Category Humor

What Faux Fall Flora Wrought

Michael 6 Comments

We are almost half way through September which means if you haven’t yet, you soon are going to be too late to buy any of the good Halloween decorations. I was thinking about this last weekend when I was taking stock of my meager faux fall flora for my coffee table and front door. I like fall. I like the colors. I like the calmness that seems to fall upon fall mornings. But except for fun size candy bars, I’m not so much into Halloween.

Apparently I didn’t get the memo. Last year Americans spent over $9 million on Halloween decorations. Right around 9,100,000 dollars according to The Balance e-zine. They went on to say that is because it’s an economical holiday and people “are willing to spend money on something if it provides a lot of value. Halloween does that.” I guess they didn’t see the $14 hairy spider at Big Lots. Or maybe they did and their idea of value is different from mine.

FauxFallFloraIf you crunch some numbers and divide this into that, that being how many people claim to celebrate Halloween with more than spiked cider and this being that 9 million figure, you come up with a spend of about $86 per person. I’ve spent that much on a nativity set and I have well over 50 of them. (Really. Some people are into hairy spiders, I’m into nativities. I have them, many complete with wise men, made of clothes pins, cheesecloth, corn husks, ceramic, glass, plastic, straw, bronze, wood (carved, sculpted, machine cut and assembled, hinged, and nested), bronze, stone, steel, marble, paper, wool and rubber, sawn from barn board, and cut out of paper.) It’s what I do for Christmas so I can’t say if you want to eighty-some bucks on Halloween you’re nuts. But if you’re planning on spending eighty-some bucks on Halloween, you’re nuts! Except for the little candy bars. Those are cool.

Anyway…just yesterday I was going through my email and I came across a headline “Ugly Halloween Sweaters Were Made For People Who Are Too Lazy to Dress Up.” Well, I couldn’t pass up that piece of bait and I clicked away. What I discovered is, like ugly Christmas sweaters, the ugly Halloween sweaters really aren’t. This is just my opinion but that opinion is that they are kind of cute. The other thing I discovered is that somebody’s going to have to revise that $86 per person spending estimate. Those sweaters go for about $40 per.

For myself, I’m sticking with the faux fall flora. Maybe I’ll spend my $86 on another manger scene this Christmas.

 

Aw, Quit Your Wining

Michael 8 Comments

You can pretty much always find a bottle of white wine and one of Prosecco in my refrigerator. Which is really a shame when you think about it because not only should they not be committed to the same temperature, neither temperature that either should be chilled to is what a kitchen refrigerator is kept at. I used to have that handled by way of a stand-alone wine refrigerator that could handle different temperatures in different zones for different wines. Two refrigerators in fact. But those days are over.

Some of you let that pass right on by. Some noticed but didn’t notice. Some are just now wondering in almost 700 posts I’ve never given any indication of being a garden variety sot. Why so much wine? It actually isn’t a mystery of so much wine as so many refrigerators. Let me explain. If I can.

Many years ago I saw this really nice counter top wine refrigerator for some ridiculously cheap price in a remainder store. (Tuesday Morning actually if you have one of them near you. You can check them out or not. I get nothing for mentioning them. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure why I mentioned them. Anyway…) I looked it over and decided it would sit nicely on the bar in the family room of my old house.

This was all going on during my wine phase. I would go to the local winery every other week and always would bring something back. There were trips to the Erie and Niagara wine trails. I would explore the neighborhood wine shop for an interesting find. (By the way, one of my favorite methods for selecting new wines was the look of the label. I said I was in a wine phase, not that I had become a wine expert.) (Wait. What was I saying? Oh, right. Labels. It was by that very method that I discovered Plungerhead Lodi, a respectable old vine zinfandel.) (I don’t get anything from them either.) (Don’t worry, that didn’t go into the refrigerator. I’m not that much of a Neanderthal!)

Since I was also in a phase where I had to go overboard with everything, I had to have a separate refrigerator for wine. It couldn’t go in the beer refrigerator. The optimal temperatures for beer and wine are nothing alike. And I was in a wine phase. I needed that wine chiller. And by all that was alcoholic, I got that wine chiller. So shortly after I spotted it, the countertop wine cooler was in the back of the car and we were heading home.

