Happy New Year to all!!

Well it’s 6:00 pm and I’m about to head out for an evening with friends to ring in the New Year.  I am welcoming 2008 with open arms!!  I believe that it is going to be a great year.  I hope that your New Years Eve is filled with fun and merriment and that you are surrounded by friends and family as you welcome yet another year.  Can you believe it?  Be safe and have fun!! 

Random observations from a boring day at work

It’s incredibly boring to be here at work today.  First of all there are only 6 of us here today.  Normally this office supports over 60 people.  If I had any vacation days left for this year I would also be gone.  So here go the random observations.

~A co-worker of mine who is 3 offices down from me must bathe in his cologne.  Eau Du Smelly is what it should be called.  He apparently believes in dousing himself liberally in cologne in lieu of showering.  I have no nostril hair left because of this man.  Maybe that’s a good thing.

~ Have you seen the outfits people wear?  It’s like they take everything that they got at Christmas and put it on.  I seriously believe that they must not look into a mirror before they leave the house.  Either that or they are blind.

~Why are people still telling me Merry Christmas?  That was two whole days ago people!!! Bah Humbug!

~Being bored at work is absolutely terrible!

~ Mr. Smelly brought his girlfriends dog to work today.  That’s about the most excitement we’ve had here. 

~The pants that I’m wearing catch every piece of lint that is in the air.  I think that they were black when I put them on this morning.  Now they kinda look gray!! (only a slight exaggeration, I promise)

~When did we become an animal friendly environment here at work?   I must have missed that memo!

~I’d rather be snow skiing. 

~Or sleeping!! One of my favorite past-times. 

I may, keyword, may not post again today.  Maybe it’s time for more tea.  I’m sure that I need more caffeine.  4 shots of espresso, 1 cup of tea, and 1 cup of Coca-Cola isn’t enough.  My whole body is vibrating.  I really want to go home and read in front of the fire.  It’s cloudy and cold and supposed to rain some more.  That should make tomorrow a joy!!  Can you imagine how many people will come into work if it’s raining, a holiday weekend, and Friday!  I might post 17 times tomorrow!!  Ugh.

Great Tea!!

Just wanted to let everyone know about a great tea that I have just discovered.  It comes from  Peet’s Coffee & Tea.  Snow Leopard!!  Great great stuff.  Add a little honey and WOW!!  The coffee at Peet’s is completely different from Starbucks.  The espresso is much much stronger and the drinks are different.  Don’t order a mocha and think that you will be getting what you are used to.  Peet’s is a great place.  You should all try it out.

A little miracle!!

Since last Monday my Jeep has been smelling like gas.  Now, I don’t mean just a little bit, I could not even turn on the air conditioner or the heater because it blew straight gas fumes into my face.  So I called the service department where I had bought the Jeep and asked if I should bring it in.  The service manager asked me if I had overfilled it recently to which I replied yes.  I had pre paid for $55 and didn’t actually need the last dollar or so but I squeezed and squeezed to get it all in there.  C’mon when you pay as much for gas as we do here in California I wanted to get every last drop.  Doyle, the service manager, told me that it would probably evaporate in a few days as I had just overfilled the tank.  Great, not a problem right?  Well the smell just hung around.  People that drove up beside me would look at me and let me know that they smelled it too.  So this afternoon when I got off of work I took my little Jeep into the service department for them to take a look.  A couple of minutes later Doyle came into the waiting area and pulled me out into the service bay and pointed out what was wrong.   A gas line had broken and was leaking gas directly onto the exhaust manifold.  He was stunned that I had been driving around for over a week and the Jeep had not burst into flames.  As we stood there and watched a little gas poured out of the line and landed on the exhaust and puffed and smoked.  It is an amazing miracle that  nothing happened.  I am so thankful for God’s protection and his keeping power.

 I hope that you all had a great Christmas and I am wishing you a very Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas

Wishing all of my friends and family the merriest of Christmas’s.  I hope that your Christmas is the the best that you’ve ever had.  Merry Christmas ya’ll.

Who knew?

