Category: blood

Family, easy!

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a provider, a protector


It’s coming up on one heck of a storm here in Sunny California. The wind was blowing the spray from my tires sideways away from the car as I drove home from work, big poofed-up plumes of frenzied droplets floating on the gusts. It’s exciting, you know, when you’re all but sure a storm is brewing and you’ve got a nice warm sheltered hideaway from within which you can hole up and observe. Makes me feel safe, and somehow wise, as if the rigid walls and roof of a house I didn’t even build were extensions of my own arms, stretching out and wrapping tight around my family to spare them from the raging elements. A provider, a protector, someone whose work paid for the place that’s keeping you dry and warm. Yeah, I like storms. And, from what “they” say, this one’s gonna be a ribbon-taker, windy, rainy, and cold.

I say bring it on. After my blustery ride home, I was greeted by an empty house. Not so bad, says I. I put the iPod on shuffle and cranked it rather loud, but had to turn it down just a tad so I could hear the horizontal rain picking up speed outside (remember, it makes me feel strong and stuff?). And, even now, as Neil Young screeches out a live version of “Old Man,” I’m excited for the inky wet environment outside the window, and my brain is turning to those stormy-night ship fantasies I’ve written about before. Reclined in my quarters, nose spiced with pitch, stomach contents sloshing at rhythm with the sea, reading some mouldered book by the shifting light of a gimbaled oil lamp on the wall…

Let’s change the subject, before I start calling myself Ishmael and start looking for wrinkled brows and a crooked jaws…

When I was in Florida, my brother-in-law and I were watching TV, and the program on was “sponsored” by the “natural male enhancement” pill, Enzyte. Now, I’ve often wondered why Enzyte is the only “penis pill” that gets advertised in mainstream media. I mean, they have commercials during prime-time TV, a NASCAR sponsorship deal, and tons of print ads in respected circulars. And these aren’t your back-of-the-magazine Mangaian Tribe wiener pill adverts, either. These are real full-page ads that look like they were designed by paid graphic artists. Anyway, during each commercial break, there was an Enzyte commercial offering a thirty-day free trail of the herbal penis-bulking formula. Soon, I was joking with my brother-in-law that I should order them, take them for a month, and blog about what happens. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I even started thinking of funny post-accompanying graphics I could design to chart any “happenings” during my “trial.”

So, I did it.

And that, dear readers, means you should prepare yourself for a weekly Enzyte update here on sounds familiar. This way, you can accompany me while I add all sorts of unclassified and under-researched herbs and proprietary substances to my daily diet, and follow along with me as I analyze the witchcraft of the pills. Now, don’t think I haven’t realized that typing “Enzyte” this many times on my blog will be like lighting a massive signal fire to the penis-enlargement spam lobby, because, I have. But, I think there’s a chance for some funny writing here. And, c’mon people, it’s not like I actually need natural male enhancement or anything… as it’s well-established that I’m 110% OK in that arena of physical attributes. So anyway, here’s hoping it makes for some good blogging, and look for the first update soon!

Before I go, I found these two (one, the other) enthralling (to me) brief stories written by a guy about some of the crazier nights he had back in the underground after-hours clubs in an early-1980s NYC. I thought they were well-written, and very Tarantino-esque (fitting with the post Kill Bill high I’m still coming down from since seeing them again for the first time in a while). You should read the stories, they’re quite entertaining, and, whether truly non-fiction or not, pretty engrossing. And, man, that guy has really done some cool stuff… like burning down a crack house, or surviving a Blackhawk Down hail of bullets in Afghanistan. And, yeah, I think they’re true.

And, I hate to proselytize this early on, but did you guys see Obama’s “victory” speech after his Iowa caucus win last night? I thought it was brilliant. Watch it here, or read the transcript if you’re bookish like that. Thanks Iowa.

Goodnight.

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merry merry christmas y’all!


Merry merry Christmas y’all!

