Noises

So on Monday night, Sandy and I caught Memoirs of a Geisha. It was a solid movie. Of course, Michelle Yeoh was in it which is never a bad thing. I loved the book, and anyone considering the movie should absolutely read the book first. The movie does a reasonable job of getting to the heart of the story and putting it onscreen. As usual though, the book was 20 times better.

I didn't want to post to talk about the movie though, but rather the movie-going experience. Where did this tradition of popcorn at the movies come from? Is there a worse food for movies that we could pick? The way I see it, there are two aspects of watching a movie that are absolutely critical. The first is the visual. If the film is grainy or the projector is screwed up, it makes the movie totally unwatchable. If the imagery is particularly excellent, this enhances the experience a great deal. The second aspect is the sound. It's essential that you can hear the movie, all of the dialogue, music, etc. that the filmmaker is using to influence you. Without this, the experience will definitely not be good.

If we can agree that 2nd aspect I mentioned, the audible, is quite critical, why would we choose a food that is so inherently loud when consumed to be the main staple of theater cuisine? This makes no sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I like popcorn as much as the next guy. However, I don't enjoy hearing the person behind me chomping it at a ridiculous volume throughout the 1st hour of a movie. This is what was going on Monday. What's wrong with raisins? Why not raisins? They're quiet and healthy. Just a suggestion. I'm sure someone else has better, but there's one.

Now granted, I should say that I'm sensitive to "food sounds" in the first place. When people make a lot of extraneous noise and chew with their mouths open while eating in my presence, it drives me nuts. This is probably the one thing in life that "drives me crazy". If you were going to torture me, putting a guy in front of me chewing chips in an insane way would be the way to go. I would crack in about 90 seconds. My personal issues aside though, I still say popcorn at movies is entirely illogical. I love movies, but every time I go I say a secret internal prayer that I don't have to sit next to "a chomper".

Back to the grind..

Well, I'm back at work after being home in Bourbonnais celebrating Christmas. That's right Christmas, not "the holidays" or "the holiday season" or whatever. I come from a lineage of Christians, so Christmas it was. It can't be helped. That is, unless I convert.

Anyway, work was sort of atrocious today as pretty much everyone was out and a bunch of stuff decided to flip the trip out switch on me. What can you do?

The holidays were freakin' fantastic though. I got lots of cool stuff and I think I gave out a bunch of good stuff too. At least, I hope so. It's not over for me either as the Milone family has decided it would be a good idea to celebrate Christmas on New Year's Day. Back to Bourbonnais with a monster hangover I will go.

The best gift I got this year? Undoubtedly, it was my first authentic Blackhawks jersey. Way to go Sandy! Go Hawks!

The Bitter with the Sweet

So this weekend was sort of brutal for me personally. On Saturday, I was hella sick. This really sucked because it was the final tournament for my poker league. Our league (about 14 people, not all of whom always play), plays several rounds throughout the "regular season". Standing are kept for these games based on order of finish. A portion of our buy-in is taken each time for the final tourney. Then, for the final tourney we buy in for double the usual buy-in to play for a larger pot. So basically, there's a tremendous overlay for the final tourney. I finished the league in first, so I would have had the most chips to start with and I would have been the favorite going in. So naturally, I get sick and miss the thing.

However, Sandy ended up taking it down for 1st. This is her first tournament win ever in a couple of seasons in our league. She came through when it really counted. Great job Sandy!

Congrats to Mark

My buddy Mark successfully laid down pocket kings today pre-flop in a no-limit cash game online when he was sure his opponent had aces. It is a rare poker player that can do this, especially after making a sizeable raise with his/her kings. Great Job Mark!

Funniest Thing I've Read in a While

Check it out here. You scientists and engineers will have a special appreciation for this one.

Shopping/Celebrity Sighting

So today, Sandy and I were at Old Orchard amongst other places Christmas shopping. The shopping went pretty well. I just wrapped up the majority of it today between our excursion and some internet shopping this evening.

