The Grain

Hi

2011-07-27T08:16:00.001-07:00

Long time, no post. How are you doing?

The day the music died

2011-01-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

Really, that headline has nothing to do with anything.

But it's good to be back. I haven't blogged in a while but figured I needed to update how things are going.

Well, they are going.

Brian.

AT&T still sucks

2010-11-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

It's great to have all of this week off. I definitely needed a break from the students and I'm looking forward to eating some serious Thanksgiving grub.

Planning to have Thanksgiving dinner with the in-laws, then return on Friday to have our own Thanksgiving dinner over the weekend. Not that I need all this food, mind you. I've been eating quite a bit (Stacey and I are going to Five Guys for lunch; she's getting a veggie burger -- what a wimp) and I haven't been doing anything in the way of exercising lately.

In fact, I challenged myself to drop and do 20 push-ups this morning, and barely got through 10. I've got to get on the ball!

By the way, AT&T sucks. I mean, absolutely, positively sucks. We still usually can't make calls in our home and when we do manage to connect with someone, the call is usually dropped. It was good news to hear that Verizon is going to partner with the iPhone. We'll probably be kicking AT&T to the curb, once our contract runs out. Of course, Verizon will probably end up sucking, too. You really can't win.

Yeah, I'd probably have to buy another iPhone to get a contract with Verizon, but it would be worth it not to be aggravated with AT&T's shitty infrastructure.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

Brian

Hey, this is a private residence, man!

2010-11-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone. It's been awhile.

Things are going really well. Getting more and more adapted to the teaching gig, even while I continue to be smothered in paperwork and red tape. Got a new principal who seems really together and focused on the task of improving the school. That's good news.

On the home front: Stacey and I are planning a trip to New York to see my son, Brady. Looking forward to seeing the Big Apple all spruced up for the holiday season.

Cooper's doing well and using more and more words. He's also really becoming a stinker, getting very adept at pushing all the buttons.

I'm glad the holiday season is here and I'm also glad it has cooled off a bit. Those 90- and 100-degree days were beating me down.

Hope everyone is getting in the holiday spirit.

Brian.

I promise I mean

2010-11-03T17:11:00.001-07:00

People still reading

2010-11-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

It's amazing that people still stop in here since I haven't blogged
since mid October. Inpromise to get on the ball, but I've been busy.

The market has been in a great rally. Good news. Teaching has been
going well, albeit still frustrating at times.

What's up people?

Brian

2010-10-15T19:24:00.001-07:00

Getting ready to go to sleep. It's the end of a pretty long week.
Cooking short ribs for a friend and his wife tomorrow night.

Went to see Daniel Tosh. Show was actually a bit of a dissapointment.
He seemed to lack that rapid fire, stream of consciousness thing that
is typically his trademark. He wasn't horrible though.

Hanging in there; going to see Daniel Tosh

2010-10-12T15:07:00.000-07:00

Cooper turned 2 this past weekend.

He probably didn't realize what was happening, but we got him a Thomas the train cake and he received a lot of presents.

It's difficult to blog, since I'm so consumed with school and things like grades and seating charts.

Seating charts are tough. It's kind of like playing chess. Of course, you want to wedge the troublemakers between the good, nerdy kids. But when most of the students in the class are trouble-makers, where do you go? Checkmate!

Anyway, I think I have a pretty good plan hashed out for one of my classes and I'm trying to get the rest in line.

Sitting on the bed while Cooper plays with his cars. Going to see Daniel Tosh this week, which I'm pretty psyched about.

Yes, the comedian of Tosh 2.0 is coming to the sticks -- Augusta. He should have plenty of material to draw from here.

Anyone who hasn't seen any of Tosh's standup should check him out. Pretty funny guy (and I'm not really all that into comedians).

That's about it for now. Hope everyone is doing well.

Brian

Bummed

2010-09-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

What do you say (or do) when one of your students gets shot?

Definitely wasn't prepared for that one.

Obviously, I really can't talk about the details, but holy cow! I'm hoping the kid is going to be okay. I had taken a liking to him (even though he gave me a hard time now and then). It really sucks.

Other than that, just trying to stay afloat in the new teaching career. Finding the planning and paperwork exhausting. I am at a loss when it comes to a good gauge for my expectations. Can't tell if I'm expecting too much, or if some of my students just have me duped and are playing dumb.

Other than that, Cooper and the wife are doing well and I'm looking forward to the weekend. Oh yeah, I've got Saturday training. Oh well ...

Brian.

Cribbin' it up homestyle

2010-09-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

Well, entering week 6 (I think) of the teaching job and things are getting to be less chaotic, albeit only slightly.

Still getting students switched around and we're supposed to get new schedules this week, meaning I'm continually having to update newcomers and constantly having to reintroduce myself, class rules, etc.

It's been a little mad.

This week was Arts in the Heart of Augusta, an annual arts, performance, and food festival in Augusta. My wife and I picked up a pretty cool painting from a local artist who does illustrations and editorial cartoons for the paper my wife helms, the Metro Spirit.

I'll have to take a pic of it when we get it and share it with you all.

The festival itself was a little disappointing this year. There seemed to be more of the craft type stuff, rather than true art. The economy probably hasn't helped. I'm sure a lot of artists are finding that people don't want to shell out a bunch of dough for art when times still seem so uncertain.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Brian

2010-09-15T17:26:00.001-07:00

I am Elmo. God of fire. I will destroy you. You are in my power and my
power shows no mercy. Welcome to hell, kiddies.

Sheep Dip scotch

2010-09-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it sounds pretty weird, but it's actually pretty good.

It's a blended malt rather than a single malt, but it's still pretty decent. Its about $30 a bottle or so (maybe a little more, I forget). But it has a nice honeyed taste along with a little peat on the finish.

Sheep dip, as many might now, is an insecticide applied to sheep. Apparently in the olden days, people would hide their scotch in barrels labeled "sheep dip" to avoid the tax man.

Anyway, don't like it as much as one of my faves, Laphroaig, but it's gotten priced out of sight (used to be about $40 a bottle, now it's $60-plus at some places).

Hope everyone had a good three-day weekend.

Brian

Some much deserved R-and-R

2010-09-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

My wife and I are just kicking back this weekend. We're about to go to a jazz festival in downtown Augusta for awhile.

I made some pretty awesome barbecue chicken last night and it had cooled down enough where we could actually use that side yard we put in earlier this summer. The mosquitoes seemed to have taken the night off, too, which was nice.

It was one hell of a week. We had a big football game at school (and our team trounced the other school), and I think the students were just overly fired up and, therefore, acting like knuckleheads. I had to put a few kids out of the room and it was just an overall bad Friday, even with the promise of a three-day weekend in the back of my mind.

Finishing up Beowulf with my students and getting ready to go into the Vikings and literature from that period. Took Cooper to a fish fry the other night for a local politician friend of ours and he got his first frolic on a bouncy castle. He had a pretty good time and didn't want to leave:

Here's the rub I used on the chicken:

Equal parts: paprika, coriander powder, garlic powder, pulverized oregano, ginger powder

Half tablespoon each: ground black pepper, salt

I used KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce and rubbed it on in the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Good stuff.

Brian.

Everything's good, excepting mortality

2010-09-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Hanging in there. Made it through another week in the chaotic world of high school teaching.

Looking forward to a lot of rest this weekend. It's a three-day weekend.

Going to the high school football game Friday night.

Does anyone really like their job? It seems like they don't. I remember early on in my reporting career that it really didn't feel like a job. It was enjoyable. But then it started to suck.

I'm 46. That's weird. I'm closer to 50 than 40. What a truly brief time we have here on Earth. I know, I know. I still have a lot of time left with my children (provided some horrible disease doesn't strike me or some lunatic nation pushes the button). But still, you have to wonder what it's all about.

I don't think my oldest son really likes me and that's kind of weird, too. But I don't really know what to do about that. I guess maybe time will bring us closer together, or maybe he'll come around when I'm a sick old man.

But I digress ...

Lots of relaxation this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Brian.

Another week down, chana dal

2010-08-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Well I made it through another week, and I don't mind saying I'm tired as hell.

I've been getting up at 5 in the morning each day and I'm' usually ready to hit the sack around 8 (but don't, because my wife would kill me if I went to bed that early.

I still feel like I'm Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the hill and having it roll right back down on me. Classroom management is a real bitch and it's about all I spend my time doing.

But enough of that.

I'm hoping to make chana dal for my in-laws tomorrow.

It's made from a lentil-like legume and has lots of Indian spice.

Cooper chilling at the beach this summer

I'm also going to do some shrimp with some garam masala, ginger, garlic and a little bit of chili, cooked in coconut milk.

I haven't gotten to do much real cooking lately because I've had training on the weekend, so I'm really looking forward to it. My in-laws don't know I'm cooking yet though, so I hope they're OK with it.

Brady getting ready to boogie board

That's about all for now.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

Brian.

2010-08-25T16:26:00.001-07:00

Sorry I haven't been on here much lately. I've been pretty tired and
run down.

I have mixed feelings about my new career and it has been really
taking a lot out of me.

Class sizes are way too big (34 students or more in some cases) and it
is often difficult to get much teaching done. I often feel like a
combination of babysitter and correctional officer.

Even so, I'm keeping my head down and doing the best I can. People
tell me it will get better and I've got to believe it will. It can't
get much worse.

Brian.

Tired and a little disillusioned

2010-08-15T13:04:00.001-07:00

Well, I made it through the first week, and man was I tired.

My classes are almost constant classroom management for me and I honestly don't know yet whether I'm cut out for that.

I know I'm cut out for teaching, and enjoy presenting lessons and getting input and participation from students when they are attentive and good.

But constantly having to tell people to sit down, pull up their pants, stop talking, pay attention to me, etc., etc., is pretty taxing.

Now I'm about to enter Week 2.

I can't believe this weekend is already over. I had to spend much of it getting lessons ready.

So much for that, "Get some rest over the weekend" spiel.

Brian.

So far, so good

2010-08-11T17:59:00.001-07:00

Day 3 of the new teaching job and so far, so good.

There have definitely been some rough patches, but each day gets a little better.

Actually, the things I've been through and witnessed the first couple of days would make for some really interesting writing, but I can't put any of it down here. Students, I am told, will inevitably find you on the Web.

It's not that I would say anything bad about them. I really like the kids, even the ones who have given me problems.

I still see a big learning curve ahead for me, but I'm looking forward to it.

Sorry I haven't been posting more regularly, but I'm tired. Been getting up at 5 a.m. and trying to work out in time to be at school by 7:20. I have four classes of seniors that I teach British Lit to. I'll also have a remedial reading program for ninth-graders in the morning.

Trying not to lose my voice.

Brian.

My new (and first) classroom

2010-08-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

So here it is:

I am teaching senior British Lit.

Here I am trying to get my classroom ready for the first day.

Brian.

New name for the old blog

2010-08-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

So there it is: The Grain.

That's the name I've chosen for the evolution of the blog that used to be House Daddy.

Since I'm no longer going to be a house daddy, it made no sense to keep calling it that.

Why The Grain? I don't know, it kind of came to me when I was drifting off to sleep and it sounded cool.

I'll still write about Cooper and still write about the types of things I've been writing about all along.

Hope my five readers keep reading.

Brian

Gearing up for something completely different

2010-08-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

Only a week left before I'm staring at my first classroom of high school students.

It's going to be interesting and challenging. I'm looking forward to it.

Cooper is adapting to daycare, but he doesn't seem overly happy. When I picked him up on Friday, he looked pretty anxious to go.

Hopefully he'll get used to it soon.

Brian

R.I.P. House Daddy

2010-07-28T09:16:00.000-07:00

So yeah, it looks a little different doesn't it?

And the old blog is soon going to be changing even more -- with a new title.

See, I can no longer call myself House Daddy because, well, I'm not going to be a house daddy anymore.

