Mmmmm...soup.

So I made tomato soup, the same recipe that colin used for those who were/are involved in Dinner Club, it turned out very well except I saw the word "stock" and thought "broth" and so added the wrong kind of liquid, though even if I had caught this ahead of time it would not have mattered as I have no stock. I'm excited to try out a yellow-split-pea and andouille(sp?) sausage recipe in the next few days. Its good that I'm getting into soups as the weather has turned a wee bit chilly recently and hot food is very welcome in the old stomach. Ahhh...I can't wait to make all kinds of one-pot concoctions.

So this past weekend was amazingly boring, don't know when the last time I was that bored but thank god its over. The only thing of note I did was read Richard III. If you want to know how to curse read that play. In order to make this weekend exciting I've decided to go and stay in the cities, I don't know how or with who yet but I'm really up for anything and need a little adventure. Hopefully I'll have a good post ready with all sorts of weird sidebars and such, I'll just stay here and read.

In other news I'm continually amazed by Arrested Development, if you're not watching this show you really need to. Its just amazing, even if you don't like TV, buying consumer goods, or any element of popular culture this 30 minutes is worth your time. To those who do watch it I've been laughing at Buster's invisible hand waving for two days now.

I've also recently joined the facebook universe. Its kind of scary as I can now easily reconnect with high school friends and meet others who share similar interests or characteristics, like having an adam's apple. I don't know if I'm ready for that. If/when I go back to chicago I may take advantage of some of those options.

The attempted pirate post

So I promised I would post more regularly and so here is a post. I would first like to apologize to teammates of mine on Jobbers. Though sectionals will undoubtedly be over by the time you read this I would like to admit my error and poor judgement in talking about clambake and more specifically my desire to go there rather than regionals in my previous post. I think that I was still a little frustrated from my play at tune-up and was excited at the idea of going to clambake though I sort of always knew I would not really go. Anyhoo I'm sorry if I marginalized anyone on the team by what I wrote, I guess therein are the dangers of blogging while slightly inebriated.

Well after that rather sober note I'll get on to the happenings and goings-on of the past week. Monday while listening to the radio I learned that it was national talk like a pirate day. I actually tried to post in pirate prose. My attempt was rather lacking but the short aborted attempt is reprinted here for your enjoyment.

T'is morning while listenin' to the radio me be, I was remembered of the meaty meaning of this day. Tis a day for speech not unlike pirate and so I, so unable to write in a normal voice, on any other eve, will try my hand at speech resembling more a barge's raider than a man of thought and opinion well-conceived. I should note that while this is a day for pirate speech I found myself reading shakespeare, so if my prose seems more like (though not as good) as the later rather than the former, know that I tried though not too well. Also I should admit that the extent to which my thought and opinion is well-conceived is very debatable. Yestermorn ere my booty was won Keep your thoughts clean I spied in me box of letters from seas afar a letter from the new hampshire state. It was the reply to a note I had sribbled some ports past from a wrench I use the term loosley here as she is a retired schoolteacher I met while landlubbing through the eastern states. It caused a moment tender in this young cur's heart and gave me delinquencies pause as I learned what had occurred to her since our chance meeting much water under the bow ago. Ok I can't do this.

Well there you have it, I guess I unlike twain don't really have an ear for the language, and I should furtherly suppose that our differences in writing ability don't end there.

Incidentally, reading about shakespeare, actually an article about vulgarity in the NYT, the past week I learned in interesting tidbit. The play title "Much Ado About Nothing" is a bit of wordplay that could sound like "Much Ado About an-o-thing" the 0-thing apparently being a bawdy reference to female genitalia. That William was rather clever.

Yesterday I went to the same fellow's house as I did last friday to help put up a fence for his 2-1/2 horses, one of them full-grown is about the size of a large heavily muscled dog, which was fun. As we were putting up one section the neighbor's eight horses sauntered over to see what all the fuss, hammering, and oath-generating was about. In those numbers, standing near them in their natural fenced-in element was quite remarkable.. Afterwards we enjoyed an old-speckled hen beer which I believe jason or zahlen spoke to the merits of some time ago and with whom I concur. We then proceeded to the local tavern where much to my liking they had unlimited popped corn, though judging from the floor around the bar area they keep the hoover corporation in the black. We ordered the fish-fry and were not disappointed.

Finally, about 5 months after my own arrival and 1 month after the majority of interns left, we got our presumably last intern arrival of the year. His name is nathaniel, though he goes by natty and graduated from oberlin college a little more than a year ago. When I asked, "Did you know Lyrica?" He replied, "Lyrica Hammann?" So Lyrica, or any other oberlin educated reader of these humble pages, if you would like to pass along convey any message I would be happy to do so.

Well that 'bout wraps her up. Its off to pancake making and then possibly an extended sojourn to the allison savannah, its a nature conservancy owned savannah that abuts our property, and while there the other day I was struck by its amazingly high degree of awesomeness. Anyway ta ta.

roofin' man tunes up? not really.

