Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • The Wake

    Jen wrote this one…

    Waaaaaaaahhhh! Arizona lost! Arizona lost! Boohoo. They started out so flat, so sloppy, just plain horrible! It would have been Lute’s 500th career win at Arizona. Twenty years ago today he signed on with Az. How great would a win have been? To end a season by playing so poorly is frustrating, almost as bad as a first round NCAA tournament loss (which Az has done.) Even though Az won big, Thursday’s game against Notre Dame did more harm than good, due to the lack of defense. When Kevin heard that Az had lost, his face fell and he said “oh, I am so sorry. are you ok?” He acted like my pet had just died. I was exuberant when Az beat Gonzaga, but my mood didn’t swing the other way for this loss. So I assured him that I was fine. But then again, this is my first ranting blog in almost 6 months. I am glad that Kevin is sensitive enough to inquire about my feelings, even about such a trivial matter as a basketball game. (When Princess Diana died, I called my aunt and asked if she was ok, so I understand Kevin’s motivation.) It did give me the opportunity to talk about my favorite Az moments: the first final four appearance, the national championship a few years ago. One of my favorite game of all time was the loss in the championship game 2 years ago. It was the year Lute’s wife Bobbi died after fighting breast cancer. Lute had taken a leave of absence from coaching during the season to be with Bobbi, but came back after her passing. He had mentioned that the pain of her passing was least felt while the team was on the court. Taking that to heart, the team played and played and played. Going further than any would have thought possible, they lost only in the last round of the tournament when there was not another game waiting to be played. As for the rest of the tournament, I may continue to watch, but only to root for a loss for both Texas and Oklahoma (so that no number one seed makes it to the Final Four. Kentucky lost today too.) It may sound spiteful, but I need a reason to watch, don’t I? In happier news, Lute is engaged to be married in October. How great is that?! Statistically, widowers who were happily married are more likely to remarry than the unhappily married widowers. Interesting thought, huh?

  • Three Cooking Undertakings

    Last night, Max and I made cookies. Our pantry was against us, however and we were missing two important ingredients: brown sugar and rolled oats. Being the creative culinary maverick that I am, I substituted regular sugar mixed with maple syrup (it made the sugar brown, and kind of brown-sugar-esque) and crushed pecans. The cookies turned out a little flat and runny, but they’re still yummy. The maple syrup added a great flavor.

    Today, I decided to try out Mr. Allen’s yummy-sounding soup recipe. Of course, being American, I couldn’t just follow directions. Instead of making chicken stock, I used some store bought beef and chicken broths left over from my braising experiment. I used broccoli, cauliflower and mushrooms as my veggies of choice, along with a healthy heaping of spices: white and black peppercorns, green chili powder, red chili powder, a pinch of curry, and some sea salt. I simmered for two hours, then added two little containers of heavy whipping cream, whipped with my little kitchenaid thingy, and voila – the most amazing soup I’ve ever made. Jen is floored.

    On top of the soup, I decided that Max and I would enjoy making bread together. Unfortunately, Max decided to take a nap, and I got to make bread by myself. It was my first time making homemade bread from scratch aaa-aaall alone. I decided to go old school and mix everything by hand. I’m not sure it’s going to turn out, but it was fun to try just the same.

    Oh, there’s the timer. Time to go see how it turned out.

  • Like A Tofu Sammitch

    Not gonna talk about the war… not gonna talk about the war… not gonna talk about the war… I got flamed over at A Small Victory. I’m not going to say what it’s about or why I got into it other than I couldn’t resist. Go read for yourself (I am taking bets though on how long it will take for someone to call me a Nazi).

    I met Jen and Max for lunch today. Max is my favorite little kid ever. I know, he’s my son, but it still counts. I asked him what he wanted to do tonight while he was sitting there gnoshing on chicken nuggets. Max piped up and said, “MAKE COOKIES!!” We’re going to dust off the cookie sheet, pull out the flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla and butter and make ourselves some chocolate chip goodness. I then asked him what we were going to do after we made cookies. Of course, he said, “We’re gonna eat one!” And we will.

