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January 7, 2011 · 12:01 pm

The Hangover…

Today is going to be a good day…

The reason today is going to be a good day? Yesterday (Thursday) I woke up with a nasty hangover, you know, the kind where you just want to die. I hauled myself out of bed, walked to the shower, walked back to the bed and laid back down for just a couple minutes.

“Get your ass up, you can’t go back to bed you know” said the little Devil conscience guy that was standing on my right shoulder.

“You know you shouldn’t have had so many glasses of wine” said the little angel conscience guy on my left shoulder.

“C’mon you sissy, just get in the shower, you’ll be fine” said the little devil guy.

“You know you shouldn’t have had that last drink… or five” said the little angel guy.

“Get up you nancy-boy, you have to drive the kids to school in 30 minutes” said the little devil guy.

“Don’t ever do that again” said the little angel guy.

Yeah, I know, I thought, I’ll never do that again! How many times have we all said that? Thankfully it doesn’t happen that much anymore. So, I hauled myself back out of bed, showered up, ate some breakfast, drank some coffee, got the kids in the car, drove them to school, and went to work and put in a full day. Not the most productive day by any stretch of the imagination, but a full day.

I don’t even have a good story to tell. I wasn’t at a bachelor party… c’mon, it was a Wednesday night! I wasn’t celebrating a birthday, anniversary, job promotion, salary raise, lottery win. None of that! I didn’t even have a partner in crime.

It was the great George Thorogood who sang:

I drink alone, yeah
With nobody else
I drink alone, yeah
With nobody else
You know when I drink alone
I prefer to be by myself

George of course was speaking of drinking much more manly stuff; Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, Old Grandad. Not the girly-man red wine that I saw swilling down… out of a box no less… but hey, we’ve all got our vices.

So here’s the story. I get home Wednesday night from work. My wife had a soccer game that evening and a night out with the team.  A friend of mine had posted a status update on his Facebook page about eating spaghetti and having a glass of wine for dinner. Ahhh, spaghetti, the most basic and wonderful of comfort foods!  I thought, man that sounds good, so I cooked up a big batch of spaghetti for myself and the kids, and poured myself a nice glass of wine. Then I fired up my laptop, signed onto https://brownroadchronicles.wordpress.com and started blogging. Yes, blogging, my new favorite time waster productive hobby. But the words just weren’t flowing. I couldn’t come up with a compelling post, so instead of writing, I started reading… and reading… and refilling… and reading… and refilling… and reading… and reading… and refilling… and there were so many interesting and funny blogs and posts and I was having so much fun that… well, you know… I kind of lost track of how many refills I had refilled! This went on until about 11:30 at night (the kids had long gone to bed) when I finally, through a fuzzy red wine cloud of thought, concluded it might be a good idea to go to bed.

So, I’m here to blame the following bloggers:

husbands4hire http://husbands4hire.wordpress.com;

walkswithstress http://walkswithstress.wordpress.com;

Edmonton Tourist: http://ragrobyn.wordpress.com;

Shit My Cake Says http://shitmycakesays.wordpress.com;

Writers Block http://bymyink.wordpress.com;

Girl on the Contrary; http://girlonthecontrary.wordpress.com;

and several more that I can’t quite remember… for welcoming me and being my first blog-world friends, for hanging out with me on Wednesday night and for having such fabulous and interesting and inspirational and humorous blogs…

… and for getting me drunk!

Thanks!!

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January 5, 2011 · 5:33 pm

Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get you today?

I fucking love coffee…

There, now that I have your attention, can I tell how much I love coffee?  I drink coffee all day long.  It doesn’t even have to be good coffee.  In reality, sometimes coffee doesn’t taste that good.  In fact, sometimes it tastes like shit… but I’ll still drink it… and plenty of it.  At work we drink plain old Maxwell House coffee with that white powdered “dairy product” creamer mixed in and I’ll down that stuff all day long.  I’m not sure why I drink so much coffee.  The caffeine buzz wore off years ago.  Maybe it’s my version of the cigarette, just an habitual thing.  Or maybe I’m addicted… or just bored.

I am also a fan though of good, high quality coffee.  My wife is a coffee snob so she always buys the little $8.00-$10.00 vacuum sealed bags of coffee when she shops for groceries, rather than the cheap oil-drum size cans of the name-brand products.  There are many of these exclusive brands available now, everything from Starbucks to Dunkin’ Donuts to the local grocery store brands, and it’s no doubt, better tasting stuff than what you get in the can.   We are also big fans of dropping $3-$4 bucks on Latte’s at Starbucks stores or at our local café or wherever we can get our shaking hands onto that warm, frothy cup of coffee ecstasy.

