Suburban Adventure

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Etailer Casualties

Now that I have all the pieces I need for my bed after finding a new person with a box spring I set about dressing it. I went to K-mart, found a style I wanted and picked up a fitted sheet, king pillow case, and artificial down mattress topper which totaled around $90. Walking towards the register I started to slow as the gears of my mind began turning at what I was doing while a gaggle of neurons shouted “NO! STORES ARE FOR GROCERIES AND EMERGENCIES NOT HOUSEWEARS.” I checked Amazon and found my needed items for about $25 cheaper so I put the K-mart ones back. I walked to the door empty handed and felt bad at having used their retail space more as a catalog than store and tried to come up with a way to thank them but nothing came to mind. K-mart needs an e-commerce pity tip jar.

Craigslist Sniping

I got the mattress I wanted but now sought a box spring and frame and I found a listing on Craigslist containing these items for $40. I saw the listing had been up for only a few minutes and contacted the seller who immediately sent me a message back that the item had already been claimed by two other people. Ok, I can understand how someone could be looking for a full bed box spring and by coincidence have beaten me to an item listed for less than 10 minutes but two seemed excessive. When did crap for full beds become like an endangered species? Have queen beds become so ubiquitous that the full bed is now the hatchback between the sedan and SUV, squeezed from both sides and finding solace on neither side of the war between efficiency and grandeur? I suspect that there’s some sort of weather phenomenon correlated with mid-20s men realizing that 72″ is just too short but queen-size is too much if you’re not sleeping with someone. I will find that front, create the first mattress futures exchange and make a mint.

First Time Camera Inspection

I’ve been playing email ping-pong with someone who wanted one of my camera lenses and I arranged to meet him at the Market East station at 11 AM in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts (that’s where the convention center guard is, how apropos). Leading up to the sale, the buyer asked nearly a dozen questions and I was worried I was dealing with a reseller or someone else who’d rake me over the coals and took the train to Philly to find out.

I met him in his imastudent/hobochick coat and he pulled out the most beat Canon 30D I’d ever seen. I passed him the lens which he nearly dropped and he commented on how he’d finally have a lens with both caps. He put the lens on and started taking pictures of the floor. I asked him if there were any problems and he said “no, but maybe just one. It doesn’t seem to… focus.” Normally, I’d be terrified but I’d been so bowled over with is confidence that I politely removed the lens hood covering the focus ring and put the lens into manual focus. He smiled and passed me the money. I saw the guard shake his head and it was off to the Reading Terminal to enjoy the fruits of my sale: five bananas and something unhealthy made by the Amish.

Pink Shoes

Someone had the idea of getting some people together to try to record the early history of my TF2 team and record our first impressions of some things and I had a wonderful exchange.

Other Dude: So what was it like meeting FlameDemon?
Me: He was… gayer than I thought he’d be.
Other Dude: What’s that mean?
Me: I’d seen his facebook field and he seemed generic, but in person he had cultural calling cards like pink shoes, except in this case is was a faux hawk, capri pants and an Armani Exchange shirt.

I expressed my sentiment poorly and this got back to me quickly but through a bit of a filter.

Flamed: I know you were using it as a fake example, but I do have pink shoes.
Person 2: Flamed is mad you talked bad about his pink shoes.
Person 3: Why are you picking on men with pink shoes?

Elements on Parade

Team Interrobang does periodic field trips where members rename themselves based on a theme and visit other servers to see how they do things. I’ve been on a few but never before ran one until tonight where our theme was the elements and I picked thorium. Not only does it have “Thor” in its name but I’m an advocate of alternate nuclear technologies of which fast thorium reactors are one of the more promising ones. None of the gals joined us so Curium, Vanadium, Meitnerium, and Hydrogen (hydrogen’s a bitch) were present.

We gathered at a common spot and after determining that picking an isotope was putting a too fine a point on the matter, we were off. Quickly, Tungsten got a little tipsy and a little cocky and started smacktalk entirely in the 3rd person. Like always, Carbon tried to be everyone’s friend but without Oxygen, Hydrogen, or even copious Nitrogen he remained in his graphite form. Neodymium was just a dick and pointed out that no one said his name correctly, Phosphorus kept having outbursts and I was getting schooled by Titanium. But then, something magical happened; I realized I was no longer in charge of the server and got to perform the rare luxury of picking a fight with a person of power I’d never see again over something trivial. I love field trips.

