My new wheels rock

I love the Out­back. It’s pretty bare bones (with the excep­tion of a CD player and the Cold Weather Package… mmm, heated seat!) but it still rocks! I’m so excited to be dri­ving a stan­dard again (plus it was cheaper!). Did I men­tion its red? Pic­tures are coming (it was pour­ing yesterday… but that’s another story that I need more time to write about)!

In the mean time I have found a totally addic­tive web­site. First there was Hot or Not (which my brother appeared on… wear­ing a shirt that read “Bikini Inspector” USA Glenn, USA), then there was Groovy Bootie, and now there is What is Better. Basi­cally you get two items and have to decide which is better. One of my first pairs was “The A-Team Van” and “J. S. Bach.” Guess which one I voted for. Cur­rently the Top 10 list of the best things on the site is:

1. Einstein

2. Natalie Portman

3. Christina Ricci Wet

4. Alyson Han­ni­gan (<— yea!)

5. Milla Jovovich

6. Alyson Han­ni­gan (<— yea!)

7. Angel

8. Star Wars

9. Kirsten Dunst

10. The Simpsons

There’s no nudity, so the pages are work safe. I do have to ques­tion the taste of the people on the site list­ing Alyson lower than “I’ve-got-a-giant-head” Christina Ricci (I guess I shouldn’t com­plain since she is on there twice and me-​ow! those are WOW pic­tures of her!…. Hmmm I wonder what she thinks of Outbacks)

I DID IT

I just bought a new car! I’ve been think­ing about doing it for quite and while and so I finally made the move! So the well loved Blazer has been replaced by a Subaru Out­back Wagon! I’m a proud owner of the off­i­cal car of kodak.com and North Amer­i­can Les­bians. Move over girls, Matt’s here. I’ll post some pic­tures later today!

I found the One Ring while gardening

seri­ously!

Ok, sorta seriously…

This week­end I decided to tear up a small part of my lawn and plant a garden. When I was a ‘lil tyke we lived next to a woman who had an amaz­ingly kept herb garden. She taught me a little bit here and there about plant­ing and gar­den­ing. But at the time there was always too much of a com­mit­ment involved to think seri­ously about gar­den­ing. In recent years I’ve con­sid­ered start­ing a garden a number of times. But my lifestyle really doesn’t lend itself to taking it up as a hobby. How­ever, des­per­ate times call for des­per­ate mea­sures. The little patch of land I started the project in (and I stress little) was an iso­lated area of my lawn by the steps to my front door. Said patch was impos­si­ble to mow and usu­ally looked ter­ri­ble. So after a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion I real­ized that a small garden with hardy peren­ni­als would be far easier to main­tain than grass.

So on Sunday I went to the Rochester Public Market’s “Plant Days” event and picked up $20 worth of green good­ness and set to tear­ing up the grass. And in my usual “Never Say Die and Never Think Things Out” approach I started to tear up the lawn… with a trowel. I could have sworn we had a shovel at the house, but that little trowel was the best I could find. Unfazed as usual by my lack of the right tools I went to work tear­ing up the patch one small bit at a time.

About an hour into the project, as I shoved the trowel into the ground I heard a tink. Imme­di­ately real­iz­ing that grass doesn’t usu­ally go tink, I cleared away the grass and soil and lo and behold found a simple gold ring that had been buried. Noth­ing fancy, just a simple band. Not unlike the One Ring (from the Lord of the Rings story for those non-​geeks read­ing this). Having read the books, lis­tened to the audio and seen Fel­low­ship of the Rings a number of times, I real­ized the awe­some power that I could be wield­ing. So I decided to inves­ti­gate the band.

I didn’t have a fire near by to pitch it into, so I washed it off and check for inscrip­tions. And there was one. Unfor­tu­nately it wasn’t

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gim­batul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-​ishi krimpatul.

Or even

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the dark­ness bind them.

Instead I saw

Lotsa Love – 6-14-94

Big let down! It wasn’t even in Elvish. Still I had hopes that the inscrip­tion might be a clever trick to pre­vent me from know­ing the true power of the ring. So I decided to risk slip­ping it on. And noth­ing hap­pened. I didn’t turn invis­i­ble (I know this because all my neigh­bors told be that they really could see me when I danced around them saying “I’m invis­i­ble, you can’t see me.” They also asked me very nicely to put my pants back on). I didn’t com­mand supreme power. No fiery eye sought me out. On the plus side I didn’t turn into a slimy crea­ture and start whin­ing about “My Precious.”

So does anyone know what you are sup­posed to do when you find a ring in the middle of your garden? Oh and if I sud­denly dis­ap­pear some­one please check the Biker Bar up the street for a group of black cloaked motor­cy­cle riders who might be car­ring my finger. As for me I’m get­ting a little hungry so I think I’ll go off in search of fish-​ish-​ish-​es or maybe a muffin.

ummm…. yeah

So we have one vote against the cur­rent MP3 was logged in the last post’s com­ment sec­tion. Hon­estly I didn’t think it was that bad. But then again there is no account­ing for taste.

