Overdoing Saturday Morning Breakfast

At some point, I started frying an egg or two for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Usually, I would put it on toast, and make a sandwich. This has been becoming more complex as time goes on. Now, while frying some eggs, I'll toast a bagel or English muffin or something, and apply butter and Vegemite, and then some cheese. Near when the eggs are done, I'll toss a slice of bologna or some lunch meat on the frying pan, and fry that up too. When done, split the meat in half, and put an egg and half slice of meat on each bagel.

Eat two of those, along with a banana and a cup of coffee, and you won't be hungry for lunch!

Another Remake (Silly Love Songs by Red House Painters)

Currently playing on Launchcast: Silly Love Songs by Red House Painters. (This group was fronted by an old acquaintance of mine, Mark Kozelek, which is why I have it rated.) In a recent blog entry, I mentioned that I liked remakes. However, this one is so different from the Wings original that it's not really any comparison. It stands on its own. Not bad. Give them a listen.

(Next up: Tullochgorum by Natalie MacMaster.)

August 5K Race Photo

Last month, I ran in a 5K race for the first time in a good number of years. As I mentioned, I would post a photo when I got one. Today, I got one, so here you go.

Those guys in the middle are fast!! Though, maybe if you strapped 30 or 40 pounds to their midsections, the "bookends" might have a chance.

Birthday Photos

How would you like to have your entire life recorded in someone else's blog? (Sorry about the red eye!)

(Non-Tennessee) Volunteer Marching Band

I found the following photo on my wife's desk a day or two ago. As I mentioned before, I don't organize my old photos well, but I don't know why it was there. It had been a long time since I had seen it. I figured that I would at least save a copy online, so that I would have a backup of sorts.

This photo is from a few decades after the advent of colour photography, and it shows the marching band that we put together for the youth football "pageant", where, to start the season, the youth players all played a scrimmage game in the high school stadium. The far (away) stands look small and sparse, though the home stands were larger and more populated.

I could be remembering wrong, but I seem to recall that volunteers were asked to participate and what we put together was done without the help of one of our directors, or maybe without any adult supervision at all. (Is that even possible? It's hard to imagine these days.)

The real question is, do you recognize me? If you do, do you recognize anyone else you know?

The New Musician, 2006 Edition

If you have a blog long enough, you'll notice that the posts start to repeat themselves. Here's the new musician of the year:

Souvenirs of Chinese Female Former Coworkers

I'm in the process of clearing out a lot of the junk from my office at work. You'd be amazed at how much can accumulate there -- though it's probably just a small fraction of the state of my house. Anyway, I discovered that I seem to have accumulated more "memorabilia" related to Chinese females than from any other class of people:

• I still had the sheet with Yi Yi's name written in Chinese charaters and her e-mail address and other contact information in a more readable (to me) form. I haven't contacted her since she left, however.
• I have Jing's nameplate from her consulting firm.
• I have Hanjun's expired contractor ID badge. This one is explained by the fact that her last day was some December 24 (or maybe December 30) and I was the only one in the office when she left. She gave it to me and I tossed it in my drawer, neglecting to turn it in all these years.

Anyway, I thought this was a little odd, and I don't have a good explanation!

New Glasses

Just The Way You Are

Currently playing on my Yahoo! Launchcast Station: Just The Way You Are. You know, the Billy Joel tune. However, it's not Billy Joel that's singing it. Instead, it's Ol Blue Eyes: none other than Frank Sinatra himself. I'm a big fan of remakes. This is cool!

Here are some of the remakes I have rated on my station. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
One Tin Soldier (Really, anything my Me First and the Gimme Gimmes qualifies and is good.)

Weird Al Yankovic
Bohemian Polka

The Smothers Brothers
The Impossible Dream (The Quest)

Ugly Kid Joe
Cat's In The Cradle

Natalie Merchant
Space Oddity

Honeybrowne
Take Me Home, Country Roads

Bob & Doug McKenzie
The Twelve Days Of Christmas (I'm not sure that this counts as a remake.)

Jupiter Coyote
Duelin' Banjos/Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Live
I Walk The Line

Eva Cassidy
Time After Time

Rush
The Seeker

Johnny Cash
Desperado

Pat Benatar
Helter Skelter

Joe Cocker
With A Little Help From My Friends

The Bangles
Hazy Shade Of Winter

Willie Nelson
Amazing Grace (This song was done by many others, of course. Some do it better than Willie.)

Madonna
American Pie (Actually, I don't like this one.)

Lemonheads
Mrs. Robinson

Workplace Internal Spam and Fever

I don't normally like to make fun of the people I work with, but there is one thing that I feel is worth mentioning that annoys me. One class of workplace internal spam is when we get mail mentioning a successful project, or a future contract, or something. Often, this will be only marginally related to my job; I can live with this, I suppose. But what bugs me is when people (who should know better) do a group reply without thinking and have nothing to add besides "Good Job" or "Congratulations!" or something like that. I mean, don't they realize that the message is going to, I don't know, tens of people (or maybe many more) who all will need to take the time from their busy day to read the message, grumble internally that this person had nothing to say, and then delete it?

Anyway, if you agree, reply by saying "Sooooooooooooo WONDERFUL!!" or something.

Actually, the level of intelligence involved reminds me when, many years ago, a coworker changed his mail (or USENET) response attribution line to say, "$SENDER must have been out of his mind with fever when he said:". This caused a minor controversy when he responded to someone who, due to a lack of understanding of modern communications, thought it was some kind of personal attack, rather than just a silly (and certainly unprofessional) thing he had changed in his mailer and had probably forgotten.