So anyway, we were sitting in Maggiano's in this booth at lunch time. We were sitting so we were looking out on the rest of the restaurant. After about 10 minutes, I look up at the table directly in front of us. It's ten feet away. I turn to Sandy and say, "that looks like Rachel Ray". The woman in question was dining with another female companion. If you watch the Food Network, I know you know what who I'm talking about. If you don't, you probably have no idea. Anyway, she does a few shows, the two most popular being $40 A Day and 30 Minute Meals. Anyway, after I said this to Sandy she says, "it is Rachel Ray." Two seconds later she talked and it was definitely confirmed.

Of course, we didn't go up to speak to her. I actually had some things to say, I think. However, they likely wouldn't have been appropriate. Here are a few of the options I'm thinking of -

1. "You know the Food Network sucks? I got in that Next Food Network Star contest with an original show idea and all you guys did was laugh at us and put us in the blooper reel."

2. "You know when you have all of the ingredients chopped, sliced, or otherwise prepared for you on 30 Minute Meals, that's cheating? Who are you trying to fool? That shit takes 2 hours for anyone at home."

3. "You know what the best part of $40 A Day is? It's when you are in some exotic city like Amsterdam and you make random comments alluding to your desire to hook up with random strangers you've met on the voyage. Do you know what the worst part is? It's the way you fake that 'mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm' on the first bite of every freaking dish you eat in every city that you are in."

Instead of my inappropriate comments, we were later treated to a family that came up to Rachel just as she was leaving. The woman (about 40 years old) had a couple of seemingly kind words for her but then she tells her this about 12 seconds into the discussion, "you're a lot shorter than I thought." Rachel's face drops just a little but then she just wound up the slightly awkward conversation. Why would you tell someone you seemingly admire that they are a midget? I just don't know. Anyway, good seeing you Rachel.

Relief

Something I just realized....

There won't be a Nick and Jessica Holiday Frickin' Extravaganza on TV this year. Thank God for celebrity break-ups.

Apartment Living

I live in an apartment. It isn't a condominium that I own, it's an apartment that I rent. This affords me the ability to have a some sense of detachment from my residence. I guess this is both good and bad. I've been in the same apartment for a couple of years now. I wanted to talk about what I like and don't like about my building a little. Why? Because I'm doing laundry and I'm bored.

1) I have to pay for laundry. This sort of sucks. To me, laundry in my unit would be an amazing luxury. I think most everyone I know would have no concept of my laundry experience. There is a good reason for that. It mostly sucks. In the basement of my building, there are four washers and four dryers. While costly to use, at least most of the time I can get four loads of laundry done at a time if I want. This can be good. The fact that I have to keep going up and down stairs to do this isn't the best, but at least there is upside and that's something.

Anyway, a lot of times the laundry room is empty and this is optimal. Tonight though, there were a few other users. Now, I only had two loads to do this was no big deal. I get my stuff in two washers. I come down fairly promptly 45 minutes later, and there are no dryers available. Now, there are two things I hate in the communal laundry room. They are:

1) I'm very prompt in getting my clothes in and out of the washer and dryer. I don't leave my stuff in there more than 10 minutes as I try to be very considerate of other people in the building. Sometimes though, my drying will finish up and in that ten minute span that I don't there, someone takes my stuff out and throws it on top of the dryer to use the dryer themselves. Give me a couple of minutes, that's all I ask. Somehow, I seem to lose socks in this scenario about 50% of the time. This pisses me off.

2) The other residents who aren't considerate. They know the laundry room is in heavy use, yet they leave there stuff in the dryer for 2 hours. I don't ever want to be the one to move their stuff (see #1) but at some point, it borders on ridiculous. I'm forced to move their stuff, hoping the entire time that they aren't going to come in and "catch me in the act".That is just the worst.

Scenario 2 just happened to me tonight. I went downstairs, all four dryers are full along with all four washers, two of which I was using. So fine, I went back upstairs for 35 minutes and waited. Two of these dryers were sitting with the same clothes when I put my stuff in the washer, so they've been there over an hour at a minimum. I come back down, same situation. So someone is taking up two dryers for ~2 hours minimum. I moved all of their stuff, I just couldn't help it. They didn't catch me in the act either. The bastards. It's 11pm when I get my stuff in the dryer, so it's not like I was going to wait all night for these clowns. So frustrating.

