I Need a New Wardrobe

I was dressing for a concert Saturday evening (what do you wear to a concert these days, anyways? At least, not to a Skidrow/Metallica concert...) and realized that my clothes suck. I mean, I have never been a clothes horse in the sense of buying all of the newest fashions, and frankly, have never really paid attention to the newest fashions. In fact, I don't think I understand the newest fashions. I've always considered myself kind of a 'classic dress' guy - which I think means that all of my clothes are old enough to qualify for antique status.... I mean, I mostly tend to buy cheap stuff. I wear Wrangler jeans from Target - hard to beat $12 for a pair of jeans! I but cheap footwear - Champion sneakers, in lovely grey, again from Target, for $29.... I DO have some standards - I typically only wear Ralph Lauren Polo polo shirts - the rougher texture only, and bought - of course - on sale! But those shirts last forever... And I do have both black and brown belts, as I learned early on in life that your belt and shoes must always match. So the black belt gets worn with the black Adidas Samba sneakers, and brown with most everything else...

But I have shirts going back to the last millennium. Some of my shoes are on their second set of soles - and need a third. Most of my sweatshirts say Cape Cod on them. So something needs to be done for sure. TJ Maxx and Marshalls, here I come!

Another Edition of 'Funny Freecycle Items'!

I've been scanning a couple of local Freecycle sites lately, looking for items for AJ's house. As always, there are entertaining things that people put on there, and some are actually taken! My pithy comments are in '**'....

1 -
OFFER: Peanut butter & misc kitchen stuff - pls read (Plainsboro)
Wed Sep 1, 2010 6:07 am (PDT)

I have a opened jar (approx half used) for Shop Rite brand of chunky
peanut butter.

** Ok, now really, would you take an opened jar of food from a total stranger?? **

2 -
OFFER: Blank checkbook register, Lawrenceville
Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:33 am (PDT)

** Yeah, let me drive 5 miles to pick up THIS item...**

3 -
Offered Queen size Serta mattress (7 years old, in decent condition)
Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:41 pm (PDT)

**I wonder if it includes bedbugs.**

4 -
Offered manual push lawn mower (no engine),
Mon Aug 30, 2010 3:42 pm (PDT)

**As opposed to the kind WITH an engine.**

5 -
Wanted: breast pump
Thu Sep 2, 2010 10:55 am (PDT)

i am due in about a week and i am looking for a breast pump. my old one is not working right... so i am in need of a new one

**In a few weeks she'll be looking for some used baby food as well**

6 -
OFFER: Floppy Eared Bunny 19720
Thu Sep 2, 2010 10:55 am (PDT)

I have a very large floppy eared bunny..Free to good home. He is friendly and love kids and other pets...he needs more time to run and we just do not have it to give right now. Comes with cage,food.hay ect...

**I think I would show up with a big pot of water, with some sliced carrots and celery,
and say 'Let's just pop him right in here, he'll make a nice stew!'**

Car Search

I've been looking for a car for Rob, and am about to get serious, as money has magically appeared for it! I'm primarily looking via Craigslist, but also dealer-related sites like cars.com, vehix.com and the Star-Ledger's on-line site. Also occasionally trolling local dealer's inventories. I have found that many people have no freakin' idea of how to advertise a car!

For example, take a look at this ad from Craigslist -

*************************************************
02 VW Jetta grey/blk - $4800 (Iselin)
Date: 2010-06-07, 4:00PM EDT
Reply to: ************

runs great, rides great,great on gas, ice cold A/C , pwdl, pw/windows

* Location: Iselin
* it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

**************************************************

Included is a low front 3/4 shot. So, no info on engine (there are 4 different types available in the Jetta) or trans (auto or manual??). No indication of the number of miles! No model (again, there are several different models available). No contact info other than going through the Craigslist contact (which can be slow). But at least they note the location, many ads will say 'New Jersey' or 'North Jersey', which isn't much help, considering it takes me an hour in either direction to reach the borders of the state!

This guy is advertising his services as a mechanic -

**************************************************
MG Triumph British Car Mechanic (Windham, NY)
Date: 2010-04-28, 5:04PM EDT
Reply to: sale-eb8ev-1715034096@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

MG Triumph, British Car Mechanic available to help complete your restoration project or repairs to British Cars.

