An airline passenger discovers there is no joy in being assigned the “other” jumpseat. (Story)
Than Shwe, you held your sham vote instead of helping millions of your cyclone victims. Grats. (Story)
Bank tellers tend to get a little suspicious when you start throwing around 360 billion dollar checks. (Story)
My exercise habits have been very poor. This morning, I discovered I now run a 13 minute mile.
A 13 minute mile.
Now maybe in 30 years, that’ll be something to be proud of. But I used to be able to run one under 7. Nowadays, if you stick me in a race with the 38-ish chessloser and 50-something Polly, they’d be breezing through like a couple of Olympians to the finish line while the crowd starts mocking me as I’m only halfway through, wheezing and gasping.
May 13th, 2008
3 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese, Uncomfortability, Weaksauce Losers, In the News
First of all, thank you for your contributions yesterday on how to handle unwanted suitors and stories of unrequited gay love.
Catching up on other chess blogs, I was struck by an observation: most of them are trying to get better at chess.
Yes, I enjoy the game and want to be good. I have a (fairly) competitive spirit. But the amount of time I dedicate to chess improvement has been close to nil for a long time.
I started competitive chess in 1998, playing until 2000, when I took 5 years off before jumping back in. Several months were (relatively) hardcore, actually playing 40 or so rated games before tapering off again. Even then, almost all my time was spent playing; studying was relegated to when I was taking a dump in the lavatory.
Right now, I’m 1600-ish, the same as 10 years ago without putting effort into improvement. What would happen if I tried? Does the thought of “maybe there’s an Expert somewhere in here” motivate me enough to work?
More likely, the “I’m sufficiently skilled so most people can’t dismiss me; that’s good enough” win out (again).
April 29th, 2008
14 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese, Chess
For lunch break on Thursday, I ambulated along Griffin Road to pretend I occasionally exercise. (Kinda like drinking V8, so you can fake getting enough vegetables. It’s probably beneficial and better than nothing, but if it’s the only thing it probably won’t matter much in the long run.)
A young man of about 18 years, possibly East Indian with a hairstyle vaguely like mine, bicycled past me. It sounded like he said something to me, and I briefly considered ignoring it. Griffin Road has a fair amount of traffic, making hearing difficult, so it would have been easy to pretend not to hear him. But I decided to turn around.
He stopped, and asked me what I was doing (”Not much, just walking down the street during lunch break.”). Then he inquired if I worked, as if the shirt and tie weren’t a giveaway, and had any kids. (”Yes and no.”) He talked about how he worked, but needed a bit of cash until payday Friday. I gave him 3 bucks, and then he asked if I liked DVD’s.
I don’t remember the exact diction he used, but he implied it was smut. Besides the obvious retort (”You can get that stuff free on the Internet”), I merely declared a lack of interest. After his brief, poor sales pitch, we parted ways.
At least for a few minutes. He came back and stopped me again. He asked rhetorically whether I know that other men would have been mean, and mumbled a couple other things. Then he asked “Can I see your dick?”
I froze and wondered whether the traffic caused me to mishear. Then I asked him to make it clear. He stammered and went on for a little while until I just laughed and said “No! Sorry, that’s not me.” Then he said, “Well, I mean, it can’t hurt to ask,” to which I replied affirmatively although I know full well there are people who would have hurt him for asking.
Even ignoring the fact that I’m not gay and he’s possibly underage…the line “Can I see your dick?” doesn’t exactly crack the top 5 in best ways to start a relationship.
April 27th, 2008
18 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Patently Ineffective, Grilled Cheese
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
April 27th, 2008
1 comment
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese
Everyone has eggs they’ve met from a long time ago or have some strange or distant connection with. Thanks to my loyal (?) readers, I’ll be able to hook back up with a few of them.
l3rucewayne managed to meet my old high school math professor, Mr. Ahmalette, with balding hair and everything! I don’t know who the guy on the right is, but he looks like a dweeb compared to me (don’t you get puffed up, human readers; he’s still more attractive than 80% of you. Although Annie will never be part of the 80%, wink, wink.)
