Deep Thoughts

Saying someone is a night owl is kind of redundant.  I mean, when's the last time you've heard someone say, "Look at that ocean whale!" or "See that land elephant?"

Top Alternative Rock Songs of the 1990's

1. Pearl Jam "Evenflow"
   
2. Alice in Chains "Rooster"
   
3. Monster Magnet "Space Lord"
   
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers "Give it Away"
   
5. Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
   
6. Better than Ezra "Good," "In the Blood," "Desperately Wanting"
   
7. Collective Soul "Heavy," "Gel," "December"
   
8. Stone Temple Pilots "Interstate Love Song" "Big Empty"
   
9. Weezer "Buddy Holly"
   
10. No Doubt "Spiderwebs," "Just a Girl" (not exactly a fan of Gwen Stefani's voice, but the guitar riffs are pretty catchy)
    
11. Bush "Machinehead" 
    
12. Spacehog "In the Meantime"
    
13. Smashing Pumpkins "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"
    
14. Live "Lightning Crashes," "The Dolphin's Cry" "All Over You"
    
15. Soundgarden "Rusty Cage" 
    
16. Foo Fighters, "Big Me," "I'll Stick Around"
17. Butthole Surfers "Pepper"
18. Third Eye Blind "Jumper"
19. Days of the New "Down Town," "Touch, Peel, and Stand"
20. The Refreshments "Banditos"
21. 311 "Down"
22. Harvey Danger "Flagpole Sitta"
23. Eve 6 "Inside Out"
24. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones "The Rascal King," "The Impression that I Get"
25. Nirvana "The Man Who Sold the World" "Heart Shaped Box" "Lithium"
26. Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under the Bridge"
27. Presidents of the United States of America "Lump," "Peaches" (Deadly orchard ninja swift-as-the-wind attack!)
28. Crash Test Dummies "Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm"
29. Blessed Union of Souls "I Believe"
30. Burlap to Cashmere "Eileen's Song"
31. Jars of Clay "Flood"

Not the worst day, but pretty high up there.

Who knew my day could start off with such innoccuous words: "Hey, we're going to Raleigh. Want to come with us?"  I knew it was for my sister's wedding and all the preparations going into, so I'd figure we'd talk numbers with some of the venues for the dinner, reception, and the catering service.  No big deal, right? I'd get to eat some cake, see how big 1200 square feet is, and note the colorful ambience of the dining feng shui.

Except none of that happened. Well, I can't say that; I did get to eat a tiny amount of cake.

My sister and mother kept getting into arguments over the whole thing.  It first started off with a squabble over the dining venue, but that soon resolved thanks to some well-placed sniffs by my mother. Then we moved on to the catering service and sampled the different cakes and tried to pair them with the different mousses.  My sister decided on several patterns for linens and things and chose a navy and ivory color scheme. I asked her, "Are you sure you want me to appear in uniform at your wedding? I'll be in full dress blues and they're black."  The woman organizing the catering fawned, "Ohhhh, you're in the Navy! I was a CTM for 6 years!" and she seemed impressed that I was going to OCS in a week. It's a small world, I guess when it comes to previous service.  Right now I'm not sure black will go with a navy color scheme, so I might wear a regular ol' navy blazer with matching slacks.

After the catering, the catfight reached feverpitch when we headed towards the museum to look at the room for the reception area.  It sort of looked like the room my highschool prom was held in. Drab carpet, wood panelling that comes in rolled up sheets, and lighting that could cause epileptic seizures.  My sister did not like it for the aforementioned reasons.  My mother was convinced that it was absolutely gorgeous and that all it needed was a little sprucing up.

The tension was palpable.  If I were to make an analogy, I'd say it was equivalent to someone taking a mallet and banging away on 100 crates, with 10 of the crates filled with TNT.  I was expecting my sister to blow her capillaries and my mother to flip her lid.  Or my sister to throw a hissy fit and my mother to hem and haw.  Or my sister to throw a hoot 'n' a holler and my mom to kiss the wampus cat.  Or my sister to wring the 'possum's neck and my mom to stamp in the muscadine jelly. Or however those Southern US phrases go regarding losing your temper.

Lucky me that I happened to be in the middle of the whole thing.

My sister drove back with her fiancee to visit her future father in law, and I drove back with my mother.  Guess what our topic of discussion was?

In essence, the day boiled down to: "This is my day, this is what I want to do!" "No, I think this would be better, yes this would be much better if we did it this way!"

Oh yeah, and if my day wasn't bad enough already, I got blatantly checked out by two gay guys and was ignored by every single girl I saw.  This seemed to amuse my sister greatly.

Headed towards Newport

I got word from my officer recruiter that my final selection letter came through and I've got a class date of April 26th for OCS. And it only took me 3 years to get here.

Current Sign of the Apocalypse

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is seeking court permission to appear in a reality television show based in the jungles of Costa Rica.

And now for the betting odds: 

1:10 that he attempts to control his coiffure with a comb fashioned from a seashell.

1:2 that he smuggles in Snickers and refuses to share with everybody because he "has this [expletive] thing and it's [expletive] golden. [He's] not going to just [expletive] give it away. [Expletive!]."

