Musicians, coffee, Golden Girls and Gladiator

We're still in SDCM (super duper crank mode) over here, but a few updates:

• The Jewel site is live at www.jewel-web.com. CK did a great job on the design -- one of my personal favorites that we've done.
  
  
• The first phase of the George Michael site is up at www.georgemichael.com. More sections to follow in the upcoming weeks.
  
  
• Today is my 10th day without coffee. Doing pretty good. CK argues that it doesn't count because I still derive caffeine from other sources, including a Starbucks mocha drink on Day #1. But I stopped listening to long-haired hippies back in the mid-70s, so frankly his opinion doesn't matter. In lieu of coffee, I've been drinking a gallon of water each day. Which is great and healthy, but I have to go to the bathroom every hour. Never knew I had Estelle Getty's bladder...
  
  
• We bought an iMac and placed it on the floating desk. That will be the new webcam once we have time to muck around with it. Even better, it has a DVD drive and a big monitor, so we've put a couple movies in and listen to them in the background. Right now, we have "Gladiator" on, which has spurred numerous remarks, such as "Oh Gluteus Maximus, why are you such an ass?" and Gavin asking CK, "Have you seen this movie yet?" Clearly, comedy is alive and well here. At least to us. Which is what counts.
  

You don't change ORF in mid-stream....

...unless ORF changes itself in mid-stream.

Which is why, starting today, we are changing our onion ring supplier. Apollo Sub & Pizza, the venerable institution right down the street, and for reasons we have not grasped yet, decided to offer smaller onion rings over the last couple weeks. Perhaps there's a global onion shortage I'm not aware of, but the smaller rings have definitely cramped the last couple ORFs. And if there's one thing we will not tolerate, it's a sub-par ORF.

So, we will head 100 yards further up the street to Center Pizza, and we'll give their rings a whirl. For as our founding fathers once declared, "'Tis far better to have fewer large onion rings, than to have many smaller rings."

Knee deep / lite rock

Long hours...cranky and short-tempered...eating nothing but Hot Pockets and leftover Easter candy...feeling like crap, not working out...ashen faces, greasy hair, and no concept of time. All the above can only mean one thing -- CHA-CHING! Business is great!

Only slightly kidding...but we've been cranking along on some big stuff and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We hope it's the light. If it's another train we're gonna be peeved and will probably shoot off a very terse email to the train's conductor.

On a completely different subject.... one of my new favorite things is listening to Lite Rock 105 on my way home from work. It's a nice alternative from my usual choices of WEEI ("Damon sucks! Coco rules!") and self-help audio CDs ("You are someone. You are a gift from God, and God hates Indian givers, so go forth and do something."). Anyway, the host is Art Spencer, and as you would expect, he has a very soothing voice. The evening program is called "NiteLite", and he takes calls from listeners who dedicate love songs to their companions.

The great part is that Art has the callers tell him who they're dedicating the song to, how they met, how long they've been together, and so forth, and you can tell by his reaction if he thinks they're gonna make it or not.

To wit, here's an example of one he likes...

Art: "Okay, who's this for and where'd you meet?"
Caller: "My boyfriend Tom. He moved here from Jamaica for me."
Art: "Oh great! How long have you been together?"
Caller: "Seven years, and I love him more each day. We're soulmates."
Art: "Excellent....well I wish you luck. And here's your love song..."

And here's one he's just not feeling the vibe on....

Art: "Okay, who's this for and where'd you meet?"
Caller: "This is for Tom. We met over Spring Break in Jersey."
Art: "Oh....how long have you been going out?"
Caller: "Three months, and it's been very rocky, but I love him anyway."
Art: "Oookkay....well, good luck with that."

Cracks me up every time. To quote a line from Vanilla Sky, "The little things... there's nothing bigger, is there?"

My Mom returneth!

It has been about a month since my Mom answered a question in her very own section of the Weeblo. Turns out she had been away on vacation for a bit. She claims she went to Michigan to visit her new granddaughter (a real cutie!), but I'm pretty sure she was at a top-secret MENSA conference. Apparently it's becoming too easy for really smart people to join, so they brought my mom in to proofread the exam and "toughen it up a bit."

