Giving It Up

(February 21 and 22)

This year I decided to give something up for Lent.  I've never attempted this seriously before, but being that there are more Catholics than non-Catholics in my extended family why not partake in Lent FTVLT?

I gave some thought of how extreme I wanted to go with this, for example, what about giving up meat?  That would mean no boiled dinner for St. Patrick's Day, and so that was right out.  The all-beer fast sounds interesting, but I'm going to have to pass.  Lisa Barone probably wants me to give up my blog.  Not gonna happen!  So, I settled on a compromise, and decided to forego pork for Lent.  And, before you criticize my selection, consider all the foods I'll be missing out on:

• Sal's pepperoni pizza
• Pork fried rice
• Ham and Swiss on rye
• Sam-gyeop-sal
• Sausage McGriddles
• Baby back ribs
• Penne with spicy Italian sausage
• Pork Chops with applesauce
• Pulled pork

and... most of all... come on folks, if you were paying attention to the link above...

Yup, just like J. Wilson and Jim Gaffigan, I'll definitely be craving me some bacon in a big way.  So, the day before Ash Wednesday I pigged out on bacon ;-)  I happened to have a pack and a half in the refrigerator and probably went through about one pack.  I didn't just eat it plain either; I wanted to test the notion of whether bacon makes everything taste better.  Do bacon-wrapped Chicken McNuggets taste better?  You betcha.  Bacon with peanut butter and banana in a wrap?  Naturally!

So, this Lent will really be a challenge:  Thursday's menu at the company cafeteria includes BBQ Pork Ribs and Pulled Pork sandwiches, as well as Cajun Gumbo with Andouille... I have to watch those ingredients carefully!


Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 22, 303 days remaining


The Immunity Syndrome  (Space amoeba!)
A Private Little War  (Mugato:  white ape thing.)
Return to Tomorrow  (A possessed, evil Spock was memorable.)
Patterns of Force  (The Nazi regime rises again.  On another planet.)

Video Mission Update: 51 / 728 hours = 7.0%

Blue 42

(February 20)

I'd like to thank the late Douglas Adams for providing meaning to the age I have turned this day; the age I will be  at EOTW.  42.  To celebrate, Angelica, Marcie and I hit the streets of Boston and took in Blue Man Group.

The show was an incredible rush and highly recommended.  The musical/dance portions are the real draw, of course, but on the lighter side they have a Twinkies "feast" sketch that goes something like this.

Food Forever

(February 19)

I worked out a birthday trip to Red Robin in Wilbraham.  They claim to be the "Best Gourmet Burger" makers, and who am I to disagree?  :-)  Joining me were the same crew from the Golden Corral adventure: Marcie and my parents.   I enjoyed my "Burning Hot Love" burger with its layers of spiciness from the bun to the patty.  (My system is still enjoying it the next day.)  Also, I would definitely recommend the onion ring tower with its tasty dipping sauces.  Good American fun.

(February 18)

To celebrate the 49th day of the year, Marcie and I tackled the daunting task of identifying all 49 flavors of Jelly Belly beans from the large container we received last Christmas.  Actually, most of the beans can be determined by color alone, but a few of the oranges and reds were not so easy to tell apart without tasting some.  Well, er -- a lot :-)

(February 16)

Kudos to the Chipotle iPhone app, which allowed me to place an order and skip the line at the store.  Love those burritos.  I also really like this bit of A/V magic Chipotle commissioned last year.

(February 15)

Girl Scout cookies are here!  I had a bit of a scare in that I thought Lemonades were not available, but it seems they were on one seller's list and not another's.  So, we have our Lemonades and Thin Mints for TLY, but I also wanted to try a new one:  Thank U Berry Munch.  Crunchy.  Berries.  Mmmm.



Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 19, 306 days remaining

Obsession  (SBD cloud)
Wolf in the Fold  (Scotty dunnit?)
The Trouble with Tribbles  (Does anyone NOT know this episode?)
The Gamesters of Triskelion  (Gladiator, Kirk-style)
A Piece of the Action  (Kirk and Spock are 'The Feds')

Video Mission Update: 47 / 728 hours = 6.5%

Sold two Blu-ray discs on Amazon Marketplace last week!


Sales Mission Update: 23.43 / $2500 = 0.9%

Red Robin

Food Mission Update: 2 / 20 restaurants = 10%

Da Boom

(February 17)

I'm not a follower of the animated series The Family Guy, but I do confess to own their parody trilogy of Star Wars!  I discovered they had an apocalypse parody episode, "Da Boom," and watched it through Netflix.  That was fun; I'll have to track down apocalypse episodes in other TV series...