The shop is located in Windham NY area, reasonable rates by the hour or the job. Many MGB parts available!

Jack
*************************************************

So what is missing? How about a telephone number of e-mail? Or an address? Geez....

And why can't people take 10 minutes and give the car a quick cleaning before they take pictures? I mean, really....

Freecycle Strangeness

I recently re-started my membership to a couple of Freecycle sites, trying to locate some free furniture for AJ's off-campus house for this summer. If you don't know what Freecycle is, it is a series of Yahoo! groups that allow members to advertise stuff that they are getting rid of for free, instead of sending it to a landfill. It's a great site (I belong to a local Princeton group as well as one in Delaware) but there is wacky stuff on it pretty frequently. Here are a few from the last couple of days -

- OFFERED in Plainsboro interesting contents of top desk drawer!

TI 60 calculator,Silva Hiking and Orienteering Compass, staple remover, box of JT 21 quarter inch staples, two plastic coasters with cork inserts,vinyl covered clipboard folder thing, fountain tech pen with refills, Bates Model K Listfinder with quite a few original page inserts, chalk ball, the type athletes use on hands. Yes, weird, but interesting assortment, please take all and share what you don't need.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Wanted: Pick for guitar; used or new. Thanks.

First time learning to play guitar, so any good pick is fine.
Thanks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- OFFER: Grapefruit (Plainsboro)

I have 4 grapefruits if anyone is interested.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- wanted-hand mannequin-hopewell

Does anyone have a hand mannequin that I could use? I'm knitting fingerless
mitts for a church fair and would like to display them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- OFFER: tree leaves, Pennington area

A long shot, I'm sure - I'm still raking up leaves from last autumn. Does anybody need or want some? Compost or mulch? Let me know.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deathride 2010....

I had an interesting ride back from UDelaware yesterday, after driving AJ back to school after spring break. The normal 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hour ride turned into an almost 3 hour odyssey (in our Odyssey). So here is what happened....

I by-passed the Delaware Memorial Bridge as the traffic on I95 in Delaware was backed up exiting onto the approach to the bridge. No big deal, I have done this before, simply taking I95 north through Wilmington and then cutting over to New Jersey via the Commodore Barry Bridge at Chester, PA. This then leads you to Route 130 which then dumps you onto I295. Mission accomplished, I settled in for the remainder of the drive home. Traffic was heavy, and about 5 miles south of the I295-I76 interchange in Bellmawr, there was a large construction zone, with 2 right lanes and one left lane that was actually on the southbound side. Signs indicated that you should bear right for local exits, but not realizing this ALSO meant the I295-I76 interchange, I jumped into the left lane as there was very little traffic in it. As I entered this crazy intersection, with a lot of traffic and multiple lanes, cars crossing over, etc., I saw that I had 2 options - stay on I76 and take the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philadelphia or take I676 north towards Camden. I did the latter, figuring I could find a way to cut over to I295 again. No luck with that, as there was no signage on I676 indicating how one could get back to I295. At that point, I figured that I would simply cruise over the Ben Franklin Bridge and take I95 north again and back to home.

Unfortunately, I continued to outsmart myself....! I saw the signs for the waterfront district of Camden, where the aquarium is, and knew that the main road that led to the aquarium also led directly back to I295 and the NJ Turnpike, so I got off at that exit. Instead of heading towards the waterfront to my left, for some reason I went straight through the light and ended up in a very bad section of Camden, known as the Red Zone.... This is when I determined that if I got a flat tire, I would continue to drive on the flat tire! I wandered around this area, trying not to stop moving and avoiding looking around as much as I could, until I saw a street that went a ways back the way I had come. I ended up next to the Rutgers Camden campus and took Cooper Ave back to I676 and went back the way I had come. End of story?

Well, no. Once I got back to the I76-I295 interchange, I somehow again missed the signs for I295 North and ended up on Route 42 South, heading towards Atlantic City! I went about 6 miles down this road before I realized that it wasn't I295! Once I got turned around north again, the traffic was backed up due to an accident. At that point, I got my iPhone out and started looking at the Maps app to see where the heck I was.... The next exit had a 'To NJ Tpke' sign, so I took that, along with most of the other cars sitting in the traffic jam..... This was Route 168. It took me about 20 minutes to get to the Turnpike, getting on at Exit 3. Almost immediately I see the signs warning of 'heavy delays ahead'.... Fortunately, I knew that Exit 4 would put you right back onto I295 (they Turnpike and I295 are only about a mile apart at that point). So, back on I295, basically just north of where I had gotten messed up an hour earlier!

