Update #7

Movie News
OK ok ok, I know you are sick and tired of hearing about this but I have to share the news! Jeanne & I were at the movies and we saw the posters for the 'Coming Attractions' and Kontroll was there!! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you too, can participate in the experience of watching a truly original movie that dare I say it....DOES NOT follow the standard Hollywood theme and STILL keeps you vastly entertained?!?!?! Who would've thought such a thing was possible!??!?!?!?
On top of that, the soundtrack is incredible! Here's a trailer. (Click on 'Gallery'. The real movie has subtitles).
(I am not affiliated with the makers of this movie and am not receiving compensation for my comments, although compensation would be greatly appreciated)

If you do want to see it (and you KNOW you do...remember my suggestion of going to Emeril's for Christmas lunch? You do remember how good that was right??? Even SACO¹, liked it!! Well, this movie is the Emeril's of the theater), we saw the poster at the South Beach Regal cinema (the theater on Lincoln Road) so it should be in there soon. Yeah, I'm actually battling the urge to see it YET AGAIN. I mean, I saw it at the festival, I finally got the movie at home and I still want to see it in yet another theater. YES, YES I DO!!

So, as we site watching the movie trailers, we see a preview for Charlie & the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp. Here's a trailer for that one. Go ahead, click on it, watch the trailer and then come back. Seriously, DO IT!!!







OK, now who does Willy Wonka look like? Remember how strange he looked? Sort of like a girl, but not really? Kind of androgynous right? And his racial makeup was also indeterminate origin??? That's right! You guessed it! We're on the same page! It's not Willy Wonka at all, it's no other that Michael Jackson!!! Wacko Jacko has landed a film role right after beating the charges against him!! That's not all!! He even managed to surround himself with CHILDREN in the movie!!! The irony of it all is unbearable!!!! Wacko is taking a groups of children on yet another tour of Neverland (this time called the Chocolate Factory) and he hasn't learned his lesson since the parents are still coming along. There will probably be a sequel where he gets sued for trying to steal some Kisses, feel up some Mounds, use his Bazooka to explore the Milky Way. What will he do then? Settle for 100,000 Grand...

And finally, after the movie trailers were over, what movie were we there to ultimately see? Batman Begins, of course! This by far, is the best one of all Batman flicks. Batman is actually in shape, the movie is much darker in tone (in line with the comic book character) and the Batmobile is really cool. I found out the model for the Batmobile was actually the mixture of two 1/12 scale models, one of a Lamborghini Countach and the other of a Hummer.

But not all is well in Gotham City. The first thing I noticed is that Batman has a nice suit made from a Kevlar material that can stop knife attacks & bullets. Keeping that in mind, I found it strange for him to suffer & double over from a simple punch or kick.

The second incongruity I noticed was the the bad guys were going to use a weapon to vaporize the water pipes in Gotham City and make everyone go crazy. The weapon would only vaporize water and not directly hurt humans (how this is accomplished is BEYOND me, since we are 80% water, but I digress) At one point, everyone knew where the weapon was, where it was going and it's ultimate intent. The Water & Sewers workers were shown paralyzed in fear in their main control room as the weapon made it's way to the intersections of the main water pipes. Now, I tend to think in simple terms (it all stems from a unfortunate incident in 3rd grade involving Jack, Jill & compound sentences, but I digress) so I was thinking, "Why don't the Water & Sewer guy's just simply SHUT OFF THE WATER?" Then Batman & the SWAT team could get there and the weapon disabled, and live happily ever after. That didn't happen. The Water & Sewer guys didn't think of it and Batman had to suffer through another series of punches & kicks that his armor didn't protect him against.

And finally, I don't know why the other characters in the movie cannot figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. If you pay the least bit of attention to the movie, you'll notice that Bruce/Batman is ALWAYS WHISPERING!!! He is physically unable to speak in a normal tone of voice, even when only Alfred is around. If you knew a person that was constantly whispering everything, you would think that the guy has issues AND he's hiding something! That's a Batgiveaway!

And what about Robin? Wasn't it a dynamic DUO???

Birthdays
Why were we in Miami Beach that particular weekend? Jeanne & I were celebrating our birthdays and we were offered a two night hotel stay at the Clinton Hotel. The Clinton is a small boutique hotel on Washington Avenue. The hotel has a corset theme going and if you look at the mirror in the room, it also has a corset! How cool is that!! A mirror that makes you automatically look thinner (unfortunately, a bit feminine too)!!! That thing on the bed is a swan made out of a folded towel. Those bottles were wine & champagne.