I will simply direct you to the Wikipedia entry for a full summary, but suffice it to say it was a great episode.  A nuclear holocaust occurs at Y2K (remember when we were all hysterical about that date?)  The Griffin family find themselves quickly without food, thanks to Peter, and set off in search of a legendary Twinkies factory.  (Local flavor: the factory is in Natick.)

The episode also featured the very first appearance of Ernie the giant chicken as well as a surprise live-action ending sequence.  Stewie gets mutated and Randy Newman makes an annoying appearance.  Don't miss this one!

Valentine's Despair

(February 14)

In this year of the tragic ending I want to make sure my legions of devoted readers are aware of this most delightfully twisted take on life, labor and love: Despair, Inc.  This site has provided my colleagues and me with a lot of laughs over the years.

This year I finally ordered some Despair swag:  a desktop calendar and a tin of "BitterSweets," featuring 37 reasons that you might be dumped.  Why settle for ordinary Valentine's candy?

Oh yeah, the very best thing about Despair is what they have to say about blogging!  Yup, and according to the BitterSweets, blogging is a dumpable offense.  Sort of shows you where my life is at  ;-)

Keep on countin' 'em down!

Politics and Money

(February 11)

At some point this evening while driving around, I learned from the radio of Whitney Houston's passing and also discovered a Michael Smerconish talk show.  The discourse on the program interested me and later on I found articles online that suggest that he is very much like me politically:  a right-leaning independent.

(February 12)

In the personal finance arena, I have received a cell phone from my company, and now I am in the process of turning my older phone into a reseller for cash.  After a bit of research, I'm going with this company, Totem.

(February 13)

I began my next book, Endgame, which describes a global debt "supercycle" that is coming into the last act, the endgame, with not pretty consequences for many nations.  Basically, our choices at this point are between very bad and disastrous.  This sort of book scares me more than any Stephen King novel ever did.  While we're on the subject, a must-see film is I.O.U.S.A.

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 11, 314 days remaining

Friday's Child  (Bones is a Daddy!)
The Deadly Years  (Kirk is senile.)

Video Mission Update: 42 / 728 hours = 5.8%

Made a credit card payment!

Debt Mission Update: 2 / 11 payments = 18%

Androids

(February 10)

I sit down to reflect on the clear, warm weather we're having and decide to break out a bottle of Sam Adams Alpine Spring beer.  Let's stick a fork in this (non)winter!

I feel a bit reassured that robots and androids will not be the cause of EOTW; at least not androids of human making.  There just isn't time to invent them, unless some Japanese company has been holding out on us all and has a giant, secret warehouse of ready-to-ship androids.

Don't get me wrong, I love stories and movies about robots -- they're right up near the top of my list.  And I would support the development of androids -- ethical androids, of course.  We humans get closer to completing this quest each year.  It's too bad we are simply out of time.

This leads to our next classic Trek episode, "I, Mudd."  Harry Mudd returns from Season 1, and this time he is the "ruler" of a planet occupied by thousands of androids who originate from the Andromeda Galaxy and are keen on studying human beings and to serving them -- although the androids' notion of "service" includes keeping the humans confined to the planet.  This is tough on Harry, since on the one hand he especially enjoys the female models (technically 'gynoids,' but when's the last time you heard that word?), he also yearns for his freedom and tries to trap Kirk and gang into taking his place.

This episode was clearly comic in nature and I found myself hooked and LOL.  Perhaps one of the most hilarious (and bizarre) segments of any episode so far is in the last portion of this one:  the Enterprise crew really get to step out of their characters and act out nonsensical sketches in front of their robot captors in a coordinated effort to disrupt their logic circuits.  Kirk has an uncanny ability to set logic traps for artificial thinkers; a ploy he has used numerous times to date.

Oh, before I forget, I watched the pilot episode of NBC's The Firm yesterday, where I spotted Cylon "Number Six" (Tricia Helfer) in a new role.  Here's an interesting question:  is a cyborg a type of android?  Does it make a difference if the cyborg is predominantly machine, like The Terminator, which can function even if it sheds its organic exterior, or predominantly organic, like I, Robot's Del Spooner?

And, was Deckard a replicant?

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 10, 315 days remaining

I, Mudd  (500 Stellas...)
Metamorphosis  (When an energy being loves a man...)
Journey to Babel  (Aliens of all colors assemble!)

Video Mission Update: 40 / 728 hours = 5.5%

Surviving Doomsday

Last night I had a chance to watch a few hours of National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers, and I have just one thing to say: stop spreading misinformation that EOTW will be survivable!  :-)

Actually, many of the survivalist skills depicted on that program are simply good skills to learn, apocalypse or no apocalypse, so in reality I say:  more power to 'em.

