Future pico de gallo

I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.

Possessions are causing me suspicion

There is one thing I’ve been putting off in life for quite some time now, and a few recent events have finally spurred me to get cracking. The task? A major review and overhaul of my possessions, specifically all of the stuff I’ve acquired over the last, oh, ten years. The recent events are two in number: first, it’s coming up on the two-year anniversary of when we moved into our current apartment, which means that any moving box that still has stuff in it is fair game for disposal. Second, my favorite office supply store near where I work is going out of business. I know that doesn’t seem terribly relevant, but it fits into the puzzle because the office supply store is where they sell things that help you get organized, like file folders and so on. And also, the store itself was incredibly well organized, in a way that bordered on obsessive. Since I value my own organizational talents, the store and I were a good personality match. And now that they’re going out of business, I figure I’m going to need to pick up the slack.

Back to the moving boxes for a moment. Thanks to all the housing woes of the recent past, many of which have been chronicled here, there’s been a lot of moving in the last several years. It’s true that moving frequently often discourages the piling up of unwanted stuff, because you have a strong motivation to keep your possessions lean and you don’t have time to fill your current space with crap. On the other hand, though, recently I’d been moving often enough that I never wanted to spend the time to really look through boxes of papers and random possessions, especially if they were already packed carefully and easy to just move. So a lot of crap has been following me from house to house, simply because of inertia.

I’ve also been partially stymied by the impulse to try and get rid of things in a constructive way, by selling or giving them away on Craigslist. I had a little success at that before the last move—people will take all kinds of odd things if you offer them for free or cheap on Craigslist. But in the ultimate reckoning, I realized a couple of weeks ago that I had a lot of stuff to get rid of, and listing it all individually on Craigslist was too daunting. In fact, it was keeping me from getting off the ground at all. Then I read an online discussion about cleaning out stuff, and was reminded of Goodwill. Stuff that isn’t trash but that I don’t need or want is exactly the kind of stuff that Goodwill takes. Aha!

For about a week, once I started to commit to the idea of going through things, I was in the planning stage. There are only a couple of storage areas in the house where I originally stashed the stuff we don’t use: the dining room closet and the extra room upstairs. There’s also the three redundant corkscrews in the kitchen, but that was quite easily addressed. Now I’m in the phase where I’m actually gathering the unused stuff, trashing the trash and boxing the Goodwill candidates. I also cleared out a clothes drawer that had shit in it I didn’t even remember; things I hadn’t worn since college, or never. Uh, college is getting to be a long time ago. That led to a lot of gleeful chucking of things into the trash, and now that drawer is only half filled. It’s like my pajamas get to live in a mansion with cathedral ceilings now.

I also visited my doomed office supply store today, and bought some things to help organize some of the crap I do intend to save. Childhood papers and writings from the distant past are scattered across several boxes and locations right now. My plan is to collect them into a single plastic file box, which I can then easily store and move. My messy life will be neatly filed—ah, the irony.

Of course, an important part of the entire process is to report it here, if only to provide motivation to see this through. Embarrassment is a healthy source of stamina. After all, I mentioned here that we sold the old Civic when, last September? Well, the bag containing all the stuff from the glove compartment and the trunk is still sitting in the dining room. Uh, maybe it’s time to get rid of that.

Ooof

So I went cross-country skiing for the very first time yesterday. It was my first time on skis in my entire life, as a matter of fact! Let’s just say that gravity had its way with me in cruel fashion. You know, the ground is very far away from you when you’re on skis, and I was demolished by even the slightest downslope. I hope my left knee forgives me for getting fallen on so many goddamn times. Ooof.

Today also marks the very early end to the annual challenge to try and get some cycling in every month of the year. Thanks to this year’s ridiculously snowy winter, I haven’t been on the bike since January freaking 1. Oh well, maybe we’ll have a drier spring than usual and I can make up some miles!

Al Thornton dunk of the century

There isn’t too much that’s good about the Wizards these days, but this dunk is INSANE. That is all.

A visual summary of the month

Four more inches, and it will have snowed up to my height so far this winter. We’re supposed to meet that target tomorrow!