Whereever she went, she came back fully refreshed and clearly on a different plane than anyone else. To wit, her first email to me upon her return contained this nugget:

"Dad said you didn't golf on Sunday because you had a birthday party to attend. How come you didn't golf on Sunday?"

What the heck? After I uncrossed my eyes, it became clear to me that I could not reply to this email. While away, she had uncovered a new approach to communication -- state a fact, then question that very fact using the same wording. Truly the mark of a genius.

Anyway, read what she has to say about vegetable gardens....

Blatant product endorsement here!

In the last month or so, a new catchphrase has emerged here -- Utz! For those in the know, Utz is a maker of potato chips and other fine snacks.

Our favorite is "Grandma Utz's Handcooked Potato Chips". In addition to having a hard, kettle-cooked quality to them, they taste like Chinese food. You know when you get a pu pu platter at a Chinese restaurant, and after 15 minutes all the food acquires the same greasy taste? Welcome to Grandma Utz's chips! All the enjoyment of fine Asian dining with half the calories and none of the dim lighting.

Try them out and let me know what you think...

=

No case of the "Mondays" here

Ok, we're back. Last week was busy and draining, for no real particular reason. Got home Friday night and felt like crying myself to sleep (note: I totally didn't...)

Anyway, a nice relaxing weekend appears to have cured last week's doldrums for all three of us. Except for CK -- he's still miserable.

Some random thoughts:

• A great pick-me-up is listening to '80s music on iTunes Radio. We've been listening to it all day. Gotta love going from Juice Newton to "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" to Rick James to "Under Pressure". Even funnier is that it takes 30 seconds to figure out if you're listening to "Ice Ice Baby" instead of "Under Pressure".
  
  Of course, as Vanilla Ice defended himself on "Behind the Music", there's a subtle difference between the two -- "Under Pressure" goes "ding ding ding ding ding da DING", whereas his goes, "ding ding ding ding ding DA ding". So, you know, step off the Ice Man. And while you're at it, ditch the zero and get with a hero.
  
  
• Note to spammers: If you want to pretend to be Bank of America in the hopes of grabbing my credit card info, don't have the subject line be: "Importent msg from bank OF america -- send me ur credit card numba". Unless they have teenage girls sending out email blasts in between their IM sessions, there's no way I'm falling for that [again].
  
  
• By the end of this season's "24", every single person will be implicated in the conspiracy except Jack Bauer (for obvious reasons), Curtis (impossible to be involved when all you do is drive from place to place while providing cover for Jack), and Chloe (because no one with that many facial expressions and quirks could be trusted in a 6,000-person conspiracy).
  
  
• Today's third PB & J sandwich at lunch? Bit too much. See you later, hips.
  

Officially out of material

The weeblo has been going strong for nearly a month now, and it was always easy to write something every day. Sure, maybe they weren't always funny or earth-shattering, but at least it was something.

And then this weekend happened. My mom called to have that mother-son once-a-weekend phone call, just to make sure I was alive, had clean underwear on, and had enough Saltines and bottled water in case of a natural disaster. After answering yes to most of those questions, she threw out this bombshell: "I read your weeblo every day, and it's funny! And other people read it every day too! Can't wait to read Monday's entry."

Well that did it. Pressure. Who needs it, right? It's not easy to be funny every day, let alone say something "weeblo-worthy" (pronounced "dub-dub" for those in the industry).

So I had the cold sweats on Monday, trying to think of something witty to post. And you know what? I got nothing. I'm completely out of material. Nada, zilch, null. No jokes, no anecdotes, no funny client stories, no sandwich recipes, nothing. So, with that realization, the weeblo has ended.

Back tomorrow!

Today is April Fool's Day

Hah hah, just kidding! It's really April 3rd!!!

Phew, let me recover for a sec after that prank....

Nothing new to report today, and we're all in "super duper crank mode", meaning we don't talk to each other and resort to nods and grunts when answers are expected of us.

Two items of absolutely no interest to anyone:

1. CK's hair saga has been updated.
   
   
2. The best show on television? My vote goes to "I Shouldn't Be Alive" on the Discovery Channel. You heard it here first.