    Each paragraph in this post will be completely unrelated… if you hadn’t caught that already. I’ve been keeping this quiet since we launched it, but I just can’t anymore. I met with a couple guys from DevEdge on Wednesday to see if we could make our product faster/better/happier. Now, I’m pretty confident that I’m good at what I do. I do my best when at all possible, and the best I can under circumstances that dictate something other than the best. Ok, back to the DevEdge guys. They came in, and told me my DOCTYPE wasn’t in caps, and that was a problem. Fine, I can live with that, and they said it doesn’t affect the pageload anyway. I’m not hip on DOCTYPE’s anyway, and it’s easy enough to fix. That was it. That was the only problem that I have control over. They actually said they learned some new tricks looking at my markup, and that makes me happy. So, what was it that they were looking at? AOL Search. We quietly relaunched it earlier this month. I was able to shave a second off the page load time by totally redoing the markup underneath. Other than a couple places in the results that I don’t have control over, there are no tables, and everything is contained in DIVs. There’s one inline stylesheet. Oh yeah, and it had to look EXACTLY the same as it did before, and I had to learn a new language in like two weeks to get it done. This has been a good week for my ego.

  • Massive Armada Launches Groove Attack

    The other two music-related things I was going to tell you about yesterday before Mike delivered his new album were the two CD’s I got in the mail on Monday. They are:

    • Massive Attack: 100th Window: Before I start this, I have a confession. I am a huge Massive Attack fan. I own all their albums. I have been waiting for this for five years. So, if I break down and start to cry, that’s why. This is a great album. Go out and buy it right now. Why? It has Sinead O’Conner sounding the best she ever has in some haunting Teardrop~~esque (my favorite song EVER) pieces on it. The rest of it is classic Massive Attack, only new. There’s growth and expansion from what they did on Mezzanine. The sound is fuller, and has more layers than anything that’s come before. Everywhen is heavenly, with the slightest bit of distortion on the keyboards adding a pleasant roundness to the sound. The layers come in one by one and wash over my ears, making me nod and close my eyes. It’s hypnotic and then it blows your ass out of the chair~~ like the best of their other work (think “Angel has a baby with Teardrop who sounds a little like Safe From Harm“).

    • Groove Armada: Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub): I somehow have a copy of Edge Hill on my computer that I swear I have no idea how it got there. It’s a great song, and I was already placing my order with Amazon, so I went for it. I’m glad I did. The other songs on the album bear little resemblance to Edge Hill, but they’re still good. I even like the rap in the first song (it shows up in others two, but I’m listening to Massive Attack still, so I’m not going to go find them. The album flows really well between songs, and creates a great laid back mood throughout, even when it’s rockin’. After Edge Hill, Little by Little has me going back to it over an over. Hypnotic, densely layered and beautiful, even the vocals are great. What I love about the song is it gives you a good couple minutes to set the mood of the song before the vocals come in. Even then, the music takes precedence. Good good stuff for your headphoning pleasure.

    My lovely wife got me Fear of Pop for my birthday, which I’ll probably review tomorrow, if I can stop listening to Mike’s new album, and these two gems.

  • Google Things

    Google thinks I’m a “web designer and goofball extraordinaire”. One out of two ain’t bad. I’m no designer. I used to think I was, but I gave up. I’m a code monkey with definite opinions about design, but I’m not a designer.

    The goofball part is right on… on the way back from Indian food the other day, someone said, “It’s great to find someone else who never grew up.” Yeah, that’s me. I’ve got a juvenile sense of humor and a delight in mischief.

    What does Google think of you?

  • He Ain’t Just My Friend, He’s A Moo-Zish-Yan

    Today has been a much better day than I expected. Lots of good news and good new music. I’ll document the other new music later, but I want to tell you about my friend Mike. See, he was my boss for a little while a couple years ago and is an all-around swell guy. I didn’t find out until recently that he’s something of a musician (something of because I didn’t know how good he was). All that changed today when, while I was meeting with someone in my office, Mike ran in, dropped something on my desk without saying a word and ran off. It was a CD, and it had his name on it!