Ode to a Honda Civic

During the Long Blog Blackout, one event occurred that can be seen as either momentous or no big deal, depending on whether you give a crap about cars. I confess that I do, and so when it came time to replace our 1997 Honda Civic with a newer Toyota Matrix, I was compelled to write this homage to the old trusty car. Read on below the pic.

It was inevitable, of course I knew it was inevitable. But just as humans have the ability to adapt to new situations, so they also often favor the routine, well-worn path. And in this case I’m talking about a path that was worn for nearly fourteen years: our 1997 Civic, bought at a time when we were kind of poor and in grad school and driving around in a shitty Hyundai Excel. That Civic seemed like pure luxury by comparison—I still remember feeling like it was a major step up even on the test drive. Now it’s fourteen years later and 185,000 miles further down the road, and it definitely doesn’t feel like luxury anymore. (Not that it ever really was: manual steering! manual transmission! manual windows and locks!)

A lot of people view cars with an entirely unromantic perspective: necessary transportation, gets you from here to there, annoying when they break down, unremarkable when they don't. Unfortunately I see cars as more integral to my life. In grad school it carried us on thousands of miles’ worth of trips back home for the holidays, most of them, it seems, conducted in horrifying snow or rainstorms legendary in scale. It was bought mere months after we got married, so it forms a sort of monument to the longevity of our relationship. It carried us into our new life when we graduated and moved back to the East Coast; we slept in it during that horrible drive east when there wasn’t anywhere to stay on the way. And then, a few years ago it acquired a roof rack, and we put our bikes on it and had all kinds of fantastic day trips and vacations. With the new car’s arrival it became almost purely a vehicle for the weekend, to escape the mundane life and to be free of weekday worries.

Of course, there is a new(ish) car to take over that role, so it's not as though I’m really losing something. In fact, objectively speaking I should be more excited, since the new(ish) car is so much younger than the old Civic. But for now, it’ll be those deadly adjectives New and Different—something my routine-loving personality will chafe at for a while. At least until it too becomes Old and Familiar. And someday I’ll write a fond homage to it, just like I'm doing now. Assuming that we still have the internet, of course.

2010 in Review

So what the heck was I up to for 2010, that I wasn’t in here posting? The answer becomes pretty damn clear, really, when I break it down by the numbers. For some background reference, you can compare this to the recap post for 2009.

Miles bicycled: 745.33

Minutes of tennis played: 16,960 (5,590 more than 2009!)

Movies seen in the theater:
True Grit
The Fighter
Black Swan

Wonders I can’t believe I didn’t already know about:
Flight of the Conchords
Cooking meat in a slow cooker

Hopes for 2011:
A clearer view of what happens next for me job-wise
Achieving a 3.5 NTRP rating
(Okay, neither of those changed from 2009. Er?)

Something we all still need:
Patience!

A new resolution

Now that we’ve stepped into 2011, it’s time to engage in a bit of self-reflection. And what better venue for that than my poor neglected blog?

You might think that my resolution is to post here more often, and that certainly has crossed my mind. But on the other hand, I’m thinking that that will be an secondary effect as I tackle my real resolution: in 2011 I plan to start marshaling my resources to figure out how the heck to get out of this crazy job of mine.

Why change jobs? I can’t argue with the hours I have, the PTO, the proximity to tennis, and the general lack of pressure to work too hard, but at the same time it seems to be slowly crushing my soul like a giant drill press carefully squeezing a lone grape. So there are drawbacks to staying here. Obviously there’s something beautiful about not having to do much of anything at work if I don’t feel like it, but on the other hand, after a certain quantity of goofing off I start to wonder whether I can respect myself. It’s a fine line, ha.

So what do I plan to do? Well, note how vague and weaselly the wording of my resolution is. I resolve to start thinking about how to plan to do something. The truth is that I don’t have formal training in very many practical areas. The publishing world has done nothing but contract violently in the last few years, so I wonder whether I’d be able to find anyplace else to do work that’s similar to what I do now. And if I throw open the gates to all possibilities, then I’m kind of mystified as to what I could do. So 2011 is going to be all about exploration and all that parachute-color crap. In the meantime, I’ll try not to notice how many ways my current workplace annoys me. Can I do it? Maybe I can at least try, and report back here on my progress.

