From the depths of the archives....

Since I have not posted anything since Jesus wore short pants, I have decided to pull some thing from the depths of my hard drive. Much dust had to be blown off this one, but I like it and think I did pretty OK on this one. It just goes to prove that every once in awhile I can come up with something to be proud of.

LIFE AT THE SPEED OF CAFFEINE

We are the Venti Triple Shot 2 Pump mocha generation my friends.

Weaned on the Espresso pumping teat of Mother Starbucks and her French Roasted spawn.

We have to be smarter, worker harder and party the hardest of any generation.

Red eye caffeine zombies come Monday morning.

But there is only so long one can survive in a caffeinated carnival of horrors – before we

CRASH

Sucking grinds and foam dregs in desperation.

They have trained us to forget the simple joy of a cup of tea. . .

Think only in the confines of the ‘To Go’ cup

But the 60% post-consumer recycled fiber insulated ring can’t keep me from burning

Out on consumerism.

I want to be an artist – to have everything in my Ikea Fabulous Swedish post-modern minimalist inner-self.

I want to change the world

Get out the vote

Log off

Turn down the constant volume of it all –

And just be

But maybe that’s just the caffeine talking  

Bonding with my Neighborhood

I have now officially lived in my apartment for a year. Yeah me! So in honor of this semi-momentous occasion, I decided to try to bond with my neighborhood. It's surprising that I have not really done this until now. I mean I shop in the area and go to the laundromat, but for some reason, if I to do things it has been outside a 10 mile radius of my residence. So today I changed things up a bit and spend a good chunk of time (a bit of cash I will admit) getting to know the area better.

The catalyst for this was fact I needed a hair cut. It's strange, but that first second when you notice that you should get a hair cut, it's like every second that you don't remedy the situation is one second too long. Or at least for me. And I have to admit that the other salon that I had been using since my transplant to the Commonwealth was a bit pricey. So I call up the place that I drive by twice a day to and from work. They were able to get me in right away, which thrilled me to no end. It was cheaper, they did a good job, and it was only two store fronts down from the comic book shop that I had been meaning to stop in at.

Freshly shorn I wandered the comic shop for long enough, that I felt the need to spend a few dollars on a back issue. Then I tried the local diner. Which provided me with a very tasty breakfast burrito (sadly with out the green chili that I came to know in love in New mexico). So nicely fed on burrito goodness and people watching (cause that's what I do when I eat alone) I feel that I have come to know my little corner of the Boston area.

Was it really a productive day? Um, kinda. If nothing else I am fed, with a spiffy new do, and a new comic book. But that's how I know that I am and adult - I'm more thrilled about the new hair cut than the new comic. Ah well.

A blog post for the New Year

And so now it's 2012. I did what a lot of people do on New Years; went to a party, watched Dick Clark with a sense of horror and pity (and asked why he was orange), made some resolutions to improve myself and sang a passable version of 'Here Comes Your Man' while playing Rock Band.  You know, the usual.

So with all that I have been in a contemplative mood. So I've made my resolution(s). It's technically one resolution, but it encompasses multiple things. So I have made a start of it, which is good, and if I ever come to the positive end of it I will be most pleased. But sometimes the New Year is just good for looking back and figuring out what life has taught you. I will admit, it hasn't been all fun for me this years, and a lot of the things I learned have been painful. But that's life in a nutshell. You live, you get hurt, you heal. Repeat.

It's a bit daunting to be starting down the barrel of another year. If horoscopes are to believed, then I should have a good month. I haven't checked the Chinese horoscope yet. It's the year of the Black Water Dragon, according to the internet search that I've done. This is still the year of the Rabbit - which was/is supposed to have been a good one for me - as I am a goat/sheep. Not sure if that were true. I would rank it more as fair to middlin' (as Gram would say). But as there is still a month left in it, behaps it will end on a high note for me. We shall see.

So lets end where we begun - it's 2012, how about that?

It's beginning to look a lot like Quiche-mas

Ahhh yes, it's that time of year again. As I count down the scant few days before I go home to the Rust  Belt for a week, it's time to talk about the best holiday of the year: Quiche-mas.

Quiche-mas? What is this Quiche-mas "holiday" you speak of? It just happens to be the best nondenominational holiday ever. Started many years ago in honor of a friend for whom Christmas is not a jolly, holly or other things ending in "olly" holiday. So while it might be traditionally held on the 25th of December, it can be held on any day that quiche is served in mass quantities. And why is quiche so special, I hear you cry. Simple, my mother only makes quiche one a year, on Christmas day. I am sure the connection has become clear by now.

And while Quiche-mas comes but once a year, it comes early due to my scheduled trip home. As it's much cheaper and easier to fly home in between the major holidays, I will be home before the normally appointed day. To celebrate my first trip home during the holidays (sort of) in almost 3 years, my family is holding Quiche-mas just for me. I am feeling pretty special. Ask not for whom the quiche bakes, it bakes for thee. . .

