FROM THE BRAIN OF CJHANNAS

To Future Bad Decisions

2012-01-27T00:18:00.001-05:00

Four years ago my work days started at 2 a.m., which meant having to think a little differently about my routine.

Instead of flipping on the news or SportsCenter while I was getting ready, I watched Conan. If I wanted to get food on the way to work, there weren't many options, but I had the ability to roll through the Taco Bell drive-thru for breakfast. Fortunately for my health I only did that a few times.

But it did always seem odd that Taco Bell didn't serve breakfast on a normal person's schedule. Countless other places offer breakfast burritos, so why wouldn't they do it too? The line every morning at the McDonald's down the street from where I live now shows there's no shortage of people making poor life decisions (I say as a lover of Egg McMuffins). And yet, at the same time the Taco Bell next door is closed.

That may not last. This morning I saw a tweet that both excited and horrified me:

That's right, Taco Bell is rolling out breakfast -- or keeping with their marketing campaign, "First Meal."

It's too early to tell if the test markets will be successful enough to make this a nationwide thing. But just in case it does and I get sucked into a world I know I shouldn't, I'll go ahead and start working out more now.

High-Five

2012-01-24T09:34:00.000-05:00

[Note: For sports haters, scroll down for baby-related content]

Before last weekend, I had only ever seen a team I root for play in an opponent's stadium once, and even that sort of didn't count.

Shortly after Major League Baseball began interleague play, my family went to see the Atlanta Braves (my former team) at Baltimore's Camden Yards. I discount that one both because I have swapped allegiances (let's go Nats!) and because back then I didn't mind watching the Orioles too.

On Friday, my brothers and I saw the Washington Capitals play the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh. My older brother lives there, so it doubled as a chance to visit. The Caps played disgracefully, but we still had a great time. It was hard to argue with our view, which was much easier to acquire down there than at the Verizon Center:

The real highlight of the trip though was getting a high-five from my niece. The first night we were there she totally left me hanging, which from a 15-month-old is pretty demoralizing. Fortunately I found her weakness -- peek-a-boo.

We played a modified version in which she would bring me her blanket and lie down on the ground, then I would put the blanket on her, declare my inability to find her and finally pull it off to everyone's delight. Of course then she decided to start lying down farther and farther away each time, to the point where I was throwing the blanket as far as I could just to reach her. She found that hilarious.

She was also pretty entertained by looking out the window at the rain. Notice she is sitting on what looks like a toddler-size ottoman. In fact, that's exactly what it is. Here's her Uncle Pat testing out the full chair-ottoman combo:

Some would say he's too big for that piece of furniture, but I would argue that as the baby of my generation, it's just right.

The Squeaky Shoe Gets Replaced

2012-01-19T09:01:00.000-05:00

Walking down the polished floor at work earlier this week, a strange noise filled the hallway.

It was the faint sound of my footsteps -- nothing more. That may seem like an obvious observation, but given that I was wearing a pair of brown leather shoes, the near silence was a relief.

I got a new pair shoes last weekend, and the quiet walk came during the first day I wore them. The pair they replaced were similar -- a different brand and 12 years older, but from a short distance you wouldn't be able to tell the difference by looking. But your ears would know.

This older pair, which served me valiantly through the years, had one major flaw. The soles would let off a high squeaking noise on any hard floor with the least bit of polish to it. Imagine submerging your shoes in a puddle and walking inside without wiping your feet. That's what they sounded like at all times -- wet or dry.

So it's nice to now be able to walk without thinking people are judging me to be a delinquent who can't wipe his feet and without making everyone start to wonder how it could be raining when the weather's nice.

Out with the old, in with the new

Buying the new shoes was a fun experience. Since I've (still) spent more of my working life in the retail footwear industry than anything else, it's odd to be on the other side of that experience. Little things like being allowed to actually sit down on the benches feel wrong. I even find myself tucking wayward laces into the display shoes and straightening them on the shelves as I walk by.

I wonder if anyone else in retail, or with that background, catches themselves doing those things without thinking, or is compelled to inform the sales associate of their connection to the business. Of course I found a perfectly normally place in our conversation to slip that in -- because I'm smooth like that -- and it actually set off a whole round of dorky shoe technology talk that I kind of miss from my selling days.

What I miss more is working just down the hall from a Cinnabon and a Taco Bell. Though for the sake of my health, maybe it's a good thing I don't work in that mall anymore.

Gooooooooooooal(s)

2012-01-12T11:48:00.001-05:00

I've never been the type of person to have a five-year plan or a list of 1,001 things to do before I die.

It's not that there aren't some things I'd like to do. Rather, I think seeing the utterly unpredictable way in which life played out as those five-year periods passed has made me less prone to trying to plan out what's coming next.

To some people, like AV, that makes no sense. She has 387 life goals (and counting) and they're all good ones. I was talking to her about those one day and she naturally asked for mine, and after a lot of thought I reluctantly named my writing project. I say reluctantly because it's not like I have ever written down that I want to write a book and get it published. I thought of it more as something that would be cool if it happened someday.

But now, you can count it as an official goal because of something AV told me (which I believe her mom told her): A goal is a dream with a deadline. This may be her new favorite thing to tell me. Repeatedly. But that's a good thing. I have a dream, it's getting a deadline, so now it counts as a goal.

There may be some others joining it, because again, the list didn't exist at all before now. Part of what I like about the writing project is that it's a creative expression, like what I write here, which is far outside the newswriting I do professionally. Don't get me wrong, I'm a totally committed journalist, but there are lots of times I think I should be doing something more creative with my career.

Enter Mindy Kaling's book, "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" If you're not familiar with her, Kaling plays Kelly Kapoor on the NBC show "The Office" and also serves as one of the show's writers. She is really funny and one of those people who seem to excel at anything.

In the book, Kaling talks candidly about her childhood and the kinds of kids she spent time with growing up. She describes forming bonds with creative people and the process of realizing the types of personalities she has no interest in being around. This, of course, is something we all do, but a lot of her path felt very similar in that regard to my own trek through high school, college and beyond.

There's something really fun and inspiring about being around people who are into creating things -- in whatever format -- those who can be a little less linear in their thinking and indulge in silliness at appropriate times without worrying about being judged.

Kaling got noticed when she and her friend wrote and acted in a play about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon having the script for "Good Will Hunting" literally fall from the ceiling in front of them. That is, the two women played Affleck and Damon themselves, with a story that has no basis in reality. But it was a hit. They sold out shows and eventually she got the offer to write for "The Office."

I'm always fascinated by how others approach the creative process and encouraged when I read or hear things that sound very familiar. Kaling says she has found her "productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven. So, for every eight-hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done." The rest of the time is taken up by things that are in no way important in a to-do list kind of way, but who knows how vital watching YouTube videos of babies dancing is to her final product.

I'm very much the same way, but my procrastination involves things like reading my old blog posts, thinking about going for a run, deciding not to run, updating my Netflix queue and wondering how many more bowls of Cocoa Puffs I can squeeze out of my current box. But whatever, distractions happen. Kaling is proof that in your spare time you can create something great that takes you in a fulfilling direction.

Other things we share:

-Inability to reliably throw a frisbee with any skill
-History of quoting comedic works to our head-shaking mothers
-Diplomas from small-town colleges -- "If you're a kid who was not especially a star in your high school, I recommend going to a college in the middle of nowhere."
-(Related) Finding your own way as life progresses --"What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also a big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair."

She even supports my one-time life plans involving Natalie Portman: "That's nice. You can have that. That's not hurting anybody."

Thanks, Mindy.

Call Me Aunt Clara

2012-01-08T09:11:00.001-05:00

When I was a sophomore in college, I purchased a baby-size bunny suit off eBay.

It cost me $4 and has become a fixture of our family Christmas since that first year when I gave it to my little brother. I wanted to get a full-size suit so that he could be just like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story," but those proved to be prohibitively expensive, so I settled for the mini version.

It was sufficiently funny.

Since then, whoever got it the previous year has passed it on, giving a certain sense of anticipation to every gift you get with the chance of finding a bonus bunny suit inside. Even those who are new to the family get indoctrinated into the tradition, like my sister-in-law Bethany at her first Christmas with us:

But this year, all of my dreams came true. We finally found someone who could actually put this thing on. My niece Madelyn didn't make the trip for Christmas last year, but this time around not only came, but happened to be the perfect size. Who knew I would pick correctly back in 2002?

Can't wait to see who she gives it to next year.

It Is (Being) Written

2012-01-05T10:24:00.000-05:00

For some reason when I promise to write about a certain subject "soon" or "next time" that post either never happens or takes weeks to actually appear. This is one of them.

I first mentioned at the end of January last year that my friend AV and I were going to each write a novel, projects we had picked up and put down many times with no real push to actually complete them. Our goal was simple -- to nag and support each other through the process in order to make this time different.

She ended up diverting to another goal, but I kept writing, and while neither of us finished 2011 where we thought we would be, we still managed to accomplish things with our projects we never had before. It wasn't a perfect year, but I would definitely call it a success.

At the time I wrote this post, Microsoft Word said my story had 52,546 words and the little blinking cursor sat near the top of page 88 (single-spaced). When I work on my laptop I use OpenOffice instead, and oddly enough they disagree on what the meaning of "word" is, giving me numbers that are a few hundred apart. I've always been obsessed with checking word counts, whether I was writing my sports column for the school paper, or a research assignment for a political science class. Still, I find these number pretty staggering and borderline unreal. Eventually I think I'm going to end up with around 90,000 words. My characters still have a lot they need to do.

Whenever anyone asks what the book is about I rarely have a good, concise answer. The problem is partially that it's not actually done yet, but with an entire outline in my head it's hard to sum up all the major and minor pieces before losing the person's attention. But here goes.

Caleb, the narrator, has a mind-numbing job he's vastly overqualified for, yet can't seem to find anything better. He spends frustrating day after frustrating day wasting his life and knowing he's wasting it. He goes home to find a letter in his mailbox, one with an envelope covered in hand-drawn circles of different sizes. It's from Sophie, a girl he never expected to hear from after she moved away with her boyfriend, one who grew up on his street and occupied his idle thoughts while she dated guys he never thought were good enough for her.

The story follows their reconnection and explores the ideas of how people respond when their lives aren't going well, who we push away in the face of adversity and the battle between the urge to dream and the safety of chasing more realistic expectations. Style-wise, think "High Fidelity" and "500 Days of Summer."

The notebook I use to write on the Metro

As hard as it has been at times, I find this project fascinating. Except for a few short pieces in a high school creative writing class I've never really written any fiction before. My day (or night rather) job is exactly the opposite, so it's fun to be able to completely control what happens in my little made-up town and have my characters say whatever I want them to say (within reason, or course).

I hit a very rough portion late in the summer when it became clear that the first 50 pages or so needed a major overhaul. Thanks to some excellent advice/cheerleading from AV, I slashed a bunch of stuff that wasn't working and added back in new sections included two extra characters that have now become pretty vital parts of the story. I'll have to do a lot to what I've written since then, but at least this time I think I'm on a pretty good path already.

Before this project the thing about fiction that scared me the most was the prospect of writing dialogue. Now? It's my favorite. I could literally write a conversation between Caleb and Sophie all day. Hopefully that's a good sign about them as characters, but I find myself in some sections telling the two of them to wrap it up so I can move on. The people at Starbucks don't find that weird at all.

That's another thing I've learned -- I write in public places far better than I do at home. I think there's some aspect of social pressure at work, since if you have a laptop or notebook in front of you people think it's odd if you just sit there. So I write.

Hopefully I'll be done in the somewhat near future so I can move onto the editing stages and whatever comes after that. I'll keep you posted. Though given my track record on this one, that may take a while.

Another Year in the Books

2011-12-31T17:27:00.001-05:00

I came very close to forgetting to wrap up my year in books, mainly because I shut down the whole reading process weeks ago in favor of focusing on writing.

I was actually shocked to look back and see that I finished 15 books -- much higher than I expected given how much reading time I've diverted this year. Luckily though, the list brings back some fond memories of what were some really awesome reads.

Here's the obligatory yearly stack, which is slightly smaller this time due to the introduction of a Nook to my reading arsenal:

(Note: You can read about my previous years -- 2010, 2009, 2008)

This year in list form, with links to their respective blog entries:

-The Last Juror by John Grisham
-Stories From Floris
-A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
-Sixty Feet, Six Inches by Bob Gibson & Reggie Jackson
-In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
-Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
-The War For Late Night by Bill Carter
-Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler
-If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
-Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
-Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
-High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
-Leviathan by Paul Auster
-Moneyball by Michael Lewis
-Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck

This means absolutely nothing, but I find it randomly interesting that the average number of pages in this year's books is 307, compared to 306 last year. Also, unlike previous years in which the number of days it took me to read each book was wildly different for each title, this year most of them took me 20-something days to get through (max 30, min 6).

There weren't any this year that I wouldn't read if I had the chance to do it again, though I was slightly disappointed by "High Fidelity." But I mostly blame the timing of when I read it, since I've loved every other Nick Hornby book before that. I did do well though with books that were recommended to me, with "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" and "If on a winter's night a traveler" being two of my favorites

If you read just five from my list, I would go with: "A Brave New World," "In Cold Blood," "The War For Late Night," "Leviathan" and "Outliers."

I have to give an extra plug for "Leviathan" and author Paul Auster, who I don't think enough people know about. This is the third book of his that I've read ("The Book of Illusions" & "The Brooklyn Follies"), and each has been fantastic.

Next year is probably going to get off to a slow start as I continue to focus on trying to finish my writing project (I promise to post an update about this in the next few days). Let me know if you have any titles to add to my 2012 list.

Happy New Year.

Elegy for a Deli

2011-12-29T09:51:00.000-05:00

This morning on my way home from work I took what can definitely be described as the "scenic route."

Instead of going to the Metro station a block and a half away, I went to a station much farther down the line, walking down the National Mall past museums, monuments and the White House on the way.

The Mall leading up to the Washington Monument

I used to take walks similar to this all the time. A few years ago both during a period in which I was unemployed and then later when my combination of a part-time job and a freelance gig left me with Fridays off, I made a point to go into DC a few times a month.

I didn't have any grand objectives, just to see and experience things on my day off that might in some way enrich my life. Having grown up in this area and spent a lot of time at the various museums, I've seen pretty much all of the permanent collections at the major spots. So before I left each time, I would browse the various museum websites and find one or two new exhibits that had just opened that seemed somewhat interesting.

Maybe half the time these trips also included lunch with my friend who worked at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, near the White House. I sent her this picture this morning, and told her that I considered stopping into her favorite lunch spot nearby to see if they served breakfast as well:

The Corcoran Gallery

It was called Heidi's Brooklyn Deli, and the food and the atmosphere were everything you could ever want from that type of place. My friend could not say enough good things about how nice they were and how she made a point to observe "Heidi's Fridays." That's how I ended up going there so much.

She told me a story once about how she stepped up to order her favorite sandwich -- let's call it the Lewis, since I don't remember the name -- and the guy behind the counter said, "I'm Lewis!"

[I'm now told it was a Cajun turkey with avocado sandwich. "The best!!!!"]

She was so excited to have met the guy who created it, the kind of experience you do not get at Subway. That's why it was so sad to get her reply message this morning: "Heidi's has been closed almost a year!"

So long, Heidi.

Chip of Love

2011-12-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

A company comes out with a chip you implant on the inside of your wrist, and when your true love gets a chip as well, a clock on both begins ticking down the time until you first meet.

That's the premise of the movie "Timer" which examines the struggles of people navigating a world in which a computer is basically telling them whom to love. The results vary widely, from one woman whose clock shows she won't meet her man until she's in her 40s to a 14-year-old kid whose chip reports he will meet his future wife almost immediately.

The movie (available on Netflix instant) brought up a lot of questions, mainly would you want to know? How much of that experience is the search, the trials and errors, the hopes and disappointments that make you appreciate someone in a way you wouldn't without that journey? (Of course speaking entirely hypothetically since as a single guy I can't actually attest to that.) Those failures shape us, and make us the person we are when new people come into our lives, and when that "one" person shows up, it seems like we should aspire to have been affected in ways that crystallize that self. To quote an Adele song, "Regrets and mistakes, they're memories made."

If there's a display on your wrist that says you have four years until you meet your match, you might be inclined to close yourself off and eschew any relationships. But that's another question -- should you? Is it "cheating" if you carry on a relationship knowing that your true love has been identified and is not that person? Does it matter if the clock says four days instead of four years? The characters in the movie are mixed on this one, but the ones with longer countdowns are more inclined to date other people.

Another issue is that not everyone has a chip. At $79.99 to install plus a monthly fee, it's not possible for everyone to get one, but there are also plenty of people who willingly choose to do without one. They hate the idea of turning over that bit of humanity to a computer, or don't trust that the system is actually producing the result it claims. After all, how much of the "success" is that people want to believe it works? If you get a chip then you are predisposed to buying in, so when the chip says the person you just passed in the grocery store is your future mate, you aren't going to question whether that should actually be the case.

At best, it's a comfort knowing that there is in fact someone out there who will love you. At worst it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that ultimately alters the entire future of the world by pairing together people who would otherwise never be in a relationship.

For the characters with no reading on their clock, and even some with many years left to wait, the reactions they face are actually much the same as those experienced by people in real life whose friends and family have all gone off and gotten married. There are the platitudes of "it will happen one day" and "they're out there somewhere." The main character's mother can't help but try to set up her daughter with man after man in hopes he'll be the one. They are more likely to be the doubters, whether through frustration of seeing no results or not wanting to believe in a system that would make them wait so long to find love. And yet at the same time, they're faced every day with people close to them espousing the benefits of the same system and showing how happy they are with their love.

Then there are the couples who got married outside of the system -- the old-fashioned way, with no technology telling them which person was right for them. What if they get chips? Is it worth the risk of the incredibly low odds that you actually picked the right person, or is it imperative to know whether there's a more-right person out there?

I guess it just comes down to the original question -- would you want to know?

Giant Oversight

2011-12-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

Mila, I'm sorry to report you have some competition.

Last year I wrote about how 2011 was all about marrying an Oscar-winning actress (which I immediately expanded to include nominees as well) after Kate Middleton totally stole my idea about snagging royalty. I was a little mad at the time, but Kate really did me a favor and sent me in the right direction.

Fortunately, the 2011 plan didn't pan out either. I say fortunately because what I really should have been focused on was actresses appearing in movies that were nominated, and while Mila would qualify there for her work in "Black Swan" she suddenly pales in comparison to another young woman from that category.

Her name is Rooney Mara, who had a small role in "The Social Network" and now stars in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." Why her? In addition to the obvious appeal, her name adds a lot.

That's Rooney as in the Rooney family that founded the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Mara as in the Mara family that founded the New York Giants. She isn't the product of some crazy father who somehow got to pick her name, but rather the daughter of a mom from the Rooney family and a dad from the Mara family.

You may wonder, as David Letterman did in an interview last week, if she likes football and if so, which team she roots for. As a Giants fan, her answer only makes me more of a Rooney Mara fan:

In addition to all of those good traits, she also went to NYU and heads up a charity helping kids in Kenya.

That's not to say I won't answer Mila's calls, but someone else just may be a higher priority.

Eleven for 2011

2011-12-18T08:07:00.002-05:00

The year is coming to a close, and with that comes the inevitable plethora of stories about the best/top/most memorable X of 2011.

So what better time for me to break out what I think are my best offerings of the year? I've done this for 2010, 2009 and a single list that covers all the years before that. I'm not saying these are the greatest things you'll ever read, but if you're here and want to know which of the 450+ posts I think may be worth your time, I think these top-10-ish lists are useful.

I've really tried to do some new things this year, including more pictures, adding a lot of video posts and even attempting a couple of audio stories. I also added two new features -- the Twitter box to the right that shows you my 10 latest posts (you can click to see more), and the labels at the bottom of each post that allow you to click and find related content from the archives.

Without further ado, the 11 best posts of 2011 (in chronological order, not necessarily by merit):

An Offer You Can't Refuse
A friend exposes a major hole in my pop culture experiences, and I find that watching "The Godfather" reminds me of "Almost Famous" in ways that have nothing to do with the storylines.

Voices From the Past
I go "This American Life" style with a story about how my mom's family communicated by tape with my grandfather while he was deployed in Vietnam and Korea, with actual audio from the era as well as some perspective from today.

I Do Declare
I won't even pretend like this isn't my favorite post topic ever. I fulfill a dream by attempting to enter a professional sports draft, and get an official response letter from the NBA that makes me laugh every time I look at it.

Glory Days
A TV news story I did about the University of Maryland women's basketball team and their national championship run. Unfortunately it does not include the subsequent riot and people being doused with a pepper spray hose.

Chicken Nugget Dreams
An example of me bringing in a Twitter conversation (ones I know people don't mind me sharing, of course), as I melodramatically complain about Wendy's not offering delivery service and my friend Jason letting me know that in other countries, they do.

We're Jambin'
A post from the "not smart" category. I manage to run myself into a doorway, think I broke my hand, and fail so badly in explaining the situation to a friend that I have to create a graphic in Photoshop to fully illustrate what happened.

A Kool-Aid Miracle
I dust off a video from the archives -- a faux infomercial for a miracle weight loss drink that helped me lose 20 pounds in 48 hours. It truly is a miracle!

Great PB & J Debate
I never thought it would end up being such a contentious issue, but if there's one question this year that got people chiming in, it was this: When you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, do you spread the PB & J on the same piece of bread?

Watch and Learn
Another parody video, this time a series of do-it-yourself tips for self-explanatory things like how to drive a nail, use a faucet and read a digital clock (with bonus blooper video!). If you don't find this funny, we probably shouldn't be friends.