Patagonia
I have uploaded a few choice pictures that we took in Patagonia.
We took tons of pictures but my favorite scenic ones are in this album.

The Kitchen Diaries
I did something that I thought would happen many months from now. I must admit that these developments seem to be moving a bit too quickly for me. I'm not sure I'm ready for all this.

Yesterday, in the deep, dark, throes of famine, I opened up a frozen pizza box and prepared to use my oven. I KNOW, I KNOW, I thought it would not happen this soon either but when you are in need, you just do what you gotta do.

I spied my oven out of the corner of my eye.
I pretended to look for something in the cabinets overhead, all the while sneaking glances at the complex navigation system. I was really circling around my prey, but I had to let it get used to my presence before I attempted physical contact.
I made the next move, I put my arms down and made direct eye contact. I sensed it quiver in confusion & barely restrained anger. I had to move carefully now. Things could get ugly in a heartbeat. The kitchen is not large by any stretch of the imagination and that made two things abundantly clear:

1. Escape was impossible
2. Should things go awry, I was in for some major injuries

I had already developed a relatively amicable relationship with its close cousin, the range. I decided to use that to my advantage. I figured that since in almost all species grooming is a social ritual (except for porcupines, for them, grooming is DEFINITELY a solitary task), I could gain a measure of trust from my oven if I was seen grooming my range. I quickly took out my hastily prepared grooming kit, which consisted of 409 & a paper towel. These two items were the only things protecting me from certain fiery death.

I slowly cleaned off bits of steak, oil & a few bits of mashed potato (last week's dinner); I noticed the uneasy calm remained. While wiping steak entrails I purposefully brushed the oven with my bare hand. Physical contact! Would I pull back a stump or my hand? I looked and my hand was unscathed. CONTACT!

I slowly expanded my grooming actions to include the oven's extremities. No reaction. I think I have become a part of the range/oven clan!! Although no injury had yet occurred, I must forge ahead and push my luck to the extreme. Would I be able to venture into its gaping maw, place food there, and then retrieve it unhurt? Is this oven possessive? Could I take back what I gave it? I had no idea, and it gave me shivers...I realized the air conditioner was on...I shivered some more.

We had to take it slowly. We had barely met and were still in the 'getting to know one another' phase. I gently bumped my oven to let it know I was still there. Then, in an act of faith, I turned my back to it. I was completely unguarded and completely vulnerable to an ambush!!! I had to court death!! Nothing!!! I was still alive!!

Gingerly, I reached for my oven condom (oven mitt) and slid it on.
"This won't hurt one bit," I told it.

I'm sure my oven may find it uncomfortable in the beginning but it'll get used to it (I hope). I stroked its ears, which were perfectly camouflaged as two red towels hanging off a handle. With a gentle tug on an ear, it opened it's cavernous maw. To my surprise, it's tongue was removable! I removed it's tongue, which brought back disturbing images of metal pans. I placed the frozen pizza on the tongue and put it back in it's mouth.

Then it hit me! NO!! Maybe it thought that I was feeding it! Usually I groom the range AFTER I take food off it and eat my meal. I had the order backwards!!
I GROOMED THE OVEN BEFORE EATING!!!!!!

Had my plan failed? Was I doomed to gaze at my dinner through a window as it burned to a crisp? Ohh cruel Atropos, why hast thou sought to cut my thread so soon????

I was doomed. Would I die like a man and face the fire or succumb to the horrible, lingering, cowardly death that starvation would bring about? Darth Vader or Gandhi?

I chose...the DARK side. I slipped my oven condom back on and, with a burst of speed brought on about by an unholy mix of 1/3 cups desperation, 1/4 pound of folly, 3 teaspoons of dark force, cinnamon, topped of by a coulomb of sage (I TOLD YOU it was an unholy mixture) I ran into the kitchen yanked open it's mouth and took my pizza out!

VICTORY WAS MINE!!!!

I reclaimed what was rightfully mine! I would live to eat yet another day!!

Epilogue
Dinner went well that night. Things were quiet, too quiet. As my oven lay resting after our bout earlier, I noticed what was causing my sense of discomfort. The condom. No! It was still intact, luckily, it had not broken. I did notice certain 'residue' on it. Very strange. The foreign substance was outside the condom.

