Family Time

Today my family got together in Indianapolis to celebrate Mother's Day. Based on last year's success we thought to try and have a repeat performance this year. I was happy because it saved me a long drive home, and they were happy because they get to see me, which is always a treat.

I had the idea of eating at Bucca De Beppo this year. Last year we went to a Mongolian barbecue. It was tasty and Mom had never been there before. This year I wanted to switch things a little bit. Bucca De Beppo is right in the heart of downtown Indianapolis which is sort of neat because we don't go to many large cities very often.

After a too big meal we went over the mall where I bought my suit last weekend. We watched the 3D TV at the Sony Store, and stood in shock at the sight of a $228 Hawaiian shirt at one of the designer stores. Dad had thought the shirt would be around $100. Then I took them over to Nordstrom to show them my suit and look for a tie. They very much liked my suit, and while we were looking at it they met the guy who helped me out last week. I told him I wanted to look at ties and he showed me where they were. At this point he made the mistake of trying to help me. Everything he pulled out Mom said "absolutely not", "that's gross" or some other variation. The guy started laughing because he remembered from last time me telling him how Mom and Brittany tend to point and laugh at some of my clothing choices. In fact they did it earlier that day. Apparently they felt my pant legs were too high. Maybe they shrunk in the wash or something, I thought they fit alright when I got them. But I noticed in the Sony store that in the "Thriller" music video Michael Jackson was also wearing flood waters, so if they were good enough for the "King of Pop" they ought to be alright for me.



This picture is also a good illustration of how I approach ladies when I want to ask them out.

Finally I told the salesman there were just too many cooks in the kitchen and he understood that I was telling him to let us be for awhile. We never did pick out a tie. I will just have to surprise them for the wedding.

But going back to the suit. Recall it is light grey with two buttons. While they liked it, Mom and Dad were quick to point out a famous celebrity who wore a very similar looking suit.

Twisted Up in Cable

My cable bill went up this month by 11.8%. However, I can't complain because the quality of the available programming has noticeably increased as well with the addition of new hit stations such as Jewerly TV. This really is rather ludicrous. In this area of the country a standard of living raise is at 4%. Essentially if you can't pull that off once a year, either your skill set doesn't match your profession, or your job is about to go away altogether. Maybe I should read my own posts. Anyway, my point is that this arbitrary increase in cost to my cable bill seems a bit exorbitant. If an average raise is 4%, cable companies shouldn't be increasing their bills by 11.8%.

With internet TV options like Hulu becoming more and more available it's little wonder cable companies are increasing their prices. They have to pay the networks to host their channels. And the cable companies are going pay for that by increasing my bill as more and more others continue to drop their service.

Since Monk ended, I've found nothing on that I don't mind missing. I didn't want to miss an episode of Monk, I don't care if I miss an episode of anything currently on TV.

Since I got rid of the internet I haven't missed it. Maybe once a month I think that it would be nice to have, but it's usually to look up a recipe. But I already have a recipe book named Mom. She comes for free, and I already know I like what she has to offer. When you look up a recipe online there's no telling if you're going to like what it has you create. Oh sure some of the recipes come with ratings and reviews but their is no accounting for taste. And people who like mushroom bread may be writing some of those reviews. So now maybe it's time to cancel my cable subscription as well.

Canceling cable might be harder. One summer I did go without it and didn't miss it, but at the same time I did have the internet. Now I'd be without both. I haven't decided yet but I'm fairly close to pulling out the cord. If I were to do this, not including the internet savings, I'd save almost a thousand dollars a year on the cable alone. Which would be just about enough to cover the loss I took this week on the stock market. Stupid Greece.

Bi-wheeler Acrobatics

Walking around the pond the other day, I saw off in the distance a little girl learning how to ride her bicycle without the training wheels. Two older ladies were supervising her. They had her in a grassy field, wearing a big helmet. I watched her ride for awhile in a straight line and then come to a stop. At this point she didn't know what to do so she simply fell over. It was pretty amusing. She was just riding along, came to a stop, and then didn't quite know to put out her legs. Instead she sat there with her feet on the pedals and tumbled down bike on top of her. She got up and went to one of the ladies who readjusted her helmet, while the other readjusted her handle bars that got bent from the fall. Then the new bike rider ran back to the bike to hop back on again. This was one very determined little girl.

When I learned how to ride without my training wheels, my parents took a different approach. First my Mom had nothing to do with it at all. This was a job for Dad. It was Dad's duty to teach his son how to ride properly. I never understood the timing, and tried in vain to explain this to him. It made no sense that early evening when he came up and said he needed me to get on my bike without the training wheels. As far as I was concerned, nothing was broken so nothing needed fixing. This seemed like a waste of time. There was no need to learn a new skill to replace an old skill that was serving me quite well. And his decision to choose that day seemed completely random. He could have chosen the day before, the day after, or any other day. Why he felt on that particular day I was ready I'll never know. But he did, and I obeyed and hopped up on that bike, all the while trying to explain to him that there was nothing wrong with my training wheels. A little bit of fright was probably in my protest, but I think mostly I just didn't want to be bothered right then and was looking for an excuse to get back to whatever it was I had been doing.

