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And The Gold Medal Goes To…

We’re almost two weeks into competition and I haven’t written about the Olympics. A quick search of the archives says I also haven’t mentioned Natalie Portman in a post in nearly seven months.

Let’s tackle both of those today, shall we?

Natalie, the former future mother of my children, got officially married over the weekend, closing a long-running chapter here at the blog. We had some laughs, I wrote a dismissive note when she got engaged, but mostly I think we can all walk away feeling good.

You may recall Natalie gained a prominent role when my brother and his wife were about to have their first child, and my mom, ever encouraging, gave me a year to match. [SPOILER: This did not happen.] She also fit in well with my plan to be the perfect husband to an Oscar nominee.

But now that she’s officially off the market, I guess it’s time for a new plan. That’s where London 2012 comes in.

Oscar winners are cool, but maybe the Hollywood life isn’t for me after all. Seems like a place where hoodies and jeans would be frowned upon. You know who is definitely cool with that? Olympic athletes, who also happen to sometimes get gold hardware to acknowledge their achievements.

One of my former coworkers has been posting daily updates on his new favorite Olympian, but I’ve been consistent since the early days of this year’s games. Ideally there would be only one, but as I explained in commenting on one of his posts, the odds of meeting one are so slim, it only makes sense to have a backup. Right?

First on my list — swimmer Lauren Perdue. She won a gold medal as part of the 800 meter relay team. She’s been tweeting about the Olympic experience. She plays a key role in the U.S. swim team’s “Call Me Maybe” video (first appearing at 0:37-0:44):

As a University of Maryland graduate, I’m even willing to overlook her University of Virginia ties, especially since that’s my home state.

In case Lauren and I don’t hit it off, there’s another Olympian on my team — soccer player Alex Morgan. That would Alex Morgan, the one who scored the amaaazing goal against Canada to put the U.S. in the gold medal game. She’s doing Twitter stuff too. She went to Cal, which I have no issues with, and has a sponsorship deal with Nike, which provides (fine, at a cost to me) most of my running gear. Seems like a good start to me.

And if things go well, she may have her own gold medal in a few days. Not that anything less would be a deal-breaker. I can be cool with silver, too.

[UPDATE: Alex Morgan & company won the gold!]

August 7, 2012 life plans Uncategorized
Greetings [Insert Name]

We all get plenty of emails from companies that immediately go in the trash, messages that arrive only because at some point we ended up their mailing list.

Usually it’s a promotion designed to get us to visit a website and buy something. But on Friday, my inbox started filling up with messages from corporate America wishing me “Happy Birthday!!!”

Some of these were of the expected variety, like the Washington Nationals offering me a special 15 percent off at their team store. A bank sent me a link to a video with a basic message that having friends is more important than having stuff (so maybe you should deposit more money in your savings account?)

The local rock radio station didn’t seem to have a message at all. In fact, they acknowledged exactly what they were doing: “Don’t you hate automated emails Chris? We do also.” (I also hate when you don’t properly punctuate your sentences, but I’ll let that go.)

The University of Maryland Alumni Association sent a nice message, including a push to update my information in their system if it wasn’t actually my birthday.

But by far, the most random was from an online forum catering to all forms of stereo systems. I signed up two years ago when I was fixing my grandfather’s reel-to-reel tape machine and had some sort of question about 1968 technology. Granted, this was useful information that led to finding some really cool audio, but I’m not sure they had to go out of their way to wish me happy birthday.

To all of the real people who did, thanks. It was a massively cool day that included sleeping late and going to a doubleheader at Nationals Park:

Our view while consuming Game 2 food

August 6, 2012 baseball Uncategorized
Eating For One

Having worked in jobs that require lots of interaction with the public, I am fully aware that there are some people in this country who are not so bright.

That leads to really obvious warning labels on products, like, you know, coffee is hot, and having to tell people that if there’s a tornado outside, you should probably not be as well.

But there’s a limit to the amount of hand-holding we need, especially when it comes to the key questions of “Is this a lot of food?” and “What is my relationship status?” These questions can be intertwined, as evidenced by what I picked up for dinner tonight:

In case the busy graphics on the box obscure my point, the fine people at Red Baron have kindly pointed out that this is a “feast for one.” Now, I’ve eaten a lot of things in my day, and I’m pretty sure that just looking at the size of the box I could have figured out that this mini pizza was not intended to feed 12 people. I will give them credit for at least jazzing up this phrase instead of their lazier competitors at Mama Celeste, who simply call their product “pizza for one.”

The only thing that this kind of slogan does is remind the person who picks it up exactly why they are having a meal “for one.” Trust me, we do not need the refresher. We are very well aware of our oneness. Our moms have reminded us, our friends with girlfriends have reminded us and our Facebook feeds filling up with baby pictures have reminded us.

We know.

Sure, there are people who celebrate their singledom, and I say more power to them. To each his own. But in a world in which people think you’re crazy for taking a vacation by yourself or taking yourself to the movies — people, of course, who have a built-in companion for all these things — I don’t need the reminder from a pizza box.