I left AJ's dorm at Delaware at 6:30 pm and arrived home at 9:20 pm.

Experimenting with embedding video....

Dixie's Latest Conquest

So yesterday Dixie decided to stalk and take out some sort of creature in our back yard. I am not sure what it is, but it was fairly large and had some fight in it.

She had been whining about going out several times during the course of the morning. Right after non, she went out and was just standing on the patio gazing intently towards the back fence. I thought she was having one of her Alzheimer's moments where she goes outside then apparently forgets why she wanted to go out.... Kind of like me going to the grocery store without a list. Then I looked up and saw something waddling across the yard at the base of the fence. Dixie spotted it the same time as me, and she took off like I haven't seen her run in a couple of years. I yelled after her, then assumed that whatever it was would get under the chain-link fence between our yard and the Hamiltons. Once I saw her pounce and start growling and shaking her head back and forth violently, I knew that wasn't going to be the case. It was kind of gruesome, as she was very single-minded and focused on apparently killing the poor beast. That took a couple of minutes, and then she came out from behind the tree in the corner of the yard with the carcass drooping in her mouth. I finally got her to put it down and come to me. She was covered in blood, and looked like she had two big burises under her eyes on the side of her muzzle... I could not tell whether the blood was from her or the animal but I feared the worst and started thinking about how to protect the interior of my car if I had to take her to the vet...

Well, long story short, I got her into the bath tub and all of the blood washed off, although the sides of the tub and shower looked like the shower scene from Psycho as she shook herself off several times during the ordeal. The bad part for her was that I would not let her back outside until Rob came home from school 2 hours later to help me dispose of the remains!

Olympics Wrap-Up

Well, the Vancouver Olympics are wrapping up tonight, the last event was the men's hockey, won by Canada, 3-2. The US got the silver.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the Olympics overall. I prefer the winter games to the summer, almost every event in the winter is cool, even the curling and the biathlon (x-country skiing and shooting). The venues were nice, and the scenery in and around Vancouver was tremendous. I suspect there will be a dramatic increase in the tourism to that area over the next couple of years.... I know I would like to visit there!

The medal count ended up with the US #1, with 37, followed by Germany with 30 and Canada with a respectable 26, after a slow start - and a lot of pressure! And the Canadians ended up with the most gold medal, with 14. So, good for them. They put on a great show and deserved all of the success that they had, especially since they didn't beat the US in medal count!

The first week, I watched almost everything, but by the time the second Tuesday rolled around, I have to say that my interest was waning a bit. Too much Bob Costas will do that to you, I guess. And the coverage was a bit irritating, too, as it was impossible to not see what happened suring the day before NBC showed it at night. If you spend any time on-line or watch any TV, it's hard not to see what's going on..... And of course, the sappy segments are a bit much. But the athletes are very impressive, many of them not just one-trick ponies but real people with real lives outside their sports and ready to make contributions to society once their competition days are over (Shaun White excepted - enough with him, already).

Don't know who will have the next winter Olympics (ok, I looked it up, Sochi in Russia. So we'll be ready for the Putin Games, I guess...) but they will have a hard time outdoing our friends to the north. Congrats, eh!

'70's Cultural Icons - Clothing Edition

For some reason, last night I started randomly searching in Google for various '70's clothing items, and came up with some great stuff....

Earth shoes - these are probably the reason that I have back issues today! If man was mean to walk with our heel lower than our toes, we would have been born with our heels in a hole....











Frye boots - oh yeah, these were the coolest things ever, and the switching back from these to Earth shoes probably contributed to my achy back!











A popular fabric back in the day, Qiana, was also an effective way of losing weight, as it would trap any and all sweat against your body....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiana

Nike Cortez - the first sneaker they made, I had a pair when they came out in the early '70's. Funny to see them back in stores now.....