So, what’s my point?  When you go to Starbucks you have to place your order in their language.  The language of the coffee barista!  I don’t know what language it actually is… some of it sounds kind of French-y, some of it sounds kind of Italian-y.  So I guess it’s a combination of European cultural language sounds all wrapped up into one good ol’ American chain store.

We never order anything other than Medium Latte’s made with skim milk.  That’s not because we have been totally frightened off by the stifling pressure involved in ordering a Double Espresso Macchiato or an Espresso Con Panna or even an Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha.  We just prefer Medium Latte’s with Skim Milk… good coffee, a little frothy milk, low-cal.

In Starbuck’s language a Medium Latte with Skim Milk is a Grande Non-Fat Latte.  Four pretty simple words all lined up in precise order.  Early on when Starbuck’s was just starting to build it’s seven billion locations, ordering was a challenge and after a couple visits where I actually exposed my complete ignorance and ordered a “medium latte with skim milk” I started to understand the language.  But I still struggled with it and I hated that the clerks were always sure to subtly correct me.

Starbucks drive through Employee:  “Good morning, what can I get you today?”

Me (nervous):  “Uh, yeah… I’d like a Non-Fat Grande Latte.”

Starbucks drive through Employee:  “A Grande, Non-Fat Latte?  Would you like anything to eat with that?”

Me (thinking, damn I fucked it up… again… maybe if I order a scone or something they won’t think I’m a complete hillbilly.  But I hate scones, they’re hard and nasty and like eating petrified bread.)  “Uh, yeah… can I have a blueberry muffin?”

Starbucks drive through Employee:  “Yes, a Grande, Non-Fat Latte and a blueberry muffin.  That will be $18.97.  Please drive around to the next window.”

Me: (thinking… next time I’m gonna nail it!)

Fast forward a few years and many successful Latte orders…

This past Sunday my wife and I were driving over to Detroit to see the Detroit Lions/Minnesota Vikings game at Ford Field.  I’ve been a Vikings fan since I was a kid and she bought me the tickets early in the fall for my birthday.  It’s about a 2 hour drive from where we live, so on the way there when our travel coffee cups ran dry we pulled off an exit and found a Starbucks where we could get some coffee.

As I pulled up to the drive through window, my wife jokingly says to me “make sure you say it right.”  That threw me into a fit of hysterical laughter… you know, one of those laughing fits where you just can’t stop!  Her too, and now the drive through speaker comes alive.

Starbucks drive through Employee:  “Good morning, what can I get you today?”

Me: (thinking, stop laughing you dumb ass!) “Yes, I’d like two Grande Non-Fat Latte’s…. (pause)……… Medium” 

As, I pull the car around to the pay-window, my wife still laughing says “the Grande IS the Medium.”

Good thing she loves me… we got a good laugh and had a nice day together at the game.

… and the next time I’m at a Starbucks… I’m gonna nail it!

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January 3, 2011 · 8:53 pm

Naughty, can you please get the newspaper?

I’m a pretty technologically saavy guy, spending lots of time connected to a computer keyboard or my blackberry. I’m a Facebook addict… and now I’m a blogger. But I’ve always enjoyed reading a newspaper, you know, like a real one, that’s actually made out of paper and that stains your fingers black if you spend enough time browsing the pages. Even though our local paper continues to shrink as the digital age consumes it readership, I still enjoy a physical newspaper.

Growing up, when my family lived in New York, my Mom worked for years in New York City and would commute on the Long Island Railroad from the Smithtown train station all the way into Manhattan and back every day. For one month during my senior year in college I worked an internship in the city and we would commute in together. I still remember her joking about how the businessmen on the train had this incredible skill at opening and re-folding and re-opening and re-folding the New York Times, like some giant origami project, so as not to disturb the neighbor trying to sleep in the seat next to them.

I haven’t been on a commuter train like that in probably over two decades so I can only imagine that the riders on today’s trains are reading the news on the array of handheld devices available today or the Kindles, iPAD’s and other tablet readers rapidly breaking into the market. That’s progress and in the long run, I believe it’s a good thing.  I won’t let myself be one of the nayayers that gripe and complain about technology taking over our lives. I enjoy it and I thrive on the instant access we have to information, to each other, to the world!

