Tag Archives: versatile

Guest Post: Harry’s Favorite Things

1. Pizza Port – Monterey pizza is really good and the Swami’s IPA is excellent. Best place to go with a lot of people. The one in Solana Beach is my favorite but the new one in Ocean Beach is usually less crowded.

2. Canned beer/Avery IPA – I’m a recycling nut and all those bottles take up so much space. People say it doesn’t taste as good, but they’re wrong. Other favs are Caldera IPA, Oskar Blues Old Chub and Gubna. California brewers are finally doing this with Sierra Nevada putting Torpedo in a 16 oz can. Also goes great with…

3. Thai Curry – Red, green, yellow, chicken, tofu, shrimp, so yummy I could eat it twice a day.

4. Mission Proto VSI skates – Since I play inline hockey 2-3 times a week, I need a skate that fits well and is light. I have two pairs, plus an older, beat-up pair of Proto VS skates for going around the lake/bay with Michelle.

5. CCM Thornton Blades – The inline hockey surface is a slightly rough concrete and it acts like sandpaper to my stick blades. It’s much cheaper to replace the blade than buy a $100 stick every two months. I hope they keep making them when he retires.

6. Sansa Clip+ – Best. MP3 player. Ever. Clips to my t-shirt collar for a run around the lake plus it’s expandable with microSDHC cards. Also works great for taking data back and forth to work.

7. Ikea Jerker Desk – Great desk with a funny name. I started standing at my desk and this desk adjusts to the right height. Plus it’s got great storage areas for my computers. I’ll be adding some additional hidden mounts under the desk to hide my cables and router gear.

8. Vmware/Cygwin – Allows me to run Linux and use Gnu tools (bash, g++, Emacs, ssh, XWindows) while I’m using Windows. Need both for work and it’s a pain to have two computers.

9. Subaru Outback – So versatile. Use it to carry big stuff from Home Depot, hockey gear, camping gear plus it’s not as big as a SUV and gets better gas mileage.

10. AT&T Uverse – So sad we gave this up for Time-Warner cable. TW only has two pros: slow-motion and it’s cheaper. As soon as our contract is up, we’re going back to UVerse.

11. Hot sauce – Because my list goes all the way to 11 and everything is better with it (PB&J and Sriracha). As you can tell, I keep a variety on hand for every spicing need.


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Twelve On Twelve

There’s a bunch of bloggers out that that do the 12 of 12, including mi amigo Enrico at Hotel Tuesday, whose September 12 of 12 featured yours truly.  While I always mean to do a 12 of 12, I always seem to forget and miss the day.  So this month I’ve decided to cheat, and post 12 photos that I’ve taken recently.  Instead of a ’12 of 12,’ I’ll just call it my ’12 on 12.’  Please enjoy my orgy of photography!

On September 29th, a friend and I went to see David Sedaris speak at Raritan Valley Community College.  Our seats were pretty far away, as you could probably tell by the grainy zoom and head shadows between my camera lens and the subject.  I’ve seen Sedaris before, and he never fails to put on a good show.  This one was no different — he had the audience in stitches for most of the night.  His latest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk had been released a day earlier, so he was there (in part) to plug the book. I’m now about half way through reading it, and it’s far from his best. If you decide that it’s worth a read, I’d suggest that you wait until it comes out in paperback. The tiny hardcover is priced at a very steep $21.99, and the Kindle version still seems quite pricey at $9.99.

Before and after the show, Sedaris signed copies of his books in the lobby.  I had decided that I wouldn’t bring anything to get signed, because I felt like I’d probably be too wimpy and nervous to wait in line and speak to someone that I admire as much as David Sedaris.  But when I got there and saw how personable and friendly he was to all of the gays, women and husbands that were dragged to see him, I regretted my decision.  Oh well, maybe next time I’ll grow some testes.

Do you ever add the phrase “in bed” to the end of your fortune cookie fortune?  Another friend and I recently ate at P.F. Chang’s and we received these two fortunes.  It’s not often that “in bed” works so well with a fortune, let alone two!  Mine was the fortune on the bottom of the photo.

Even better is that my Chinese word on the back was “Mouth” — how filthy!  It’s like the fortune cookie fortune writer was flirting with me or something.

Lately Spring has been curling up on top of blankets and pillows.  As the weather begins to change outside, my apartment is becoming increasingly drafty and cool.  I get that it’s probably warmer to sleep on soft and cozy things, but when she sleeps on pillows like this, I have trouble not thinking of her as a spoiled rotten little princess.  I’m always tempted to stick a frozen pea under the pillow to see if she can feel it.

Here’s a picture I took of a praying mantis on a brick wall.  I’m really only showing this to you so I can get my photo count in this post up to the necessary 12.  They’re my favorite insect … but that’s all I really have to say about it.

I’ve never been a big fan of shopping for clothing (especially when all I can really afford is sold at WalMart or stolen off the backs of sleeping homeless people), but now that I know that T.J.Maxx (or T.J.Maxipad, as I prefer to call it) caters to both Active Tops and Active Bottoms, I might start shopping there more often.  My wardrobe could use a little more versatility.

Last Friday night I had the chance to visit Mikey for a bit in New York City.  Though we’ve been friends for about 3 years, this was only the fifth time we’ve actually met in person.  Mikey suggested that we meet at Boxers, a classy joint where all of the male bartenders seemed to have forgotten most their clothing on the night that we were there.  While there, I decided to drink an entire alcoholic beverage.  I’m such a lush!

When I was leaving, Mikey desperately tried to plant a big, wet kiss on me, but I was able to evade his animal magnetism.  I’m a classy chap, and a boy’s gotta buy me more than a drink if he wants some sugar.

Last Sunday I took a drive to Ikea in Conshohocken, PA with my family.  No big purchases this time — I just stocked up on cutting boards (as a vegan, I go through them pretty quickly), shower curtain liners (I think it’s an OCD thing that I change them so often), and batteries (my label maker takes six AA’s — yay organization!).

As an atheist, I’ve never really experienced the faith and clarity that religion can bring to one’s life.  But at Ikea, I feel a sense of purpose, of belonging, and I rejoice as a greater power (Ikea) envelops me in its love.  Can Ikea be my religion?  I love it there.  I only wish I lived closer to an Ikea store, because I’d get a job and just assemble furniture all day long for the rest of my life.  Just like Ghandi and Malcolm X did!

And finally, on Monday I woke up early and baked a batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies to bring to work.  Just in case someone thought that they were in honor of the genocidal homo maniac, Christobo de Colon, or GAWD FORBID they all figure out that I’m a big homo and force me to be friends with Justin again (the horror!), I labeled them as Canadian Thanksgiving cookies.  Almost everyone threw veiled compliments my way: “wow, these actually taste really good!”  One coworker thought that the chocolate chips were raisins and that there was a strong flavor of applesauce (the cookies contained neither), and one refused to eat anything that was so close to a Canadian flag.  How rude to me, my cookies and Tam.

So there ya have it!  Those are the 12 photos that I didn’t actually take on the 12th, thus cheating so much that the blog universe will probably implode and/or murder me by the day’s end.  In lieu of flowers, please click the ad a few hundred times.

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