Living vicariously through myself

If you're reading this and are so inclined, please feel free to sign up for the fantasy baseball league I created:

The league ID# is 91631 and the Password is "baseball".

One of the things I've really appreciated about EA Sports video games (like Tiger Woods PGA Golf and NHL 2004) in the past couple years is that they take music from up-and-coming artists and include their tracks as the game's musical backdrop. In NHL 2004, there's music from the Ataris and Alien Ant Farm, and a song I really like called "Get What You Need" by the group Jet, which is my favorite offering -- I'd recommend downloading it for an upbeat tune with decent lyrics.

You are Fozzie Bear.
You are caring and love your friends as if they
were family. For only they will put up with
your stupid jokes.

FAVORITE EXPRESSION:
"Wocka! Wocka!"
FAVORITE AUTHOR:
Gags Beasley, comedy writer

HOBBIES:
Telling jokes, dodging tomatoes

QUOTE:
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
His joybuzzer, his whoopee cushion and Clyde, the
rubber chicken.


What Muppet are you?
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The facial hair is gone. It fell prey to my Norelco razor (official motto: "all the pain of shaving with a razor, but without the blood") this evening. Why is it my high-tech Norelco tries to injure me and my old Remington (three years older than ME) just takes the hair off and gets the job done? Absurd.

I just saw a Subaru ad that adverstised (I swear I am not making this up) "Sophistocated monochromatic color". My guess is that they're preying on what they assume to be the fact that most people could not define "monochromatic" if you asked them. If I'm not mistaken, the Ford Model T had "sophistocated monochromatic color" -- you could have the car in any color -- as long as it was black...

If so, read this

Got to go to the driving range this afternoon, which made me happy -- both because I was able to hit some golf balls, but also just to try to keep active. I helped organize a basketball game for Medill people tomorrow, which should be fun, assuming people come.

I was awakened by the impending approach of the Roto-Rooter man this morning, who's coming to clean out our kitchen sink drain, which apparently has incurred some sort of debilitating clog. So he approaches, the dog barks as though he's some sort of prowler (if you've ever been to my house, you know the amount of barking is inversely proportional to the amount of time you've spent in the house), and at 8:23 am on a Saturday, I am woken up. I'd blame the sink, but I'd never get satifsaction enough out of it.

In other news, I'm finally trying experimenting with growing my facial hair out. It's very slow going, and it grows in splotches around the edge of my face. Eventually it will grow long enough, but it's slower than probably 90% of the male population. This may take up to a month, I fear. I don't know if I can get used to it in that time. I have a feeling one of these days I'll break down and just shave. It'll be a sad day for my clogged little electric razor.

Today was one of those days where you walk out of work feeling like you made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I had been working on this story about the designer steroid THG (the one Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and others are suspected of taking, and about which federal indictments have come down against its creator), but no one seemed to know anything about the drug or be able to talk. For three days, people kept referring me to this doctor at UCLA, who went out of town just as I began writing the story. I called the World Anti-Doping Agency in Canada, but to no avail. I called doctors at Harvard and NYU, and they were gone. Finally, with less than 2 hours before my deadline, I decided to randomly call sports medicine departments that came up in a Yahoo search. I reached the head trainer at the University of Missouri, who asked if I had heard of the National Center for Drug-Free Sport in Kansas City, which I had not. I called the Center, and finally someone was able to answer some minor questions about the drug, which filled enough holes to make it printable. In the end, it ended up being a decently informative story that just might get picked up somewhere. I'm not really sure how that happened, but two editors seemed pretty pleased that it did.

Books I bought today:

"The Science of God" (for a book review I have to do)

"Is That a Moose in Your Pocket?" (because why not?)

Another weekend that's outside my normal routine. Moderating at ACF Regionals tomorrow because Susan Ferrari said she could use the help, then spending the rest of the weekend editing this stupid TV package on the Hubbard Street Dance Company.

In other news, I spent the last 3 days observing the inner workings of the D-Zero facility at Fermilab and learning about how to search for the properties of the elusive Top Quark. These are some of the smartest people I've ever met, and they literally work 20-22 hours a day BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. I came in this morning and the woman who I was working with had the same thing on that she had on yesterday. I said "Did you go home?" She was like "No..."

Other funny things: On day one, my "boss" Brigitte (she's Canadian) went to training to learn how to become a shift leader for the facility's control room. When the group left the meeting table and went into the actual room, I stood at the back of everyone and one Indian gentleman said "He's not a prospective shift leader?" I said, "I'm not even a prospective physicist"

On day two, I attended a practice talk given by a British man who happened to be in Europe, but was a prof from UC-Riverside. He had 15 minutes to fill in his talk (which he'll give at an international conference next week), and used 19 speaking to all of us. So the team began to cut lines from each of his powerpoint slides. They got to one line where he talked about conservation of momentum. They began to hem and haw and I said "Even I understand conservation of momentum. I'll bet they will, too."

I have always wanted a program like this! In red are the states I've visited, yellow not.




create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

You are a Miranda-class Destroyer, Starfleet's
antiquated workhorse. You're old and not as
flashy as some of your peers. What you lack in
bells and whistles, you make up for with your
dedicated history. Although in the grand
scheme of things, you may be a pawn, you have
honor and you work hard.


Which Class of Federation Starship are you?
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