I looked at it carefully (but from a distance) trying to determine it source of origin. Upon close inspection, I also noticed streaks of red in the substance.

'What on Earth?!?!" I thought.

As I reflected on that evening's occurrences, a notion, so simple, so probable that it completely escaped my attention, came to the forefront of my clouded, tired mind. The events that transpired weren't a battle between two opposing, worthy adversaries. It wasn't a duo! It was a threesome! THE PIZZA!!!!

The pizza was frozen and couldn't fight for it's life! That was a lucky break for me since I had my hands full with my unruly oven. When I ran in to snatch my pizza for dinner, I thought of saving time & energy. I decided to grab the pizza with the oven mitt instead of a spatula, thinking it would save me from washing another kitchen utensil.

The oven, got me in it's subtle way. That red, bloody substance was actually pizza sauce and the other substance was melted cheese (what did you think it was?). Great, I saved myself from having to wash a spatula but now I had to wash melted cheese off my oven mitt. It's always something....


And so my evening ended, and as incredible as this account may seem, it is entirely true. I understand the folly of trying to comprehend how such things could happen but I assure you, truth is stranger than fiction. This is no Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster or Chupacabra. This is a real beast I tell you! I was able to capture a picture that definitively proves its existence! It was yawning & trying to flee, but you can get a glimpse of it's camouflaged ears and it's tongue. Frightful!!!



The preceding story is factual. No ovens or oven mitts were harmed on the evening in question. The death of the pizza was an unfortunate consequence of the aforementioned events. Such deaths are unwarranted and the extenuating circumstances have been discussed with PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Pizza).







1 - SACO is not meant as the Spanish word for coat or bags. It is actually a reference to my previous boss. His tastes for dinner are predominantly focused around the environs of Coral Gables. He is known to venture outside its boundaries but only when direly necessary. Although his excursions outside 'The City Beautiful' are the stuffs myths are made of (other than his travels to work---which are dire by definition), he has been seen socializing with other mythical beings, notably, The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and a certain rowdy oven and his cousin the range. The chupacabra was sick that night. It called about something a mall near his home and eminent domain.

Update #6

When the road of life gets paved in yellow stones and you see a motley crew coming towards you, ditch Toto, he's useless...

Movies
As many of you know, I am now an official card carrying member of the local chapter of the International Foreign Film Fanatics fan club. After going to the Miami International Film Festival last year (We're going this year again...feel free to join us) I found out that in many cases foreign films are much better than the standard Hollywood stuff.

My two favorite movies of the film festival were 'Kontroll' & 'Old Boy'. I liked Kontroll so much that I found a Hungarian website that sold the movie. I bought it online. 2 months later, I get an email telling me that they had been out of stock but would be sending my movie that day. 2 month later, I get another email telling me the movie was returned because they didn't have the zip code. I sent the lady my full address and I took the opportunity to ask her what regional encoding the DVD had. What's that? You don't know what encoding is? Region codes are DVD's Little Dirty Secret.

Well, she told me that the DVD was region code 0, which meant it could be played in any country. Well, what she actually wrote was that it was a Region 0, PAL DVD disc. I was planning to get the DVD and play one of my favorite movies, I saw nothing wrong with that but that....HAHAHAHAHAHA.....my plan had a little flaw.

You guys remember the metric system? C'mon now, remember that strange measurement system that is extremely logical, based on the number 10 and which THE ENTIRE WORLD USES except the USA & Britain? Yeah, well we like to be different. The DVD format that the entire world uses is PAL and the USA is the only place that uses NTSC format. Of course, both formats are incompatible. Lucky me.

Now I have this excellent movie that I can't watch on my DVD player, I just get a disk error message. I did some research on the web and you can convert PAL to NTSC on your PC but it takes about 4 days of PC processing time and the quality is not good. Then I found places on the Net that will do it for a fee, only $14...for non-commercial, non-copyrighted movies.
Then I found a guy that would do it BUT he also said he would charge me $1 for each minute of the movie. Now, it's an EXCELLENT movie but not THAT great. What on Earth am I going to do?

As luck would have it, while Jeanne was in the hospital, she made friends with her roommate and her son (not the gallbladder lady, the other one..see previous update for details). The son works in video production. My savior! I gave the guy the DVD and he put it in his PAL to NTSC converter but no matter what he tried, the copyright protection prevented the conversion. Now what???

