December 2004 Archives

Hey, so I don't think I mentioned it, and in case you didn't notice, I've got a new link in the sidebar to the astronomy site I've been putting together. The Belt of Venus

There's a comet cruising across the late evening sky that's a really nice binocular target. If you can find the constellation Orion, it shouldn't be too hard to find the right spot in the sky for Comet Machholz. Sky and Telescope has a pretty good nightly map showing the comet's position in the sky. Try putting some binoculars on it if you like that sort of thing. If you're in the middle of heavy urban light pollution, or the moon is shining high in the sky when you go to look, it may take some patience. Otherwise, wait around for the first week in January, when it will be at its brightest, and pretty close to the Pleiades. Here is a photo I snagged of it a couple weeks ago.

Here's a widefield shot of the Pleiades (upper left) and the Hyades (lower center) star clusters.

Here's a moonlit shot of the US Naval Observatory I grabbed that same night. It got 11th place out of 143 entries at dpchallenge.com.

We've got a real character working in our shipping department here at work. Good ole Jack. I can easily picture him jumping around chest-bare in the mud at Woodstock 35 years ago. He's a really nice guy. Kinda on the hyper side though. Whenever he blasts through delivering the packages, he calls Rob "My Bohemian Brother!" Cracks me up. Every time. I think he decided I was getting left out, and since I'm a little too 'establishment' to become part of "My Bohemian Brothers", he calls me "My Latino Brother!".

Which is all really just my introduction to the cool-buds knuckle-bonk thing that he does. He came by today to drop off some proofs, and as he handed them to me, he extended the knuckles, and so I whipped out my knuckles, and then right on cue, I completely missed his knuckles. Oh the humiliation. Ladies & gentlemen, I am complete loser when it comes to secret cool-guy handshakes or cool-buds knuckle-bonking. I've always shook people's hands the old fashioned colonial European white-guy way--extend right hand, grasp subjects right hand, firm grip, freestyling comes in the form of how many shakes, or how long the shake lasts. I'm not saying I'm a pro at missionary-style handshaking, but I think I do a good job avoiding the clammy, flacid, fish-hand shake thing, which is about 80% of that game right there.

Whenever I go back to visit Amanda's family and friends back in Oklahoma, I run into a lot of cool-guy secret handshakes. The ones where you start out with standard hand grip, then swiftly shift to the thumb grip, and then over to the curled finger lock, except not ever in the same order, and it always trips me up. It's like oh man, Amanda's husband, what a stiff. Takes me straight back to the doofus loser days of gradeschool and jr. high. (By high school, I had learned to avoid contact with people I didn't know very well, and thus hide my idiocy from the masses as much as possible.) Anyway, baggage. Always there.

Then along came Jack to reinforce to me on a daily basis that I still [don't] got it. Sometimes he does the fist hammer thing instead--where one guy extends a fist for the other guy to bonk his fist down onto, and then the downward bonk is reciprocated by the first guy. It all happens very fast. And at first, I used to get confused as to which one he was after--knuckle-bonk, or fist-hammer--but I started to realize it's all in the angle that the extended fist is at. These things are subtle, people. And I realize that if I was "street wise" as my Aunt Becky used to call it, it would come to me intuitively. Instead, I have to sit here and fret about the mechanics. :P I just need to loosen up and let it flow. I bet I'd get it if I could just do that. And then I wouldn't be missing the target half the time, or getting so focused that I hit his knuckles so hard that they pop. Oh man that was actually pretty funny when that happened. Actually, what I should do is go totally and insanely freestyle and pour on a little confusion myself. Like maybe next time, I'll reach out with my left hand, grab his forearm, and then then do a fast up-down hammer-bonk, followed by a triple knuckle-thonk. See what kind of reaction I get out of that...

Hmyeah, so I was tantalizing my tastebuds over at Appetites.us and came across a recipe for a Banana-Cashew Sandwich. As much as I really don't care for bananas, it whetted my appetite to give them a try in this context. Yeah, yeah, I've heard of peanut butter & banana sandwiches before, but sometimes a thing can be said in such a way as to give one a new perspective on it. So today, I went to Safeway to get the necessary lunch materials, and then went home to enjoy. Then I got home and realized I left the bag of bananas and au naturale peanut butter at the store because I love nothing more than to forget things and so waste my time in as many ways as possible. So I returned to the store, to find that nobody knew what I was talking about. "Bananas? A bag of bananas? No. No bag of bananas." Ehh. Maybe I set it on the roof of my car and splattered it all over the road. Forget it. I use dollar bills for toilet paper anyway, so what's four bucks for sammach fixins right? So I bought another round of bananas and organic peanut butter, and off I went, staring at the bag the entire time, half expecting it to vanish from my hands by way of some schizophrenic hallucination feedback loop.

I made it home with the cargo this time, and toasted up some nice munchy honey-wheatberry bread while stirring in the layer of oil on the stratified peanut butter. (I know, his recipe suggests cashew butter, but I didn't want to drive around for an extra half hour to go get some cashew-butter at the hippie store across town. Because as we all know, bigtime corporate grocery stores cater to Homogenized Suburbanites who don't eat any other creamed 'nut' product besides peanuts--and YES I know they're really legumes, so please, no fair getting all pedantic on me. That's my job, thanks kindly.)

Righto.

So I smeared on the peanut grease, sliced up some banana discs, and then drizzled on some honey. Mmmm, it smelled pretty yummy. After pressing it all together, I sat down in the living room and watched some lame 'Young Looney Tunes' cartoon with the kids as I prepared to savor this new delight.

Fooey! I hated it.

Dadgummit. It had such potential. But I can't get past the bananas. I've just never liked them. The flavor is bearable, but the texture bugs me to death. So slimy, yet chewy. And for some reason, this 'bearable' flavor, when mixed with that texture really grosses me out. Even the crunchiness of the bread, and the sweetness of the honey couldn't drown out the greusome banananess of it all.

Oh well. I tried to be as much of a trooper as possible, and ate 85% of it before plopping the last couple bites in the trash. Yechh. So, sorry Mr. Peyton. I tried--I really did.