Missing the Point

When making a recent ThinkGeek order, I noticed they had these OpenX package opening gadgets for pretty cheap (like $2 or $3) so I got one. It's for opening those horrible plastic clamshell packages that won't tear and then cut the shit out of your hands when you do get them halfway open.

So I was pretty surprised when I got the gadget and it was packaged in one of those horrible plastic fused clamshells. What were they thinking?


I would like a bit more of an apology - instead they're actually kind of smug:


Oh well. If I ever get it open I'll let you know how it works.

The ThinkGeek order, by the way, was inspired by their April 1 newsletter, which is always awesome. Check out this year's version at http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/2008.shtml

Magically Delicious

My parents didn't let me have crap cereals. We would beg and beg, but no go.

Mom did let us pick out cereal at the grocery store but there was some rule that we had to find ones that didn't have sugar as the first ingredient. (Although, looking back, I can't believe those existed, so it must have been sugar as the first or second ingredient.) Sucrose and corn syrup and all that stuff count as sugar too, of course. Somehow, King Vitamin and Frosted Flakes passed, but no Frankenberry or Fruit Loops or Coco Puffs.

That last bit might have had something to do with the fact that my dad liked Frosted Flakes....

So I had to learn about sugar cereals in college. The dining center had these huge bins of breakfast cereal available at every meal. (I remember a bet at my table once that you couldn't distinguish different colored Fruit Loops by flavor.) That was how I discovered Lucky Charms.

I really like Lucky Charms. They're oaty and sweet. Not too sweet. And they have two flavors that you alternate back and forth: oaty cereal and sweet marshmallows.

In college I learned the marshmallow trick. I never liked Lucky Charms much because the dehydrated marshmallows were chalky and squeaked on my teeth. In college I discovered that if you made sure to get the marshmallows all wet right away, they soften up and don't scrape your teeth so much.

The marshmallow shapes have got totally out of hand, though. When I was a kid they had "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers." Then in a media blitz they introduced a new marshmallow: blue diamonds. Soon it was "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, and purple horseshoes!" Then they realized they could do "special editions" with different marshmallows. Now the marshmallows are all multicolored (new technology from a few years ago), and much bigger than the originals. Of course, Wikipedia has an exhaustive article on Lucky Charms' "marbits" through history....

As an adult, I buy Lucky Charms every few months. Whenever I open the cereal cabinet not knowing what I want, I see it and get all enthusiastic about having Lucky Charms. I don't know why. But you have to go for those small moments of joy.

There is one thing I never understood. The oat cereal pieces are shaped exactly like dry cat food. Does General Mills make cat kibble too?

Creepy Products I Have Known

Better Than Ears

I found these at a grocery store years ago. They're supposed to replace the boiled pig ears that you can buy in huge bags to feed your dogs (which are another creepy product themselves). Which is worse, ears or pseudo-ears?

But you get 50% more free!




Wee Block

I'd heard of these when I was with two new moms who were talking about baby products you shouldn't buy because they were stupid. This is a cup-shaped sponge you put over your baby boy's weenie while changing him so he can't squirt urine very far when the diaper is off. I'd never seen one for real so when I was shopping at a local baby superstore (site of a relative's shower registry) I sought this one out.

The other one I heard of had a better name: "the pee-pee teepee"

But the "tinkle tinkle lil' star" embroidery is a creepy touch....

Resurrection Eggs

This was in the Easter section of the Mississippi Sprawl-Mart where we went to buy camping supplies. (I held out on buying stuff there as long as possible, but when you're stranded in the south and on a time budget it's difficult....)

These are plastic eggs with mysterious symbols inside that somehow are supposed to teach the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.

Yeah, we're really supposed to believe that this kid is happy to find a bloody crown of thorns in that egg instead of a chocolate?

Over 1 million sold!

Oops! Disposable Panties

Almost forgot the creepiest one: emergency panties.

"Ideal for camping and travelling[sic]!" it says. (Actually, I've seen normal undies at way less than $2/each, and since this two-pack cost $3.99, I think the cotton still wins out.)

"Keep a pack handy for those Heavy Flow days!"

It could have been worse - I found these in a hotel gift shop (where I suppose I was buying "emergency" hosiery, since I was getting a foot blister and the drugstore was several more blocks away), not in a nightclub toilet or highway rest area.

They're ingeniously packed into a compressed disc about 2" diameter and less than an inch high. And the sizing? "Free size," it says. But not so free as you could be.

Statistically Improbably Phrases

My best one for this week:

"That's a cross-check, you piece of poo."

According to Amazon.com, "Statistically Improbable Phrases" are phrases that occur in the text of one book but not very frequently in other books. The phrases don't have to be rare in that particular book, just in books in general.

Which kind of makes sense, because I'm pretty sure I've said something close to that before. But hey, it was a 3 p.m. game. You have to tone it down.

P.S. Here's everything you need to know about hockey penalties

Classy Leftovers

My dinner from a couple weeks ago - all out of the fridge and reheated in about 10 minutes prep time. My beau started the Japanese cooking experiment a few weeks back, and it's getting pretty good.

Clockwise, we have: plain rice; a miso-based soup with mushrooms, tofu, and fresh watercress; and pickled cabbage (two colors). The green stuff sticking out of the pickles is kombu. (And it's probably been used three times before it went into the pickles, because kombu gets recycled a lot in this cuisine.)

The inspiration was the book Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh. A friend gave it to us for Christmas last year. So the beau finally cracked it open, studied up, made lists, and we headed out for ingredients.

It turns out, Japanese home cooking is pretty complicated. The food is simple, but you have to make all these broths and such from scratch. There were some misfires in the beginning - I think he accidentally skipped a step where you leave the broth overnight and then take half the ingredients out before adding the soup ingredients - but even the mistakes weren't too bad.

We did get props from the clerk at the local Japanese food store. She saw the dried anchovies, asian mushrooms, and fresh yuzu (which were like $7! are they ever in season?) and said "what are you making?" We explained we were learning to cook Japanese food. As she rang up the large bag of flaked bonito, she said "This is good. The young people don't use this any more, they just use the powdered dashi."

I have to say, after seeing how long it took to make dashi from scratch (not to mention smelling that bag of bonito when it was opened), I can understand that!

And I finally tried umeboshi, which is one of those Japanese foods that foreigners aren't expected to like. Ume are a small fruit that's like a plum. They're pickled in salt. So the result is salty and sour and pretty intense. Here's how it went:

• Umeboshi 1: Uh, eeew. Ack. Whoah. But the saltyness is kind of nice with my head cold.


• Umeboshi 2 (days later): That's not as salty as I remember.


