Repairman_Jack's Xanga

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:30:59 GMT

Wayne annoyed me with a recent photoblog entry detailing all the wonders of visiting his local farmers market. Why does he get to do all this great stuff while I'm stuck in the South with bucktoothed yokels who think deer heads make the best decor? Where is my culture, and small town charm, and the local folk who smile and cheerfully wave and say things like, "Hey! How'ya doin'? Mighty fine weather we're having! Etc, etc..."?

Well, the reality of it is that this is an old mindset of mine that I've recently (and slowly) begun to overcome. Truth be told, there is a lot of this going on in my backyard, but I've just been looking in all the wrong places. And so when I heard that my town actually has one of these farmers markets, I jumped at the opportunity. I called some of our friends, and demanded they set aside some time this morning to see this glorious event. The local newspaper even pointed out that it was an up-and-coming event in the area, growing four times in size over the recent months, and had to be moved to a new location at the town square to make room for it. "Pack your bags, folks! It's time to do some grocery shopping!"

Visions of kettle corn danced in my head, and it was going to be ten times better than Wayne's stupid kettle corn from his stupid farmers market. Sunkissed by the Southern Sol, it was bound to be lighter and fluffier and sweeter than anything Massachusetts could produce.

And so, with a van load of people, we finally arrived at our destination. And, I kid you not, it was the most pathetic display of "market" I've ever seen. Market was such an overstatement that it was more of an outright lie, like those you hear about during hellfire and brimstone sermons. No more than five tiny tents covered the goods of those streetside vendors. Only one of those contained food which, as my wife pointed out, were vegetables that numbered fewer than what we had in our veggie bin in the fridge back home. The proprietor had cut open one of the peppers to show his fresh goods, however it had clearly been left out in the sun all morning so that the interior had long since dried up like an eighty year old sun worshipper who smoked twelve packs a day. It was pathetic in every way, and I even found myself questioning whether or not the man had just gone to the grocery store to pick them from the tomato bins.

Meanwhile, the other booths consisted of such great things as sun bleached watches, some old store-purchased jewelry that had visibly tarnished, and some old guy who did such a horrible job of wood burning that his letters looked like they were drawn by an alcoholic who hadn't had a drink in over a week. It was a huge letdown made even more embarrassing by the fact that I'd talked over half a dozen people into joining me. I'll no doubt suffer mocking until another person in the group finally makes a fool of themselves and takes the heat off me. What a letdown.

Curse you and your farmers market, Wayne. And your glorious kettle corn, which I hope dries your mouth when nobody is offering free samples of their homemade fruit beverages. And specifically the farmers who actually lend their name to the reason for their market's existence. Someday we'll actually get a real market down here, and you'll wish you were down here enjoying all our glorious festivities.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:11:13 GMT

My wife just mentioned that she joined up Facebook at her sister's insistence, and was getting all these emails from old friends. Probably hot, rich friends, which is a little disconcerting, but whatever. I had no idea that Facebook had a school search, despite the fact that I've been a member since someone here talked me into it something like fifty years ago.

Anyway, I scrambled through my hundreds of internet aliases, and hammered in thousands of various passwords until something finally clicked and I was able to log in. A quick search for my high school revealed that only about ten people have registered, and only about two of them I remember... Whether or not that is from old age, or the fact that I hated most of the people who went there I'm not sure. Flicking through the years revealed similar results. I guess we didn't have the close-knit community that other schools have, and there are apparently other people out there who disliked our school as much as me. It makes me a bit jealous of those people who grew up with all the fun angst and exciting focus on 80's fashion that I never really got to take part of. Well, aside from the parachute pants and scrub shirt crazes. Those were awesome. It's just a matter of time before they make a comeback!

Friday, September 05, 2008

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:07:05 GMT

Yes, yes. I know the background is ugly. I'm working on it.

Added:

It's starting to look like baby vomit, but I'm tired and want to go to bed. Forgive me.

There. That'll have to work for the time being. At least it's not puke.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:51:53 GMT

Nothing much to add other than Philosophy sucks.

Oh, and I get the morning off on Saturday so my wife can go with our friend, a bride to be, to pick out flower girl dresses for the girls. Now, I get a lot of time to myself because the kids are in school all day now. But this is like free time. On those other days when I should be doing homework or housework, but this is a gimmie. I was going to the movie with a friend, but he had to cancel, so now I'm going to do nothing... and that sounds pretty good.

I think I'm going on a trip for some photography fun. Go some places out of the way with just me, a camera, and some random photography subjects. Like butterflies, or peat moss. Maybe some artistically squished roadkill. I'll try to take something for all of you.

Hey! Remember that baby poop shot I posted a long time back? Yeah, something like that.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:41:58 GMT

Dear Nicole:

Dude. It looks like I have old man hands. Remind me to get some moisturizer next Target run.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:03:47 GMT

Life is filled with little compromises, and one of my least favorite is when we made the decision to move to the South. It took a long time to accept that Falls down here are entirely different from up North. Fall Festivals are filled with fake Autumn foliage that mimic a season that many of their visitors have really only seen in textbooks and Google searches, and children have to weigh whether or not a full body costume is worth the trade-off between being "cool" and being hot on Halloween. Meanwhile, parents sort through trick or treat candy while walking from house to house, eating the chocolate that will likely melt by the time they get home, anyway. It's just not that same, and while I made my peace with that some time back it will always be a bitter pill to swallow.