Speak­ing of taste, I have to agree with some of the points Heather brought up about Attack of the Clones. Per­son­ally, while he may be one of the biggest Bad Asses to grace the screen in a while, Samuel L. Jack­son should never be allowed to swing a lightsabre again. Please some­one give Star Wars Shaft a blaster. If he was a back­ground char­ac­ter it wouldn’t have been as dis­tract­ing, but he’s set up a a top Jedi Swords­man (Saber­man?) and he just doesn’t move well enough for it. Yeah I know I’m being a picky mar­tial artist… deal. :-)

Also could some­one teach Natalie Port­man how to fire a gun. Either that or get her a better prop. I’m not sure if it was too heavy for her or to large but man was her use of a blaster cringe worthy. And speak­ing of Ms. Port­man, what is it with Nip­ples in movies now a days? First Spi­der­man and now Star Wars. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the nip­ples (that really didn’t come out the way I meant it to), but they just don’t have a place in these films. I think they just bring a level of base sex­u­al­ity that isn’t wel­come in these iconic films. Plus the snick­ing of teenage boys all around me is kinda dis­tract­ing. And I really don’t like having to con­sider if I’m going to be sit­ting at “nipple level” when choos­ing a seat in the theatre.

But over­all I liked Attack of the Clones a lot. The key thing is that you need to expect a Star Wars movie and within that con­text it works really well.

feast or famine

oy. Some days you can’t find any­thing to blog about. Other days you have way too much stuff to write about. I’m occu­py­ing the second space right now. Unfor­tu­nately as a result of all the stuff I have to write about I don’t have much time to blog. It’s a vicious circle. But I did carve some time out today to update the page a bit:

• There’s a new MP3 up and I fixed the link to the old one
• I added more quotes. There are about 20 now and more to follow
• I also updated my links column

Speak­ing of updated links there is some­thing that I want to mention…

my mom rocks!

she does! First of all she has her own web­site. Yes, you to can learn about what’s going on in her Gym Classes in Ami­tyville! She built the page all by her­self and that’s really cool (well, I mean it’s no blog… but its not bad)! Go ma Bernius!

What’s not so cool is that she decided to try to start a flame war in the com­ments sec­tion of this site. If you check out the com­ments for the last post­ing you see this com­ment she made:

Regard­ing #5 on your list–I beg to differ with you. You were not age 2 or so at the time of your self inflicted hair cut, because we didn’t trust you with a scis­sors until age 7 because of your manip­u­la­tive capabilities.

I object to that. First of all I totally got to use the scis­sors (albeit the round edge “safety model”). But more impor­tantly if there was a manip­u­la­tive one at age 7 (or before) it was my brother Glenn. He, before he was five, was able to con­vince our brother Paul, the middle one in the family, to draw on the walls of the living room. How­ever Glenn, that crim­i­nal mas­ter­mind, opted not to par­tic­i­pate in the activ­ity him­self to avoid being caught. That’s way worse than any­thing I did. I was a com­plete angel.

And that’s the story I’m stick­ing to.

this and that

Hmmm this has been a good week. I man­aged to keep on my run­ning sched­ule, help orga­nize a joint the­atre ini­tia­tive in Rochester, made some progress at work, got com­pli­mented during my mar­tial arts class, and man­aged to get my mom a gift for Mother’s day. Woo hoo. Of course I’ve totally fallen off con­tact­ing friends and I still need to get a birth­day present for Jenny. Oh well, I guess I can’t squeeze every­thing into a week.

This week­end I’ve got lots of stuff going on. On Sat­ur­day I’ll be at a mar­tial arts sem­i­nar with Fran­cis Fong, one of the best Wing Chun instruc­tors in the US. It’s always great to study with him. Plus we usu­ally get to see a number of old friends from out of town who come in to train. I’m also going to finish eval­u­at­ing MiniDV cam­eras. I’ve been wnting to get one for a while and Cindy’s wed­ding is the per­fect excuse. Finally I’ll be clean­ing my apart­ment and catch­ing up on e-mail. I’m also hoping to get out with folks for the first time in a while.

Return of the friday five

1. What sham­poo do you use? What ever is on sale at Weg­mans. I think it’s Wegman’s brand this week. Once a week I’ll use a good sham­poo (usu­ally an Aevida prod­uct) to keep my hair in shape.

2. Do you use con­di­tioner? See above. During the winter I’ll occa­sion­ally use a tinted con­di­tioner to keep up the red-​ish high­lights my hair has.

3. When was the last time you got your hair cut? About a month ago. I’ll be going next week for a cut. Right now I’m in a high main­te­nance hair mode (some­thing my styl­ist loves). My hair grows rather fast and I’m trying to keep it kinda short.

4. What styling prod­ucts do you use? A dab of pomade. Not Dapper Dan though. Rather some hemp based stuff I’ve had for years. I didn’t buy it because it was hemp based. Though I do like the idea that my hair is more stoked on a daily basis than I’ve ever been.

5. What’s your worst hair-​related expe­ri­ence? Hmmm, prob­a­bly the hair­cut I gave myself at the age of 2 or so. My mother often tor­tures me with those pic­tures. Oh and the one time I got blond high­lights put in. BIG MIS­TAKE. I don’t think I’ve heard the end of that one from my family yet. Hmmm, all things con­sid­ered my family prob­a­bly hasn’t been too good for my self esteem.

too many balls

how’s that for an eye grab­bing title? But rest assured gentle reader I’m not refer­ring to any abnor­mal phys­i­cal con­di­tions. Rather, I’ve allowed myself to get too busy. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to set down any­things at the moment. It’s like I’m jug­gling and more balls keep get­ting added. If that wasn’t bad enough, the ones in the air are get­ting bigger and heav­ier. On the plus side I’m feel­ing more pro­duc­tive than I have been in quite a while. Unfor­tu­nately it also means that I’ve been having real prob­lems keep­ing in touch with people. As of late when I’ve been get­ting home I’ve either been to tired to call or write or it’s just too late (which I guess is another way of saying I’m too tired).