The change I've been hinting at recently (and thanks "Red" or "Bill F." for calling me last night to inquire; I was amazed someone was actually reading this thing!) was that I've gotten myself a job as a teacher at a local high school.

That's right, House Daddy is going back to work.

I found out a couple of weeks ago, but there have been a lot of things to sort out and I was waiting for confirmation that I did, indeed, have the job.

It was bittersweet. Teaching is what I've been aiming to do for some time now, after getting certified while still working for a newspaper in Florida. I was happy to have gotten the job, since hundreds of would-be teachers are trying to do the same. But I literally wept at the thought of having to be away from Cooper.

The past year with him has been a true gift. It has been great to see him grow and change and learn new words and accomplish new acrobatic feats (like jumping off the coffee table onto the couch). I knew I was going to have to go back to work, but I just didn't know it would be this soon.

But I'm excited, and terrified, about the new job. I think I have what it takes to teach, but it's going to be a steep learning curve at first.

So am I abandoning the blog? Heck no (see, I have to use heck instead of hell now, because students might find their way here).

The blog's going to undergo a name change and a few more tweaks, but I'm keeping it at the same URL, at least for now. I tried to figure out how to keep the old House Daddy postings labeled as such, but they will probably get re-tagged with the new name as well. Oh well.

Brian.

Still alive

2010-07-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm still here, though my posting's been sporadic at best.

Actually, I'm going through some changes here at the moment that I want to update my five readers on, but everything is still not solidly in place enough yet for me to put it down here.

Nothing bad, really. Actually, probably a good thing. But I can't really go into it now.

Had a pretty nice weekend in Savannah with some friends from Florida and my in-laws, who stayed a night and watched little Cooper while we went out.

Everything else is going pretty well, and I promise to get more regular in my postings soon.

Until then, here's a photo of Cooper with a praying mantis.

Brian.

Steaks on the grill

2010-07-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

I got some pretty inexpensive Angus filets on sale at Sam's today and I'm getting ready to throw them on the grill.

I turned 46 the other day. Bummer. I guess it's better than the alternative.

Non sequitur cloud photo to spruce up otherwise dull post

Haven't been blogging much lately and I know I've been disappointing the now seven people who regularly check this site (unless it's the same two or three who are checking it a couple of times a day).

I do have some news to report, but I'm feeling out the situation a little longer before I tell it.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Brian.

Did you hear about LeBron James?

2010-07-09T06:10:00.001-07:00

He's going to Miami.

Brian.

Fastest wireless carrier's mea culpa: "149 bucks please"

2010-07-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

I love my iPhone. The AT&T carrier it's married to, well, not so much.

It's the way you get a 3G signal one minute, and then, seemingly with a change in the wind's direction, you're thrown onto AT&T's much slower Edge data system -- even though you haven't physically moved. Then it's back to 3G, then Edge, then 3G, and on and on.

But the real frustration is having to desperately run all around my house trying to keep a signal so my calls don't drop. This is Augusta, Ga. It's not exactly Atlanta, but it isn't Podunk either. The cell infrastructure here ought to be able to penetrate our brick walls or at the very least, find their way through the glass of our sun room. If we lived in a bomb shelter clad with four-feet-thick concrete walls, I might understand.

I've called AT&T and gotten the typical, "Oh, we'll make a note that," B.S. response.

But a few weeks back, AT&T sent me a solution. For $149.99 I could buy a device from them that would actually allow me to talk in my own house on my own cell phone that I bought just several miles from here. The device looks like a modem and uses your DSL line to boost the cell signal in your home.

Let me get this straight, I thought. AT&T is failing to give me (and my wife) what we paid for: essentially, the reasonable expectation that we should be able to talk on our cell phones in our own house. So to make things right, they want to charge me for a device that makes their service function as it should?

Well, here's what I have to say to you AT&T: You guys are a bunch of fu---- [CALL FAILED]

Brian.

Brian Neill rides mechanical bull - badly

2010-07-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

We spent last week in Garden City, S.C., in a house that was right on the beach.

My father-in-law rented the house for us and the rest of the family. It was a great time, though ferociously hot and I probably contributed greatly to my future melanoma count.

For my son's 14th birthday, we went to an amusement center and rode go-carts.

I also tried my hand at riding a mechanical bull. It wasn't pretty. I don't think I'm really that fat, but I might be. It depends on which one of the three selves (how I see me, how I think others see me, I others really see me) I believe.

Brian.

Empire of the Ants

2010-06-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Anthill: A Novel" by E.O. Wilson, a fictional work that seeks to juxtapose the infighting and struggles of ants with those of developers and environmentalists in the area of southern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

The book caught my interest after reading a review of it in the Wall Street Journal. Being a Florida native, the topic of encroaching developers always interests me. And the idea of delving into anthill populations, depicting their struggles in a fictional but scientifically sound way also piqued my interest. Wilson, who was 80 at the time he wrote the book, is a Harvard professor who has spent the majority of his life studying ants and has won a Pulitzer prize for his work on the insects.

Weird thing was, the word ant did not appear until page 114 of this 378-page work. Much of the time was spent developing familial backstory for the protagonist, Raphael "Raff" Semmes Cody, who goes off to law school at Harvard to eventually help save the Nokobee territory -- rich in animal and plant life -- from the developers. Cody takes this tack after initially taking up biology at Florida State. The struggles of the ant colonies at Nokobee form the basis for his thesis there but become connected only in the most loose fashion near the end of the book.

Wilson is good at adding dimension to his characters, but seemed to rush some of the major exchanges in the book that are at the crux of the imperiled Nokobee tract's outcome. In all, it was a decent book, but probably not as interesting as I expected.

Brian.

I wish I were cool

2010-06-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

But at least I went to Asheville.

Here are some pics from the recent trip. Yankees and yuppies, look away. There's nothing for you to see here. Go to Vegas.

Blood-sucking beasts

2010-06-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a good thing we put in that patio in our side yard, because at the moment at least, it's virtually unusable.

I have never seen so many damned mosquitoes in my life. They've set up breeding grounds in the mulch and if you walk back there at 4:30 in the afternoon or so and step into the shady areas a literal cloud of the damned things wafts up at you.

((Sorry, this is pretty small and hard to see [that's what she said]))

So I'm on a mission today to find something that will get rid of the things and maybe eradicate their young-uns. I want a spray, but nothing that's going to hang around on the mulch forever. We do after all plan to put a swing set and maybe a sandbox back there for Cooper one day.

I grew up in Florida and thought that was the mosquito capital of the nation, but Georgia's looking to overshadow it. The fogger truck drove by one night not too long ago, but it doesn't look like what it sprayed out did much good.

They have all these elaborate mosquito killing devices now. Coleman makes one that uses propane and a special type of lure to somehow draw mosquitoes into the device. I read where you have to refill the propane once a month and the device runs about $300. To hell with that.

It's off to Home Depot this afternoon to see what I can find.

Brian

Mountain trip was nice break

2010-06-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

My wife and I went up to Asheville weekend before last.

It was a great time. I love it up there. The mountains are beautiful and there are places that rival Europe as far as beauty.

Its bittersweet for my wife, who grew up there. She sometimes feels the same way about Asheville that I feel about Florida: It's beautiful, but there are too many people and too many changes to the landscape. And too much of the two "Y's" -- yuppies and Yankees.

But it's still beautiful and is a nice break.

I'm going to post some pictures soon.

Brian.

The high cost of Apple's iToys

2010-06-01T05:44:00.001-07:00

And what of the people who don't have what I ain't got? Are they victims of my leisure? ... Maybe partying will help.

-- Minutemen

Coming across the crawler on CNBC this morning was news that Apple had sold 2 million iPads in two months.

Contrast that news with a headline in Thursday's Wall Street Journal that read: Suicides Spark Inquiries.

Turns out that 10 employees at the chinese factory (or sweatshop, if you prefer) have jumped to their deaths from the dormitory-like living quarters. Apple and Hewlett-Packard are said to be investigating the suicides and worker conditions at Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which also manufactures under the name Foxconn.

The complex where the suicides took place houses an amazing 400,000 workers and is walled off with guarded gates, according to the Journal. The average worker there makes a whopping $132 a month -- the legal minimum wage.

I thought about this as I watched the slick ads for the new iPad and thought about those 400,000 hands jamming circuits into circuit boards from sunrise on into the night (indeed, the Journal story said that many of the workers end up working overtime).

I've thought the same when I've scrolled through photos or accessed Web sites on my iPhone, the beautiful little device that I couldn't wait to get my hands on. CNBC reported that iPhones where also made in the factory where workers leapt to their deaths.

At least officials at the Chinese factory are taking proactive steps to help their workers. The company is installing 1.5 million square meters of netting around the complex to discourage jumpers and also circulated a letter to workers, which was later retracted, asking family members to agree not to sue if their loved ones take their own lives.

As for the suicides, themselves, maybe there's an App for that!

Brian.

For oil spill, call in the aliens

2010-05-30T06:15:00.001-07:00

So the "top kill" solution to the oil leak failed and now millions of
gallons of oil continue to pour into the gulf.

BP is now going to try to seal off the oil pipe, but experts are
skeptical that the extreme pressure of the underwater gusher will
allow such an operation.

There's only one solution: We need to call in the aliens. That's
right, only advanced civilizations from outer space have the ability
to save us now. That's where the Obama administration needs to be
focusing its attention.

Brian

I get stupid with a snake

2010-05-24T08:06:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting out on our patio Sunday just minding my own biz when I look over and see three feet of stretched out snake looking at me.

He was lying next to a 4 x 6 and had little kinks along his otherwise straight body like he might be as surprised and on guard about seeing me as I was about seeing him.

I don't really mind snakes. In fact, I owned a boa before, back when I was a dumb teenager and never thought about what a pain in the ass it was going to be to go buy cute, little white mice all the time to feed him. I ended up giving the snake to a friend and the mice escaped into my father's house. Sorry dad.

Anyway ... the dilemma was, a) I didn't know what kind of snake this was, and b) he couldn't stay here with little Cooper -- and me -- playing in the yard all the time. I went in to get my wife, Stacey, to show her.

Her opinion was immediate: "You've got to kill it. If you chase it away, it will be back."

It was a beautiful snake, however, and the thought of chopping off its head with a shovel repulsed me. So I jumped into Crocodile Hunter mode: Crikey, Stacey, go and get me that shovel and a chockerblockin' good sized pillow case! That's one big snake! Come here little fella. No one's going to throw YOU on the barbee!

My plan was to gently pin its head so I could get in to grab it. But that proved a challenge. This snake was quick and each time I pinned his head, he would twist under the shovel and come back toward me. Not in a striking manner, mind you, just in that, "Hey, hey, what are you doing? Let me out of here!" kind of way. Then he got the front of his body firmly tied up to a stubby Japanese holly bush. I had his tail and wasn't letting go and I finally managed to get him out, but he raced back in my direction again.

By now my heart was beating out of my chest. There are only a few poisonous snakes in Georgia and I knew this wasn't a copperhead, or a rattler or any of the others. Had it been one of those, I would have had no choice but to kill it.

Me, taking a picture while driving and holding a snake in a pillowcase

This snake's head was slender. It was pretty passive in its actions. But I didn't want to get bitten, nonetheless. Finally, I got his head pinned and just went for it, thinking myself crazy as I was doing it. He excreted some musky stuff on me, but I got him in the pillowcase without getting bitten.

I decided to drive him over to a nearby canal here in Augusta where there are lots of bushes and places to roam. The whole time I'm holding this knotted pillowcase in my free hand while I drive. So far, so good. But when I'm nearly there, he starts getting antsy and freaking out in there, taking strikes at the top of the bag.

Yeah, right where my hand is.

I'm at the edge of the canal area, so I decide to pull off, hop the guard rail over to the other side of the road, and let him go. Once out of the pillowcase, he starts trying to head toward the road. No, no! I yelled, and waved the pillowcase at him to go the other way. I wasn't going to all this trouble just to seem him squished on the Riverwatch Parkway.