Ok so I gotta clear the air. When I went to chicago this past weekend apparently a number of people thought I was drunk every time I posted to this space. Despite the fact that I am drunk right now (4 labatt blues) that is simply not the case. I'm actually sober most of the time. But enough of that.

Tuneup, or to the newer generation CHC (chicago heavyweight championships, though now its more of a middleweight), was just ok. In fact it was pretty bad. I played the worst I have at a serious tournament since probably my freshman year of college and our team despite playing well at times, never really started to click. It was a frustrating weekend as far as ultimate is concerned. However, ultimate has recently become a vehicle with which to see friends as 90% of my current friends play ultimate to some extent, rather than an end to itself. I got to see Lyrica for the first time in a year, which was totally sweet, as she's totally cool and moving to chi-town soon, which is all the more incentive to go back there because its one more totally righteous and fun-living individual. I also got to see kevin and george. He was an especially fine see as he's leaving the country, along with nate (though he's embarking for deutschland), for the greater part of a year for london to study polysci at the london school of economics. He's an inteligent man and a wonderful human being, we talked about books, betrand russell, and the decline of page2 on espn as an entertaining media source; really a classic joe/george conversation with both the highbrow and the low all intertwined and such, we only lacked a new personal best record for spyhunter to bring up. I also saw trudy (I'll email I promise though you probably won't read this), rose, eric, julia, josie, erica, and others. I think I may have more to post here about that weekend, but I'll leave that to more sober times.

So yesterday I went to help a full-time type from here tear down a fence at his place so he could put in a better fence to keep in his horses. It should be noted he has quite the personal zoo, including a slumbering feline that got quite indignant when I started peeing in front of it. I managed to test his electric fence twice. It apparently conducts quite well through both the work glove I was wearing and the metal posts that I was carrying which grazed it. Sort of made my arm go numb. Not bad work. Today I helped another guy from here, jim, put a new roof on a house he bought to fix and resell. With 5 of us it took 13 hours and he'll probably put in another 3 tomorrow to finish it. It was rather satisfying work as you got instant gratification and the sense of having done something noble (namely putting a roof over someone's head) not to mention being well paid, fed, and beered. So now I could almost roof on my own, a scary thought. Afterwards we started telling stories about this and past years at the creek. The funniest ones included someone "lubricating" root samples with WD-40 and the resident chemist and sometimes roofer nearly having to kill him, but restraining himself to a "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" which was pretty understated when you consider the question of why anyone would think that roots need to be lubricated. Other ones included the girl who not only couldn't get hot water in the shower (she was used to two knobs rather than one) but who didn't bring this up in conversation with anyone else for 3 weeks before bringing it to Jim the facilities guy, this especially boggled people because she never wondered how her roomates could steam up the bathroom with cold water. The other good one is the guy who borrowed a screw gun, brought it back 30 seconds later and said, "Can you give me the other screw gun, this is the one that unscrews screws," not realizing that there's a rather nifty switch which toggles the function between unscrewing and screwing on one gun. Yes we get some interesting types around here, though to be fair I myself once walked into a mirror, you might ask why didn't I see myself, and the answer is I'm a narcissist and would be inexorably drawn to any image of myself. It should also be noted that Jim spent $100 dollars on a nail gun. This is the single best investment anyone could make if they roof their own house, outside of the actually roofing material of course, It probably saved about 15 man hours and if you ever get the safety off, can really keep the neighborhood kids at bay. This might be a good point to just reiterate the fact that I'm evil. The house he bought incidentally was about the worst in terms of fixer-upper I have ever seen. The previous owners had just destroyed the interior walls, floors, bathrooms, and anything else they reasonably could. To give the reader an idea they fixed holes in the wall with newspaper and duct tape and I think one load bearing structure looked a lot like paper-machie (sorry for the spelling and yes that was a poor joke), just abysmal.

In other news this week my friend EB departed south to go home from here. She was one of the good ones and we'll all miss her. Especially those of us who egged her on in her baking habit, its wonderful getting home-baked cookies in the morning what can I say, she was also just genuinely happy most of the time, even when she recently floated the burb' in a in a huge puddle up to its bumpers.

The last bit of news is that steve, the WD-40 on roots hating chemist also plays ultimate. He invited me to play in maine at clambake with a lot of the guys I played with from 2 years ago. I decided to decline because of the expense and because its the same weekend as regionals and although my attendence in the UPA series is still in the air, I'm not keen on ditching my chicago friends and go to maine. It is however clambake, and when will I ever get another chance is what I ask myself. I guess I'll have to trust to fate and to the fact that I suck at the moment. If however any readers of this space are going and would voice there profund approval to my attendence, who knows, I might be swayed, it is supposed to be a pretty sweet party. I'll probably amend this post tomorrow with more details about my triumphant return to chicago.

Wooooo! I wrote the above last night and when I went to post it I got an error message and it seemed everything had been deleted, this made me so angry I had to go to sleep. I'll try to post more regularly in the near future, sorry for the delay.