Now that worked well for a time then I noticed a problem. The bar and its counter, upon which sat the countertop refrigerator, were in the family room in the lower level of the house. A reasonable place to watch hockey and drink beer. But not wine. Wine was had with dinner, after dinner, in the evening on the patio, and occasionally in the hot tub, all upper level activities.  I decided that if I drank wine upstairs I had to store it upstairs. Suddenly the cute little wine refrigerator sitting so neatly on the corner of the bar was inconvenient. I had to correct that. And since I was making more money than sense, I couldn’t just move the one I had.

WineCoolerSo it was back on the hunt. In fact, it was back to Tuesday Morning (who still isn’t giving me anything for mentioning them, the nerve!), where I found an upright wine refrigerator with two zones, each one’s temperature individually controlled so you could keep different wines at their own optimal temps. (I was getting better in this wine phase thingy.) Of course I had to have it, so it came home with me and went into the sun room on the upper level where after dinner drinking and near where during dinner drinking and on patio drinking and drunken hot tubing drinking happened. Yet all the while the cute little counter top wine cooler continued to cool wine on top of the counter on the bar just in case I had the urge to raise a Riesling while watching hockey on the big screen. And all was right with the world. For several years actually.

But then I moved and the new place doesn’t have an upstairs or a downstairs or a dining room or even a hot tub. I really wanted somebody in the family to take custody of one or the other of the wine refrigerators but my sisters already had their version and my daughter didn’t have room.  So both refrigerators were sold and less was right with the world for now I have to keep my Prosecco chilling next to the orange juice.

But that really isn’t such a bad thing since most Sunday mornings they get together anyway. Well, I still have a patio.

What Have You

Michael 4 Comments

I spent a day in the car last week doing some visiting, running some errands, and generally taking on a “what have you” type day. In the course of that day I discovered a few things.

I had the radio on listening to a sports talk program. A question came up regarding how we listen to music. It’s not hockey season so sports talk takes in rather diverse subject matters. Both hosts mentioned the listen to songs stored on their phones or streamed on a service. One admitted he still listens to the radio but only in the car. Both said they haven’t played a CD in years and iPods are basically modern relics. Boy am I behind the times! Almost all my music is on CDs and what isn’t is on an MP3 player.

ReceiptsReceipts continue to be out of control. Just earlier this year I wrote about the nearly 22 inch long receipt I got at the grocery store. Any paper saved by newspapers no longer printing hard copy editions is being used in store receipts. It was reinforced on my “what have you” day when I got home and emptied my bags and pockets and sat two receipts side by side. I present the photographic evidence here. Together, both receipts reflect a total of 7 items purchased. The longer receipt from Walgreens is for 2 each of 2 different items. The shorter Walmart receipt represents 3 individual pieces. I guess if you’re looking to save the environment, go to Walmart.

Because I got hungry on my “what have you” day, I made a quick run through the drive through at Burger King. Since I had just read about it in some magazine I thought I’d try their Veggie King, basically a Whopper made with a veggie burger. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. What merits inclusion of this stop in this post of what have you’s is not the faux burger but the soft drink. You cannot drink a soft drink in a moving vehicle without a straw given the current lids used on soft drink cups. Of course anybody who is anybody is denouncing plastic drinking straws this year so much so that McDonald’s and Starbucks have both announced plans to move to biodegradable straws in some unspecified future. As I sipped my soft drink through the offending tube I wonder if those chains will also be shifting to biodegradable trash bags or if their expensive earth saving sipper will remain undegraded for a few thousand years encased in black plastic.

Can I come up with some random thoughts while doing what have you!

Bloody Hell

Michael 1 Comment

It’s nice to have memories. Pictures are good reminders of things fun times and people. Certificates bring back the pride of recognition. Scars are my reminders of usually something stupid I did.

Last week I was reminded of a scar as I was conversing with a friend. She had mentioned the previous night, actually early that morning, unusual activity in the house across the street from her. Lights were on at a time they shouldn’t have been and cars were in the driveway that shouldn’t have been. Immediately my mind went to activity at my house that shouldn’t have been.

