a notebook

I hate it when I make rookie mistakes, even if for the situation in question, I really am a rookie.

The Wonder Bread people (which may be simply the Wonder Bread Company, for all I know) have a new product out called “White Bread Fans” that is whole grain wheat bread but looks and tastes a lot like… well, Wonder Bread. It’s a little brown instead of pure white, but that’s the only obvious difference. […]

I’ve been watching the countdown (countup?) to one billion songs sold on iTunes, trying to get in there and snag the grand prize (or any prize, really). I got distracted by some in-depth articles and missed my crack at the 100,000 level prize at 999,000,000 by – according to the counter – a couple of […]

I was prepared to make three grocery stops tonight – Costco, for some Costco-sized things; Walmart, for nearly everything else, and Winco, for a squeeze bottle of Best Foods mayo. That’s Hellmann’s if you’re east of the Rockies, and why they don’t call it that out here is beyond me. Hellmanns.com and best-foods.com are the […]

Here I am, not much more than halfway into my bonus hour, and I am tired. Tired not like it’s 1:41am, but tired like it’s 2:41 am. This hardly seems fair at all. In fact, if you consider that this is not really a bonus hour at all, but an hour I paid for last […]

If you’re going to get stung by a bee, make every effort to avoid what happen to me yesterday, which is to be stung by a bee ON MY SPINE. Wow that hurt.

True: the better the hotel, the crappier the cable TV. Also, charging $10 a day for the internet is completely bogus. Should be a hotel law: the bathroom lightswitch should light up, especially if if it’s between the heat lamp knob and the outlet with the plug for the hairdryer and thus not so easy […]

Higglytown Heroes is computer animation and everyone looks like those Russian nesting dolls – vaguely bowling-pin like and hollow inside. Sometimes the Higglyites (Higglyians?) will just open in the middle and take something out relevant to the task at hand – say, a bike helmet before a ride, or a squirrel. Someone always has a […]

I accidently bought the ‘lite’ Eggo syrup and sure enough, I think it tastes wrong. Not as wrong as when I bought (on purpose) the low fat peanut butter, thought it was okay for about a quarter of a PB&J, and then realized the product would make an excellent spackling compound, but still wrong. This […]

My town is getting a Del Taco, which completely rocks not because of their tacos but because of their awesome crinkle cut french fries and we all know how few fast food chains really get the importance of crinkle cuts. I was all excited to post this, but Toni had to go and upstage my […]

In the few minutes I spent writing the previous entry and reading a Slate story about the decline of “Trivial Pursuit” the house across the street has gained Mylar banners across several windows that declare “It’s a Girl!” eight times and pinkish streamer across the front of the house, around the door, on all the […]

From a Reuters story: Fossett hopes to touch down back in Kansas in a little less than three days after covering 23,000 miles at altitudes of up to 52,000 feet — and is designated as an alternate landing spot for the Space Shuttle. Was this an editing error, or did a robot just string together […]

I watched the entire Oscars last night, and I’m still mad at myself. I used to love the movies, and I would go to a movie in a theater at least twice a week. I think I’ve seen two in the last three months. I barely even rent DVDs. I used to try to make […]

Today NBC is showing “2005 Tribute to Movies on Ice.” Perhaps the most disturbing part is the “2005” in the title. Have they actually done this before and decided it was a good enough idea to do it again? The horror, the horror…

They say you learn something new every day. Today I learned: gorgonzola sucks. My mom says it’s closely related to bleu cheese, so if you believe in guilt by association, bleu cheese sucks too. Although I bet you could tell because it’s spelled “bleu” which is weird and wrong. A moment of Googling reveals there’s […]

Saw a big F150 with the “Idaho Forests: Today and Tomorrow” vanity tag reading “CLEARCT” … I don’t know if I should laugh or not.

I’ve been halfheartedly shopping for a new wallet because parts of my old one are held together by somewhere between one and three stitches. I’m won’t look too closely because I fear close examination may cause thread failure. In Penney’s I happened across some post-holiday closeout gift sets. One of them is a 3 in […]

Wisdom teeth removal (L’s, not mine) = a search for soft foods, diet be damned, and, well, it’s cheap pie month at Marie Callendar’s. You have to pay sixty cents for the pie tin deposit which just struck me as some sort of scam, but I realise now that’s how they suck you in – […]

A two disc version of Michael Mann’s Heat comes out in a week and a half; when I saw the ad I thought it was out already and was ready to run to the store. It’s not every day a top five favorite movie comes out with a special edition. I mentioned this to L. […]

I photographed a punk show the other night and I think the average age in the crowd was about fifteen and a half. Everyone had a big black X on their hand and the bar was a ghost town. I started wondering if any of them went to the junior high down the street and […]

When I worked in commercial production, many years ago, when one of my friends (also in commercial production) and I would watch TV and see a particuluarly lame commercial, one of us would say, “If I ever make a commercial like that, shoot me.” I can tell I’m years past that part of my life, […]

If you should find yourself in Albany the day after a huge blizzard on or around January 22nd and you have a good jacket but no hat or gloves, and you feel obtaining such items might be worthwhile, and if you have a Target across the street from your hotel, you may think it’s a […]