Walking the Walk

I went to the doctor recently for a general checkup. Collarbones are straight, no weird bumps or growths, I can cough properly with my head turned either direction, and my heartbeat is as steady as it should be. Everything was fine. It had just been ages (the early summer before spending a week at Triple R Ranch when I was twelve or thirteen, I think), so I figured that having health insurance was a good enough reason. (Next up: tooth cleaning and an eye exam. If you know of other fun things to do with insurance that pays at 100%, I'd welcome your suggestions. Just, please, no more tetanus boosters.) Regarding my exercise and diet, Dr. Carr was really happy to hear that I walk back and forth to work just about every day. It's only a mile and a half, and it only takes about a relaxed twenty minutes, but he was satisfied and said he wished more people would do it. It almost makes me want to reacquire a taste for the unhealthy things I was eating a few years ago.

We moved to Redmond on September 28th, a few days after selling my car and dropping our insurance premium by nearly half. We showed up with about a quarter tank of gas, and just yesterday, we filled up for the third time since moving here. That works out to a tank of gas about every three-odd weeks.

I used to work at an advertising company in Lynchburg. It was only for a few months, actually, but every morning when I got up to be there by 8 AM, I thought about the Classic American Workday and how it was only right and proper. So right, in fact, and so proper, that "the 9 to 5" is a euphemism for pretty much any job that doesn't pay by the hour. It was irritating to be forced into an 8 to 5 arrangement, even though tons of people do it and not every job looks like Rob Petrie's. I arrived bleary-eyed and half asleep every morning a few minutes before eight and waited in the hallway until a few minutes after eight when the first person with a key showed up to let me in. What I needed was not a 15-minute drive with BBC cricket scores confusing me to death. I needed a twenty-minute walk in the grey morning air, past the stretch that is particularly redolent of pine, to my cup of green tea and bowl of cereal. (I keep a bag of Life or granola or whatever on my bookshelf at work and take advantage of the free milk and bowls and spoons every morning.) It's refreshing, and it makes me feel awake and capable of thought.

An interesting thing about this walk is the opportunity to see a limited cross section of my Redmond neighbors. I say "neighbors" in a very large sense, of course, and "cross section" in a very small one. Some of the more noticeable items:

1. Everyone who is anyone runs red lights at this intersection, and if you don't, then you're out of the club. That is Redmond Way/E. Lake Sammamish Pkwy./180th Ave. It's a weird intersection with long red lights, so when people get a green, they get impatient and run through it on yellow as well as the first couple of cars after red. Keep your eyes open and you're fine, but if you trust the little white "Walk" symbol and charge out into the intersection as soon as it turns, you will be clipped off at the knees by an Audi or limited edition BMW, or at the hips by a foreign-made SUV. And then you can sue for the down payment value of a house around here.
2. The short Hispanic guy in the bright orange rain coat. I like that coat. And not in an it-looks-terrible-and-makes-me-laugh way, either. I genuinely think it's cool.
3. The Hispanic-looking lady waiting for the school bus with the Asian-looking kindergarten/possibly first grade student, who looks as eager as she does sleepy. Maybe he goes to Einstein Elementary...
4. All of the other normal people that I can figure out are either running late or early based on where I pass them on my walk. And of course, sometimes I'm a minute or two ahead of or behind schedule. I like seeing how variable it is.

But it is number five that really has my attention and makes me think I am possibly a creepy person. Oh, number five (except Blogger made it say "1" instead)!

1. The tall, very casually dressed and cheerful-looking employee of somewhere close by.

I have to tell you about this guy. I'm going to say 6-foot-4. He always has on a navy blue hoodie and a blank navy blue baseball cap. And the most memorable thing is that out from under this blank navy blue baseball cap is (not peeking out, but exploding) a mass of the most curly and thick black hair I have ever seen on a caucasian. It's his defining feature.

Now, I could pass someone like this once, and be like, "Nice hair..." and have that be the end of it. But for some reason, because I pass this guy, about my age, moving about as quickly, looking about as pleased to be walking, every morning, I think, every time I do, "Where are you off to, guy that would likely be my friend if we worked together or took a class together or something?" And that gives me suspicions about my creepiness. And then I think, "I must find out." And that confirms my suspicions. All I need to do is just go and see this guy putting pizzas out for sale at Whole Foods or grinding beans at Peet's Coffee, and that would be it. "I know where he works, I know where he's headed when I'm going to work. I can move on," I would say. Maybe he works underground. Maybe he's a window washer that was laid off months ago but has an obsessive compulsion to wash the same window every day and they don't want to harm his fragile psyche, so they let him. Maybe his great-grandfather invented the Barc-a-lounger. Maybe he's a professional cheese taster. Maybe he holds the world record for longest continuous kite flying from a seafaring vessel. Do I need to know any of this? No. (Although it is cool that any individual person has wacky, unique stories or traits like this.) I just want to know where the guy's headed, that's all. I am far too curious. I will not will not will not follow him around to find out, either. Except if I pass him on a Saturday when I'm not expected at work, I probably will. (To unsubscribe from this blog, just don't read it anymore.)

I have an excessive back log of material that needs to be mentioned here as soon as possible (I've written this bit here over a period of several days in between other stuff), so stay tuned for Puget Sound maps, musical research, Thanksgiving reporting, and other things that are silly and unnecessary.