I once ended up in the emergency room seven stitches to close a cut that I got from walking into a cardboard box. I don’t know why nobody could understand how a piece of cardboard sliced my leg open so efficiently that I had left a trail of blood from the living room through the dining room into the kitchen where it collected into a pool of blood rivaling what one usually finds beneath a freshly slaughtered chicken. And I use that animal as the example because I was scared like the proverbial chicken not just at the thought that I might die of massive blood loss on a newly laid kitchen floor while all the sharp objects lay safely nestled in their holders, but that if I lived long enough for someone to try to close that gash it was going to involve other sharp objects like scrapers and needles and undoubtedly a tetanus shot. Maybe it wasn’t a chicken I was channeling as much as a scaredy cat.

What happened that one morning I was up early roaming the house with only the light coming through the windows to guide me. There wasn’t much light because it just shortly after five in the morning but it was an August morning so full sunrise wasn’t that far away. Besides I had gone down that hall to the living room for 29 years and I was certain where to step. Except this was that period of time between having a contract to sale the house and actually moving out and closing on the deal. More specifically it was at the moving out stage and that’s why there were boxes hither and yon. One of the ones in yon was right next to my chair where I had planned to plop myself and watch the morning news. As I rounded the bend I walked into the box catching a top corner with the outside of my leg and I knew immediately I had done something unpleasant. I knew immediately because that’s how long it took for me to feel blood running down my leg.

TheBoxI thought at first it was just a scratch and I started a hobble back down the hall to the bathroom to wash and dress it. Then I saw how much blood covered my hand when I brought it back up from checking what I’d done. I altered course for the nearer kitchen sink and by the time I got there I had left a trail Dracula could have sniffed out from his home in Transylvania. I grabbed a towel and tied it around my leg, grabbed the phone, called my daughter for help, and went back to apply as much pressure as I could to the outside of my leg.

I should mention that all this was happening about 8 weeks after I got out of the hospital for the marathon four month stay and probably hadn’t the strength to apply sufficient pressure to stop a paper cut. By the time my daughter got to the house I looked like the victim of a mugging. I was on the floor with my leg elevated on the lower rung of a kitchen stool. I was whiter than the towel that continued to get redder. I held the phone in one hand trying to dial 911 with just that hand while the other was feebly twisting said kitchen towel around my calf. Between the calling of the daughter and her arrival I decided we weren’t going to be able to staunch this flow and navigate our way to the required help ourselves and opted for professional assistance.

Not much later were in the ER, an IV running to replace my lost fluids, a clean dressing covering my first stitches not associated with surgery, and awaiting the dreaded tetanus shot, we discussed where to go for breakfast. It was after all still morning and my kitchen was busy doing its imitation of a crime scene. Not much gets between me and food.

So that’s what I thought of when my friend had seen activity in the early hours across the street and as I ran my hand over the scar on my lower leg I wondered what my neighbors might have thought on my unusually active morning.

Incidentally, if you ever want to get the front of the line at an emergency room, show up in an ambulance and bleeding.

Remotely Technological

Michael 3 Comments

If I had to describe myself I would avoid it. But if I couldn’t, depending on the context, I would say I am a technologically aware luddite. I’m not anti-progress, I’m just don’t care about it. Actually, most other things I care about more. Work had the necessary bells and whistles. Home had bells. And whistles. And too many of them sometimes.

I wouldn’t be the first to say we’re advancing in the wrong direction. Take a look at your wrist. If it’s not there, on the wrist of somebody you know is a smart watch doing all the things Dick Tracy’s did in the 40s looking remarkable like what Kojak wore in the 70s. In fact, if you’ve got a spare $500 laying around, you can get a brand new Dick Tracy watch.

I don’t. But what I do have laying around is a new remote that might finally be progressing to where I suggested they go six years ago. Look at the remote on the left. Ignoring those 4 shortcut buttons toward the bottom, there are only 10 buttons on it. That’s the voice remote for my Roku Stick.

Remotes

Compare that the to the voice remote for my cable with its 39 buttons which is actually 14 buttons less than the cable remote that sparked my post six years ago. Eventually we might get to power, volume, and the one that looks like a cross.

Oh, I didn’t get the more slender if not more fashion forward remote to join the entertainment streaming masses here in the 21st century. I just got tired spending $130 for cable. Like I said (as I said?), I’m not anti-progress. But I can be cheap.