Lifehouse in the Nats' House
Easily one of the most fun days I had all year, with an amazing baseball game followed by a free concert from one of my favorite bands (video included).

Nats a Wrap
A wrap-up of the awesome year we had attending Nationals games, including some really interesting moments like seeing a rookie pitcher hit a home run on the first pitch of his first Major League at-bat.

Pizza Hut and the (Re)Quest for the Pepperoni Smiley
Other than the NBA draft post, probably my favorite one of the year. I ask Pizza Hut to put my pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face...and they sort of comply.

Changing Faces

2011-12-16T12:43:00.000-05:00

Facebook has rolled out a new change, and the world did not end.

Actually, I love this change. It's the addition of the Timeline feature, which totally changes the look of your profile page. Visually, it's a vast improvement that better integrates the posts on your wall and really makes any kind of graphic or video really stand out.

The new look also provides a fascinating kind of rabbit hole for you to go down with the ability to look back through the years to pretty much all of your Facebook activity since you signed up. You could kind of do this before by continually scrolling to the bottom of your wall and stepping back little by little, but now it's really easy to browse through.

Being a total nerd, of course I looked back at most of it already. There was a lot that made me smile, remembering some great times and people that have made my life great since I joined Facebook on March 3, 2005. Back then it was only college students and you had to wait until your school was added. Susquehanna University wasn't exactly at the top of the priority list, but we were certainly happy to be included eventually.

But seeing all of those posts also brought up a lot of names that once were a big part of my life, or at least good for some laughs, and now are gone. Seeing them definitely made me wish some of those relationships hadn't melted away, but I guess that's life, and a reminder to do a better job of keeping up with people.

My only real complaint about the new look is that the shape of the profile picture changed, making the one I've had pretty much since mid-2009 look really awkward now.

Maybe it was time to change anyway.

Tree(t) Yourself

2011-12-16T02:56:00.000-05:00

Everyone can relax now, our house is officially ready for Christmas.

Tonight my second roommate inquired about whether I was going to put up my tree, so I made the massive effort to make that happen. Actually, it took about 10 minutes, but let's pretend I put a lot into it.

Part of me really hates this tree because it's fake and doesn't have that Christmas tree smell. The other part of me enjoys how easy it is to set up and later put away. I also kind of like its humbleness.

I got it when I was living down in Florida making less money at a TV news job than I did selling shoes at the mall. To put things in perspective, the snack I would bring to work most days was rice with a few pieces of frozen vegetables mixed in, and my diet relied heavily on hot dogs that came 10 for a dollar. So when I realized I wasn't going to be able to go home for the holidays and decided I needed at least something Christmasy to cheer me up, I went to Target and got the cheapest tree they had. I think it cost me roughly $14.

Of course things are better now, and while I could go in a new direction, there's something to be said for the memories of this one and its single strand of lights:

Yes, I could have framed this picture better, but that would have required getting up out of the chair

The real question will be how long we leave it up this year. Last time it stayed around until at least February.

Enjoy the season.

Cup of Gold

2011-12-11T07:37:00.001-05:00

It's a perfect example of a cliche, but history really does repeat itself.

I write something here about every book I read, partly for my own archival purposes but also to share with others what I'm reading and the thoughts those texts conjure. For some people, I know these posts are unbelievably boring, and that's OK. Hopefully I write enough other stuff to keep everyone somewhat entertained.

Last December I posted about John Steinbeck's "The Pastures of Heaven," saying weeks had passed since I finished it, and that I didn't have a ton to say about the story itself. Well it's December again, and several weeks ago I finished the John Steinbeck book "Cup of Gold" about which I really don't have anything to say.

Like last year, that's not a knock on the text, but something that tends to be a pattern with Steinbeck books. I guess the only thing to note is that this is the first in a new approach to Steinbeck. He's one of my favorite authors and has written so many books that I had a hard time choosing which one to read next. So I decided to take subjectivity and guessing out of the process by reading all of the rest in chronological order.

"Cup of Gold" is his first, and it seems like it wasn't exactly well-received. I can definitely understand why that may be the case. It's kind of a crazy story that involves British indentured servants, pirates and of course, Merlin. Not exactly what people expect from the "Grapes of Wrath" Steinbeck, and I'm certainly not alone in liking the latter much better.

I have two more of his books to read before I get to the ones that really started to make him famous. That quest will have to wait until next year though, since I have turned over a lot of my former reading time to my own writing project. I feel like I'm making some progress (about to pass 50,000 words) with a goal of finishing by the end of January. We'll see how that goes.

Nerfing Out

2011-12-09T23:15:00.001-05:00

Top Chef is on. The chefs are cooking. Terms I don't understand are flying around. Tension is building. Everything looks delicious.

And then the power goes out. CA and I are cast in darkness, and worse, we're without Wi-Fi. So what do two young happening guys like us do? We break out the Nerf guns.

Maybe it's a good sign for our status as so-called adults that I had almost forgotten we even had Nerf guns. I was actually slightly surprised at the size of our arsenal (two assault rifle type things and three handguns), which I would put up against anyone on our block -- especially the people at the end of the street who are for some reason flying a Canadian flag.

You may remember me writing about when we got the first guns a few years ago. At the time, it seemed like a great idea, though it's possible we didn't use them as much as we thought. But on this day, I'm glad we had them.

CA and I played a few rounds of HORSE, which works the same way with Nerf guns as it does with a basketball. One of us would make up a shot, like standing in the living room and trying to get our dart to stick to the sliding glass door in the kitchen. If the other guy missed, they got a letter.

We ended our Nerf session with our own version of skeet shooting, which involved using an empty Cran-Grape juice bottle as our target. It was shockingly difficult to hit, but I am proud to report we stuck with it until we both accomplished that very important task.

And then of course the power came back on a few minutes later, and we returned to our regularly scheduled program.

Did I Studdard?

2011-12-02T01:28:00.001-05:00

It all started with this tweet from one of my college roommates, Jason:

I told Jason that I remember Ruben because he was a guest on my news show when I was producing in Jacksonville, Fla. He was in town for a sickle cell disease event, and came by beforehand for an interview.

It was early -- I think in the 7 a.m. hour -- so I recall being surprised that Ruben showed up with four or five other people. I want to call them an entourage, but since I was trying to monitor a live news broadcast I was unable to find out exactly who everyone was and thus unable to properly classify the group.

I can say that they were all extremely nice, including Ruben, who for some reason left me a signed photo:

(Click for larger version)

There are several things I love about this picture. First, the general vibe with the red and the big glasses. Second, that it's personalized, which I think I can be traced to one of our video editors who was getting autographs of his own (and is probably why this exists in the first place). Finally, that after his name he put "American Idol" like you would put "Systems Analyst" or "Account Manager" in the signature of your work email.

Other than a box of chocolates one of our regular chefs gave me after his visit to the White House, this is probably the only guest-related item I still have from that time. There were other random things that PR people would send me to plug their event or bring attention to their client, but they were usually boring things like Starbucks coffee (swing and a miss) or M&M's (you have my attention).

Friends who knew we had guests on the morning shows often asked who I had met, though I think they often overestimated our pull on big celebs. Jay-Z and Freida Pinto never stopped by, but I did meet people like Mark Curry (Hanging with Mr. Cooper), Jenna Morasca (Survivor), Tony Little (fitness informercials), and talked via satellite to Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa Explains it All).

Oh and Carrie Underwood...I mean, Carrie Underwood's competitors on American Idol, Anthony Fedorov and Vonzell Solomon (probably the two nicest guests I had).

Fortunately I never had any truly nightmarish guests, though some of the ones I was unsure of did make think "please don't get me fired, please don't get me fired."

I've Been There

2011-12-01T08:59:00.001-05:00

It's not often I watch something on TV or check out a clip online and see some place I've been.

Of course, that doesn't count big things like the U.S. Capitol or New York, but rather more unique experiences.

This morning I got an email updating the latest news from the Ice House Cafe, a restaurant and bar my family has been going to forever. Well maybe not literally forever, but often when I'm there the bartender, Dan, will tell other patrons stories about me and my siblings as little kids climbing up on the stools and demanding he change the television to a sports game.

One piece of news was that the Oyster Bar area was recently used in a music video by R&B artist Akshan. It's that part of the restaurant where my family has spent most of our time, including many years of eating at the exact same table by the front window.

A really great part about the Ice House is the decor, which you could easily spend hours examining. That also makes it easy to see that in the video, around the 3:25 mark, Akshan is sitting exactly where I have sat dozens of times. From there you can look outside at the cars passing by and across the street at what was for many years a sports card shop.

The real perk -- in addition to the sweet old-time football picture -- is that right next to his left knee, there's a heat vent, which is an excellent addition to any wintertime dining experience.

And The Shirts Came Back

2011-11-28T09:15:00.001-05:00

It took a series of text messages, a home watch company, a multi-part chain of custody and more than five months, but I have now been reunited with three shirts that for a short time threatened my sanity.

In June, I went on vacation in Naples, Fla., where I stayed at my aunt's house. Two weeks later, I did some laundry and afterward noticed an empty hanger on the left side of my closet. A maroon polo shirt was supposed to go there, right next to the orange one of the same style.

I double-checked the dryer, the washing machine, the space in between them and behind, but didn't find the shirt. Back in the closet I searched every nook where it could have fallen -- nothing. I dragged out the suitcase I had taken to Florida, opened every pocket, and still found nothing. Checks of my roommate's closet, the guest bedroom, under my bed and at least three repeats of all of the above still resulted in no shirt.

If you know me at all, you're probably aware that I'm ridiculously organized. I don't lose anything. Ever.

I asked my then-former, now-current roommate (don't ask, long story) if he had maybe borrowed it one night when he was staying with us. No dice. I searched the closet one more time, this round focusing on the right side (yes, there's a system involved) and noticed two more empty hangers.

WAIT. WHAT SHIRTS ARE THOSE?!........FLORIDA!!!!!

It all came back to me. When I arrived down there and unpacked, I hung up those three shirts in the closet -- none of which I wore while I was there.

After my revelation, I texted my aunt, explaining how I was driving myself crazy looking and asked if she could check the closet the next time she was at the house.

"Don't go nuts," she said. "Don't need more nuts in the family!!"

So true. Concerned for my sanity, she sent someone over to look, and sure enough the shirts were hanging right where I left them.

Flash forward to last weekend in New Jersey, where we were visiting for Thanksgiving. I walked into my grandparents' house and was immediately handed my shirts.

Sanity fully intact.

Belle of the Ball

2011-11-21T08:59:00.001-05:00

To those who doubted whether future wife Mila Kunis (Natalie who?) would show up to the Marine Corps ball last weekend, well, she went.

You may remember that back in July a sergeant invited her to be his date via YouTube, and after the prodding of "Friends With Benefits" co-star Justin Timberlake, Mila accepted. I forgive those who thought that given the light-hearted tone of her conversation with Timberlake that maybe she wasn't serious.

While I think it's cool that she went, Mila definitely needs to consult Timberlake for some PR tips. The stories about her ball are basically that she went, looked great and was really nice. No comments from her perspective at all.

Contrast that with Timberlake, who attended a ball of his own the weekend before. Those stories are overflowing with him saying what an amazing time had and how honored he was to be there. Great for both of the stars to go, but he definitely could not have handled the entire thing any better.

The best part about Mila's ball is the reporting from a local television station in Greenville, N.C., where the event was held. They went totally TMZ for this story, getting paparazzi-style video of her speeding away from the airport wearing sunglasses in the back seat of an SUV.

The flood of Marines asking celebs to accompany them to balls this year reminded me of the movie "My Date With Drew." It's sliiiightly possible you've never heard of it, but given that it's a documentary I only happened across on Netflix one day, that's excusable.

The basic premise is that the filmmaker has had a crush on actress Drew Barrymore since they were kids. As an adult, he decides he has nothing to lose in trying to get a date with her and documents his efforts with a camera. I won't give away the ending, but it's actually a pretty interesting movie showing how some celebrities are more open than others to acting like normal people.

XXL Reprieve

2011-11-19T23:13:00.001-05:00

Good news: I won't be dying this year from eating a Taco Bell XXL Chalupa.

Bad news: I didn't try one, thus continuing a streak of not making good on a World Series bet with roommate CA.

On Friday night, we were in search of no-effort dinner options and decided it was about time we got around to taking care of the wager. The terms, if you forget, were that I had to buy the XXL Chalupa -- aka bad decision in a box -- and each of us had to eat half of it.

With that in mind, I stepped to the counter and ordered the behemoth along with a Mexican pizza, assuming that if the XXL was awful I would at least have one quality thing to eat.

"We don't sell those anymore," said my savior.

Fortunately for us, they had ended the limited time promotion, so I was able to replace the XXL with my beloved cheesy gordita crunch. My brother, who was with us, assured us it isn't nearly as bad as we think, but I'm still going to assume we lucked out. In the car on the way home I asked CA what he thought about the developments.

"I feel great," he said.
"Like we dodged a bullet?"
"Absolutely."

Until next year.

No Braniacs Channel

2011-11-19T21:43:00.001-05:00

Sometimes this country really frustrates me.

I'm not talking about Occupy Wall Street protests, the Tea Party, the super committee or President Obama, but rather television viewers.

Last week, NBC announced they were suspending the show "Community," which seems like the entertainment industry way of saying your dog isn't dead, it just went upstate to live at a nice farm. It's also the latest Show With a Small, Passionate Fan Base and Critical Acclaim That Nobody Watches. And that's really a shame.

I love that show. It's a comedy, but doesn't have the normal trappings of the genre. They change formats and do crazy things, like turning entire episodes into a paintball war or a claymation Christmas story. One episode this season went in more of a quantum mechanics/choose your own adventure style, showing how a roll of a dice could unleash seven different possible ways for the same setup to play out.

It's a show that takes chances and tells stories in a different way, eschewing the more simplified, safe episodes that kept "Friends" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" on the air for so long. The result is that some people don't get it or won't take their own chance to give it a shot. Sure, sometimes the show's style leaves even me wondering what's going on, but I love that even more. Where so many "Friends" episodes are indistinguishable from one another, most of the "Community" offerings are distinct.

We've seen this scenario play out too many times before. Gone are shows like "Arrested Development" and "Freaks & Geeks," while networks stick with shows I find inconceivable anyone would enjoy watching. We'll lose "Community" but NBC will continue airing "Whitney" and "Chuck." Don't get me started on the Kardashians or Real Housewives. (Yes, I remember that I watch "Jersey Shore," but I'd gladly trade it for "Community.")

I understand that television is a business and you need ratings to make money. So why not try something like switching time slots before axing the show? NBC recognized "Whitney" sucks on Thursdays after "The Office" and moved it to Wednesday. Why not push "Community" from 8 p.m. to 9:30 and see how it goes? Right now it's up against "The Big Bang Theory" on CBS, a show that likely grabs some of the same demographics (including me). I guess the easier answer for them is trying something "new" and adding a Chelsea Handler show to their schedule instead.

In September, Wired magazine ran a feature on Dan Harmon, the show's creator. It's a fascinating look into his process and his path to coming up with the show. It's definitely worth your time if you find delving into the creative process of others as interesting as I do.

Here's to hoping NBC changes its mind.

[Note: According to additional research, it appears "Chuck" is ending in January.]

Precious Medals

2011-11-16T09:25:00.001-05:00

One of the great feelings after finishing a marathon or half marathon is going through the food area just past the finishing line and finding all kinds of delicious things to stuff in your starving face.

But before you get there, there's a person handing out medals to all the finishers, something you can dangle around your neck to show everyone you survived the ordeal. Some of them are pretty cool looking, others are a little lame, but I put them on display just the same.

I was shocked to read in the latest issue of Runner's World that according to respondents in their poll, only 29 percent kept their finisher's medals, and just 16 percent held onto age group and other awards. (For those who aren't familiar, races often give prizes to the overall winners as well as to the top finisher's in sub-categories like Men Age 20-24.)

Now I'm not wearing my medals around to social events, but I certainly would never just throw them away. I keep them on top of my dresser, right next to my running watches and keys where I'll see them before every time I go out for a run.

My collection is pretty varied. In the back, there's a trophy showing that in 2006 I came in first place in my age group in a 5K. I especially like that one as a sign of humility since that was by far my worst 5K time ever, and I only came in first place because I was the only one in my age group who entered the race.

That same year I was on a little bit of a quest to win more age group awards, so I tried to cherry-pick smaller races where my chances might be a little better. Didn't quite work out as I planned, but I do have a nice 3rd place medal from the Vienna Elementary 5K.

The rest are more legitimate -- 2nd place in my age group from the much more contested Herndon Festival 5K (a personal best at the time), then the string of medals from my five half marathons and one full marathon.

By far the coolest one is from the 26.2 with Donna Half Marathon -- not confusing at all -- which I did in 2009 just weeks after returning to running from a stress fracture. It's the one in the middle here:

My newest one is on the right. I'm not going to lie, it's the ugliest one, but then again the race was sponsored by McDonald's so I'm not sure we should expect more.

Run, Neb, Run

2011-11-15T10:12:00.001-05:00

I'm just going to throw this out there -- last weekend rocked.

The big event was traveling to Richmond to run a half marathon, which seemed like a bit of an overly ambitious task given that I hadn't exactly trained a ton for the race. In case that sounds like I'm just being humble, consider that when I set my personal best at this distance two years ago I was running about 25 miles per week. There have been several months this year in which I didn't run a total of 25 miles.

With that in mind, I started the race with my sister-in-law Bethany, as we worked towards a somewhat lofty goal of finishing in 1 hour 50 minutes. The last time we ran a half marathon together was when I did get my best time (1:43:08), and this course was much flatter, so at least I had the right conditions going for me.

In the first mile Bethany asked me how I thought our pace was:

C: "Good...a little fast maybe."
B: "Fast?! I was thinking slow."

In order to hit our goal time, we needed to keep a pace of about 8:23 per mile. Our first mile time -- 8:45. We picked it up from there cranking out 8:04, 8:04, 8:07, 8:41, 8:07, with watch-less, psychic Bethany guessing our sixth mile time exactly on her first try.

From that it seems like things were going great, but we were asking each other after each mile, "We can't actually hold this pace, right?" Fortunately we slowed down a touch for the next three, going 8:13, 8:37, 8:25.

In Raleigh in 2009, I went ahead after mile 7 and felt great picking up the pace straight through the finish. This time, I left Bethany with a high-five after mile 9 and as I surged ahead immediately felt like I may have made a poor move. My left knee started hurting and I could feel the effects of all those early fast miles catch up to me quickly.

Fortunately, as I walked for a second at the water stop in the next mile (8:24), the knee quieted down a bit and my brain was able to convince my body that with just three miles to go I should just suck it up and go. I also did some quick math and told myself that if I could just keep them under 9 minutes, I could reach what seemed like kind of a crazy goal just an hour earlier.

The result was closing out with miles of 8:20, 8:14 and 7:52, and covering the final tenth of a mile in 42 seconds to finish at 1:48:41 overall. My second-best half marathon ever on easily the least training.

Given that my best time came after a ton of training and was followed two weeks later by a stress fracture in my foot, maybe there's something to this whole non-training thing. Though as we walked to the car after the race, I couldn't help but think, "Man, what if I had trained more?"

Maybe next year.

And next year I think may be a requirement. My aunt and cousins in Richmond were awesome hosts, giving us a ride to the start line at 6 a.m., feeding us and cheering us on. They had as much fun as we did, and it was great to experience that with them.

Another highlight, my brother's forethought when signing up for the race. They gave us the option of putting our names on our race numbers, which means random spectators on the course can call out your name and give you encouragement. I didn't have mine on there, Bethany had her name, but Ben, who ran the full marathon, went with this:

Go Neb!

Constructive Boredom

2011-11-03T10:10:00.001-04:00

We've all experienced boredom at work, it happens, but we don't always make the best use of that opportunity.

You may know that in a former life I spent quite a bit of time in retail, including a stint as a supervisor at a shoe store in the mall. At some point our store ran a promotion giving customers a discount on a new pair of shoes if they gave us their old ones. I'm pretty sure we sent the old ones to some sort of charity, unless they were really gross in which case they went straight in the trash.

The response was kind of shocking. I think we were giving something like $10 off, but an enormous number of people took us up on the offer. Of course, that meant finding a place to store all of these shoes as they accumulated throughout the day.

That's where boredom came in. Blessed with absolutely nothing to do but listen to a music system we all hated, me and two of the other managers set about creating an old-shoe storage system. We called it the TUB, or Trade Up Box.

We took a bunch of different sized cardboard boxes we had left over from a recent shipment and created what was essentially a giant mailbox. It was as tall as me, with a big flap near the top so you could flip it open and toss the newest old pair of shoes down the chute.

It took the three of us -- the highest paid employees in the store at the time -- about half an hour to construct, which I think was definitely a solid use of company time. The owner of our franchise visited after we made it and complimented our work. He even suggested we send photos of the TUB to the other stores in our chain.

I was reminded of this great day last week during lunch at Taco Bell with one of the other former managers. He was brave enough to try the XXL Chalupa that was the center of my World Series bet with CA. He seems to have survived the ordeal, so maybe there's hope for CA and I when we make good on our wager.

Hey Taylor

2011-11-02T10:15:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I mentioned Taylor Swift here, mainly because her quest to ruin my life appears to be over.

We never had direct peace talks, but both sides seemed to have lost the will to continue the fight and we settled back into a sort of neutral stance. However, that's not true for her and another member of my family.