Housekeeping

It’s been a while since I checked in, but things have been pretty quiet for a change. In fact, we just celebrated our first year of living in peace and quiet after escaping from Crazy Neighbor Land. Go us!

Just to give you an idea of how organized I strive to be, I’ve always tried to keep a record of my old addresses and phone numbers. (This actually came in handy when we ended up going back to renting, because I still had the contact info for our last landlord, from 2004.) The list was always in my Palm contacts list, but when I migrated over to Android and Google Contacts last month, things aren’t really arranged the way I like. I don’t really need my apartment info from 1992 to come up in my main phone list, you know? So I’ve been revisiting the data and plugging it into a simple text file that I can stow someplace out of the way.

Well, as you can imagine, I’ve been struck by a serious wave of nostalgia as I look through those old addresses. I have them all the way back to the first years of Swami and Fang, when we lived in a crappy place about ten minutes’ drive from campus in Williamsburg. To confirm the address, I even tracked down the website for the apartment complex and took a look at the Google satellite view. It’s amazing to think how many people have lived in that unit since we jammed our stuff into the Hyundai and the rental truck and drove off in 1992. I sure hope they’ve replaced the carpet since then. Oh, and fixed the lamp that was broken while someone was practicing his golf swing indoors.

Eighteen years have passed and we’ve lived in seven more places since then. I know a lot more than I did then, about all kinds of things. I also have a better idea of exactly how little I still know, even after all that time. But the one constant is that everything I’ve learned is colored by wherever I lived at the time.

When I try to visualize a life’s experiences, my first impulse is to picture a road, with the way behind spread over flat terrain with long views, and the way ahead a steep hill that you can’t see over. But I’m not sure it’s really like that. Things that happened a long time ago often feel immediate and can easily provoke a visceral reaction. As I think about that first apartment I can almost feel myself living there right now, even though it’s so far removed in time. So maybe memory and experience is more like one of those rooms full of churning plastic balls, where you have no idea which ball is going to surface in front of you next. And something is constantly handing you more balls to add to the pile. Hmm. I think I just suggested that we’re all trapped inside a giant McDonald’s Playland! That might explain a few things.

Snowpocalypse Now

I know, the giganto-storm that whupped the Mid-Atlantic is no laughing matter—you poor guys really aren’t equipped to deal with it. But I did have to laugh when I watched the crazy Accuweather dude’s video forecast beforehand.



Heh. That guy is really, really something. Oh yeah, turn your volume down before you play that vid. Trust me.

2009 in Review

Online, there was less blogging but more other stuff. Out in the real world, things were kind of mixed this year. We escaped from Crazy Neighbor Land, which was obviously very necessary but entirely bittersweet. Job frustration has started creeping from my peripheral vision into the center of things, but I have no idea what to do with that turn of events. Anyway, perhaps as a coping strategy, I’m going to continue my new tradition of recapping the year in list form, since I like how that turned out last year.

Miles bicycled: 840.85

Minutes of tennis played: 11,370 (that’s 189.5 hours!)

Movies seen in the theater:
Watchmen
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
District 9

New country seen:
Scotland, aye!

Hopes for 2009 that came true:
The house sold
Gilbert Arenas is playing basketball
Halo 3 kill/death ratio isn’t too bad

Hopes for 2010:
Health for people I care about
A clearer view of what happens next for me job-wise
Achieving a 3.5 NTRP rating

Something we all still need:
World peace!

Happy new year to everyone.

Rolling into the semis

Yesterday I had a unique experience that I should share. I went with the Swami to a meeting about wheelchair tennis. The goal is to increase people’s awareness in New England, organize more events, and set up a means of collecting charitable donations to help with the costs of the sport. A wheelchair that’s been specialized for tennis costs at least $2,000, and you can imagine that most people can’t afford that kind of outlay.

I heard about all this from the tennis pro where I play; he’s a certified instructor for wheelchair tennis and incredibly dedicated to the sport. He’s also a fantastic tennis coach. So when he was talking a few weeks ago about how much the chairs cost, I knew I wanted to help out.