More is Less

Michael 2 Comments

It is said everybody has a number. That might be a number of dollars to commit an otherwise distasteful physical act, or a number of times the car stalls before you break down and finance a new one, or perhaps the number of proposals before you finally say yes. For me it was the number of ways to prepare avocado. And the number is 73.

Seventy-three ways to use an avocado was the subject line on the email. A trusted food magazine’s daily email with a new recipe, a reasonably thought out kitchen hack, and some cutesy new way to do something you’d not previously considered like perhaps how to juice concord grapes at home, had with that one subject crossed the line into click bait. And I wasn’t biting.

It was one thing to occasionally sneak in 5 ways to use a watermelon or six flavors to make your coffee. I’d gladly scroll my way through a half dozen ways to spice up my morning caffeine dose. But everybody knows there are only three things you can do with an avocado – chunk into a summer salad, spread onto a wrap, or turn into guacamole. Anything else is a pathetic attempt to create relevance or justify buying a Tesla. See avocado oil.

CensoredWhile we’re talking about Facebook (I did say click bait), did you hear about the spat going on between Dutch tourism and the harbinger of all things questionable? Apparently the Visit Flanders tourist bureau would like to advertise their museums on the site but because the video they prepared includes shots of paintings by Rubens, the site usually not known for decorum refuses to allow the video to post because Rubens painted, er, nude models. It seems the number for Facebook is 1/4, as in the number of inches wide the shoestring covering the nipple of a spring breaker frolicking on the beach must be to make the post “decent.”

Another number that seems to be is 29. As in dollars spent to be free. Once Wayfair was the only site that blatantly barked “the shipping is free” in their ads but it wasn’t unless you spent a minimum amount, theirs being $50. Not to be outdone, etailer after etailer is including free shipping as one of the perks of shopping with them. It just doesn’t happen to be completely free. Shipping charges still show up at checkout sometimes with a little note saying how much more you have to buy in order to qualify for free shipping. Usually that number is 29 less whatever you have already committed to your purchase. Completely free. At least they tell you how much free costs, unlike the infomercial people who will double your order for free. Just pay a separate fee.

So, what’s your number?

McReally

Michael 2 Comments

I really like sandwiches. I’ve done that bit before so I’ll not bore you twice with it. Maybe even three times. Anyway, I like sandwiches. Today I came close to a sandwich trifecta. I made an egg and sausage on English muffin for breakfast, for lunch I had grilled chicken with provolone and zucchini on a hoagie roll, and I came close to grilling a hamburger for dinner. Fortunately I came to my senses and grilled a pork chop instead and actually got to use a knife and fork for one meal.

But that hamburger got me thinking about the sandwich world. Every restaurant has sandwiches. Maybe not the Top of the Marque type places but I can’t afford them so they don’t count. Yes I said that. If you want them to count, put them in your blog. Anyway…every restaurant has sandwiches but it took one that nobody wants to admit patronizing to have made it an institution. New York delis notwithstanding. Of course that is McDonald’s. And I’m not getting any consideration from them for this.

The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking was the Quarter Pounder. You know McDonald’s recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder. No? You didn’t? That’s right. Nobody actually goes to McDonald’s so of course you didn’t. That’s ok. I did. They recently upgraded the Quarter Pounder and a couple of weeks ago I had one. I’m not going to sit in my kitchen and ponder if I would rather fire up the grill and burger it on my own or make the trip down the road to cop dinner. But if I’m on the road and hungry, and an arch topped sign beckons, I could do another one of those.

McRibAh but there’s more to the story. The hamburger thought that popped into my head when that hamburger got me thinking wasn’t just about hamburgers. Because one of the hamburgers that thought popped was the venerable Quarter Pounder, that particular hamburger got me to think about a non-hamburger sandwich from that chain, the McRib. Or you prefer: the McRoo (inaccurate though since it contains no kangaroo meat although rumors do persist) or the McTripe (actually quite accurate since tripe is one of its 70+ ingredients) (sorry) or even the McOhNoI’dNever which is probably also inaccurate because they sell between 30 and 50 million whenever they are released and I only get one) (really).