1:1.5 that he's called an a**hole, d*****bag, and whiner by his fellow contestants.

1:1000 that the fellow contestants fashion a Blagojevich voodoo doll from his hair and burn it.

1:1.25 that when he's voted off the island, he refuses to acknowledge his dismissal and goes straight to the TV cameras and declares that there is a reality TV show conspiracy against him.

Yunnian 2008 JianCheng 1094

I've almost finished off the Yongpinhao Yiwu Fall Harvest brick, so I decided to unwrap a new bing.  And the Yunnian 2008 JianCheng 1094 Wild Green bing is pretty good!  The compression was light enough that I could pinch off pieces of the bing and separate the leaves with ease.  The leaves are all whole which I'm starting to prefer over the mixed compression of tea leaf fragments, half leaves, and whole leaves.  The whole leaves seem to make the earlier infusions much more palatable than tea mulch.

I used enough leaves to fill the yixing 1/4th full and rinsed the leaves once.  All the sequential infusions taste very similar to the Yongpinhao Yiwu fall brick.  I haven't decided if this is caused by the proximity of the bing's storage to the brick, or if the leaves are from a similar plantation.  I can't really recall the brick being very aromatic, though...

Whatever the reason for the taste similarites, whether it's a storage error or just circumstance, I enjoy the taste of this bing.  Grape, muscatel, and a slight malt character mesh together to remind me of red wine.  These notes on tasting are all tentative since I'm thinking the bing's tastes will change with future tea sessions.

Easter readings and visitations

Easter came and went at the ol' beach. I got sardines for Easter! Yippee!

I had fun running out on the beach and avoiding all the women with no teeth and plenty of tattooes.  Interesting combination there.

I reread Michael Crichton's "Timeline" and noticed that its writing wasn't up to par. Not that anyone would claim Crichton is a literary genius, but he writes good books that are a cut above most of the sci-fi, thriller, action paperback novels.  Plus, it's sort of hard to read the same novel again, especially when you know exactly what happens and how it all ends.

But I also started reading a Robert Ludlum novel titled "The Scorpio Illusion."

I tried reading it Friday night, but I fell asleep after a few pages.  I woke up around 4AM Saturday morning because the windows were rattling, the wind was howling, and the roof sounded like it was going to collapse.  I though, "Great. The roof is going to collapse and kill me before my life has even started. My tombstone'll probably read 'Graduated from UNC. Pretty much all the best has been spoken for.'" Then lightning started crackling all around the city, ambulances and fire engines with sirens blaring raced to put out fires, and thunder kept crashing that made the whole house shake. Then I realized that I'd be content with only having to worry about the roof collapsing.

I couldn't sleep so I started reading some more of the Ludlum book.  I noticed that he'd written "The Bourne Identity," so I was expecting a good read.  The book is about some woman who sees her parents beheaded so she goes completely apecrazy and decides to kill every single government in the world so anarchy can reign.  Sounds like a good plot, right? But "The Scorpio Illusion" went a little something like this: "Dammit, Chesterfield, we need to know where this Bajaratt is! She can blend in with any culture! She knows over a thousand languages including ancient Latin and Occitan! She can hack into any secure government connection through a regular phone line and figure out all our secrets! And when she displays her sign, it means she's going to destroy all of us!" "*gasp* But surely you don't mean!..." "YES I DO! She's going to steal all the nuclear warheads in the United States, wire them together and trick the entire legislative branch of the USA to sit on them until they explode while deceiving all the military planes to attack cities!" "By God...we've got our work cut out for us."

And that's when I threw the book across the room and decided to read the Michael Crichton paperback about using quantum foam to travel in time because it was a lot more plausible.

My sister flew to New York to study pieces in museums as part of a trip for her art class. She was flying back Saturday night, and was planning to go back home to visit my grandparents.  I was charged with the task of driving my grandparents back from the beach. I really don't know why, unless it's some sort of old-fashioned rule, but whenever I drive, my grandfather always sits in the passenger seat while my grandmother sits in the back.  

And all of my grandparent's idiosyncracies come out to play while I'm driving them and they're in the car.  My grandfather will start to sniff the air like a dog, gaze around, and say, "Do you smell that? I smell something stinky...Shore wish it didn't smell so bad!"  I'll be driving and my grandmother won't be able to hear me when I talk to her, and she'll remind me that she only hears well enough when you're actually facing her, but when I'm driving I don't want to turn my body around so I can see her face to face, so I'll usually opt to yell at the top of my lungs.  My grandfather will gaze at the gear shifting lever, and start wiggling it to make sure it's in the "right" position. He recently did this while we were going 70MPH on the highway, and when I glanced at him, he looked at me and said, "Hm. Good. It's in the right position."  My grandfather will claim I'm driving incredibly fast, and I'll inform him that I'm driving the exact speed limit.  My grandfather and grandmother will start arguing about whether they need to stop for gas, whether they should pick up groceries while they've got the car out, etc.  It's just crazy.

And when we finally all got back home, my sister and aunt were all sitting around and talking, and my grandfather started mentioning someone he knew named "Flatus Jones."

Looking back on all the Easters I've had, this has to be the strangest one so far.