Kent

I Made A Pie

When we woke up this morning, we were faced with our weekly challenge: "How are we going to make today, a Saturday, extra awesome?" Because we do what we can to make the weekdays awesome, sure, but on Saturdays you get an entire day! If you think of something that takes eight hours, you just go out and spend eight hours doing it. There aren't nearly the limits of the midweek. Today, one of Kirsten's ideas for things we could do was to bake something. See, neither of us are anything to write home about when it comes to baking, so it was a good idea to take on this challenge and see if I could improve my average a little bit. A quick glance around the kitchen, and I saw the eight gigantic Granny Smith apples (they're from Costco, and I know Costco does the large packages thing, etc., but these apples themselves [I like dem] are very, very big) in the red bowl. I decided to make a pie. And then the more I thought about it, the more excited I got. I can't really explain exactly why, but I got into a mode where I had to make a good pie. I was pretty happy all day today, but I was just in this mood where I wanted to accomplish something and feel like I did a good job at it. We all get in those moods every now and then, right? (Right guys...? Guys?) And that something, my project for the day, was a real blue ribbon winner of a pie. I'm a firm believer that no one in the blog reading world really cares too much about minutiae like what you ate and cooked on a given day, and I normally shy away from that sort of thing. But today, this was important to me. So I thought, what the heck, I'll show you some pictures. First, I put together Kirsten's mom's recipe for Never-Fail Pie Crust, folded in about a half cup of sharp cheddar cheese, and let it relax in the refrigerator for thirty minutes. We at dinner in that time, and then I rolled out the crust, made the filling, sprinkled on the streusel topping, and then cut strips of crust so I could do the real live weaving thing on the top, like on Looney Tunes. (I regret to say that I didn't keep my head in the game, and some of my weaving is off.) That's when Kirsten entered the scene with the camera. (Note the red bowl.)


After the weaving, you cut around the top of the pie dish, like this:


Then you crimp the edges (that part's fun), and it goes in the oven.



And after thirty minutes...



And here I am stuffing the last bit of a slice into my mouth. This is my signature method of eating things that crumble. It feeds your hunger and automatically catches crumbs. It also makes Kirsten laugh, because if you eat things this way, you look like a castaway enjoying his first day back on solid ground.


I know it's just a pie, but it's a streusel-topped sharp cheddar and Granny Smith apple thing of beauty that was baked my me and actually turned out really well. If you'd seen me previous baking attempts, you'd gladly excuse my hubris in making a whole post out of something so mundane.

Also, I'm willing to give out the recipe. But you have to leave comments. Because people who run blogs like comments like puppies like alarm clocks.

Working With Gamers

I had a great idea yesterday. See, I've had this situation in my life for a little while now, maybe eighteen months or so. The long and short of it is this: I really like to play Risk. Kirsten hates Risk. Like almost as much as I hate raisins. Can't stand it. So I don't play a lot of it, unfortunately. But all that is about to change. This morning, I invited three coworkers to an ongoing, one-turn-per-day game of Risk on the spare desk in my office.
The invitation said this:

Here at XOCDOC, we’re hard at work daily preserving, for posterity, the inner workings of an empire destined for greater, bigger, and more inexplicably frustrating things than any of us dare to dream. Together with the tools team, we provide the rough but delicate wicker framework that undergirds the plump cushion of operations in the deck chair that is Xbox Live. You think you know gaming, my friend? Pah! WE know gaming.

That is why the good people of 3363 have decided to extend the right hand of friendship and spirited competition to you (even while palming a dagger near our hips with our left) and invite you to experience the latest advancements in gaming technology. Lovers of real time strategy*, lucky rolls, long campaigns, bitter clashes of red vs. white dice, and all things warlike will find much to love as we embark on our new game together.

• Experience for yourself the thrill of rolling a two and still pulling out a victory when your opponent manages only a single dot on his own die!
• Be there as the tiny plastic cannon the size of Massachusetts becomes nine men, then seven, then six, then a horse!
• Feel the adrenaline course through your veins as you occupy the indefensible European continent!
• Own the indescribable feelings of shouting, “No! Not Irkutsk!” as the hordes swarm the border from Kamchatka!

All of these experiences and more can be yours!

Yes, we are talking about Risk. If you think you’ve played long board games before, well, buckle up, Pardner, because this is going to be a long and bumpy ride like you’ve never seen. So use that paid ten minute break at 2:00 PDT today to attend our opening ceremonies. Choose your army (current options are The Armada Azul, The Crimson Scourge, The Negro (that’s nay-gro, you know, Español) Murder Militia, The Grey Matter, and Los Caballeros Villanos Amarillos, though naming rights can be purchased for a nominal fee), place your mans, and hold on for dear life. One or two turns per workday means weeks of inspiring battlefield bravery, heartwrenching drama, and daring invasions before the final die is cast. Be there, or be elsewhere.

*Note – This game is not a real time strategy.

The players are the members of the Xbox Operations Center Documentation Team (XOCDOC, pronounced "zock dock") that share this office -that would be myself and Richard- and the two guys from the tools team that are just down the hall from us in another office. That would be Urn (Aaron) and Mike. The idea is that we get two paid breaks of ten minutes a piece each day, so we might as well use them to do something together. We'll play a round each day, or as close as time allows, and if it starts impinging on our productivity, we can skip a day when we need to.

Urn promises a bloodbath. I say he's all hat and no cattle, but we'll see what happens when the dice come up. Richard is acting a good deal more meek, feigning docility by reading the instructions again. We'll see if he inherits the earth, sort of literally. And Mike forgot to attend the opening ceremonies today, so Urn called him, and he came on up with the second half of his lunch to deal out the cards. This lackadaisical approach may also be one big head fake. We'll see. As for me? Well, I have a few strategies to use. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. I'll give you updates sometimes if I think about it. Wish me luck! (I know you're pulling for The Crimson Scourge.)