progress by next January 1st I figure I’m better off than 80+% of the rest of the population statistically speaking. Wrap it up, I’ll take it. That, and I have no need to limit my being a jerk to just the couple of weeks of the year. I can spread the joy year round.

So, there you have it; no silly resolutions for me but you know, something just occurred to me. My sole resolution is to not make any of those silly resolutions next year; but virtually everyone fails to keep their resolutions fully. Does that mean I’ve doomed myself to make resolutions next year? Hmmmm. I’ll have to consult Mr. Spock on this one; I’ll let you know what I find out. But, you know, if I have doomed myself to making some dumb resolution it will be to become an astronaut. I mean, we all know it won’t happen but if you are gonna fail, fail big, right?

/g