Cynically Optimistic

You have just won one million dollars:
I'm going to go the easy route and say that this one million dollars is tax-free. Also, I've had this discussion with many many people in the past so I have kind of thought it out.

1. Who do you call first?
An attorney. This way I can claim the money anonymously and not have a bunch of people suddenly in my business. Then I'd call Wendy and swear her to secrecy.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?
A gun. ("Stupid 5 day waiting period, I'm mad now. I'd kill you if I had my gun!" "Yeah, well, ya don't.") No, seriously, I'd buy a tricked out Mini Cooper S with the John Cooper performance package, even though I'd have to wait 10 weeks. I'd also buy a small house that I could fix up here on Long Island. I'm so tired of renting.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?
I'd be the credit-card fairy for my friends with debt. For those without, Powerbooks.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?
Probably to my parents and my sister, and to NPR and maybe an AIDS charity.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?
I figure I'd have at least $750,000 left to invest after playing. I'd put about $150,000 in a high risk hedge fund of some sort. The rest would go into safe, dividend paying equities.

I may expound upon this theme in the future, as it has led to many ego-inflating fantasies of what one could do with, say, a billion dollars.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our last winter storm, or Nor'Easter as they call them here, delivered 10 inches of wondeful fluffly snow. On my way into work this morning there was a disturbingly nasty patch of yellow snow near the stairway in the parking ramp (I wont be parking on that level anymore). My mind started to wander as it often does, and somehow I made the mental leap that there are probably very very few feminie names written in the snow each winter (as a portion of the total, which is probably quite low). Well ladies, now you can join the fun.

Clearly there are more appropriate uses for this device, such as invading the men's room in a crowded bar. I bet if you whipped one of these out you'd get around of applause.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I realized today that there is a Davis Cup tennis tournament next weekend at Mohegan Sun which is not too far from here, although it is in Conneticut. Also, while scrolling through their entertainment page I see that Barenaked Ladies are playing on February 20th, and then Rod Stewart is playing there in March. I really ought to keep better track of what concerts and shows are playing in my area.

Or maybe I should just save my money and get the ski boots.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just bought my airline tickets for skiing in Jackson Hole this March. I can't wait. After spending the whole evening on the phone convincing people that they really owe it to themselves to come vacation with me. It definitely promises to be a wondeful spring skiing holiday, with lots of Moose Drool for me in the Mangy Moose.

Woot!

Now I need to decide if I should spend the $300 to buy my very first set of ski boots (they are on sale at my local ski shop). I don't want to buy skis and poles, because it's a pain to haul them with you. Boots, however, are a big problem if you have to rent old uncomfortable ones. I'm thinking the investment might be worht it, since you can keep wearing them for many seasons. I think one evening I may go by there and try things on for size and comfort. I've also been wanting a new ski jacket since my old trusty Columbia parka is about 8 years old, and has been sent in for warranty repair twice. So if I get a new coat and boots plus pay for this ski trip things get damn expensive. Can't always have everything you want I suppose.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 02:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've never done a Friday Five before, but it probably can't hurt.

At this moment, what is your favorite...

1. ...song?
"Kissing the Lipless" by The Shins. I'll probably hate this song in a week or two, but right now it's my favorite. A close second is "Living Room" by Tegan and Sara. It's kinda folk-rocky with interesting lyrics.

2. ...food?
Chicken Korma. Cream, coconut milk, spices... I love Indian food. It's my new favorite Thanksgiving meal.

3. ...tv show?
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. This show really shines during election season and I watch it religiously.

4. ...scent?
Sawdust. I walked by the construction on the floor below me today and smelled it and i was quite comforting for some reason.

5. ...quote?
"I have many skills." --Xena, Warrior Princess. Ok, so maybe that's not my favorite quote ever, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about it. So it's definitely my favorite quote of the moment.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I went to the dermatologist because it's winter and my hands have started to fall apart. Generally they get dry and I use Neutrogena Hand Cream and things are ok until spring. But this winter they are still dry and cracking and bleeding. The dermatologist prescribed some new steroid cream and everything should be fine in 2 weeks he says.

