A funny thing happened on the way to...

Alright, Irene turned out to be nothing more than a little bitch, but apparently my parents lost their power during the hurricane, if you can even call that a hurricane, and the power won't be restored til September 4th. So I get a phone call from my mom around 4 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday asking if she can come over to charge her cellphone. I thought it was a little weird that she felt it was absolutely necessary to have her cellphone charged but no big deal, we planned on making some dinner and hanging out while her phone charged. She left a couple hours later, and half heartedly asked if she could stay over. I said she could, but for whatever reason she felt like she was imposing. So now the funny parts. She wanted to watch some local news since she hadn't seen much of the coverage. I tuned to the local Collingswood station which was broadcasting the local high school sports recap. Basically sports highlights from all the spring sports produced by students and set to music. Now I was busy doing laundry and she was just hanging out, knitting and watching the sports highlights in the background. A song comes on, and my mom is like "This is Taio Cruz ... did you know he is British?" I was like "how the hell do you know who this is, much less know that he is British?"..."oh he was on Good Morning America last week." wtf.
A few songs later she's like "Do you know the name of this Lady Gaga song?" I was like Who are you? and what did you do with my mom? She apparently was on Good Morning America last week too. What was it, clubbing week on GMA?
Anyway, after those antics, my dad called me around 9pm. Now my dad never calls me. Never emails me either. He calls me maybe once or twice a year; Usually to ask me if I stole one of his ties. Anyway, he calls and explains that he doesn't have power and he's got stuff in the fridge yadda yadda yadda. Asks me if he can stay with me. I say sure. Now I'm not really sure why he waited til 9pm to ask me but...I figure at that point you might as well just go to sleep. You don't need power to go to sleep. Anyway he comes over around quarter to ten and brings the dog. The food that he brought to save was....wait for it....popsicles! Can't waste those popsicles. Sits down on the couch, makes some small talk and asks me where he is going to sleep. Now, I only have a two bedroom house, so naturally I told him the back bedroom. He says "where is that?" Seriously? I mean, I know he doesn't come over often but. "What do you mean where is it? It's in the back...at the top of the stairs." I really wanted to tell him it was on the third floor.. top of the stairs make a right, sixth door down on the left, but I know he'd wake me up later and ask where the second flight of stairs is. Wtf. I do love my family though. I just don't understand them sometimes.

JKRNoir: BENCH!

I've never "reblogged" something, so i am not sure if this is going to work. Regardless, this was posted from my company's blog and hopefully it translates to this blog. It's a competition that the graphic designer and I worked on for a bench design for a local neighborhood group sponsored by AIA Philadelphia. We didn't win/place or show but it was still fun nonetheless. Check it out.
JKRNoir: BENCH!:

Haircuts

I got a much needed haircut today and came up with a brilliant solution to make a lot of money and solve an age old problem. The problem, (and some of you may not think this is a big deal, and you would be right)but it would solve the age old problem of having to struggle through small talk with the person cutting your hair. I usually don't have a problem making small talk, but usually the small talk only lasts for 5 minutes. The small talk for someone cutting your hair lasts at least a half hour. A much harder task. Some salons have resorted to gimmicks like having a girl in a bikini cut your hair, which to me would just be really weird. And plus that wouldn't really solve the small talk problem. My idea would be to have a salon/barber that you would pay an extra five dollars just to have the stylist not talk. I am sure the stylist wouldn't mind the extra money and you could just sit there in peace. Mutually beneficial. Call it "Silent Styles" or "quiet cuts". Who wants to open the first branch with me?

Bad Realization

You know it's bad when in a weeks time you realize that the only liquids you've consumed have been beer, wine, whiskey, and coffee. It's been a vicious cycle and it's a wonder I am even alive. I am cutting back. Starting tomorrow.

Smart Phones

As far as phones go, I held out as long as I could. But these days you can either get a Zach Morris flip phone with a dot matrix green screen, or you can get the most souped up device to enter existence since the 1990 Honda Civic. And when you take the smartphone plunge you gotta go all in. I got the Cadillac of smartphones. The new Droid Incredible2. It lives up to its name. It's pretty incredible, not gonna lie. I couldn't keep my hands off it for the first night. Luckily, the novelty has worn off. I pretty much only do typical phone things on it, and haven't really fact checked anyone on it yet. As smart as smartphones are, this one's predicative text is not good at predicting words. It's really annoying. And you have to use two hands to type. My old phone learned words, this one doesn't. But the best part of owning a smartphone is that it forces you to unsubscribe to the 10 different daily emails you subscribe to but never really read.

Writing

Sometimes I stress about how best to write these blogs. I don't really stress out, but I wonder how to craft each post so that they make sense, get the point across, and hopefully are insightful or humorous to some extent. Above all, I hope they are concise in getting to the point. But I definitely notice weird occurrences in my writing that I don't think about when speaking. Weird sentences that have the same word repeated back to back. For example: "he was saying that that was odd" or "You should do this this year" It's really weird to see two of the same words right next to each other. No? Double negatives are a no no. This post was not funny, insightful, well written or concise.

Wedding Registries

I've got two weddings coming up in the next two weekends, and naturally I haven't thought about gifts for either. I am pretty sure that all of my friends that have ever gotten married only ever wanted money. I could be wrong. But I don't really understand registries. I think people feel obligated to register somewhere. Almost everyone these days registers at Bed Bath and Beyond, and I look at the stuff on their wishlist and think to myself "what the hell are thinking?" To me, when I go to Bed Bath and Beyond it's a chore. It's not because I want the things that are at Bed Bath and Beyond. It's because I need a trashcan or a shower curtain. I see that they're registered for a toaster that's 89 bucks or a couple of wash cloths for 4.99. Then I wonder if they would really be happy if I bought them the toaster. "Aw, Mike got us just the DeLonghi toaster that we wanted! That was great!" I have to think it'd be more like askers remorse. Like why did we want someone to buy us those wash cloths or that piece of junk toaster? We could have just gone and bought them on a whim at TJ Maxx. And is it legit to buy them the 89 dollar toaster and that's it? Because I was probably going to give them 100 bucks but if they reaaaaally want the toaster, that's fine by me. Or do I have to get them the toaster annnnnnd the wash cloths to make up the 100 bucks? Also, is 100 bucks cheap these days? One friend a few years back registered for these random decorative wicker balls. I wanted to buy him those and that would be it. When/if I get married I am going to just say buy me anything from Williams And Sonoma and call it a day.