It’s true. I am a McRibber. I don’t know why but every fall I start looking for the signs that the everything but the kitchen sink sandwich is coming back because I have to have my McPig Fix. Fortunately, unlike certain potatoes chops, I can stop at one. Fortunately because even I will admit they are weird and they also have over 400 calories and you don’t keep a boyish figure like mine (yeah, right) by chowing down on a bagful of those things.

Yes, I really like sandwiches. Even the marginal ones.

One (Zucchini) Out Of Many

Michael 3 Comments

My last post I said I was going to do something I hadn’t done for a while, complain, which may have been somewhat inaccurate. This post runs to something I don’t do often enough and is surely quite accurate, be grateful. Not any old gratitude is it that I am expressing, but heartfelt thanks for my nearly 19 year old electric range, and my almost 29 year old eccentric daughter.

Most social media platforms are the most antisocial of platforms but I indulge for the special interest groups. Support for chronic illness or rare diseases is easier when you involve most of the planet. And hobbies or interests can be explored more easily when you spend most of your days in a smallish apartment by way of a connected phone, tablet, or laptop while plopped in a comfy chair. It is one of the latter groups of groups that reminded me of how good I must have it. Yes, I seem to be quite more fortunate than others not among those sharing medical burdens but of those who enjoy cookery to fill a few otherwise dull hours throughout the week.

Apparently one cannot really cook unless using a $500,000 range metering gas fed flames unless one instead is cooking over the open flameless heat of natural chuck charcoal or in the smoke of natural hardwoods in a specialized outdoor vessel. Or so those of my cooking aficionado collective extol in their various posts, complete with pictorial evidence.

Yesterday my daughter interrupted my trip to the local farmers market to bring me a basket of bounty from her backyard garden. Included in that were several zucchini, just the right amount for one of my favorite summer treats, zucchini fritters. Or zucchini cakes if you want to think more healthily, but just barely. And handful of readily available pantry ingredients and 60 minutes later we were sitting on the patio enjoying piping hot patties of grated zucchini dipped in ranch dressing enjoying the summer sun’s warmth and shine.

Thanks to my apartment complex provided and now aging electric stove I enjoyed a most wonderful repast on a most wonderful break with the most wonderful offspring. I’d include photographic evidence but we are it.

You’ll just have to take my word that I expressed the right amount of gratitude.

—-”

Bonus recipe! Real good zucchini fritters

1-1/2 pounds zucchini, shredded and drained.
1/2 large yellow onion, shredded
1/2 large red onion, shredded
1 or 2 or even 3 Italian banana pepper, chopped fine
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 teaspoons coarsely ground pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 tsp adobo powder (or chili powder)
1/2 tap garlic powder

Shred zucchini and onions. I use the shredding disk on my food processor. A real cooking hobbyist would use the large holes of a box grater. Place in a colander over a bowl, or to be like me into a salad spinner, and sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the salt and allow to sit for 10 to 25 minutes.

Mix flour, baking soda, the remaining salt, and the herbs in a small bowl.

Transfer the zucchini and onions to a clean tea towel and wring the devil out of them. Hopefully all the water will also get wrung out. If you were like me first take them for a spin in the salad spinner and then transfer them to the towel and squeeze with all your might.

Heat a large frying pan to medium high and add enough oil to cover the surface. (I use light olive oil but any normal oil will do. I’ve even used corn oil. But don’t get fancy and try to use coconut or avocado oil for goodness sake!) Assemble a cooling rack in a rimmed baking sheet and heat your oven to 250°F (120°C).

Plop the now abused zucchini and onions into a large bowl and fluff with a fork or some other fork like object. Mix in the chopped banana pepper and the beaten egg. (Thought I forgot about them, didn’t you?) Add the flour mixture in 3 installments a making sure each is completely incorporated.

Add a reasonable amount of the mixture to the hot pan and squish down to about 1/4 inch thickness. (I use a quarter cup for six 4 inch diameter fritters fried in two batches but do your own thing). Fry until golden brown, admit 3 to 5 minutes per side then transfer to the cooling rack. In between batches add oil if need to cover the bottom of the pan and allow to return to heat. Once all fritters are fried and resting nicely on the rack, pop the baking sheet into the oven for 15 minutes.

Eat and enjoy. Best shared with a friend or friendly relative.