Yet, there is a place that is sort of a temple of solitude for my Autumnal cravings, and it opens surprisingly early. It's a craft store not far down the road, and they, like all marketing machines, begin holidays months before you've even begun to think about them. Walking inside is like taking a step out of the 95 degree temperatures, and going back to life like it was twenty years ago, only with more "fake" and greater reliance on AAA batteries. Rows of fall leaves dangle from shelf hooks, cheesy plastic animatronic characters bob up and down and scream, "Trick or treat!" as you pass by. There's even a miniature mock Halloween town with lit up windows and little moving pieces that growl or moan every ten seconds.

It really shouldn't make me swoon, and perhaps desperation has made me find nostalgia in even the most commercialized of locations, but it does. And so from now until October the thirty-first rolls around, I'll be taking weekly trips to my little museum of childhood memories. I'll lift my children up to the shelves so they can get a good view of the Halloween village scene, and buy fake plastic pumpkins to carve. I'll pick up Halloween crafts with a pocketful of clipped coupons, and try the best I can to help my children feel as excited about the season as I was when I was their age.

Even if it is two months early.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:41:57 GMT

Two best Google hits of the day:

"Funny Poop Stories" and "Elfenporn"

It distrubs me that these actually refer people to my blog. It disturbs me a great deal. And I'm sure that God has these facts written down in some big book somewhere.

He probably has me down for making fun of him writing it down, too.

Update:

No, seriously. Are you guys screwing with me?

"grandma caught my poop in her hands"

I don't even want to know what's going on in their head...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:21:03 GMT

Wow... I'm a bit slow on the posting, aren't I. Sorry about that. I'll try to find some time in the very near future. Until then, here's some photos or something.

As always, clickable for larger images.

It's a sunset! Come on! Say it! You know you want to... "Purdy!"

Underwater shot courtesy of Nina. I had pneumonia. Well, she did, too, but apparently nothing will stop her from becoming one with the sea. I blame The Little Mermaid.

Pieced together shot from the top of one of the Mayan temples. It would've been cooler with a tripod, but it gets the job done.

This was just one of the ways that Carnival tried to suck money out of you. That's right. A pay-to-play massage chair. The funk of a thousand tourist hairdos right on this very chair. Ask my wife how much she'd like to sit in it. She'll actually pull the Purell out of her pocket within two seconds of you asking her.

Photographic Interlude

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:07:44 GMT

This is a bit of an odd blog, and admittedly pretty gross, but I thought a few of you might find this particularly... interesting.

When I decided to take the girls out this afternoon, they stopped when they saw a worm crossing the sidewalk. "Look, daddy!" one of them yelled to me. "There's a worm crossing the sidewalk, and it's having a baby!"

Now, I was pretty sure that worms laid eggs, but I bent over to take a closer look. Sure enough! It was having a baby. Granted, it was much larger than I'd expected a worm baby, but then again, I don't consider myself much of an expert in the field of worms.

After a few moments of watching the tiny miracle, the baby worm finally pulled free of its mother, and slid, intertwined, along the length of her body.

"What's the baby doing now, daddy?" my oldest asked after another minute went by, and the baby seemed to poke its head into the side of its mother.

I stared for a moment before responding, "I have no idea..."

Suddenly, the baby plunged deeper inside the mother worm, crimping the mother's body, and choking off its bodily functions until half went white...

It then slid deeper, until its entire body was cocooned inside. After a moment of staring, I said, "I don't think that's a baby, girls."

The girls were silent for a few more minutes as the reality settled in, and they stared at the brutal side of nature. "Daddy?" my oldest said.
"Yeah, sweety?" I replied.
"That's kinda gross," and then skipped off to the van as she shifted the subject to a boy at school who eats worms, too.

If anyone knows anything about carnivorous worms, please let me know. There's not a whole lot on the internet about them, and I'd feel more secure with the knowledge that it's just worms this little bastards eat.

And, now, back to your regularly scheduled cruise stories...

Monday, August 11, 2008

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:50:21 GMT

At Sea - August 4th, 2008

Doing a sort of pseudo-review of the ship portion of our cruise is something akin to the ocean on which we traveled. For every perfect moment of riding the crest of a wave, there would undoubtedly be a steep decline into the trough that left us feeling bewildered and annoyed.

The ship, Carnival's Legend, was absolutely stellar. The theme was essentially legends of different cultures, which I found to be an awesome change of pace from the many cruises we'd been on before. John William Waterhouse paintings covering nearly inch of available space in the common areas, and the hallways had ink drawing wallpaper of unicorns, mermaids, and the like. I did feel that the theme fell apart with the inclusion of Satchmo's Lounge (Legend? Of course! But he actually existed, which seemed to go against the general sense of the theme) as well as a very cool Colossus of Rhodes in the atrium (again, to the best of my knowledge, not a legend). But that's merely nitpicking, and really doesn't diminish the fact that the ship was incredible to behold.