As mentioned a while back, Dinosaur Mom has a picture of one of my distant cousins. And because I’m not from the Deep South, do not harbor a particular attraction to her (that’s not the best thing to joke about.)
Sworn Enemy sent Donnie a New Year’s post card, which, unbeknownst to them, has one of the kids from my old neighborhood in the back. And of course Donnie won’t be back for another few weeks, so I can’t scan it and show you…dang it.
January 26th, 2008
6 comments
Posted by Liquid E. P. Mascot
Filed under Grilled Cheese
Right now, I’m sitting in Houston airport waiting for the next plane to Fort Lauderdale. For the next month or so, I’ll be there, helping to training the next generation of our department. I was supposed to fly in last night, but due to rotten traffic, got to the airport too late (actually, if I didn’t have to check in baggage it would have been no probalo.)
Maybe I’ll get lucky like a few months ago: get to sit next to a cute girl, trade phone numbers, and nothing happens after that.
Bobby Fischer died yesterday. He was a great chess player–the greatest American player ever for sure–and sorta nutty. A lot of the other chess bloggers I’m sure are talking about it, so I won’t dwell much longer on it. So that’s that.
January 18th, 2008
10 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese, Chess
For a pot-luck doggie party, I made a fake chicken pot pie (had to be vegetarian due to at least one vegetarian being there). The Asian restaurants have fake meats you can buy, and I must say the pot pie with fake chicken was better than with real chicken.
Thrice, have attempted tempura and I am still not very good at it. They turn out good enough to want to eat, but bad enough to be ashamed to show other people.
Spaghetti is simple. It’s wonderful with freshly cooked spinach, mushrooms, and grated sharp cheddar cheese. It works well without meat, but I’ve also used sausage or snail meat. [The Mascot says: Snail meat in spaghetti? That’s weird, man.]
This past Sunday, I baked three stuffed quail. It’s the first time I’ve stuffed and baked poultry. [The Mascot says: You finally experienced sticking your finger in an animal’s anus. Congrats!] Quail tastes too similar to chicken to want to buy it again, but it was fine. I’m going to do fried quail today, because I accidentally left the other three quail out overnight. Call it defrosting.
You know how they say you end up becoming like your parents? Growing up, my dad liked sardines, and while I tolerated them as a kid, they always seemed kinda weird. But on Saturday? Bought 4 mini-cans of sardines and have already eaten 3 of them.
Falafel with plain yogurt is wonderful, but plain yogurt occupies a very small section in most supermarkets. If it’s there at all.
Today, I have to use up the bananas that were overripe from not finishing them before Thanksgiving weekend. Banana bread sounds just like the way to go.
Somewhat unusual/exotic foods left to use: red rice, frog legs, more snail meat, chicken feet, octopus, plum wine (this stuff is better than grape wines, I think).
November 26th, 2007
4 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese
First of all, all of y’all’s comments have been awesome the last few days. Sorry I haven’t gotten around to responding to them, but it’s been very entertaining.
I will be leaving to go on a short business trip tonight, and am unlikely to blog over the weekend. The Mascot will be responsible for making sure nothing blows up until my return. (That includes not CHMOD 777′ing all the files on the server this time, OK Mr. Egg???). [The Mascot says: Yeah, whatever.]
November 15th, 2007
5 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese
When I started this blog, I promised I wouldn’t do this. If you read this, you will be subjecting yourself to more personal stories. [EDIT: OK, so this post is brutally long. So sorry. I just cut a few things out to make it look more manageable.]
Seeing as I brought pretty much nothing in the way of furniture when moving, I’m having to restock most everything. The top priority was getting an actual work desk and chair (got both for $50), since I’m telecommuting, and it would have been dreadful joint stiffness otherwise. Setting up everything on boxes and suitcases, while possible, would certainly been an inferior set-up.