• Umeboshi 3: Mmm, umeboshi!

Knee Update

Greetings from week 11.

Turns out I did get to walk at my four-week appointment, but it was seven days before Christmas when that happened and I was just too busy to blog about it.

Or take pictures. These are from week 9, and it's been looking pretty normal as far as musculature goes. I should have got some pictures at four or five weeks when the thigh was all skinny and caved in on the sides. I stepped on the scale at some point and I had lost about six pounds. I am pretty sure I didn't have a huge fat loss by lying on my couch for five weeks eating peanut butter sandwiches and Chef Boyardee ravioli for five weeks!

So, back on December 18 I went to see my doctor. My surgeon, who is known even among surgeons for being brusque, breezed into the room with his fellows and put me through the paces: Show me your quad set, show me your heel slide, show me a straight leg raise. I guess I did everything right, because he basically pronounced me healed. He said to stop using the brace completely, go to 100% weight bearing, and use the crutches for another week or so. And I could bend my knee as far as I wanted.

It was actually pretty weird, because I walked in to the doctor visit feeling all disabled, trying not to put any significant weight on my leg and worrying about overflexing my knee and busting out the stitches - and then an hour later I was supposed to walk out not worrying about that stuff? I sat in the room for a little while thinking about that and then decided to put the brace back on to walk out. After all, it would be troublesome to carry it. And I ended up wearing it for a few more hours, because I wanted to go out to Ikea and I only had one stocking on, and that would just have been weird without the brace for context.

The MD also said the next two months would be when I did my most intense physical therapy. Too bad my insurance only covers 15 visits per calendar year! On the bright side, I got to go two or three times a week in December. But I've been doing pretty well with once a week in the PT gym and lots of homework. It takes about an hour to get through all my home exercises, and I do that twice a day (occasionally feeling guilty because I'm not doing three sets a day). It's pretty annoying that it takes me an extra hour now to get out of the house after I get up.

So, a lot of things work now. Going up stairs is okay; going down stairs is a little harder but not too bad. I can walk almost as much as I want - a few weeks ago my knee started aching after walking in the park for 45 minutes, but I haven't tried anything like that since.

Still forbidden: running, jumping, mountain biking, falling, and any activity that could result in an unplanned descent. Road biking in a controlled environment I could probably do, but I haven't tried it yet. I might try climbing on a top-rope too, if I get a sports jones before the weather gets nice.

Oh, and limping, limping has always been forbidden. Apparently it's hard to retrain a limp, so they really want you to walk normally. Which I still don't do 100%, but I try hard!

So now I'm just impatient. I feel okay, but I have to keep doing PT. I have to do all these boring exercise but I'm not allowed to do fun sports. Sucks. But I have to be good if I want to play outside this summer....

I hate cats...

But this, I like.

The Return of the King

King amazed the world when on November 2nd, seven days after awaking from a 30-year coma, he showed up to vote in the 2000 presidential election. He was turned away due to voting irregularities.
- The Boondocks

I'm rewatching the Boondocks animated show episode The Return of the King. They seem to play it every year around the King holiday. It's f'king brilliant.

In the episode, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was injured in the 1968 assassination attempt, but survives to wake up from a coma in 2000. Despite his discomfort with modern "urban" culture, everything goes moderately well for him - until September 2001, when he says on a talk show that we should love our enemies and turn the other cheek. Shunned as unAmerican, he ends up staying with the Freeman family, where Huey encourages him to restart his activist career.

Partly it's cutting social commentary, and partly it's funny to hear King say things like "I'm staying at a Holiday Inn Express. I feel smarter already."

How I spent my Winter Vacation

Winter Classic post-game revelry Originally uploaded by erink

Or, outdoor hockey is a really good reason to visit Buffalo in January.

The game was great. It was hard to follow the action (we could hardly hear the announcements and the video screen was on the opposite side from the rink for us), but I'll get to watch it on my TiVo later. It wasn't too cold, but I was getting a bit wet by the end - somehow, it only stopped snowing during the period breaks. The snow was pretty. Score-wise, it couldn't have gone better - Crosby wins in the last round of a shootout? Unbelievable.

We sat in a section that was mostly Penguins fans - I used our season ticket holder code when I ordered them, so I expected that. But the guy next to me was a Sabres fan, and he was a real jewel - kept saying the players should break more guys' legs and threatening to "come up there and fuck up" the guy behind him when he heckled back. He quieted down after a while - apparently he had snuck in beer in in his pants but he somehow lost all but one can on the way in.

The "title sponsor" was this Amp energy drink (which I don't think I'd ever heard of before - but after a poor experience with guarana in the 90s I haven't really followed the energy drink market). But we saw an Amp Energy Airstream trailer on the highway home, which gains style points in my book, and they played this awesome ad on the stadium screen a few times:



The Sabres goalie is Ryan Miller, who's played very well (but lost) both times we've matched up this season. Judging by fan jerseys, he's pretty popular. The Kings man is former Pens goalie J-S Aubin, nice to see him again.

Another moment at the game was when a Pens fan was coming back to his seat. He yelled to his buddy from the aisle: "I went looking for Superbowl trophies and I couldn't find any!"

Back to the arena on Saturday (we sold our tickets for the 3rd). It won't be the same, but my toes will be warmer!

Waterfront Views...

Pittsburgh has the reputation of being stodgy, but actually it's changing all the time. Like today. Where we once had a road, now we have a pretty little canal.

The Tenth Street Bypass by Lake Fong 

(copyright 2007 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

This is the Tenth Street Bypass, which parallels the - uh, Allegheny? river (a true Pittsburgher never knows the names of any streets, why should rivers be any different). The baseball park is just across the real river, which is on the right in the photo. 

This street is low. And sometimes when it's wet, it floods. It's got these nice walls on either side, and that dip at the bottom. They call it the "bathtub".

You don't think a lot about floods when you live here, although we had a few really destructive ones about three years back. Most of the housing is not along the riverside, because that was used for industry, and people generally lived up the hills a bit. But every few weeks when there's a heavy rain, you'll hear on the traffic reports that the Mon Wharf is closed to parking. That's because the Mon Wharf is a little parking lot that is basically on the riverbank. The river goes up a few feet, it floods. No big deal. People usually move their cars if there's an unexpected storm. Not always. The first time I ever parked there, there was sludge and puddles on the pavement, and it was only after I got back that I put the two things together. (But I felt pretty safe, because my office building at the time looked out onto that river. I always thought that company should rig webcams for the people who worked across town.)