The grass was not an option. This was because riding in the grass leaves marks in the yard where the tires press down. That was a pivotal moment in my life. Since I was told those marks are ugly at that impressionable age, to this day I get annoyed when I see anyone riding their bike on the grass, and very annoyed if it happens to be some grass in a yard that I had just cut. Some young neighborhood children learned quickly their bikes stay off my family's lawn.

And I don't think helmets had been invented yet, because no one wore them. If you fell down you threw your hands out and took the gravel that shoved into your palms like a man, even if you were a girl. None of my friends or any of the other children in my neighborhood wore helmets. Now you rarely see anyone not wearing them. I suppose it's safer but it took me a long while to warm up to other people wearing them, and I still don't.

Dad's approach was to hold the back of the bike to steady me as I rode. I hadn't yet learned that the easiest way to balance yourself on a bike is to be moving and I pedaled very slowly. As I built up speed, Dad would let go, but still be claiming to be holding me.

After a little bit of this in the driveway, Dad took me out onto the street so we could go a longer distance. We didn't have sidewalks, but the street isn't ever very busy so it was still pretty safe. He had me ride to the end of the block to the cul-de-sac. I was doing good, but was still a little scared at riding alone without his steadying hand. See at this point in my life I still had that complete childlike trust in my parents that they would see no harm come to me. I grew up a lot that day. I kept asking if he was holding on. At one point he didn't respond and I looked back. He wasn't there! He was way off in the distance. Then, right as I turned my head forward again, BANG! One of my neighbors had a mailbox that had a long decorative swan head on it that extended outward into the street a little bit. This was the 80s and there is no accounting for the style back then. That vicious swan headbutted me and I was clobbered backwards off the bike and onto the street. I could hear my Dad laughing before I could see him. To his great disappointment he didn't have a camcorder because he could have made ten thousand dollars on 'America's Funniest Home Videos.' I was furious that he had let go, while still claiming that he had been holding on. I was so mad I got back on that bike and rode home in a fury to scream at Mom about what Dad had done. And of course he took no shame or had any remorse for what he had done. After all I did learn how to ride that bike.

Class is over

Last night was the last salsa class for the semester. As a result was had a shortened lesson but it was to make room for a cookout on the roof of the building where we have lessons.

This last class taught us a final Bachata move, which had a dip at the end. The problem is I don't know any of the Bachata songs so predicting when it's going to end so I can pull of the dip at an impressive time is all but impossible. In fact learning that move has only guaranteed my making a fool of myself if I attempt it. So I suppose this last class taught me how to look terrible in front of a crowd, but it was still fun to learn, and the rest of move, which is a wild turn, is a lot of fun to perform.

After the lesson it was time to eat and meet (hah! that rhymes) everyone we had been dancing with all semester long. To me this meal was a bit backwards. We should have had it after the first couple weeks of class to help foster new friendships. Instead we have it at the end making it a "Hi, nice to meet you, goodbye" type event. During the meal the instructors had salsa music playing in the background in case we wanted to dance, but instead we just talked. It was better than middle school though. Guys and girls weren't separated on opposite sides of the roof. We were all mingling together, but still no one was dancing.

During the conversation I talked with a guy who I thought was an undergrad but turned out to be 31 with a job for the Army Corp of Engineers. He had been coming to class with two of his girl friends who I also took for undergrads but one is around 27 and is his co-worker and the other is around 25 and is possibly a grad student, he wasn't sure. This whole time I thought I was a creepy old guy taking these lessons, and it turns out there are three students right there who are all just like me.

Now at the lesson last night one of the really pretty girls showed up. She was actually one of the two friends that guy I met had been coming to class with. I like dancing and would have been happy to dance with anyone up there, but if had to choose I wanted to dance with her, but couldn't think of a good way to approach the situation even though we were at class, with people we had payed to help us, and they had music playing. So after talking with the guy for awhile, I said 'we should be dancing, you've got two friends over there who are just sitting around chatting, let's ask them to join us', and I walked on over. Basically I made him my wing man, even though he didn't verbally agree or really follow me. I walked over, asked the two ladies if one of them would like to dance, and the really pretty one bounded up. We "danced" for about 15 minutes which was about all the time we had left, and it was a blast. While she was very pretty, which certainly heightened the enjoyment, the best part was her attitude. She didn't get frustrated that we couldn't remember the moves, she didn't seem eager to run off to her next meeting or homework assignment, she wasn't concerned about sending mixed signals which would have made the whole situation tense and more like a middle school dance, and she had a sense of humor about our complete lack of skill. Or rather my lack of skill. She was able to follow a lead, so basically I had to be the one who remembered all the moves.