So for the past couple weeks the sum of my furniture has been the following:
Work desk (1)
Work chair (1)
Air mattress (2) (contribution from parents)
So eating meals and watching TV have been conducted on the floor, which I don’t even consider an inconvenience. But it would be nice to have a comfy chair with soft cushions, and some other stuff. Especially now my TV watching is up from about a hour a week to maybe 6 hours a week (concentrated on Sundays, consistenting entirely of sports or “educational” channels).
On Saturday, I went to Ikea on multiple people’s recommendations. First of all, it must noted that the length of time it took me to link Ikea’s colors with Sweden’s flag was embarrassingly long. Then again, I am American, so knowing what Sweden’s flag looks like–heck, knowing Sweden’s in Indonesia–probably puts me ahead of the curve.
It’s worth stopping in an Ikea once. I’m sure there’s some variation in them, but this one was pretty big, including a restaurant and kids’ play area. They lay everything out in a huge circle. Think I spent about 3 hours there deciding on the look of furniture, evaluating cost vs quality, and watching Notre Dame get destroyed by Air Force.
They even have some Engrish…one wall contains a world map mural, upon which they mark their locations. Looks like they have 3 or 4 stores in “Tawain”.
Incidentally, there was a very strong possibility of buying a TV stand that was more expensive than my TV. Finding that odious in principle, I made sure that didn’t happen. I ended up going with a cheapo side table and TV stand, decent chair, and splurged (relatively) on the coffee table.
A lot of the furniture you pick up in boxes just before reaching the cashier, and when you’re in the showroom, there’s a tag that indicates which aisle to pick your stuff in. You end up going through their entire store first, which means they can sell you more stuff. They ended up getting about 20% more money out of me in the lighting section. Got a floor lamp (the design was called “Not”, which probably means something else in Swedish). And a blue glowy decoration thing, which was, sadly, more expensive than the Not lamp. But it was nifty, and the number of decorations I own is painfully few anyway. And more energy-saving light bulbs.
Upon picking up the boxes, I made the discovery that I’m capable of carrying 107 pound (48 kg) boxes that contain, say, a coffee table, for short distances.
Upon getting home, I re-discovered that I’m capable of carrying 107 pound (48 kg) boxes that contain, say, a coffee table, for short distances. Unwisely, I tried to carry the coffee table from the car to the apartment–and I was this close to making it–but I dropped it on its corner and ended up shattering the glass sheet for the table top.
The smart thing would have been to think, “OK, this is 107 pounds (48 kg)*; maybe I can open up the box and carry the pieces in a more manageable fashion.”
After cleaning up the glass and assembling all the furniture it came out something like this. Besides the blue glowy decoration thing, I put out a couple of my nicer chess sets (well, my only nice chess sets) in lieu of actual decorations.
The results can be seen in these night pictures, with only the blue glowy decoration thing on. The first picture was taken with a longer exposure and no flash; the second was with flash.
November 12th, 2007
13 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese
The best part about Engrish is not simply that it exists, but it destroys the English language in ways that you’d never think of:
“Ustensils” you can almost convince yourself, “Well, that’s just a typo.” I’m not exactly sure how one transmutes “with” into “wight”, a dreadfully uncommon word in English.
Last night, I returned to Hong Kong Food Market to purchase an electric rice cooker. The cashier there was friendly and helpful, although a tad hard to understand since his English was middling. They had several brands, and he recommended the “Tiger” brand as the best. I requested the 10 cup version, and after he put the box on the table, I saw the price tag of $105. “No, this is too expensive,” I laughed, so he offered the 8 cup version which was “only” $99. (Note: It had better be one heck of a rice cooker for me to be paying triple digits for one.) Eventually, I ended up getting a $30 brand, which is closer to what I’d envisioned on spending. We will see how long it lasts before it explodes.
In any case, I couldn’t get the sign hanging by the rice cookers out of my head: “3 days to return all eleclric merchandies”.
November 10th, 2007
9 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Grilled Cheese
