Lightning post tonight. Almost a drive-by posting, really. I just got home from work and the rerun of tonight's Top Chef is on in mere moments. I yearn for the couch.

Jigsaw fitting into place. Quite fun actually. I put one together last night in about 10 min and some odd seconds. The one with the sparks. Go ahead and beat that!

Next up is a very cool trick with milk. Show it to your kids, but don't let them drink it!

Last up is some fantastical and cool art. Sorta freaky, sorta fun and all kinds of weird. Enjoy.

And now for tonight's Quickfire Challenge.

The rain swamped the Mets game tonight, but that didn't stop us from having fun for Lu's birthday. Had lunch at an organic & vegan restaurant, then experienced great success at the Apple store where our malfunctioning iPod was replaced for free even though it was out of warranty. Lu definitely used a Jedi-mind-trick. Birthday + pregnancy will do that I guess. We stopped in to say hi to Mom & Dad and then headed home to go lounge on the couch to watch Into the Wild. A Mets game in the Bronx with lots of friends would have been even better, but we did the best we could considering the crazy rain out there today.

I'm glad I saw Into the Wild, but I found McCandless to be ultimately unappealing. Although some of the heartache and anguish he caused was evident, I do think the supposed 'beauty' and 'wonderfulness' of what he did was the real focus of the film, and that troubled me. I understand that there was an inner need inside him to do what he did, but the way he abandoned his sister in that destructive household seemed incredibly selfish to me. I get what he was searching for, but his pride, his irresponsibility to his sister (and even to himself), and that in the end all he really did was run, well, it made me pity and dislike him. From what I see in the Metacritic comments, the book does a better job balancing his idealism and the reality of his situation. The movie would have benefited from similar attention. It was also waaaay too damn long.

Facing your fears and taking on adventures are important, though. And so is driving smart. On the way home tonight a guy in a Jeep was tailgating me on the highway entrance ramp, despite the horrible conditions. About 20 minutes later we drove by that same Jeep spun out on the highway, airbag deployed and 2 cop cars just arriving to the scene. The guy seemed okay and no other cars seemed to have been involved, so my guess is hydroplaning. Obviously due to excessive speed and douchebaggery.

Bad drivers are the most dangerous people I encounter every day. I'm glad we were no where near him when his luck ran out. He tailgated till I could move over, and then he sped away.

You'll know it when you see it.

Here's a MSM version of the The Huffington Post. Or maybe it's the other way around.

And here's the brutally humorous response to the utter bullshit of cable and local news.

Until 2 days ago I had no idea ONN and The Note even existed. Shows what I know.

Happy Earth Day! In honor of this magical day I drove my car around by myself for work and felt like a complete asshole. Strangely enough, the UN celebrates Earth Day on the spring equinox. We just can't agree on anything!

Off to see Lu's parents this weekend. This will be the first time they'll see Lu pregnant and her Mom is practically beside herself. I'm pretty sure her father doesn't quite believe it yet. When he sees her, though, he will then. There is clearly a baby in that belly.

And speaking of mothers, mine is doing great. CAT scan came back cancer free and we are thrilled by that news. She's getting stronger by the hour and she'll be back home any day. Thanks for all the love and support, we all appreciate it.

On the way home from the hospital tonight I had on NPR as Lu dozed, but then I woke her up when I shouted "Yes!" after I heard that This American Life will be in theaters near you, live on May 1. I can't wait to go. I'm buying tickets for us immediately.

Mom was doing good. Definitely taxed, but still had her amazing sense of humor. In fact most of the time there we all spent laughing. Might as well have fun, even when shit sucks, right?

And yeah, that was an April 15 joke up there. Awesome.

Last, here's a crazy story from the New Yorker about Nicholas White who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. His ordeal was captured by a security camera, and a time-lapse video is part of the article. I'm going to watch it now. (via bb)

Surgery went well and Mom is in recovery. She'll be in the hospital tonight, tomorrow and probably into Wednesday and then she's home. I cannot believe this incredible woman has had to go through so much illness in her life. Anyone with MS should have automatic immunity to breast cancer. That should just be a rule of the universe or something.

I definitely learned at an early age that life is not fair, and that you have to make the best of whatever you've got and aim to make it better. Even on the way in this morning my bro told me that she was laughing and joking around. Her sense of humor is just incredible. Another thing I learned at an early age is the importance of grace and humor no matter what the circumstances.