Last weekend I went to see a "Moneyball" with my mom and brother Pat. Mom, a country music fan, was driving and when the very first notes of a Taylor Swift song came on the radio she immediately changed the station. This was not nearly the first time I had witnessed this phenomenon, but in case there was any doubt as to her feelings towards Ms. Swift, my mom added, "I don't understand why everyone else thinks she's so wonderful."

Last night mom and Pat went to a hockey game at the Verizon Center, and my brother sent me a text message saying they saw a Taylor Swift poster go by as they went up the escalator to their level. "She's trying to follow mom," he said.

I get that maybe Taylor was tired of feuding with someone taller than her, but I don't get why she has to keep pursuing these quarrelsome relationships. Hey Taylor, it's OK to just play your guitar and sing. I'm perfectly fine with that. My cousin, who has used your picture as his Facebook profile photo, is definitely fine with that.

Though maybe you shouldn't do it when my mom is around.

Stunt Double

2011-10-31T09:10:00.001-04:00

Facebook has added in a lot of features over the years -- some good, some not so good -- but there's one aspect of their technology that may help solve a lifelong question.

If you meet me, there are certain facts that are likely to elicit what I consider overblown responses about their novelty, mainly that I am left handed and have a twin sister. Yes, I understand neither of these are tremendously common, but each brings its own series of questions I have answered a hundred times.

With the twin thing one of the most frequent questions is if we look alike. The answer, I say, really depends on whom you ask. To some people there's a big resemblance while others think we don't look anything alike.

Thanks to Facebook's face recognition feature when you upload photos, we may have an answer. At least, we now know what computers think:

I uploaded a picture the other day with all of my siblings in it, and Facebook only tried to tag one of the faces. It's mine, but Facebook think it's my sister.

What do you think? Here's perhaps the greatest picture of us that will ever be taken:

And one more for good measure:

Crazy Dreams Come True

2011-10-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

Revisiting movies or television shows from your childhood is a dangerous thing.

There's great potential for nostalgia and reconnecting with something you enjoyed in the past, but equally great danger that you'll hate it and wonder what the heck little you was thinking.

This morning I put aside any fears of ruining good memories and delved back into the 1993 film "Rookie of the Year," about a 12-year-old kid who hurts his arm slipping on a baseball and heals in such a freakish way that his 103 mph fastball earns him a spot on the Chicago Cubs.

I saw this movie in the theater for my 10th birthday, and the main character, Henry, became my hero both because he played professional baseball as a child and also because he got to star in a Pepsi commercial. That seemed like a pretty ideal life to me.

It may be because I was on a super baseball high after last night's amazing World Series game, but it's possible I enjoyed this movie even more today than I did as a kid. It's funny and heartwarming, and only features sliiightly implausible baseball scenes that are easy to overlook. Plus it has one of the great aspects of watching movies of this era -- the ability to pick out random actors nobody heard of then, but have since gone on to more famous roles. In this case, the winner was the first basemen for the Cubs, actor Neil Flynn, who is much better known as the janitor on the TV show "Scrubs."

Even the star of the movie, Thomas Ian Nichols, managed to avoid the fate of many child actors. Instead of being in one big film, doing a couple of TV show cameos and disappearing from the acting world, he has consistently worked since this movie came out, most notably as one of the stars of the "American Pie" series.

And of course I can't leave out director Daniel Stern, who also acted in the movie. Most people would know him best as one of the robbers in the classic "Home Alone."

I was also struck by how many lines I remembered, many that my friends and I quoted over the years (and perhaps still today): "Hey Rosinbagger!" "Did he just say, 'funky butt-lovin?'" "Piiitcher's got a biiig butt." "Float it!"

Here's to hoping the next one is such a positive experience.

One Winner, Two Losers(?)

2011-10-19T09:19:00.000-04:00

With the World Series beginning tonight, I am rooting for the Texas Rangers as part of the latest -- and most potentially deadly -- bet between myself and roommate CA.

Last year we had a wager related to the World Series, with the loser required to try Taco Bell's new XXL Chalupa. Somehow the results got sort of muddled and nothing ever came of it. But with Taco Bell making a new push to advertise the XXL Chalupa and the two of us hankering for a bet, we brought this one back.

You may be wondering why any Taco Bell menu item would be such a big deal to people who have spent many of their fast food dollars there. Well, take a look at this thing. It's what we imagine Taco Bell looks like to normal people -- a really really poor life decision. It may end up being the most amazing thing we've ever eaten, but it will surely take paying off a bet for either of us to try it.

We made our bet during the league championship series, with me wanting to back the Detroit Tigers and him wanting the Milwaukee Brewers. When both of those teams lost, we shifted to picking their respective leagues -- I took over Texas and he threw his support behind the St. Louis Cardinals.

For some reason I can't quite remember, we also put the terms in a way that really amounts to mutually assured destruction. The loser has to buy the XXL Chalupa, and we both have to try it.

If you want any of my stuff when this thing kills me, get in your requests now. Go Rangers.

Moneyball

2011-10-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to reading "Moneyball" but I can thank Brad Pitt for giving me the motivation to finally do it.

The movie version of the story, starring Pitt, came out a few weeks ago, so I wanted to seize the opportunity to get through the book first. I'm not interested so much in the conventional exercise of just seeing how closely the movie follows the book. Rather, I really want to see how the elements of this Michael Lewis story are adapted to film in comparison to his book "The Blind Side."

The movie that earned Sandra Bullock a Best Actress Oscar focused 90 percent on the non-football side of Lewis' book about professional football player Michael Oher. The book, which describes Oher being taken in by a family when he was in high school, focused more like 50 percent on the football part of his story. Given that "Moneyball" is even more heavy on statistics and inside sports stuff, it will be interesting to see how that gets translated into a more traditional Hollywood movie.

If you're totally unfamiliar, "Moneyball" examines the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s under General Manager Billy Beane. With much less money available to run the team than many other organizations, Beane has to find a way to be successful and focuses on finding undervalued players in the baseball marketplace. His approach is not about signing the latest high-price star to hit the market, but rather to find the guy who succeeds at things nobody else realizes are important to winning baseball games.

The strategy not only helped the organization become surprisingly successful on the field, but engendered a passion among Oakland's fan base to really support the team.

"Win with nobodies and the fans showed up, and the nobodies became stars," Lewis writes. "Lose with stars and the fans stayed home, and the stars became nobodies."

When those stars reach the end of their contract and are in line for a big payday, Beane is more than happy to let them walk away. All-stars Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon want to test the free agent market? Fine. Let Boston and New York overpay them. Beane will find two guys who have a similar on-base percentage -- the king of the hidden key stats -- and go right on winning at a fraction of the cost.

"The question was: how did a baseball team find stars in the first place, and could it find new ones to replace the old ones it lost?" Lewis says. "How fungible were baseball players?"

Not only is that one of the key questions driving Beane's mindset, but also includes a word, "fungible," that I drop all the time, only to get strange looks from other people. I can't take any credit for knowing what it means, though. That goes to a fantastic college professor who happened to say it among so many other memorable lines that my cohorts compiled a document of his sayings during our time in his classes. (Highlights include: "Have you ever gone to run for the phone and just went 'that dog just won't hunt?'" "Please rent out the cameras immediately if not sooner," and, in reference to aliens, "I have a feeling the government really screwed the pooch on that one.")

Part of the book talks about the statistics revolution in baseball, the drive by people like Bill James to better quantify what is happening on the field. These are people who set aside the traditional box score stats and began asking questions about how players are really succeeding and how much they are actually contributing to that success.

One of the big examples is in fielding. If you look at a box score, pretty much all you'll see is errors, which James found to be a really crazy way of evaluating how good of a defender a player actually is. So much of making an error is being near enough to the ball that the official scorer thinks you should have made the play.

As James says, "The easiest way to not make an error was to be too slow to reach the ball in the first place."

Pitchers, too, have some very over-important stats. The earned run average, for example, has so many factors that are beyond the pitcher's control that to use it as a major barometer for determining future success is somewhat crazy too. Sure, if you're ERA is 17.50 that's probably mostly your fault. But it would be silly to rely solely on ERA to say that a pitcher who had a 3.75 season is so much better than one who had an ERA of 4.50 in the same year.

Another guy named Voros McCracken worked to find more objective ways to value the work of pitchers. Lewis writes that McCracken focused on looking at the number of walks and home runs a pitcher gives up, as well as the number of batters he strikes out, among a few other things. These were the things a pitcher had more control over himself, and thus were more useful in determining how he may perform in the future.

Of course, when you're the one in an industry doing things very differently from those around you, it's probably expected that they'll be less than welcoming of your approach. Especially in baseball, where tradition and attitudes of "the way it's always been done" govern so much that goes on. Beane challenged a lot of conventional wisdom, so much so that many of his long-time scouts left the organization rather than have him ignore theirs.

"Baseball has structured itself less as a business than as a social club," Lewis says. "The greatest offense a Club member can commit is not ineptitude but disloyalty." Lewis mentions here former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton, who essentially alienated himself from the baseball Club with his 1970 book "Ball Four." Bouton tells a lot of baseball's secrets, and Lewis says that honesty got him "as good as banished from the Club" instead of a possible extended career in coaching or scouting. (I highly recommend Bouton's book for those haven't read it.)

And finally, because it's something I find interesting and keeps popping up, Lewis writes about one A's relief pitcher who battles with the idea that others are bound to figure out he's not talented. Chad Bradford is a good example of a Beane find -- a pitcher with a crazy submarine motion that conventional wisdom didn't value, never mind that what he was doing got batters out. Bradford didn't accurately value his talent either, but from what Lewis presents, that's more because of the "imposter syndrome" I've mentioned before.

"When it starts not going right, I think, 'Oh my gosh, I hope I can keep foolin 'em.'" Bradford said. "Then I start to ask, "How much longer can I keep foolin em?'"

Jersey, We Have a Situation

2011-10-14T09:43:00.000-04:00

Professional sports teams go through disappointing seasons where it's clear something is wrong, but there aren't obvious moves to fix the situation. Sometimes the best answer from management is to get rid of some key players who have been around for a while and move in a different direction.

It's time for this to happen to "Jersey Shore."

Some would suggest we just get rid of the show entirely, but as I've written before, there's some merit to having it around. However, in its current state that argument is harder to sustain, and making some changes to the cast would go a long way toward removing some negative elements.

The producers have at least hinted this may happen, though I don't for a second believe the claim made in last night's episode by Mike "The Situation" that he's considering not returning for season five. There's only one episode left in this season, and I would be shocked if it didn't end like all the others with everyone in the house hugging it out and proclaiming their latest stint together was the best time of their lives.

And that's unfortunate. The Situation has to go. He should also take Snooki and her BFF Deena with him. The rest are fine, but these three have descended into a weird state of outrageous behavior this season that's not healthy for them or anyone watching. Something has gone seriously wrong when Sammi "Sweatheart" -- an emotional, unstable wreck in previous seasons -- stands out as the bastion of rationality and normal behavior in this house.

From the beginning, The Situation has been about bravado and making everyone think he's possesses irresistible charm on a level never seen in the history of man. This worked for a while, particularly in the first season when nobody knew any better. But now in season four, everyone has figured him out. The confident persona is all about getting attention, and when things aren't going his way in that department, he starts drama.

It's like he's pathologically wired for destroying relationships, whether it's the rare instance of Ron & Sammi actually getting along this season or his persistent efforts to ruin Snooki's relationship with her boyfriend back home. He even seemed to think it was funny when she got mad and threw a glass wine bottle at him. The persona was entertaining for a while, but now it's just kind of sad to watch, like he's not even happy being there himself.

It also seems like both he and Snooki are victims of the reality show world. I don't mean "victim" in that we should feel too sorry for them, but that their experience with getting super famous for being these characters only served to reinforce that that's what people want to see. When someone writes you a big check and invites you back for another season, it's hard to think you should be doing anything differently. For The Situation that has meant wearing out his welcome with everyone around him, but with Snooki, it's more of a dangerous self-implosion.

She walked into the house in season one with a similar projection of self-confidence, but quickly threatened to leave when she felt like none of her roommates liked her. She ended up trying way too hard, and evolved into someone with a care-free attitude who doesn't give a crap about what anyone else has to say. Oh, and the drinking. She's drunk all the time -- not just she had a few beers and is having a good time drunk, more like half the time she can't walk straight or even sit on a chair without somehow falling on the ground. For a while it's kind of entertaining to watch, the kind of spectacle that makes you just shake your head and say "Wow, whaaaat is wrong with you?" But when it happens episode after episode it becomes, "Wow, seriously, what is wrong with you?!"

The drinking affects more than just her balance, leading to all sorts of self-destructive behavior. That boyfriend she thinks is going to hate her because of what The Situation is saying? She gets in a fight with him on the phone, then hooks up with one of the roommates, and she's so drunk she doesn't remember what happened the next day. That leads to yet another series of arguments on the phone and begging the guy to stay with her because she needs him in her life. It's a wonder he doesn't seem to find that sentiment to be mutual. So for her sake, and for the sake of not promoting her issues as a way to fame and fortune (I'm all about the children, you know) it's time for her to find a more positive occupation. Yes, America has loved Snooki, and thus helped create this monster, but we need to let her go.

She can take her friend Deena, too. Deena is the newest cast member, but all she does is enable Snooki's behavior and serve as a fill-in for Sammi's former role as the girl in the house who can turn any slight into an argument and subsequent crying session. She carries Snooki's same coating of not caring what everyone else thinks, but is so deeply affected by the opinions and actions of the other roommates that everything sets her off.

With those three out of the house for the next season, we would need replacements. MTV obviously has an entire crew of people who scour the country for those interested in being on these shows so I'm not worried about finding willing participants. The new members would bring an infusion of new life, and give us not only new personalities to examine but also reveal new things about the old cast members we think we know and love.

What we need is Vinny and Pauly D continuing to do Vinny and Pauly D things, and for Ron and Sammi to continue their progression into seemingly normal human beings instead of their former roles as polar opposite fighting machines sent to this planet to destroy each other. In fact, Sammi has been so normal this season I actually picked her the other day when a friend demanded I answer "If you HAD to date one of the girls, who would it be?" Before this season, my answer would have been more like, "NONE OF THEM. Are you crazy?!"

As for JWoww, well, let's just say she's on the trading block if next season doesn't start so well and we need to make another change.

Pizza Hut and the (Re)Quest for the Pepperoni Smiley

2011-10-09T12:50:00.001-04:00

A few months ago I asked Pizza Hut to place the pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face.

It wasn't a totally random request, since they have a box on the online order form that specifically asks if you want anything special: "Want your pizza cut into squares? Have another request? Let us know."

I could hardly contain my excitement when I picked up the pizza and brought it out to my car, but disappointment instantly set in when I opened the box and saw no smiley. I posted about it on Facebook and learned I was not alone. My friend Holly said she once requested they cut her pizza into rhombi, but Pizza Hut just called and said they could deliver it uncut so she could cut it herself.

Yesterday, I tried again. I was talking to AV when placing my order and she suggested I throw in a bit of trickery to try to influence the process. "Say it's your 5-year-old's birthday," she said. "Maybe that will tug at their heartstrings."

The only problem with the request section of the form is that it only allows you 28 characters to work with. The word "pepperoni" is so long that you're really limited in saying much else, but this is what I came up with:

I mean, come on, it's for a kid! How could you ignore that? When I picked up the pizza, the guy behind the counter seemed extra happy about the process. Granted, I've never met this guy before so it's possible he's like that all the time, but I want to think my order had something to do with it. Unfortunately, there was nothing special about the pepperoni placement, but at least they got the spirit right:

I still want to find a place that will follow through on the pizza itself. Let me know if you have any luck.

Leviathan

2011-10-08T18:09:00.000-04:00

After reading a few books that were far too close in tone to the project I'm working on, thankfully I stumbled into one that is unlike any I've read in a long time.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" or "High Fidelity," they just muddled my thoughts a bit and complicated what I was doing. Enter "Leviathan," the third book I've read by the underrated Paul Auster.

It follows the usually enjoyable setup of "I'm telling you something about the end of this saga, but in order to understand the situation fully, let me now start at the beginning." The narrator learns that a man has blown himself up in northern Wisconsin, and after reading about it in the newspaper and getting a call from the FBI, he figures it is his friend. He then tells the story of how they each made it to that point, a story of interwoven decisions and fates that build on one another until the final outcome is like two locomotives speeding toward one another.

Auster's style, unlike that of say, Nick Hornby, relies much less on long stretches of quoted interactions. If you're not looking for it, it's easy to miss, but I found myself at various times looking back and finding stretches of pages without a single piece of dialogue. Just shows there are lots of ways to tell a story.

The man who blows himself up is a writer named Sachs, whose brain is always running with whatever he is working on consuming his thoughts. The narrator describes him by saying, "The wall between work and idleness had crumbled to such a degree for him that he scarcely noticed it was there. This helped him as a writer, I think, since his best ideas seemed to come to him when he was away from his desk."

I can't even remotely tell you how many blog posts can be directly attributed to that notion. I never sit down and say, "OK, let's post something." Often what happens is I'll wake up at some ridiculous hour thinking about something random, and know that I'll continue thinking about it until I just bite the bullet and get up to write it all down. Of course, then getting back to sleep afterward is a different challenge.

Sachs also deals with struggles that a lot of creative people go through with uncertainty about accurately evaluating their own work. Author Bill Carter talked about this "imposter syndrome" in his book "The War for Latenight" - the feeling that no matter how good you are, someone's going to eventually expose that you're not. In Sachs' case, he asks the narrator to read the first third of a novel he is working on:

"I've reached a stage where I don't know what I'm doing anymore," he said. "I can't tell if it's good or bad. I can't tell if it's the best thing I've ever done or a pile of garbage."

Part of my lack of posts lately has been due to hitting this point with my own work. I know I've said about 37 times that I'm going to do a proper update on what's been going on, but I really do intend (possibly in the next week or so) to follow through on that. Thankfully I feel like I'm through a really rough patch, thanks to consultant/editor/consigliere AV's push, echoed by the narrator in this story, to "just keep writing."

For anyone who insists that growing a beard is a good idea, I'm going to use Sachs' wisdom as my excuse for not letting it grow. After spending some time in the hospital, he rocks a beard for a while before snapping out of that phase for the sake of the country:

"He wanted to do his bit for capitalism. By shaving three or four times a week, he would be helping keep the razorblade companies in business, which meant that he would be contributing to the good of the American economy, to the health and prosperity of all."

So remember that next time you suggest I let the beard grow. As much as I enjoy ditching the beard, I get even greater satisfaction out of seeing random references I understand from having read other books. In this case my knowledge was thanks to Ralph Keyes and his book "I Love it When You Talk Retro." It's only because of him that this made any sense:

"You always dressed me up when we went out, and I hated it. I felt like a sissy in those clothes, a Fauntleroy in full regalia."

Fauntleroy, Keyes writes, is Little Lord Fauntleroy, who first appeared in literary works in 1886. "As much as the text itself, detailed drawings of Little Lord Fauntleroy in a dark velvet suit with a scalloped white collar created an indelible image of this idealized child. They inspired a type of formal (some would say prissy) boys' wear."

And I don't have anything else to add to this, but I loved this quote too much not to share. It's from Sachs' wife, Fanny:

"You don't want to get stuck in the past. Life is too interesting for that.

What You're Looking For

2011-10-07T00:50:00.000-04:00

If you're looking for a can't-miss business idea, I can assure you there's money in the custom ping pong paddle industry. Seriously.

The most common search term that lands people here continues to involve homemade paddles, with "China home made ping pong paddles" and "sweet paint jobs for a paddle" showing up this month. Though, actually, that last one may be related to something else entirely that maybe we should ignore.

I'm not sure how to monetize that -- maybe do-it-yourself kits, mall kiosks offering custom paint jobs -- but there's money there for sure.

For anyone who still doesn't agree with my method for making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, at least I include the peanut butter part. Someone ended up at that post recently after Googling "Jelly on bread." Sounds delicious.

One of the cool things about the service I use to see this info is that it will (sometimes) tell you where your site ranked in the search results. Even better is seeing how ridiculously patient some people are when browsing those results.

Take this recent example. Someone in India searched "Gutters cleaning service," which after 197 other results listed my post about the epidemic of gutter-cleaning peeps leaving flyers stuck in our front door. For the record, we still aren't interested. If the Google page shows 10 results at a time, that means they browsed through nearly 20 pages of other options before reading my post. And even then, it could in no way have had anything to do with what they were actually looking for.

Those are my favorite outcomes, when what I wrote has absolutely no bearing on what the person was trying to find out. Someone once searched something like "what aisle silly bandz target" and ended up at a post describing these awesome marshmallows I found at Target and a completely unrelated anecdote that mentioned Silly Bandz.

Thanks to another search a few weeks ago, I now know that Googling "tweety tat" brings up one of my posts as the fifth result. It has nothing to do with Tweety Bird or tattoos, of course. Just me talking about my Twitter habits.

There was one search in the past month that did really make me curious about the searcher. They said, "Why not live it up take the risk," and landed on this post from 2007. I was writing about the movie 10 mph, which tells the story of a team of people who were unsatisfied with their lives, quit their jobs and pursued a project of riding Segways across the country.

I wrote it the day after I quit a job that was sucking the life out of me and daily worsening a sense of personal disappointment. Whether that somehow drew me to this movie, or if it just happened to come to me at a time it would really speak to me, it did help to put some things in perspective.

I hope in this one case the searcher found what they were looking for.