The reward was getting into one of his chairs and hitting with a few real wheelchair players. I can report that I did manage to actually hit a few balls. That doesn’t sound like high praise, and believe me, I was pretty hopeless maneuvering the chair around with any speed or accuracy. But it was an incredible experience, and I feel really lucky that I had the chance to do it.

If those guys ever figure out a way to set up a website or a system for accepting donations, I’ll report back. In the meantime, watch some wheelchair tennis on Youtube! It’s a great thing.

Facebook ate my Blogspot

After futzing around on Facebook for a couple of months, I realize that it’s cutting horribly into the time I spent thinking about this blog. That seems to be a pretty frequent happening on the net; I certainly don’t claim to be suffering from something unique, here. But it’s interesting how that’s come to be. Maintaining the blog requires a lot more active work, whereas I can just hang on FB and watch my often hyperactive friends pepper me with links and the occasional burst of personal information. I suppose that everyone’s short attention span is also more rewarded by the Chinese fortune cookie style of writing on FB. On the other hand, FB isn’t nearly as anonymous, and isn’t the right forum for getting an interesting idea across.

Nevertheless, I’m still trying to come back here a few times (once?) a month and say something substantive. And I’m not interested in bashing the flourishing of FB as some kind of evidence that our society is crashing in flames like the Hindenburg. That’s what I think about Livejournal. Kidding!

A few words about apples

It’s apple season, and I got a few opinions about apples.

What I like in apples: I like tart, and crisp, with additional aspects of flavor a close third in terms of criteria. A long shelf life and consistency across individuals also helps guide me. So if you like soft, sweet apples, this list will at least help you learn what to avoid.

Another note: I’m assuming that most people are familiar with Granny Smiths due to their ubiquity, hence they get mentioned a lot for comparative purposes. Heck, if you’re not amid the New England bounty of apples like I am, maybe that’s all you’ve got besides Red Delicious. If so, I am deeply sorry.

Anyway, let’s get to the part where I do some blathering about varieties.

Ambrosia: I tried one of these for the first time last winter. The name conjures an image of either Olympian pinnacles, or that freaky gelatin, canned fruit, marshmallow, and coconut salad that people always made for potlucks. Unfortunately I was kind of underwhelmed by the lack of a tart counterpoint to the ingratiating sweetness. Potluck, not pinnacles.

Braeburn: Tastes just like “apple.” Which is good. Very crisp, quite tart. Similar to Empire in its straightforward appleness (by which I mean no overtones of honey or exotic fruitiness as in Honeycrisp or Pink Lady). I ate my first one late last winter and I’m definitely pleased. It’s very high on the tart scale without the brutal characteristics of the Granny Smith (see below).

Empire: Back when I first opened my eyes to the crazy variety of apples and struck out from the familiar land of the Granny Smith, this was my next apple of choice. This is another variety like Braeburn that just says “apple” to me: crisp, slightly tart, and straightforward. Empires also seem to keep forever in the fridge. Ultimately, I’ve eaten so goddamn many of these that I’ve been off them for a while, thanks to taste fatigue. But this is a strong choice. In fact, here’s a not-great glamor shot of one I took last spring.


Ginger Gold: last fall I bought a 3-lb. bag of these out of curiosity, which is something I rarely do because I like to pick my victims by hand. Also unusual was the size of each apple: rather than the typical baseball size, these were small, maybe 2 inches in diameter. I ate them in pairs. Woe to anyone who cored or sliced them en masse, what a chore for the reward. Anyway, these were definitely outside the box in terms of what I usually like: not particularly crisp, with skins that were fairly soft rather than shiny. The taste, though, had a very pleasant spiciness that I liked a lot, and I forgave them their noncrispiness on the strength of the interesting flavor. Apparently the flesh browns fairly slowly, too, not that I spent time testing that theory. This fall I bought another big bag of GGs that were a more typical apple size, and I did enjoy them all over again. And despite my tales of excess, I recommend getting fewer at a time than I have, so you can eat them when they’re freshest.

