Roseyland

I loathe shopping for underwear. Mostly because it requires me to spend a lot of time looking at pictures of men in their underwear. The worst part is, you are forced really examine the pictures because you have to make sure you get the right kind. The only thing that could be worse than shopping for underwear is returning underwear.

Beyond the looking at nearly naked men part, there are a lot of other things that bother me about underwear shopping. First, I am convinced that I am the only guy alive who buys his own underwear. Every time I’m in the men’s underwear section, it’s me and 3-5 women shopping for men’s underwear. I almost feel like I’m not supposed to be there or something. Traditional gender roles are not a big deal to me, but if I ever get married, it will be my wife’s duty to buy me my underwear. That way I don’t have to feel like the weird guy buying his own underwear.

Another thing, size. My waist size fluctuates from 34 to 36 inches depending on how often I’m working out. Medium underwear is for men who’s waist size is 32 to 34 inches, and large underwear is for men who’s waist size is 36 to 38 inches. Did I miss something here? Is there a Medium/Large size hidden somewhere? I go with the large, because seriously what self respecting guy would wear medium underwear. I’m surprised underwear companies even label men’s underwear small, medium, and large. They should do it like Starbucks and call the sizes tall, grande, and venti. Maybe I should start telling people I wear grande underwear and see if it catches on.

I did something a little out of the ordinary for me today. I went to church. If you have read this post (or you visited Colonial quad 6 from 1997 to 1998), you know that my views on religion/god are not exactly conventional. I do think that there is symbolic value to religion though, and I definitely have a spiritual side. To me spirituality is more about questions like “Why does anything exist?” or “Why is the universe so finely tuned for life?”, rather than “What does this Bible verse mean?” or my least favorite of all “What would Jesus do?”.

Anyways, back to the point of this post, I went to church today. I went to The Gathering, which is a newer United Methodist church on McCausland Avenue. I was familiar with both of the pastors of this church from a young adults group I went to a few years ago, and I’ve been meaning to check out The Gathering for awhile now. Today I finally got around to it. I was a little uncomfortable at first, because let’s face it a 30 year old guy showing up at church by himself is a little odd. Nobody seemed to care though, so that’s good. There were five things I really liked about the gathering:

1. No pews and comfortable chairs. Seriously, I really liked the chairs.
2. Free coffee. Unfortunately, I came in the wrong door and didn’t see the coffee until I left.
3. The exposed brick wall. In the sanctuary the front (or is it the back) wall has the brick exposed. You can see it in the picture in this post. I’m sure it has a deep symbolic meaning, but I don’t care about that, I just think it looks cool.
4. The Neighborhood. I like the neighborhood The Gathering is in. It is fairly close to me and has lots of good restaurants like Olympia and Chuy’s.
5. Communion with real wine. I was in the wrong line for the real wine, but I still liked the fact that it was there.

The only thing I didn’t like was that for one prayer everybody held the hands of the people on either side of them. I’m not a big fan of praying and holding hands, mostly I’m not a big fan of holding hands. That’s my own hang up though, and it only lasted for about 15 seconds, so I can get over it.

I’m going to try and become more involved with The Gathering. My chances of sticking with it are probably about 50-50, but I figure I can at least make to church once a month or so. It is a nice way to start the day. The Gathering also has a lot of small groups. One of them is a skeptics group, which I think would be right up my alley. I always feel a little weird at those things, because I know I’m probably the least religious guy in the room, which makes me a little reluctant to share my true thoughts. That being said, the Gathering seems to be a fairly open mined environment and I’m pretty sure nobody there is going to try and “convert” me. If nothing else, it will be a new adventure, and that’s always fun.

I need my kitchen remodeled. I’ve been putting this off for over three years. It all started with the kitchen floors, they are wood floors that are in bad shape and need to be replaced. I was going to just replace the floors, but then I started looking at the cabinets and realized that they were outdated and ugly. Then I thought if I replace the cabinets, I’ll have to replace the counter tops, and after doing all that, I might as well replace the appliances too. At this point, it became overwhelming and I decided to give up. I’m not planning on living here forever though, and I’d hate to try and sell the place with the kitchen I have, so I need to do something. Here are some pictures of my kitchen:

This is what I would like to do:

• New Floors - Probably something like Pergo, but tile might be good too. I also like the idea of extending the floors out into the dinning room, but I’m not sure if that is practical.
• New looking cabinets - I’m hoping that I can avoid the expense of new cabinets by somehow resurfacing the existing cabinets. I’m not sure if that is possible though, so new cabinets is also an option.
• New counter tops - I’m okay with the existing counter tops, so keeping them is an option. However, I have a feeling that it will make more sense to replace them.
• New appliances - I need a new refrigerator, dishwasher, oven/range, and microwave. They can be black, stainless steel, or that stainless look stuff. The refrigerator needs an ice maker, it would be nice if it had a door ice/water dispenser, but that isn’t a necessity. The electric range should have a smooth glass cook top that is easy to clean. Also, I would like the microwave to be an over the range microwave.
• Miscellaneous - There will probably need to be some painting done, maybe a new sink, and probably a few things I’m not thinking of.

