This Should Work

I was pretty sure that I couldn’t top last year’s pumpkin carvings, mainly because of time constraints, but I felt the need to have carved pumpkins on the porch for our first Halloween in this house.

Sunday morning I decided to carve Star Wars-themed pumpkins and sketched out drawings for Yoda and Darth Vader. That afternoon we picked out a couple of pumpkins (though the selection was rather poor, but that’s what we get for waiting at the last minute) and planned to carve them Monday night.

Yesterday at lunch I rummaged through our garage looking for the “safety” pumpkin carving tools I used last year (which consisted of a 3-inch dull but serrated knife and a plastic pumpkin scraper in the shape of a hand), but couldn’t find them. ‘No problem’ I told myself, ‘I’ll just pick up another one at the grocery store on my way home from work.’

I went to three different stores: a supermarket (Kroger), a drug store (Rite Aid), and a big box warehouse (Meijer) and none of them had pumkin carving tools! All the Halloween stuff had been pushed to the clearance area to make room for Christmas decorations!

I broke down and bought a serrated steak knife and a large plastic spoon as untensils. After about four hours of carving with these cheap items I ended up with this:

Unfortunately, Yoda looks more like a billy-goat and I must have had Spaceballs on the brain because Darth looks more like Rick Moranis’ Dark Helmet. And I must say, carving pumpkins with the wrong equipment is difficult and dangerous. There were many times when I sure I was going to cut my hand wide open. Next year, I’m investing in a set of cheap tools.

Oh yeah, Happy Halloween!

[tags] Halloween, Pumpkins, Carvings[/tags]

That’s what I overheard last week in the Starbucks lobby while waiting in line for a Hot Chocolate one afternoon.

From what I gathered, the woman was trying to explain to the person on the other side of the call what she wanted for dinner. It went something like this:

“I think I want a Hot Brown for dinner tonight”

…

“What do you mean you don’t know what a Hot Brown is? You’ve never heard of a Hot Brown?”

…

“Well, it’s like a sandwich… but hot and covered in melted cheese.”

…

“I don’t care if sounds gross, I’m hungry and that’s what I want for dinner. Don’t F**k with a Pregnant woman and her food!”

(Click)

Part of me wants to ask “Did she get the Hot Brown?” but I’m guessing the answer is Yes.

Yesterday, my wife and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. So what did we do?

Dinner? Kinda

A movie? Sorta

The truth is we spent most of the day working at our jobs, followed by meeting up at our church for dinner where I’m helping lead a class on Faith and Film. Not exactly perfect, but that’s why we’re doing something this weekend.

While not the ideal way to spend our anniversary, I was so grateful that she was able to make it out to this “dinner and a movie” event when she should have been home preparing for classes the next day. Both of our lives are really busy right now, and it sometimes feels like we’re ships passing in the night, so any time spent together is a joy-even if it’s just sitting watching a movie or checking out Lost while eating ice cream with butterscotch and walnuts.

I look forward our many new adventures with her, and many more happy years of marriage.

(By the way, I’m usually not this sappy… And if you don believe me, then you can just go to hell!)

Back in March, before my parents arrived for a visit, I typed up a set of instructions for them on how to work the AV equipment in our house. Here’s a brief sample of what it was like:

To use TV/Cable:

• Grab silver remote and press “All On” this should turn on both the TV and the cable box.
• Next, grab the small black remote (Onkyo). Press the power button in the upper right corner, then press the “CD” button
• You should now be able to both hear and see the TV. If there is no picture, pick up the other small black remote (Westinghouse) and press “Source” until it reaches “YprB1.”
• If you can’t hear the TV, make sure the reciever is on and set to “CD”. If there is a little orange light blinking, pick up the black remote (Onkyo) and press the “Muting” button. This should un-mute the stereo system.
• All other problems, call me at…

Needless to say, it was complicated to watch TV at our place.

Throw in another remote for the DVD player and it leaves little room left on the coffee table (or in our case ottomans) to place a beverage or a plate of food. Technically, two of the four remotes are “Universal” remotes, but they can only do the basic- On/Off, change channel, etc.- none of the more sophisticated stuff could be done- speaker adjustments, advanced menus, favorites, etc. So after a few weeks of research, I decided to go out on a limb and purchase the LogiTech Haromy 880 Universal Remote Control.