There's his tail heading into the woods

Off he went, and I went back home to see what he really was.

According to the University of Georgia's Web site, a gray rat snake has a blotch pattern down its body, assumes a "kinked" position when it gets threatened, and also expels a malodorous musk. Check, check and check.

Brian.

Sympathy for the devil

2010-05-22T08:00:00.001-07:00

Thanks for the comments Maura. I'm just reading them and I'm LMGDMFCSSOBSFBAO!

Yes, that's right. Poor little Brian not getting any attention.

Oh no, no one's commenting on my blog. Nobody likes me. Nobody's paying attention to me.

Waa. Waa. Poor little Brian. Shut the fuck up you weak little loser. People have a lot better things to do than read your stupid blog. What do you have to say, anyway? Just shut up.

Anyway, thanks again Maura.

Just taking it easy today. Got a little rain this morning, which was nice. Ate more leftover Korean food for breakfast.

Brian

Zero comments

2010-05-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

That seems to be the story of my life on here lately.

Apparently I'm boring people to death, so let me continue.

Had a pretty good week. Finally got some much-needed rain.

Went to a pretty cool Korean restaurant yesterday for a food story I'm doing and got treated to a full table spread of wonderful dishes. There were Korean short ribs, bibimbap -- a dish consisting of meat and vegetables with a soft-yolk egg on top served in a searing hot stone pot, and an assortment of sides, including kimchi.

There were also these cool little anchovies, about the size of an inch piece of linguini, that were absolutely delicious.

Getting ready for a kicked-back weekend, hopefully.

Brian

The whipsaw strikes again

2010-05-20T16:44:00.001-07:00

How low can we go?

Over 300 points down in the Dow today.

What the f---

And how about that oil spill. Looks like it's going to make Valdez
look like a quart of Castrol fell in the gulf.

Greece. The euro zone. Thailand.

Wonder if Starbucks' stock will go up tomorrow?

Brian

Holy frijoles!

2010-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Haven't had a whole lot to blog about lately.

The terrible two's have definitely set in for little Cooper. His favorite thing to do is go outside, and that's turned into this non-stop chant: "Ouu-tt, Ouu-tt. Ouuuuuu-tttt."

"OK, wait just a second Cooper and Daddy will take you out."

"Ouuu-ttt!"

"I'm coming, Cooper. I'm coming."

"Ooouuu-tttt!"

He's also taken to head-butting when he's frustrated and caught me pretty good in the eye socket yesterday. He was already banging his head on the floor and furniture (which a baby book said was normal and which was fine with me if he was dumb enough to do it) but I don't need him head-butting me.

Have some people coming over today and I'm making Mexican-style pinto beans and pork tacos. I was going to do my mojo-braised pork for the taco fillings, but decided to try out a recipe from Rick Bayless out of a cookbook my in-laws got me for Christmas. His recipe incorporates chorizo and potatoes in the meat. We'll see how it turns out.

Oh yeah, we also made flan. I frustrated my wife because I wanted to blend two recipes, one from the Columbia Restaurant in Florida and a flan Bayless makes. She was really in charge of the flan, but in my usual intrusive style in the kitchen, I got in the way. I still think it will be good though.

Have a good weekend, all.

Brian.

Have I sold my soul to iTunes?

2010-05-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

I love iTunes. The iPod changed my life. No more CDs blanketing the floorboard of my car. No more practically running off the road trying to remove and insert CDs.

But it has gotten a little ridiculous lately that nearly every time I go to download music on the iTunes service I'm stopped and presented with a new terms and conditions form that I have to read and fill out.

I've always got the best intentions, but never make it all the way through the legal mumbo jumbo before checking the "I accept" button.

Apple's rise to prominence in the tech world has been nothing short of diabolical.

Think one of those forms signed away my soul?

Brian

Mr. Market's wild ride

2010-05-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I was watching the market and around the time the Dow was down about 140 points, I decided to pick up some of the ProShares ETF that shorts the Dow 30 (DOG).

I don't feel I'm savvy enough to short stocks and the ETF is a good way to profit from the market's fall and hedge against losses without having to get into options contracts or having to cover your shorts. The market had been extremely wobbly lately and it looked like some downside protection was in order.

As the market continued its descent, I decided to enter an order for SH, another ProShares ETF that shorts the S&P. My motivation was not so much profit as it was maintaining capital without having to sell all my long positions.

While entering my order, I noticed that I was already up 8 percent in DOG. Not bad, I thought. A few minutes later, however, I noticed I was up only 1 percent. I knew a lot of investors would have the same idea, but I didn't think trading would be that volatile. I watched in amazement as the Dow sank 500 points in just a matter of minutes and then rebounded to the minus-375 level.

Apparently, the market plunged 700 points, then rallied 600 points in the span of about 35 minutes. Oh no, not these days again, I thought.

The fustercluck is being blamed on trader error. Someone supposedly entered a trade on Procter & Gamble for a billion shares when they meant to press million. "Fat fingers," it's being called on the financial news programs.

Whatever the cause, it's bad. A correction in the market was overdue. Too much bad news was being shrugged off and the market kept heading higher and higher. But this was something much worse than a correction.

A caller into Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" last night asked what was the point for average investors to be in the market when large computer trades and other questionable practices can undermine prudent stock selection and patience in a matter of minutes.

There's a big financial regulation effort underway in Congress that will hopefully gain new evidence through yesterday's action. The SEC is also investigating yesterday's trades.

If this was a case of manipulation -- the profits during that 30 minutes for someone who knew what was happening would have been huge -- they should bury the culprits under the jail.

Brian

Land of the walking dead

2010-05-05T05:06:00.000-07:00

Got shitty sleep again. It's really starting to wear me down.

Three o'clock in the morning seems to be the magic hour. I wake up to go to the bathroom and can't get back to sleep again until about 6:30 a.m. -- right when it's time for me to get up.

Does anybody really care about my sleep problems though, with all the ongoing issues like protests in Greece, the oil spill, the near Times Square bombing and the fact that, worst of all, Julia Louis-Dreyfus' name was misspelled on her Hollywood Walk of Fame star?

Hay-aall no. So leave me alone. I'm tired and grumpy.

Brian.

Our first outdoor lunch; stock market volatility

2010-05-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

Here's Cooper and me enjoying our first lunch outside on our new patio.

It was nice and overcast, so it wasn't too hot and the mosquitoes had not yet gotten up to full force, despite all the rain we had last night.

I know in a few more weeks, it's probably going to be way too hot during the middle of the day to do this, but we took advantage of it today.

Here we go again?

As I earlier wrote, I waded back into the stock market in my IRA after going into cash during the downturn (and giving up a 7o percent move to the upside in the process).

But I still feel good that I maintained capital and didn't lose the 40 percent or 50 percent others did by holding their positions.

I was feeling pretty good after re-entering the market. I was up about 9 percent in one month's time. But I'm watching CNBC right now and the Dow is down 250 points. Apparently, it's all about the Greek debt fears. The last few days have been choppy. We're back to that pattern of rallying, then heading sharply down, then rallying again.

Hopefully, we're not going to see the volatility that we did through 2008 and 2009. I remain committed to cutting any position that falls 8 percent below my buy price, a la Investor's Business Daily. So far, I haven't had to cut anything and hope this just amounts to a pullback that, honestly, we're due for.

Here's where I stand as far as percentage gain/(loss):

Apple (AAPL): 10.39

AmerisourceBergen Corp. (ABC): 6.51

Bank of America Corp. (BAC): 3.10

Blue Coat Systems Inc. (BCSI): (6.52)

Citigroup Inc. (C): (2.31)

Enterprise Group Holdings (EPE): (5.84)

Lennar Corp. (LEN): 21.40

Starbucks Corp. (SBUX): 3.58

I'm sitting tight at the moment.

Brian

Thanks 500 visits

2010-05-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

According to my site visit counter, this blog has been viewed 500 times.

I know, I'm not exactly setting the world on fire since I started the thing back in December, but it's pretty cool, nonetheless.

People from as far away as Australia, Japan and Israel have popped in to read about my latest domestic disaster, imagined ailment or rant about that golfer that I promised to never mention again.

So thanks for reading. Or if you just stumbled in by accident, thanks, nonetheless.

Brian.

Exiting the land of the sleep-deprived

2010-04-29T07:27:00.001-07:00

At last, some sleep.

I had about seven hours of sleep spread between two days before last
night.

I'm a sufferer of benign fasciculations. Basically, my calf muscles
move and twitch uncontrollably and the spasms have moved to my foot to
create this neat, involuntary jerk of the foot just as I'm about to
fall asleep.

As the name implies, the condition is benign. But it's a pain in the
ass, no less. It doesn't happen all the time, but flares up now and
then.

Other than that, just giving little Cooper a bath and getting ready to
go do a food write-up on a place in town called Crab King that's
supposed to have delicious take-out seafood. I'll let you know how it
is.

Brian.

A weekend with the president

2010-04-26T12:19:00.001-07:00

What were the odds?

My wife and I talked about going up to Hendersonville and Black Mountain, N.C. to see her relatives a couple of weeks ago, but put it off until this past weekend because of the landscape project and some other stuff going on.

So we spent the night with Stacey's grandmother in Hendersonville on Saturday and started heading up to Black Mountain when Stacey's mom calls and says President Obama is supposedly heading there as well.

Now, Black Mountain is a beautiful, yet small and off-the-beaten path town. It didn't sound probable that the president was heading there. But the Rev. Billy Graham lives in the next town and you have to pass through Black Mountain to get there. Turns out, that's where Obama was heading.

There he is. No, wait ... there he is ... no ...

There were unmarked SUVs, state trooper cars and emergency vehicles all the way along the 20-mile or so drive to get there. When we got to my wife's uncle's house, we saw that his yard had a bird's-eye view of the street where President Obama was to pass. I walked down to the street to get closer and stood around in the beating hot sun for more than an hour, waiting for him.

It was pretty exciting, as the state troopers on motorcycles swooped through, followed by an armada of SUVs, with automatic weapon-toting security guys leering out the windows. He was in one of those SUVs, but the glass was so dark that it was hard to see. Plus, I was trying to hold Cooper, take a (lousy) photo with my cell phone and not get shot for looking suspicious.

Brian.

The fun is over, now what?

2010-04-19T13:38:00.001-07:00

Well, we finished the landscape job this weekend, more or less. There is still a Japanese maple to plant and some patio pavers that are rocking a bit that need to be shored up with some more sand.

But other than that, we're in business.

Oh, and a swing set for Cooper.

My wife, Stacey, helped a lot, and I hope she really thinks it's worth it in the end. She carried 64, 16-inch paving stones to the back to be laid for the patio and also helped me level out and dig in the large flagstones leading up to the patio.

Mommy and Cooper taking a break on the patio

Everything came together really quickly at the end, although there were a few blips.

A nifty auger tool that fits on a drill I ordered from Amazon that was going to help dig the 500 holes for the sprigs of dwarf mondo grass ended up getting sent to our old Bradenton, Fla. address. They corrected the problem (our bad, for not changing the address online) and shipped me a new one which I received today -- a day after I could have used it. (If anyone is in the market for one of these, let's talk).

We ended up using bulb planters to do the job. I broke one of them in the process, since they aren't really designed for planting ground cover.

Then there were the sprigs themselves. For some reason I was expecting 500 of these things to arrive in several good-sized boxes. But when UPS arrived, I was handed a box not much bigger than a shoebox. There were supposed to be 10 groups of 50 plants each, but there were only 10 clumped plants bound by rubber bands in the box.

Me with my box of grass (not that kind).

Considering these things were 69 cents each (you do the math, I don't want to talk about it), I was a little panicked and perturbed to say the least. Not something else going wrong, I thought.