My budget is $10k to $15k, but hopefully closer to the $10k. The $15k is an absolute upper limit. Partly because that is all I can responsibly spend right now, and partly because my condo is probably worth about $140k, so if I spend too much, I’ll just be throwing money away. The goal here is to increase the value of my condo and make it easier to sell.

I’m considering 5 options:

1. RSI Kitchen’s and Bath - This isn’t really an option. I know RSI is too high end for me and is going to cost too much. I’m just including them in this list for completeness.
2. Lowe’s - This is probably the cheapest option, but I have a feeling that it is going to involve a lot of participation on my part. I’d rather have one person coordinate everything for me.
3. New Transitions Kitchen and Bath - This is small local company that gets great reviews, but they are so popular, they have a big backlog and are hard to get a hold of.
4. Ultimate Kitchen and Bath - I don’t know much about this company, but they are located close to my condo.
5. Callier and Thompson Kitchens and Baths - This is one of the more well known local companies. They advertise on the radio a lot. I get the feeling that they would be like RSI, but not as expensive.

So, there you have it. If anybody out there has any advice for me, I’d love to hear it.

If you have read my about me page, you know that one of my favorite restaurants is Spaghetti Works and that I always order spaghetti with white clam and beer cheese sauce. I love the beer cheese sauce and I’ve been working on recreating the recipe for some time now. I have mixed and matched from different recipes to create something that I think is close to the real thing. Here is my most recent version:

• ½ cup butter
• 1 clove garlic (minced)
• 1 cup flour
• 12 oz Michelob Amber Bock
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 16 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese (grated)
• 1 ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp. Dijon mustard

Here is a picture of the ingredients:

First, melt the butter under low to medium heat in a saucepan or stockpot. This recipe makes approximately 2 ½ quarts of sauce, so use at least a 3 quart container. Then add the garlic and stir in the flour until golden brown. It should look something like this:

Now add half of the beer. Add the beer gently so that it doesn’t foam up. Stir until it becomes a paste like this:

Add the chicken broth and stir until smooth, if there are clumps, try using a whisk. Then slowly sprinkle in cheese while stirring so that cheese is melted and the sauce is smooth. It should look like this:

Finally, add the cream, remaining beer, Worcestershire sauce, and Dijon mustard. Add the final ingredients slowly and one at a time, so that the sauce temperature doesn’t drop too much. Simmer for 15 minutes to an hour while stirring until the sauce has a thick beer cheese sauce/soup like consistency. Here is the final product:

You can serve this as a topping for spaghetti or as a soup. It also goes well with bacon, so if you use it on spaghetti, you might try sprinkling some bacon pieces on top of the sauce. It goes good with chicken livers too, but I have no idea how to make those. Some people use this as a soup and sprinkle plain popcorn into it, kind of like oyster crackers. I haven’t tried this, but it sounds good.

This recipe isn’t the same as the real thing, so if you haven’t been to Spaghetti Works, go and try this sauce. There are a number of variation of this recipe out there. Just Google “Beer Cheese Sauce” or “Beer Cheese Soup”. As far as the beer goes, I think Michelob Amber Bock is perfect. The beer needs to have a strong flavor to stand up to the cheese. Bud Light will not do. The cheese is more difficult. I feel like the cheese needs to have a strong flavor too, so I use extra sharp cheddar cheese. Many recipes call for Cheez Whiz. While Cheez Whiz melts easily, it also taste like Cheez Whiz. I think it might be a good idea to add some Parmesan cheese to the mix, so maybe I’ll try that next time. Instead of cream, some recipes use milk or evaporated milk. I like the sauce creamy, so I use cream. Evaporated milk might be interesting though. Some recipes do not call for the garlic or Dijon mustard, and some recipes call for Tabasco sauce or cayenne pepper. I tried a dash of cayenne pepper in my soup, and I think I liked it. In the future, I’ll probably add a couple teaspoons of cayenne pepper. This is definitely a recipe that can be played with. If you find something that works or have any other ideas, please let me know. Here is a picture of the final product as I served it:

I’ve been working out a lot more lately. I do 30 minutes on an elliptical machine 4 to 5 days a week. So far I have lost about 10 pounds, and I think I feel healthier, but that could just be my imagination. I hope I can keep it up. I have this bad habit of going through phases where I start working out more and more until I’m in the gym like an hour a day. Then it’s too much to keep up with, and I quit all together. This time I’m trying keep it simple. Hopefully I’ll stick with it.