To add to this whole experience, we had the perfect room on the eighth floor midship, exactly ten steps from the buffet upstairs (take that BMI!), and always halfway to wherever it was that we wanted to go. We had a nice sized balcony, and the room itself was stellar, with plenty of space, a great shower, and a nice layout. If I could stop right here, this cruise would have been an easy ten out of ten. But that would only be telling one tenth of the story.

The other nine tenths, as any cruiser will tell you, revolves around the notion of relaxation and the sense of being catered to. Yet, and I am not being overly dramatic here, there was not one member of the staff who did not walk around like they secretly hated you. Actually, "secretly" might be pushing it, because, as my wife overheard, one of the higher ranking employees said a little too loud, "Pffft... The only people who go on cruises are fat people." The irony of which wasn't lost to my wife who pointed out the fact that his own stomach was testing the durability of his uniform buttons.

Even more ironic is the fact that the food was so overwhelmingly bad that I have very little doubt that many people actually lost weight on the cruise. Okay, maybe "many" is pushing it since there seemed to be little complaint from the large number of gluttons on board (and what's a cruise without overeating?). However, we all came back having gained little more than sodium weight, so I think that speaks volumes of the food quality, not just in taste but in the sheer amount of salt that was added to every meal. By midway through the voyage, my tongue was swollen, and I demanded to add salt to even the cheesecake to give it flavor. If variety is the spice of life, I have little doubt that this cruise's chef would replace variety with a half cup of salt.

Even worse was that the dining room, which has historically featured stellar cuisine on all the ships I've ever traveled on before, and was consistently bland and tasteless. And in most occasions the food came out at room temperature. Not so bad for steak tartar, but horrible for filet mignon. Further, finding an edible vegetable was something akin to finding sunken treasure while snorkeling in a swimming pool. Usually it was floating in a swamp of salty brine, or was found buried in some enedible Chinese food (bring on the MSG!). On occasion we ran into a pan of limp broccoli, but since my wife has horrible allergic reactions to it, she essentially spent a week staring dreamily at any green plant she came across while on shore.

Oddly, there were a small handful of items that were absolutely stellar, which made the bad food seem even more horrible. Most of the desserts were inedible, but there was a pumpkin cake, a dense chocolate cake, and even an Indian rice pudding that were phenomenal. Particularly the rice pudding, which tasted even better than the pudding that I eat several quarts of every time I go to my favorite Indian restaurant. Similarly, the grilled shrimp was of high quality, as were the (very, very, very young) lobster tails, which I'm typically not impressed with when I go on ships. Granted, I probably wouldn't have been impressed on any other voyage, but having something taste at least good made that item taste very, very good by comparison. Clever tactic, Carnival.

People watching was a little more interesting this time around. We're used to going on Disney Cruise Lines or Royal Caribbean, which definitely caters to a different crowd. Carnival seems to cater to couples. Or more specifically, couples who drink a crapload of alcohol, and stay up until the wee hours of the morning. At one point I woke up at around two o'clock in the morning with a wracking cough, and so I went upstairs to get some tea. I'm not kidding when I say there were more people running around at two in the morning than at two in the afternoon. Music was blaring from the pool area, drunk people were everywhere screaming at the top of their lungs, and there were a surprising number of kids and teenagers just running aimlessly around in large gaggles. I can only assume that this is while their parents got hammered poolside.

All this was punctuated by our magnetic whiteboard that we always hang from our cabin door. Specifically, on Disney's cruises, everyone has a whiteboard to leave messages to their family, or to simply tell everyone who walks by to have fun on the island the next day. However, we stuck one on the door of this cruise and it wouldn't last five minutes before someone had scrawled a curse-filled phrase on it. Who knows how many times our cabin steward erased these lovely sentiments before he finally asked us to please take it down and place it inside. Emo teenagers would spend their idle time just sitting in elevators to chat for hours on end like blabbering lumps in the carpet, or they would hit the door release buttons throughout all the halls, closing massive doors that blocked passage throughout the ship and making navigation of the hallways more difficult. I always appreciate devious teenage behavior, but only if it's devious. These kids were just annoying.

I don't want to lead you to believe that this vacation was by any means horrible, because it wasn't. Quite the contrary, actually, because it was absolutely fantastic overall. But the cruise experience was way less than stellar, and I went from being excited for our days at sea to dreading them to some degree. Keeping the children entertained on a boat that doesn't want to have anything to do with them aside from a few mildly-entertaining kids club activities is difficult, and counterproductive to the relaxation portion of our trip. I have little doubt that there were hundreds and hundreds of people who thought the ship was great, the food fantastic, and the staff incredibly friendly. But I imagine those are also the same people who spent ninety five percent of the cruise completely sloshed, and will likely have a large gaping black hole in their memory of that week, anyway.