Don’t get me started on Kraft Singles.

July 30, 2012 food Uncategorized
Sweet Vindication

Nobody likes it when you gloat, but when fate gives you a long-awaited win, I think it’s acceptable.

Several years ago, a college friend swore to me that during my senior year her dorm room was bigger than mine. I thought this was a crazy assertion. We joked about getting a current student to walk over with a tape measure to settle the bet, but never resolved the issue.

Today I visited campus for a yearly reunion with a few of my closest college friends. After lunch at our favorite spot, we did our usual routine of wandering around campus, reminiscing and trying our luck at getting into various buildings.

During this tour, there were just two buildings that were unlocked — the one I lived in, and one that once housed a girl with a faulty square footage memory. Not only were these buildings open, but the doors to the suites and individual rooms in question were as well. Quite a fortuitous coincidence if you ask me.

I had two witnesses who vouched for my assessment of the situation, but judge for yourself:

That’s her room (in Seibert Hall) on top, and mine (in Sassafras B) below. Which looks bigger to you?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Where else did you live?” Glad you asked. Junior year I lived just down the hall from this room in a spot that overlooked the train tracks (first pic below, with roommate Shawn L.). That was a nice feature to return to considering my first dorm room had that view as well (second pic, my top corner spot in Smith Hall):

Sophomore year was by far the most convenient. Shawn and I lived on the first floor in Aikens Hall, which not only meant no stairs, but also receiving pizza deliveries through the window:

I’d like to thank the fine people at Domino’s for making this dream a reality.

July 28, 2012 Susquehanna Uncategorized
Origin of Tepees

I have to admit that I was about a quarter of the way through “On the Origin of Tepees” before I totally realized the title was a pun.

Part of that is because I completely glossed over the first word and thought of it only as “The Origin of Tepees.” Essentially the wheel that spins this story along would be the same with that title, but the real one does a much better job of explaining the context.

In short, this book is about how ideas evolve, as examined through the way tepee adoption and technology changed over time. Author Jonnie Hughes takes a trip across the United States, tracing the paths of different American Indian tribes across the plains (where tepees were in use) and noting differences along the way.

But the trip is a way to explain the idea that although idea evolution shares some characteristics with biological evolution, there are major differences made possible by humans. Other organisms can teach each other things, but as Hughes says, humans are the best thought-swappers:

“Mother Nature achieved a design first, the goal of any technical engineer: she created a future-proof product, a product with “hardware” so sophisticated that it required no further work. All it would ever need to take on the future was upgraded “software.”

As long as our “software” keeps going — and the capacity of our brains is astounding — then our culture will keep growing.

An earlier theory of biological evolution posited that acquired characteristics would be passed down to offspring. That description sounds a lot like what we think of when considering culture and the learning that goes along with the distribution of ideas by humans. But as Hughes writes, there’s a very key difference that makes this idea evolution different:

“Individual ideas go in to a mind, change their traits over several generations in order to adapt to the selective environment they discover inside that mind, then come out different from the Ideas that went in. This means that the adaptation that happens within a mind is the same as the adaptation that happens between minds.”

The idea of idea evolution itself is not new, but rather what Hughes describes as the “goggles” through which he is viewing his particular quest. The makers of his “goggles” include Richard Dawkins who coined a word we are all familiar with these days: meme.

It’s “a body that secured its passage into the future only by building successful ideas that could leap from one mind to the next. [Dawkins] called this new replicator the meme.”

Some memes ended up as the most advanced tepees. More recently, they became this:

Yes, the one on the right is my niece. Yes, with the help of my younger brother I did make an entire book of these. Yes, they are all hysterical.

July 27, 2012 books Uncategorized
Dude, There’s My Car

The people who run my old apartment complex in Florida should really complain to Google.

The property shows up fine in search results, but the Street View is doing nothing to entice people to move there (or any part of Jacksonville). I say this after randomly deciding to look at it tonight and noticing something very familiar in the parking lot:

That’s my car in the middle, with my apartment to the right of the big tree. The photo says it was taken in December 2007, which was two months after I moved in. To be fair, this is exactly what the sky looked like when I arrived — grey, nasty, feeling very rain-like. But of course that’s not what you picture when you think of Florida.

The Street View van has been back to the city since then. Check out what my former workplace looked like in April 2011:

That’s more like it, right? The sun and the green vegetation project some actual warmth. The same is true at the beach, taken the next month (how long does it take to drive around a city?)

So Google, do the very nice folks at Beach Villas a favor and give them some better Street View pics. People need to know I vacated that parking space.

July 26, 2012 car technology Uncategorized
We Can Drive It Home

If you needed me this weekend, I was at Nationals Park.

In the course of about 29 hours I saw 29 innings of baseball, which included an absolutely wild 11-inning game Friday night and a day/night doubleheader Saturday followed by a post-game Wallflowers concert at the stadium.