It’s Christmas Eve in Florida as I write, and the weather is wonderfully warm and just humid enough to make you skin feel tacky and soft. I love it. Today, Sharaun went Christmas Eve shopping, doing her part to clogging the retail arteries along with the throng of other last-minute folks. She enjoys the “rush,” she says. And, since I’d always rather sit at home and enjoy some vacation, that’s just what I did.

Sharaun’s folks got Keaton a little tricycle that has an extension-boom thing on the back you can push her with. She feels like she’s riding the bike while you push from behind, and she loves it. We took a “ride” down to the river and back, and then re-did the route on-foot since she wanted to stay outside. After that she sat with dad out on the back porch (what you Yankees call a “Florida room,” a semi-weather-proofed screened-in room) and colored in her Sesame Street coloring book while I surfed the internet. It was a good Christmas Eve.

And now, Keaton’s curled up in her Pack-‘n’-Play, waiting to hear reindeer on the roof, and we’re all sitting around watching TV like a good American family. I anticipate a fairly lowkey Christmas this year, Sharaun and I have already each exchanged our gifts-majeure, and what will be under the tree tomorrow morning (today, as you read this) is mostly smaller afterthoughts. As such, I plan to enjoy watching others open their gifts more than looking forward to more loot of my own.

I’m actually looking forward to a nice day with Sharaun’s family, and am in no hurry to get back to California.

Well now, having said nothing yet, I better go. See, as is with most Christmases lately, the (totally legal) music sites I frequent are doing their holiday season “free download” blitzes – so I’m wracking my brain to decide what I need that I don’t have, and am keeping the internet connection saturated. So, I’m off get that new Grateful Dead show.

Goodnight people, and I hope Santa brings you everything you were after. Merry Christmas.

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never long enough…


Still nursing your Turkey hangover? Unfortunately, one of the negative aspects of traveling to family for Thanksgiving is that you often have to return home without having enough time to enjoy a proper amount of leftovers. Half the reason I love Thanksgiving is because a plate of gravy-drenched stuffing almost always tastes better at 10pm the night after Thanksgiving than it ever did at the table the day before. Next time, I’m packing a backpack with dry ice and taking home some turkey, all the trimmings, and a couple slices of pie. But, we did have to leave, and now that we’re back home the trip seems like it really flew by. I guess it’s never long enough when you’re on vacation…

Walking through the airport today, I had a thought: What if I was stopped, just as I was at that moment, and asked to take a detailed for-insurance-purposes-like monetary inventory of the goods I was carrying. Naturally, I started ticking off items in my head. Laptop, two iPods (not typical, but I had them both on this trip), cash, clothes, miscellaneous electronic accessories, gold rings, and the clothes I was wearing. Doing some mental arithmetic, always off by bit at best when I’m the mentalist, I was surprised to come up with a total in the several thousands of dollars. To think that people like me are so blessed that, at any given time, they have thousands of dollars of goods on their person, while there are people in the world who won’t go through that in their lifetime. Not that thousands would necessarily make those folks any more happy, it’s just pretty amazing the amount of material “wealth” we have with us in general. I complain because my laptop bag is heavy and uncomfortable to carry around when it’s got two iPods, a book, my $200 headphones, and a couple AC adapters in it. Guess I should be thankful I’m not on my barefoot way back from the river with a yoke across my neck, two buckets of water hanging from each end.

Let’s change gears now, and talk about iPods again…

I have so much room now, with my new Classic, that I’m having a great time decided what “new” things I can put on my iPod. I’d basically topped off my 60GB with what I thought was pretty much the best limited-to-60GB collection of tunes I could muster. But now, I can expand that collection more than 100%. Worried that I’ll end up putting some “just OK” stuff on there, and potentially pepper the “Shuffle All” feature with bad tracks, I made myself a promise that I’ll prune and manage the quality of the the new device just as diligently as I did on the old one. For starters, I’m going to load the thing up with Beatles bootlegs. Having nearly 32GB of Beatlegs in my collection, I had decided to leave them off the old iPod altogether. But, I’ve always wished I had at least a sampling loaded, as I feel like I now under-listen to what used to be a super-important kind class of albums to me. Problem is, I need to be careful about how I treat Beatles bootlegs, and for that matter, bootleg recordings in general, on the iPod. Because I have so many, I want to make sure that, between the Beatles’ commercial and bootleg releases, my iPod doesn’t get skewed too heavily to the Beatles. So, I’ll do this intelligently.