I'm glad to see that some people have also started making use of the buttons on the bottom of each post that allow you to easily share something you like. If there's one thing people love to do these days, it's sharing links, and the buttons make it easy to email, post on Twitter and Facebook, or for the really cool kids, +1 it on Google.

As always, thanks for reading.

Ideas Lost

2011-10-06T01:31:00.000-04:00

The death of anyone represents unrealized potential, the loss of what could have been with another minute, year or decade of life.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, the world paused to remember a man who changed a lot about the way we create, share and experience the world ours has become. He led a company that revolutionized whole lines of products that now seem essential in our lives. Now the question will always be, "What else would he have done?"

His lost legacy is not unique. You can ask that question about anyone. A loss of life is the loss of inventions, books, works of art, ideas and experiences. With each one, the world -- in ways however grand or minute -- will never be the same.

A few years ago I read a book that remains one of my favorites. It was recommended to me by a friend, written by an author I had never heard of. The story is one I connected with from the first page, with an unforgettably unique protagonist -- the kind of experience that left me wanting to read everything he had ever written. Sadly, there wasn't much else.

The book was "A Confederacy of Dunces," which earned author John Kennedy Toole the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. But under the weight of depression he killed himself, and it was only after his death that "Dunces" and another book he wrote at age 16 were published. It's a shame the untold stories in his head were lost before they were told.

So to the creators, the storytellers, the visionaries and anyone with ideas kept private because they seemed silly or unimportant -- please share them. The world wants to know.

Nats a Wrap

2011-09-26T08:59:00.001-04:00

The Washington Nationals may be a few games under .500, but in the 14 times I went to Nats Park this year they went 8-6. Clearly I'm a good person to have around.

The last visit of the season was yesterday, a 4-1 win over the Atlanta Braves in which I saw pitcher Chien-Ming Wang get his first Major League hit.

That was a milestone I actually saw three times this year in what was an eventful and extraordinarily fun season at the ballpark. The most incredible moment by far was rookie pitcher Tom Milone belting a 3-run homer on the very first pitch of his first Major League at-bat -- the eighth pitcher to ever do that. In case that game needed a little more drama, Nats star Ryan Zimmerman won it in the bottom of the ninth inning with a walk-off single. A post-game concert by one of my favorite bands, Lifehouse, was icing on the cake.

Late-game heroics were a common thread all season, as we watched Zimmerman end a game last month against the hated Philadelphia Phillies with a walk-off grand slam. Michael Morse finished off our May 27 evening at the park with a walk-off home run as well -- that's three of our 14 games ending in walk-off wins.

That doesn't count June 14, when the Nationals trailed 6-2 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning. Even with three more at-bats, it seemed like the Nats had no chance. But they responded with six runs in the inning, scoring on a wild pitch to tie the game, and getting the eventual winning run when the Cardinals pitcher hit the Nationals batter with the bases loaded.

In July, the Nats scored a winning run against the Cubs on a late suicide squeeze play, which I unfortunately missed because I had to leave the game early to make it into work.

At another of our games, an opposing player hit a home run into the left field stands. The fan who caught it threw it back onto the field -- an impressive toss that made it all the way back to the infield. Unfortunately for him, security was not as enthused and kicked him out.

Our second-to-last game had a few quirks, going 13 innings, and featuring both two ceremonial first pitches and two between-inning races between the president mascots. Those mascot races this year also gave me the opportunity to see Teddy Roosevelt be tackled by a monkey and a leprechaun, and for human Jayson Werth to grab a win himself.

I can definitively say it was a very unmemorable year for pitcher John Lannan. Except for opening day, I did not remember him starting a single one of our other games. Well, apparently there were three others. Better luck next year, John.

Here's to 2012.

Salt on the Side

2011-09-22T11:21:00.000-04:00

While many fast food places are really particular about giving out extras like forks or ketchup, McDonald's is apparently very conscious about salt.

Before today I would have offered up their fries as an example that they are in no way concerned about the amount of salt they hand through the drive-thru window, but that was then. Now I know better.

As I counted down the seconds remaining until my weekend this morning at work, all I could think about was how hungry I was and how much I wanted to solve that problem by downing a couple of Egg McMuffins. This is actually a very convenient thought to have at such a time since there's a McDonald's on my way home.

I pulled into the drive-thru, ordered my two Egg McMuffins and nothing more. After paying at the first window, the nice woman inside handed me back my credit card and receipt, which looks like this:

I don't remember ordering the salt packet, but I'm glad they are so concerned about inventory that their computer system actually has an entry for "Salt Packet." And that it has no cost.

When I got home and opened the bag, I found two Egg McMuffins, and three napkins (why aren't they are the receipt?), but no salt. Maybe I should go back and get a refund.

Strasmas

2011-09-18T10:25:00.001-04:00

Last year I saw Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg strike out 10 batters in his electrifying second start as a major league pitcher.

Then he hurt his elbow, had surgery and spent months outside of my baseball-watching world. Until last night.

Strasburg walks to the dugout after pre-game warmups

I had a ticket to check out his previous start, which happened to fall on a workday and during a week in which it rained constantly in the Washington, D.C., area. I figured there was no way they would actually play the game, and decided to grab a few more hours of sleep before my overnight shift instead. They played.

The next night was one of the games in our 14-game ticket package. It rained, but we made the effort to go into the city determined to watch the game, which of course was canceled before we even made it to the stadium. Fortunately though, we were able to trade those tickets in for any future game and ended up with a Strasburg start.

Our normal seats are down the third base line, so it was extra fortuitous that the replacement tickets just happened to put us right next to where Strasburg was warming up before the game. Here's that, plus what he does best -- striking people out to end innings:

He ended up pitching six innings, allowing one earned run on four hits and striking out three.

The Nats lost the game in 13 innings, but I was able to see a few interesting things along the way that had nothing to do with the game. First, there were two ceremonial first pitches. I didn't know that was technically possible. In the bottom of the 12th inning, the remaining fans mounted an impressively long version of the wave that seemed to grow stronger and stronger each time it went around the stadium. That is, until Jayson Werth struck out looking, immediately everyone so much there was no will to continue.

There was also the unprecedented second running of the Presidents Race, which typically happens in the middle of the fourth inning. But with the game stretching deep into the night (actually it was pretty quick for a 13-inning game), the presidents made it out for a second run. I took video of the first one, which will surely satisfy your lifelong desire to see a leprechaun tackle Teddy Roosevelt:

If you are into such things there is a blog devoted entirely to the Presidents Race. And yes, I'm jealous I am not responsible for it.

Mojo No Mo'

2011-09-11T20:27:00.003-04:00

I'm sad to report my mojo is completely gone.

For years I have had an uncanny ability to predict the outcome of random events and win $1 wagers with roommate CA. Last year, I wrote about a streak in which CA ended up owing me $10 -- highlighted by my accurate guesses regarding snowfall totals, children's hockey games and the color of Bob Costas' tie.

As of right now I owe him $4, and in a few days it will be $5.

It started when our other roommate, MR, bought a bike with no pedals. Weighing that and other factors, I figured there was no way he was going to ride it within a month and made a wager to that effect. Well, he got pedals and went for a ride after about two weeks. Since MR and CA had discussed the bet beforehand and thus tainted the results, we made a new bet on a second ride not taking place within the following two weeks. That happened too. CA +1

On Saturday, with Alabama leading Penn State 7-3, I bet that the Nittany Lions would stage a comeback at home and win the game. Then Alabama scored 20 unanswered points on their way to winning 27-11. CA +2

In the late stages of that game, I was watching my Susquehanna Crusaders play Johns Hopkins thanks to a CBSSportsline gamecast and a video feed from the Hopkins athletic department. Maybe I was better off in the days when I was unable to follow SU football in real-time, since they trailed 35-0 at halftime. But there's an opportunity to wager on pretty much anything, so with the score 56-7 I offered CA and over-under of 85 points for the final score. There was still more than 10 minutes on the clock, so I was ecstatic when CA chose the under. Then nobody scored, and I learned the hard way that I should never bet on Crusader football. CA +3

Fresh off three-straight football-related losses, I thought "What the heck, let's bet on football again." My beloved New York Giants and hated Washington Redskins were tied at halftime. CA bet the 'Skins would win, and I obviously had to back the G-men. Washington 28, New York 14. Shoot me now. CA +4

Months ago -- perhaps even last year -- CA started talking about this sweet new phone he was going to get. He threw out rumored release dates and talked up why it is the greatest phone of all time. But he was disappointed as Samsung refused to announce anything publicly, and all the chatter on the interweb kept pushing the rumored release date back. I stood steadfast in my belief he would never ever get the phone, either because it would never be released or he would end up getting something else instead. I even bet a dollar on it. Well, this weekend he ordered it. It will be here in a few days. CA +5

I write this hoping to somehow reverse my jinx and reclaim my winning ways. Though maybe you should take this opportunity to harness my bad luck for your gain and have me bet against something you really want to have happen.

I'll only charge you a dollar.

Lifehouse In The Nats' House

2011-09-04T09:50:00.005-04:00

Last night I had one of the best baseball game experiences of my life.

It started with a rookie pitcher who in his first Major League start threw two no-hit innings, then hit a 3-run HR in first first at-bat. On the very first pitch he saw. Which I (sort of) predicted:

Bro: "Oh the pitcher's up."
Me: "We haven't seen him hit, he might be good."
Bro: "True..."
Me: "If I see a pitcher homer in his first big league at-bat I'm never coming to a game again. I'll never see anything better than that."

I guess predicting the future happens to be in our genes. Late in the game, with the Nationals trailing by two runs, my brother said Ryan Zimmerman would hit a walk-off home run. He later amended that to just a walk-off hit.

Ninth inning. Bases loaded. Ryan Zimmerman hits a single. Two runs score. Nationals win.

The game itself would have been high on the list of great experiences, but these tickets we bought back in March just happened to fall on a day when the Nats were having a post-game concert featuring Lifehouse.

That would be Lifehouse, one of my favorite bands. (Yeah yeah, not a universally accepted choice, but I like them, so whatevs.) They're best known for their hit song "Hanging By A Moment," which came out when I was a senior in high school:

When I heard they were playing after the game I figured they might do four or five songs, but they ended up playing 12 in all. I was slightly disappointed they didn't hit my favorite one, but I'm not about to argue about a free concert. One of the big worries about hearing a band you like play in person for the first time is the fear that they will be terrible live, but fortunately I thought Lifehouse was fantastic last night.

Here's a medley of the show (minus "Nerve Damage" which I failed to record at all):

For people who care about such things, the set list was:

-All In
-Spin (which I used in a montage in my documentary)
-Nerve Damage
-You and Me
-Whatever It Takes
-Wrecking Ball
-Beast of Burden (Rolling Stones cover)
-Falling In
-Hanging By A Moment
-Halfway Gone
-First Time
-Broken

High Fidelity

2011-09-02T23:11:00.002-04:00

Sometimes life is all about timing.

Last week I finished Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity," which at another point in my life I think I would have really enjoyed. But for some reason I had a really hard time connecting with it in a positive way. It doesn't have anything to do with Hornby since I've read and enjoyed several of his other books, but rather with how some of the elements relate to things that are going on right now.

One of the major issues is the attitude of the main character, who runs a record shop and uses the story of several past loves as a lens to explain his latest relationship issues. His attitude is awful -- brooding, negative, excessively sarcastic -- and one that mirrors the kind of thing I've been working very hard lately to eliminate from the main character in my own writing project. (Yes, I'm still writing. Maybe I'll update soon, but it's been rather challenging in the past month or two.)

Given that he owns a record store, it's not surprising that music plays a big role in the story. There are musicians, endless top-5 lists of artists, albums and songs, and lots of talk about how certain songs can be closely tied to something in your memory:

"Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forwards, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time."

We all have those. If you've listened to a piece of music at any point in your life, it's impossible to not have a few notes or a chorus bring someone or something rushing back to your mind no matter how far your brain has to reach. Sometimes that sentimentality is a good thing that elicits strong, positive emotions, but just as easily those songs can leave you shaking your head.

Books can do that too. Another thing that I think skewed my experience with this book was the name of one of the recurring characters. Seeing it over and over again rang notes that brought me back to a situation I once had such fond memories of, but which has since been tainted by a flood of negativity. It's hard to change those associations.

This was also one of those books that somehow ended up with a lot of dog-eared pages by the time I finished, but looking back at those pages I have no idea why I marked them. I should really start taking notes as I read. I'll end with one that doesn't really need any explanation:

"I can see everything once it's already happened -- I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand."

Hits Keep Coming

2011-08-27T10:18:00.008-04:00

This may come as a great shock, but as a child I was a bit of a goofball.

That's me at baseball practice at the age of 10. It's from a tape I found recently that my coach had made of each of us hitting. I imagine nowadays it would be some slickly produced highlight video with a pulsing soundtrack, but back then it was cool to be able to watch ourselves play.

My brother I went to some batting cages yesterday to take some swings and see if we could actually still hit long after the glory days of our baseball-playing years. I brought along a camera, and it was interesting to see how things haven't changed much. Sure, I'm stronger, have a little more swagger in my stance and definitely look better in HD, but all those swings as a 10-year-old certainly laid the foundation.

A little from then and now:

The old video also showed that my penchant for neatness is nothing new. I had forgotten about my habit of cleaning off home plate whenever it was my turn during batting practice:

Someone had to do it, right?

Outliers

2011-08-26T09:28:00.004-04:00

The notion of the American Dream is that anyone can work hard and be successful, and that those who achieve great things got to where they are through their dedication, brilliance and effort.

In "Outliers" author Malcolm Gladwell says those things are all well and good, but if you look hard enough there are almost arbitrary advantages that make a huge difference in who rises to the top.

"It makes a difference where and when we grew up," Gladwell writes. "The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine."

I heard about this book long before I read it, specifically the example of elite hockey players. Gladwell says that if you look at any collection of people from this group, you'll see that 40 percent of them were born in January, February and March. That compares to just 30 percent for July through December.

Why? It has to do with a seemingly innocuous decision -- the date that youth leagues use as a cutoff to decide how old you are for that season. They say however old you are on January 1, that's your age. So kids with January 2 birthdays end up being almost a year older than kids in the same league who were born December 31. That matters. They're bigger, they've probably been playing longer, so they seem a little better. They end up being picked for all-star teams, which play more games and practice more, thus turning any small advantage in skill into a huge one, all because of that date.

I was a huge beneficiary of this growing up. I played baseball, and in our league the cutoff date was July 31. My birthday is August 3, so I was always one of the older kids. Gladwell says if you look at professional baseball players, more of them are born in August than any other month. Not sure where I went wrong.

But if you're not that interested in sports, he says "these exact same biases also show up in areas of much more consequence, like education." Parents have to decide when to start their kids in school, which makes a big difference given the group they progress with. Here, I was on the opposite side of things, always one of the youngest people in my class. I was in the same grade as roommates CA and MR as we went through school, but both of them are almost a year older than I am. Sure, everyone could drive before I could, but that didn't mean I couldn't do better than them on a test.

As part of a larger point, Gladwell brought up something about IQ that I thought was one of the more interesting notes in the whole book. He writes that experts say after a certain point, having a higher IQ makes no real-world difference. There are thresholds at which you are considered to have the mental capacity to pass high school or get through college, but he says someone with an IQ of 130 is no more likely to win a Nobel Prize than someone whose IQ is 180. He compares it to basketball players -- if you're 5-foot-5 there's little chance you're going to play in the NBA. But being 6-4 versus being 6-6 isn't as big of a deal -- you just have to be "tall enough."

Being 6-3 did not help my basketball career, though if any NBA teams are reading, I am still a free agent.

Among other people, Gladwell writes about Bill Gates and how going to a certain high school that happened to have a really advanced computer, and then living near a college with a computer lab he could go to in the middle of the night were small advantages that led to his incredible success. These examples are interesting and make you think about how those little things add up. But Gladwell also takes moments here and there to give a more practical view of why we should pay attention to these things:

"Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today? To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success -- the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history -- with a society that provides opportunities for all."

Amen.

National(s) Pastime

2011-08-22T09:49:00.004-04:00

The Philadelphia Phillies decided to lose a few games in Washington over the weekend, and for some reason thousands of their fans decided to make the trip to see the beatdown in person.

This has become a trend whenever the Phillies are in town, with their fans occupying a huge portion of the stadium. As per the stereotypical reputation for Philly fans, they do a lot of booing, mainly of the Nationals, even during super classy times like when the team was being introduced during a pregame ceremony on Opening Day last year.

I went to the game on Saturday with my brother, Pat, and we were able to witness a rare moment in sports -- both fan bases booing the same player. If you aren't familiar with either team, Washington right field Jayson Werth used to play in Philly and this year has been terrible for the Nats:

The great thing about hearing the Philly fans boo is that Werth did nothing but a favor to them. He signed a big contract as a free agent, doing zero harm to the Phillies, and given his performance this year I'm not sure what exactly they are mad about.

There's an old anecdote about Philly fans booing anyone, even Santa Claus. Well, after Saturday you can add George Washington to the list:

Sure, some of those boos were from Nats fans who wanted Teddy Roosevelt to get his first ever win, but given the number of Phillies fans in attendance it had to be mostly them.

Another thing I don't understand about that fan base is their desire to grab the Nationals-related promotional items. Last year I saw thousands of Phillies fans pick up their free Nats hats on Opening Day. On Saturday, the first 15,000 fans got an Ian Desmond bobblehead. That's Ian Desmond, shortstop for the Nats. I don't think I saw a single Washington fan with a bobblehead -- just those from Philly.

I know if I went up to see a game at Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park and it was Shane Victorino bobblehead day, I certainly wouldn't take one. Why would I possibly want it?

Just more proof that Philadelphia, and its fans, are crazy.

Major Wisdom

2011-08-19T00:58:00.005-04:00

You meet someone for the first time. They're attractive, nice to everyone around them, have a really engaging personality, and seem like they could succeed at absolutely anything they try. In a word, they're perfect.

You set this person up on a mantle, an object of envy, someone you wish you could be like. They have it all together in ways you don't feel like you do.

But as you get to know them more, you see the cracks, those little flaws that bring them down from that cloud of seeming perfection. And yet, you find that as you see more of those nuances the person seems even better than you initially thought. There's a more colorful story there, one that shoots through the highs and lows of life instead of cruising along at a constant one-note level.

As a character in Helen Simonson's "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" puts it, "Everyone needs a few flaws to make them real."

The story follows Major Pettigrew, a retired British army officer who lives in a small town characterized by proper social structures and country club attitude. The Major at once embraces the old set as a defense of traditional British ways against modern excess while also bristling at the lack of progress in cultural acceptance.

The Major strikes up a friendship with a Pakistani woman who runs a sort of convenience store in town, a relationship that brings out more than a few off-handed less-than-enlightened comments from his friends and country club colleagues. As they connect into a deeper and deeper friendship, the Major (a widower) and Mrs. Ali (a widow) find an unexpected renewal of the types of feelings they thought had long ago left their lives for good.

But life isn't perfect, and when circumstances surrounding Mrs. Ali's family force her to leave town, the Major is left to discuss the disappointment with a neighbor who pushes him to reach out to her and make sure she knows how he feels:

"You miss her," she said. "You are not happy."
"It is a moot point," he said. "She made her choice very clear. One feels quite powerless."

Whether it's a slow realization or an overt rejection, this is one of the worst feelings we can experience. You care for someone who decides they don't want you as that part of their life. They make a choice and you can't help but feel powerless as they leave you wondering what it is about you that makes it so easy for them to say "no thanks."

But sometimes we can save ourselves from that fate, or protect ourselves from that disappointment, if only we pay attention to the subtle and not-so-subtle signs, no matter at what stage a relationship may be. The Major, comforting his son who just had a fight with his girlfriend, offers some wisdom that a girl -- or two, or 283 -- in my past could identify with:

"You are not the first man to miss a woman's more subtle communication," he said. "They think they are waving when we see only the calm sea, and pretty soon everybody drowns."

It's really a sweet story about the Major and Mrs. Ali, the Major and his son, Mrs. Ali's family, and how all of them interact in a community of differing goals, standards and ideas of how the world should work.

I'll end with one of the Major's many nuggets of wisdom: "But we, who can do anything, we refuse to live our dreams on the basis that they are not practical."

[Note: I realize this is the kind of post some people may read too much into. Don't.]

Watch Your Language

2011-08-18T12:55:00.006-04:00

"Jersey Shore" cast members may have sparked the use of acronyms like GTL and DTF (NSFW BTW), but they weren't the first to come up with catchy shorthand to communicate with their friends.

During the summer after high school CA and I worked together, and given that we lived on the same street, we spent a lot of our free time together too. Naturally, we needed an efficient way to talk about the important things in our life, so we began trying a few new terms and nicknames for our coworkers and ended up with what we called Chrispeak.

A typical exchange might go something like this:

CA: "Yo, you RTW? TR gave us some TMS for the LM."
CH: "SLAP city, just have to chill my TL and hit a BB."

I'll forgive you if you don't remember anything from the Chrispeak classes you took in school. In English, that conversation reads:

CA: "Yo, you ready to work? Jeff (our boss) gave us some timesheets to input in the Eliminator (our computer system)."
CH: "Sounds like a plan, I just have to put my two-liter (of soda) in the fridge and take a bathroom break."

It's a very diverse language system that involves both using acronyms and crazy chains of logic to come up with nicknames, like the one for our boss Jeff. We started with a play on his last name and called him The Fong, which became The Royal Fongness, TR Fong, Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy, and finally Ted. Totally clear, right?