I also remember a strange incident when I was a child. My family was parking downtown, in a parking garage. Dad drove down a ramp, and at the other end, there was a lake. He acted like it wasn't a big deal, which was kind of confusing at the time, but was probably exactly how I would act today.  You just turn the car around.  We decided to park on a higher floor.

At any rate, back to today's flood. I almost never drive on this road, because it only connects downtown to the highways to the south suburbs. It's not for my people. But it is scenic, at times.

Online Shopping - A View from 40 Years Ago

Sweet. How do I get that "counterpart console" where the husband pays for the things I pick out?



Some more info about this video is on Snopes at http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/year1999.asp

Six More Weeks of Winter

Tuesday morning I went to my follow-up doctor visit. They took out some stitches and took x-rays and re-fitted my brace. I get to bend my knee now! I get to shower, and I get to take off my brace to do exercises and to sleep.

The only down side is I still can't put weight on my left leg - and that won't change until I see the MD in three weeks! Ack!

The really big problem with only having one leg that is I can't carry anything, except in a bag or a backpack. A cup of coffee and bowl of cereal don't fit in a bag or backpack. Making food is like doing ballet, because I can only move food as far as I can reach by leaning. If my beau's not home, I only get to eat in the kitchen. No coffee at the computer. No dinner in front of the TV. Luckily, my kitchen workspace is relatively cramped: about three feet between the fridge and the sink/island/breakfast bar, and four or five between the stove/microwave/toaster counter and the island.

So making the morning coffee goes something like this:

• Hobble over to the coffeemaker and set the crutches down carefully so they won't slide onto the floor.


• Lean over to the sink across the way to get the coffeepot out of the draining rack.


• Grind coffee and put it in the filter. Set the pot in the coffeemaker.


• Lean over to the sink counter to get the Brita pitcher.


• Pour in water and push the button to make coffee.


• Get a coffee cup out of the cabinet. (This is the part where I'm really happy I decided to store the coffee cups all in the tiny cabinet over the coffeemaker.) Pour coffee.


• Lean over to the sink counter again and set the coffee down as far to the middle as possible.


• Pick up crutches. Hobble around to the other side of the counter where the barstools are.


• Stretch over the counter and get the coffee from the other side. Sit and drink and rest.

Apparently the big deal is the meniscus repair. Ten years ago I didn't have anything done to my meniscus, so I was able to start walking a bit the second week. The P.A. I saw Tuesday said I could put up to 30 pounds on my leg. I measured 30 lbs with my bathroom scale and it's nothing. I didn't mention to her the two times I slipped and weighted my foot a little by accident (both Saturday, once at the hockey game and once on the way home). Hopefully nothing bad came of it...

Also I can't drive, because I can't step on a clutch, and we don't have any cars without a clutch! (Actually, I don't have a fit car at all just now, but that's another story....) But I can't push a grocery cart or carry anything either once I get somewhere, so it's just as well! Hello Amazon Christmas shopping!

PT at the gym starts next week!

*NIX humor

In honor of my temporary return to my former employer, which makes Linux things.

Really, it's funny. Trust me.

Once more into the breach

Before and after photos of my latest project:

11/18/2007

11/20/2007

The after photo looks a little more gruesome than it is; there is a discernable kneecap under there, just the photo doesn't show it very well because it's on the inside.

Yes, I jacked up my knee playing Ultimate again. This is the other knee, I jacked up my right knee playing Ultimate ten years ago and got it fixed, then played for ten years until this July. Ironically, my mantra for Summer League this year was "it'll grow back." Twisted ankle? Wonky hamstring? It'll grow back, probably before our next game. Well, as it turns out, not everything grows back.

This injury was much more glorious than the last time. This time, I was open in the end zone, and trying to catch a long throw that was coming down at a weird angle. My defender was back at mid field, and one of her teammates peeled off his man to cover me. We both went up for the disc, and we knocked together. And then I screamed like a soprano (this part was not very glorious) and my knee hurt a lot for a minute, and then it didn't hurt any more. I only wish I had caught the disc and scored.

I was a spectator for the last few Summer League games, and limped through Pennsic a week later, but felt pretty good by the end of the week. Then for the next three months, things pretty much stayed the same. I was doing PT exercises every day and I could walk as much as I wanted, but I had trouble going down stairs (or stepping off a bus) and although I got some rail-trail bike riding in, I couldn't do any other sports. My knee was sore every day.

The doctors diagnosed a completely torn ACL and a tear in the meniscal cartilage. I think it might be the miniscal tear that gave me so much trouble - when I messed up my other knee, I didn't do much damage to the meniscus, and I remember my knee being pretty normal after the first few weeks. Not this time.

I was interested to see if the surgical technology had changed in 10 years. Turns out, it hasn't changed very noticeably. I'm sure it's progressed, but the major outline is the same.

There are three main options for replacement ACLs: patellar tendon, hamstring tendon, and cadaver graft (more euphemistically called an allograft). When my first friend had an ACL repair (in the late 80s or early 90s), he had a hamstring tendon, which was the new thing at the time and they thought it would replace patellar tendon. Well, it didn't, and they still use all three. My surgeon said they all have benefits and drawbacks. The patellar tendon leaves a bigger scar (which is almost a benefit to me, since I think I should have something to show for my trouble) and has the risk of persistent front-knee pain. The allograft has a slight risk of disease transmission, but recovery is faster (no graft site to rehab) and they get to choose a graft instead of having to use whatever they find in your leg.

When I had my right knee done in the late 90s, they used a hamstring tendon. It worked pretty well, but the graft site was very painful and to this day, that hamstring muscle is weaker than it should be (it's noticeably weaker than the other, and it occasionally cramps under stress). My surgeon was inclined to use the hamstring again, because it had worked well in my right knee, but I easily talked him into an allograft. An Ultimate player friend of mine recently had a knee re-done with an allograft and said it was the way to go.

Of course, as soon as I decided my mom told me a story about a childhood friend of mine who almost died from a bad allograft...something about a bad donor that made a bunch of people sick. She didn't have any data to back it up, though.

Anyway, I have a plenty big scar now because the meniscus repair is a separate 3" incision. I'm happy to have it, because they weren't sure they would be able to do anything with the meniscus but they ended up repairing it.

I did have something new: the anesthesiologist did a nerve block in my leg before the procedure. It's supposed to help with pain the first day, and it did. Of course, it wore off in the middle of the night, but the anesthesiologist told me to expect that so it wasn't a big deal. I also had a cryo-cuff this time around, which they had 10 years ago but my HMO wouldn't pay for it. It's a nylon thing that goes around your knee and fills with ice water. Pretty spiff. And I have different drugs this time, oxycodone for pain (I hardly took any because it didn't hurt much) plus an antibiotic every six hours for like forever (6 days!), plus they have me taking two tylenol and two ibuprofen together every eight hours - supposedly for inflammation more than pain. I also got an anti-nausea drug before anesthesia, since it tends to make me puke. No puking this time!