The most common thing you think about with apartment living is relations with your neighbors. Here in Chicago, it's not like people are tremendously friendly. I don't really know many of neighbors of the past or present. I have however, assigned several of them a few "names". Here are a couple of examples:

1. My most intriguing neighbor is the 40ish woman that lives right next to me. She's always polite. She often has visitors. She cooks up a storm and it often smells really great when I'm walking up to my place. Tonight was a great example, about 3 hours ago there was a tremendous aroma of bacon blended with some other wonderful things that I couldn't entirely pinpoint. Two hours later, I got the other very familiar smell from next door. That is the chronic. That's marijuana for those of you unfamiliar with my terminology. My neighbor is blazin' the chronic a minimum of three days a week. Today, I was left with a couple of questions. Did she cook up something wonderful to enjoy with her hash? Was the food so good she felt like topping it off with a proper dessert? Is she aware that an entire wing of the building can smell the weed from 40 feet away when she's lighting up? I'm not sure how to get answers to these.

2. Mostly my neighbors to the other side of me have all been quiet and courteous, I hardly know they are there. However, one year it was quite different. I had a Latino family with a couple of kids in there. They were kind of loud generally, which makes some sense with 4 people living in a one bedroom apartment. What really distinguished this group though, was their love for salsa music at insane decibels. The walls here are thin, so for quite a while I was watching tv with a fairly loud background of salsa. I was glad to see them move out. I have to admit. My current neighbors in this unit, I've never seen. I barely know that they exist.

3. On to the unit above me. My current neighbors are very quiet. I've had two couples up above me in my time here. The first used to throw crazy parties. I occasionally had to go up there at the behest of my roommate to get them to chill. There would be 15 people up there, these guys would be playing music (the dude was in a band) and just boozing it up. They were always nice though, which was key. While the parties were loud, it hardly rivaled the parties in the bedroom. These two were really loud and pretty damn freaky. So freaky that when I would go up there, I couldn't really look them in the eye. The young lady screamed in what seemed to me to be a ridiculously unnatural way. At least they were happy though, or so it seemed.

4. The couple that moved in after the screaming sex maniacs was decidedly different. They were arguers. More specifically, the woman would nag and nag with a really high-pitched annoying voice. Pretty much nightly, she would be degrading her man relentlessly in that voice that still haunts me to this day. On numerous occasions, I contemplated going up there, knocking on the door, and telling the young man that no one deserved this shit and he should dump this woman ASAP. I'm sure that conversation wouldn't go well, but still. It was so bad, I really felt I should intervene. I never did though, and they've since moved on. I now have completely quiet people upstairs which is simultaneously more peaceful and uninteresting.

So those are my neighbors. The best thing about my building though is my maintenance guy Carlos. The guy is almost always around and he'll take care of any little thing in a hurry. He's on top of everything. He's a comforting force in my life and the reason that I still live in this building. There's something great about knowing your problems will always be taken care of and quickly at that. It's hard to put a price on that.

Laundry Update: I just picked up my clothes and the clothes I had to remove were still sitting there. Apparently, these guys are just leaving there stuff there all night. I hate people like this. Don't be these people.

Why Can't I own a Canadian?

Thanks to Nate for this link. This is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Check it out here.

If you ever wondered what Mr. Miyagi's Funeral Would Be Like...

Read all about it here. I love Ralph Macchio's quote in here on about 7 levels.

Hammer Time

Check this out. The best part of this is that Hammer has a new album and someone described it as "hot".

Yankees and Farnsworth

The Yankees inked Kyle Farnsworth to a 3 year deal for $17 million dollars today. To me this is sort of akin to buying a used Corvette for $150k that you are reasonably sure will break down around the 10th time you get in it, and then subsequently breakdown 80% of the time after that until you finally leave the keys in it in a bad neighborhood hoping that someone steals it or lights it on fire.

Go Yanks!