100% organic, shade-grown, fair-trade, and anti-biotic free.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
phoenix
just got to phoenix. a few good days in la. tiring. those damn sales people like to drink. the westin kierland is pretty phat.
going to see the little bro tomorrow night.
joe hooked up phat seats to see the super hot suns beat up on the jazz. from the fender executive suite, no less! it's good to have a bro who is in the industry, as he likes to claim.
mrs. w just left after a really good weekend. saw the beav and mr. beav, ka-pow-how, j-watt and emory friends, and even an unexpected meet up with chall3PO, whose baby girl is due in five weeks.
headed to the west side for the week. early am flight to lax tomorrow. for once, i remembered to pack myself some snacks for the flight and not have to reply on a) junky, albeit free, in-flight snacks or b) junky and over-priced trail mix from the airport snack stand. should be a great week. three days in la for sales meetings and then two days in phoenix for our hospital ceo forum, including the fbr open (golf tourney).
i've resisted golf to date, despite many folks exhorting me to take it up for its networking and business deal benefits. i refuse. it's a game for rich, old, white men. i currently fit only the last criteria, and i'm working towards the first. so no golfing for me. however, i have decided that it's dumb to get cut out of the wheeling and dealing, so i'm going to volunteer at this tourney, staffing one of the holes or serving drinks, etc.
major bonus is that my bro lives in phoenix. i'm going to stay through monday morning to hang out with him. he's even hooked up free tickets to see the suns-jazz game saturday night--in the freaking fender executive box! should be phat.
return to metalsome on monday. hit 10 high with bama boy, who was a metalsome virgin. he's now a convert. it was freaking great as always. some regulars were there. charrissa was carried the crowd. there's a chick who is simply terrible. i pointed her out to bama boy, "see the couger up front?" every week she gets up and makes everyone's ear's bleed. she's three counts behind the beat and looks genuinely surprised when the music starts. come one! every week she picks her best acid wash jeans and reebok hightops. not to be ironic. i think that's genuinely what she wears. it's the same thing every time. so the cougar picks the ultimate cougar song, "living on a prayer." it's terrible. the band barely makes it through the song. the crowd sings 90% of the words to make up for it anyway, which is kind of fun.
some douche bags, of course. i heard someone comment about the sour smell of vinegar in the air. one of these fucktards ruins 'separate ways' for me.
the highlight had to be when adam j from helios (who i opened up for with the nick edelestein band last spring at jake's roadhouse) rocked 'the final countdown.' he hit it note for note and sounded even better than the original.
celebrated kiki's bday in south beach last weekend. hitting the town till 3:00 am is a big night in the wintermute household
over the course of many frosty beverages, we arrived at a list of the most iconic movie lines of the 80s. these are the lines that everyone knows. even your grandmother knows. the one that was deaf by 1981. yes, even her. note that the best ones are the most succinct. in order:
every year my closest friends get together--it's a tradition that we've kept in place more or less since college. i known some of these folks since early freshman year, three of them have been my room mates, we've been in each other's weddings, one was mrs. w's room mate (and the person that introduced us), etc. this is a close knit crew.
this past weekend, we had an impromptu gathering in miami when bloodninja and his lady were re-routed on their way to honeymooning in buenos aires.
so the past few years have been good. we were together at my wedding, then bloodninja's engagement party, then labor day weekend in miami, then bloodninja's wedding, and now briefly in miami again.
jan 1 marked the end of mrs. wintermute and my pledge to abstain from fried food for a year. well, we did. it wasn't that hard really, but it turns out we eat a lot more fried food than we thought i did. last january, i would have said i eat fried food once a month. once a week is more like it. maybe more. i found myself turning down food all the time because i had to think about whether it's fried or not. egg rolls. french fries that come with apparently every meal at every restaurant. chips and salsa. chips and guac. chips and chili. chips, and well, anything. calimari. there is just a ton of stuff.
so on new year's day, we went to a local tampa eatery to celebrate the end of the pledge. i had been savoring fries for a long time. i had been dreaming of crispy fried chicken. i would have settled for kfc, even it it's not really chicken (yeah yeah, i know that's an urban legend). instead, we ended up with the crappiest food on earth at po boy's. and then the waitress gipped us on our 2-for-1 coupon. major buzzkill.
so now it's time for something new. mrs. w and i couldn't come up with anything new. my favorite suggestion was going to church every sunday for 4 months, temple for 4 months, and then doing community service every sunday for 4 months. intellectually intriguing, but neither of us saw ourselves sticking with it.
so we've settled instead on each having a set of goals for the year. here's my 7 for '07:
be able to bench press my weight
spend more time with mrs w
unplug every week for 24 hours (basically friday night to sunday at noon). no blackberry, not email, no web surfing, no instant messaging, no blogging.
fully fund my 401(k), both of our roth-ira's, and meet our target for a down payment on a house. earn a 8% return on our portfolio.
give back to my fraternity, seo, and schools.
be in touch with my family more often. call my brother and parents bi-weekly. in-laws and brother-in-law every three weeks.
perform well enough at work to earn 100% of my performance bonus
no, not the release of the iphone (good coverage here).
mrs. wintermute finished her dissertation. while it's not the submission draft (still subject to some revision and feedback from her adviser), it's there, in its shining glory.
i'm very proud of her. you should be, too. she's been kicking ass and taking names for six years, and this last year has been the toughest.
the passing of a year means time for a fresh start. however, everything that has a beginning must have an end. in that vein,i have to mark the end of an era.
like kurt cobain, like jimi hendrix, like joanie loves the chachi, the era saw a meteoric rise and likewise, a meteoric fall.
the fall was made official shortly before the turning of the new year. around 11:00 pm on december 31, 2006, a fellow guest at the new year's party who works for kellogg confirmed that the most delectable cereal ever made is indeed being phased out and soon production will cease. apparently, fruit harvest suffered from a "bad marketing campaign" and is run on the same line as special k strawberry, which has been much more popular. kellogg is going to stop running fruit harvest in order to create capacity for special k.
fruit harvest is a treat for the lips. every morning, i spring out of bed. the cereal crackles as i pour ice cold 1% milk on it. i let the golden flakes stew for 30 seconds to soften up the tasy crisps of banana and peach. each spoonful can contain only either banana or peach, not both. 75% of the way through each bite, i spoon in more milk, letting it run over my teeth. after finishing my bowl, i slurp the peach and banana flavored milk in a long, satisfying drink.