So I'm hanging out in my TV room and Jake is bringing me food every few hours. I can't bend my leg (except doing exercises), which is annoying, and I don't get to shower until next week. I don't know why everyone says sponge baths are sexy...I guess I need a hot nurse and less self-respect. I missed one hockey game but plan to go on Saturday (not sure how I'm going to fit in a seat, but we'll figure something out). It take three minutes to go to the bathroom, and hands and armpits are really not suited for locomotion. I probably can't wear normal pants until the brace is off (four weeks or so), but I ordered $50 worth of cool thigh-high socks and legwarmers! I can't even be tempted to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

And I'm catching up on blog posts...more later!

More random crap I saw downtown

Part 1: Accessories for the modern wooden man?

Part 2: Because everything is better fried....

That time of year...

Safety and Convenience

Old office buildings rock!

My new favorite website

"Jikatabiya.com's English site is under construction. But this can use a little. If you hope old version, click here.
Please visit here in another day. You will find something change."

http://jikatabiya.com/indexe.html

I think machine translation would be more accurate. But this is lots of fun:

Spike Jikatabi is for workers in forest,
mountain, or any other tilt ground.
But nowadays, They are used for gardening, Afforestation,
& for The Earth.

They're like little, accidental poems.

Jikatabi is Japanese footwear.
So, their strainge Metal fittings
"HAZE" is disliked from foreign peaple and young japanese.
Velcro solved this problem.

NEW!
Jikatabi in colors
Many people wants them.
To Fashon, To Dance,
To Sports Training!!

Holy cow, I'm wearing Bermuda shorts.

Kennywood Memories (for a small price)

Every now and then I run a "Kennywood" search on eBay, and the last time it turned up this. Wow.



When I was a kid, Kennywood Park had these Peanuts themed height signs. If you were as tall as Linus you could ride some rides, mainly the kiddie rides. Then I think Lucy or Snoopy was the intermediate level, and Charlie Brown was the tallest height limit. I think you can see in the photo that it says if you're that tall you can ride the Thunderbolt - that was always the most advanced ride in the park.

After the Peanuts signs they used signs with Kenny the Kangaroo. There's one of those up from this seller too. I also vaguely remember another height sign, it was a boy and I think it looked like Howdy Doody - I don't think it was him, just some redhead with a cap or something. But I did almost all my measurement on the Peanuts signs.

I didn't go on the Thunderbolt until I was about 15, though. I was way taller than Charlie Brown by then, I just thought it was scary.

Since I moved to a different neighborhood two years ago, the right way to go to the Homestead Waterfront shopping area is to go over the Rankin Bridge. As a kid the only reason I went through Braddock and over that bridge was to go to Kennywood. Even now I think of it as the Kennywood bridge. At the end there was a big yellow Kennywood sign pointing left. Same as the small wooden signs you would see all around the city directing you to the park.

I would love to have the Charlie Brown, but it's probably not a $2000 investment for me. Maybe not for other people either, since it didn't sell the first time it was listed. I wonder if I can find an old Kennywood direction sign for a more reasonable price....

Seller's other items:
http://myworld.ebay.com/djcuffin/

Here's a great Kennywood tribute page with lots of old stuff:
http://piacasdad.tripod.com/id84.html

Avatar Sociology 101

NPR has discovered online avatars: Alter Egos in a Virtual World
The story is a little cursory, but it has its moments.

Like the bit about the woman who made her City of Heroes avatar "the biggest, blackest guy I could find" and found out that her fellow players gave her a lot more respect and less lip than when she played with a female avatar. I'm fascinated because it's like a controlled experiment on how people automatically discount what women say just because of how they look.

It makes me wonder about men who use female avatars. Do they think that people discount what they say and do, or are they just too busy staring at their character's boobies to notice? Or do they get caught up in "acting like a girl" and think that's part of the fun? Apparently it's hard for people with privilege to see discrimination even when it's directed at them.

There's also a picture in the story of significantly disabled man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy who plays Star Wars Galaxies as a mysterious, armored (possibly robotic?) fighter. His online avatar is ironically like his real body, except that it's hard metal that hides the avatar to its eyes instead of twisted, immobile flesh encased in medical equipment. Online gaming is a unique social interaction for him, the player says, because he gets treated like an average person online.

This wasn't a new concept for me, but I still feel I should apologize for my somewhat uncharitable reaction: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Our Quarterback Throws Like A Girl

A passion flower I photographed at the Pittsburgh Zoo a few weeks ago. I'm posting it in honor of the Pittsburgh Passion football team, which just finished off its undefeated season with a blowout 32-0 championship game against the Columbus Comets to win the National Women's Football Association title.

I'm really no football fan at all - actually I think football is kind of silly - but I think it's pretty cool that people were interested and committed enough to start and support a professional women's football team around here. Chicks should be able to play football if they want to.

And any time my local team can totally crush the teams from the rest of the league, well, that's worth noting.

Rock on, ladies.

News about the championship: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07203/803626-66.stm
Team website: http://www.pittsburghpassion.com/
They really do sell a bumper sticker that says that: http://www.cafepress.com/pghpassion.38081973

Snap Down Only To Eat Child

Snap Down Only To Eat Child
Originally uploaded by erink

Parked next to this in the Home Despot lot the other day.

Phase One: Snap Down Seat. ...

No iPhone? No Problem!

Today's Post-Gazette brings us a detailed story on how inmates at the Allegheny County Jail use their toilets as a telephone system.

Clever little hoodlums, eh?

Here is the Post-Gazette's fabulous explanatory graphic. I bet the artists fought over this assignment.



I especially like the person at the bottom of the picture who is lounging comfortably and listening to his toilet.

Read the rest of the story at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07179/797810-85.stm. (It's worth clicking through just for the potty puns in the headlines.)

Been There, Done That

Or maybe Been There, Been That. If I do say so myself.... This is an Australian comedy band named Tripod; you can download their album from iTunes (or buy it on Amazon for three times more).

P.S. Definitely Spiderman.

Eat'n Park Goes Smoke Free

Smiley
Originally uploaded by erink

After a court ruling ended our 12 hours of smoke-free bars and restaurants in Allegheny County, I was bummed. But now I have hope. One of the biggest regional family restaurant chains has voluntarily gone smoke-free.