Living up to that ideal is the tough part.

Getting pissed off and raging at the world seems so much more satisfying and cathartic. The fact is, though, rage and negativity are poison to the soul.

Nonetheless, I am still pissed off about 1 thing right now: that douchebag bartender up the street. I told myself I would not go to the bar if he was working there after my last unpleasant interaction with him. But George was in town and it was easy to grab beers and wings with him & his sis at a fine bar just a few doors away, so went we did. And once again, d-bagtender didn't give me the happy hour price on the wings. I mentioned it to him, but apparently his hearing is as bad as his memory. Next time if that guy is behind the bar, I not going in. I'm not! No matter how bad I want wings, I'm not going in.

On the other hand, if I win him over somehow, he'll probably give me happy hour wings for free. I can tell he's that kind of guy. Either he's your friend and he'll steal from his boss to hook you up, or he doesn't know you and you are therefore an enemy and he'll try to 'forget' it is happy hour like he hasn't worked there for 20 years.

What's cool, though is that now I have an arch-nemesis. That's really important, especially if you're mad at the universe in general. How do you take your anger out on the Universe? Not appreciate it's beauty? Scorn trees? Insult the birds? No. If you are pissed at the Universe, you need an arch-nemesis to direct your specific anger towards.

This bartender charged me regular price for happy hour wings TWICE! And now he's going to pay for my mom getting breast cancer. I'm like totally not going in to spend money when he's working, unless my friend is in town, or I'm hungry. But while I'm there I'll talk about him when he's not around and seriously, that will teach him to mess with me. Or my mom.

I'll still leave a tip, though.

Damn you bartender. Damn you!

And cancer, frankly, you can fuck off completely.

Crazy working weekend and I'm still not quite done. Finishing up a video and editing job I took a while back, and I'm almost there. Times was blah or maybe I was too busy to really relax and delve but either way I got nothing for ya today on that front.

In the not-so-awesome-personal-news realm on Monday my Mom goes into surgery for a double mastectomy. They were unable to get clear margins during the lumpectomy, and so further steps have to be taken. Although it is only present in one breast, they believe it is smarter to be aggressive now rather than later. And as we learned more about Mom's extended family's medical history it became clear that breast cancer was a high risk for her.

She's been feeling great and her spirits are high and so we all know she will battle through this, but nonetheless, it sucks. Bad. Send her some goodvibes today. She can use'em!

But here's something to distract you. It worked for me for a lot longer than I would have expected. I'm not sure if it's a game or a puzzle or just exactly what it seems to be, but it was fun. Go ahead! Feed the head! (Wow, I just stopped started messing around with it again and a whole other scenario unfolded. Incredible.)

Okay, the weirdest thing just happened to me just a second ago.

I was writing the post below and while composing it, one of the links I considered was this one. I found it here, at the top of the page. But in the end I decided not to use it because, well, I just didn't feel like it. Instead I wrote the post you see below.

After that, I checked out my blog to see how the new post looked and saw that the first Archive link is from April 2006. Which makes this blog exactly 2 years old. Kinda cool. I didn't realize that. So I clicked around and started reading through some old posts when I came to this one. Make sure to click on the link in that last sentence. Crazy!

Alright, maybe it's not that crazy and it's just that I am, but it definitely threw me for a loop.

Good stuff. Good night!

Lots of flights on the ground these days. This site might help.

And finally, a new offering on NPR's Project Song. It's a crazy song, and I'm looking forward to watching the video of its creation. Read through the article as you listen to the music. The tune is not at what I expected, but it is a lot of fun on headphones.

Oh and here's what did and didn't happen with the Olympic Torch in SF on Wednesday. My friend and I just got into a gtalk shouting match about how hard athletes work to get to this point vs. the tragedies and abuses of the host country and where pure competition beats political activism and where the hell did those clothes come from that the protesters are wearing and so on. We both agreed that we were both wrong and so was everyone else and then we moved on to other topics.

It actually reminded me of a scene from an amazing play Lu and I saw Wednesday night. It is called The Boycott, it is a one-woman show by Kathryn Blume, and it is awesome. If you see her performing nearby, go see the show. It is a lot of fun, it makes you think, and it is definitely worth your time.

Last is something 3 million other people watched and probably enjoyed. I give you Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.