And, of course, bell bottoms! I had a pair of hip-hugger, denim bell bottoms that were my favorite pants for decades... ummm, years......












Platform shoes, anyone? I had a pair of plain brown ones very similar to these. Worked perfectly with the bell bottom jeans!












Seems to me I wore a powder blue tux to my Senior HS Prom, probably not unlike this one...












Ahhh, good times for sure.....

Lost is Found!

Well, last night was the premiere for Season 6 of Lost - the final season. I had missed the last 2 episodes of last season so I watched them prior to the show on hulu.com (a great web site if you've missed episodes of your favorite TV shows!). So I was caught up when the show started, and didn't have to watch the 'clip show' that was on prior.

Knowing it's the last season brings mixed feelings. I've been pretty into the show over the years, after watching the first season in reruns over the summer after it debuted. I love the characters and there is certainly a lot of sci-fi feel to it, like The X-Files..... Some people see religious overtones (Kathleen is always looking for Bible references and has found a number of them in character names and places). Personally, I don't try to read too much into it, I prefer it simply as a human interest/action drama, with a lot of interesting characters and humorous situations. While there may be some 'good vs evil' aspect to it, especially now with the introduction of the cynical 'Man in Black' and Jacob, the more positive, 'free-will' guy generally being seen in a white shirt, I still think people read too much into it. Is the island purgatory? Is it a good vs evil clash? A morality play? Who knows. It's just fun and addictive.

My Name Is Dan and I Am A Jets Fan...

And no, that's not intended to sound like the beginning of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting....! I just wanted to reaffirm my membership in Jets Nation prior to the AFC Championship game this Sunday! As a rabid Red Sox, Celtics and (when I care about hockey) Bruins fan, I am somewhat of an odd duck in rooting for the Jets (and New York Football Giants as well). The Jets are pretty much anathema to a real New Englander. But I haven't been a Patriots fan since Steve Grogan retired, and the latest Bill Bellichick era has really turned me off to them. And not just because of the cheating ;-) (Had to get that in there!)

There is actually a lot of similarity between being a Jets fan and being a Red Sox fan (at least, prior to 2004). Like most Jets fans, I always have doubts and expect the 'same old Jets' will show up, and it's the same thing with the Sox, although certainly to a much lesser extant since 2004 and 2007. And the Jets have had the same flashes of good play, just like the Sox in '86, '88, etc. But something has always gone wrong (see Testaverde, Vinny, 1999, when the Jets were expected to contend for the championship).

So I will be watching the game on Sunday, with my Jets hoodie and Jets hat and green turtle neck!

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

MA Senate Election

So the big election in Massachusetts is over, and the Democrats have again been shown (for the third time in as many months - see also governor elections in VA and NJ) that they have completely lost touch with the people. And President Obama has put his political capitol on the line in all three races, and lost each one. If that's not a repudiation of his policies, in sections of the country that SHOULD support them, I don't know what is. The Democrats can blame Martha Coakley for a lackluster campaign, but I think they all - all the way up to the White House, which coordinated this campaign - felt it was a slam dunk once the primaries were over. So by blaming Coakley, they are really blaming themselves for complacency in the face of massive dissatisfaction - with the economy, with the bloated health care bills now being negotiated behind closed doors, with the costs of these bailouts for various industries but not Main Street, and mainly by the arrogance shown by the Democrats in the last year. Unfortunately, I doubt there will be major changes (except, of course, those brought on by the fact that the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate) in their approach and, most importantly, attitude. While I'm not a big fan of the tea-partiers, I do think that some sort of protest in that vein certainly reflects the larger sentiments of the population, if not so verbose or radical.

At the same time, the Republicans should not necessarily take this as a validation of their party or ideals. Brown ran more as an independent than a Republican, and frankly, the Republicans have been complaining about many of the same tactics used by the Democrats, they they have used in the past, and would use again if in the same position the Democrats are today. So, the Republicans should not be crowing about this election either, but take a sober look at where they are as a party (too far right, IMHO) and correct course.

I'm interested to see how Brown fares in 2012, when he is up for re-election on the regular cycle. Only thing I am sure of is that Martha Coakley won't be his opponent!

I am going to try to post at least 4 times a week, from this point on. I need to start writing more, and think I can come up with enough topics on which to comment!