Archive for May, 2004

The Battle for Suburbia

Day 3 – The Neighbors

After living in apartments most of my adult life the concept of friendly neighbors is almost foreign, sort of like the Ice Cream Truck from Friday. When you live in apartments you don’t really become friends with the people in the apartment building (unless you live in a Spelling TV show on FOX). Typically your comfort zone is violated with the sound of feet on the ceiling, yelling next door, or your neighbor peeing himself in your front door asking if you have seen his cat. Not so when you buy a house.

The concept of the yard.

It would appear that the borders of the yard are approxiamately what most people need for personal space to become socialable neighbors. We have already met the little old lady next door, and Steve from down the street. Wooden playgrounds from Costco are the topic of conversation instead of canvasing the old neighborhood looking for my wife’s stolen car.

Gems of suburbia.

The Battle for Suburbia

Day 2 – Moving Day

I have oftened believed that a measure of ones friends is absolute on moving day. Friends are the people that help you schlep your crap from door to door, with only promise of pizza and beer at the end, on the only long weekend we have had in 6 months. Thank You.

The Battle for Suburbia

New House – Day 1 – Cleaning Day

I felt like an 8 year old boy when I heard the music from the Ice Cream Truck rounding the corner. Having lived in urban areas for so long I thought that Ice Cream Trucks had gone the way of Walt Disney and were just pure childhood myths told around the camp fire.

Apparently Kat had the best vantage point upstairs to see myself, Mom and then Aunt Karen running for the truck with dollar bills clutched in our hands.

The little pleasures of suburbia.

Special thanks to Mom and A. Karen for spending two days cleaning the filth of others so that we could have a clean place to call home. Love ya!

The Historical Debate

When the historic town that you grew up in is faced with a choice; maintain it’s historical signifigance under the shadow of poverty or WAL-MART, what do you do? I just read an article on the National Trust website that Vermont is on the 2004 America’s Most Endangered Historic Sites. My home town of St. Johnsbury has been presented with this challenge a few years ago, and they chose to keep the “800 Pound Gorilla” at bay. Everyone heard the stories on how Walmart crushes the small businesses and offsets the community.

Frankly put, this is bullshit.

WAL-MART went to a bordering town in New Hampshire. The town is alive, getting all kinds of shopping traffic from both New Hampshire and Vermont, including my home town. WAL-MART created jobs and actually created more traffic for the surrounding small businesses, and is not located in the town proper. So all the fear was in vain.

Now my home town is presented with this choice again, and I don’t think history will repeat itself.

Pronunciation

Not sure how to pronounce words like fiduciary, equilibrium, or my favorite bunghole, then visit The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary for audio playback pronunciation.

Be forewarned you may spend a good part of your morning getting Merriam-Webster to read naughty words back to you (there are plenty).

Erik Olsen who is not only a talented photographer, but also by trade a journalist. He has started a new blog in an effort to display and discuss the world’s view on America from the outside looking in. This topic is very important to me because I have a lot of non-American friends and family, and not to mention my nine-to-fiver is with the international tech community.

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds, and I recommend a visit to http://www.americaabroad.org

Reading the blog reminded me of the other night when the writers of the the season finale of “The Practice” hit the nail on the head during one of the closing arguements…we are a nation of finger pointers. It would appear the the “I’m rubber – you’re glue” lesson I learned when I was an eight year old on the playground has perpetuated throughout the entire American culture. Though rarely do we seem to point in the right direction (perhaps purposely)

We are sort of that super star high school athlete (world super power), the one that everyone loves (other world super powers), the one that everyone wants to be (all the other countries). Then we realize that everyone thinks that we are rock stars and it goes to our head. Then we are too star struck to see that things are starting to slip. It becomes obvious to everyone else long before we realize it, and in the meantime we piss people off. Then they wait for us to make a mistake, to be embarrassed, humbled, equalized.

Iraq is that embarrassment. Except that we are not handling the humility well. We fire the shotgun into the crowd – the finger pointing begins.

So the other day we were in the Maternity Store at the Mall. It was here that I realized all expecting fathers share some sort of cosmic connection, and I guess in that respect all expecting mothers do to. But I see all these fathers-to-be in the store and realize that they all look the same, just following, arms to the side,body slack, looking slightly defeated and confused.

A simple head nod and I was in complete understanding with one of the fathers-to-be. Knowing that inevitably we all will have to dodge questions like “Does this make me look fat”, which in normal circumstances would be easy. With a pregnant wife all hopped up on hormones, this question can only leave us speechless and scurrying for cover. Luckily, Kaca has a sense of humor about all of this, and simply put, being pregnant looks good on her.

Minutes later another father-to-be was repeating verbatim the words that I had spoke to my wife while she was trying on clothes. We sat in our designated chairs outside the changing rooms, watching our wives come out with simulation belly pillows, hearing them say “Don’t I look cute?”. Knowing that in the 90 degree high humidity Connecticut summer that a belly this big will not be “cute” – it will be hell. Our thoughts wander out of the maternity store to Home Depot designing the best home cooling system. These thoughts only broken by the sound of the sales woman pawning off an $18 jar of coco butter and reminding us that when our child goes to college it will cost $215,000.

Seeing the excitement on Kaca’s face made the experience worth it, and of course the trip across the mall to the software store for being such a good husband

Well today, I give you even more proof of why the internet KICKS ass. I have seen a huge number of websites that have released for free, most of the classic literature, alternative, or tranditionally unreleased works.

http://www.readprint.com/

http://www.litrix.com/

http://www.bartleby.com/

See a pretty complete list on Yahoo!

This is a perfect example of why the internet kicks ass. Click here to view the world in panoramic format. Similar in form and funtion are the panoramics of Erik Olsen ,which if you haven’t seen you should. website