Turns out though, each clumped plant grouping contained 50 individual sprigs when you pulled the rubber band off. Ohhh ...

And to the credit of Classy Groundcovers in Blairsville, Ga., I got a call back literally five minutes after e-mailing them that I thought there was a problem. No problem, just a lot of time and work sticking these little suckers into the ground, one by one.

Squirrel bait

Now I'm trying to keep this damned squirrel from digging them up, hunting for nuts. Hey you little bastard, go dig somewhere else or I'll eat you!

Anyway, enough blathering on. It's done. Hopefully we can enjoy it.

Brian.

Marching on

2010-04-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

Patio stones are here. Flagstones also arrived. Damn, those things are heavy. But Tarzan strong.

Trying to get this thing done in a hurry, since the world is apparently ending in 2012 (I was wondering about all these earthquakes and lights in the sky and stuff like that).

Apparently, the Mayans aren't even going to let us have Christmas before everything is snuffed out. December 21, 2012 is what I hear.

President Obama just said he wants astronauts to land on an asteroid in the 2030s. That's too late! Bruce Willis will be too old and we'll already be wiped out!

Anyway, I want to have some time to kick back and relax in the new yard before all this stuff goes down.

Brian.

Sweatin' the yard stuff

2010-04-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

So this morning, I was wide awake about 5:45, lying in bed and tossing this landscaping job I'm doing around in my head.

Terror was setting in.

Will 4-by-6 timbers be big enough? Will I be able to get the ground for the patio level? Will the 500 mondo grass sprigs I just ordered, sight-unseen, over the Internet, die on me (or even show up)?

To tell the truth, I'm getting a little nervous.

Don't chop your foot off, dumbass!

Putting the beds in was a breeze. Renting the tiller from Home Depot to prep the ground was also not too bad. But in the next two days, 1 ton of flagstone, 64 paver stones, 500 plant sprigs and two 16-foot lengths of lumber are going to show up at our doorstep. Yeah, I'm a little worried.

I had originally contacted a landscape guy to eyeball the plot for sod suitability. No way, he said. Too shady. But he offered to help me measure and mark plantings and features for a small (and I mean, small) fee. It eased my mind to know I had someone to hold my hand. But after giving him $30, he isn't calling me back.

Hey kid, get out of that bed!

Don't get me wrong. The $30 was well worth what he gave me, which was a full charting out of what I needed to do to get my project accomplished, right down to where to order shade-loving mondo grass sprigs for a fraction of retail cost and how to build a barrier for mulch at the back of the yard where a swing set and Cooper's play area will be.

A bunch of pine straw I rummaged from a neighbor's trash

He also confirmed some of my initial ideas and gave suggestions for improving them. He even gave me some pruning trips for our crepe myrtles out front.

The guy has a full-service, commercial landscaping business and probably rethought this trivial side job as not being worth his time. So I'm going it alone.

Area where the patio and Cooper's play area will be

Well, not exactly alone. My wife, Stacey, has offered to help me tackle much of this during this weekend.

Does she really know what she's getting into?

Brian

A pollen Pompeii

2010-04-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

We're all just getting over the effects of our recent pollen onslaught.

I've honestly never seen the stuff this bad. We returned from our trip to Atlanta to find our back deck, driveway and every other hard surface coating with a thick, yellow dust. I told a neighbor it kind of looked like Pompeii. I don't really think she knew what I meant.

I'm not allergic to anything that I know of, but breathe in enough of any dust and you start coughing and feeling that congested feeling in your chest. Luckily we got some rain to beat some of it down.

It's Monday, and Cooper and I are getting ready to go for our walk.

Rented a tiller this weekend to tear out roots and growth from the side yard I've been working on. I know the six or so people who faithfully read this will be excited to know I'm going to update the progress of that project very soon.

Brian.

Oh, what a beautiful morning!

2010-04-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

6:20 a.m.

My wife wakes up to go downstairs to exercise and I roll over for another 10 or 15 minutes' sleep before getting up myself.

Suddenly, she comes upstairs in a hurry.

"There's a bunch of water in the kitchen," she says.

Waking from my semi-dream state, I try to process what she's just said. But then I hear the water downstairs. It sounds like a running faucet.

Not good, I think.

It turns out that one of the previous owners installed one of those nifty, under-sink water filters. We've never really used it and I've contemplated disconnecting it in the past.

I should have gone with the impulse. The filter, an Omnifilter, just plain ruptured. There was a big crack in the top of the filter housing and it gushed about an inch and a half of water into the kitchen and adjoining dining room, soaking oriental carpets and furniture.

That little blue thing in there is the culprit

Out of curiosity, I looked up the filter on the Web and it turns out that this has happened to a number of other people with this particular brand of filter.

Nice!

All I can say is I'm really glad we have terra cotta tile floors. It really aided in the mopping up process. Wood floors and carpeting would have been toast under this amount of water. Luckily the water didn't reach past the baseboard to hit the drywall.

I'm also happy that our local weather guy hardly ever knows what he's talking about. He said it was supposed to rain today, but it's bright and sunny out. That's good, because our carpets are air-drying atop the Civic. What a mess.

Working at the car-pet wash!

We just came back from a week in Atlanta. I can only imagine what that would have been like if this thing had ruptured while we were gone. Holy cow.

I was able to go up to Home Depot and get a new water feed line so I could remove the one with the filter splice on it. We're back in business now, thankfully, without a call to a plumber.

Fortunately, it looks like no real damage was done.

And we have really, really clean floors.

Brian.

The Neill & Son Ice Cream Sandwich Cake

2010-04-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you take six Wal-Mart ice cream sandwiches and set out to create the perfect dessert?

The Neill & Son Ice Cream Sandwich Cake.

The ice cream sandwich could be considered the perfect food.

Often neglected and seen as nostalgic, it doesn't get much better than soft vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate wafers dotted with pinholes.

It's a food that doesn't need any variations, though many try to improve on the basic premise. Peanut butter flavored and even banana split varieties can be found, but to me, plain old vanilla is the best.

My son Brady and I tried to pay homage to this great food item with the creation of the Neill & Son Ice Cream Sandwich Cake.

We fully expect to see this on store shelves and in the finest restaurants in the near future.

Bon appetit!

Brian.

A great week comes to an end

2010-04-05T06:06:00.000-07:00

Well, we had a great time in Atlanta this past week. But all good things must come to an end.

Dale Chihuly glass sculpture and fountain at Atlanta Botanical Gardens

We spent it there with my son, Brady, who came down to visit from New Jersey. We hiked on a mountain, went to the Georgia Aquarium, saw the Coca-Cola Museum and went to the Atlanta Zoo, among other things.

Hiking on Kennesaw Mountain outside Atlanta

It was a lot of fun. Atlanta is a great city, though I probably wouldn't want to live there. The traffic is insane.

Cooper checking out the jellyfish at Georgia Aquarium

Coming tomorrow, if I can get the video uploaded: The making of a masterpiece - the Neill & Son Ice Cream Sandwich Cake. It is an event that is not to be missed.

Brian.

The hot, hot heat

2010-04-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

The sun beat down on Peachtree/Dunwoody Road today like a harsh symphony of radiation slowly cutting us all to the bone.

Tall, glass-facade office buildings made me think of coffins, where the shut-ins toil in cubicles until they are shoveled under.

Bright, hazy heat does this to me. It's oppressive. The dog days of summer are almost here. Maybe they have already arrived.

Brian.

Man on the silver mountain

2010-04-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging from atop Mt. Kennesaw outside Atlanta.

We had a pretty good climb to the top and little Cooper held his own
with the walking.

It's a gorgeous day here and I got a lot of good pictures of these small white
flowers blooming along the mountainside.

Brian.

If a tree falls in the forest ...

2010-04-01T06:28:00.001-07:00

If the media completely ignore Sarah Palin she will go away.

Brian.

Have a Coke and ka-ching!

2010-03-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

My son Brady is in town this week and we decided to stop by the Coca-
Cola museum in Atlanta.

The diabolical genius at work there. You pay a nosebleed price, not to
mention 10 bucks for parking, in exchange for one long Coca-Cola
commercial. Where else would you do this? Oh yeah, Disney.

But despite the evil machinations of capitalism at work, we did have a
good time. And the visit culminates in a trip to the "tasting room,"
where you can sample different Coca-Cola products sold around the
world. Some of them tasted pretty whacky.

Brian

Another week down

2010-03-27T05:49:00.001-07:00

Hope everyone has a good weekend planned.

Thanks, but no thanks, Re-Bath

2010-03-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

I knew the day was coming soon when our shower door would give out.

The moment was signaled the other morning by my wife shouting down to me for help. It turns out the door had finally corroded off the bottom pivot and my wife was in need of extrication from the shower.

That morning I got on the phone and called Re-Bath. You know, that place that will fit a moulded new bathtub over your old tub? They were the first name that came to mind, because I figured they'd be an economical choice and know what they were doing.

Well, I told the guy I needed a replacement door for a small shower -- about a 36-inch wide opening. He asked if I wanted chrome, or bronze or some other choices, and I said, no. Just a plain old shower door to keep the water in.

He said a door like I was describing was going to likely run in the neighborhood of $600.

After hanging up and finishing LMFAO, I went to Lowe's and picked one out for about $200.

I feel pretty good about the finished job, but it was a definite pain in the ass, for sure. Still, I did the job with a limited amount of expletives and without throwing any tools around. And saved a bundle.

Six hundred dollars? No thanks, Re-Bath.

Brian.

Glad everyone agrees on health care plan

2010-03-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

It's good to see that people on both sides of the aisle are in agreement with the sweeping new health care reform bill signed into law by President Obama.

Now that all the states are on board, we as a nation can finally say we have a health care system that will take care of all of our citizens. Take that, Canada!

Cooper's food odyssey continues. He has been trying an assortment of different foods now that he has largely shunned the jarred stuff and I've been trying to make dishes that are as attractive and appealing to him as possible.

The other night I gave him a plate of green beans, turkey, Mexican queso fresco and sliced strawberries. He seemed to like most of it OK.

Things are starting to get beautiful around this time of year. It always seems to coincide with when all the golf goofs show up in town for the Masters, but I guess the explosion of azalea and dogwood blooms around town is a nice tradeoff for not being able to go anywhere on Washington Road for a week while a bunch of yuppies try to get a look at that golfer that I promised not to mention anymore.

We're noticing some surprises in our own yard. Like this Japanese magnolia, which has put out some beautiful blooms. We didn't know what it was at first, but were happy when we found out.

That's about it for now.

Brian.

Trading bug bites me again

2010-03-22T14:02:00.001-07:00

Not long ago, I wrote a blog called "Taking Stock" for the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, where I worked.

I traded real money in the stock market and wrote about my triumphs and failures along the way. It was a lot of fun, and the only other guy I know of who does this kind of average Joe stock investing column is James B. Stewart with the Wall Street Journal.

But along came the big bad downturn and I got spooked. Looking back, I'm sorry I did. I held Apple (AAPL) around $90-something a share and now it's over $200. But I dumped it. Ditto a speculative biotech stock I bought called Targacept (TRGT) at around $7. I bailed when it started dipping down to $3. It closed today at $19.31.

But like "Mad Money"'s Jim Cramer says, no shoulda, woulda coulda. You learn from your mistakes and move on. (And truth be told, I didn't do all that bad, and was able to pat myself on the back more than a few times).

The point of all of this?

Today I started actively trading again in my IRA. I'm going slow, and don't have a lot of money to play with, but I'm ready to trade again.

This is a stay-at-home dad blog and I'm not looking to start Taking Stock Part II or anything. But I may occasionally talk about what I'm up to in the investing world.

Today I picked up Starbucks (SBUX) and Lennar Homes (LEN).

"A homebuilder!" you say. "Are you crazy?"

We'll see.