The nice thing about this remote is that it’s not pre-loaded with a bunch of generic appliance information- it’s blank slate that you program through LogiTech’s website. Tell Logitech which devices you want to control (and they’ve got a huge database of TVs, VCRs. DVD players, etc.), then plug your remote into your computer and Logitech pushes the all the information for the devices onto the remote.

Since Logitech continually updates it’s database, this is probably the last remote I’ll need to buy. But it gets better. Logitech allows you to program “Activities” which run multiple instructions with the push of one button. I’ve programmed an “activity called “Watch TV” which does the following with one button press:

• Turns on stereo receiver
• Sets the stereo receiver input setting to “CD”
• Turns on my Insight Cable DVR
• Turns on my TV
• Sets the TV input setting to “YprB1″

Now when people come over, all I’ll need to tell them is “Press the button reads ‘Watch TV.’” It makes life easier for me and for guest who want navigate my complicated A/V system.

It’s not completely perfect; it took about an hour to setup and another few hours of programming the “Activities” before the buttons worked properly. Every once in a while, when switching between Activites like “Watch TV” to “Watch DVD,” the remote would turn off certain devices like the TV or stereo receiver. However there’s a great Help menu that appears in the LCD screen at the top that walks through turning on the devices one by one-and it learns from these mistakes as well.

The only other downside is the number buttons are kinda low for someone with large hands. I find myself grabbing the remote and turning to channel 777 all the time. However, the positives of this remote outweigh the negatives and would recommend it to anyone who’s got three or more remotes in thier house.

Remember Emeril? Not the celebrity chef, not his two food network shows Emeril Live or The Essence of Emeril; I’m talking about Emeril, the short lived NBC sitcom. Emeril’s got a great personality, but that’s not enough to carry a sitcom. His fun-loving self could endorse all the crockpots and kitchen gadgets he wants; but when he tried to step into the acting ring he fell flat on his face.

I’m fine with Food Network stars endorsing food-related stuff (ccokbooks, blenders, knives, etc.) but stray too far from what you know and you could end up looking like a fool.

The latest Food TV star to try and step out of the food world is none other than Rachel Ray. She’s got a Chrsitmas Album called (wait for it…) “Now That’s What I Call Christmas.” But wait, it get’s better! Act now and you can pre-order her kids album “Too Cool For School Mixtape for Kids.”

She doesn’t sing on these albums (Thank God), it’s just a collection of her favorite tunes including Elvis Presley’s “Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me.”

I’ve cooked her recipes (even though I’ve never made one of them in under 30 minutes), I’ve flipped through her cookbooks in bookstores, but there is no way I’m touching her CD. I’m guessing that the Food Network thinks this is a bad idea as well because you can’t buy the CD’s from their website-where they happen to be selling everything else she’s put her name on.

“Ooooo.”

“Oops!”

“Are you ok?”

This morning I heard all three of them from the phlebotomist. I was called by an older, well-dressed woman to follow her back ot the phlebotomy services area and felt like I was in good hands, but then she gestures to a very young-looking woman and says “Stacy will take care of you.”

While Stacy’s filling out paper work, I’m thinking ‘are you old enough to be doing this? Are you even old enough to legally drink alcohol?’ but I say nothing as she places the tourniquet on my arm and asks me to make a fist. I make a fist and start looking around for something to stare at other than my arm that’s about to get stuck with a needle.

“Oh good, you’ve got a strong vein. This will be easy.”

“That’s good to know,” I say while I continue scanning the room. There’s nothing to look at; no pictures of kids, no impressionist painting replicas, nothing. Instead I close my eyes and feel the needle go into my arm.

“Oooo” she says, and I start thinking ‘Think about nice sunsets, think about ponies, think about that crossword question from yesterday, think about anything except that the person who’s stuck a needle into your arm just said “Oooo.”‘

She then says “There we go. Got it. OK, you’re all done.” I open my eyes and see two other phlebotomists hovering near my station, one of them said to my phlebotomists “Never pull the needle out before popping the tourniquet.”

“Oops!” She says, “I’ll remember for next time.”

Now I’m getting nervous, and she must have known because she asked me “Are you ok?”

I’m fine… I think.