My So Called Life

The tastiest part is the soul

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend I had to trot, trot to Boston to do a little work.  While I was there, I was very bold and adventurous trying food that I normally wouldn’t try.  One night we were out at the Fisherman’s Festival and my boss stopped at a booth serving clams.  He was pretty excited because, being French, they ate a lot of fresh seafood growing up.  So he ordered a plate and convinced me to try one.  I had never had one before and figured I probably never will, since it is not something that would normally appeal to me.  So he squeezed some lemon on there and I ate it.  I was pleasantly surprised!  I mean, I like seafood quite a bit, so I don’t know what I expected, but it was good.  Saltier than I imagined.  I would like to try one with the hot sauce maybe.  Anyway, we continued walking along and I inquired what the difference between clams and mussels were.  He started explaining that (among many other differences) when the lemon juice hits the mussels they shriveled up.

I stopped cold.  “You mean they are alive??”  He laughed and said, “Yeah, what do you think you just ate?”  I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me, and it doesn’t change anything about the fact that I actually thought it tasted pretty good, but I’m sure glad he told me that after I ate it.  I was fairly horrified.  I just imagined me chewing and chewing and ending his little life.

I also had the opportunity to eat an entire lobster.  Again my boss was there to demonstrate all the tricky bits and how to properly dismantle him.  Again, it was super, super tasty but I just had to keep suppressing the knowledge that I was tearing this animal apart with my bare hands.  Especially when there was something disgusting, like the contents of its stomach.  The thing is, I have no problem with killing animals and I have no problem with the awful conditions of slaughter houses, etc.  I think if you eat meat or fast food, or wear leather, etc. you better come to grips with the fact that that’s what is happening.  I have no remorse over that, I’m no PETA lover.  But I don’t like to be reminded that my food came from an actual animal; I’d rather someone else took care of that part.  I mean, I want my garbage collected but that doesn’t mean I want to actually do that part myself!

I also tried clam chowder, which was ALSO delicious.  So, that was 3 adventerous forrays into the New England food world and 3 big hits.  Although I’m still not sure I could bite into another clam knowing that it would be that bite that ended his tiny life.

Musings on Favre

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As a Packers’ fan and specifically a Brett Favre fan, many people have come to me for my reaction about all the things going on lately.  I don’t claim to represent every Packers’ fan, and in fact I assumed that most of them would disagree with me.  But the more I talk to them and the more informal polling I do, I find out that in fact many of them do agree with me.

Let me start by saying I think Brett Favre is absolutely qualified right now to be a starter on an NFL team.  Probably his best years are behind him, but that being said, he’s easily in the top 5 of current QBs.  Even if you only put him in the top 10, that is still better then about 2/3rds of the starting QBs.  So I was not a person that was saying he was washed up and needed to go, even before last season’s renaissance.  I am also very protective of his legacy and I sort of breathed a sigh of relief when he went out on top.

I honestly believe the Packers’ organization (or at least McCarthy) when they say that they didn’t want him to retire and that they flew down to his home after the season to try to convince him to come back and he said no.  I honestly believe that they made the best choice available to them at each juncture and tried to do the best thing they could not just for the franchise but for the fans and for Brett.  Brett says that they forced him to retire.  I don’t think that is true.  They may have forced him to make a decision, but not that decision.  And quite frankly, he’s the one who put the idea in thier heads in the first place with his talk of retiring at the end of every season for the last 4 years.  Every year the drama gets dragged out longer and longer and you just can’t wait until a week before the season starts to find out who your QB is going to be.  So yes, they forced him to make a decision one way or the other and he went with the other.

I don’t blame him for wanting to come back.  I think there are very few of us who can put ourselves in his shoes, but I’m sure everybody who retires misses it.  And they aren’t super famous with thousands of fans screaming for them every week.  I’m sure when you retire it is hard to imagine your life without something that you feel defines you as a person.  So I don’t blame him for that.  But I just can’t figure out why he can’t understand where the Packers are coming from.  They had to have a decision from him and then having that decision they made all the necessary arrangements to carry on without him.  He doesn’t seem to remember that he works for them, not the other way around.

When he announced that he was coming back, it seemed like a nightmare scenario.  There was no good way out of it for the Packers.  He set himself up so he couldn’t back down, which meant he was definitely going to play somewhere.  It would have been hard for them to welcome him back as the starter and throw away all of the preparations and plans and commitments they had made while he was away.  It would have been bad to pay him $12 million to sit the bench, although maybe they should have out of spite.  It would have set up a terrible situation for Aaron Rodgers (whom I like and think will do quite well) to be second guessed to the point that he would be unable to perform.  It would have been hard to trade Favre away because you couldn’t hope to get much for him considering the other team could only really count on one year out of him at the most, after which he may retire again.  So do you want to be the guy who traded away a superstar for a 4th rounder?  No, there really wasn’t any easy way out of the situation.

I think the Packers’ organization handled it about as well as it could possibly have been handled.  First off, they ran the risk of the fans being pissed that they traded away an icon, but they let it go on long enough and they were (at least on the surface) nice enough that all the fans are just fed up with Brett.  Second off, they got a 4th rounder that could hypothetically go all the way up to a 1st rounder based on the Jets going to the superbowl.  So it’s probably not going to be much but it’s something and it will be something even better if Favre ends up being good.  But really the main thing is that they traded him to a really sucky team!  They have practically guaranteed that Favre will look worse than Rodgers, which was really the danger of the whole situation.  Even on the Bucs (and certainly on the Vikings), Favre could have potentially shown up Rodgers.  The Packers have a really good team and especially really good receivers that will tend to make a QB look even better than he really is.  Also, everybody and his mother knows that Favre didn’t want to go to the Jets which means a) everybody knows the Packers forced him to go, meaning he lost that round and b) another thing stacked against his success since his teammates and the fans all know he didn’t want to go there.  And something tells me a New York media storm isn’t exactly like a Green Bay media storm, so he’ll have that to deal with.  So maybe the Packers did find a way to salvage the situation after all.  And to top it all off, you’ve subtly sent the message to Rodgers that you have so much confidence in him you sent BRETT FAVRE packing.  That’s got to feel pretty good.

