Idiomatic Expression

If anyone cares a decent list of watches worn in the movies.

According to an article on MSNBC complaining may be making you feel worse about your situation.

I just helped a friend get an answer right for the game show Cash Cab. I won’t tell you the answer, but I didn’t even need the google to help. Hopefully it will get on the air and I can be appalled at how my voice sounds. Especially since I actually like this show and end up watching it from time to time.

Pulitzer Prize winner Art Buchwald, best known for his regular column in the Washington Post, has been writing about his experiences since deciding against dialysis and checking himself into a hospice to wait for the end. They are insightful, funny, and sad. Take a minute to check them out.

• Having a High Time Where You’d Least Expect It
• The End. Or Maybe Not.
• Low-Interest Loan
• Who Art (Not Quite) in Heaven

Yesterday 10 of the members of my new group headed out to Allsports Grand Prix for a team building event. We raced a Mini Grand-Prix, which consisted of a 20 lap qualifier and a 40 lap race. I managed to qualify in third position with a top lap time of around 25.7 seconds. The person who qualified for the pole position had been to the track before and seemed to know what he was doing so I has hoping for a shot at 2nd place. The race started in a grid layout, in the third lap I was able to pass the person starting in 2nd position when he went a little wide around a turn. I was stuck about 1/4 lap behind the leader on the 9th lap when his engine stalled, and I took the lead for the rest of the race. I put up a respectable best lap time of 24.436. The person who had started in the pole position had an amazing best lap of 24.o4 (enought that he should qualify for a spot in the all time top 50 6.5hp laps), and ended up finishing just 12 seconds (1/2 lap) behind me.

This place is a blast, if you have the time and the money it is a lot of fun. Although part of the fun is going there and racing with friends, I don’t think being matched up with strangers or going around the track by your self would be as much fun.

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My nomination for the best quote of 2006 comes from an AP report on an incident in Pasadena, CA. after rescuing “Two dozen Caltech students wearing Superman capes, tutus and other odd attire” Deputy Greg Gabriel said “You’ve got to remember that common sense is not factored into the intelligence quotient.”

It is the second week of the 2006, so time to get around to publicly making some New Year’s resolutions.

• Make more timely blog entries. The fact that this entry is eleven days late is probably a bad sign there.
• Be better at keeping in contact with friends and family. This is one that I make every year, and every year I fail miserably. If you don’t hear from me very often, hopefully it will make you feel slightly better that no one hears from me very often.
• Find a hobby; I need something to concentrate on outside of work and home improvement projects. The front runner is home brewing, but like many of the hobbies that have failed to hold my interest in the past, brewing has a relatively steep entry price.
• Live healthier; Less cookies, less chips, less fried food, more whole grains, more exercise, and an attempt at remembering to take my vitamins. Hopefully the previously mentioned resolution to find a hobby won’t impact this one too much.
• Write more; both on this blog, and starting on other writing projects.
• Waste less time; If I am going to do all of this crap, the time has to come from somewhere.

Does anyone out there have a decent picture of Katherine and Me? I don’t seem to have anything more recent than the wedding without at least one of our eyes closed.

In our first year in the new house we didn’t have a tree, in fact the only decoration we had was the beautiful wreath sent by Katherine’s director. However we did have a new roof, and a mostly repaired brick fence in the backyard. The lack of visible Christmas cheer didn’t dampen the season too much. There were presents for both of us a video game and Leatherman for me, and an eight carat Golden Beryl, slippers, and skin care products for Katherine.

Christmas Dinner was at Jenny and Gary’s house, unfortunately they had to join us via iChat from Korea. However James was kind enough to host at their house. Chris smoked a turkey, and kindly allowed me to smoke a Tofurkey when he was done. There was enough food to feed twice the people, but strangely all of the Turkey disappeared. Here are some pictures of the festivity.

The recent articles posted on MetaFilter about role playing game history and Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Played a little with things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, Runequest, and the Cyberpunk 2020. One of my favorite games of that time was the Amber RPG a great world thanks to the vision of Roger Zelazny and a great set of rules that threw away the dice and focused on the role playing and the story. The last phase of my RPG playing focused on the White Wolf games mostly Vampire: The Masquerade with a bit of Werewolf: The Apocalypse thrown in for good measure.

Most of the time playing was a lot of fun, but I finally got out of it when everyone I played with seemed more interested in advancing their character statistics and following the exact wording of the rules (including arguments about comma placement) than actually enjoying themselves. Still there is a soft spot in my heart for RPGs and from time to time I think it might be fun to play again with a basic system like the classic D&D game (not the new mis-labeled D&D version 3 which is really AD&D).

Anyone else out there ever play RPGs or still into them?