Jeanne and I went to Best Buy to look for printers and while we were there we decided to ask if they, by any chance, sold a DVD player that would play both PAL & NTSC. I had seen these on the web but they ran about $150 so I wasn't that happy about spending that kind of cash for another DVD player. The Best Buy dude shows us a box that's about one square foot and he says this DVD plays both NTSC & PAL. I was impressed by the tiny size. The thing is about 1/3 the size of my current DVD player. I as him how much, and he says.....you ready for this???? He says...$40!!! That's it?!?! Yup. $40.

I debated coming back for it but what the Hell, it's only $40. I grabbed a box and brought it home. It took about 25 seconds to hook up and I put the DVD into it. A few seconds later the movie played!!! Jeanne and I watched the movie the very next day. What an awesome flick!

So there you have it, a $40 solution to the evil, profit mongering, standards flaunting, corporate greed machine, that is trying to squeeze every single penny out of the working man!!! SCREW YOU!!! I GOT MY MOVIE!!! WRITHE IN AGONY AS YOU SEE MY HARD EARNED $ GO TO SOMEONE ELSE!!!!

Shopping
I made yet another shopping trip to try and stock my refrigerator. Yes, it is still empty. I just can't seem to buy enough food (that I can cook) in order to fill the fridge. But here's what I have so far!


As I was shopping, I noticed a few things that maybe a few of you could clear up. First, do I really need to freeze any meat that I buy? Can I just put it in the refrigerator or MUST it go into the freezer? I say this because I saw that all the supermarkets have the meat in the wanna be freezer aisle but they really aren't frozen. They're just sort of cool. If the supermarket doesn't freeze them, why should I?

I also heard a rumor that when you freeze chicken, you need to wrap it in paper before wrapping it in aluminum foil. Is this correct? Does chicken need to wrapped? It seems to me that the paper may just be an urban legend but I bow to others that know more about communicable food borne illnesses.

OK, so I haven't died of starvation yet so I must be eating something! I am making progress though, I admit. Even though my dishes tend to be very very very simple, I continue to make small improvements. Here, at long last, is the moment you have all been waiting for. Finally, I have made a dinner that can be shared with the rest of the world! I humbly present to you...Wednesday, June 23, 2005's dinner!!!!

(Meat & mashed potatoes, if you couldn't tell)

Oh yeah, how long can you keep mashed potatoes in the fridge? Do you have to freeze them first? Lately, I have been lazy and have been having cereal for dinner...sad but ohh so true...

Update #5

Further Adventures in Domestication

Now that 99% of my unpacking is complete and the new homeowner duties taper off, I find myself in the same predicament I was in before I moved, I have to feed myself when I get home. In pursuit of this lofty, difficult goal, I went back to my local Food Giant (which is two blocks away). No more Sedanos for me! This time my main target was side dishes. I picked up some spinach, instant potatoes & au-gratin garlic potatoes. The au-gratin garlic potatoes are for later, they require the use of the oven. Currently the oven and I have an uneasy truce. She knows that I am her owner but we have an unspoken agreement: for the time being, she keeps to her self and I stick to the range. No one gets hurt. However, recent relations have deteriorated since I believe she saw me pull out from a Target bag...a pair of oven mitts.

So I decided to cook up a steak, have a side of spinach and make some instant mashed potatoes. I had done this before so I felt up to the challenge. It was tough but I made it without serious injury. Unfortunately, I had bought a new brand of instant potato. I read the instructions and they seemed simple enough, open a packet, add water, add milk, add butter, boil water, stir. Voila, mashed potatoes!!

Guess what? It's not THAT easy. As I prepare to make my feast, I put the water, milk, butter to boil. I see that there are only two packets in the bag. Upon reading the fine print, I see that one packet SERVES FOUR!!! As luck would have it, I have a measuring cup but it starts at 1/4 cup. I estimate what 1/4 of 1 1/2 cups water is, 1/4 of 1/2 cup milk and put it in the saucepan. As I mess around with the steak, getting it ready for consumption, the mixture starts to boil over. I lift it from the heat and then...I forgot to measure the potato mixture, I now try to immediately figure out what 1/4 of 1 3/4 cups is. Do you remember how to do that? I did but I'm rusty and stuff was burning. Well, let me tell you, figuring out the least common denominator, converting a whole number to a fraction, multiplying by a reciprocal and then simplifying isn't as easy as it sounds when you're under pressure...

The mashed potatoes were edible, but they ended up with a consistency not unlike spackle.