The games were the main attraction, especially since I was there with my brother Pat, a diehard fan of the opposing Atlanta Braves. The Nats were up 9-0 Friday, only to lose 11-10. They lost again in the first game Saturday, but rebounded with an extremely entertaining performance in the nightcap. I even saw my favorite player (legally) dive into an ump and knock him down.

The concert was the second in the NatsLive series that I’ve seen. Last year, Pat and I saw Lifehouse play at the stadium (which, as I described in this post, was awesome). This time it was more of a blast from the past with The Wallflowers, who sounded good/exactly how I imagine they did in 1997.

They played a lot of new songs, but did the four that I recognized from back in the day:

In an odd twist of scheduling, Saturday was the first time I’ve ever attended a doubleheader…and I’m going to another one in less than two weeks. Add in another post-game concert with Third Eye Blind, and August is going to be a good month at Nats Park.

July 22, 2012 baseball Uncategorized video
Carou-sel(l) Yourself

I’ve had a number of job interviews during my lifetime.

Some of them are pretty straightforward, needing only to establish simple, straightforward information like, “Can you mow our lawn?” or “You’ve sold shoes before?”

Others were more typical, involving dressing up, doing my best to say all the right things and passing a current events quiz (non-journalism people definitely miss out on that fun…seriously).

But there’s one that definitely sticks out as memorable. It happened on a bench. Next to a carousel. On the National Mall:

This was an interesting conversation for several reasons. Obviously being next to a carousel was different, but imagine it actually running and a horde of little kids gathered around. On the other end of the line, my then-future, now-former boss was driving after picking up her son from daycare. He chimed in at times. I felt like he and I had a good rapport.

For the record, I don’t remember knowing exactly when this call was coming, and happened to be checking out some museums when it did.

In the end it went well, establishing either that it’s easy to sell yourself when you’re sitting next to a colorful, spinning disk of pure joy or that Jacksonville, Fla., is a really kooky place.

July 19, 2012 DC television Uncategorized
Hole In One Kick

What happens when you’re eight holes into a round of golf and some guy who works at the course insists you stop playing because of this allegedly dangerous thing called lightning?

For your sake, I hope you don’t end up stuck in the screened-in portion of a snack bar waiting out the thunderstorm cell…and then another…and then another, until the course peeps say you’re not going to play again that day.

But if you do, I have a game you can use to occupy the time. It’s called Foot Putt. That may not be the best name, but it’s what I came up with under those conditions.

Our shelter had three wooden stools, a water cooler and the things roommate MR and I had on our person (golf balls, hats, gloves). So we started with this:

The goal is simple: Kick the ball with your foot and have it go through the legs of the stool. This proved to be rather difficult given the slope of the concrete on which we were playing. So to both make a scoring kick more likely and to spice things up a bit, we enlisted the other two stools:

The wrinkle this time is that each stool has a different point value. The far right is worth one point, the middle two points and, you guessed it, three magical points for foot-putting your ball through the stool on the left.

At first, I thought we would get to maybe 11 points before we got back out on the course. MR was crushing me at that point, so I was glad when the rain would not stop falling and the sky would not stop throwing electricity at us. With a monumental comeback, I finally won 50-49.

As devastated as MR was with the loss, nothing could compare with what happened next. We had already snacked at the adjacent snack bar and during our game had noticed through the window on the door that they had a big Good Humor ice cream cooler just inside. With extreme rain-related mugginess assaulting our bodies, we decided nothing would be better than sampling the cool treats.

But as soon as we walked over to the cooler we saw the cruel joke. It was empty. Pretty sure that should be illegal.

July 16, 2012 golf Uncategorized
I See You

There are many criticisms about our Facebook/social media society, but you can’t ignore some of the cool chance happenings it brings.

Last night, I saw the Nationals drop a game to the Rockies in sweltering conditions (still an enjoyable game). As my mom and I were going up an escalator to our level, I happened to look over at the adjacent ramp and saw one of my friends walking by at that moment.

That sighting in itself was interesting, since we had planned to get to the park much earlier, only to be delayed by major Metro issues. I wrote last month about how we can get mad about those kinds of delays, but you never know what might happen because of them.

My friend’s section happened to fit conveniently in the somewhat standard picture I take at all the games, and being a digital society, I tagged her basic location in the photo:

But after I got home from the game, another friend posted a comment on the picture saying that she was could see herself in there, too, about five rows behind the dugout on the right.

I had no idea she was there when I took the picture. I did, however, start to think about how long we’ve known each other, and since I’m ridiculously organized, I can confirm we go back to at least 1989. She’s in the upper left. Pretty sure you can identify me:

Of course this led me down a small rabbit hole of looking at other class photos, including an absolute classic from 5th grade that features a VERY confused-looking me and a miserable-looking roommate MR. Forgot to scan that one, but maybe I’ll make the effort soon.

July 7, 2012 baseball Uncategorized