Just Because You Can

Michael 5 Comments

This morning Best Buy announced they will no longer sell CDs in their stores. Vinyl yes, polycarbonate no. Apparently those who had normally opted for the shiny discs are now more likely to download or stream music to their hand held devices.

Last week the local paper announced that in August they will be dropping the print version of the paper from seven days a week to five. Apparently everybody wants their news electronically. This particular paper has not only its news website but two different apps for reading on mobile devices.

When Apple told us they had just the thing for that (with their trademarked and copywrited slogan (copywrit? copywrote?)), did they know they would release an app to reduce mobile dependency 9 years later? In fact, their app for that is only the latest in a string of such aids to reduce our electronic jonesing.

No, I’m not going to embark on a rampage decrying the ever presence of mobile devices in people’s hands. For the most part, I personally would rather hold a paper in my hands for perusal, especially now that they’ve resolved the inky finger problem, and though I never really got the hang of transferring a song from “somewhere out there” to what I still call “the phone,” I think we’ve done well in miniaturizing and availing technology to the masses. Even I am more likely to read the morning paper on my tablet out on the patio and I actually have a collection of favorites in my music folder in “the phone” (thanks to the daughter’s doing). Still, there are some things that shouldn’t completely replace the older hard copy iterations.

TriptikFor example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.

But even knowing exactly where I was I never had a sense of roughly where I was. Years ago I’d use AAA “Triptiks” to navigate to a specific place. They were flip chart looking collections of mini-maps that specified your travel along highlighted roads. But I also always had my guidebooks and atlas so that at stops I could get a feel for what lay beyond the margins of the designated route. How else could you know that the world’s largest ball of twine was just 50 miles around the next bend, a drop in the mileage bucket when you’re already 1800 miles from home? You don’t get that from GPS.

So although I hope atlases never go away and that I’ll always have a CD player in my car so I have something to listen to while I search for the second largest cactus shaped like a tea pot, I can still appreciate the electronic versions. Now if only the proponents of those would please leave my paper and plastic alone we can live together in peace.

 

Nay Nee, I Say

Michael 4 Comments

I once toyed with the idea of changing the blog name to better represent who I am. But I was concerned how some to whose blogs I subscribe would take receiving an email from WordPress saying “Congratulations, A Single White Male is now following you.” And then there’s that whole “weren’t you something else before” thing to deal with.

Myanmar doesn’t have that problem. In fact, it is because of that country that I thought of this at all. One scarcely ever hears reference to Myanmar that it isn’t immediately followed by “formerly known as Burma.” Indeed it is. And indeed even WordPress refers to it as “Myanmar (Burma)” in its statistics reports. It’s been a fairly recent change but not much more recent than Bangladesh, Belize, or Zimbabwe and not as recent as Cambodia and Somalia yet you never hear their “formerly known as” designations.

MyanmarIt all came to my attention as I was reading a book. A minor character working as a data miner (legally and legitimately) had completed a project. As he submitted it he told the recipient to be sure to call him, don’t email him, with any questions because he will be leaving for vacation to Southeast Asia in the morning and won’t be bringing his laptop. He explains that it is very difficult to bring electronics into Myanmar “which you may know as Burma.” First of all, who talks that way? And secondly, for a character appearing on only seven pages of a 460 page novel, he’s being pretty cheeky taking that tone, wouldn’t you say?

It seems that we’ve been double designating Myanmar as that place formerly known as Burma since it barely stopped being known as Burma. I refer you to the 1996 episode of Seinfeld when J. Peterman escapes his world to, in his words (word?) “Burma.” He tells Elaine “You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.” Admittedly, this makes finding Myanmar on a map easier if you haven’t updated your Google Maps since 1989. By that same token though, it would be handy if we started calling Mumbai formerly known as Bombay or St. Petersburg formerly known as Leningrad formerly known as Petrograd formerly known as St. Petersburg. Ok, maybe that one might not be so easy.

I think if you’re going to change your name, just do it and let every else figure out who or what you were before.

If you have an opinion I’d love to hear it in the comments. If I don’t respond right away, don’t fret over that. I might take a few days off and see a play or two and maybe do some shopping in New York City.

Formerly known as New Amsterdam.