Errors of Omission

Me: My car seems to be making a weird noise when it shifts into second. Who should I have look at it?
Dad: Just leave it here, I’ll take a look, take my keys.
Me: Anything I should know about the GMC?
Dad: Nah.
*walk outside to GMC, see dad slam his screwdriver (drink not tool) onto table and run to the car window*
Dad: There’s one thing. When you hit 5 MPH the brake pedal will shake and suddenly shoot to the floor. You’ll think you’re about to die, but you will stop safely if you hold your foot down.
Me: Thanks for the heads up.

Bananas Foster

Whenever I go to buy something at a liquor store, something I’ve done less than 5 times, I feel like a lost child. I walk to the store attendant, tug on their pant leg and say “I need booze”. I always know nearly exactly what I need to the point where I should just have a note pinned to my jacket that says “banana liquor and dark rum <3 Mom” maybe with a $50 bill under it just in case I forget how money works. I got my alcohol and darted.

Next was the trial run at home of bananas foster, a dish revered by rum enthusiasts and camp commissioners that it is at the upper end of how much alcohol I’ll tolerate as even after ignition plus simmering 2/3rds of the alcohol remains. In my test run at home, I ran into a problem; to get the alcohol to ignite I had to heat it, but the oven is immediately under my microwave so I’d ignite the alcohol, wait for condensation to form on the microwave and start to sizzle, remove the dish from the heat, wipe the microwave and repeat. My expert assessment panel said it wasn’t sweet enough so I upped the proportion of butter, brown sugar and allspice by 50%. Starting Recipe

EDH-atred

There’s a part of me with a reflexive hate of Elder Dragon Highlander because of the manner in which I was introduced to it. There are some Magic Judges that I simply don’t get along with and one is the elder statemen of Magic for the south who, during our first meeting, I corrected him on a trivial rules point, slightly outperformed him in terms of Spanish, and refused to be a sycophant gaining me his backhand. Such is the way of things.

Randy Booz was having a few people over to play EDH and after venting my hatred of the format he informed me that they didn’t play EDH but MCHG, multiplayer centurion highlander with generals. Sounds fun! I had just helped a friend assemble such a deck but didn’t have time to build one and shot to his apartment to watch the games unfold. Upon arriving, I remembered some other reasons I couldn’t stand EDH.

Your time in the game is inverse proportional to how nice you are leaving the gave in a 1 v 1 dick duel. In this case, dicklord supreme never thanked me for my cheesecake.
All generals have the flagbearer mechanic from Apocalypse whereby they have to be the first thing to die.
If the first two people to lose aren’t sitting across from each other you have two people seemingly relegated to spectator in absence of additional table space.
Despite being a “casual” format, players have no compunction about becoming a rules lawyer when it suits them.

The again, I barely have the patience for a two player game and the apartment was a spot warm and completely devoid of ice. The next host lives in an igloo, maybe this will change my opinion.

New Sandals

I had my previous pair of sandals for at least six years which is a personal record for shoe ownership. Most of my clothing has about 1/2 to a 1/3 of the lifetime of other people’s in that I don’t have any regular-wear clothing that’s older than 3 years mostly due to my chronic inability to act my size. Additionally, clothing technology doesn’t really move at a pace that one really notices it from item to item in the same way as from say car to car or phone to phone but my shoe purchase interval in this case was enough. I usually buy the 4th lowest price item that came in my size of 14D and in the style I wanted, which is non-fisherman (open toe) and not a flip-flop. I was very happy with what I got as it contained 3 technological leaps that I just didn’t expect.

1) That stretchy zip-tie lace-up method thingy
2) A second side support to prevent blow-out
3) Some sort of nanoparticle-laced uber-sole that absorbs footsweat without getting icky.

Any of these would make me the envy of the subjects of King Herod or any Roman Centurion, but combined I’m at least on par with what the Olmecs or even the Rapa Nui could expect. Your next, Mesopotamians!