Also, he checked my body for moles. Took a biopsy of 2 of them, and told me I might have cancer. Then I call my mom and she tells me that she had a cousin who died from cancer that started out as a mole. Would have been nice to put that on the "Family History" section of the paperwork I filled out, but oh well. So I have to wait 2 weeks for the results to come back.

Fingers Crossed

Posted by Jeff Smith at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a rockin' party (see below). I messed up the house. I have 36 hours to get the house back to perfection. Tick, tick, tick...

Scene 1: Saturday Morning
Once everyone was gone, I went to survey the damage. The carpet was a disaster. I don't have any before or after pictures, but it was horrible. I started using the Resolve carpet cleaner. Worthless. But I did notice a a LOT of suds, at which point I noticed the bottle of Tide on the bar.

Cut to me with buckets (yes, buckets) of water and a wet vac trying to rinse the Tide out of the carpet before it gets sticky and crunchy. Three hours pass.

Scene 2: Saturday Afternoon
The white carpet is now orange. I freak out. Then I find the Oxy Clean 2. I spend the next 2 hours on my hands and knees with a toothbrush and a stack of white cotton towels. Finally the carpet starts to look better. I decide to let it dry, and as I set up the fan I notice a chair pulled to the side. It's a month old. It's beautiful and tan, and a third of it is purple. Oh shit. Oxy clean again, except it turns bright blue. I hope it looks better when it dries.

Scene 3: Sunday Morning
It's snowing again, and the diffuse natural light falls on the carpet and the chair. The chair is still blue. I hit it with Oxy Clean 2 again. And I hope.
The carpet is still slightly orange, but much better. I hit it with Oxy Clean 2 again.

Scene 4: Sunday Afternoon
I clean the stove, finish the dishes and the laundry, the carpet looks fine. I vacuum. At this point, I just accept my fate, whatever it may be.

The power goes out (it's still snowing). The landlord comes home and I immediately confess. We both survey the disaster area and agrees that everything is clean. Actually he's less concerned with the mess, than he is that everyone had a good time. I relay the details of the evening, and he is very impressed. "I'm just disappointed that you didn't invite me."

Roll Credits.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday night I invited the "European Union*" over for dinner and a movie. The menu was a mix and match pasta feast with spaghetti, fettuccini, and rigatoni for the pasta. Sauces included bolognese, creamy alfredo, and pesto. I also served salad, cheesy garlic bread, and sliced tomato & mozzarella with balsamic vinegar to accompany the entrees. For dessert we had mini cannolis and a pannetoni cake. We also had 10 bottles of wine, but more on that later.

There was a conglomeration of cooks in the kitchen preparing the food. I recruited Guiseppe to cook the pasta because he is Italian and I didn't want to be responsible for overcooked pasta. He also makes a kickass bolognese. Everyone arrived around 7:45 or so, and we finally sat down to dinner around 8:30. In attendance were a Frenchman, a Spanish se–orita, two Italian men, a guy from the Phillipines, two guys from New York, a midwestern girl, a Pennsylvanian girl, and me.

Dinner was a huge success. Good food, great conversation and a couple of truly spectacular glasses of red wine which soaked completely into the white carpet of the dining room. Oh, and I didn't mention that this isn't my carpet, my kitchen, my dining room furniture, or even my house really. We cleaned everything fairly quickly but there was still a huge stain, and I was sequestered from the dining room as the perpetrators of the crimes tried to clean up the mess - more on that later. Some people played pool, some people loaded the dishwasher, and some people put Tide on the carpet (please, hold your screams until the end).

The party spontaneously migrates to the basement. We have finished all the wine at this point and have progressed on to vodka. There are cannoli crumbs everywhere. Through my mostly drunken haze I realize there is no way anyone is going to watch a movie. As we're cutting up lemons to do lemon drops using a butcher knife I realize that there's no way anyone is going to watch Dumb and Dumberer. The Europeans took on the Americans at both pool and foosball, but I have no idea who was in the lead. While the tournament was on, the group doing lemon drops starts to play "I never". Did I forget to mention that 8 of the people at the party are my co-workers. Keep that in mind for the remainder of the story.