As for me, on December 21, I'll probably drive somewhere with a nice view of the "fireworks," so to speak, and recline back with a Twinkie in one hand and a beer in the other.  I'll watch the sky burning through my panoramic sunroof, set to a little R.E.M.  Oh yeah, the beer will be cooled down by this $10 beverage cooler/warmer that I opened up today.

Speaking of Twinkies, it's fun to see how they are emblematic of non-perishable foods to have on hand post-apocalypse.  So says my Doomsday calendar on February 9 (I peeked), and so says Chevy:

P.S.  Sudden restaurant closing.  One branch of this place was just down the road from me.  They say that bankruptcy is the reason, but I think there's a doomsday conspiracy afoot...

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 8, 317 days remaining

Catspaw  (Every series has to have a Halloween episode.)

Video Mission Update: 37 / 728 hours = 5.1%

Happy Waitangi Day!

This is an interesting sounding name and it is a national holiday from New Zealand. To celebrate, I cooked up some New Zealand lamb rib chops and tried my hand at their "national dessert":  a meringue cake called pavlova.  I like instructional recipes like this one, where we learn the science behind the cooking.  (Which is why I was always a fan of Alton Brown's Good Eats.)  I can say for sure that my technique on baking pavlova needs much improvement, though the end result still tasted very nice.

Remember to celebrate these holidays FTVTL with a little extra zest.  Oh yeah, just  a reminder, we already celebrated the very last Christmas, in 2011.  Not trying to be a killjoy...

Super Bowl Sunday

At long last!  Sometimes it feels like two weeks take forever.  Today is going to be a day about football, and a BBQ feast from Firefly's in Marlborough.  As I am writing this well before the big game, I do not know the outcome, and so that cannot be reflected in this entry  :-)

Needless to say, it's fantastic when your team makes it to the Super Bowl, and we here in New England have been blessed these past 11 seasons to have a team that has reached the championship in 5 of them.  So, whatever the result of today's contest, it's been one hell of a ride, and it never gets old.

It's a great time to reflect on how the Patriots and Tom Brady got to where they are today.  Let's go back to the 2001 season and ask a few hypothetical questions.

What if Tom Brady, with 1:30 left and no timeouts in Super Bowl XXXVI, was instructed to take a knee and go to overtime?  Do the Rams, who were building momentum in the 4th quarter, win the game?

What if the Tuck Rule was not applied in the AFC Championship Game in the famous win in the snow against the Oakland Raiders?

Here's a real thought to ponder: What if Drew Bledsoe had not been injured that season?  One guy's take.

Winning football requires a lot of skill, to be certain, but also some fortuitous bounces of the ball.  The element of chance.  That is why in a game where most analysts are picking the Giants, I am not worried about the Pats chances to win.  Go Pats!!!

Contagion

(February 4)

There are many forms of destruction that may account for the EOTW, and over the course of the year, I'll take potshots at them all.  At least the ones I can think of!  (Use the comments to offer your own suggestions on how we meet our collective demise!)

Let's start with infectious disease.  Now, I'm probably more familiar with this fictional list than the mechanics of real epidemics.  I've read some solid books featuring epidemics:  The Stand, White Plague, The Andromeda Strain; and I've watched some scary movies: Outbreak, and today, Contagion.   Contagion did a pretty decent job depicting the challenges that would face our government, our medical establishment, and society itself in the face of a fast-moving epidemic.  We get a glimpse of how a random virus might transmit animal-to-human, and in this global community how easy it is to lose containment of an epidemic.  We learn about the term, 'R-nought', which describes the number of additional persons one infected individual will likely infect in turn.  The higher this number, the more virulent the strain and the more difficult to contain the epidemic.

Human history is marked with significant outbreaks of lethal diseases, such as the Black Death of the Middle Ages, or the H1N1 influenza epidemic of 1918-1920 that killed conservatively 3% of the world's population.  Yet, in the final analysis, and based upon my extremely limited knowledge of this subject, it seems to me that epidemics are all about percentages.  Yes, we could have a major outbreak, perhaps even this year, and such an outbreak would devastate many families and probably drastically change many entire communities forever; however, the percentages game favors our survival from one of these events in the long run.

In short, I'm not buying a pandemic as the final cause of EOTW.  Don't sleep any better, though, there are plenty of other catastrophes to discover!

I sign off with this fabulous quote from Contagion:  "Blogging is not writing; it's graffiti with punctuation."

Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 4, 321 days remaining

Mirror, Mirror  (Parallel universe with pirate version of Enterprise!)
The Apple  (Yup, they're going to find out what kids are soon enough.)
The Doomsday Machine  (Planet destroyer ... hey, this could be EOTW!)