All of this is just a prologue for something I wrote for my friend who has inspired it all. For the first time ever, for posterity, here is the full rendition of:

          THE TWELVE DAYS OF QUICHE-MAS
(sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas. In list form, cause I'm lazy)

On the first day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
A Joy of Cooking quiche recipe.
On the second day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Two dozen eggs.
On the third day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Three pints of cream.
On the fourth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Four pounds of cheese.
On the fifth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
 FIVE GOOOOOLD CRUSTS!
On the sixth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Six slabs of bacon.
On the seventh day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Seven whisks a-whisking.
On the eighth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Eight knives a chopping.
On the ninth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Nine toasters toasting.
On the tenth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Ten diners circling.
On the eleventh day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Eleven ovens baking.
On the twelfth day of Quiche-mas my true love gave to me,
Twelve timers timing.

So there you have it. Happy Quiche-mas to all, and to all a good bite.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The NyQuil Hangovers!

If I had a punk band, I would call them the NyQuil Hangovers. That's because NyQuil hangovers kick my ass. I have an inner punk rocker. Purple hair, plaid skirt, Doc Martens, studded belt, safety pins in the nose, the whole 9 yards. That is why I sing way to loud to the Sex Pistols and the Pixies on occasion. But I digress...

To rewind a bit: Yes it's been way too long since I have last posted. There have been a many reasons, but the most simple reason is I have not been feeling up to it. Lame, I know. There has been "stuff" that I have been dealing with, and sometimes I just do not have the emotional energy at the end of a day to sit down and type out a bit of none sense even for my own delight. Ah well. But after some none too subtle prodding from my sibling (she does it cause she cares) I have a bit of randomness to post.

The other reason that posts have been thin on the ground since before Thanksgiving is because I have been sick. Blah. Last Wednesday it was snowing here in the Bay State, then the next day it was 65. My sinuses are just not up to that type of mistreatment. I started feeling the sinus headache trolls giving their pick axes a swing late the next day and it went down hill from there. Monday was such a slice of hell on toast that I did something that I normally don't do. I took NyQuil. I came straight home from work, dosed myself with the green devil's liquid and went to bed. The next morning I had felt disconnected from my body and stupid. That is what I call the NyQuil Hangover. Painful like a real hangover, but there was no fun previously had to have earned such punishment. But I survived the day and that is what counts.

So that's it really. Nothing Earth shattering, but at least it's a post. Onward and upward.

Limerick love

My dad told me my first limerick when I was about 6, and to this day I still remember it. And it was:

There was a young lady of Madras

who had a marvelous ass.

Twasn't pretty and pink as you were to think,

But was gray, had long ears and ate grass.

Since then I have a love of bawdy lines. As today was a bit of a drag, I have composed one. Please note, that this is neither autobiographical or biographical....

There was a young lady of Boston

with proclivities both lewd and wanton.

Nights on the town in which she downed

liquor, wine and ales

And most of the Navy before they sailed.

Creature of the Night

I am a night person - I will freely admit that. In college I did my best writing at one in the morning after hockey practice. There is something about typing late into the night that I find invigorating. But alas, now that I am a day slave to the cubicle mines of Corporate America, my late night writing binges have pretty much come to an end.

For me, midnight usually means that I should start thinking about going to bed. I know that I need more sleep but I just can't seem to settle down to the heavy work of it. At times when my stress levels are higher than what is good for me I suffer from what I call psudo-insomnia. It takes me a long time to fall asleep, but once there I can manage quiet well.

Morpheus and I have a rocky relationship at times, but once wrapped in his warm and deep embrace I am loath to leave. I am a sucker for a good cuddle, but there are times when we are barely able be in the same room. Just call it par for the course, my histories of relationships has not been stellar. Ah well. Does Hallmark make a card for wooing back the tender mercies of an anthropomorphized figure of biological necessity? If not, they are missing out on a who new genre of the greeting card industry. A Holliday can not be far behind.

Unlike most of my family I cannot nap. If I do it means I'm sick. I never mastered the cat nap, or even the power nap. When I go down, it's for a couple of hours and I wake up feeling worse for it. My mom is an Olympian napper, and there are times I envy her. But she is also a night person, don't ask me how that one came about.

But what does all this have to do with my attempt at exercising my creativity? Just this: Not that long ago when I was still new to MA and living with a college chum, I would stay up and write (a confession of a dirty little secret here) fan fic. I did this to amuse my roommate and it kept me sane. I'm not sure when I lost that creative drive, but that is what I am attempting to do here - recapture that fire that made me have to sit up and hammer away at the keyboard on an almost nightly basis.

So there it is. I'm a self confessed 'Night Person', and writer or fan fic, a sluggard of the Earth if ever there was one. But as it's currently nearing midnight, I must away to my bed in hopes of being rested enough for another day in Corporate America. But having written this I do feel slightly better. Maybe tonight Morpheus and I will be on speaking terms, or at least have a nodding acquaintance and be cooly polite. Maybe I should send flowers?