I'm such a geek...

We did it. We've been talking about it for about a month.

I first saw the beauty of the new iMacs a few months ago, right before the Apple Store opened in Loserville.

Then the Spouse made noises about how nice it would be if we had another Mac and we could both surf the web at the same time.

Then Webhamster mentioned how easy it would be to hook up a router to our internet source.

Then a few days ago the Spouse's hand-me-down G3 iPod croaked. Well, it didn't really croak, but the battery is shot. I was trying furiously to get his music uploaded to it... going 50 songs as a time... and still it was being surly.

So the Spouse made noise about how nice it would be if I got a new 160gig iPod (for ALL the crap I keep finding on the web) and he could get my current 60gig iPod to replace his dying one.

And, well, our 5th anniversary WAS Friday. And since we didn't buy individual gifts for each other...

So after a hefty purchase at Apple, and a stop off to Comp USA for a router and an ethernet cable long enough, and several hours last night and a few today moving over files and re-establishing connections, and waiting thru updates and various syncs, here we are, basking in the beauteous glow of the new iMac (350gig hardrive, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) with the older, yet still dependable, iMac behind us.

See? Even the cat is happy. Now he has TWO laps to choose from when he hangs out in the office with us.

The Christmas Wrong

It started today. Today I entered Dante’s 9th circle of Hell.

The Christmas music got started by my supervisor. The day before Thanksgiving. And from here on out, for the next 4 weeks until December 22 I’ll be forced to listen to her limited yet never-ending playlist of Christmas songs.

Never mind that I’ve told her, politely, that I don’t like Christmas music. My brief stint in retail in my youth caused that. No, never mind that I have repeatedly told her I don’t like Christmas music. That’s just too fucking bad. I get a mean-spirited laugh, then told that I’m a Scrooge and the music plays on.

The same tired old 15 or so carols we all know and loath, repeated over and over, each time by a different artist: Elvis, John Denver, Frank Sinatra, Dolly Parton, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole... Over and over and over.

We didn’t listen to Christmas music at my house when I was growing up. Yeah, I sang them in school. And yes, we still celebrated Christmas even tho we were a non religious family. We just didn’t drive ourselves silly with repetitious, inane Christmas carols. My Christmas-music-lovin’ supervisor was shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you - to discover that I had never heard the Andy Williams Christmas album, and that my parents didn’t own it.

That’s because my parents had taste. I grew up hearing the Beatles and the Stones, not Andy Williams or, gods forbid, Pat Boone.

What makes it even worse (yes, it gets worse) are some of the quirky, non-traditional songs that get tossed onto these Christmas albums. Songs like “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” by John Denver or “Hard Candy Christmas” by Dolly Parton are extremely putrid.

Don’t believe me? Go google the lyrics for both. You’ll see what I mean. These are songs that burrow under your skin and make their way into your core, lay eggs and then die. Those eggs hatch later and the Christmas-Music larvae devour your soul.

These songs cause me to lose the will to live. These songs make me want to grab something sharp and just start stabbing.

Thank the gods I have a metric fuck ton of music on my iPod. Looks like I’ll be getting a lot of use out of those earbuds for the next 4 weeks.

It sounds sick, but I’m actually looking forward to going into work Friday. Yes, I really do have to work on the day after Thanksgiving. But that’s ok. Everyone else in my department took the day off. So it’s just little ol’ me. All by myself. With no Christmas music. At least for that day.

Bliss. Until December 22.

A Thanksgiving to remember

The Spouse and I survived another trip to the world-famous Jungle Jim's up in Ohio (in Fairfield, just north of Cincinnati for those of you considering the roadtrip). We even dragged my parents along and wore them out on the 2 and a half hour excursion from one end of the store to the other.

Jungle Jim's is known not only as an International Market, but as being one of the largest (if not THE largest) grocery on the North American continent. Not to mention, they also have the nicest restrooms in the U.S. (and the port-o-potty doors are pretty damn cool).

Another thing that makes this place so amazing is the weird and wonderful selection of unusual foods you can find. Below are just a sampling of the things the Spouse and I picked up:

Mexican tamarind candy
Hot 'N Spicy nori snacks
REAL Cranberry Fool
Dundee Marmalade from Scotland
my Blenheim Ginger Ale (which I can no longer find anywhere here in Loserville)
2 pounds of frozen crawdads (just thaw, heat and eat!)
Haggis. In a can. Two of them (THAT'S the Spouse's purchase, not mine)
Oh, and a turducken

Other things you can get there that we decided NOT to purchase:

from the Meat department - elk, kangaroo, bison, ostrich and goat. They even had elk burger patties.
Pickled pig's feet
Cracklin'
Chocolate covered ants and other bug candy
bug snacks - Crick-ettes and Larv-ettes. In a variety of flavors (bar-b-que, sour cream and onion, chedder, salt and vinegar)

But back to the turducken.

A while back on Food Network I saw a program about turducken. It's a cajun-inspired delicacy that consists of a deboned chicken rolled in stuffing, then stuffed into a deboned duck. Then THAT is rolled in stuffing and stuffed into a deboned turkey. And the stuffing is cajun-style stuffing with spices and sausage and other cajun goodness. And if the elk and kangaroo mentioned earlier doesn't freak out my vegetarian friends, I'm sure the turducken has them running for the hills.

Anyway, the program mentioned that these things are usually special ordered in advance and can get quite pricey. But I thought, "Damn, I would still like to try one."

So the other day the Spouse and I were making our list for the Jungle Jim's expendition and I casually mentioned, "Ya know, we oughta look for a turducken. If any place other than Louisiana would have them, it'd be Jungle Jim's."

In all seriousness, I didn't expect to find one there. Really.

But low and behold, as we were making our way thru the meat section, past the goat and bison, there, in a small box, was a turducken. I gasped. The Spouse gasped. I grabbed the box and looked it over. Sure enough, it was a real turducken. I was just about to load it into our cart when the Spouse exclaimed, "Look! There's another one!"

And there, in a much larger box, was a much larger turducken. Fifteen pounds of bird upon bird upon bird. And it was ours. For $79.

Yes. We really did spend $79 on a turducken. But dammit, you only live once (well, some of us are all for the reincarnation bit, but if I came back as another person, I may not have a chance at a real turducken experience). And Thanksgiving is coming up. And we're doing it at our house this year. So it looks like the Spouse and I will be serving oven-baked turducken for Mom and the Dads.

And no, you cannot deep fry a turducken. It has to be oven cooked. So the one Thanksgiving ritual of all the men standing outside in the cold, gathered around the large vat of boiling peanut oil and turkey will not be happening.

But until then, our turducken stays lovingly tucked away in our freezer, awaiting its moment of glory when it can bask in the glow of the pre-heated oven.

And a good time shall be had by all. Unless the Spouse breaks out the canned Haggis.