Laundry

It was time I try my hand at doing my own laundry. I had been lulled into complacency by having a little Cuban laundry near my apartment that would wash & fold clothes for a pittance. Now that I had 4 washers & dryers at my disposal, it was time to forge a new path.

Jeanne taught me that clothes actually has instructions! They have this little tab of paper that lets you know what temperature you wash & dry the item in! That's pretty neat. What will they think of next?

I played it safe and armed with my new knowledge, decided to try my luck with washing my work pants. The washing went ok, I put them all in cold water with detergent. Apparently, Louise doesn't have many friends here. I made Louise's acquaintance in the laundry room. She's an elderly lady that whose hobby seems to be wandering aimlessly around the condo complex. She wandered into the laundry room and began to tell me the history of North Bay Village. She has been living in this complex for over 20 years. She also really doesn't like the handicapped neighbor in my floor. And finally, she excused herself for not looking at me while she was speaking to me. She said she was not feeling well. uhhh ok. 3 minutes later she tells me she's about to pass out. Nice, some more excitement tonight. She says that she has been passing out for the past year and she feels it coming on again. She's going to have open heart surgery in 2 days and her heart's the cause of her fainting. I tell her, "Why don't you go rest in your unit?" She says, "No, it's not necessary. I won't be around for much longer." Now, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REPLY TO THAT?!?!?!? I strategically began to busy myself with moving my clothes from the washer to the dryer. She stumbled off. Since I didn't hear a thud or see a body as I left the laundry room, I can only assume she made it up to the third floor. I'll keep an eye out for her in the next couple of days but there may be an extra parking space opening up soon. Feel free to visit.

I then took the next step and tried to iron my pants. That was true test. I figured out how to make the ironing board open and get the iron on. What I couldn't quite figure out was how to get the wrinkles out of the pants with the iron. I passed the iron over the pants but the wrinkles were still there. I then figured out that the pants have to be COMPLETELY flat, or you end up creating these nice pleats where you didn't want them.

Ironing Tip #1
If you're ironing and the iron & board tip over, don't try to save the iron from falling, just let it go, trust me, let it go.

It ended up pretty well, I only ruined one pair of pants and suffered a burnt fingertip.

There's a Better World Out There

And finally, I get a very interesting letter from GEICO telling me that since I moved away from Hialeah, my insurance premium went DOWN by $220 per year. Wow, there's life...dare I say it, a BETTER & CHEAPER life...outside of Hialeah?!?!?!?

Until next time...

Update #4

On the highway of life, take the long way.

I finally moved! The fateful day was May 21, 2005. I laughed, I cried but I left Hialeah behind...

The Move

The day before the move I got a call from an old friend of mine that had moved back to Miami. He also offered to help so now we had three people helping me move, Pablo, GuIllermo and myself. Using my native Puerto Rican wisdom, since I planned to give just about everything to Goodwill and I own a pickup truck, I decided to finally use it and carry the stuff over to the donation site. I come to find out that I could not donate the furniture at the donation site 10 blocks from my apartment. I had to go to the headquarters and donate over there. I had already donated most of the small stuff, sheets sets, books, etc. and the only things I had left were a dining room set, refrigerator, two Window AC units, ceiling fans, etc. I also found out that I VASTLY underestimated the capacity of my truck bed. After about 9 trips to Goodwill, we finished donating everything. Well, not everything. At one point, Pablo got tired of driving around Miami and he walked across the street and talked to an lady that ran an ALF. She was willing to take some of the items and that saved us several trips! I had originally thought that if we started at 8:30 AM we would be done by lunchtime. Such is the stuff dreams are made of, we began at 8:30 AM but we finished at 5:00 PM. You see why there is such a low demand for Puerto Rican wisdom?? It works, but it's just not very fast...

I left that place BARE! I took the fridge, both AC units (the third one was owned by the landlord) and all three ceiling fans. There was dust everywhere and two large gaping holes in the walls, where the AC units were. Man I hope several families of lizards moved in after I left. As many of you know, my landlord, his dad and myself did not part on very good terms. Since I didn't need them any more, I left all of my researched property records on the real estate they owned right there in the middle of the floor. Heh heh

Why the middle of the floor? To make that 70 year old bend over! Yeah, that's right! I went there! You know he was cursing me out as his decrepit, arthritic hips and knees reduced by one the total number of actions they can take before they leave him an immobile, flailing shell of a man. I was thinking of also putting a MedicAlert (remember those? "I've fallen and I can't get up!") but I think that he would've completely missed the allusion. I also thought of putting a clapper there, you know, so he could at least have some functionality while immobile ("clap on, fal la la, clap off, fa la la,...THE CLAPPER") but that gave me pause. Not only would that be yet another wasted joke, suppose he got a pacemaker installed (if he didn't already have one)? You have to clap twice, to make it work, would that cause the infamous, but rarely spoken of...CLAP OF DEATH?!?! Not to be confused with a bad case of the clap but an actual CLAP OF DEATH. The first clap would be like the cocking of a gun...click/clap, then a tense, pregnant pause before...clap, then...nothing.