We also had a coworker named Faith, whose name was clearly so long and difficult to say that we decided she should be Rev instead. The people in our office were slightly confused by some of this, so being the nice guys we are we created a cheat sheet so they could keep up. In the wonders of the digital age, I actually found it -- A Beginner's Guide to Chrispeak.

I'm proud to report that all these years later we still use some of these terms from time to time. However, I'm sad to say we are no longer offering to detail your car. Sorry. TTYL.

In Defense Of Snooki

2011-08-12T07:17:00.008-04:00

Let's just get it out there -- I love "Jersey Shore."

There. I said it. Judge if you must, but hear me out.

For those who don't know, "Jersey Shore" is a reality show on MTV that follows eight 20-somethings as they spend a summer living it up at, you guessed it, the Jersey Shore. Actually one of the seasons was shot in Miami and the current episodes were done in Italy, but whatever. Just go with it.

The show has the normal things you would expect from any reality show, with enough debauchery, infighting, drunken wisdom and egoism to make even Charlie Sheen proud. There are certainly lots of people who think it may be the dumbest show on television, but those people are clearly ignoring the one -- or many -- shows on their DVR that are no better. Don't pretend like you're watching the National Geographic channel all day.

My roommates and I realized last night while watching the show that it is pretty much the only one that all three of us watch. There are others that two of us keep up with, but "Jersey Shore" is sure to bring everyone into the living room at the same time.

One of the things I love is that the majority of the time they refer to each other with nicknames -- not ones that came organically from within this group, but rather were brought from home and tossed in as a part of their original introductions. "My friends call me Snooki." Oh, OK, we'll just call you that then.

We all have nicknames for friends that we use once in a while, but those always have some sort of inside joke that makes sense within that relationship. I don't introduce myself with the option of calling me Hotshoe, Heinous, Christafuh, Erty, Channas or Issypher, since those are only meaningful to certain people. I have no idea where Snooki came from, but it certainly wasn't from the Shore house. For the non-watchers, the other names include JWoww, The Situation, Pauly D, and Sammi Sweatheart -- though no one uses that last one because she's not. At all.

Another sign of a great show is the use of catchphrases, and "Jersey Shore" certainly doesn't disappoint. When we get close to 10 on Thursday nights (when the show airs) you are guaranteed to hear shouts of "Cabs are heeere" and "Awww yeah, burgers for the boys" ringing through our house. I might even go to Twitter in the pre-show excitement:

That's all not to mention the now-ubiquitous terms GTL, smush, and grenade that sprang from the show.

But really the main draw of the Jersey Shore comes down to the fact that it features one of my favorite things in the world -- drama that doesn't involve me.

Oh and it inspired the name of my fantasy football team, which year after year brings lots of assets to the table but ultimately underperforms: CWoww.

Watch and Learn

2011-08-05T15:34:00.007-04:00

I know after my stellar effort hosting a fake infomercial the world has been clamoring for more.

Lucky for you there is another video in the same vein, this time with me hosting a series of important instructional videos. If you never figured out how to drive a nail with a hammer, read a digital clock or use a faucet, this is the video for you.

It again features Dave, this time as my student, and our friend Justin does some camera work. You'll notice a few rough edits throughout the video, which is mainly due to the fact that the entire thing is basically ad-libbed and we just couldn't make it through without laughing. That will be really clear when you see the bonus blooper video afterward.

Sit back and learn:

Things may have gotten a little silly during the shoot. If I were an SNL cast member, people would definitely complain about my laughing during sketches:

Ukraine is Strong

2011-08-05T01:54:00.006-04:00

Back in high school, my friend David and I used to borrow his parents' video camera and make creative videos as a way to pass time, have fun and learn how to edit.

Actually, "make" creative videos might not be as accurate as "thinking about making" creative videos. A lot of times we would be hanging out at his house and have the following conversation:

Dave: "Dude, we should make a video."
Me: "Yeah, definitely."
Dave: "Do you have any ideas?"
Me: "No, you?"
Dave: "No."
Me: "Cool."

We would look around the room and flip through TV channels looking for inspiration, and sometimes, as in the case I'm about to show you, we could come up with a concept we thought we could actually pull off.

This video I believe was done during our senior year of high school. I'm pretty sure about the high school part, and based on my car I walk by in the beginning and my seeming lack of braces, that timeline would fit. It would also make it one of the first videos we edited in Adobe Premiere, which has been used for the majority of what I've shared here.

Without further ado:

Don't worry, mom. Unloaded BB gun.

PB&J Revisited

2011-08-04T09:04:00.004-04:00

It turns out that in the peanut butter and jelly world, I am part of a very select group of people who make sandwiches in a logical way.

After my post last week, I got a lot of feedback that showed most of you do not agree with my method. The comments ranged from saying I'm un-American to my own mother questioning how she raised me. I really had no idea I was doing something so strange, always assuming everyone did it the same way. I guess we learn a lot by asking even simple questions.

What I learned is that even though I may be different, I'm not alone. Shout-out to those who PB&J the right way -- my coworker JA, sister-in-law Bethany, and my second-cousin Sara, whom I have never met but who has been awarded instant cool status.

And for those who still question my method -- especially those in my family -- please consider this email I got from Grandpa Hannas: "P.S. PB&J - Gramma makes 'em like you do."

Who can argue with that?

Orange You Glad

2011-07-29T12:06:00.004-04:00

It's funny which little comments people make to you over the years that stick with you and end up affecting things you do later on.

This morning I unpacked a box of clothes I just bought -- a process I absolutely cannot go through without thinking of my friend Aundrea. Her comments have played a role in pretty much every piece of clothing I have purchased since early 2006.

We went to grad school together, and I walked into class one day wearing this shirt with orange stripes on the sleeves:

Aundrea practically gave me a Nobel Prize in fashion for the dose of color, and used the opportunity to inform me that my wardrobe was extremely boring. She had a point. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that 90 percent of my shirts at the time were either navy blue, grey, grey with navy blue, or navy blue with grey.

For a while her influence was more direct in my mind. I would see a shirt I liked and think, "Ok, this the color I would get, but Aundrea would tell me to get that one."

I think I more routinely expand my horizons today, and can report that none of the shirts I just got are navy blue or grey. Now if only I could bring back the bright yellow shoes I used to have.

Great PB&J Debate

2011-07-27T09:09:00.004-04:00

There's a great debate raging in our household, and since I'm on the losing end of a 2-1 vote I have to make my case here and hope for outside support.

The issue is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Specifically, it's the proper way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Twice in the past month or so (once by each of my roommates) I have been ridiculed for my method, which to them makes no sense. Judging by their reactions, you might think I was using a spoon instead of a knife or cranberry sauce in place of jelly.

No. They say it is crazy to do this:

That's putting down one piece of bread, spreading on the peanut butter, then spreading on the jelly, and finally placing the other piece of bread on top.

What they think is "obviously better" is this:

Spread the peanut butter on one piece of bread, the jelly on another, then join them together.

The result? The.Exact.Same.Thing. You have two pieces of bread with identical layers of peanut butter and jelly smashed together inside. No difference at all.

Please weigh in.

A Kool-Aid Miracle

2011-07-24T09:25:00.005-04:00

I'll forgive you if you are unaware that I am an infomercial superstar.

After all, my most famous ad was done under the pseudonym Ricardo Simones and it's possible you weren't totally sure about our uncanny resemblance.

The infomercial was for a product called the 48 Hour Miracle, a diet drink that promised to help people lose 20 pounds in just two days. In reality, it was really just green Kool-Aid, but for two easy payments of $14.95 it was definitely worth a shot.

We made the ad for a public relations class in college. It was part of a much larger project to create a campaign for a made-up product, and when the option for making a video was presented there was little doubt ours was going to be awesome.

It's longer than others I have posted here -- about 5 minutes -- but I think it definitely captures a lot of the stereotypical cheesiness of the genre. For those who went to Susquehanna, we shot the "studio" portion in the basement of the library and the "before" pictures outside a room in Smith Hall.

To me it's really obvious but since a lot of people ask, yes that is my "announcer" voice at the end.

Hurry while supplies last.

Auto Incorrect

2011-07-23T08:40:00.003-04:00

One of the best developments in the cell phone industry is autocorrect, which takes things like "dtubw" and figures out you really meant to type "drive."

One of the worst developments in the cell phone industry is autocorrect, which takes roughly 90 percent of what you say and replaces it with entirely incomprehensible statements that somehow include words no one would ever intentionally text.

I've gotten used to my phone and its mission to make me look stupid, so I can happily report I only have two issues that constantly pop up. For some reason my phone refuses to believe I ever actually want to use the words "of" and "taco."

If you hypothetically asked if I wanted to grab something to eat, but I just went to my favorite fast food establishment, I might send you a reply that says, "Sorry, already have a belly full of Taco Bell."

Of course just because that's what I intend to send doesn't mean that's what you'll see.

Deep inside my phone gremlins and possibly Keebler elves will be hard at work, analyzing and debating what message they should send out into the world. They'll analyze all of my previous texts, utterly disregard that history and randomly throw darts at a board full of alternate statements they somehow think will be an improvement over what I typed.

The result will look something like this:

"Sorry, already have a belly full if taxi Bell."

Thanks, phone. That was helpful.

Fro-Zen

2011-07-22T00:09:00.000-04:00

I may have a brain full of useless information, as I described in the last post, but in there somewhere there are also lots of really useful skills with everyday applications.

And by that I mean things like the proper technique for dispensing a Slurpee at 7-Eleven.

As a kid, I slowly got introduced into the Slurpee world through trips my siblings and I used to take on our bikes to a shopping center about a mile and a half from our house. I'm not sure it's the kind of thing parents let their kids do these days, but for us it was an incredibly fun way to get out of the house and spend some of our allowance money.

There were lots of options back then from Tippy's Tacos to Pizzatalia, and of course, the kid favorite McDonald's. But I was always a fan of hitting up 7-Eleven for a Big Bite hot dog and a Slurpee.

mmmm, frozen deliciousness...

I didn't start to focus on the technique until late in high school, when CA and I became regular enough customers that we probably should have been paying part of their rent. During the spring of our junior year, we went something like 40 days in a row.

For a while we were just focused on large amounts of soda, which culminated in downing Double Gulps while we played video games after school. For those who don't know, that's only about 3.5 ounces less than a 2-liter bottle.

Eventually we graduated to honing our Slurpee skills, which is probably a good development considering our desire to keep living. From our experience, there are three things you need to know for a perfect Slurpee experience:

1. Put the lid on first. The seal is tight enough that you can fill it up until it's basically overflowing through the top, thus gaining a liiiiitle bit more of frozen delicious goodness.

2. Before you put your cup under the nozzle area, pull the lever slightly to let out the liquid that collects there. It's kind of like shaking a ketchup bottle before you use it.

3. There is no such thing as a flavor of Slurpee. Yes, there are Slurpee flavors, but under no circumstance are you to put fewer than three of them in your cup. That approach doesn't necessarily work at a soda fountain, but in Slurpee land the colors and flavors mix together like a symphony of fantasticness.

It's going to be 102 degrees today where I live. Sounds like a Slurpee day.

Remember Remember

2011-07-21T09:13:00.002-04:00

There's a lot of information in my brain, and I'm pretty sure about 97.3 percent of it is completely unnecessary.

I'm not some kind of super genius who knows the atomic weight of everything in the periodic table, or one who can name all the kings of England.

Rather, I know things that have absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever, like the names of multiple characters from "The Hills" and the technical term for the little plastic thing on the end of shoelaces.

Can't remember what class we had together in high school? I could probably tell you. Why is that important now? It's not. At all. (Do I like when people ask themselves questions? No. Am I stopping now? Thankfully.)

A few weeks ago I met up with some college friends -- Shawn L. and Mindy -- for lunch at our favorite pizza place and some quality time strolling around campus. You may recall from previous entries that Shawn L. was one of my roommates.

At one point during the conversation he mentioned this one summer he spent on campus to take extra classes, and couldn't remember which of the dorm buildings he lived in. I was almost 200 miles away during that summer (2004), and yet I could immediately recall that he spent those months staying in Hassinger Hall.

I can honestly say that conversation is the only time in the past seven years that knowing that minor detail has benefitted me in any way. I hope I didn't need that space in my brain for something else.

(Totally unrelated note: After roughly two years, I put in the three minutes of effort it took to create my own icon for the address bar. Get excited.)

I (Don't) See Where You're Going With This

2011-07-15T12:47:00.006-04:00

I can unequivocally say I have just finished the strangest book I will ever read.

I've written about some that were tough to get through, but this is something else entirely. It's one thing to not be totally clear what's going on with the plot, but usually you at least know who the characters are and have some sense of what they are working towards.

In Italo Calvino's "If on a winter's night a traveler" you are the main character. That's right, he starts the first chapter by saying "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler."

The chapters then alternate between you reading the text(s) and your increasingly frantic quest to track down a complete copy of this book, and then another, and then another. The first book has a printing error, and each successive time you're reading the first chapter of a new book that has its own error -- and isn't the one you thought it was -- and then trying to find its remainder.

Confused? I think that's the point. Calvino wants you to stop thinking so much about the ABCs of standard storytelling and look for something else in the text.

After a while this whole process becomes kind of comical. You know you're reading what will only be the first part of a story, and yet, each one is so engaging you forget for a few pages and are genuinely disappointed when the chapter ends and you realize you have to move on to a new story and new characters.

This is a book about reading -- the process, what we look for in a story and what we get out of the act itself. The "books" have nothing to do with one another, but taken together they still represent something.

Usually when I go to write about a book I first go to each of the dog-earred pages, find the section I think I wanted to reference and type it out here. I always include a notation of the speaker in case I need it later. In this case, I didn't even try to figure out who was talking since the characters are so nebulous.

Again, no idea who said this, but I think it's an excellent message about how even the smallest experience long ago can play a part in what we do and experience today:

"And so if by chance I happen to dwell on some ordinary detail of an ordinary day...I can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything I have experienced, all the past, the multiple pasts I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, my life."

Calvino also talks about reading in the same way, that books don't exist in a vacuum:

"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings."

Everything you read builds upon what came before it and creates a bigger story. You and I may have read a lot of the same books, but not all of the same ones. Therefore your "book" is different from mine and affects your next bit of reading in a different way than it would affect me.

That quote is from "a fourth reader," who is just the fourth person to speak at this table full of people who are reading. That just distinguishes them from the "third reader" and the "second reader." These are not be confused as being linked in any way to "The Reader" (you) or "The Other Reader" (a girl you meet at a bookstore while trying to find a correct copy of the first book). I told you this book wasn't "normal."

While I was reading this book my friend Regan posted on Twitter about a slight issue she had with her own reading:

Having turned the page on three or four now-interrupted stories, I could somewhat sympathize. Even one of Calvino's characters (the reader, not THE The Reader, but another the reader, ugh) laments that kind of disjointed experience:

"I am forced to stop reading just when they become most gripping. I can't wait to resume, but when I think I am reopening the book I began, I find a completely different book before me."

But we can also have that same kind of experience with complete books. A single book can change over time, as we change and then go back to it for another reading. Like the quote about small things building up into our "overall life" we approach a repeat reading from a different place, and thus are open to new emotions and interpretations.

The third reader (from the same group as the fourth reader above) isn't sure if he is changing or if it is the act of reading itself which is just inherently unrepeatable:

"At every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern?"

I'm definitely reading a more standard text next, but glad I made it through this one. Not often you read something so very different.

Creative Company

2011-07-13T09:41:00.006-04:00

I haven't exactly been putting up tons of content lately, and as someone who follows other blogs I know that probably leaves a huge, immense, devastating, heart-breaking hole in your life.

My answer to that -- other than obviously posting more of my own stuff -- is to share some sites from my creative/quirky friends.

You know all about AV's website from an earlier post, so I don't have to badger you again to check it out (though you should).

I'll start with Jen(n)a (@jenaardell) whose name I have spelled that way since roughly 2003. We went to college together, and at some point I was really unsure of how many Ns were in here name, so I just made the one sort of optional. She's a photographer who specializes in retro pictures (shot today, look vintage) as well as Polaroids. She also happens to end up with super cool gigs covering her favorite band and mine for LA Weekly.

Keeping in the college crowd, let's move on to Jason's blog. First I want to acknowledge the great pun at work here. Jason lives in Denver, the Mile High City, where one may experience altitude sickness. He's also very opinionated, and putting those together arrived at Attitude Sickness. I remember him consulting the Facebook world and considering a number of titles in the same punny spirit, but I'm glad he settled on this one. Lately, most of the content has been about an extended trip he made to the Philippines and Vietnam. But this is a blog that has as one of its categories "Uncategorized Rambling" and thus is worthy of a read.

What's that? You want more from the Susquehanna University classes of 2005/06? Fine.

Brooke went there too, and has a blog I would describe using the words snarky, nerdy, occasionally about her upcoming wedding, and ultimately entertaining. I did have to actually Google the blog title on this one to find out what it was actually referencing and I'm proud to report it appears to be a character in "Pride and Prejudice." I was worried it was something far, far girlier.

Just so you think I read things other than those written by my fellow Crusaders, I'll share one more.

For anyone interested in filmmaking or any creative process/endeavor, check out Camden's blog about her experience creating a documentary "about the Montagnard people who served as American allies during the Vietnam War." She has chronicled big-picture stuff like finding out about the history behind the story, as well as really specific posts about technical challenges in the editing process. She also shares a lot of tips about time management and the things she has learned about herself, which I think really translate to a lot of facets of life. I don't actually know her, my brother does, but we were introduced through Twitter when she was looking for old Vietnam footage and figuring out how to capture 8mm film to video just as I was doing the same process at my old job. Good times.

Build This House With Me

2011-07-02T10:30:00.006-04:00

I took a video editing class in college that included a project to make a two-minute trailer for the movie of your choice.

It wasn't about recreating the real trailer, but rather doing whatever you wanted to make it your own. On the surface this sounds really easy, but distilling a two-hour film down to a trailer that highlights enough to get people interested without giving too much away is a bit tough.

Neither I nor most of my group had the least bit of preference for which film to tackle, so we ended up going with Jason's pick of "Life As A House." This added another layer of difficulty since I'm pretty sure none of the rest of us had ever heard of the movie, let alone seen it.

Fortunately the local video rental place had a copy -- VHS I believe -- and a few viewings later we came up with this:

At gunpoint I could recite this entire thing word-for-word. I may have seen it a few too many times.

I'm especially proud of the ending, where Kevin Kline's character is smashing all the little models to the beat of the music as if they are drums. This is one of those happy accidents that pops up in creative ventures sometimes. As I recall, the footage just happened to almost line up when we first cut it, so it was just a matter of tweaking things a bit (like slowing down the last shot) to get it just right.

So how did we do? Here's the actual trailer from 2001:

We didn't watch the real one until after ours was done. We felt like they told a totally different story, one that seemed to put a happier spin on the movie than what was actually there. Maybe they thought more people would want to go see it that way.

Things didn't go so well at the box office though. Maybe they should have hired us instead.

Now Boarding

2011-07-02T10:05:00.002-04:00

It's funny to stop and think about some of the things we hang onto.

Everyone has at least something in their house that they've carried for years for really no reason. They can't explain why they still have it, they just do.

The other day I came across this:

That's a whiteboard -- still wrapped in plastic -- that I got from my grandmother shortly after I graduated high school. Ten years ago.

I brought it with me when I went off to school in Pennsylvania, but obviously never used it. It spent a lot of time in closets during the next four years as I went through the cycle of remembering I had it, taking it to school, forgetting about it, then taking it back home with a vow to actually use it next year.

When I went to grad school in Maryland, the white board went too. Same when I moved to Florida and subsequently back to Virginia. I'm surprised I haven't accidentally ripped the plastic during all those trips.

The real question is, does the pen still work?

Right Way to Write

2011-06-30T08:55:00.005-04:00

Some people need a special space and just the right conditions in order to write.

A quiet office with the perfect color of paint on the walls is necessary for them to focus and channel their creative energies. Fortunately, I am not one of those people.

At work, I have to write stories with whatever noise is going on in the newsroom -- televisions, phones, people shrieking at the sight of mice -- and the news doesn't stop just because I don't like the bland desk that's holding up my monitor:

In the spirit of full disclosure that's not actually my desk. It's AV's, but we work at the same place and I assure you mine looks the same.

At home, I have a lot more control and thanks to the wonders of laptops and wireless Internet, I can work just about anywhere I want. Not that I do, but I could.

Everything you read here is composed in one of two places. There's the desktop computer in my bedroom:

Or more frequently, it's sitting downstairs in a recliner using my laptop:

I guess I do have one special stipulation though -- I find it very hard to work in silence. Maybe that goes back to writing so often in the newsroom that I'm used to having at least some background noise. I find the sound of silence somewhat distracting.

Ever since college I have turned to music to combat this problem. On very rare occasions that means opening up iTunes and letting it skip around my playlist playing whatever it wants. Usually though, I listen to one of three artists, and in an odd twist, this is the only time I ever listen to them.

The first is Nickel Creek. I can accomplish absolutely anything with them as my background noise. The only problem is that I only have one of their CDs, so the window of productivity is pretty limited.

The second, Delta Goodrem, does not present that issue. I think I have three of her albums, and thus can work for hours with her wailing away at a just-audible level.

If things really aren't going well and I'm having a hard time getting myself to just buckle down and work, it's time to go to the secret weapon -- DMX. I know, you probably assumed from the start that DMX was one of the three, but I had to make sure. His song "What's My Name" basically sounds to me like "Do Some Work."

When even that doesn't work, I may solve my Rubik's Cube in a last-ditch effort to get the creative juices going. But sometimes even the best of us can totally fail, and end up opting for more successful pursuits such as napping or quality time with the Playstation.