Granny Smith: one of the year-round stalwarts, although it’s often hard to find a good one. Definitely avoid any that are shaped more like cylinders than the stereotypical heart shape—they tend to be mealier in my experience. Often too damn tart, with tough skin. My last resort apple. I heartily recommend slicing these before eating—I always feel like I’m getting a periodontal scaling when I try to bite into the skin, and slicing mitigates the amount of work your teeth have to do. This is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of apples: indestructible but in no way subtle.

Honeycrisp: If this is among my apple choices, then hands down I buy these over all the others. The name says it all: these are super-crisp and tangy, with an overlay of honey sweetness that offsets the tartness perfectly. Maybe I love these because the first one I had was at an actual orchard, but I haven’t been disappointed by ones at the store. The real tragedy is that they’re often a dollar a pound more than the other, lesser varieties. Bah. This must be Bill Gates’s apple, dude.

Macintosh: I love the taste of Macs, but dammit they aren’t crisp. The flesh has a fabulous perfume and subtle tang, but the skin is very soft, and did I mention they aren’t crisp? They don’t seem to keep as well as Empires, either, so I very rarely buy Macintoshes. If I were to see a particularly spectacular specimen that I knew was fresh, well, then I would probably buy it. Otherwise, eh, it ain’t worth it.

Paula Red: I tried these for the first time last fall, buying a bag of them at the actual orchard. Apparently they have a very short season, so I’m not sure they’re worth getting in the store, since you might not be getting them fresh. But I was very pleased. They’re nice and crisp, and have a solid apple flavor that I liked a lot. When I see these in late August or early September, I definitely buy them.

Pink Lady: When the Honeycrisps are unavailable, this is my go-to apple at the moment. It’s got a blazing tartness, but there is a slight sweetness to offset. Also, the skin is more forgiving than Granny Smith, though thick enough that they keep well in the fridge. All around I dig this one a lot. It also looks nice in decorative fruit bowls, if you're trying to sell your house or are featured in Architectural Digest or something.

So that’s the lowdown on the Apples I Have Known and Formed an Opinion On. And what’s in the fridge right now? Two Honeycrisps and, uh, an Anjou pear.

Miscalculation

Well, my streak of attending every year’s Hub on Wheels has been broken, in somewhat lame fashion. I knew the forecast was going to call for rain today, and sure enough, when the alarm went off at 6:45 a.m. I heard the drops falling on the roof. After checking out the giant green wash across the radar map on TV, my resolve just drained totally away. Screw it, I really do hate cycling in the rain—especially cold rain. So, full of regret, I went back to bed.

That kinda sucked. What really sucks, though, is when I got back up officially at 8:30, it wasn’t raining anymore. And it didn’t rain again at all until around 1 p.m., well after the Hub ride would’ve been over. So I BLEW IT. BAH.

Now I have an official 2009 Hub on Wheels cycling jersey, and I didn’t even ride the damn ride. BAH.

Scotland recap, at LAST

Well, I must apologize for the month of August—life has interfered mightily with my duty to report on our trip to Scotland. And that created a logjam that led to a whole lot of not posting. So here, at last, is the scoop.

Once again I had a great time on a tour run by Bike Vermont. Seven days of touring, with six of them spent more or less on the bike, four different inns in four different regions, great food and some serious scenery. The two guides, one a Vermonter and one a local Glaswegian, were fun people and awesome leaders through everything. Just about all of the inns were top-notch too, although there are a lot of weird ideas about showers in the Old Country. The concept of the full shower door or curtain doesn’t seem to have caught on there. On the other hand, the electric towel bar is a grand thing—why don’t we have these in New England?

As for Scotland itself, I was impressed. Glasgow was a great little city, with tons going on and easy navigation. I really dig that you can order glasses of wine in two different sizes. Yeah, I’m easily wowed. The landscape, though, that’s the real star of the place. We saw the rolling lowlands of Perthshire, cycled our way up the River Tay, took a ferry from Oban to the Isle of Mull, and came back via the truly highland moors of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. Pictures of each below, respectively. For the full spread of photographic record, see my Flickr link on the right over there. ->