Eat'n Park is a Pittsburgh institution. It has good breakfasts and huge salad/brunch bars and some locations are open 24 hours. They have nice blueberry pancakes and this amazing thing called "grilled stickies."

The smoking ban apparently affects 68 restaurants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. They also have restaurants in Ohio, where there is a statewide smoking ban. They serve 350,000 customers a week in southwestern PA.

I'm not sure where all the pouting teenagers will spend their weekend nights now, but I'm sure some of the waitstaff is not mourning their business.

I went in specifically today to buy baked goods because I thought I should reward them with some business. I realized that I haven't sat in the left side of the Squirrel Hill restaurant in about 20 years. Once they get it cleaned up I'll have to try that.

Here's their press release. http://www.eatnpark.com/newsDetail.asp?NewsID=117
And more info about the county smoking ban: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07143/788180-85.stm

What's Up

In the absence of actual inspiration, here's a random sampling of what I've been up to recently.

Reading Sandman.

I'm finally reading the Sandman comic series, for the first time. Yes, even though I collected comics all through the 80's and 90's I never managed to read Sandman. I don't know why, maybe because it was a DC book and I was a Marvel girl; it was expensive and I was cheap; it was pretentious and I favored mutant super heroes in primary-colored costumes. I picked up a bunch of the collected books at Pittsburgh Comicon and I've got through the first few now and ordered more from Amazon. It's keen.

Wearing Geta.


I bought a pair of these traditional Japanese sandals in San Francisco on a recent trip, and now I'm practicing wearing them so I can wear them with my Japanese outfits at Pennsic in August.

These are a bit big for me, but I was happy to find them at a reasonable price ($12) since I'll never get around to making any myself.

Running.

I'm in the worst shape I can remember, and without an ultimate frisbee team to whip me into shape I'm on my own. I have two more out-of-shape buddies and we've been guilt tripping each other into running a few times a week. Last night was the least horrible, and it actually was quite pleasant, but the other three times I was sucking wind big time.

Feeling Lush-ous.

I ordered some of these froofy natural-handmade-boutique skin care products from Lush. No bath bombs (I don't remember having a bath in my adult life), but I was intrigued by the solid shampoo and I ended up also getting a pretty soap and a facial scrub and a moisturizer. True to form, I chose the one moisturizer designed for men. The face scrub and moisturizer feel a little oily but they seem to be working out.

Ironically, I've been getting Lush catalogs since I moved (the previous homeowners apparently were fans), but it all seemed too neo-hippie pretentious until I heard actual People Who I Can Vouch For As Reasonable Folks gushing over their products.

Thinking about Buying a Mac.

The idea of switching teams is kind of scary, but I do need a new laptop, and they just seem like less work and more fun. They're big and heavy (same size as my 6-year-old Sony Vaio) and they have a funny shaped screen, but I hear they can run all the apps I need now....

Meeting Chewbacca.

At the aforementioned Pittsburgh Comicon, Peter Mayhew was one of the guests. Not that he has anything to do with comics, but hey, maybe I wouldn't have gone if he wasn't there. I paid $20 for an autographed photo, which is silly, but whatever. He seemed like a swell guy.

He told a nice story about playing Chewbacca in Revenge of the Sith. Of course since it was 20 years later they'd improved on the original Chewbacca costume, and they'd added all these robotic/remote control elements in the head and face. So they had puppeteers running facial expressions for all of the Wookies, and Mayhew said the whole time they were running film all he could hear was the whirring and buzzing of the robotics. They finish up their action scenes and they go to shoot the close-ups with Chewbacca. They start shooting and all of a sudden the motors stop making noise. Mayhew says hey, what's up, the gadgets stopped working. And George Lucas says no, we turned them off. You don't need them.

Mayhew is actually quite knock-kneed, which you can see in Chewbacca too. I was wondering if he has medical problems from being so big (and he's over 60 now), but he seemed fine.

Go Sens!

Ottawa is within a game of eliminating the Sabres in the Stanley Cup semifinals.

Not to jinx it, but actually they're within a game of sweeping the Sabres.

The Buffalo Sabres. The juggernaut of the 06-07 regular season. The team that dominated the entire league from day 1, winning their first 10 games. By mid-December they had just seven losses on their record and had not lost consecutive games. Yeah, they came down to earth a little at the end of the season, but they still won the Presidents' Trophy, and they beat the rest of the Eastern Conference by six points.

And Ottawa? A team that's named after politicians. How tough can they be? Apparently, pretty damn tough. Tough enough to knock out New Jersey, who finished at the top of our division (and second to Buffalo in the conference).

At any rate, Pittsburgh's elimination (by Ottawa, in round one) is looking better and better.

P.S. In other hockey news, Colby Armstrong scored the gold medal game-winning goal for Team Canada in the IIHF World Championship yesterday. Go Armpit!

Maybe We Need a Safe Word

ThinkGeek, purveyor of geek cultural accessories, always puts out a nice April 1 edition of their advertising newsletter. It gives us such wonderful products as the Lonely Guy Dream Vacation Photo Frame, the USB Desktop Tanning Center, and many more that I can't find on their website any more.

So today, safely in mid- to late April, I get their latest newsletter. The first product is something called a Flying Alarm Clock. Supposedly, it's an alarm clock with a little helicopter thing on the top. When the alarm goes off, the little helicopter thing flies off, and you have to get out of bed and find it and put it back to turn the alarm off.

Yes, it's very similar to Clocky, which I hear is now on the market (http://www.nandahome.com/).

Ridiculous, maybe, but apparently the Flying Clock is an actual product. So how can I tell when they're serious and when they're joking?

Worse, one of their joke products from this year, the 8-Bit Tie, was apparently so popular they're now making it.

I mean, in a world with LED faucet lights and the Personal Area Network (PAN) fleece pullover, and the USB Aquarium who can tell?

On the other hand, this is just really cool.

Links (these will open in this window):

April 1 2007 newsletter - http://www.thinkgeek.com/edm/20070401.shtml

April 25 newsletter - http://www.thinkgeek.com/edm/20070425.shtml

Flying Clock - http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/9171/

Wipes

Presumably there's a GL on there somewhere but I can't see any. Either way, a streak-free shine seems like a win.

Wildlife Service Says Mullet is Not Endangered in Pittsburgh

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the US Fish and Wildlife Service just denied a petition to add the Monongahela Mullet to the Endangered Species list. Apparently they were talking about a fish, though. I suppose it's hard to sell a fish called the "bottom-feeding longneck sucker."