Brian

Cross your fingers on the health care front

2010-03-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well, this weekend we should probably see what will come of President Obama's push for health care reform. The vote is supposed to come Sunday

Honestly, I have no idea at this point what the bill contains and just don't feel motivated enough to download the 14o pages or whatever it is and read it. I did catch Michael Moore being interviewed and even he was saying that the bill is a mess and shouldn't be voted on -- that Obama would have a hard time recovering from the backlash if it passed.

But Jim Wallis, writing on the Huffington Post, felt that "something was better than nothing ..."

I kind of agree. I guess. That's the beauty of the media, of which I guess I'm still a part. Conflict usually takes center stage over substance and we are often left to wonder what the real truth is.

Great St. Pat's

Cooper and I had a great St. Patrick's Day. We went to a potluck at the newspaper where my wife works, then stepped right out the door onto Augusta, Ga.'s main downtown Broad Street and watched the parade.

It was drizzling pretty heavily the whole time, but we had fun anyway. Cooper got a kick out of seeing the fire trucks and also enjoyed the high school marching bands with their big, thundering bass drums that we could practically reach out and touch.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Brian.

I am ubermensch!

2010-03-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

I am ubermensch. I cook. I clean. I landscape!

When I came down from the mountain, I saw what needed to be done. Ornamental grass was encroaching on the roses. Weeds had overtaken the mulch.

I swung my philospher's hammer and beat them all back. I created new worlds for the strong and dispatched the bungled and the botched with clean strokes.

THE GODS: Ubermensch, our fair world has been overgrown by the invaders. How will you save us?

UBERMENSCH: Well, uh ...

Aw, screw this. I was going to have fun with some Nietzschean philosophy as it pertained to a massive landscape overhaul I've undertaken in our side yard (massive in the sense that I seek to make a yard where there is none) but started thinking about all the possible misinterpretations that could be drawn here.

"He's a Nazi!" or "The weeds are undesirable people." Or some such nonsense. So to heck with it. Besides, my wife has the card reader, so I can't upload any pictures, so I guess this one's going to kind of fizzle out.

But I'm still ubermensch, I tell you! Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Brian.

Debt be damned, capitalism going strong

2010-03-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

The other day I got a letter in the mail from my auto and home insurance agent. I figured it was an update on our policies, a privacy rules disclosure or some such thing.

No, it turns out that my insurance agent was trying to do me a solid. He wanted to turn me on to a special Visa card that was going to give me an introductory zero-percent rate. After the honeymoon, though, it would shoot up to around 13 percent.

Thanks, Mr. Insurance Agent Guy!

Travelocity wanted to also reward me for all those trips I booked for my son Brady to visit me from New Jersey. They were going to give me a nifty new MasterCard with an annual percentage of either 13.24 percent, 16.24 percent or 19.24 percent, based on my creditworthiness. Lucky me!

Then I noticed my bank, Bank of America, was pitching a "high yield CD" on its Web site. Awesome, I thought. If I just tie up $5,000 for a year at Bank of America, the altruistic behemoth will pay me, drum roll please ... .08 percent.

So see, it wouldn't matter if MasterCard charged me even the 19.24 percent on my card, because my own money would be making ... oh ... wait a minute ...

I find it kind of criminal, but I guess that's capitalism and the free market economy (neither of which have been doing so hot lately).

But good news came on the front of the Wall Street Journal this past Friday. "Americans Pare Down Debt" the headline screamed across the top of the front page.

That would give the impression that Americans are doing the prudent thing by tightening their belts and prioritizing their wants and needs.

However, the "paring down" actually is coming from defaults on obligations, according to the piece. Somehow, the article found, this was a good thing -- that all these people would have a clean slate and the economy could get back to growing wildly again like a giant cornucopia of convenience.

But where does all the debt from those obligations go? Up in smoke, apparently. It's kind of like when I'm beating my son at Monopoly and have houses and hotels on a slew of properties and he becomes mortgaged to the hilt. To keep him from getting too mad and to keep the game going, I forgive him everything and let him start with a clean slate.

I guess that's what we're doing -- keeping the game going.

Brian

TGIF

2010-03-12T13:21:00.000-08:00

Have a good weekend, you all.

Brian.

Gerber gets the heave-ho

2010-03-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

It's official: Cooper is done with baby food.

I knew the days of sticking the convenient little jars in the microwave and pushing 18 seconds were numbered. It was a slow progression, Cooper first giving up his least favorites like chicken with noodles and vegetables and turkey with vegetables.

But when he started even turning up his nose at favorites like lasagna and spaghetti, I knew the days of convenience had reached an end.

So I had to get creative.

On the menu last night was a melange of potato, whole wheat pasta, parmesan cheese and broccoli, topped with a perfectly poached egg.

Cooper dug in with gusto and seemed relieved to not be getting the pasty, Spaghetti-O's like texture that had been his mainstay for the past year or so.

Cooper had this to say:

"The anticipation of bursting the yolk over the ingredients in the dish was hard to contain. The richness of the yolk melded nicely with the earthiness of the potato and whole wheat pasta. This is definitely a dish I would recommend, however, in the future, the potatoes need to be cut up better."

Brian.

Feels like spring has sprung

2010-03-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today was the first time I've felt hot outside in quite a while.

It actually hit 70 here today in beautiful Augusta, Ga. and it looks like warmer temperatures might be here to stay.

I'm a little torn about how I feel. On the one hand, I have already started busting my tail getting the yard and landscape whipped into shape. I'm trying to design and plant our side yard from scratch. It's just dirt and saplings now.

The thought of getting out there and digging in the dirt is a happy one. But, I know that once the 70s become a regular thing again, 90 and 100 are just around the corner. This is Georgia, after all.

But it will be good to get little Cooper outside and run around with him more. And we can go on walks in the morning more often now that it isn't going to be 20 anymore.

Brian.

Oops, almost forgot a headline

2010-03-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry to disappoint my thousands of fans, but it's another one of those days. Not much to write about.

Went to interview a chef for a story at this pretty cool French restaurant in North Augusta, S.C. called Manuel's Bread Cafe.

He slid me a nice Nicoise salad and some great french fries, or frites, that the place fries first in a lower temperature oil, then again in a higher temperature oil to finish. Great stuff.

I got a haircut.

Snip, snip

TGIThursday.

Here's hoping for a good weekend.

Brian.

Firing up the chili

2010-03-03T08:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's post was pretty heavy, so I decided to lighten things up a bit today and talk about the awesome chili I made.

I was watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats" on the Food Network the other night and got inspired by a chili con carne he was making in a pressure cooker. I already make a pretty good chili, and because Brown's recipes are often distracted from by all the theater on his show, I decided to take his cue regarding the use of whole cubes of meat (rather than ground) and head off in my own direction.

Here's what I came up with:

Brian's Fire on the Mountain Chili

2 to 3 pounds, each, boneless pork loin roast and beef chuck boneless roast, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 guajillo, 1 pasilla, and 1 to 3 (depending on how much heat you like) chili de arbol, seeded and cut into pieces

2 tablespoons cumin seeds

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon oregano

1 large Spanish onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, smashed and rough chopped

1 jalepeno, seeded and sliced crosswise into roughly quarter-inch slices

1 or 2 Scotch bonnets (again, depending on the heat desired)

1.5 tablespoons chipotle in adobo, getting both some of the puree and pepper from the can

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil, or as much as needed to sautee meat and vegetables

1 pound dried pinto beans

6 cups water

28-oz. can whole tomatoes

12-oz. can tomato paste

1 bottle of darkish lager, such as Yuengling

Soak the beans overnight or use the quick soak method, boiling them for 1 minute and then allowing them to sit, covered, for 1 hour.

In a medium frying pan over medium high heat, toast the pepper pieces and cumin seeds until aromatic and starting to change color. Allow the peppers and seeds to fully cool. After they cool, grind to a powder in a spice grinder, adding in the garlic powder, smoked paprika and oregano.

Heat a tablespoon or two of oil in two medium sized pots (you can use one, but the cooking time for the meat will double). In batches, brown the meat in the two pots, adding salt and pepper as you go. Remove each batch and add another.

After the meat is browned, add half the onions and garlic to each pan and cook, stirring, until softened, but not browned. Halfway through the cooking, add the jalepeno and Scotch bonnet(s).

Deglaze each of the pots with a little of the beer, scraping the browned bits off the bottom. Pour all contents of the pots into the pot you plan to use to cook the chili. Continue cooking as you add the homemade chili powder. Cook for 30 seconds, then add the meat, making sure to fully coat it with the spice mixture.

Add beans, rest of beer, tomatoes and tomato paste, water and brown sugar. Bring to a boil. Reduce to low and simmer, covered, for 6 to 8 hours, adding additional water if necessary. During the last hour or two of cooking, it helps to remove the lid to thicken up the chili. If you want to really add a kick, save the second Scotch bonnet until near the end of cooking and then chop it up and throw it in.

That's it, and it's pretty darn good.

I shopped around for the meat and spent just about $10 for all of it. Pretty darned economical, considering we can eat off of it for a few days. Chili sandwiches, anyone?

In a day or two, I'll also revisit that mojo-braised pork dish I made not long ago. It, too, was pretty economical and was well received by those who ate it.

Brian.

Happy birthday, kiddo, hope to see you again some day

2010-03-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

It's March 2, Keegan's birthday.

I often forget it, since he's gone. I'm bad enough at remembering the birthdays of the living. But this morning, for whatever reason, the significance of the day hit me.

Keegan James Neill was my son. He was a beautiful, smart kid. I felt very close to him and I think he felt the same for me.

Sometime back in early 1991, Keegan started complaining of feeling dizzy and having trouble keeping his balance. His mother and I were divorced and he was living about two and a half hours away in Atlanta. I had seen him the weekend before, and he was great. I remember running and jumping around on this playground down near the Savannah River in Augusta, Ga.

In fact, Keegan had been so full of energy and otherwise healthy up until this time that his mother and stepfather thought he might be faking to get out of going to school.

If only that had been the case.

I remember, vividly, that day in the doctor's office at Scottish Rite Children's Hospital in Atlanta. The somber, downward gazes of the doctors. The series of lightboxes along the wall. Immediately, I knew that the MRI image was Keegan's brain and the white circular mass in the center of his brain stem meant he was going to die.

I can still rattle off the name of the enemy: Intrinsic, diffuse, pontine glioma.

The one good thing that can be said about the doctors is that they held out no false hope. They said the tumor was inoperable, its cause was unknown, and that Keegan would have about a year to live.

My current wife and I made weekly trips to Atlanta and even took Keegan down to Florida a time or two. The doctors did promise a "grace period," one in which Keegan would be re-energized after the chemo and radiation and would seem like he was getting better.

We were told to enjoy it, but not expect it to last. It didn't.

He began to feel horrible. The steroids he took as part of his treatment began to swell his face and body to an unrecognizable state. But through it all, he never complained. He was strong -- a lot stronger than I could ever be in that situation.

Keegan slipped away early in the morning on Jan. 5, 2003. He was 10. It's hard to believe that he would be 18 today. I think about him all the time and wonder what he would be like as an adult.

I miss you, kiddo. Happy birthday.

Brian.

Just some old photos

2010-02-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

I was going through some old boxes of photos from when I used to develop my own prints.

It really hasn't been that long ago -- about three years -- and I've been thinking about getting back into it again. I know, it's the digital age and all, but a darkroom can be a lot of fun. But it's also a big mess and means tying up one of our bathrooms and stinking it up with Dektol and fixer, so I'm still mulling it over.

Anybody been looking for one of these?

Anyway, I shot this photo outside of Atlanta about four years ago. It would seem that the market for flatbed-mounted, giant gorilla tops is largely untapped.

Rainy day in New Orleans

Even though it poured rain most of the day, it was still a good time. That city makes me drink too much though. Plus, I get argumentative. We bought a voodoo statue there that always gives me the creeps. The person who sold him to us said he was supposed to bring the home good luck, but he goes by the Lord of Mischief. How is that supposed to work, exactly? Actually we had bought another and he broke while in New Orleans (how much karma did that fuck up?) and so we bought a replacement. He broke, too, but we glued him back together. This is him.

