Tuesday, April 29, 2003
The cycling season is upon us. The bike path today was littered with senior citizens and trophy wives, power-walking, cycling and jogging their way into better shape. Also children who've been walking for less than two weeks zig-zagged their way down the path as their neglectful parents trailed behind, not worrying about one of them getting taken out by a speeding cyclist (i.e. me). I guess when you have four children you must value them a lot less as individuals. The parents on the path gave off the impression that they could quite easily spare one or two.
I have big plans to participate in a 75 mile ride later on this summer. The benefits from it are going to help MS (I think). That should be pretty neat.
In other news, Lefty beat me to it by posting his 19 reasons "Star Wars Episode III" was a really stupid, pointless movie. Why do I keep missing the good ideas? First Paul beats me to the punch with his Great Powerpoint Demonstrations by Villains: Skeletor's Soliloquy and now this.
My last post was pretty much a dud comment-wise. This one doesn't look like it's fixing to be any better. It's tough to write about stuff happening when you sit at your computer all day. Paul and I made a video game, though. It's called Quest for the Crown. It's rather amazing.
Posted by chefelf @ 02:09 PM EST [Link] [29 People Love Me!]
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
This Glorious City is not that big. The population is 173,618 according to the 2000 census. This is less than 1/3 the population of Boston (589,141) and less than 1/46 the population of New York (8,008,278). Why then can't I get a damned parking spot? It was just a normal Wednesday afternoon. It wasn't even that I was trying to park directly outside of the place I wanted to go. I couldn't even get a lousy parking spot! After moving in slightly expanding concentric circles for about 20 minutes I finally found a fairly horrible spot a few blocks away and was able to go about my business.
On Monday I went with Paul to Boston. I kinda forgot about that whole "Boston Marathon" thing that seemed to be happening that day. So Boston, which is already impossible to navigate with its plentiful one way streets and constantly changing traffic laws, became a nightmare. Even knowing where we had to go didn't help with runners and spectators blocking off all of the streets. Beacon street runs through Boston and all the surrounding communities. Beacon Street is one of the streets where the Boston Marathon goes through. Beacon Street is also the street Paul lives on. Bad times.
Today on the way home a guy stopped his car right at a V-shaped split in route 95. This happens all the time as someone can't change lanes and just gets stuck there. Today an 80 year old woman decided that she would come to a complete stop on route 95 (it's a pretty big highway, you might have heard of it) and let this person into traffic. Then she slowly sped up from 0-45 over the course of the next ten minutes on the way home. While a catastrophic pileup was avoided, a considerable traffic jam did build up behind us rather quickly.
I hadn't left the house for three days before today. I think I had the right idea.
Posted by chefelf @ 07:57 PM EST [Link] [8 People Love Me!]
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Yesterday afternoon I decided to make myself some pasta for lunch. Simple enough. I had learned how to do this in culinary school. 10:1 ratio of pasta to water, salt water, bring to a boil, add pasta, cook until tender, drain. Got it. As I sat in the other room I heard weird noises coming from the kitchen. I dismissed them at first thinking it was something flapping around since I'd opened the window. That turned out to be a fatal error.
When I entered the kitchen I found my stovetop engulfed in flames. In the center of the chaos was my pasta pot (which was by this point at a nice rolling boil I must say). What had happened was that a container that I kept on the stove top with sugar in it had melted partially, spilling highly flammable sugar straight into the burner on the stove. A thick, magma-like, flaming caramel was pouring all over the top of the stove and down the side like my own little Mount Vesuvius.
In a panic I ran over to the fridge and retrieved the fire extinguisher. After five or six long seconds of staring I realized that I didn't have the foggiest idea how to use the thing so I tossed it aside in favor of tap water. In a matter of seconds I had put the fire out leaving a bubbly caramel on my stove top with a heaping five pound mound of sugar on top, slowly pouring onto the floor. The carnage left in this incident's wake seemed unfixable so I just left it and had some crackers for lunch instead.
I know when to admit defeat.
Posted by chefelf @ 03:34 PM EST [Link] [23 People Love Me!]
Monday, April 7, 2003
This weekend was fun. We had dinner with some of Jen's nice friends and lunch with another of Jen's nice friends. It was extremely relaxing. The guy who sat next to me on the bus ride home slept like a fool the whole way home! He just lied there with his head against the glass, tongue hanging out, dead to the world! And I'll be damned if that son of a bitch didn't sleep for every second after we pulled out of the Port Authority in New York until we took the exit into Providence on the way home. A good three and a half to four hours straight!
See, I can't do that. I could never fall asleep on a shaky bouncy bus surrounded by sounds, smells and strangers. It's just the way I am. The way I always have been. My mind it too busy calculating the possible outcome of every insane scenario that could possibly occur on a bus ride. I was shockingly alert last night. So alert that I couldn't help but catch the jock sitting diagonally behind me who was making fun of me. As I took a bite out of my sandwich a quarter inch piece of lettuce came out with the meat and bread. This piece of lettuce dangled from my mouth for about a half second before I was able to coerce it into my mouth... a pretty standard happening when eating a sandwich. Mr. Jock Pretty-Boy-Thinks-He-Knows-About-Web-Design felt compelled after witnessing this to say: "Look at this fucking guy; he's got FOOD hanging out of his mouth!" This illicited a polite chuckle from the girl that he was obviously trying to impress with his insane and inaccurate ramblings about web design. He was a moron.
So at about 9:30 I got back to Providence. I got in my car and drove for about a mile before my car decided that being on was much less fun than being off and that ever turning back on would just not be something it was interested in. This lead me to have to call friends and get AAA to tow my car. So scrapped were the plans that I would make a lunch, do laundry or get anything done last night.
When the tow truck backed my truck into the lot for the garage the drive accidentally smashed into the back end of a parked Porshe, spraying millions of tiny shards of broken glass everywhere. Now not only was I faced with the undesirable task of calling my mechanic in the morning to explain to him why my truck was deposited there without warning, I also had to explain why one of the many valuable and expensive Porsches in his lot was without a back window.
So I got home about two hours later than expected and did nothing before bed but watch about twenty minutes of an E! True Hollywood Story about a porn star.
Surprisingly I was in very good spirits last night. I guess the rest of the weekend was worth the rather shitty ending.
Current Mood: Amused
Current Music: The Sweet Sounds of Microsoft Word
Posted by chefelf @ 01:03 PM EST [Link] [14 People Love Me!]
Thursday, April 3, 2003
This morning I played a game. It's the same game I play every morning. A game I've been playing since my pre teen years. I set my alarm for a half an hour before I have to wake up. Then I snooze three (3 [three] ) times. This allows me to wake up three times and the first two times are wonderful because I get to enjoy the fact that I can go back to sleep. The third time always sucks.
I can easily count to three. I know when it's been the third time but each and every morning when I roll over on the third sounding of my alarm I curse as the clock reveals what I already know. It reveals that it is now really time to get up.
This says something about my will to believe. I will always check on the third alarm. I will always cling to the shred of a hope that maybe, just maybe, I will get to sleep more.
I never learn.
I've been wanting a PDA badly lately. If there are any rich readers out there who'd like to send me an iPaq, and Axim, a Treo, or (preferably) a Sony Clie then email me for a shipping address.
This weekend I travel to New York City. I wish I had a PDA for the ride, but what is one to do? I will have to stick to the old fashioned sport of reading instead.
Posted by chefelf @ 09:17 PM EST [Link] [21 People Love Me!]