That may mean you go a week (or two) without seeing any new content, but if you get too desperate you can always just pretend it's 2006 and read those entries instead.

We're Jambin'

2011-06-24T23:34:00.005-04:00

My phone buzzed just after noon today, waking me up from a solid 12 hours of sleep.

That initially sounds like an amazing way to start any weekend, but given that I only slept three hours the day before it's actually not that great at all. You might even say I'm somewhat sleep deprived.

I was talking to AV after my extended sleep session, and she sent me a link to an article she had just read giving five signs that you're not getting enough sleep. Number 5 on the list: "You've become a klutz."

Last night, on just the three hours of sleep, I decided the last thing I wanted to do was actually cook dinner. The word "Chipotle" sound a lot better than "effort."

Before I could make the short drive though, I needed to grab my wallet and keys from my bedroom. When I walked out of the room, I caught the pocket of my shorts on the door latch, which somehow then whipped my hand into the door jamb so hard it immediately left a giant purple welt. I momentarily thought I broke my hand.

I did a terrible job of explaining that scene to AV, so I made her a diagram that I'll share in case I failed again:

It's hard to say if sleep deprivation was to blame, or if it was just natural klutziness. But since I went a full day on 12 hours of sleep without running myself into a doorway, let's go with the sleepiness.

Signing the Dotted Line

2011-06-24T21:29:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I put on my sports columnist hat, but with the sudden resignation of Washington Nationals manager Jim Riggleman it seems like an appropriate time to revisit something I used to do every week.

When the news first broke, I thought someone had made a huge reporting mistake. After all, the Nationals had just won their game to continue an almost unfathomable hot streak. Everything about this team was a constant stream of positivity.

But there it was, an incredulous tweet from WJLA's Britt McHenry responding to something sent out by someone I assume is some kind of Nats blogger: "What?! RT @washingnats: I just learned that Jim Riggleman has resigned as manager of the #Nats."

McHenry's "What?!" was how most people reacted in the following hours as Riggleman's resignation was confirmed. Why would a guy leading one of the hottest teams in baseball right now, one who had garnered so much respect not just with this team but earlier in his career, walk away so suddenly?

It came down to his contract. Riggleman was in the last year of a deal he signed in 2009, but the team held an option to extend him for next year. He was frustrated they had not given him an extension, which he probably deserved, nor had they seriously held talks with him about his future.

Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo says Riggleman gave him an ultimatum less than an hour before Thursday's game, saying he wanted a new deal or he was walking. The game ended, and Riggleman walked.

At first, I was totally on Riggleman's side. I liked him, and who doesn't enjoy a good "take this job and shove it" or "get two beers and jump" story?

As I thought about it more today though, the fact that he was under contract bothers me. When you sign on the dotted line, whether you're a professional athlete, coach, or managing a Denny's, that's a commitment. The stuff above the signature lays out what each party will do and for how long. If you don't like the terms, don't put your pen to the page.

The Washington Post quoted Riggleman talking about his contract: “I made it very clear that I didn’t like [it], but you know I can’t say no to it,” Riggleman said, recounting his conversations with team management when he signed the contract. “So there I am, and two years later, I’m realizing, ‘You know what? I was right. That’s not a good way to do business.’”

Again, if you don't like it don't sign. We see this a lot of times before the NFL season with players holding out for a new deal. A star receiver has a career year and decides his old contract is no longer worthy of his abilities. He feels it's OK to refuse to honor that contract and demand the team pay him more money.

This always reminds me of a scene in the iconic Adam Sandler version of "Mr. Deeds." Deeds, played by Sandler, talks to the quarterback of the Jets, who is following the exact script above. Deeds's (paraphrased) response? "If you had a terrible year could the team just demand you take a pay cut?" Of course not. They can fire you, but the contract probably says they have to pay you some kind of buyout.

A few years ago I was working as a news producer in Florida on a one-year contract. Part way through the year, my boss brought me an offer for an extension. It was for a little over three years and included a raise, but I didn't sign it.

Among other things, I knew at that point I didn't want to stick around in that city for that length of time. Sure, there wouldn't have been huge legal consequences if I signed the extension and bolted after two years. But it wasn't a contract I liked, so I didn't sign it.

What I wanted was a one-year extension, but the station decided that wasn't an option for them. So, instead of throwing a fit and storming out the door, I worked through the end of my deal and we parted on great terms.

Things don't have to get crazy.

Trouble Is My Business

2011-06-21T08:59:00.000-04:00

I have another reason for posting, which I'll get to in a minute, but first I wanted to share a moment to remind you that I'm not that smart.

I drove home from work this morning and pulled into a parking space. Before I turned off the car I saw the odometer was at an even 57,000 miles.

"Oh that's cool, the trip counter is at 254.0 miles -- they're both round numbers. Wait, of course they're both round numbers. They have to be. Cars all start at zero. Duh."

I went inside thinking this was yet another example of me not being that bright. Five minutes went by as I poured a bowl of cereal and went upstairs.

"No, that's not right at all. I could have reset the trip counter at any number. They're both round numbers because I was at a round number on the odometer the last time I got gas. I'm not that dumb after all."

So being not smart about being not smart totally makes me smart, right? Whatever.

What does make you at least seem smart to other people is reading books, and I recently finished another one. It's Raymond Chandler's "Trouble is My Business," the latest in a long list of his books I've read starring the no-nonsense detective Philip Marlowe.

This one was slightly different from the others in that it's a collection of four stories instead of one novel-length tale. I guess I'll admit to forgetting that during each of the first three short stories and being surprised when they suddenly ended.

They're pretty straight forward detective stories, so there's nothing really profound to get into. But one thing I like about Chandler's writing is the kind of language he uses to describe things. It's probably mostly because this book was published in 1934, but I'll give him credit anyway:

"I pulled up in front of a cottage that had a sign in the front yard: Luncheons, Teas, Dinners. A small rabbit-faced man with freckles was waving a garden rake at two black chickens. The chickens appeared to be sassing him back."

You don't see too many writers today talking about sassy farm animals.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2011-06-16T11:34:00.004-04:00

I'm not sure if anyone else has figured this out yet, but vacation days are awesome.

As I type this, I have been off from work for a solid week and still have a few days to go. I knew this vacation was going to be solid when I got to the airport after working all night, sat down at my gate and saw this:

That's a Five Guys if you can't quite make it out through the greenery. And yes, a cheeseburger at 9:30 a.m. is always a great decision. After landing in Naples, Fla., I spent six days doing this:

And some of this:

Whenever I go to the beach I always try to get out to the shore for at least one sunrise. Since I live on the East Coast that's the only way to see the combination of sun and ocean. On this trip though, I was on the Gulf side of Florida, meaning I could hang out with the sun on a more agreeable schedule. Here's my half-effort attempt at time-lapsing the sunset:

I also took a short drive up to Ft. Myers to see a Single-A baseball game between the Ft. Myers Miracle and the Palm Beach Cardinals:

I'm spending the rest of my time off back home (avoided using the term "staycation" there, you're welcome). That means two Washington Nationals games and a little bit of this:

Oh, and some writing too. Updates on that sometime soon.

Enero de Mis Sueños

2011-06-07T09:11:00.005-04:00

"I think I can find your dream girl."

That was the message I got last week from my friend Kim, who has now apparently taken leadership of my dream girl search committee. I had no idea there was such an entity, but she says she's particularly skilled in picking out someone's type.

I'm happy to report that in just four days she has found the perfect woman for me: January Jones.

Now, I know what you may be thinking, and yes things with other celebrities who don't know I exist haven't gone so well. But those were just shots in the dark (sorry Natalie). This is science, or at least an objective decision made by an outsider using her extensive knowledge of me.

And if for some reason January doesn't return my calls, don't worry. Kim offers a warranty on her dream girl picks and says she'll find another one.

Team Coco

2011-06-05T11:02:00.006-04:00

I watch a lot of late night television, mainly due to the fact that I work overnights and thus am awake when the shows start at 11:35.

If you're a connoisseur of the genre and know me at all, it's probably no surprise I gravitate towards David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon. But for a short time, I at least had to make a choice in that early time slot. That's when Conan O'Brien hosted the "Tonight Show."

I just finished reading Bill Carter's "The War For Late Night" which chronicles the rise and fall of Conan's "Tonight Show" run, from his initial guarantee to host to the day last year when he accepted a settlement from NBC and took his show to TBS.

I knew all the big-picture stuff about this saga from having watched it play out on TV at the time, and also read about some of the insider stuff as well. It was fascinating to read Carter's description of how everything was working inside NBC, as well as the Leno and Conan camps, as all the decisions and negotiations were taking place.

If you're not familiar, here's a very basic timeline of what happened:

-NBC gave Conan a guarantee that he would host the "Tonight Show" after a set number of years, upon which they told Leno he would be done
-Leno wanted to stay on TV, and combined with NBC's fear he would bolt to compete with them at say ABC, he ended up with an ill-fated show at 10 p.m. on NBC
-Neither show did great in ratings, and NBC affiliate stations complained their news ratings were being crushed
-NBC reacted by floating a plan to move Leno back to 11:35, and shifting Conan and the "Tonight Show" to 12:05
-Conan balked, the network chose to stay with Leno and pay Conan a multi-million dollar settlement

Throughout the entire process, and especially in the accounts in the book, Conan comes across as sort of the righteous character in the story. He didn't do everything perfectly, and maybe what NBC was asking wasn't so bad, but people generally felt Conan was being screwed.

The shame is that in the end Conan is now stuck on TBS while Leno continues to dominate the late night ratings on NBC. Carter talked to many of the other players, who gave really candid assessments of the situation and their colleagues. Many of the major names are Letterman disciples and don't get Leno's appeal. Jimmy Kimmel, who hosts a show on ABC at 12:05 describes Leno's brand of comedy saying, "I think he turned comedy into factory work--and it comes across."

Sure, there are "Leno people" and everyone is definitely entitled to their opinion about which shows are more entertaining. But I think actor and one-time Conan roommate Jeff Garlin sums up my view pretty well:

"It's like comparing John Coltrane to Kenny G," he says in the book. "One of Kenny G's albums probably sold more than all of John Coltrane's library. But you can't tell me for a second that Kenny G is better than John Coltrane."

While I knew a lot about this set of events, a lot of what I enjoyed about this book was learning more about Conan. I was vaguely aware that he had written for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, but even as a total Simpsons nerd I had no idea he wrote the amazing "Marge vs. the Monorail" episode and the one where Homer goes back to college.

But there is also a lot of real insight into Conan's mind as a creative individual, particularly with the self-doubt that often comes along with the process. Carter describes it as "imposter syndrome" saying that as eager as Conan was to take over the "Tonight Show," there was always "the thought that, no matter how successful you became, 'they're about to catch up to you.'"

I don't know many creative people who don't think that way. As much as we are proud of our work and know that some things we do rock, hitting the "publish" button and sending our stuff out into the world can be extremely nerve-wracking. There's always a sense that it could be better, and that there has to be some kind of luck to people thinking what we are doing is special. I know that when I was in school, no matter how good my grades were I had the feeling that some day, someone was going to figure out I'm really not that smart.

I'll close with Conan's closing to his "Tonight Show" run. He spent his final days absolutely lampooning NBC in a string of shows that belongs in some kind of entertainment hall of fame. The process crushed him. NBC was ripping away something he had dreamed of since he was a kid sitting and watching the show with his father. And yet, while his legion of young fans who don't need much to be pushed into a cynical view of the world rallied behind him, Conan said this:

"Please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."

Amen.

Chicken Nugget Dreams

2011-05-31T09:17:00.007-04:00

In the midst of my sickness last weekend, I did my best to follow advice that really didn't sound too hard: eat a lot, turn off all possible distractions, and sleep until your body decides it's time to wake up.

Everything was going well until I took a nap on Saturday afternoon. What was meant to be a rest-my-eyes session turned into more of a sleep-way-past-dinner coma. Whoops.

As I stared at the clock and tried to figure out what was going on, it occurred to me I was hungry and really needed to do something about that. Given that it was already after midnight and I didn't exactly have a ton of energy, naturally my thoughts went to how great it would be for someone to provide food for me.

Since I don't yet have lottery winnings to provide for a personal chef, and Natalie Portman decided to go in another direction, all I could hope for was some type of delivery service. Pizza didn't sound great. Neither did Chinese. What I really needed was some Wendy's.

So, in super-productive fashion, I addressed the situation by sending out a melodramatic tweet:

Below my message, you see a reply from Jason, who happens to have just visited the Philippines. As you can see, Wendy's does deliver in Manila. (You can read more about Jason's travels on his blog).

Not only does Wendy's deliver, but you can even order online. The website says there are 31 locations in the country. They certainly have something to teach the thousands of Wendy's restaurants here in the United States who make me go alllllll the way to them.

As my delirious dreams of delivery faded that night, I started thinking about a backup plan. That involved actually pulling myself out of bed and making the two-mile drive to Wendy's myself.

Then I closed my eyes for a second -- just a second -- and somehow it was 3 a.m., long after Wendy's had closed. Thank goodness I had some Cocoa Puffs.

Oh Blackwater, Keep on Rollin

2011-05-29T06:52:00.008-04:00

I have been sick for a week now, which is extremely rare for me. In fact, the last time I can remember feeling like this was years ago, during my last semester of grad school, when I was sick for roughly 1,871,874 consecutive days.

OK, it was more like three weeks, but it certainly felt like forever. It was a busy time -- I was working basically full-time in our Capital News Service television bureau, taking a class on Monday nights and also working a part-time job on Saturdays.

I got sick just before Spring Break, which wasn't really a break for those of us in the bureau. Instead, part of our experience was taking that time to do a long-form package, one we could spend an entire week on. My story was about a proposed housing development on Maryland's Eastern Shore that critics said would greatly harm the nearby Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

I took my sick self to the statehouse in Annapolis, where I interviewed state lawmakers and representatives from environmental groups. Then it was off to the Eastern Shore towns of Easton and Cambridge where I spent a few days working on the story.

I remember getting to my hotel the first day and going for a meal at the Denny's next door before passing out early in the afternoon. I was still holding out hope that somehow a little extra sleep was going to get rid of the sickness before I really got to work the following morning. It didn't.

The next day I interviewed the mayor of the town where the development was going and also talked to a ranger at the wildlife refuge. Then I did exactly what any doctor would tell you to do when you're already sick -- I spent an entire windy day outside at the refuge with temperatures in the 20s.

Content-wise, I think the story turned out pretty well. Even my narration track convincingly hides how I was feeling, though I remember the first few takes being rejected by our bureau director. Apparently sounding like I was in a coma or had just woken up in the middle of the night were not acceptable.

Fortunately for you, I actually have a tape of this entire show, so you can see my exquisite anchoring skillz along with the story. I'll even leave in the tease after the story, so you can see me totally mistime how long Aundrea's part of the script is and turn to the camera way way way early. Enjoy:

In case you're interested, in 2007 the state purchased more than two-thirds of the land from the developer, who cut the number of houses in the project by 75 percent and contributed about $2 million for restoration efforts.

I also eventually got better. All it took was deciding I was actually going to visit a doctor. I woke up the next day completely fine.

Going Way Back

2011-05-27T05:52:00.007-04:00

Now that there are 400 entries in the archives, I would believe you haven't taken the time to read through all of the entries, particularly those from the earlier years. So to give you a sense of what was on my mind back then, I pulled 10 of what I think are the better entries from that time (in reverse chronological order, not by merit):

August 2008 -- Do I Know You From Somewhere
A coworker says I look like a combination of two celebrities, leading me to examine that and other comparisons people have made to famous people.

June 2008 -- The Results, Please
A question I still want to research: How often do two of the exact same type of car crash into one another?

February 2008 -- World Out Of Order
A few words from the employee working the Taco Bell drive thru completely derail my life.

July 2007 -- I Wanna Be The First, The Best
I argue my brother has set a very unique world record involving a pool table and a Playstation.

May 2007 -- Listen Up
The first of some "fond memories" posts from my frustrating days working at the mall. Not funny at the time, but I love the undercurrent of extreme bitterness.

May 2007 -- Depository Please Receptacle Of Man
The store gets a new music system that A)makes no sense and B)threatens to literally drive me insane. Good times.

December 2006 -- Oh For The Love Of Pete
A very short post about what extreme boredom does to a 23-year-old male, plus one of the all-time great not-smart customer moments.

December 2006 -- I'm Suck On The Couch And Can't Get Up
Holy bitterness, Batman. The extreme laziness of customers gets to me in a big way, especially when someone calls my store just to ask for the number to another store.

November 2006 -- Helga Gets Worried
I watch a woman on the Metro become increasingly terrified about the prospects of interacting with the woman sitting next to her.

May 2006 -- It's All Becoming So Clear
Going through boxes of papers from elementary school, I find notes about myself from my classmates and find not much has changed since then.

In case you've missed them before, the "best of" 2010 and 2009.

Becoming Me

2011-05-26T11:09:00.006-04:00

Last weekend I did something very momentous and took another step closer to fully becoming me.

Now, before you think too much in the existential sense or that it involved some hallucinogenic-induced soul-searching, know that this step involved my Twitter name.

The fine people at Twitter actually make it really simple to change your username without affecting anything else about your account. All of your followers and the people you follow stay the same, and pretty much nobody notices.

So, with that knowledge, I subtly switched from chwilbur to cjhannas, a move that better integrates the "brand" that is my online presence. More importantly though, it should help reduce the chances that I will ever have to explain to another person how the heck I ended up with the name chwilbur.

My short answer for years has been something like, "It doesn't mean anything now, and didn't mean much when I first signed up, it's just too much of a hassle to change." Thanks to nobody using AOL Instant Messenger anymore, and my slow migration over to this site for the blog and a somewhat similar gmail address, I don't have much use for the chwilbur moniker anymore.

And that's good, because the true story -- the long one -- is a bit of an effort to tell, and like the short answer, really has no good substantive reason behind it. But in honor of retiring yet another chwilbur, here goes:

When I was in high school, let's say freshman year, I actually started with usernames that were well grounded in my actual name. But back then, it was super lame and un-creative to do that, so I started trying to come up with something clever. After several failed attempts involving Pepsi (my favorite drink at the time) I gave up.

Then one day I was at my friend MR's house, and the movie Contact was on TV. If you're not familiar with Contact, it's a sci-fi movie based on a book by Carl Sagan. As the credits rolled, MR said to nobody in particular, "For Earl."

(confused silence)
(more confused silence)

He pointed at the television and again said, "For Earl," and we waited. Finally, near the end of the credits a dedication to the author popped up: "For Carl."

(pure delirious laughter)

A week or so later, I called MR's house to see if he wanted to hang out. As the phone rang for the third and fourth times, I remembered he and his family had gone out of town and definitely were not going to answer the phone.

No matter. The answering machine picked up, and in whatever goofy accent I decided to try out that day I started with, "Hey Earl...this is...uhhh...Wilbur..." And so I accidentally became Wilbur, and thus chwilbur, a name that as I said clearly meant nothing then and means even less now.

Long live cjhannas.

I'd like to also take a second and note that this is the 400th post on the blog, a number that seems pretty staggering considering the first year only had 20 posts. It's incredible to look back and see how much my writing has changed, and even the difference in the kinds of things I write about.

Last year I did sort of "best of" posts for 2010 and 2009. Tomorrow I'm going to dig up a list of the better ones from the early years, when things were slightly more, um, interesting.

I thought it would be neat to look at posts Nos. 100, 200, and 300 as a quick snapshot of the changes. But the first two ended up being about books I read, so it's not as interesting an exercise as I thought it might be. I linked them for what it's worth.

Hasta mañana.

Glory Days

2011-05-22T10:15:00.005-04:00

When I was in grad school at the University of Maryland, the women's basketball team won the national championship.

I happened to be basically working full-time reporting for our campus news station that semester, and given my interest in sports was assigned to cover all things Lady Terps.

When the team made the Final Four in Boston, my roommate Jon and I were pretty close to heading up to cover the event. All we had to do was get media passes so we could get inside the arena, and we would have been in a car to Massachusetts. Well, the NCAA has some ridiculous procedures, and after hours and hours of making phone calls we figured out it wasn't going to happen.

So I did the next best thing, and found an on-campus viewing party that was being held in the movie theater inside the student center. It ended up being probably the best story I did all semester, and though you don't see it in this video, was followed by my sprinting downtown to cover the resulting riots.

Since I anchored the show this was in, it doesn't have the "in College Park, CJH, Maryland Newsline" at the end. I mentioned the prospect of this team turning into a dynasty since all five starters returned the following year. Well, while they remained competitive, things didn't turn out so well. The next three years went like this:

-Lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament
-Lost in the Elite Eight
-Lost in the Elite Eight

At least 2006 was fun.

Supertome

2011-05-22T09:48:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I finished reading Dave Eggers' "Zeitoun" but for a multitude of reasons -- mainly laziness -- I neglected to post about it.

It's the story of a family living in New Orleans during Katrina, and really about the experience of the father before, during and after the storm. If you've read Eggers' "What Is The What" you'll recognize the same style of exploring complex issues connected to a historical event through one person's eyes.

It's one of those stories that really shows how quickly we can move on and consume the next event without stopping to fully examine what just happened. We're all sort of familiar with the broad strokes of Katrina -- the rooftop rescues, the nightmare at the Superdome, the broken levees -- but it's what people like Zeitoun saw and were subjected to in New Orleans that really give the situation its gravity.