Oh no, I've stolen his soul!

This one has no title

This photo is one I took of my 13-year-old son, Brady, when he was about 6. I sandwiched three different negatives together in the enlarger to get the effect. What I was trying to say with this picture is that his youth was being threatened by the blanket patriotism of the times. No, wait a minute, what I was trying to say is that even though it seems dark and gloomy, country, family and pigeon flocks will live on. No, that's not it either. Let's see ... Actually, I was pretty happy with the outcome and you can decide what it means for yourself.

Brian.

Blah, blah blah. What do you want from me?

2010-02-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

That pretty much sums up my mindset for writing a blog today.

I'm working on another food story for the Metro Spirit in Augusta, Ga. I have to download a bunch of pictures and finish writing my story, so I have to save my creative juices for that.

Still, I didn't want to disappoint my thousands of fans (well, actually, five followers and whoever else might stumble upon this site while searching for porn or baseball stats, as Costanza would say) who would no doubt be crestfallen if they did not have the chance to read these meaningless few sentences.

So that's about it. Taking advantage of Cooper's nap time to get my stuff done. Hopefully I'll have something better to say tomorrow.

Brian

No dummy, you can't go home again

2010-02-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

How many pathetic souls have uttered the phrase, "You can't go home again," and never even read the novel by Thomas Wolfe from which it was drawn?

Well, add another pathetic soul to the list.

Because I, too, am learning this lesson, albeit slowly.

I have written before about my tendency to reach out to people I haven't talked to in decades, just to see how they are doing and let them know how I'm getting along.

This time it was a friend I will just call Bob, to protect the innocent.

I've been looking around for Bob for a long time now. See, Bob and I had been pretty good friends in high school and he was one of the few -- perhaps even the only one -- of my friends that my parents actually liked.

That doesn't mean Bob and I didn't do things we weren't supposed to do. We were growing up on the Gulf Coast of Florida and engaged in the prevalent vices that were readily available in such an atmosphere. I'm not being coy or overly cryptic, but I do have a teenage son who occasionally drops in here to see what I am writing about.

Me, stylin', some 35 years ago. Seems like yesterday

So long story short, I wound up at the age of 16 in a "program" that was designed to help kids like Bob and I say no to such vices. (This "program" actually ended up being the focus of investigative news shows like 20/20 and became the brunt of numerous lawsuits and legal actions before it was finally shut down, but that's another posting -- or maybe that's a home I don't want to return to).

The point is, I had been "programmed" to tell friends like Bob that I could no longer associate with them, because they were bad influences and would prevent me from staying on the straight and narrow path. This caused one of my friends to cry in class (a big and embarrassing deal, since this was high school. That friend, who later became heavily involved with cocaine, ending up shooting himself).

Bob took my robotic, "I can't be around you anymore; you are part of my past," drilled into us to be parroted like a mantra by the brainwashers, fairly well, though he did kind of chuckle and looked like he really didn't understand.

We were entering our senior year, and after high school, Bob moved up North and I continued on in the program until my parents had the good sense to yank me out.

I was a pretty wild child, in that spoiled son of a doctor way. I didn't stay on the straight and narrow path after getting out of the program, though I never got in trouble with the law. When I did decide to stay on the straight and narrow path (at least in terms of what our country defines as "legal;" hey, I like my whiskey) it was because I chose that for myself. And I can say with certainty I could never go back. Hell, I'll be getting fitted for a cane pretty soon.

But seriously, my life is good. I have a terrific wife. A beautiful son with her, and two other sons I love very much. I have my health, a nice home and stay reasonably happy most of the time.

So why do I occasionally try to seek out people like Bob? What does it matter what they are up to?

I guess it's just a sense of wanting to let people know that I turned out all right. See, my friend who cried in class wasn't the only one of my friends to take his own life. Another friend who I had grown close to and supported as we de-programmed ourselves (his family had also sent him to that place to be fixed) also took his own life -- with carbon monoxide I am told -- after caving to the pressures of a very bad family situation.

A friend of mine who lives abroad is very good at scouring social Web sites, alumni sites, jail rosters and obituaries for people we know from our past. It's a little eery sometimes. I often get an e-mail with the subject, "Remember him?" and it's one of our old acquaintances who died in a motorcycle crash or is in jail for the third time for something so incomprehensibly low as meth possession. Meth? Are you serious?

So I recently got an e-mail from my friend concerning Bob. It was one of those alumni sites, and after reading the bio, I knew for sure it was him. And it sounded like he was doing pretty well.

Those sites don't let you leave contact info on a person's bulletin board. They want you, of course, to contact people through them.

I'm not a big fan of joining these groups, mainly because I don't want a bunch of people contacting me out of the blue -- just like I was about to do to Bob.

I had searched for Bob in his state through the online White Pages before. But being a common name, I found there were too many to feasibly call one by one.

But I resorted to my reporter instincts to narrow it down. See, Bob had a picture of his house on his profile. I noticed a mailbox, and zooming in a little closer, I had a house number. That made it pretty easy to find Bob's number.

I was excited. I called the number and got a woman's voice, no doubt his wife, on the answering machine. I awkwardly tried to explain why I was calling and how I found the number, but it probably sounded pretty weird anyway. Still, I left my number, and remembering Bob the way I did, felt certain he would call.

A day went by and he had not. To hedge my bets in case the machine had been buggy or the wife didn't want old friends contacting Bob, I made sure to say that I would try one more time when I left my message.

I asked my wife two days later if she thought I should try to call him again. She said, no.

Naturally, on Sunday I placed another call to Bob and left another message, but did not hear back. I made sure to state on the message that I would not try again, that I was not stalking Bob, and that I was sorry if I had bothered anyone.

Then I started thinking about the actual time it has been since I spoke to Bob. See, I never really went to any high school reunions. Technically, my time in the program had put me behind credits in my senior year and instead of going back to make them up I opted for a GED. I did go on to finish my bachelor's, however.

I probably wouldn't have seen Bob at a reunion anyway, because he had moved away.

But, 20 years isn't that long of a separation to still have good memories to talk about and check in on old friends, is it?

Wait a minute. Did I say 20 years?

The last time I would have talked to Bob was when I was 16. This year I will turn 46.

Does that mean ... it's been 30 years?

I still think I would have a lot to say to Bob and it would be good to hear his voice.

But I also think that Bob might feel 30 years is a lot of empty space between the past and present as far as he and I are concerned.

So once more, this lesson is driven home to me.

Go ahead. Cue the Wolfe quote.

Brian.

Are they serious?

2010-02-19T07:52:00.000-08:00

(Author's note: I hereby solemnly swear that this will be my last posting about Tiger Woods or Good Morning America. I appreciate your patience over the past several weeks).

Apparently, a frustrated taxpayer in Texas crashed his private plane into a building that housed employees of the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday. A pretty big story you would think.

But what did Good Morning America lead with today? Of course: Tiger Woods.

That's right, they devoted a full seven minutes to the segment and even included results of an ABC poll asking Americans whether or not they thought Woods should continue to play golf.

It probably comes as no surprise that a majority -- 65 percent -- did.

Yay! Come back Tiger. We need you.

Sometimes I think I'm being too shrill, that I'm the only one who feels this way. But then I watched the Twitter stream on Google as Woods spoke to the public this morning. Here are a few of the comments:

so, our economy's struggling, a war is going on, and we have to have a network takeover ofTiger Woods' apology statement...c'mon america.

Is there something going on with Tiger Woods right now? I can't seem to find any info on it.

Remeber all the people still homeless in Haiti? Yeah?

According to i-banker cousin, markets have literally stopped trading as Tiger Woodsspeaking

Absurd, is all I can say.

Brian.

Stop the presses! Tiger Woods to speak!

2010-02-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

So I just finished rubbing my meat.

Hey, relax!

I'm talking about applying the spice rub to some pork ribs that will become mojo-braised pork, but I can see where your minds are at.

My wife is having some people from her work over for dinner and drinks tomorrow night and like a good house husband, I'm trying to whip up something tasty for them.

Meat rubbed. Check.

I came up with the recipe at about 4 o'clock in the morning Wednesday while tossing and turning. I've marinated the ribs in mojo before, but I thought, why not try braising them in mojo and chicken stock for about 4 hours? After searching the Internet, I discovered that a lot of other people have had the same idea. We'll see how they come out.

Tiger, we await your words. We are not worthy!

So all the news this morning was that Tiger Woods was going to finally break his silence and maybe explain his behavior. Gee, that's a load off.

I mean, despite all the natural disasters around the world lately, the European debt problem, the escalating war in Afghanistan, persistent unemployment, uncertainty about the future of Social Security and the failure of our government to hash out a health care solution, the one thing that's been nagging me, the thing that's just kept me tossing and turning at night, is how Woods has been coping with the fallout of his infidelity and when we might expect a tee time for him.

Do we really care? Is this really all that important, people?

Several news stories stated that Woods would speak, but not answer any questions. Wouldn't it be great if no one had any questions? Wouldn't it be great if no one showed up at all?

It's really become a pretty silly world. But I guess it has always been that way.

Here's my question to Woods: Who in their right mind, living with the Hefneresque fantasy of a hot Swedish wife WITH AN IDENTICAL TWIN, cheats? What's wrong with you, dude?

Poor Tiger.

Brian.

Thawing back out

2010-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Well, the excitement of the snow is over. We thought we were going to get a little more on Monday, but no such luck.

It's still been pretty chilly, like 20s in the morning.

Not a whole lot going on today. Little Cooper had to go to the doctor and get a shot today, but he took it like a real trooper.

After pinching his same finger in the same accordion door today that he did last night -- and bawling his eyes out -- Cooper's grabbing some Z's and I'm settling in for a little Rosetta Stone. We'll see how far I get before he wakes up.

Brian.

Snow creates a 45-year-old kid

2010-02-15T11:58:00.000-08:00

We headed up to see my wife's parents in Spartanburg, S.C. this weekend and were greeted with 5 inches of snow.

Needless to say, we had a blast. We made snowmen, went for a walk in the snow and even did some daredevil sledding down a steep hill on the road in front of my in-laws' house. This was the VERY FIRST TIME that I have sledded and I did feel like I was going to wipe out a few times.

Watch the death-defying feat here:

((((SOMETIMES THAT IS. BLOGGER seems to be having an issue with their video support. Sometimes you see this video, other times it's unavailable. So if it doesn't play, I apologize. Hopefully the behemoth, Google, will get its act together)))))

We built snowmen:

We chose not to sit on the snow cushions:

And just had an overall great time:

Of course, we did come home to find some huge tree branches had broken off and damaged the edge of our roof. But the price of fixing it (I hope, anyway) will be worth the fun we had.

Brian

It's gonna snow!

2010-02-12T07:23:00.000-08:00

The word is, it's going to snow today here in Augusta, Ga., sometime around 4 this afternoon, and it's going to continue snowing overnight.

With apologies to all the people up North who have had to shovel themselves out of the white stuff day after day, I have to say: Ya-hoo!!!

I've been waiting for it to snow all winter. Hey, I'm a Florida boy and I get excited about snow. We'll see though. The weathermen don't have the greatest track record.

Zip-a-dee-doo-da

I felt like I was in one of those old-timey Disney movies yesterday. While giving my son a bath, there were squirrels, robins and cardinals crawling and flying around outside the bathroom window.

Don't know what had gotten into them, but they put on quite a show. I snapped this beauty as he was chirping away:

Well, I have to go now and look out the window for that snow to come.

Brian.

Bank of America must be stopped!

2010-02-11T05:50:00.001-08:00

Bank of America recently took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal featuring the Marvel comic super hero crew.

The caption reads: "Delivering a deal of heroic proportions."