Apparently all this was way too much for the Phillipino guy to take without his girlfriend present. She's still in the Phillipines and I guess he tends to get mental when he's out having fun and she's not around. The drunken females take advantage of this and really start messing with him and I think some mild molestation took place. It got difficult to keep track of everyone. When they tired of molesting the poor man, I got a request.

"Can we go in the jacuzzi?"
"I guess so, but you don't have swimsuits"
"We don't need swim suits."

Not five minutes later, there were two mostly naked girls in my jacuzzi. Various other people rotated into and out of the jacuzzi, and at one point there were four people in the two person jacuzzi. Then one of the Italians broke off the shower faucet, so the jacuzzi party was over. At this point I supply people with towells and boxers so they can be comfortable for the rest of the party.

Most people left around 3 AM or so, but the three girls were too drunk to drive home, so they slept over. As they are leaving,

"Do you have everything?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Hey, what's that in your purse?"
"Oh, those are my panties."

It was a good party

* We have a lot of foreigners in our lab that hang out together, so we call them the European Union even though they're not all European.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have procrastinated shopping for christmas presents on purpose, since I was not going to see my family and friends in Iowa over Christmas, so I just decided to wait until after Christmas to do the bulk of my shopping. Also, I hate buying someone a gift just to spend the money so they'll have a package to open. I prefer to buy a unique item that cannot be purchased in that person's locality, or just give them cash. With my parents, giving cash is kind of stupid, because they stopped trying to buy me something and just send cash anymore - which I greatly prefer. So in brainstorming for gifts, and watching too much TV, I settled on the idea of buying some knock-off designer purses.

Saturday, after letting the garage door opener repairman into the garage, I headed to Canal Street in Manhattan with the hopes of finding some purses. It's quite an odd experience, shopping at a quasi-legal semi-permanant store where the inventory is covered by sheets, and stored in black plastic garbage bags underneath the tables. I kind of embraced the day and went hardcore purse shopping, with no idea what I was exactly buying.

As a man, I have really no concept of what I might want to carry with me in a purse. What I know is that my mom's purse is always at least 12" x 12" and heavy, while my sister wanted something a little smaller. So I just kind of guessed while making my selections. These places have everything, so it was just a matter of time until I found what I hope will be well received gifts.

I got my mom a Louis Vuitton bag that is black, with the multicolored flowers and logo on it. It was suede lined and seemed pretty well made. I got my sister a simple smallish Kate Spade black bag with white stiching. Sexy, kinda. Now, my mom will not know what the hell to do with a Louis Vuitton bag, so I'm going to have to beg her to actually use it for a couple of weeks. My only hope is that she gets some ooohs and aaahs from her co-workers or other people she runs into. So if you see my mom in Iowa City around Jo-Anne's Fabrics, and she's rockin' the LV bag, give her some props. It'll make her day.

After accomplishing my shopping duties, I headed towards the Apple Store SoHo to see if they had any iPod minis on display. Unfortunately they did not, but I got to lust after many other wonderful Apple products. It's a little like going to church, walking up that million dollar imported German glass staircase.

A block away I found a little Irish pub that had a seat at the bar and served hot food, which was awesome since it was only 11 degrees outside, with 35 mph winds blowing down the streets. I had the chilli and two pints of Guinness to warm myself up. I ended up chatting with a couple of British tourists who were enjoying their say, and had ventured up to the top of the Empire State building earlier in the day. Brrrrrrrrr, that cannot have been very fun.

My next stop was the Guggenheim Museum for an afternoon of culture. The Guggenheim changes it exhibitions regularly, and they were displaying the works of American artist James Rosenquist and Italian Filmmaker Frederico Fellini. I was very unimpressed with the Rosenquist exhibit. Yes it was very bold and used some "powerful imagery", but I just didn't buy into it. The explanation cards seemed to point out some deep meaning in each work that was only apparent if you had been doing as much LSD as the artist. I did enjoy the Fellini exhibit and bought a ticket for a screening later that night of the 1954 film "La Strada".

The people watching in the Guggenheim was the most fun part for me. There were a lot of WASPs and DINKs wandering about, with a strong section of uppity bitches in the mix. I was a little disturbed by a couple in the Fellini exhibit. The guy was licking and nibbling on his girlfriend's ear while she stopped and looked at each sketch. It was pretty ridiculous, and I kept expecting the gallery guard to come by and pry them apart.