Beat beat, beat beat...clap...beat beat, beat beat, clap.........................................................................

I don't think I could take it. Would I be implicated in the death? Would it be murder? Would it be suicide? Would I be safe if I got him a smart clapper? I had yet another thought to throw caution to the wind and leave two tickets to a concert along with a clapper there. I would buy another pair of tickets and take my own clapper along and watch the fun as the audience erupted in applause at the end of a song. You guys ever seen an old fart dance like a 20 year old??? He'd be like an old epileptic Lord of the Dance!!!

Why did I want to go to Goodwill, you ask? For the tax write-off! I'm thinking that Goodwill has a pretty good racket going on. You go and donate your old stuff to them, they clean it up and sell it for a markup. Granted, they don't mark it up a lot but they got it for nothing! By my reckoning, that means that if you divide the markup by the cost, you get like a what, INFINITY percent profit margin!?!?! The actual accounting definition of Goodwill is "the value paid over the fair market value of a good or service." How appropriate that Goodwill makes a living out of goodwill.

Then, to give incentive (not incentivize, that's not a word!) for people to donate, the government lets you deduct a certain percentage of the value of donated goods from your taxes. The result being that the government, collects less money the more people donate. Hmmm...so that means that I will pay less taxes this year and the teeming masses will have paid a proportionately larger share of taxes for my benefit. Well then, to all of you who decided not to HELP ME PAINT OR MOVE!!! THERE YOU GO!!!! You paid for your indifference to my pleas for help! SERVES YOU RIGHT!!! I GOT YOU ANYWAYS!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE! I WILL TRY TO REMEMBER YOU WHEN I AM LIVING IT UP USING MY TAX SAVINGS!!! And for the few, the proud, the ones who did help, don't get to cocky, I paid for your lunch...we're even.

The night before the move, the furniture guys came over an built my stuff. They were nice enough guys but I had the impression that furniture builders were pretty much experts, maybe not. They got there around 8:00 PM and Jeanne (by now you should know which one) and myself stood around watching them read the instructions and try to build my stuff. We were so bored that we walked over to the corner store and bought them some Powerade.

We come back and in order to expedite things, I started helping them out and while they built my couch and TV stand, I put the last pieces of my bed together. I noticed that some pieces didn't quite fit and upon further inspection, determined that the guys had put the frame on upside down!! They had to disassemble the frame, flip it over, and reassemble it.

The First Days

Now I have a few pieces of nice furniture and boxes of stuff stacked everywhere. Jeanne & I start to rearrange all the major stuff and we put the TV on the stand. Jeanne connects the cable to the TV and for the first time in my life, I have cable. Yes, I am not ashamed to admit it. I am too cheap to pay for cable outright! It is included in my monthly maintenance fee and I have all the basic channels. On Sunday night, as I relaxed on my couch among the boxes I watched my first cable show on my own TV. What show was it? You'll never guess. It was the Dog Whisperer. WTF?!?! THE DOG WHISPERER?? Yeah, there was nothing on and with such a stupid name as that, I wanted to see what it was about. Did it deal with a pet psychic? Was it a game of telephone for canines? It's actually about a guy who is an animal behaviorist that coaches people on how to manage their dogs. The guy's pretty good but it's sort of like watching NASCAR. The race is boring but you really want to see a crash. I was waiting for the guy to get bit. Didn't happen though.

