• Are you going to eat that?

    Yogurt is the most disgusting substance that I purposefully put in my mouth on a routine basis. It beats out things like cottage cheese and brie because, as Nancy Reagan says, I, “just say no.” Pre-mixed yogurt isn’t too bad. You remove the cover and you see a substance that looks a little bit like pudding. Pudding is good! Contrast this with the look and feel of the fruit on the bottom variety; well, it’s enough to loose your appetite. Stirring it up, if anything, makes matters worse. After a good stirring, my yogurt looks like a culture from the lab run amok. Then you read the label, proudly proclaiming that your lunch contains “live and active cultures”, and suddenly you’re waxing sentimental over those peanut butter sandwiches that perpetually appeared in your school lunch, oh those many moons ago. No matter how much you stir, you can’t quite eliminate those disturbing white lumps. Is that the part that is “live and active?”

    Please don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know.

  • Bitching about the weather

    There are two kinds of Floridians: native born and transplants. There are two kinds of transplants: those that don’t mind the summers and those that do. There are two kinds of people who mind the summer weather: those that complain about it and those that don’t. I’m a transplant that doesn’t like the summer weather and is outspoken on the matter.

    Coming in to work this morning, I had the occasion to flip the calendar to the new month (we’re not in May anymore Toto). The first thing that jumped out at me was that June 21 is the first day of summer (the summer solstice for those of you who are astronomically inclined). To those of us who live in Florida, June 21 is a relatively meaningless day. Summer weather has been with us for over a month now; forget about waiting another twenty odd days. Highs in the nineties, lows in the mid to upper seventies, humidity thick enough to go down the wrong pipe, direct sunlight that will burn unprotected skin in just over fifteen minutes, what’s not to like? Normally I would just go indoors and stay there, but my friend the air conditioner has betrayed me yet again.

    WANTED: Catharsis suitable for a thirty-two year old male who is ready to go up in the attic and open a can of whoop ass on his air handler.

  • A mother by any other name

    Cheryl and Beth have a unique mother-daughter relationship. At any given time, any one of these labels may seem appropriate for Cheryl’s relationship with Beth: friend, rival, taskmaster, pseudo-sibling, mentor, nurse, maid, and cook. Of all these titles, the most surprising one was added yesterday afternoon, secretary. I would have sooner expected Beth to be doing aerial acrobatics from the arm of the living room couch than what I saw yesterday: Beth dictating a letter to Cheryl.

    You just haven’t lived until you’ve heard your six year old daughter dictating an email message for her aunt to her mother, like some kind of corporate executive: “, ‘feeling much much better’ PERIOD – NEW SENTENCE – ‘I’m having a lot of ,’”