  1. Modify the “genre” tag (the MP3’s ID3 tag) for all my Beatleg albums, making it read “Beatles bootleg”
  2. Using iTunes, sort the music on my iPod by genre, and make sure that all items in the “Beatles bootleg” genre are marked as “Skip when shuffling”
  3. Finally, in case I want to hear a shuffled mix of bootleg Beatles recordings, create a smart playlist which randomly grabs all songs in the “Beatles bootleg” genre
  4. Ta-da! I can now put thousands of illicit Beatles tracks on my ‘Pod, and not have to worry about overdosing on them during a “Shuffle Songs”

Well, sorry about all the iPod-themed entries of late… as you can see I’m having a little bit too good of a time configuring my new 160GB iPod Classic. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?

Thanks, and, see you back here Monday!

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happy thanksgiving!


Happy Thanksgiving y’allz! We woke up early today, and spent the morning waiting around for the cast of Sesame Street to show up on the Macy’s parade (for Keaton, you know). After that, Sharaun and I took Keaton down to play on the little playground near here, and we kicked back family-style and watched a movie while she took her afternoon nap. And now, we’ve just finished our early-afternoon repast. Paying homage to the escapists whom we credit with kicking off the grand tradition. Turkey and dressing, with sweet berry-relish things should your tastes run that way (most most definitely do not). Sweet-potatoes and green beans. Fresh bread and gravy atop it all. And that’s not even dessert. Yeah, it was a good meal.

Oh, and, I wrote a whole lot about buying a new iPod… but I decided to make that an entry of its own. You can read it here (or just below), and that way we keep this entry nice and simple. Y’know, stick to a theme…

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

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the hug voyeur


Still rainy and cold in Oregon, melancholy. I was supposed to do something with my brother last night, but he called and bailed after work. So, I stuck around my folks’ place and made a sandwich and a bowl of soup for dinner. A glamorous evening it was not. I thought about maybe going to see a movie, I’ve never gone to a movie by myself… could’ve been an interesting experience. But, in the end, I sat there on the couch with this laptop on my knee, oscillating between dozing and waking while the Grateful Dead station on Sirius played in the background.

Woke before the sun this morning to venture out into the frigid pre-morning and ride the train to the airport with my mom. And, after meeting up with Sharaun and Keaton, we hopped right back on for the reverse trip. Getting to the airport about a half and hour early, however, we had some time to sit around in the lounge area where people await their arriving friends and relatives. Sitting there, I found myself smiling as people leapt up to greet those coming from the terminal. Grandfathers beamed as little kids ran up to them, hugging their legs before being swept up into their arms. Fathers gripped and snatched up children two at a time. People whose faces said they may have been sisters shrieked and hugged while commenting on new haircuts and how good it was to see one another. It truly was a fun thing to sit and watch. Got me thinking, in fact, that someone could make a great short film of holiday airport receptions. Also got me thinking, I should totally do it. All you need to be a filmmaker these days is a camera and a PC anyway…

Movie or not, I decided that, if and when I ever become a solitary old man whose filled with bitterness, I’ll remedy the situation by going down the airport on the day before Thanksgiving, or Christmas Eve, and watching friends and family reunite. It really is a remedy for the I-me-mine mentality.

And… before I leave you. GetReligion, one of the best religion-focused blogs on the ‘net, has an interesting and well-rounded article on some recent changes made to the introduction to the Book of Mormon. I’ve been somewhat critical of the Latter Day Saints here on sounds familiar before, but this article is pretty well balanced. Read it up if you’re still hankering for some more writin’.

Until tomorrow, I hope you get safely where you’re going and into the arms of who you’ll be with this Thanksgiving. Peace.