From the Post-Gazette:

If you thought a mullet was a hairstyle for bottom-feeder guys stuck in the 1970s, you're half right. It's also the commercial name for the bottom-feeding longneck sucker. This week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied a petition to protect longnecks in the Monongahela River drainage under the Endangered Species Act. The petition, filed in 2002 by the Pennsylvania Biological Survey, cited water quality concerns and asserted that Monongahela longneck suckers are a distinct population separated from the rest, qualifying them for special treatment. The FWS ruled, however, that while Mon longnecks are geographically separate, the petition didn't prove they are genetically distinct.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07070/768524-358.stm

"Yume o Taberu"

I was at a Japanese language conversation group on Saturday discussing animal names. The discussion leader had brought in a picture from the back of a box of Japanese animal crackers, and it had a long list of animal names in Japanese and English. But some of the names were odd. There was "peafowl," and "fur seal." There was parrot, which is common, and macaw, which is not. And there was a really strange term for rooster - can't remember it just now. I pointed out "tapir," which I'm not sure I've even seen in most zoos. I asked the Japanese people at the table if it was a common animal in Japan. You never know what's trendy.

So we were talking about tapirs, how big they are, trying to figure out if we're all thinking about the same animal, and the one Japanese man says to the other, "Yume o taberu."

Now, I wasn't having the greatest day for hearing Japanese, and a lot of Japanese words sound like other words - but those words are pretty easy. Yume - dreams. Taberu - to eat. It didn't make any sense, so I thought I'd misheard the words. I guess I was just staring at him, so they asked if I'd understood. I had the words right, they just didn't make sense. "It eats your dreams," he had said.

Turns out there's Japanese folklore about tapirs that eat dreams. When a child has a nightmare, the tapir can come and eat it to make it go away. You can put pictures of a tapir on your pillow. One of the men at the conversation group said it can go the other way too, if you're having a nice dream the tapir can come and eat it and make you unhappy.

Tapirs, huh? Who'da thunk.

Wikipedia entry for Baku

A Mean Pinball

Tales of the Arabian Nights,
originally uploaded by erink.

The beau was out looking at a pinball machine for sale, and I was thinking he had been gone a long time when I heard from him. He was on his way home and he needed help with two things. He had actually bought the machine and needed help getting it inside. But first, he had cut a big gash in his hand and needed first aid.

I was only slightly surprised that he'd bought the thing. His buddy from back home had come to help, and he has a new pickup truck and a lot of expertise in the field, so given the right price and condition there was no reason not to do it.

The gash was rather more surprising. Apparently the house they were moving the machine from had dogs, and instead of opening the gate the guys had just taken to vaulting over the fence. They each made it, once. The second time my beau tried it he hit something nasty on the fence and sliced his thumb open pretty good.

Did you know trucks come with first aid kits now? At least this one did. So they tied up the wound and drove home and it had not quite soaked through the 5 layers of gauze by the time they got here.

We washed it off and found some scissors to remove the 1" thumbprint-shaped flap that was hanging off - I would have left it, but it was pretty dirty and washing it wasn't very easy. Or pleasant. It was kind of still dripping, so we used most of the rest of the roll of gauze to wrap it so we could move the machine inside and get it set up.

If you have never moved a pinball machine, well, here are some things you might not know. The legs come off. It's fairly heavy. The top folds down onto of the playfield area. The standard procedure is to get a set of sawhorses to substitute for the legs while you're moving it. Once you get the machine pretty close to where it's going you put the legs back on. Being the smallest and weakest of the three, my job was to run around with the sawhorses while the guys carried the pinball machine up the steps to the house and up to the second floor where we keep such things. If we ever move the pinball room to the third floor we're going to have to hire someone. My job also included running back and forth between the second floor and the basement to get tools we needed, and actually measuring the spaces where we wanted to put it. So, you see, this way I get some sweat equity without doing anything hard.

We probably should put that door back on the hinges sometime.

While I was helping put on the legs I got a nasty metal splinter. We joked about how the machine wanted blood, but I felt it was only fair that it bite me too, since we were all going to be living together. And I actually didn't bleed, though I did need to take the splinter out before I did more work.

So, fine. The men tinker with the machine for a few hours and get it all set up. We get some dinner. We play a few games. It's fun. The buddy heads home.

We spend some time orchestrating high-tech band-aids for the long-term dressings on the thumb. Band-Aid makes these "advanced healing" ones now that are thick and you're supposed to leave them on for a few days at a time. On his thumb they keep peeling up after a day, but we figure they're probably the best bet. 3M makes some "Nexcare waterproof" bandages that are also good for hands because you can typically wash over them without getting them wet on the inside - these are the step-down plan.

So Monday comes, my beau goes to work, and Monday afternoon I lose a ball deep in the back of the machine. I'm a little intimidated about pulling the glass out (the glass is big, and breaking the glass is bad) and the machine won't play until it finds the ball, so I wait for him to come home. The first step in opening the machine up is to open the coin door and release the latch to take the glass off, so he reaches in front to open the door.

And then he says a bad word and goes to the bathroom. (I wanted to say "pulls back a bloody stump" but it wasn't really that bad.) He's got a deep cut in the side of his index finger, right on the side of the nail. See, the lock on the door is missing, and he reached in to the empty hole to pull open the door. There's a sharp edge on the inside and it sliced right in. It bleeds pretty good. Luckily we already have all the first aid stuff out....

So now we're both a little nervous about this new machine. How often will it demand a blood sacrifice? Why was the previous owner so eager to get rid of it? Are we secretly in a Night Gallery episode? (If we had bought the Twilight Zone machine we looked at earlier, would our mystery have a better script and classier themes?)

I hope you can see this, Mayor Menino

Because I am doing it as hard as I can.

Albuquerque

Hanging at ABQ. Among its amenities are free wireless and this workstation with a billion outlets. (Yeah, my cell phone camera sucks, but still it's cool that I can post from it.)

Another innovation is their "cell phone waiting area" where people can hover in their cars waiting for their travelers to arrive. In Pittsburgh we use the side of the access road, and some people even pull over on the highway before the exit (both illegal). I saw about 8 people stopped on the highway on my way home, and they hadn't even bothered to turn out their headlights.

Albuquerque airport has distributed security checkpoints - one for two sets of gates. I had a nice short line. The coffee stand sells zip-top bags for 50 cents in case you forgot to bring one for your carry-on toiletries. All their rental car agencies share one site - and one shuttle.

I even found a bathroom near the ticket counter with stall doors that open out. Posh!

Dozen

Cupcakes!

The cupcake store has opened. Film at 11.

So for a couple weeks this hole-in-the-wall shop in Squirrel Hill (local urban shopping area) has been remodeling and promising something about "premium cupcakes." I parked near there Thursday and they were open, so I went to check it out.