Photo 1: Perthshire fields as viewed from the battlements of Huntingtower Castle

Photo 2: The River Tay, outside of the village of Murthly en route to Dunkeld

Photo 3: The port of Oban

Photo 4: A view of Duart Castle from the Oban-Craignure ferry

Photo 5: On the Ardnamurchan Peninsula

The cycling was a little nuts, I have to admit. I don’t think the terrain was significantly tougher than what I’d seen in Vermont (except for the day on Ardnamurchan), but there were fewer little towns to take breaks in, and most of the roads on Mull and in the highlands were what’s breezily referred to as single-track: in other words, a strip of road just one narrow lane wide, but used in both directions, with occasional tiny semicircles of shoulder where two vehicles can pass each other. That was quite nerve racking. But having a half pint of cider at lunch usually restored the courage.

In general I also thought the food was first-rate. Maybe that’s because we were always staying in swanky places, but I really ate and drank well. I also had haggis for the first time, which is very tasty! It’s funny that it has such a reputation. I ate weirder things in Manila, that’s for sure, heh. I also tried a couple of different single-malt Scotches, although hard liquor isn’t usually my thing. For the newbies to Scotch, I’d recommend the Tobermory 10-year, and if you’re into peaty, funky Scotch, the same distillery also makes Ledaig. Both were distilled at this here spot on the Isle of Mull.


So to sum up, it was fantastic. I was impressed by how beautiful the country was, with some very stark landscapes and amazing views. And the people all seemed incredibly friendly, too. Definitely worth a long visit, and I would go back in a second!

Cancellara is the MAN

Here’s a video to keep you occupied while I’m cycling in Scotland! Time to go make sure I’ve packed everything...rain gear being the top priority, of course.

Fuzzy yellow balls

I’ve been trying to figure out the most opportune moment to post to the blog, but you see what happens when I do that. Yeah, how did it get to be mid-July?? Anyway, here’s what’s been going on.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, tennis, lots of tennis. So far I’ve been making quite the impact on the USTA team. Won the first match as part of a doubles pair, then got switched to singles and won the next two matches too. Those were both hard fought, and I learned that I (often) possess that ineffable quality necessary for sport known as mental toughness—which I suppose I knew already, but it was confirmed as I made it through those two matches with victory definitely not assured. That being said, my fourth match was a real rout, and not in the good way. I got totally pwned by this woman such that I was actually quite relaxed the whole time, in a “well there’s certainly no reason I should feel bad about getting beaten by someone so clearly better than I” kind of way. The funny thing there is that about four days later, she was disqualified by the USTA from 3.0-level play, and all her matches from this season awarded to her opponents. (I should add that she kicked everybody’s asses up and down, not just mine!) So I guess that match is now in my win column too, although only on a technicality. And finally, to catch you up, I won last week at singles too, even though I dropped the first set. In fact, I had a long moment where I thought about how much I actually was starting to hate competitive tennis, but fortunately that passed and I got back to the business of figuring out how to beat my opponent. Which I did!

So there’s one week left, and two matches, before the season ends. It’s been a lot of fun to get to know all the people on my team, and to play so much goddamn tennis. But it will be nice to have a break from it and get back to other things. The cycling is getting a bit neglected, for example. And it’s getting very close to vacation time for me and the Swami, which is a cycling tour in Scotland starting on the 23rd. There will be lots to report from that, so I’m assuming that August will be a better month for the blog than June and July. Also, I imagine that you intrepid readers might want a break from my incessant blathering about tennis. Did I mention that the Swami and I have been playing doubles too? Ah well, never mind that!

I'm a winner

Unlike LeBron James, I won something last weekend: a USTA tennis tournament! Okay, it wasn’t exactly the French Open, but it was pretty tough. I prevailed in fairly straightforward fashion on Saturday (6-3, 6-2), then managed to win a real battle on Sunday against a very tough opponent (7-6, 2-6, 6-3). It took about 2.5 hours and man, did I suck in the second set, as you can see by the score. The prize was this exceedingly cheesy trophy, you’ve got to love it. Boo yah!

Hello Cleveland

This post is dedicated to cheering up LeBron James now that his Cavaliers have been eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals by Orlando. I figure these two videos will do the trick. Better luck next year! And p.s., LeBron, stop being such a crappy loser.