During the unpacking, my computer desk got damaged and I decided to get a new one. (Sorry Pablo. Not that I don't appreciate your help or discount the many injuries you sustained as we disassembled the desk but it was looking pretty ragged. By the way, did you lose that fingernail?) I went to OfficeMax and found a pretty nice one at a decent price. I brought it back home and slaved to get it off the truck and into the elevator. I took apart the old desk and made trips to the dumpster downstairs taking one board at a time. I unpacked the new desk and began reading the instructions. In BIG BOLD letters the instructions cautioned against back injury and stated that the building of a desk was a job for two. "Pshaw!!!" I said. relying on my Puerto Rican wisdom. "It's only a desk" I thought. I can build it myself. Following the instructions was easy enough except that these instructions did not have any WORDS AT ALL. They only had pictures. Well, it did have some words in the steps, but they were mostly like, "An assistant is required to flip the unit over", "With an assistant, hold Board C while blah blah blah"...unimportant stuff.

I must admit that an assistant, while not absolutely necessary, will make the task of building a large, unwieldy computer desk much easier and faster. It will also potentially prevent several undesirable incidents such as: dropping extremely heavy particle boards on your toes as you work barefoot, having the top half of the desk pin you under its weight as you try to place it on the desk's bottom half, the incorrect placement of several support boards in reverse and having to spend 1 hour figuring out why board V, affixed with screws AX5645 and spacers SP58 will not fit into board D, which has its respective sunken holes ON THE OTHER SIDE. THEN after looking at the same simple cartoon picture you find out that BOARD A, THE ONE THAT CRUSHED YOUR TOES, is backwards and EVERYTHING has to be UNDONE, BOARD A has to be FLIPPED OVER AND MOVED AGAIN...I wore shoes (sandals) this time...it's NATIVE Puerto Rican wisdom, I can't help it...

Computer Problems

Now I have my desk ready and looking pretty. I have sufficiently healed so that I can deal with more semi-heavy lifting. I decided to ravage one old PC and take out its hard drive and install it into the newer one. After a few phone calls to tech support (i.e. Pablo) I got it to work. I set up my PC and waited a few days for my DSL move request to be complete.

I connect my router and modem to the PC and get ready to surf and check my email for the first time in about 2 weeks. I see a disturbing little yellow light on the modem. Greeat. Something's wrong. I go through the usual tasks to try and refresh the connection but nothing works. I call Earthlink DSL tech support to find out what's going on. After navigating though an automated voice prompt maze, I get to speak to a very polite foreign guy with an EXTREMELY heavy accent. I think he was toying with me and was purposefully masking his vowels. We went through several steps but he had to send me over to a level 2 tech. After spending 12 minutes on hold, 5 minutes listening to various vowel-less apologies I get transferred to a Level 2 tech named Manny. Manny was nice enough and after telling me hello and his name. He started apologizing. Now I wasn't angry or anything and I thought wow, this guy really turned up his compassion meter tonight! Guess what? It was damage control. He tells me the system is frozen and they can't get any information. He asked me to call back in one hour to see if the system was back up. What exactly do tech support guys do if their systems go down? They just sit there? Why bother answering phone calls?

I get another phone call the next day and I call tech support back. The move service form was not recorded and they would have to open a new order. It would only take three business days to get my service up. I said fine but it actually needed up a better deal. Since it was a new order, I was able to get a discounted rate for the first 3 months and after that, my service would actually be cheaper than the one I had previously.

Star Wars

Jeanne and I went to see Star Wars.We went during the day so the crowd wasn't that bad. The movie was ok, but the acting was not that great. At this point, near the end of the franchise, I began to think about the first movie and I see that the entire story really revolves around capes, not the Force, not the Empire, not about a messianic savior but capes.

It's actually a vicious fight for power that sets the brown capes versus the black capes. Star Wars has Obi Wan in a brown cape training Luke to fight not one but TWO dark capes, Darth Vader & The Emperor. Using the knowledge of Revenge of the Sith, I see that The Emperor has a legitimate reason to wear a cape (I guess plastic surgery isn't as popular in the future) but Darth Vader? The guy's in a cybernetic suit that keeps him alive! I am assuming that the engineers actually thought of something called temperature control, when putting a person in there. I was under the impression that the little red buttons on his suit were used for hot & cold A/C.

And of course, the most memorable line of all 6 movies is...no, not "Luke, I am your father". That's so 1970's!!! Get with the program, we are all more sensitive nowadays, we know we had so-so relationships with our parents but we are still nostalgic for the good 'ol days. The best line IS.."Luke, hold me like you did by the lake in Naboo"

In Revenge of the Sith, capes play a prominent role. They foreshadow EVERYTHING. Anytime, anyone takes of his cape, something is going to happen...

[cape off]

lightsaber fight

[cape on]

bad dialog

[cape off]

spaceship chase

[cape on]

"Luke, hold me like you did in the lake by Naboo."