Figured out the way to handle the multi-photo post for Freshly Roasted. Had to simplify via complexity. Broke it down to what I needed to accomplish then attacked it in simple parts. Instead of trying to get everything on one page, I linked to vendors that already had nice sites and used the photos I took for the vendors without a web presence. It took a little longer, but it was much easier to organize.

Organize has been my word of the day, but I only got so far. Apartment is in better shape, but my 'office' is still a disaster. The main problem there is that my desk is the absolute worst. And without a solid foundation to do work upon, work cannot be done effectively. So instead I just push piles around, throw some things out, crack a beer and call it done.

My post last night about protests in San Francisco actually scooped the Times. That was their front-page photo this morning. Of course, I got that video from someplace else. Namely, BoingBoing which is one of the best out there so do make sure to check it out often.

Flickr now has video. It's limited to 90 seconds, but flickr is all about the photostream, so this feels like an appropriate level to me.

And here's the history of computer data storage, with pictures and facts that are somewhat mind-blowing if you stop and take a minute to really think about it. We've accomplished quite a bit in 50 years. I can barely even imagine what the next 50 will hold.

The Olympic torch will be passing through San Francisco on Wednesday. The protests have already begun.

There is a very small but very interesting article in the Metro Section of today's paper. The article happens to be on the same page as the obituaries, but it isn't exactly one of them. Yet.

I love Ping Pong. My brothers and me and my dad would spend hours in the ping pong room perched above the lake in Maine smashing that little white ball back and forth in the humid summer air. You don't think of it as a very athletic game, but sweat we did. And shout, and curse, and laugh, and compete. He never let us win. We always had to earn it!

This is a great article about the show The Deadliest Catch, and and interesting profile of the group Gnarls Barkley. Obviously, they have a new album out.

And I noticed last week that the Times had changed their layout again. Last August they reduced the size of the paper by an inch and a half, and just last week they reformatted and expanded the index section on the first two pages. I had not read that the change was coming, nor did I notice any subsequent discussion of the redesign. Today's Public Editor column answered my questions.

Finally, have a read through Frank Rich's op-ed. Or, if you don't have time, let me summarize it for you: McCain is insane. The way the reality in Iraq is the exact opposite of what he says and seems to believe is downright frightening. Haven't we had enough of that?

Gaaahh! What a day. Some days no matter how hard you try, there's just no getting it right. Blogger has had the upper hand all day as I tried to create a post filled with pictures for the Freshly Roasted blog. I'm trying to put the word out about a local farmer's market and show all the vendors, but there's just no good way to do a photo layout with the tools provided. Gonna have to get creative to make it work.

Then the coffee machine and I did battle all afternoon. I finally emerged victorious, but I was foiled twice more when various owners of various businesses were not at said locations. Screw it. Happy hour is almost here and I am more than ready.

But last night on the way home from roasting I heard an awesome program on Radiolab about Orsen Welles' radio performance of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds. Check it out here. A few things I found fascinating: Orsen originally did not want to do that story because he thought it was boring, and because everyone already knew it so well. Even crazier is the fact that the 1938 performance was not the last time it was done, and again, people were utterly fooled by the radio show.

Apple is the #1 music retailer in the US. Here's how NASA trains for weightlessness. And if you're looking to get a bit more than zombie attacks and superpokes from Facebook then these tips may help. The first one is especially interesting, although it does feel a little invasive.

Alright, time to see how east coast burritos stand up to SF's. Haven't had one since we moved.

Thunder and lightning and pouring rain out there on streets of New Haven tonight. It was an ugly mucky mess all day and the final band of weather is passing through right now.

This must mean it's spring. Rain and thunder and humid sticky air. I love it.

The house is silent tonight as my preggers wife lays on the couch beside me dreaming of the fact that she has to pee, again, but doesn't want to and can't make it go away. Still can't do it for her. But that would be her superpower she's said many times. That she could make me go pee for her. Beautiful, isn't it?

Mine would still be perfect timing. The only downfall is that my superweakness would have to be super bad timing. And just like timing is everything, bad timing is the worst.

But this street art is anything but the worst. I'd love to see that pop up as I strolled through NYC some time. I also really enjoyed this series of photos of an abandoned roller coaster out in Ohio. Beautiful, eerie, and strangely serene for a structure that is so usually filled with motion and force. Last offering is an amazing game. Seriously awesome. You are gonna love playing this game for sure. Good luck, have fun and I know you will be able to find the crown. It just takes a little doing.

Look Lu... storm's gone.