I don't want to get much into the story and spoil things, so I'll just mention a somewhat relevant quote that pretty well sums up how I'm feeling about my own project:

"It's so slow sometimes, so terribly so sometimes, but progress is being made...If he can picture it, it can be. This has been the pattern of his life: ludicrous dreams followed by hours and days and years of work and then a reality surpassing his wildest hopes and expectations."

Silver Where

2011-05-21T13:44:00.003-04:00

Every household has its quirks, the little things that come from the fact that people are used to doing things a certain way.

If you grew up as the one who always took out the trash, it only seems natural for you to do so now. And there are the really important questions, like where you decide to keep the vacuum.

When I first lived on my own, one of the little things I enjoyed the most was having complete control over where I kept the coffee mugs in my kitchen (never mind that I don't even drink coffee).

With that in mind, I present to you our silverware drawer:

I know, it looks super exciting. Focus on the four sections on the left: big forks, little forks, little spoons, big spoons.

This is how it looks when CA puts away the dishes. When I do it, they alternate: big forks, little forks, big spoons, little spoons.

Why? I have no idea. It's not one of those issues that has risen to the level of needing a discussion or deep introspection on our parts.

Let the spoons fall where they may.

Campus Tour

2011-05-16T09:55:00.005-04:00

During my junior and senior years of college, I was the president (mainly by default) of our school's film club.

That meant running a lot of meetings that didn't accomplish anything and eventually heading up the task of putting on the first- and second-ever student film festivals.

The first year was tough, as is any event you're trying to create out of nothing. The club wasn't very big, and there were more film-watching enthusiasts than filmmakers in the crowd.

As the event approached, it was clear we weren't going to have many entries at all. So, given that I had a camera and a vested interest in not totally embarrassing ourselves, I walked around our campus for an hour and came up with a project.

I really didn't know what I was doing when I started, but sort of figured it out as I went along. It's basically a trip around the Susquehanna University campus using common sights from different areas or perspectives as a way to move from one place to the other.

It's probably easier to follow if you went to the school, but even those who have never been to Selinsgrove can somewhat keep up. Some of the transitions work better than others -- banners using the school logo and signs on buildings look pretty good, lightpoles not so much.

The music was done by fellow Susquehanna student, and actual legitimate music artist, DLake.

Enjoy:

Dynasite!

2011-05-10T09:11:00.004-04:00

It seems like it has been forever, but AV has finally stopped procrastinating enough that I can share her fantastic project with you.

Actually, that's not quite true. She has created a website, which it turns out takes a lot of effort and consequently a lot of time to get things just right. The project started in earnest last fall, but it has been amazing to see how far it has come in just the past month or so.

It's called Miss On Her Own, and basically AV wants to help young women with practical advice and resources for starting out in the "real world."

In her words, "From cover letters, to car troubles, to building credit, to what the heck is credit?, there are so many issues we encounter as young adults that can leave us feeling lost and confused." Her hope is the site "can provide quick and easy solutions to your everyday concerns and save you time for the things you’d rather be doing."

The tips cover everything from email etiquette at work, exercises you can do at home when you can't get to the gym, how to enhance your apartment-living experience and, of course, relationships. And that's just as of today -- much more new content is on the way.

In addition to the website, be sure to check out -- and "like" -- the Facebook page, and also follow MOHO on Twitter.

Tell your friends, your daughters, cousins, people you knew in high school but haven't spoken to since graduation, the intern who always uses the wrong "your" in emails, and the girl in front of you at the grocery store who seems to be buying way too much spaghetti and not enough sauce.

Basically, spread the word to anyone might be interested in a site like this. AV won't let them down.

Legitimate Coup

2011-05-09T09:49:00.008-04:00

I'm continuing the quest of sharing videos on days I typically haven't been posting new content.

If you missed the one from last week, check it out here. Also remember you can click the labels at the bottom of posts for similar content -- in this case "video."

This project is one that makes me laugh every time I watch it, even though I'm sure I've seen it roughly 2,381 times. I made it for this really amazing class I took in college called Film & Politics. Basically we used films with political themes (All The President's Men, The China Syndrome, The Manchurian Candidate, Black Hawk Down, etc.) instead of a textbook to drive discussion and papers.

The final exam was one I knew I was going to get an A on as soon as I saw it: Make a trailer for your own political film (or write some sort of detailed summary of your plot).

As a communications major who already spent a good deal of time at that school in front of video equipment, there was nothing I liked seeing more in other departments than the opportunity to make a video. The production value alone on my projects I'm sure earned me high grades, but I also enjoyed the opportunity to share those skills with my classmates (in this case in the political science department).

I have to give great credit to my actors, MB, who is playing an intrepid reporter out to uncover a big conspiracy, and the maniacal Jason, a vice president hellbent on taking over the Oval Office.

Jason, who lived in my suite and was also in the class, had an amazing project we had to abandon because of technical issues. His idea was to do a sequel for Happy Gilmore, where Happy rides the momentum of his golf fame into a run for Senate. It would have been epic.

Alas, all we have is mine. Enjoy:

Koyaanisportsi

2011-05-05T23:58:00.006-04:00

Part of my life is in total disarray right now.

Professionally things are fine. I'm getting an adequate amount of sleep. The price of Cocoa Puffs remains at an acceptable level.

But when it comes to sports, things are getting a bit crazy.

I understand that many of you don't care the least thing about sports and want to stop reading. For you, I offer the following video featuring Elmo making an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:

In the sports world, things aren't as funny. Today I learned that Gary Williams, the head men's basketball coach at (one of) my alma mater(s) the University of Maryland, is retiring. Gary certainly has his critics, but I have always been a fan and will be sad to see him go.

Then, on the same day, this news that CBS announcer Gus Johnson is reportedly parting ways with the network. That means the best play-by-play guy in college basketball will no longer be involved with March Madness. The Los Angeles Times says he's in talks with Fox to do Pac-12 college football, which means I will never hear him announce a game.

All of that comes on the heels of another epic playoff collapse by my beloved Washington Capitals, who were just swept in the second round by the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Did I mention the NFL season is in jeopardy?

What I'm left with is the Washington Nationals, and following their quest to remain near the .500 mark. It could be worse I guess. I could be a Mets fan.

(P.S. I hope at least some people get the veiled references I often put in the titles of these posts. This one, for example, is a play on the film "Koyaanisqatsi" -- titled after a Hopi word meaning something like "life out of balance.")

Breaking News

2011-05-02T09:28:00.003-04:00

In any newsroom, there are stories we feel like we cover in some form every day -- a shooting, a debate about education funding, the latest bomb blast in the usual place. Those stories are important and we do our best to tell them.

But then there are the ones that really make our hearts beat a little faster, the ones that make the cliche of "writing the first draft of history" not seem like such a bloated claim.

Last night was we had one of those stories.

I was working the national desk, and not long after I got in we received word that President Obama was going to address the nation at 10:30 p.m. Given that it was a Sunday and an especially late hour, it was clear this going to be something important.

As we waited for the address -- which ended up being delayed until more like 11:30 -- word started to leak out that Mr. Obama was going to announce the U.S. had killed Osama bin Laden. It's always fascinating to see how different news organizations treat that kind of information, and who is willing to risk being wrong for the sake of being first.

My newsroom is very much on the conservative side, so a senior editor prepared a quick story based on what Mr. Obama was likely to say with the idea of tweaking it once the address began.

As the president spoke, we quickly confirmed the major details and released the brief story as I took notes that would be used in the subsequent versions. As the following frantic hours went by, I added more and more details from Mr. Obama's speech as well as new information about the operation we were getting from senior White House officials.

My last version looked like this.

As I was writing, I was glancing at the television on my desk seeing the scenes outside the White House and in New York as crowds of people gathered in the early morning hours to celebrate the news. I also thought at one point Twitter was going to crumble under the pressure of the massive number of messages that were being sent.

But more than anything, I was proud to be a part of a team that calmly and efficiently covered the heck out of this story, and included multiple people rushing to come into work on a day off or going right back to work even though they just left. There's a reason we do what we do.

And now it's time to rest. Goodnight.

(Bonus: interesting links with some insider info, including how White House officials convince you that you REALLY need to come into work on a Sunday night even if they can't tell you why.)

Literary Chase

2011-05-01T11:56:00.003-04:00

My brother reminded me the other day that I (a)recently figured out how to embed my own video player here and (b)have a bunch of old video projects on my hard drive.

So, given that I rarely post new entries early in the week, I'm going to change that by putting up some of those videos.

Some of them had specific purposes -- news packages, class assignments -- but many were made either for the sake of learning new things about shooting or editing, or because someone said, "Hey, let's make a video."

I'm starting things off this week with a video called "Literary Chase" that Pat and I made somewhere around 2003. It's a pretty straightforward story that includes some (hopefully) neat visual effects I wanted to try out. Enjoy:

Strongend

2011-05-01T09:17:00.004-04:00

I think everyone would agree weekends are by definition amazing. Well, maybe not people who have to work weekends, but they get to enjoy the excitement of having Tuesdays off.

Sometimes though, a particular weekend can have so many enjoyable things packed into it that it becomes a Super Weekend. This was one of those.

Friday morning: Accomplished everything I had to get done this weekend. My dad would call this having all my to-dos to-done. Then I bought a new amazing iPod to replace one that I think was made prior to World War II.

Friday afternoon: Somewhat decent weather on a spring day when I don't have to work? How about this:

The legendary CA showing off his superior golf skillz

Friday night: Dinner with the fam.

Saturday morning: Complete and total relaxation. Excellent conversation.

Saturday afternoon: Sunny spring Saturday? Baseball, please:

I went to the Nationals-Giants game with my dad and my younger brother. After the second Nationals player was hit by a pitch, I told my brother it would be great to see a brawl, since that was one of the Sports Bucket List items I wanted to see in person.

Then of course we started talking about the rest of the list, which only has a few items on it so far. It includes things like seeing a pitcher throw a no-hitter and a hockey goalie score a goal.

But Pat and I came up with the ultimate challenge for the list: In one calendar year, see every team in the four major sports (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA) play a regular season game at home, plus attend each league's championship game. Logistically, a tough task, but definitely would be an amazing accomplishment.

Look for a post dedicated to a full list of 101 items in the somewhat near future.

Oh, and to finish off the weekend -- post-baseball game brinner (that's breakfast for dinner) at a diner. Good times.

Everything in One Bottle

2011-04-28T10:43:00.004-04:00

Sometimes we don't step back and realize how fortunate we are to live where we do.

Forget things like reliable access to electricity, clean water and Netflix. It's the little things that make our lives astounding compared to many parts of the world.

Last night at work I drank two bottles of tea, which in itself doesn't sound that incredible. After all, you can get tea in even the poorest countries on Earth.

What makes our lives really privileged are the adjectives. Just like we have a whole section at the grocery store solely for different varieties, brands and sizes of ketchup, our choice of teas is extensive.

So, let me try again.

Last night I drank two bottles of tea. The one on the left, is just a diet, mixed berry-flavored green tea. The one on the right is a thing of engineering beauty, a sparkling, diet, strawberry kiwi-flavored green tea.

Maybe our lives would be a little simpler without so much choice.

Then again, adjectives are delicious.

Reading into Readers

2011-04-24T09:23:00.006-04:00

If my blog readers are representative of the world as whole, life on Earth isn't so bad right now.

I have a traffic counting service here that shows me some information about everyone, including the Google searches that sometimes bring visitors. I share these from time to time (August 2010, October 2009), usually because they feature ridiculous queries of people who are going to be really disappointed with the lack of answers they find here.

Apparently making your own ping pong paddle is a major concern these days. Since March, some version of "homemade ping pong paddle" has by far been most-searched term among people who came here from Google. Maybe I should start selling my collection?

One oddly persistent search string is something like "snl your not tall midget" which refers to a Saturday Night Live skit I posted a link to in September 2009. Sure, it's a funny segment, but for this one I really have Google to thank. For some reason, my post is the #3 result for that grammatically dubious search, even ahead of the actual Hulu link that's included in my post.

We did have one new addition this month thanks to the realization of a lifelong dream for me. Last week someone came here after searching "declares nba draft." It's likely they were actually trying a more specific search like "Harrison Barnes declares nba draft" but I hope they enjoyed my story about becoming an official NBA free agent.

Within the blog, I recently added "labels" below each post that allow you to search for similar content with a simple click. People seem to be slowly catching on to this system, which I think brings a lot of good context with the archives and lessens the need for me to explain who certain people are or recap events I've already written about.

Most of you get here following links I post on Facebook and Twitter, and not surprisingly the vast majority of hits are from the United States. There were hits in the past month from Brazil, Australia, Colombia, Canada, Spain and Chile, though I know some of those people.

I actually try to use all the info I can see (which also includes your city and Internet service provider) to figure who my readers are. Sometimes it's very easy -- I only know so many people in Denver or in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

But I do have one problematic reader. That is, I have one reader for whom I have what I think should be enough information to figure out who they are, but for some reason I just can't.

So if we are Facebook friends, and you work at the State Department, please send me a note. Your anonymity is making my head hurt.

[Update: We have a winner! Just goes to show sometimes all you need to do is ask.]

In Cold Blood

2011-04-23T08:48:00.004-04:00

What makes mystery fiction compelling is finding out who did it. What makes true crime stories interesting is knowing not only what happened and who did it, but that the writer has an entire book to tell you how and why.

I wrote last month about the experience of walking past certain books over and over thinking that I really should read them someday, but never actually picking them up. Add Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" to the list of books I can't believe I didn't read before now, despite considering it for years.

The story is about the murder of a small-town Kansas family, the Clutters, who were shot inside their home at night. Capote, a writer from New York, saw a brief story about the killing in a newspaper and went to Kansas to research what became an exhaustive account of the murder, investigation and resulting trial.

Capote tells you pretty much right away that the family is dead. Shortly after he tells you who did it. In crime fiction, you would have little reason to keep reading. But what is masterful about Capote's work is the way he reveals just how the murders were committed and how the suspects were captured.

The reader is omniscient in the sense that we know for sure the suspects are guilty, but we only learn many of the details as the investigators do. That creates this sense that, like the townspeople, we want the police to figure out the how and why as quickly as possible. We want to know just like the people who live down the street from a horrific unsolved murder.

It wasn't the kind of story that led to a lot of dog-eared items for me to expound upon, but I do have two items.

The first comes from the description of Nancy Clutter's bedroom. She is the teenage daughter in the family of four.

"A cork bulletin board, painted pink, hung above a white-skirted dressing table; dried gardenias, the remains of an ancient corsage, were attached to it, and old valentines, newspaper stories, and snapshots of her baby nephew..."

When I was a senior in high school, I had a locker just a few down from my friend Kristen, who lived in my neighborhood and caught a ride with me to school. Early in the year I saw her put a red rose upside down in the back of her locker. I made some sort of comment about why she would put it in there to just let it die and disintegrate all over her stuff.

She kindly informed me of the apparently widely known practice of drying flowers like that. Still, I was dubious, and spent the rest of the year peaking into her locker and saying things like, "Hm, doesn't look so good today" or "It's starting to go, I can sense it."

You can learn some unexpected things at school.

Late in the book, after the suspects are captured, they spend an extended time waiting for their punishment to be carried out.

"In March 1965, after Smith and Hickock had been confined in their Death Row cells almost two thousand days, the Kansas Supreme Court decreed that their lives must end between midnight and 2:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 14, 1965."

April 14 is my brother's birthday, but also a day marked by a few not-so-good events. In 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. In 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg. It's also Pete Rose's birthday.

If you're interested in reading more about Capote's role in launching "New Journalism" with this work, or the scandalous rumors about his connection to one of the killers, here's a pretty interesting piece from Salon.

I Tawt I Taw a Tweety Tat

2011-04-22T08:01:00.003-04:00

A few of my friends have recently joined Twitter and asked for advice about some of the intricacies of using the micro-blogging service.

Some of those questions have been about specific things like, "What are hashtags?" or "Who can see my Tweets?" Others have centered on more macro issues such as, "What do I do with it?"

There are about 200 million Twitter users, and many of them would answer that last question differently. My account is all about snarky responses to other people's tweets, sharing links to interesting articles I read, offering quick observations that aren't enough for a blog post (though sometimes they end up here), and posting links to my work.

I joined in 2008 and since then have sent out 1,347 messages. I was looking back through them today after AV asked if they stay on your account forever (they do, and also get recorded by the Library of Congress). Naturally, I was curious to see what my first post was like. It was boring, and somewhat puzzling for my first foray into the Twitterverse:

I was looking for my next job at the time, but not sure why I felt compelled to share that with the world. Since then, I think it's become a more entertaining feed to follow.

There's the observational stuff:

Some insight into my life:

And the constant reminder that I'm not that smart:

AV and I also talked about the trove of messages as in interesting place to research certain events. It would be fascinating to see how the Tweets unfolded as a particular event was happening, as people made conclusions and expressed opinions based on limited information and even how those things changed as more became clear. You could also compare international events looking through different lenses, such as how Americans viewed the uprising in Egypt or how Israelis and Palestinians talked about an airstrike in Gaza.

Or you could look at your ancestors and find really interesting nuggets about incredibly important milestones in their lives:

Of course, you can also do that with yourself. This seemed innocuous at the time, but given a group of people I have met since then, it would probably get me beaten up today:

Tweet carefully.

On Eagle's Wings

2011-04-16T00:37:00.004-04:00

I usually write stories that get no immediate feedback.

Sure, some people comment right after they read something here, or an editor might say something after going over one of my scripts. I've also spoken to many fine residents of Jacksonville, Florida, who wanted to lodge some complaint about one of the news shows I produced.

But that's not the same as having people react in the moment -- to see their faces and sense them as you're reading something.

Last week, I actually did that, presenting a short piece at a "coffee house" event held at my church. As I may have suspected, it was an odd experience having a crowd instead of just sending my story off as a bunch of anonymous electronic signals.

But at least they applauded at the end. My normal audience may do that, but not loud enough for me to hear.

In case you weren't in attendance, I recorded a version here (3.5 mins). Brace yourself for the part where I made the questionable decision to sing, letting what I thought the story needed at that point supersede my total lack of ability to adequately provide it.

Will & Kate Overrate-d

2011-04-14T11:12:00.012-04:00

Just in case you didn't already assume as much, I am definitely not one of the people who is super-psyched for the Royal Wedding.

I'm sure Will and Kate are perfectly nice people, but I just can't get that excited about their wedding and all of the massive hoopla surrounding the event.

And yet, I somehow can't help but stay really informed about it. Sure, I'm a journalist and tend to know a lot about what is going on in the world. But beyond writing a story about the announcement of the wedding date, I haven't had any actual need to know this information.

In several recent conversations someone has mentioned a piece of Will and Kate news -- like that the blouse she wore in the engagement photos was available in stores again -- and I had to admit I was already aware. (Sad side note: To find that link, all I had to Google was "Kate blouse").

I also know there's a Lifetime movie about the couple, which happens to star a former Susquehanna University student as Kate.

She was apparently only there for a semester during my sophomore year, and I'm fairly certain I never met her. But given what she says about the school in an interview on Lopez Tonight, there's at least a chance my roommate, Shawn L., did. (The brief Susquehanna portion starts around the 3:27 mark).

She basically says she wasn't a big fan of the middle-of-nowhere, Amish country nature of the school and that there wasn't much to do in the area. None of that is totally false -- the campus is in a quiet, rural section that has lots of stores nearby and some great local business in town. It's not exactly the New York club scene, but as the esteemed rock band Harvey Danger once said, "If you're bored than you're boring."

Unlike Camilla, some people who come from big city areas actually like those aspects as a complete departure from what they've known the rest of their life. I found it refreshing to be able to drive somewhere without sitting in traffic, or to walk down the street in town and have a stranger walking by say hello to you.

And if that's not for her, that's OK. I'm not sure as a freshman I would have liked the University of Maryland, but as a graduate student I loved it.

What I found kind of funny about the interview -- and where Shawn L. comes in -- is when she mentions hanging out at the gas station as one of the prime attractions.

Me outside the Sunoco gas station in Selinsgrove, Pa., sometime during the 2001-02 school year (Photo by MinChin)

Shawn absolutely despised campus food and spent a good chunk of time at that gas station buying donuts and all kinds of random treats to eat instead. In fact, those habits earned him the nickname "Tastykakes."

I can definitely see Camilla eating her nachos at the gas station as Shawn and his slightly humorous mustache stumbled in at 2 a.m. in search of some Swiss Rolls. Now that would have been a great conversation.

Waiting for Shutdown

2011-04-08T09:33:00.002-04:00

I have done a lot of video projects in the past, most of which have had a very concrete purpose.

Today, I have one for you that really was meant to be nothing more than learning more about ways to embed video on this site without having to use YouTube.

After work on Thursday I went down to the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., to shoot some video of the cherry blossom trees. On the way there I grabbed some shots of the Capitol, White House, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

I didn't spend a ton of time editing the montage, and did it before creating the background music, so it's far from my best work. I also intended the music to be more in the "soothing" category than "ominous" (my apologies to anyone with actual musical training).

But the overall result could pass as a film school piece about the possible government shutdown.

What do you think? Do we like this player? More video on the site? Step away from the piano?

Helping Haiti

2011-04-07T10:28:00.003-04:00

I know what you're thinking, you really want to help me out right now.

And by that I mean help out my "family."

And by that I really mean help the people in the town of Grand-Bois, Haiti.

My step-cousin (yes, that's a thing) Paige is going to Haiti this summer as part of her grad school thesis research. She's studying art therapy counseling, and while I don't have an exact definition, I think it's exactly what it sounds like.