Apparently there are "premium cupcakes." This is a new thing that any classy city is supposed to have, like $4 coffee and Ethiopian food and hookah bars.

Dozen cupcakes is apparently an independent business. They sell froofy cupcakes. When I was in they had four or five flavors available, like mocha, peanut butter chocolate, and vanilla. A little small for my cupcake taste, but with a big swirl of buttercream icing I'm sure they make up for it in caloric density. The staff recommended I try the day's special, which was something called mint meltaway.


Mint Meltaway

It was pretty darn good. A dark chocolate glaze, mint buttercream filling in the middle, and nice cake. The only problem was that it was pretty intense. I split one with my beau and he had to run downstairs for an emergency glass of milk. Bring a friend.

I think I can get over thinking the icing on top of the regular cupcakes kind of looks like a dog turd.

The funny part was when my beau came home from work. We were chatting and he said "Did you know about premium cupcakes?" And I got to say "Did you see what's on the counter downstairs?" Apparently a friend at work had brought some in and they were fabulous. (I swear we'd been talking about this in our social group for months before, but he somehow missed it.)

Whatever.

I just don't know. A week ago it seemed like everything was going to work out for the Penguins to stay in Pittsburgh. A new owner, a wealthy young Canadian digerati hockey fan from a town too small to have its own NHL team but close enough to commute to games. The prospect of a new arena, whether via the Isle of Capri casino proposal or Plan B, which the new owner had finally somewhat endorsed.

Now it's all gone to shit. Jim Balsillie pulled out of the deal suddenly last week. The announcement came at 6 p.m. on a Friday, just an hour and a half before a really good home game (and tuque night!). Supposedly it had to do with the NHL wanting him to agree to never ever move the team ever. Stupid NHL.

Did I trust Balsillie not to move the team? No, but I believed that keeping it here was going to be a better business decision than moving it. I trusted him to give us the benefit of the doubt if other factors were equal.

At least they get to keep his deposit.

Second strike, today the gaming commission awarded the one license for a slots casino to the Mystic Star group. You might wonder what this has to do with a hockey team, but one of the competing applicants, Isle of Capri, promised to build a nice new hockey arena for free as part of their casino complex. Free. Gratis. At no cost to you. The Penguins made a deal with IOC that included the fact they could negotiate only with them as long as the proposal was valid, so there's no back-up plan.

And really, Lemieux Group has given us a fair shot to get them a new arena already. They've been telling us for years that the team is for sale and it needs a new arena to stay in Pittsburgh. What exactly did we think was going to happen?

On the other hand, you kind of have to wonder if there was something really crummy about the IOC casino proposal and they felt they needed to give us a free hockey arena to make up for it. If so, it wasn't obvious - I didn't see any problems in what I read about it, and the politicians who evaluated the plan seemed to say it was fine.

The one bright spot in the casino deal is that if it's located on the North Shore I'll never have to see it.

So, where does that leave my team? It's for sale to the highest bidder and the arena lease expires this spring. We obviously don't deserve an NHL franchise. Maybe they'll move to a nice city and I can go there. I'll have to change the blog subtitle, but that's just a few electrons. I guess 40 years of history doesn't count for much with local politicians.

Depressing Post-Gazette coverage:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06354/747594-100.stm

Better article (but still depressing):
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06355/747842-336.stm

Wrath of God

stray leaves,
originally uploaded by erink.

Or possibly just a real aggressive weather front.

Today it's dropping from 70 degrees (yes it's December 1) to the 20s. It's a little windy.

I found out the downstairs PC wasn't connected to the UPS properly when the power went out. Hey, but the printer stayed on, that's important. Right.

There was an exciting moment when I tried to close the kitchen window. It was blowing pretty hard, and as soon as I slid the window down it blew in at the top, the whole bottom pane tilted toward me. Okay, so gotta keep that one latched.

The part that pissed me off, though, was the leaves. On Monday I did my "last" leaf cleanup of the season - around here you are actually supposed to sweep the leaves into the street. Then the street sweeper picks them up. So I went out Monday afternoon and cleaned off the last few leaves of the season. This afternoon I went out and the leaves from the neighbor's oak tree have freed themselves and they're all over my yard again. I swear, none of those were there the other day!

Ah well. Time to go find my trash cans before it gets dark.

Safety First?

I don't care if it makes me a Luddite, some things just should not talk.

No.

Not ever.

Eeeew.

Bomb Dogs Sniff Out Human Cannonball

I love this story.

The circus was in town through Sunday, and since we have homeland insecurity now we apparently do routine searches of our arenas. Sunday morning, a bomb-detector dog alerted on a trailer in the parking lot next to the building.

Turns out the trailer belonged to the Human Cannonball.

It was empty, but I suppose the dog actually detected explosive residue.

I guess it's getting dangerous to be shot through the air in this political climate.

The full story:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06310/736106-100.stm

Trader Joe's Comes To Pittsburgh

And gets full.

Painting on 'Ludes

I was happy to discover that my local PBS station is running something called "The Best of Joy of Painting." It's been ages since I encountered the soporific tones of artist Bob Ross, using housepainting brushes to magically conjur trees and fields and mountains from thin air.

He was working on a mountain waterfall, so I didn't see him paint any "happy little trees," but he there was a trippy moment when he told us to "begin thinking about all the mist that would happen down here" at the bottom of the waterfall. "It would hit and splash and churn and carry on. Probably make a lot of noise, too," he said, coincidentally drumming the canvas with the brush, just "a little bit of titanium white on the corner."

It was all so fascinating, the dark studio and the hypnotic voice and the stupid, coarse paintbrushes - and even palette knives - laying on smudges of paint that suddenly turned into such realistic images. I remember sitting on the wall-to-wall carpet in my grandmother's living room and watching this weirdo paint, wondering vaguely what my grandmother (an amateur oil painter herself) thought of him, and why all painters didn't work this way since his technique was so effective.

This particular episode broke up the painting with some strange video footage of two squirrels Bob said he'd raised and released. He said they were brothers, but for some reason they kept mounting each other.

And by accident, I also discovered a great new trick for watching the show: with TiVo you can watch it backwards. All the trees disappear!

My Trip to Venus

After passing this place for years, I finally got a chance to go in last month. (I stopped on the way back from my corn-picking trip near Mars, PA.) It's frequently closed when I'm out here, and I'm usually only there on the way to or from visiting relatives, so I don't get to stop for food.

The Venus Diner is on Rt. 8 north of Pittsburgh, near the PA Turnpike (Butler Valley exit?) and a few miles south of the town named Mars. I heard there's also a town near there named Venus. Various websites say it's from 1957 or 1959.