    I popped it open, threw it in the UberMac, ripped it (don’t worry, Mike, I won’t share), and began listening. Holy crap. He doesn’t suck! I’ve had one other good musician friend in my life, and the experience was a lot like this. I got this huge swelling of pride. My friend has created something beautiful, and I know him (not Biblically… I swear… although he did offer to take me hiking). All of the songs on the album are good, but there are some that are honest-to-goodness pieces of art. Waltz for Brooklyn is a gorgeous song that almost made me cry, partly because my friend created this and was kind enough to share it with me, but mostly because the song is just that good.

    So, if you’re in need of some acoustic guitar happy-sweet-goodness, go pre-order Half Pint today. Tell him Kevin sent you… and no, I don’t get anything if you buy it. It’s really just that good.

  • Two Great Tastes

    Yesterday was pretty brutal as far as work and stress levels are concerned. I spent a lot of time in meetings, writing documents and dealing with money stuff (we’re refinancing the house, which means lots of paperwork and finding old documents). My general stress level hasn’t been good lately with a bunch of new responsibilities at work on a new top-secret project and a lot of swirl around other stuff. It’s a whirlwind that follows me home every day.

    Jen suggested I take a bath last night, and I love her for it. It kept me away from the TV, allowed me to finish reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and introduced me to a great new mix of flavors. Before I get to that, I have to confess something. I’m addicted to Bloody Mary Mix. Being Mormon and all, there are never any spirits in the mix, just the spicy goodness of Mr & Mrs T’s Bloody Mary Mix (the normal stuff, not the super spicy version). I usually drink it in a mug full of crushed ice. It’s kind of like super-chilled gazpacho (the cocktail that eats like a meal). I think you know where this is going, or do you? The other thing I have to tell you is my obsession with good gummi bears (yes, I spell it the German way, because they’re German and that’s where I first had them). Jen bought me a big bag of Black Forest Gummi Bears (the original and still the best, no gummi worms or coke bottles for me – give me the little squishy bears and watch me smile like a doofus) for my birthday. Ok, on to the story. So, I take my mug o’ mix, a bowl of multi-colored edible bears, a bottle of water (in case I get lost and dehydrated) and my book up to the giant tub in our bathroom.

    I was a little apprehensive about mixing gummi’s and bloody mary mix, but you know, they’re pretty good. I wasn’t dipping them or anything, but I’d take a sip then eat a bear and I didn’t throw up. It’s not quite chocolate and peanut butter (but what is?), but it’ll do. I spent an hour up there nursing my mug and my bears, reading the final chapter of Mr. Eggers’ book (the last ten pages really are heartbreaking and genius).

    I feel a little better today. I’m still not sleeping well, but I haven’t broken down and run to get a forbidden soda, and work doesn’t seem so helpless today. I’m whittling away at the pile of documentation I have to write, and dealing with the constant flurry of interruptions without killing people. I think this skipping CNN thing is working.

  • Just Say No To War (Talk)

    Rashunda came up with a good idea in her comment to this post. I’m not going to talk about the war on this site anymore, if I can help it. I’m going to avoid it if at all possible. Why? There are a lot of reasons. First, I’m not qualified, and who wants to read about it here, when there are a million other places to get your war on. I’ll leave the commentary to the professionals, and those deluded enough to think they have the big picture. Second, it’s tearing me up. I have so many conflicted emotions about the whole thing that I don’t really want to relive them here. I’ll deal with them myself and leave them off this site. Third, the amount of commentary, good and bad, on the web is overwhelming. The coverage on the TV is bad enough, but it’s also practically impossible to avoid it online either. I will do my part to not contribute to the war commentary clutter.

    What am I going to talk about? Everything seems tainted by the war. Expect lots of stupidity (like you don’t already), lots of geekiness, some talk of sports and movies and Max stories. You’ll probably get some video game reviews and maybe some embarrassing stories from my childhood. I mean it, I really am going to try to avoid any commentary on the war, the President and politics in general, at least until the Primaries roll around.