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if i never work another day


Sunday in Hawaii. I debated over writing at all, labored over potentially ruining the “vibe” of the past couple days – but, in the end it seemed the right thing to do. I’m actually poolside now, committing that nerd’s sin of peering heads-down into my BlackBerry while vacation goes on around, and without, me. I don’t mind though, doing a quick lookaround I can see that I’m not the only technology-hobbled one here. But, I will use it as an excuse for brevity.

So, then, Hawaii: The trip here was a bit stressful, the flight long, the luggage plentiful and heavy, and the drive to the resort fraught with crawling traffic due to some roadside fire. However, the past two days have been nothing short of a relaxation goldmine. So much so that I find myself struggling to believe it’s actually been two days – time has been passing with a luxurious slowness, slipping by hour by blessedly long hour.

I sprung for a weekly rental rate on some snorkeling gear that first day, and am glad I did. Not but fifteen feet off the beach, which is not but a hundred feet from the room, the seafloor turns into a solid bed of coral. Stretching as far and wife as you can see are corals, crazy Discovery channel tropical fish, eels, turtles… It’s like swimming around in an episode of Nova. Now, Sharaun, who’s been snorkeling in Roatan, says that, despite how beautiful it is here, it’s not but a fraction of what she saw. It’s cool though, as we’re scheduled to do a “true” snorkeling trip Tuesday morning, and she expects I’ll be even more blown away then. I could go home happy just spending a few hours tooling around past the waves right here in front of the hotel. It really is something…

The week’s dancecard is filling up fast, with a luau and a dinner cruise, a snorkeling expedition and a “romantic” dinner, a trip ‘cross-island and glass after glass of overly-sweet rum-heavy drinks with slices of pineapple stuck to their rims. But still, I’ve managed to limit my wardrobe to a single pair of shorts and two shirts – and have worn nothing else save what I wear in the pool or waves (which is most of the day). I swear, if I never work another day…

There’s so much more I could write – but it seems pointless here when I could be doing nothing in the sunshine instead. Until later then.

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keaton gets the spirit


Today was our day at Disney, and let me just say that it was awesome. I haven’t been to the “Magic Kingdom” since graduating high school (it was our school-endorsed “sober” celebration), but have fond memories of the handful of times I’d been as a kid and young adult. Disney is a theme park done right: It’s clean, it runs like a well-oiled machine, and whatever you decide you may need or want never seems more than a short walk away.

The day was just about as hot as I believe physically possible. I was covered in a sheen of sweat from the moment we parked until the moment we un-parked, and, at times, the sweat poured off me in round droplets, plopping to the ground. My shirt clung moist to my back, and I sucked down water at each passing fountain. However, defying the many potential frustration factors: The stroller, the extra gear, and walking around in the ninth canto of Hell, we both actually sailed through the day with permanent smiles. We worked as a team, handing-off and taking turns and sharing, and the entire day was stress-free and enjoyable (a rarity for me, if you know how I can sometimes react to “doing things”).

Anyway, I got to thinking that I should really start learning to stomach walking around under the blazing sun – as I’ll be doing a week-solid of it come Monday when Anthony and I hit the Muir Trail.

Back to the story… Originally, I was unsure what, if any, enjoyment Keaton would be able to get out of the trip – still being a baby and all. Turns out, though, that she had a great time. Although we only stayed for little more than half the day, we were able to get on almost all my favorite rides. We hit Pirates, the Jungle Cruise, the Dumbo thing, Small World, and Peter Pan. Keaton absolutely loved It’s A Small World (yeah, I know it’s technically not supposed to be capitalized). In fact, her reaction was so awesome that I started tearing up watching her smile and clap and sing along nonsense words as she sat on my lap. She got a little scared on Pirates and the Dumbo ride, and seemed relatively indifferent on Peter Pan and the Jungle Cruise. By the end of the day, she was plum tuckered out – and wilted away into her stroller for our final walk down mainstreet to the monorail home.

Leaving, Sharaun said, “I feel like we had such a great ‘family day’ today, right?” And we did; it was awesome.

Tomorrow we fly home. I don’t look forward to the flight, but I am ready to get back to the homestead – even if briefly before the big hike.

Goodnight.