The problem with blogging

When we first moved to New York five years ago, I started a blog to document the transition. While it started out with my patented brand of sure-fire hilarity, it quickly degraded into a suckhole of darkness. The first few months revealed themselves to be the psychological equivalent of rabid weasels ripping at my flesh while demented pixies hovered about as they spat salt into the fresh wounds.

Like Dad always says, “it’s funny until you find someone slumped up against the wall, sporadically making guttural noises that sound most likely to be begging the carpet to grant them a quick death.”

Things did improve, but the blog had to stop.

But this time is different. This has been a great move. So I find myself stuck with two surprising issues. One, everything here is genuinely fantastic, leaving me literally devoid of material that does not sound like a greeting card.

The other issue is that as I look back, I’m beginning to fully comprehend how miserable I was for the entire five year prison sentence that was living in New York.

Like a wrongly imprisoned man never wavering from his claims of innocence, I maintained my conviction that there was a better place to live, one that would validate my judgement that living in NY is too hard, too expensive, and all for no good reason.

The important thing, of course, is that l was right.

Shiny objects

While not completely shallow, I do enjoy items of convenience. A few items of note that I have found here that are utterly devoid in New York (and New Jersey as well):

  • People are nice and kind to each other for no apparent reason. I’m am still leery of this, and am proceeding with both suspicion and reserved excitement.
  • Local news aired story about a woman who found a Cheeto she claimed looked like Jesus (Cheesus) and made fun of her on air.
  • We registered both cars, had one inspected first, and applied for new drivers licenses. Total elapsed time: 60 minutes, including a trip home for forgotten paperwork. Oh, and everyone at the DMV was clearly understandable and downright nice.
  • Local grocery is like the spawn of a Whole Foods and a Kroger. Nice selection, decent prices, open 24 hours, plays Ben Folds while you shop.
  • Home Depot is clean, well-stocked, and staff is friendly.
  • All Starbucks have drive-through windows.

10-27-10

The town we live in, Ramapo, is often sub-exciting. There’s only one DQ, and it’s a pod DQ which puts this place in perspective (see my August 13 post for reference).

However, seen on the bumper of a taxi this evening:

RAMAPO MIDGET FOOTBALL

Things may be looking up after all…

What began as a quick visit to Shop-Rite, the grocery store of little choice, turned quickly into the Gauntlet of People Who Push Carts Slowly in One Direction While Their Heads Are Turned 90 Degrees in Another Direction as If Someone Had Tried to Tear Their Head Off but Couldn’t Finish the Job.

Then, of course, was the famed Woman Dragging Her Cart Behind Her Like Someone Trying to Pull a Beached Whale Back to Sea.

Having deftly managed to avoid grievous bodily harm at the hands of the genome’s practical jokes, I found myself wishing the internet grocery stores hadn’t gone bust…

Okay, okay, much catching up to do.

I got my badge back. Some of you now what that means, and for the rest of you it means I’m now working for the company I planned on. The work is fine and the people are actually extremely cool, which is the best part for me.

Because this is a public journal, I’m not going to be talking much about work other than to say that it provides plenty of proof of my father’s saying that you can’t stop stupid.

Which leads me to the fact that I still have not replaced my Texas license plates. Much of this is due to the idiotic burocracy in New York, but there’s this enjoyable feeling of defiance, that I’ve sacrificed so much of my Texan way of life to be here, so there needs to be some public reminder that I’m not One of You.

Or I could just be lazy.

We continue to minimize the stink of the turd with a brass number nailed to it, otherwise known as the homestead. New windows were installed last week and it was a shocking experience. The contractor gave us a price, a time, and a promise of what things would look like when he was finished. The work was done exactly how, when, and looked exactly as he said.

And now, the little odd thing of the week…

There is a Cajun Cafe near where I work. Everyone at this operation is Chinese.

I was beginning to become more and more agitated with the lack of decent iced tea here. Oh, sure, they call it iced tea, but they don’t understand the fundamentals:

1) Refills are always free. I didn’t order an “iced tea,” as if it was a single object; I ordered a liquid subscription.

2) It should be brewed fresh all day, so it doesn’t get that weird tea funk. (Funk is to tea as skunk is to beer. It can still be drunk, but it gives cause for pause.) And no, I don’t want a bottle of Lipton from the cold case, you philistine.

3) The tea should be served in a glass the diameter of my neck, not my wrist.

I have found two things that partially make up for this tragic lack of tea understanding:

Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry in liter bottles and Yoo-Hoo.

Switching gears, a thought about the heat wave in Europe. Now, I don’t mean to make light of the tragic heat-related deaths (nearly 3,000) in France, which is truly awful. However…

White sauce on meat: yes

Air conditioning: no

Clearly, the French are the superior culture.