[cape off]

A potential cape guy has to choose between wearing a brown or black cape. He chooses black. One other guy gets so disfigured so he has to buy a cape

[cape on]

guy gets burnt in lava

[cape stays off due to lack of shoulders]

dark cape guy comes to help shoulder less, potential cape guy and the burnt guy gets a cyber suit...with....A CAPE

[cape on]

movie ends

The First Dinner (as opposed to the Last Supper)

One week later, I finally had the chance to cook my first meal! I rushed home from work and walked over to my friendly neighborhood Food Giant. By the way, in a short period of time, there will be a Starbucks right by the Food Giant...can you hear the property values rising?!?!?!

I bought a few things and among them were some meat products that I decided to try and prepare for human consumption. I made it a specific point to buy paper thin steaks that would cook easily. I have the habit of never knowing when a particular piece of food is done. It either ends up burnt or as soon as I sit down to eat, I find it frozen and raw in the middle.

So these steaks were so thin you could get a paper cut from them. I put some of the famous Goya adobo which I bought on it and let it sit for maybe, 1 minute. I'm guessing that was enough of a marinade. I turned on the range and guess what? I put it on medium...then it hit me! Temperature! Although I admit that my skills in the kitchen are severely lacking, there was a variable that I was not taking into account...TEMPERATURE!!! My specialty has always been eating, not cooking. My cooking experience has been limited to a high school foods class where I was heavily supervised and watching my dear mom concoct Latin dishes. She was extremely familiar with the old 25 year old range we had. I on the other hand was a complete amateur.

Up until this point, I had only been dimly aware of the continual spectrum of temperature degrees. I always thought, yeah, that probably does exists, but not in my neck of the woods. If I play around with that, I'll get burned (pun intended), that's for other people, those risk takers. The old range we had was used so much that the labels on the dials were nonexistent. As far as my conscious mind knew, there were only two temperatures where you could set a range on, HIGH and OFF. Which was which? Well, they both clicked when you got to them and if the knob was pointing slightly to the right, that was HIGH. If the knob was straight up and down, that was OFF. I thought it was a simple system and it worked marvelously for pasta and boiling eggs. I thought I could make it work for meat if I just shortened the time I cooked. Well, that ended up with my over or severely undercooked states of meat. I know now what it feels like to discover fire and not know what to do with it.

I managed to cook the steak so that it actually smelled great and I put it on my brand new dinnerware. Now I looked and I came to the bleak realization that Adobo, steak, chicken, Bounty paper towels, milk and cereal do not a dinner make (that was my shopping list)! I had nothing to eat with the steak. I did the next best thing, as a side dish to my main course of steak, I served myself a bowl of Honey Nut Clusters. Can't get better than that...ugh. If I only would've had a the foresight to buy some pork, I could've offended the majority of the world's population and two of the three major religions with one meal! Unkosher, unIslamic and distasteful, all in one fell swoop.

Communication Issues

I bought a new smart phone and I find that service everywhere is excellent EXCEPT in my condo. Since that was my main source of communication until my phone line became active it was pretty frustrating.

I did make a new phone friend though, sort of. We have never met but I feel close to Mr. Stokes. He seems to be a middle aged smoker who is trying to quit the habit, but not of his own free will. How do I know this?

Apparently either he had my cell phone number or one very similar to mine. I get very frequent misdials asking for Mr. Stokes(I also get a few calls asking for Santiago). One very persistent caller was a customer service rep for Marlboro. Apparently, Mr. Stokes had ordered a few cartons of cigarettes and Marlboro was trying to contact him and fix a few issues they had with his order. According to the rep, the order couldn't go out until they fixed the problems. I guess Mr. Stokes isn't smoking as much these days.

I finally get my phone line repaired and the very next day I get my first unsolicited phone call as I get home from work...a telemarketer. My family doesn't know yet that I have moved but the telemarketers have already hunted me down....

And finally, a few of you have been gracious enough to let me know that you are actually enjoying these updates. I'm glad that you find them entertaining. For the rest of you who I have not heard from....YOU BASTARDS!!! THROW A GUY A BONE!! You don't have to like what I write...you don't have to read what I write, shit...you don't even have to help me move (which, as many of you already know, most of you didn't...enough said) but I still consider you friends of mine!!! AT THE VERY LEAST LET ME KNOW YOU'RE ALIVE!!!!