That's the tricky part about salsa. If the girl can follow a lead she really doesn't need to know much. But the guy has to think of the moves, and execute them all while keeping to the beat. At these lessons we learn a ton of moves and rarely review. So keeping them all straight is very difficult, and after talking around last night I found I was not alone amongst the guys in my inability to retain much of anything. I suppose this is the need for practice. Anyway those fifteen minutes were a rare blast, and she put up with my fumblings the whole time. Actually she was impressed that I was quickly able to learn one of the moves she taught me from an earlier class that evening that I don't attend.

Classes are over now, but to my surprise I found they are going to continue throughout the summer. When the instructor asked who was going to be around for the lessons, a sizable number raised their hands. I asked the girl after we finished up if she was going to be here over the summer and keep up with lessons. She said yes, but that she wasn't going to be able to start until the middle of June.

Last night too much went right. Surely very soon things are going to balance out in an epic dose of humiliating embarrasment.

Hands Full

Today I'm going to take a break from writing and provide you with a video instead. Sorry for my talking, I was on the phone with a friend at the time. Enjoy.

Suit Up

This summer I've been invited to four weddings so far. Up to this point in my life, I've only been to three. At least one of these four weddings is likely going to be a fancy affair, which was problematic for me since I don't have a proper suit. I have suits, but they are all black, which is better for a funeral than a summertime wedding. So this weekend I went out on the hunt for a new suit.

Prior to now, all my suits were chosen by my parents. And I rarely have use for them. In fact I think my dress shoes are the same ones I had for my Confirmation back in the 8th grade. They're traditional so I see no reason to replace them. But the pants and coats have probably been updated a bit. As scrawny as I may be, I have filled out since the 8th grade.

The suit shopping process started here in town. I went to Macy's, J.C. Penny's, Banana Republic, Express, and Men's Warehouse. In Banana Republic I got some service. In Men's Warehouse I got scorn and indifference. The other places just left me alone entirely.

At the end of this Friday night I was upset. Take Macy's. They had a Ralph Lauren coat marked at $325 on sale for around $100 off. The point is the price was significantly reduced. My initial thought was that this was a great sale, getting a $325 coat for so little. Then I went to the Men's Warehouse, where they had the same coat marked at $269 on sale for again about a $100 off. To me that meant these stores were artificially jacking up the regular price in order to put the items on sale and lead you, the consumer, to think you're getting an amazing deal. I can't imagine Macy's and Men's Warehouse are buying the coat from the manufacturer for a different price, and I'm fairly positive they were the same coat and just very similar looking.

So very upset, I decided to go to Indiana, where everything is entirely too expensive and never on sale and I expect condescension and fowl looks from the staff at my wayward appearance.

In Indiana I went to a mall and went to Burberry, Brooks Brothers, J.C. Crew, Raleigh Limited, and Nordstrom. I saw a suit in Raleight that was particularly impressive, but no one in the store would come up and talk to me. I saw the workers just standing around talking to each other and going up to other customers, and they completely ignored the guy who was pulling coats off the racks and walking up and down the aisles trying to figure out what coat on the rack matched the one the mannequin was wearing. So no sale for them. After that place and my experience back home I started feeling like Julia Roberts in 'Pretty Woman'. The other stores didn't have much I was interested in.

But Nordstrom gave me help. Again I was walking around trying to figure out what I wanted, when a guy came up and asked if I need help. I said I needed a lot of help. Basically what I was looking for was a suit that wasn't black or navy blue, wouldn't go out of style in a month, and could be worn at a wedding. He showed me a light gray suit which right away I could tell blew everything I had tried on Friday out of the water. He told me the reason was because this suit had a European cut, which is more form fitting. For thinner guys like him and me, these form fitting suits fit much better on us. The American cut ones tend to look like drapes on us. And sure enough when I tried on the one I was looking at before he came to help me, which was cut in the American style, it just hung on me. But this new suit still wasn't quite right according to my helper. He had me go put on a dress shirt and fancy shoes, put on the suit, and then go meet the tailor. The tailor had a field day with me. The pants were actually pretty good, but the coat needed some work. The back had to be taken in some, to make it drape even less, and I learned my left arm is longer than my right arm, which surprised her when I told her I'm left handed. In her experience the arm we don't write with tends to be longer.

Below is a picture that I think is the suit. I went to the designer's website and found one that looked the closest to what I bought but I could be wrong. The only difference is that my pants are going to have a break at the shoe, whereas his are kept straight.

Cards

This video is the opening credits to an HBO show called "Carnivale". That inspired me to try out something like it.

A while back, I found a set of playing cards at that store with the soap The playing cards are a reprint from a deck made in the 1800s, and are called a transformation deck. A transformation deck is where all the pips, which is the collective name for the clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades, are all incorporated into an art piece. Practically the deck is almost worthless because it takes too long to figure out what card you're holding, but the art itself is really cool so it all balances out. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to take some of the art on those cards and make my own movie. To make it play, you have to click anywhere on the image that has color. Note I've found that it sometimes nothing appears on the screen. If that happens try refreshing.