The film, "La Strada" was fairly enjoyable. I really don't have a lot of experience with either old movies or foreign films, but I went into it with an open mind. Definitely movie making technology has come a long long way in 50 years, and the advances in sound and lighting were quite apparent. What was more apparent upon reflection of the movie, was the acting was still strong, and that shooting in black and white still produced some very amazing imagery.

And then I braved the frigid streets of New York and took the LIRR back home with my backpack full of purses.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Speaking of the Black Eyed Peas in my previous post, I just saw them as the musical guest on SNL. I didn't get home in time to see the first song, but I did see the second one which is featured in an Apple iPod Commercial. WOW that girl has some serious abs! They are not Janet Jackson abs, mind you, but they are awesome. Anyway, that was a great live performance, and it makes me want to go see them next time they are in the area. Another SNL performance that made me want to see someoen live was Busta Rhymes. He did very little mixing in his song "Gimmie Some More", and he had a small orchestra and guitar players on stage with a drummer, not a drum machine. And it was great! It didn't sound like the album version, which is to be expected because they're not in a studio. I with perfomers like Britney Spears would figure it out that we can tell she's only half-assing her songs when she shows up for these gigs.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I listen to music pretty much all day long, thanks to my iPod. I, like thousands of other people, have fallen in love with it. I was enamoured from the beginning, but 5 GB was a tad too small. I purchased my 10 GB model soon after they were released a couple of years ago and it's been going strong since. Actually, I had a couple of weird battery issues, but the Apple Stores in both Manhattan and Huntington were able to exchange them for me, so technically I'm on my third iPod, but I've only paid for one (and it's the same model).

Now Apple has released the iPod mini, which is only 4 GB and only $50 cheaper than the regular size 15 GB iPod. I think the mini's are very cool, as much of Apple's technology, but I'm confused as to what they're going for with it? It's small, but it's not THAT small, and for $50 more I'd definitely go for the extra space. I'm sure the fashonistas will love the it. I definitely think it will show up as a fasion accessory on runway models for fashion week this spring.

I currently have 1530 songs available to enjoy anytime, all organized into about 25 different playlists. I have so many types of different music loaded onto it that I don't dare use the shuffle feature on the whole library because I'm afraid I'll become schizophrenic. Right now I'm listening to Speakerboxxx/The Love Below album from Outkast. What a great set of albums. Truth be told, I listen to a lot of crap, like that Milkshake song by Kelis. I figure it all evens out. But sometimes by listening to enough crap you find a song that is really great. Like "Hey Mama" by the Black Eyed Peas. Anyway, I'll almost always listen to something once, so if you've heard your fair share of crap but stumbled on something that you really like, let me know. I just can't get enough.

As a sidenote, once I get the templates how I like them around here (like removing the horrible uppercase titles) I'm going to look into a way to live update what I'm hearing on my iTunes at work or at home. Or at least have it rotate through my top 10 played songs once a day.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm house sitting this week for my landlords, and as such I have full use of their professional kitchen and home theatre. It's a bit of a shock since I haven't actually had to cook since the end of August, but I successfully grilled salmon filets and made rice and a mushroom and baby corn lemon butter dish. Gas stoves, what a concept. That and combination microwave/convection ovens. I also watched the following movies on DVD (or HBOHD): Old School, Zoolander, Adaptation, Blow, The Big Lebowski, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Blow is an excellent movie, Adaptation is bizzare and I loved it, and Old School is cackle worthy. All in all, it was a great way to spend a rainy weekend.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I am one of the very few people in the area who is working today, and I love it. The drive to work today was nearly traffic free. The parking lot was virutally empty, even at 9:15 AM. No students are around, and 80% of the staff are on vacation. My lab, however, is open - we're always open.

I love working on days like today because I can finally do things without fear of being interrupted by someone else's catastrophe. To be fair, a large portion of my job is simply being available for any and all interruptions, but it leads to some daily "frazzlement" (for lack of a better word). The luxury of remaining focused and only single-tasking for one day is such a nice change of pace. It's very quiet about the lab, and I like it.

Posted by Jeff Smith at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)