But is it just me or does this ad give the impression that the super heroes are going to battle against Bank of America?

I mean, there's the Bank of America logo emerging from the darkness and the super heroes seem to be charging toward it like an evil foe.

Could this be an isolated case of truth in advertising?

Brian

The French toast workout

2010-02-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

So I did a bit of multi-tasking this morning, of which I was pretty proud.

My 13-year-old son, Brady, who lives up in New Jersey, had a snow day today. He was trying to whip up some French toast, but wasn't exactly sure how to go about it.

He caught me right in the middle of my workout, so I jogged in place while I talked him through getting out the griddle, setting it up and mixing the eggs, milk, etc. for the French toast.

Snow Day French Toast and Brady

After he got the cooking underway, I finished my workout.

I called him later and he said the French toast came out pretty well and he had also made some for his stepfather and little sister. He sent me a picture of the finished product.

Brian.

No, no, no, a thousand times and thunder loud, no!

2010-02-09T08:17:00.001-08:00

Lately I'm often reminded of the scene in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" when Augustus Gloop is getting sucked up the chocolate tube and Gene Wilder, responding to the frantic, plaintive cries of Gloop's mother, half-heartedly speaks, "Help. Police. Murder."

See, Wonka had admonished, scolded and pleaded for Augustus to stay out of the chocolate river. But he went in anyway.

Hope he hears "No!" when it's a real one.

And so it is with my own Augustus Gloop, Cooper (not that they bear any physical resemblance).

Cooper has become very willful of late. Whether it's trying to turn the stereo on (and often accomplishing said task with eardrum-splitting volume) or trying to pull the window shades down, he seems to be quite content doing what he wants to do.

Oh, he understands no. He understands that my voice raising and my physically pulling him away from the object of his preoccupation means that I don't want him to do that anymore.

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. It's supposed to be the "terrible twos" not the "terrible year-and-a-halfs." If this means he's just getting warmed up, I can only imagine what will follow when he reaches the appointed age.

But the thing about is, Cooper is also a really good kid. The other day my doctor, for whom the word "appointment" is open to interpretation, kept us waiting nearly three hours. During that time, Cooper was a complete angel and even took a nap in his stroller.

In fact, most of the time Cooper is really good. It's just those moments when he's feeling a little devilish that my blood pressure starts going up.

I just hope Cooper listens when it really counts. Like when he's about to run out into the street or take a bite of a Dunkin' Donuts doughnut (Krispy Kreme rules).

Brian.

Kevin Bacon, where are you?

2010-02-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

I'm on LinkedIn, the professional networking and socializing network.

The other day I was sorting through some of the contacts of my "connections" and found that a guy I'm linked with at the Orlando Sentinel had President Obama on his list of connections.

Pretty cool, I thought. But then I noticed in the right column that people who had viewed Obama's profile also viewed Kevin Bacon's.

Awesome, I thought. I sent him an invite to connect, telling him I was a big fan.

Haven't heard anything. Come on Kevin, be my friend.

Brian.

Rainy T.G.I.F.

2010-02-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

Well, little Cooper finally went to sleep for his 2:30 p.m. nap.

It's rainy and dark. But it's Friday, and that's a good thing.

Picked up a bottle of single malt scotch (decent, but not the best; like the Prez says, we have to budget, you know?) that I plan to be sipping on pretty soon. Just finished a round of Rosetta Stone.

I'm really enjoying learning Spanish (even though I've been in the process of learning it my whole life through high school and college), but I'm at the third level and it's getting much more difficult. Some of the constructions are not making sense and don't seem logical. Rosetta Stone's trick is to not give you any English explanation of phrases or usage, but I'm finding I have to seek out some other sources to try to make sense of some of the constructions in my head.

Making lasagna tonight. I made a nice meat sauce and I have everything ready to layer and stick in the oven.

Found a pretty cool radio station to stream. It's WFMU.org. It's out of Jersey City and is listener-supported and commercial-free, kind of like the station I grew up on in Tampa, WMNF (which also streams).

Here's an excerpt from WFMU's "about" section:

Rolling Stone Magazine, The Village Voice, CMJ and the New York Press have all at one time or another called WFMU "the best radio station in the country" and the station has also been the subject of feature stories in The New York Times and on the BBC. In recent years the station has gained a large international following due (to) its online operations and counts Simpson's creator Matt Groening, film director Jim Jarmusch and Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, among others, as devoted fans of the station.

WFMU's programming ranges from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to rock and roll, experimental music, 78 RPM Records, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, electronica, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, gospel, exotica, R&B, radio improvisation, cooking instructions, classic radio airchecks, found sound, dopey call-in shows, interviews with obscure radio personalities and notable science-world luminaries, spoken word collages, Andrew Lloyd Webber soundtracks in languages other than English as well as Country and western music.

Enjoy!

Brian.

Why do sharks hate us?

2010-02-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

Every time I hear about a shark attack, fatal or not, I think about how often I cheated death while growing up.

This time the reminder came in the form of 38-year-old kite surfer Stephen Schafer, who was killed by a school of sharks off the East Coast of southern Florida yesterday.

While investigators try to figure out exactly what brought on the attack, I think about the days growing up in a waterfront home on St. Pete Beach in Florida. There, I spent as much time swimming in Boca Ciega Bay and the intracoastal waterway as I did in our family's pool.

We water-skied, snorkeled and just plain splashed around. We jumped off bridges and sometimes swam to each others' houses, kicking in the water behind inflatable rafts and inner tubes.

(Bull Shark, Florida Museum of Natural History)

Then, in 2000 I was shocked to hear that 69-year-old Thadeus Kubinski was killed by a 9-foot-long, 400-pound bull shark while swimming off of his dock -- less than a mile down from my dad's house in the same waters. Authorities said the ferocious shark crushed the man's rib cage and tore his liver.

The attack occurred as his wife watched.

Why our splashes and dives hadn't sounded the dinner bell for similar sharks may just come down to: when it's your time, it's your time.

Being a Florida native and growing up highly resentful of all the growth and development there over the years that was allowed to go unchecked, I always had a sneaking suspicion that shark attacks were just nature getting even. Leveling the playing field if you will.

And I always thought that a shark making a snack out of one of those jet skiers buzzing around like annoying insects wouldn't be such a bad thing.

But after combing the Internet for some shark bite statistics, I came across interesting data from the International Shark Attack File, maintained at the University of Florida. It was data that made me rethink my earlier theory that sharks just hated developers.

Though media coverage has brought heightened attention to shark attacks, giving the perception that attacks are on the rise, they have actually fallen in recent years, according to the ISAF.

However, the number of worldwide, unprovoked attacks did peak at 79 in 2000 -- the year George W. Bush took office.

It all makes sense now. I voted for Gore.

Brian.

The boredom does get to be too much, doesn't it?

2010-02-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

I am prone from time to time to call people I haven't talked to in 10 or 20 years out of the blue, just to say hey.

I'm most prone to do that when I get bored, which is my state of mind this moment.

I remember calling a friend of mine awhile back. His name is Neil and we used to hang out quite a bit, talking books, music, etc.

About five years ago, I called him at a college in Florida where he was a professor. I didn't know what to expect. Either he'd be like, "Why are you calling me?" or "Hey, it's great to hear from you."

Instead, it was a long pause, then a slight chuckle, and, "The boredom does get to be too much sometimes, doesn't it?" We talked a bit, e-mailed once or twice, and that was it. (Neil once traded me a virtual library of his books for a toilet plunger when he was moving).

It's not that I'm really bored. It's great hanging out with my 16-month-old son Cooper. But sometimes the days do pass slowly now that I'm out of the working world.

Let's see, let me grab some old yearbooks and see who I can call ...

Brian

A lesson learned

2010-02-01T12:04:00.001-08:00

I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text. I will not tequila and text ...

"He's a good doctor ... And thorough."

2010-01-29T07:04:00.000-08:00

One-in-600. One-in-600.

Subconsciously I repeated the mantra in my head this morning as I prepared to head off for a "calcium scoring" CT scan.

I've been having some bouts of arrhythmia and my doctor felt it would be a good idea for me to have the test, which would show if there are any calcified deposits or plaque in my arteries. He felt my arrhythmia was likely a benign condition, but could be more serious if there were any blockages.

I wouldn't have had a problem with the test if I hadn't just read a piece in the Wall Street Journal citing a study that found that the dose of radiation in a single heart scan at age 40 would result in cancer for 1 in 600 men. Yikes, I thought.

But then I thought about my dad. He was a radiologist and radiotherapist through the 1960s and 1970s, a time when not nearly as many safety measures were in place. I know for a fact there was a time when one of his machines malfunctioned, preventing the radioactive cobalt from returning to its shielded position. So what did my dad do? He basically grabbed it and pushed it back in himself.

It was a machine that looked like this:

My point being: My dad probably got dosed plenty of times and he lived to be 89, with no cancer.

So this morning, I was slid into a machine that looked like this (That is, indeed, me. AND AWAY I GO!):

The technician told me the media has overplayed the cancer risks from CT scans, and that the amount of radiation I was receiving and the area it was being received in should pose no danger.

The media? Overplay things? No way.

In I went. I could see things starting to whir around faster and faster inside a transparent shield on the ring of the Siemens Somatom Sensation 16. I was told to hold my breath a few times over the speaker by the technician and then the test was over.

The good news? I scored a ZERO. The absolute best, or as the report states: "no identifiable plaque." And no chance of a heart attack any time soon.

Check me in 10 years or so on the cancer front. Hopefully I'm in the other 599 camp.

Brian

Give 'em hell, Obama!

2010-01-28T08:23:00.001-08:00

I wasn't going to watch the State of the Union address last night. In fact, any of the 150 channels of useless programming and continually run movies on Starz and Encore (Enemy of the State, Quarantine, Enemy of the State, Quarantine, Enemy of the State, Quarantine, Enemy of the State, Quarantine, Weekend at Bernie's II) appealed to me more.

The once proud, promising Obama that I voted for has been swallowed by a cloud of pundit-speak and gridlock in Congress.

But the Obama who took to the podium last night was strong and determined to carry on his promise of change. It was as if the clouds of confusion and noise had been cleared, albeit for only an hour and 10 minutes.

True, rhetoric is rhetoric and we have to see how much of what the president promised hits the pavement.

It would be pointless and mind-numbing to readers for me to give my 2 cents on all he said. There are plenty of outlets where that can be found. But I will say that the speech and his promises to restore jobs and implement a sane health care system in this country gave me hope.

I'm especially hopeful about the health care promise.

Admittedly, I haven't kept up with the health care debate like I should have. I know people on the right have vilified Obama as a socialist for trying to involve government in the medical matters of American citizens.

But I also know that when I left a McClatchy newspaper last summer when my wife accepted a job in Augusta, Ga., my COBRA insurance coverage was going to cost us $1,100 a month if we chose to enroll until my wife's new insurance kicked in. That was MORE THAN FIVE TIMES what the premium had been when I was working. Instead, we rolled the dice and didn't take the coverage. We had some savings and equity from a home we had sold, so we could have paid the premium if we had to. But it would have hurt.

And I can't think of what a premium like that would do to the average worker who has no cushion, which is likely the majority in this country.

My wife opted for an epidural during her delivery of our now 15-month-old son. If we had not had insurance, we would have been billed $27,000 for the anaesthesia, alone. That's right, 27 THOUSAND dollars! Is that a health care system that is working? I don't think so.

Brian.

That chicken's wearing a truss

2010-01-27T08:10:00.000-08:00

So I tried trussing a chicken for the first time last night. No, it didn't have a hernia.

Trussing involves taking butcher twine and bringing it beneath the breasts in front and pulling the twine back to the legs, securing them together in a knot. The purpose is to pull the whole bird into one compact shape, making for more uniform cooking and better presentation.