Ahh, but enough of that city life stuff…

Back in late spring we adopted two goats from the horse farm where my daughter takes riding lessons. The farm was planning on getting rid of the goats and we decided this might be good practice for our daughter if down the road we decide to get her a horse. Our goats are both billies and they both came pre-named. The one on the left with the horns is named Heath, the one on the right is named Naughty. Uh… HELLO… that should have been a clue right there! Actually as it turns out they are both darling animals and we have all grown quite attached to their quirky and “naughty” behaviors.

Heath and Naughty

Until I have time to get our pasture fences secured so the goats can’t sneak right through the slats, they have free reign of the property and for the most part they choose to stick around and not wander too far. I guess they know “the hand that feeds them” and maybe goats in general just aren’t wanderers. Goats are eaters however and apparently one of the things they enjoy eating is…. you guessed it, newspaper!

So, shortly after the delivery driver drops by each day, Naughty likes to “get the paper.”  If we don’t notice it’s arrived first, it typically ends up like this:

Next time could you deliver it to the front door?

Maybe I should have asked Santa for a Kindle this Christmas!!

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January 3, 2011 · 3:26 pm

Meet my Truck… She’s a He!

Yes, I drive a truck.  A 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 with Hemi engine.  Dark Gray with just a little rust starting to creep-up along the rear wheel wells, like the distinguishing gray hair that begins to show on the side of a guy’s head and his sideburns as he ages.  Folks tend to call their cars, boats, trucks, motorcycles “shes”.  But I think my truck is a “he”.  I mean how many chicks are there with “Hemi” engines?  Don’t answer that….

I bought my truck for several reasons:

  1. I needed a new car, the tiny Ford Escort station wagon that I had been driving was causing my spine to curl up as I crammed my body into its miniature cockpit.
  2. I felt confident that having a pick-up truck in the driveway would help me fit in more with the neighbors and make any potential home intruders suspect that there may be lots of shotguns and other armaments inside.
  3. I wanted a car with four-wheel drive that could get through our unplowed, snowy roads in the winter and my mud filled driveway in the spring.

Actually #3 was the primary reason.  #1? Yeah I really did need a new car.  #2? Purely in jest!

What is it about guys driving trucks?  Sure, I can see if you’re a builder or a farmer or some other man-type where you need space in the back to throw all your lumber or hay or other such dirty items.  But there are a lot of guys that own and drive trucks that not only have never had anything of any manly significance piled in the bed of the truck, but have also never driven it anywhere but back and forth to work, or to the mall, or maybe to a Wal-Mart!  I liken it to the SUV craze that hit this country in the last couple decades that only recently has begun to decline as gas prices scared people off.

I’m somewhere in the middle.  I use my truck to drive a thirty minute commute back and forth to work.  Other than on really snowy days when the roads haven’t been plowed, it’s a pretty stupid way to get to work and back.  At about 12-13 mpg’s, it’s a terribly inefficient vehicle and very costly to keep filled with gas.  But I love it!  At 6′ 1″ tall I fit comfortably in it, and yes, I have hauled stuff in it, lumber, gravel, furniture, hay bales, bags of garbage, junk going to the dump, even the pieces and parts of a friends swimming pool prior to installation.  Friends ask to borrow it occasionally when they have their own stuff to move around and I’ve gladly let them take “him” for a spin.  I’ve even given the kids the occasional ride around the “country block” in the truck bed.  Frankly, I’m not sure how the last 5-6 years would have gone had I not had a truck available when I needed it.  Especially during the 4-5 years when we were actively renovating our farmhouse.  It’s been useful, and although I am aware I am doing my part in destroying the ozone layer, I have justified its necessity in making my life run just a little smoother.

But now I may be getting close to the decision to buy a new car.  Yes, something that gets some decent gas mileage and doesn’t cost $60.00 to fill up every week.  Something like a Ford Edge is the direction I am heading.  I’d still like to keep my truck though.  He’s all paid for and if it’s not too costly to keep some insurance on him maybe I can just keep him around for the occasional renovation project, the occasional dump trip, the occasional snowy day, the occasional testosterone filled man-event!

And someday when the time comes to let him go… what’s the proper burial?  Put him up on blocks out in the field and let him rust away… like those iconic pieces of farm equipment that dot the graveyards of our country’s rural landscape.  Or send him to the junkyard?  Hopefully, that’s a decision I can avoid making until a time far down the road… and a dirt road would be preferable!

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