    I’ll hopefully be back later today with something light and humorous… check back.

  • Just Because It’s There Doesn’t Mean I Have to Watch

    Indian Food makes me sleepy. We went to the lovely and tasty Banjara for lunch to celebrate someone’s anniversary with the company (it doesn’t take much of an excuse for us to go out to lunch). The food is good there, but a well-informed member of our group touts a rival restaurant, which we will try out eventually: Minerva. I don’t know what it is about Indian food, but both times we’ve gone there, I’ve had the hardest time staying awake when I get back to work. I’m droopy and lethargic and ready for a nice long nap.

    We stayed up for the Oscars last night. Since I really didn’t go out of my way to see the nominated films this year (of the Best Picture nominees, I saw The Two Towers, how sad is that?), I wasn’t invested this year. I thought Steve Martin did a fine job keeping things light, although his way-inside-the-industry shtick got a little old. I didn’t have a problem with any of the acceptance speeches, even Michael Moore’s. I thought his “When you’ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, watch out” (or something like that) line was really funny even if it was drowned out by booing and the orchestra. Adrian Brody gave the speech of the night, and did a great job walking that line between pro-peace and anti-war.

    I’ve been trying to come up with a reason I haven’t been more vocal about the war. I’ve posted before about the fact that I think it was inevitable, and how nothing I said would change it. I still feel that way to some extant. But, I also feel that with enough voices, things can change. I just can’t align myself with either group, the rapid anti-war folks or the rabid pro-ass-kicking troupe. I’m in the middle. People in the middle don’t protest. We sit quietly waiting for everything to end. I am pro-removing-Saddam. I am pro-Troops, how could I not be, having grown up as the son of one? I am anti-how-we-got-here. President Bush botched this whole thing miserably. His policies led us right here to war without the great international consensus we needed. He lied to us about Iraq’s involvement in September 11th, and used forged documents to make his case (whether or not he knew they were forged is still unknown, but still). Other than Britain and a handful of countries smaller than Mississippi, we’re all alone. We will be when this is all over too, unless Saddam decides to reveal those well-hidden naughty weapons.

    I’m going to try not to talk about this anymore. I’m tired of the coverage on CNN. I don’t need to know what the 3rd Infantry is doing every five minutes. I don’t need to see live feeds of Baghdad twenty-four hours a day anymore. I know people are dying on both sides. I know horrible things are happening to people I never met. Wallowing in it will only make me feel more sick about it than I already am. It didn’t have to turn out this way. Now that it’s here, and there’s nothing I can do about it, there’s no point belaboring the obvious. Woulda, coulda, shoulda – it doesn’t matter. We’re here, no matter how we got here. I just hope it ends, and the folks over there who want to come home get to, and soon. I hope Saddam realizes this is a lost cause and gives himself up, either to eternity (as Eddie Izzard would say, “In a ditch, covered in petrol, on fire”) or to his nearest US Military Representative. I know it won’t happen, but let’s hope anyway.

    I’m going to go bowling tonight and pretend that CNN doesn’t exist.

  • Double OT Is Killing My Wife

    Arizona, you guys better win it in double OT, or my wife is going to kill you or me.

    Watching sports with my wife is a contact sport, especially Arizona Basketball. She yells at the TV, slaps the couch, and my legs, or whatever other body parts are in reach. She’s what they call an avid fan. I love it. The things that come out of her mouth during a game make me laugh like nothing else. Now, Arizona and Gonzaga are going into Double OT, and I’m not sure she can handle the pressure. Please, Wildcats, go on a 15-0 run or something. She and my legs would appreciate it.

    UPDATE: Arizona wins!! Arizona wins!! It was by one point. After that last second shot by Gonzaga missed, Jen exulted with my double-armed pumping, “Arizona won!!!! Arizona won!! Arizona won!!!! Holy crap, Arizona won!!!” I thought for sure, I could get clocked by “friendly fire”, but Jen assured me her arms where going straight up and down, not side to side. It was a relief, to be sure.