While standing in a group of friends last Friday afternoon and discussing weekend plans I told them that I was going to the San Francisco Symphony to which one of my friends promptly laughed, rolled her eyes and said, “Nathaniel, you are so white!”.  Really?  Who knew?  She went on to explain what made me so white.  “You listen to jazz, country, and rock.  You wear sweaters and shop at Banana Republic, J Crew and the like.  I mean, my God, you’re going to the symphony! How could anyone be whiter than you?”  Now this is something that I’ve never spent a great deal of time thinking about.  I’ve got better things to do (like wash my car in the rain, change my new guitar strings, etc.) with my time than to dwell on what makes me who I am.  In fact I do like all of the things listed above and there’s more.  I play golf, I snow ski, I drive an SUV (not doing my part for the environment with my V8 am I), I don’t fish or hunt though.  I think that what this woman was saying was that I am way down on the scale of “cool points”.  Who knew that “being white” was such a terrible stigma to carry around in your life?  I certainly didn’t and certainly don’t care if someone thinks that I’m not that cool because “I’m white”.  You see the fact is is that I like who and what I am.  I truly enjoy wearing my Mr. Rodgers sweaters.  They’re warm and they keep me from having to wear a jacket.  Plus, where I live it is imperative that you layer as it is cold in the morning, warms up considerably in the afternoon and then goes back to being cold at night.  I love good music and if that includes jazz, rock and country and the occasional symphonic field trip, so be it.  I absolutely abhor music that is all electronic and canned.  If it is live and has drums I’ll listen to just about anything.  Besides, jazz musicians play some of the most complicated, complex music that is alive.  So sue me if I think that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennet, Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong are some of the greatest singers ever. Has my Caucasian ancestry ruined me?  I think not. 

This, in a way, is what is wrong with society.  We just don’t let people be who and what they want without slamming them into some sort of box.  Our society preaches “individuality” but have you been to the mall or some other sort of public place and seen all the clones walking around?  I really didn’t want this piece to come off as one of those terrible preachy rants about society but I’m afraid that this is a soapbox of mine.  What I really want to do is to ask everyone to just stop.  Look around, life’s to short to try and pretend to be something that you are not.  Stop doing stuff that you don’t enjoy just to “fit in”.  Find out what makes you tick and then get out and do it.  Don’t live your life inside someones perception of what they think that you should be.  Be yourself. 

My friend Ryan Dean wrote about the “game table” a few weeks ago on his blog.   You should check it out.  It is a much more eloquent version of what I’ve tried to do. 

Well, I’ve got to get back to being white.  Hold on while I crank up my smooth jazz and adjust my sweater.  Whew, that’s better.  I think I hear the dreaded Banana Republic calling.  No wait that was the golf course.  Oooops, sorry, it was the country music channel!!  Who knew huh?

Slip and Slide

It’s raining here in Northern California this week.  And by raining I mean this infernal drizzle that just goes on and on.  It could rain for 72 hours and we might get 3/4 of an inch.  This happens every year from about right now until the middle of April or so.  Actually, as I look out the window it’s coming down a little harder than normal.  Here’s the thing.  You would think that since this “weather pattern” happens every year that the people who live here would learn how to drive in the rain.  Have they?  NO THEY HAVE NOT!!!  Moisture on the road is anathema to these people(and yes I did use that word right).  Nobody has figured out that you can go 55 miles an hour and be safe.  Oh no, it’s either full speed ahead, like normal 75-85mph or it’s 25-35 mph.  And ne’er the two shall meet.  Terrible, terrible, horrible, HARBLE!!.

 On the bright side the mountains are just getting dumped on right now.  That’s the good thing that happens.  Dodge Ridge (www.dodgeridge.com) is planning on opening this Thursday, which is a couple of days earlier than expected.  Go and check out the web cams for the ski resorts.  www.skiheavenly.com, www.northstarattahoe.com, et. al.   Looks like we will be having better snow this year.  Better get my stuff out so I can go and take a look!!

TERRIBLE!!

When you go to the San Francisco Symphony, which is one of the top symphonies of all time, you expect to enjoy your time and walk away going WOW!  Instead, after this Friday night, I walked away laughing and shaking my head after the performance of the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus.  They took a beautiful piece of music, Handel’s Messiah, and made it mundane and incredibly funny. Even the Hallelujah Chorus was terrible.  I’m afraid that I almost was asked to excuse myself because of the “mezzo soprano” and her rrrrrroooooolllliinnnnggggg R’s.  It just struck us as funny.  I had just taken a drink of water and was forced to laugh thru my nose so that I didn’t go Shamu and blow water over the 5 rows in front of us.  I haven’t laughed that long in quite a while.  It reminded my of my Grandma Layne and her penchant for laughing at the worst times.  It was really just bad!!  Normally they are great but this was terrible. 

 

And then the RIDE OF DEATH through the streets of SF.  I’ve never gone 90 down the Embarcadero in my life but I did Friday night as we tried to beat the clock and make it to Houston’s before it closed.  And of course everyone in the car had the best way to get from Davies Symphony Hall to Houston’s.  Take 80, No take Harrison, No that goes the wrong way take Market.  Oh no.  Let’s go the long way and catch every light in the process.  Finally, I just jumped out of the car, dashed across 4 lanes of oncoming traffic, slid across the hood of a parked taxi and dove through the door at 10:58 to make it just in the nick of time.  I’m even reasonably sure that they didn’t drop my prime rib on the floor and step on it before they served me.  Houston’s is one of my favorite restaurants in the world.  Love it.  Finally made it to bed about 4 A.M, which is way past my usual bed time and went to sleep with a “5 page of sheet music” AMEN rolling around in my head.  Seriously, that is how many pages they turned for the last AMEN!!!!!!