Video Mission Update: 36 / 728 hours = 4.9%

Immortal Chaplains

(February 3)

Once again, I turned to Wikipedia to get some inspiration for today's posting by typing 'February 3' into the search box.  It really is very cool the results that come back for any given day, and this time one entry caught my eye in particular: the Four Chaplains.

There are many topics and persons in U.S. history (and even around the world) that I am familiar with by name, but do not know the substance of the story behind the name, and the Four Chaplains are an example.  How do I know about them?  Through my childhood hobby of philately.  Through postage stamps, we discover vignettes of people and events that are formative to the countries that issue those stamps.  Here's the stamp that I remembered and led me to read about the Four Chaplains today.

But, back to the main topic.  The story of the Four Chaplains is one of those timeless tales of human courage and sacrifice, and I feel rewarded knowing the true story behind the postage stamp.  And there's also the joy of discovering a thread that ties back into your own life: one of the four had attended Yale Divinity School, which I visited on several occasions as an undergraduate to sing with the Yale Glee Club.

I gave a small donation to The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation.

Before closing on this post, I want to ask you a Deliberately Difficult Question (DDQ):  If you were presented with a single ticket to escape doomsday, would you give that ticket away?  To whom might you give the ticket?

Groundhog Day

(February 2)

Punxsutawney Phil has spoken, FTVLT, although I thought of all winters this would be the one to be declared over!  So, last (recordbreaking) winter is declared an early Spring, and this year's non-winter will be long.  Go figure.

I decided that today I would learn about the history of Groundhog Day, something I've never done despite visiting Punxsutawney once earlier in my life.  One of the wonderful things about Wikipedia is that you can get a rich context on a subject just be clicking a few links.  In this way we can find out how Imbolc, Swithun, and Candlemas all factor into the historical context of weather prognostication: just click on the links from the Groundhog Day article.  Yes, sir, I've lost more than one afternoon just following an ever expanding tree of Wikipedia links.

BTW, if you've never seen Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, the summary which is also linked from the main Wikipedia article, do so before time's up.  Chances are none of us will ever be caught in a time loop until we get things right, but if you were given that extra time, what thing do you think you would need to fix?

Backfill

(February 1)

This evening I was in the vicinity, so I stepped into Wegman's in Northborough.  Crikey, what a place...  one giant half is the supermarket, and the other half is like an open market with food stations: sandwiches, pizza, bakery, deli, burritos, prepared foods, etc.  They even have an Asian buffet and cafe seating.  Am I the only person who cringes, ever so slightly, at the all out display of consumable goods?

(January 31)

One of my cube neighbors, the kind of person who likes organizing activities, you know the kind, asked me if I wanted to buy some squares, and I asked, "Are they lemon?"  "No!  Superbowl squares!"  So, I bought a $10 square which has different rules than the normal payout per quarter.  It has a payout for the first 15 score changes, plus payouts at each half.  I hope the Superbowl is a shootout!  Anyway, she was selling $1 and $5 squares too, so I bought in to those.  Remember, folks, we're talking about the Superbowl FTVLT, and I want to make some cash off of it.  :-)  Well, I'd rather have a Patriots win.

(January 30)

I had a chance to play Mario Kart Wii in the "Mirror Level" today, thanks to Marcie who is now far and away the best racer in the family :-)  The mirror level is unlocked when you win the gold cup in all events in the standard three levels, and Marcie has surpassed my profile to reach this status.  Mirror level means all of the courses are laid out as if viewed in a mirror, so left turns where right turns would normally be, etc. which is very fun when you are expecting a hard left turn and go smack into a wall.  Heh heh.

(January 21)

Among the many, many things that my eyes were opened to in Korea was the world of spicy ramen.  Here in the States I don't eat it nearly as often as I did then, and today I just had to have a fix.  I tried a pack of An Sung Tang Myun.  Worked for me!

(January 20)

I went fishing on Wikipedia for an idea by searching on January 20.  This led me to learn about poles of inaccessibility -- points on land that are geographically the farthest from the coast.  The North American pole of inaccessibility is in South Dakota, and if the EOTW is due to massive tsunamis from the oceans, I'd advise heading there.

(January 19)

I ordered some company swag from our corporate store.

(January 18)

Stopped at Julio's Liquors -- that place is impressive!  I'm no connoisseur of alcohol by any stretch, but I enjoy a beer or a glass of wine every once in awhile.  I decided for TLY that I would explore some Pinot Noir, again which I am not qualified to judge, but which is a worthy variety for the occasion.  So, I picked up four different bottles of California Pinot Noir.

(January 17)

I created a public Google calendar titled "Tom's 2012 Bucket List," on which I'll eventually post all my 1s.  And maybe plan ahead a bit.