The exterior has seen better days, but the design is lovely, especially around the entrance.





I'd filled up on pastries on the way out that morning, so, uncharacteristically, I ordered a lunch dish - hot turkey sandwich. I know it's not how you're supposed to eat, but it's kind of fun when everything on the plate is the same color.



The diner makes its own pies. But I overheard the waitress telling another customer that they had to stop selling cream pies. Apparently the health department decided their built-in refrigerator cases aren't cold enough to store cream pies legally. "Everything was fine for 30 years," she said.

Being an old Twin Peaks fan, I ordered cherry.

I've always hoped that the diner was doing well - from the outside it looks pretty run down. Inside is another story - all shiny and beautiful. Next time, breakfast!

The rest of my Venus Diner photos are on Flickr.

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest

My first day in Seattle, I'm walking down the street where my friends live and I see a bumper sticker that says "Consider Karma." It's on a big, gas-powered SUV.

Local Food Week

It's "Local Food Week" in the Burgh. This is a new event organized by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture to focus attention the local food culture and how to be a part of it. You don't even have to cook, since several restaurants routinely use local products.

PASA's website has a nice local food guide. You can search for farm markets, you-pick farms, CSA (consumer-supported agriculture, or farm share) programs, and businesses that sell local foods. If you're jealous of my veggies from last post, you can use the search to find your own farm share! (Mine is Kretschmann Farms.)

I started celebrating a little early by volunteering to pick corn with the local food bank, out at a farm near Mars. The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank has a gleaning program, which means they get crop donations from farmers, they just have to go out and pick them. These fields have been picked already by professionals, but there is still food in them - I guess it ripened late or just was missed the first time around. So the food bank gets volunteers to come out and harvest it, and then they get fresh produce.

Somehow I lived in Pennsylvania almost 40 years without ever having picked corn. You can tell people who grew up around corn because they become corn snobs. They won't eat certain types of corn, no matter how fresh it is. One of the volunteers said he used to pick a few dozen before breakfast growing up, he had pretty high standards about what was worth picking. As a city kid, I had pretty low standards about what was worth picking.

When corn isn't ripe, the ears are flexible and a little squishy. If you open them to look, the kernels are little squares, kind of folded in on themselves. Ripe kernels are hard and round, which you can feel from the outside. The ears also have a different shape when they're all plumped up. The kernels develop from the bottom to the top. The riper ears also are easier to pick, they break off better than the younger ones - I already knew this about tomatoes and berries from my youth.

In the field we picked, all the ears were about waist level or lower, which I found surprising because I think I'd seen corn plants with ears at the top. I don't know if it was the type of corn or the fact that we were gleaning.

The food bank had a panel truck with big metal bins inside. We each got an orange plastic utility bucket and two rows to work. Runners worked the margins, swapping out empty buckets for full ones and taking the corn back to the truck. It was pretty easy, and the weather was good (overcast with sprinkles before and after we worked). We got a lot of corn and finished in only a few hours.

I didn't think to bring my camera out into the field, which I regretted because there were plenty of cool things to photograph. There's a weed version of Morning Glory that wraps itself around the corn plants, it's got wonderful white flowers. It's a bitch to cut through to get the corn out. There were amazing bugs, big bees and spiders that liked the flowers. There were groundhog holes along the rows two to three feet across. There was corn smut, a type of grey/black fungus that looked like it was pretty gross if you accidentally touched it, but sometimes it made fabulous, flowery extrusions off the top of the ear.

So it was pretty cool.

On the way home I finally got a chance to stop at the Venus Diner on Route 8, which I've driven by for years. But that's another post.

This Week's Veggies

The box is getting heavier.

Random Internet Goodness

Because some things are worth passing along:

How to Be a Ninja:
homepage.ntlworld.com/philbooth/How_To_Be_A_Ninja.jpg

The Best Diet Coke & Mentos Video:
eepybird.com/dcm1.html
It's like the freakin' Bellagio in some dude's back yard.
Here's some science stuff about why it happens (via the Post-Gazette and Mythbusters): www.post-gazette.com/pg/06220/711813-237.stm

Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates:
www.craphound.com/images/piratekeyboard.jpg

Yum?

From a Mexican grocery in Pittsburgh. They have to know, they put it in the window.

Mike Lange: WTF?

It was more than a month ago, but at the time I was just speechless. I mean, the guy's in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Voice of the Penguins for 30 years. You don't just drop a guy like that. But they did - back at the end of June, Fox Sports Pittsburgh took an early exit clause in his contract to drop play-by-play man Mike Lange from the Penguins TV broadcast team. I'll be cow-kicked.

As I mentioned in my first post, Lange was the inspiration for this 'blog's title and URL. When I didn't have cable, Lange was on radio. When I got cable, he was doing play-by-play on TV. I can't imagine watching Penguins hockey without him.

Supposedly it was a money issue, a tough contract negotiation. They're replacing him with Paul Steigerwald, who used to do color commentary on the radio with Lange and stayed on radio as play-by-play until now. I have nothing against Steigy, but even if he was a really good play-by-play man, he couldn't compete with Lange. And if FSN wanted a "fresh voice" as they say, then they would have hired someone new to the market.

I suppose there will be a lot of changes this season. At the end of last season the Pens fired their general manager (another hall-of-famer) Craig Patrick, famous for the trades that got us the Stanley Cup. I don't disagree with that, it seemed like he'd been coasting for a while. The new GM did some housecleaning, dropping scouting and assistant coaching staff that had been with the organization for years (Joe Mullen, Rick Kehoe), and even the bench staff like 18-year equipment manager Steve Latin. (Sivvy!)

And purportedly we have a new owner now. We're working on a new arena - I just hope it's in Pittsburgh.

But all is not lost. This week Lange announced that he's taken his old job back, doing radio play-by-play for the games. (Which is now Steigerwald's old job!) The Penguins control their radio staff, not the TV staff. So I'll have to figure out a way to synchronize the radio broadcast with the TV - because I use a TiVo, which buffers live TV, my video is a few seconds behind broadcast realtime, and the radio has typically been several seconds ahead when I've had both on in the past.

But still, firing Lange? WTF?

Post-Gazette coverage:

Cow-kicked: FSN fires Lange as Penguins' TV voice (Friday, June 30, 2006)
Strong negative reaction surfaces to dismissal of Penguins' TV voice (Saturday, July 1, 2006)
Shero continues to make changes (Friday, July 28, 2006)
Penguins, Lange agree to 1-year deal (Friday, August 4, 2006)