I always thought that trussing a simple roasting chicken was just fussy chefs' window dressing. But the results were pretty spectacular:

I got the idea after reading some of Thomas Keller's new cookbook, "Ad Hoc at Home," which is full of technical instruction and easily achieved recipes from one of the world's most acclaimed chefs.

Basically, the chicken gets cooked on a bed of root vegetables like rutabagas, turnips, leeks and carrots at 475 degrees for 25 minutes. Then the heat comes down to 400 degrees for about another 45 minutes.

The breast meat was very juicy and tender. We're having the leg quarters tonight and we'll see how they turned out.

Whole chickens are pretty affordable compared to individual breasts and other cuts and this is a good way to get the best bang from your bird.

Also, this week I interviewed Chef Kevin Gillespie, the finalist from Atlanta on Season 6 of Bravo's Top Chef. The interview is in this week's edition of the Metro (Augusta, Ga.) Spirit and can be read here.

And if you're interested in trussing your bird next time, just got to YouTube and type "truss a chicken" in the search box.

Brian.

Getting older, it's a drag

2010-01-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

Last night, I discovered this small little ball about the size of a piece of buckshot on my elbow, beneath the skin. I at first thought it was a mosquito bite, but figured it has been too cold for them to be out.

I touched it and the thing was actually moving around, underneath the skin. Bizarre, I thought. I asked my wife to look at it. Yep, it was moving, she said.

I'm not sure what this is, and I'm not sure I really care. I'm not going to scour WebMD or something to try to figure it out. Nothing really amazes me anymore in terms of the increasing oxidation of carbon atoms in this human shell I occupy.

Mortality is something I think about more often lately. I'm only 45. I don't feel particularly old. Most of the music I still seek out is played on college radio stations and I haven't slipped into Lawrence Welk or Frank Sinatra yet. I exercise regularly and keep my mind sharp with regular reading and writing, as well as an addiction to the Boggle-like game Quordy. I still crawl around on all fours and act like a wild bear with my son. I can also do floor rolls and one hell of a cartwheel, often to the embarrassment of my children.

But lately I've been saddled with the feeling -- a logical one -- that there's more life behind me than ahead of me, and that's kind of scary. I've also been noticing that a lot of the actors I have grown up with are looking pretty old. And what makes things worse is that every time I say, "Wow, he's looking old," my wife says, "Aren't we all."

It's not like I'm contemplating my death. I still think I have plenty of kick-ass meals to cook, at least one more child to have, and lots of good times with my present-day children ahead of me. I know my 13-year-old reads this blog (he might be the only one) and I don't want to freak him out.

Brady, Dad is not going anywhere, he's just going through what a lot of people experience at mid-life. There will be plenty of time for me to beat you at Monopoly.

As for that thing in my elbow, well, I've already forgotten about it.

Brian.

Sticking my toe back in work

2010-01-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I did my first round of interviews and photo taking for a newspaper story in about six months.

I've been writing restaurant reviews for the Metro Spirit in Augusta, Ga. for the past several months, but those are surprise visit deals and I typically don't interview anyone.

It was a little weird working on a full-length story with multiple sources again. Despite working for newspapers for close to two decades, I felt a little unsure of myself heading out the door. I wondered if I'd still be able to ask good questions and take decent notes. I think it came out OK though.

I don't miss full-time newspapering. The industry had gotten dismal and I think newspapers still have farther to fall before they pick themselves back up. But I still love to write and do miss meeting new people and learning new things in the role of a reporter.

Handyman surprise: Not getting ripped off for a change

2010-01-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

I should have known after the second failed attempt that I wasn't qualified to replace some tile molding that had fallen off the kitchen counter. After the third failed attempt, I decided to call someone who knew what they were doing.

Well, actually that's not completely true. See, I really went for attempt No. 4, but failed miserably and almost broke the tile. Then I called the handyman.

I always bristle at the notion of calling a handyman, because I never know how much something is going to cost. It's almost like taking your car to the shop. Well, I guess nothing's really that bad now that I think of it.

So Michael Drake of Drake's Remodeling & Repair in Augusta, Ga., showed up.

"What did you use to hold the tile on?" he asked.

"Sanded grout from out in the garage," I told him.

There was my problem. It turns out I had to use an adhesive before filling the spaces with grout. That's probably why I don't make a living installing tile.

I figured Drake would want at least $100 to replace the five or six strips of tile that go around the outside of the counter. But instead, he told me exactly what to do, left me a tube of silicone adhesive and sealer, and charged me $25 for his time and gas.

So far so good. It's nice that there are still some honest folks out there.

Brian.

Wa-Wa, wa-wa, everywhere ...

2010-01-19T08:25:00.001-08:00

I took little Cooper to the Augusta Canal yesterday. The day was absolutely gorgeous and Cooper got to see plenty of rushing water through the head gates of the canal and a waterfall on the Savannah River.

The winter-bare trees looked like otherworldly figures against the deep blue sky and Cooper got to check out bikers, joggers and an assortment of dogs, inluding a Yorkie by the name of -- get this -- Cooper.

It sure was a nice break from all the rain and cold we've had lately, even though I kind of like rain and cold now and then.

Brian.

Get your grub on

2010-01-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

I'm not really a chef. I just play one in my mind.

Here's something I made the other night -- shrimp with chorizo and ham:

It goes like this:

1 lb. shrimp

1 package cubed ham, or cube it yourself

2 links (or thereabouts) chorizo

1 shallot, sliced crosswise

1 quarter red bell pepper, sliced into 1-inch-long julienne

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 half teaspoon annato powder

1 tablespoon olive oil

cilantro for garnish

Sweat the shallot, garlic and bell pepper. Add the chorizo and ham and cook until browned. Add the shrimp and continue to toss in the pan, adding about a tablespoon of the cilantro. Plate the dish and top with more cilantro.

Brian

Enjoy the "game"

2010-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal carried a story today analyzing the time devoted to actual game play in the typical Super Bowl broadcast.

On average, after taking out commercials, replays and footage of players standing around, the actual game play seen during the roughly three-hour broadcast was 11 minutes.

Enjoy the game, suckers.

Brian.

More schmaltzy coverage from GMA

2010-01-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

On a followup to yesterday's post about Good Morning America's Haiti coverage, it was nice to see them actually air some criticisms from the citizens of Haiti about all the aid and attention that has been given to the foreigners in their country.

But that didn't stop Robin Roberts from spending a good five minutes on a schmaltzy, pat-on-the-back piece that GMA had tracked down a Haitian child for a white couple back in the states who were in the process of adopting her. We were treated to an endless loop of Robin patting the child while she was taking a nap and speaking by satellite phone to the relieved couple back here on terra firma.

Nevermind the thousands of people buried under concrete or the countless children of Haiti who will never see their parents again and won't likely have anyone to adopt them.

GMA saved the day!

Enjoying the silence

Cooper's asleep and it has finally warmed up enough to sit comfortably in the living room and take in a little silence.

Still trying to make it through the last of some Indian food I made without totally destroying my stomach lining. I made it pretty hot.

Brian.

Haiti, Hades. It's all the same to Pat

2010-01-14T08:33:00.000-08:00

One of the more bizarre events surrounding the tragic earthquake in Haiti was televangelist Pat Robertson's comments that the people of Haiti essentially deserved what they got because they had made a "pact with the devil," and that some good might come of the earthquake that is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people.

You can take a look at his comments here:

Apparently, Robertson later said that he was mistaken. He thought it was Hades, the Greek underworld, that had suffered this cataclysmic earthquake. Ah. That explains it.

The Good Morning America coverage didn't serve much better purpose, however. After some dramatic theme music and montages of National Geographic-like portrait shots of the citizens of Haiti -- some of the shots even aired in movie-style black and white to drive home the drama to us hayseeds -- we were treated to a litany of interviews with mostly white Christian missionaries whose main concerns were finding planes out of there.

Not really getting down on the ground with the people, I would say.

But what does one expect from the morning "news" shows?

Brian.

Where are the milk police?

2010-01-13T05:55:00.000-08:00

So it's Jan. 13 and I was starting to pour some skim milk on my cereal this morning when I caught a whiff of something not right.

Sure enough, the roughly half-full, half-gallon container had a sour smell emanating from it. It had gone bad. The date on the carton? Jan. 19, nearly a full week from now.

This has been happening more frequently. My wife discovered a sour gallon not long ago that wasn't set to expire a full two weeks later.

And it isn't just a single store that's the culprit. It's happened with milk I purchased at Publix, Kroger and Sam's Club. It's not like you can vet the stuff before you buy it, either. Fish and meat often give you clues about how they are going to look and smell in a few days. Milk, however, doesn't.

Here's one theory I found on the Godlike Productions message board concerning the topic of milk prematurely going bad:

"I think I know one of the reasons why this is happening.
I have observed in EVERY grocery store I visit that the LAZY stock people drag out these large bins of milk etc.. let it sit in the middle of the isle for hours while they talk to customers, co-workers, and especially talk on their cell phones..

I believe this heat exchange of even a few degrees causes bacteria to grow and speeds up the spoilage process..

This is juat a personal observation from numerous grocery store chains in my area."

I don't know what the cause is, but it sure pisses me off. I guess I could take it back to the store, but that means packing Cooper into the car seat and making an extra trip to the grocery.

So I'll just bitch about it here.

Brian.

Turkey, hot dog bun look-alike concoction

2010-01-12T08:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it just gets a little routine sitting down to feed Cooper the same old Gerber Stage 3 lasagna or beef with vegetables, tiny spoonful by tiny spoonful. You've got to shake it up a bit.

So I feed him a turkey, hot dog bun look-alike concoction -- cuts of lean turkey meat on a hot dog bun with a little cheese, heated in the microwave. Mmmm. Good.

Sure, I have to practically resort to using a putty knife to scrape the Kroger processed, 2 percent cheddar cheese off his face, but the break for both of us is worth it.

The China Syndrome

2010-01-11T08:01:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I read "The Private Life of Chairman Mao," a biography of the communist leader by his former physician. It was an interesting read and really emphasized how envious China was of the west, despite many of its leaders steadfastly clinging to their communist dogma and doctrines.

One of the things that amazed me most about the book was Mao's determination to make the country a leader in steel production. More amazing was the means by which the country's inhabitants were going about it -- namely, backyard furnaces.

In fields and courtyards, citizens were melting down knives, forks and other household implements in makeshift furnaces to produce steel ingots.

"I had no idea whether the ingots were of good-quality steel," author, Dr. Li Zhisui wrote, "but it did seem ridiculous to melt steel to produce steel, to destroy knives to make knives."

Fast forward to today's Wall Street Journal. In it you'll find a story detailing China's increasing production of steel. The country, already the largest steel producer in the world, is expected to produce a record 600 million metric tons this year, according to the Journal. Japan, the world's second largest producer of steel, will produce only one-sixth that. The United States ranks fourth in steel production behind Russia, the article states.

Some feel this will be the year China really takes off as an economic force. One might remember those same predictions were made for last year and people plowed into Chinese stocks. Poor timing aside, however, it appears the recession only delayed the country's economic boom.

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote a weekend op-ed examining China's huge push into alternative energy development titled, "Who's Sleeping Now?" In it, Friedman asserted that the U.S. is at an "inflection point," whereupon it can either move aggressively on energy technology or cede the industry and its jobs to Beijing.

Bottom line: China isn't tinkering in backyard furnaces any longer. Hopefully, their long-in-coming Great Leap Forward doesn't become our Great Leap Backward.

Brian.

Irish Streetwalker

2010-01-07T08:01:00.001-08:00

Something I adapted from an Irish Gentleman recipe over the holidays:

1 oz. Baileys
1 oz. Disaronno Amaretto
1 oz. Brandy
1 oz. Heavy cream

Put into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 10 seconds. Pour over ice in a cocktail glass. To make it even more interesting, add a couple of sprinkles of cayenne.

Don't serve this to the kids.

Brian.