Maybe I should let her explain what she'll be doing:

"I am going to be working with students from nearby schools as well as other community members on completing a mural at the community Health Clinic. Documentation of the process will be used to help support my research about how community arts can help highlight and support resilience, as well as build community and celebrate culture."

Here's where you come in. Supplies for this project cost money and you definitely want to give some, even if it's just $1. Just click here.

Don't think you have the cash? Skip Starbucks tomorrow. Think the donation process is hard? You can use your Amazon account and donate in roughly seven seconds.

Think this post needs a photo? Fine:

That's a collection my siblings and cousins, with a kid, some girlfriends and a dog thrown in there. Paige is in the green/white in the back row. Hopefully you can figure out which one is me.

Creativity Continues

2011-04-01T08:09:00.004-04:00

It has been a while since I updated you on the creative projects AV and I are working on.

If you remember from late February, she had ditched the novel-writing plan to focus all of her efforts on a different project. She thought back then it would be ready to share by April 1, but it's not quiiiite there yet.

I assure you she's really close, even though I temporarily destroyed months of her work and nearly got punched in the face. But everything is fine now and she's happy with the way things are turning out.

So, the absolute deadline for officially launching is May 1. Full details then.

As for my project, today was the deadline for completing my novel outline. I finished last week, but after talking to AV I have had to rethink some things. Let's say it's 97 percent done.

I posted a cryptic note on Facebook a few days ago asking "question without context: Sophie or Leah?"

AV convinced me I should change the name of one of the lead characters, and those were our two finalists. Despite a votes for George and for "nothing," I can tell you the lead female character is now named Sophie.

Now it's time to start writing. I still have to work out the final 3 percent of the outline, but the issues are near the end of the story so it's not critical I figure that out today.

Stay tuned.

Play Ball!

2011-04-01T07:25:00.003-04:00

Get excited, spring is officially here.

Walking into a baseball stadium yesterday with temperatures around 40 degrees didn't scream "spring," but the fact that I was there for Opening Day baseball said otherwise.

For the second consecutive year, I saw the Washington Nationals open their season along with my brother Pat. For those of you who don't know him, he looks like this:

It's possible that's not the most representative picture. Lucky for him, this year our mom was around for the game too:

Oh, and I guess I was there:

The weather was far from ideal. At one point I had to resort to taking my arms out of the sleeves of my coat and having my brother zip me up like I was in a straight jacket in order to get my hands warms again.

But there are few better days this time of year than Opening Day. That's when even Nationals fans can pretend our team has a chance. Mathematically, it's fun to watch all of the percentage-based statistics like batting average and earned run average that can swing so wildly with such a limited data set.

Plus there's just something right about sitting among a crowd, eating a hot dog and watching some baseball.

I brought along my flip-style camera with the intention of taking lots of video. Due to the frozen nature of my hands, I didn't get anything past the first inning. But again, with Opening Day there's a lot said in those first six outs:

The Atlanta Braves ending up beating the Nationals 2-0, so it was a respectable showing. And at least this year there weren't legions of annoying Phillies fans around.

One last comical moment. This game was played in March 2011 -- not April -- but someone forgot to tell the graphics guy at the stadium:

I Do Declare

2011-03-29T09:50:00.006-04:00

For a long time I have wanted to enter a professional sports draft.

I have played a lot of sports in my life and consider myself to be pretty athletic, but I definitely don't have the ability to be legitimately selected by any self-respecting team.

My hope was that once in the draft, some team would get lazy and just look at a list of names and say, "What the heck, let's take this Hannas kid."

Last fall, I put this plan into motion. I emailed each of the major U.S. sports leagues (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL) and asked how to enter their respective drafts.

I only heard back from the NBA, which responded the next day. They asked me to send my answers to certain questions about my background to this person at their league office in New York. So, in September, I did just that.

As the months passed, I assumed they had either misplaced my letter or, more likely, figured out that I had no business being in their draft. I had even started to formulate some theories about who may have sent them a tape of my miserable shooting performance on the court behind our house.

But yesterday I opened the mailbox to find among credit card applications and a Netflix movie a letter from the NBA. It's been a long time since I've been so excited to open a piece of mail. Here's what they said:

At first I thought they were wrong about my lack of collegiate eligibility. I played exactly zero combined years at Susquehanna University and the University of Maryland, and thus thought I was still NCAA eligible. I even carefully worded my response to the NBA question about where I had played, saying explicitly only that I had "attended" those schools.

But after further research, it turns out the rule is you have five years from the time you first enroll at a college or university in which to use up your eligibility.

While I was hoping to get invited to the draft in New York in June -- and yes, I would have gone -- it's nice to know I don't have to wait that long to chase my NBA dreams.

Surely some team needs a newly eligible free agent to help finish out their season.

Defining Content

2011-03-28T23:38:00.002-04:00

In an ongoing effort to make your reading experience better, I have finally put in the effort to tag all of the posts.

What does that mean? If you look at the bottom of most of the entries, you will see a few keywords related to the text. If you want to see what else I may have written that relates, just click the word and it will bring up all of the similarly tagged posts.

For example. I had a college roommate named Shawn L. who has appeared in several posts. I'm tagging his name in this one, so you can click on it and see what antics he has been involved in.

You can also browse just the words themselves.

If you look on the right side of the page, below the archives is a section of the labels ordered by the frequency in which they appear on the blog. You can see I have posted a lot about Taco Bell, books and working at the mall, but not so much about pandas, Rachel Bilson or Wendy's.

Happy reading.

It's Outta Here

2011-03-26T16:56:00.007-04:00

The forecast for tomorrow includes snow, but the calendar still says baseball's opening day is next week.

So what better time to read a book about baseball? In this case, it was "Sixty Feet, Six Inches" -- a book that basically follows a conversation between hall-of-famers Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson.

The book was a gift from my sister (thanks, Mal!), and I really meant to read it at this time last year. I must have been distracted. Actually, after checking the archives, it looks like I was working on plowing through a 700-page book about basketball.

For anyone who has played baseball, "Sixty Feet, Six Inches" is a fascinating look inside the minds of people who played the game at its highest level. Jackson tells you what he was thinking as he stepped to the plate in a certain situation, and Gibson counters with his perspective from the mound.

I knew a bit about Jackson before I read the book, and his portion really just solidified my impression of his supreme confidence in his own ability. Gibson was more of a mystery to me, but I found his insight to be much more interesting. I also learned he once played for the Harlem Globetrotters, who knew?

Gibson figured out a way for people to endear themselves to me by mentioning one of the finest films of all time. In discussing his pitching motion, Gibson says, "If they would have let me, I'd have loved to back up and run up over the mound like jai alai, like Happy Gilmore hitting a drive."

I see no problems with this.

He also had great insight on why baseball players -- especially pitchers -- should hustle on every play. A reporter asked why Gibson ran hard to first base whenever he hit the ball, when many other pitchers just jogged lightly assuming they would be thrown out.

"You know, I run three times a game from home to first, less than twice a week," Gibson said. "Why can't I run hard?"

Another interesting aspect of the book is that even with all of the games these guys played in their lives, they could recall certain at-bats with incredible detail. Now, I have no way of verifying if they are remembering correctly, or if the details were added later, but I definitely know what it's like to have something like this story from Jackson stick in your mind:

"I got it one-and-one, but the pitch was ball two and they took the sign off. Then [pitcher Reggie] Cleveland left a slider over the plate a little bit." Jackson hit it for a home run.

As your probably assumed by now, I played a bit of baseball when I was growing up. During the summer I played on all-star teams that would travel to different tournaments, mostly in Virginia.

Here's 10-year-old me during one of those summers. Note the awesome red cleats:

A few years after that, when I was 12, my team played in a tournament in Staunton, Va. I didn't play a whole lot that summer, but in the bottom of the fifth inning I was called into a game to pinch hit.

Just like Jackson, I remember the little details of that at-bat. The bases were loaded and we were losing by three runs. With a count of two balls and two strikes, the pitcher bounced a curveball in the dirt -- full count.

The opposing coach called timeout to go talk to his pitcher. I jogged down to talk to our third base coach, who basically told me that if I got a hit here, I would probably get to play more. No pressure or anything.

I stepped back to the plate. The pitcher threw another curveball, this one starting over the plate and diving down and in -- the absolute perfect spot for my swing. I hit a line drive over the right field fence. It was my first home run, a grand slam that won the game.

I have that ball sitting on a shelf in my bedroom.

Happy spring.

Mega Money

2011-03-24T23:32:00.006-04:00

If you want some of my future wealth, you should ask now.

I don't want to be one of those people who wins the lottery and all of a sudden has a bunch of new friends and "cousins" looking for a piece of the pie. Your request will be denied.

I mention this now because I am about to take part in my first and last attempt at amassing mass fortune with absolutely no effort.

A few months ago, AV and I were talking about various entrepreneurial ventures for which we had ideas but no funding. I may have suggested helpful things like robbing banks or starting a pyramid scheme, but she had a better idea: "We're playing Mega Millions."

Of course, if you're going to play the lottery, you need a plan. We have a few simple rules for our attempt. First, we're making one try -- no continually chasing long odds for us (though we later amended that to each one of us buying tickets once, so two total attempts). Second, we decided to play only when the jackpot got above $75 million. Friday's drawing is for a mere $312 million.

And then there are the numbers.

We decided since we are only playing one time, we could go ahead and come up with two sets of numbers. They include things like our ages, her lucky number, a lucky number she picked for me, part of my parents' garage code and the season number from the Simpsons DVD set I was watching at the time.

Our magic formula is secret

So here's the deal. On the extremely improbably chance we win on Friday (or Tuesday), you better get in your funding request now.

One in 175 million odds don't come around every day.

And You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here?

2011-03-24T10:49:00.004-04:00

If you have been reading for a while, you may know this blog started on MySpace -- which I'm told at least one person still uses -- before moving to its current location.

This set of posts dates back to mid-2005, but really the groundwork goes back a bit further to some things many of you don't know about.

Most writers have a distinct style you can pick out if you read enough of their stuff, and what you might call my "voice" really started during my junior year of college when I took over writing the weekly sports column in our school newspaper. It was a space where I could write about pretty much whatever I wanted, and experiment with different ways of breaking rules English teachers had drilled into my head.

Two years of that column produced some of what you might expect, and some slightly different stuff.

But I guess we can actually take one more step back, to my freshman year of college. That's when I started my first website on GeoCities (which I'm sure nobody still uses). It was called The Ert Movement, and basically sprang from the idea that if something can be inert, why can't the opposite be ert? The overall content is, admittedly, a bit ridiculous, but it was another place where I could experiment with a different writing style and see what this whole Internet thing was about.

The Ert site eventually became a "real" website when my brother and I bought a domain and started using a web hosting service.

Later, I used the same host to store most of the pictures you see here on the blog. Sorry to anyone who was looking through the archives in the past few weeks -- we changed hosts and the pictures were down for a little while. But we're back, so no more blank boxes.

The Ert site, which is still up for those who want some interesting reading, has a section called "Journals." The posts are short, sometimes crazy, and a few of the later ones are actually represented here as well. Towards the end of actually updating the site, I got really lazy and just had my brother post some of the latest blog entries so we had something "fresh."

But if you read some of the journals, I think you can see the very beginnings of what has evolved here. Here are a few quick favorites:

Soda cans + college kids + hot glue = masterpiece

Non-power windows confuse a nice young woman

In graduate school, I had to make a personal website for an online journalism class. The main part of the exercise was posting a personal story, which in my case was about my grandmother who had died a few months earlier. I later added a longer story -- one of my better ones -- about a family at our church who lost their mother to brain cancer, which I had written for a college feature writing class. The site also has a section of quick stories I wrote during a trip into Washington, D.C., one day that involved picking out a person I saw and making up their story.

So add up all those things, plus newspaper and magazine articles, and the countless TV/radio/web news scripts I have written professionally, and here we are.

Hopefully a few people have enjoyed reading.

Kids These Days

2011-03-18T00:25:00.004-04:00

I fear for our future.

That's not based on any 2012 apocalyptic scenarios or the coming pollen season, but rather what I have observed with today's youth.

I posted a pair of stories related to this topic a few years ago -- one about a kid who failed at using a rolling backpack and one I saw eating grass in a high horse-traffic area.

Today, I saw another disturbing sight while driving home from work.

On a two-lane road, I came up to a line of cars that had stopped for a school bus. I looked to the left of the bus just in time to see a kid emerge from inside a van parked at the top of a driveway and run onto the bus. As the bus pulled away, the van drove down the driveway back to the house about 200 feet away.

I drove on, and my sleep-deprived brain slowly started to put the situation together. A parent had loaded their child into a van, driven them to the top of their driveway 200 feet away and waited there for the bus to come.

Have kids become that soft? They can't walk to a bus stop 200 feet away and wait outside in 50-degree weather?

My elementary school was almost a mile from my house, and I walked to and from school all the time. Sometimes I rode my bike...while carrying a violin case. The weather didn't matter.

Of course, maybe that just makes me one of those geezers talking about going five miles through knee-deep snow uphill both ways.

What Friends Are For

2011-03-11T06:57:00.007-05:00

Don't say I never did anything for you.

I posted a few weeks ago about my aversion to shaving, but also my bigger dislike of the effects of not shaving. Of course, your comments here, on Facebook and Twitter were all in favor of me growing a beard anyway.

Thanks.

So in the spirit of peer pressure I skipped shaving for 10 solid days, and ended up with this:

Excuse that it looks like I have been up all night, because, well, I had been. I took this picture as soon as I got home from work, and promptly got to removing what felt like a small woodland creature slowly taking residence on my face. I think if I had waited another day I would have been required to give it a name.

The experience was just as I had remembered the last time I decided to let the beard grow. At the end I thought, "Why did I do this?"

And that's exactly what I will think next time.

Brave New World

2011-03-05T11:09:00.003-05:00

Whenever I go to a bookstore I inevitably walk past a few books I've looked at a dozen times but never brought home.

I even think to myself, "I've looked at this a dozen times, I should probably just go ahead and read it." And then I put it down, walk away and get something else.

I am happy to report that Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" will no longer be one of those books.

If you're not familiar, "Brave New World" is in the same vein as "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" -- stories that see a future world controlled to an exceptional degree by a government. In my post about "Fahrenheit 451" I mentioned that author Ray Bradbury explained "1984" as author George Orwell tackling the implications of governmental control while he deals with the societal fallout.

Bradbury writes about a government that bans books in order to deny its people information. Orwell's government changes the information to suit its present needs. Huxley's government manipulates its people from birth such that it is unnecessary to worry about history. The past is banned and irrelevant, pushed aside for a world of newness and consumption.

I'm always a fan of editions that include extra notes about the story or the author. They help put things in context of the time ("Brave New World" was first published in 1932) and often include primary sources from the author.

My copy of this book has a letter Huxley wrote to Orwell in October 1949, a few months after "1984" was published. Huxley thanks Orwell for sending him a copy of the book, then spends the entire letter explaining how Orwell's version of a controlling future government is "unlikely." He sees his story as an evolution of the Big Brother regime.

"I feel that the nightmare of 1984 is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that world I imagined in Brave New World."

The letter comes off almost condescending and mean-spirited, but Huxley at least ends on a positive note:

"Of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war--in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds."

In Huxley's world, children are manufactured through a highly efficient process that creates distinct classes with specific characteristics. The one thing the vast majority of people share is an unquestioning adherence to all of the mantras that have been systematically drilled into their heads since birth.

The system creates a world where dissent doesn't have to be squelched -- it's non-existent. Everyone has a job perfectly fitted to their abilities and is happy in the simplicity of having everything they believe they want.

The leader explains, "They're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave."

There's no need for Orwell's Thought Police when the citizens instinctively do what is desired of them.

When reading these "futuristic" books written long in our past, it's hard not to think about what the author may have gotten right. One tool of social engineering the "Brave New World" government uses is soma, a hallucinogenic drug that will turn any frown upside down. People who feel the least bit of anxiety, fear or sadness say one of the soma-related slogans to themselves as if they instinctively know the drug will solve their problem:

"Half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon..."

Many of the workers get a daily ration as soon as their shift is over. Huxley describes the scene of one group waiting in line for their soma, and the crusading figure who attempts to disrupt the ritual and break the government's spell.

I couldn't help but compare them to a Black Friday crowd waiting for a store to open. The ritual, the thing they need, will be theirs if they wait in this line. As long as everything goes according to plan, everyone is calm and continues to be happy.

At the soma line, the character muscles his way to the front. He grabs the daily ration and throws it on the ground. All hell breaks loose.

At Wal-Mart, flatscreen TVs are 70 percent off. The minutes count down as the store prepares to open. The crowd slowly pushes towards the door in anticipation. An employee unlocks one door and swings it open. The front of the line walks in calmy, or rather tries to. The people in the back want those TVs -- need them. They surge. In our world, unlike Huxley's, there's no police force on hand to spray a calming gas on the crowd.

Nah, that could never happen.

Yeah, There's an App for That

2011-03-03T10:29:00.008-05:00

I love technology, but things may be getting a bit out of hand.

A lot of video games have advertisements designed into them -- billboards you drive past, some kind of statistic brought to you by Company X or the signs at a sports arena.

It used to be that these were completely made up, generic products that just helped to give the scenes a little more feel of reality. You might see Joe's car repair, King brand hot dogs or A-1 Auto Insurance.

But now, games have real ads, and because the systems can connect to the Internet, those ads can regularly change.

Take the EA Sports hockey game I have for the Playstation 3. I grabbed a picture of the boards this morning as an example:

That's a T-mobile ad, and yes if you had taken the time to pause the game and type in the link the website does exist.

But that's nothing.

A new(ish) tool in advertising are these things called QR codes, which are square bar codes you can scan with your smartphone. All you need is a simple app, scan the code, and it will take you to a website for whatever product or company.

So imagine my suprise when I was playing the hockey game and saw one of the QR codes in a Subway ad along the boards. I didn't take a picture at the time, but I roughly recreated it:

Think about the strategy that went into this ad. Subway is banking on the fact that I will notice it, recognize what the QR code is, own a smartphone, have a bar code scanner app, and take the time to pause the game and line the screen up just right -- all so I can visit the website they set up for this promotion.

(Nerd alert: The QR code I recreated will actually take you to the Subway promotion site)

That's some incredible technology. Whether we need it is another question.

Working for the Memories

2011-02-25T10:11:00.010-05:00

Last week I posted an audio story about how my mom and her family communicated with each other by tape when my grandfather was deployed in Vietnam.

I mentioned the incalculable hours that in some way went into making that post and said I would explain some of the background work you didn't see.

In 2009 I was working part time for a company that among other things converted all kinds of old media to digital. That included things like 35mm photo slides, 8mm movie film, reel-to-reel audio tapes, records, VHS tapes and cassette tapes.

Sitting in my parents' basement were a box of reel-to-reel tapes, a few movie reels, a film projector and a reel-to-reel player. Since I learned how to use that older equipment, I set to trying to digitize my grandparents' old stuff.

I started with the audio tapes:

Which involved this machine:

A few years earlier, my younger brother and I had tried to use the machine, but couldn't quite figure it out. Turns out it was broken anyway. After opening it up, and a quick (lucky) find on eBay, I had a replacement belt for one of the motors and a working machine.

The transfer process can sometimes be a bit convoluted. In this case, it involved running an audio cable from the tape player to my camcorder, which was in turn connected to my computer. Slightly complicated, but it worked.

Things went well for a few tapes. For being as old as they are, they sound remarkably well.

Then while I was playing a tape, a loud BANG and a puff of white smoke came from inside the machine. I quickly unplugged it, recovered from a minor heart attack, and found that it had just blown a capacitor. I had to wait a few days for the new $0.15 modern capacitor to arrive, but it was pretty easy to solder in place and finish the recording process.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I listened the audio files from each tape on my computer. Using Adobe Premiere editing software, I was able to make little clips of each section that sounded like something I might use in the story.

I just happened to be going to dinner with my parents, and brought along a (very cheap) microphone and recorder on the off chance my mom was willing to sit down for an interview. I was kind of surprised that she immediately said yes, and her insight I think added a lot to the story I was already forming in my head.

The next day I started writing the script, but stopped after about a page. What I had wasn't terrible, but I just wasn't happy with the direction it was going. Mainly the issue was that I did a lot more of the setup before you ever heard any of the old audio, which is really the whole story.

I stepped away for a day, and on the Metro ride into work I brought along a notebook and started over. It took a second night of writing on the subway, but I think the result was much better the second time around.

The next step was recording my audio. Without access to a recording studio, I opted for the next best location -- the closet in my bedroom. With the Flashlight app on my cellphone lighting the way, I was able to record my track and feed the audio into my computer.

From there, it was just a matter of using the editing program to splice together my audio, the interview with my mom and those small clips I had pulled from the original audio.

The post last week included two pictures from the era. Those are part of more than 1,700 of my grandparents' 35mm slides that I scanned in 2009. Just like the audio tapes, the pictures are things I had never seen and provide a look into what their lives were like back then.

They even help connect to our family today. In some of the pictures you can see a striking resemblance between my mom and aunt and some of their kids. The backgrounds of the photos inside their various houses are interesting too. They show a lot of the artwork and decorations they had that were the treasured keepsakes in their house when we packed it up five years ago.

Many of those things are in our homes today. For example, check out the wall behind my grandmother in this picture:

As I type this, I can actually reach out to my left and touch one of those scrolls, which are hanging in my bedroom.

Here's a bonus piece of audio (50 seconds) from the tapes that didn't make the original story, with my grandfather talking about where he got the scrolls:

So, lots of overall work, but definitely worth experiencing those memories.