So, to summarize, I wish it had never happened but I put most of the blame on Brett.  I think the Packers never wanted to upset him but really tried to make the best possible decisions at the time.  I think Brett has put them in a tough spot time and time again and yet they have never bad mouthed him.  Although I understand why he wants to come back and I empathize with him, I think he has lost a lot of respect and gained very little.

That is all.

City Rodents

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When you live in the country you have to worry about pests like rabbits and raccoons that ruin your garden.  You have to assume you are going to lose X percent of your crops to these nuisances.  In the city we also have rodents, but they walk on two legs.

We lost about half (~10 ears) of our corn and a decent number of tomatoes.  It’s not that I didn’t expect there to be poachers, and its not like we don’t have tons of food from the garden, but it is a little disappointing to weed and water and watch a plant grow from a seed and see it fruiting and then finally after all of that go to enjoy the fruits of your labor (no pun intended) and find it missing.

Brett is a Jet

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As I live and breath, I never thought I’d see the day.  You have no idea how this breaks my heart.

“Brett has had a long and storied career in Green Bay, and the Packers owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for everything he accomplished on the field and for the impact he made in the state. It is with some sadness that we make this announcement, but also with the desire for certainty that will allow us to move the team and organization forward in the most positive way possible.

“We respect Brett’s decision that he could no longer remain here as a Packer. But there were certain things we were not willing to do because they were not in the best interest of the team. We were not going to release him nor trade him to a team within the division. When Brett ultimately decided that he still wanted to play football, but not in Green Bay, we told him that we would work to find the best solution for all parties involved. We wish Brett and his family well.

“We appreciate the tremendous passion shown by our fans. We, like them, always will see Brett Favre as a Green Bay Packer and our respect for him never will change. Moving forward, we are dedicated to delivering a successful 2008 season for all Packers fans.”

 It is probably the best for everyone, but it still feels like a punch in the stomach.

The man behind the curtain has been revealed

/ Shane / 2 Comments

And the curtain I’m referring to is this one:

We recently had some professional pictures taken of Evie.  I personally think that the pictures we take at home are as good (or better since we can take so many and pick the best) but Sara had always regretted not getting any when Evie was born.  So I set up an appointment and got her a gift certificate for mother’s day.  It was more difficult than I expected!  I wanted to go to a real studio but it was tough to find one in a convenient location that wasn’t crappy and wasn’t open weird hours only.  That narrowed it down quite a bit.  Then I found out that a lot of studios only do graduation pictures, or at least when they’re doing graduation pictures they aren’t open for regular business.  So I finally settled on JC Penney.

Now let me start out by saying that the photographer was actually pretty good.  The setup was pretty good and they even had some props and stuff that were pretty good.  However, at the end of the day, JC Penney rips you off with pictures.

The problem for them is that in the old days nobody knew exactly how pictures worked, so they could pretend like it was a very complicated and difficult process that they needed to charge you a lot of money for.  However, we all have digital cameras now.  The secret is out!  The man in the iron mask is revealed, and it is trivially easy.  But I guess they (like a lot of businesses I suppose) want to pretend it is still the good ole days and everything remains unchanged.

So we took the pictures and waited around for about 15 minutes and then they brought the pictures up on a monitor for us to see.  They had all of the poses plus someone had spent the 15 minutes making a couple of generic photoshop edits; black and white, sepia, a couple of cheap looking borders and captions.  Now we knew the pictures would be ridiculously overpriced, that was part of the game.  But right off the bat they want to charge you almost double for anything with a border or anything like that.  But the curtain is gone!  I know for a fact that after the picture is taken they just open some computer program and type in a caption and voila!  By the time we are looking at it, all the work is done except for the printing.  There is no way that should cost anything extra, much less $30!  I could do better in less time at home.  Furthermore, I expected them to print our selections on the spot.  Instead they told us they would be ready in about 2 weeks.  There is absolutely no reason for that.  They are trying to pretend they need a fancy technician in a fancy darkroom somewhere or something, but I know they are just coming off a photo-printer and could be ready in under a minute.

Now all of that was annoying, but no big deal.  What finally put me over the edge is when I went to pick them up.  When I got there the salesperson pulled out a couple of extra sheets with some cute poses.  Someone had taken another 15 minutes or so and arranged a few more shots, had even performed a ::gasp:: crop on one of the pictures.  I thought to myself, “Wow, that’s nice, they’re including a couple of extras!”  In retrospect, of course that was stupidly naive, but I know that it cost them pennies (no pun intended) to create and print those sheets and I thought, “Well, it’s kind of smart.  We’re happy because we got a couple of free ones and maybe even someone sees them and likes them and we go back and order a few more or something.”  But of course that’s not what happened, I was informed that the “lab” printed up a few extra which I could purchase for an additional $20 a sheet.  When I said no thanks, we’re good (and it was hard even at those prices because they were really cute) the pictures WENT IN THE TRASH.

I repeat, pictures of my adorable daughter, really cute ones with a wash cloth on her head got thrown IN THE TRASH right in front of my face.  Well, to be fair it wasn’t in front of my face, I saw it out of the corner of my eye as I was turning away.  So they already made them and had them printed and everything, any expense on their part was already paid, and they chose to throw them away rather than give them for me.  And they were going to charge me $20 for something they valued so little that they just trashed.

BOOOOOOOOO to you JC Penney!  For shame!