  We had great church today and it was the maraschino cherry on top of a really fun weekend.  I love where I live because it affords me the chance to have a great life and a lot of fun. 

I hope that you had a great weekend and hope that you have a fantastic week this next week.  I haven’t bought a single present.  I’m the guy running frantically through the mall at 5:30 on Christmas Eve.  It’s part of my charm!!

Can you feel the love?

I am in love.  I guess now that I look back upon the series of events I have to admit to myself that I’ve been in love for quite a while.  It started over 7 years ago in Elk Grove, CA and I have been in love ever since that day.  This love continues to grow and seemingly knows no bounds.  What is this great affection that I have and whom or what do I have it for?  Chipotle burritos and tacos.  Ummm, ummm, good!!

There is no lunch that can compare with a Chipotle burrito.  Mind you I am not talking about a sit down dinner at Lawry’s, Ruth’s Chris, or Maggianos, but rather lunch. I generally eat a burrito from Chipotle 2-3 times a week.  It’s fast, it’s relatively cheap, it’s very clean and much of the food is organic.  You are able to build your own burrito exactly how you want it.  For me, light rice, light fajitas, steak, extra chicken, sour cream and cheese.  Fresh guacamole and a bag of chips with a large drink.  Filling, almost as cheap as an extra value meal from McDonalds and infinitely more healthy, and fast.  The guacamole is made fresh every day.  The chips are seasoned with lime and sea salt. HHMMMMM!  It is really just the perfect lunch.

 I’ve had some problems trying to convert my family.  They look at me like I am trying to convince them of the plurality of the godhead!! Pagans.  There is no lunch that compares and I am glad that my “love affair” is well into its seventh year and going stronger than ever. 

P.S. Before you write me and tell me that Chipotle is owned by McDonald’s check your facts.  Chipotle briefly merged into the McDonalds family for some capital that was needed to take the company from a Denver area burrito factory to a nationally recognized brand.  In the summer of 2006 the company that I work for helped Chipotle in its first IPO.  The price was $22.  Today the stock (CMG) was trading at $141.41.  The 52 week high was $152.00.  Obviously a sound investment and more people than just myself think so!  (Although I usually am right, just ask my Dad!!)

Playfully debunking Christmas myths

I would like to start this playful piece off by saying that I love the holiday season.  This is my favorite time of year.  By far.  Not even close.  Love it.  Ok?  I’m not bitter, I’ve not become a little gnarled up gnome of a person who is trying to spoil all of your fun and ruin Christmas.  Fair enough?  Good.  Then let us move on the the debunking of some of my favorite Christmas myths that are given to us through song, screen, and tradition.

~Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.~  We joyously and spontaneously burst into song and sing about the glories of bouncing across a frozen prairie behind the hindquarters of a sweating, panting animal.  If you really think about it, for this myth to actually take place it has to be extremely cold BRRRR!!!. Snow must be covering the ground and you must traverse this hazardous ground while guiding dear old Bessie.  This leaves absolutley no time for what we all imagine would be happening.  Snuggling beneath a warm blanket with your significant other while sipping hot chocolate and nuzzling each others cheeks.  Sounds fun in principle, not so much when laid out in the stark terms of reality!!

~Chestnuts roasting on an open fire~  WHO has actually had chestnuts?  No dad, not bucknuts.  Those only help you when you are hunting.  Who has ever eaten chestnuts?  I’ve never even seen chestnuts, much less roasted any over an open fire. I feel like I have lived a fairly worldly life.  I’ve been many places and seen many things.  Traveled abroad, been to most of the great cities of America, but I’ve never even seen chestnuts.  I conducted an impromptu poll earlier here at work.  Now mind you this was not exactly The New York Times, that bastion of conservatism and right wing propaganda, but I did carry a piece of paper and make little marks.  My journalistic integrity is intact!  25/37 have never had chestnuts, much less those that were roasted over an open fire!  15/37 have never seen a single solitary chestnut!!!!  Point made? 

~Mistletoe?~ Seriously.  Smooching under the mistletoe.  How many of you would be ok with your significant other receiving a nice little smooch from a complete and total stranger just because they happen to be standing underneath some little weedy looking mistletoe?   C’mon, raise your hand.  Let’s see it…………  That’s right nobody.  If you have a special person in your life you shouldn’t need mistletoe to induce a little kissing should you?  Take down the mistletoe.  It just dies and drops its little leaves on peoples heads. 

Playfully debunking Christmas myths all around the world.  This has now become my calling in life.  I’m having a little costume made up and currently trying to figure out how I can fly…. Hehe.  Merry Christmas everyone.  I hope that your feelings are not badly bruised and that you have a great and very happy holiday season.