One thing that has helped is the new company fitness center. It’s very convenient and cheap. It’s not that big, but there are a few ellipticals, treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight machines. Also there are nice flat panel TVs on the wall. Below each TV is a sign that says: “If anything offensive is on the channel, please change the channel”. I always thought this was funny, because the TVs are almost always tuned to CNN.

So I went down for my workout a few days ago, and the TV in front of my favorite elliptical machine was tuned to Fuse instead of the usual CNN. Fuse is a music video channel that actually plays music videos. I know, weird. This seemed good to me. I was getting a little tired of CNN anyways. The first 20 minutes of my workout went great, but then a new show came on. The show was called “Pants-Off Dance-Off“. The title worried me a little, but it was still regular cable TV, how bad could it be? Answer, bad. The show pretty much consists of not-so-bright, not-so-attractive, not-so-coordinated people stripping to music. There wasn’t any nudity, but I still didn’t want to be watching it at work. I was almost done with my workout and the room was empty, so I just looked away and prayed that nobody came in. Then two middle aged women came in. So here I am at work on an elliptical machine right in front of a 40-inch TV showing strippers. Excellent. I’ve never wanted to see Wolf Blitzer so bad in my life. I did the only rational thing. I kept staring at my heart rate/calories burned display and acted like I had no idea what was on TV. The women didn’t seem to notice or care, and I finished my work out and went home. Note to self: Fuse = NSFW.

“Tell me are you a Christian child?”… “Ma’am, I am tonight”. This is by far my favorite line in a song. In case you don’t recognize it, the line is from “Walking in Memphis” by Marc Cohn. Religion and/or spirituality is one of my favorite topics. I think about it a lot, but I rarely discuss it in real life. Religion seems to be one of those touchy subjects, and I’m not fond of awkward situations. I have a feeling I will be blogging about religion a lot though, so I figured it would be a good idea to get some of my basic beliefs and disbeliefs out of the way. I’m going to do this question and answer style, because well… It’s my blog.

Do you believe in God? Yes and no. It would be more correct to say that I believe in the concept of God. I don’t really believe that there is a human like entity out there looking over us and deciding what should happen to who, but I do believe that there is a deeper purpose and meaning to life. I believe that there will always be a level of reality that is unknown to us, and somewhere in that unknown is my concept of god.

Are you an atheist? It depends. When most people think of an atheist, they are really thinking of a naturalist. A naturalist is someone who believes that the physical universe is all there is. I am definitely not a naturalist. Naturalists view life as a side effect of the physical universe. The problem with naturalism is that our universe is incredibly finely tuned for the existence of life. To me, the only logical explanation is that life is somehow fundamental to the nature of the universe. In fact, it is entirely possible that the physical universe is a side effect of life. Technically atheists are just people who do not believe in theistic gods or deities, but that does not mean they are naturalist. While I do not believe in the conventional view of god, I also wouldn’t call myself an atheist.

Are you a Christian? Personally I consider myself Christian, but I do not feel that any religion is completely right, or that any religion is wrong. I think of religion as being like software and “God” as being like hardware. The hardware in a computer is incredibly powerful, but it’s all a bunch of 1’s and 0’s. Interacting directly with hardware is pretty much impossible. We need software to turn the 1’s and 0’s into something more familiar that we can relate to. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that the software is the computer, but in reality the software is just one face of something much deeper and more complex. Religion is the “software” that allows us to have a relationship with “God”. Religion itself is not God however, and it does not reveal what the true nature of God is. Different religions are just different “software” interfacing with the same hardware or “God”.

Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior? Ewww… I hate this question most of all. It makes me feel all weird inside. I have two problems with this question. First, it feels very evangelical, and I’m not at all evangelical. Second, it is too literal. I’m fine with the concept of giving your life to something greater than yourself, which is what I think this question is getting at, but the question itself is too specific. I feel like answering it pigeonholes you as a certain type of person, and I don’t like that. It makes me feel weird.

Do you believe in reincarnation? Why do bad things happen? What happens when we die? Why does anything exist at all? Is this all just one big simulation? Do you follow the force? What is consciousness? Yeah, umm… let’s deal with these questions in a future blog post.

The image in this post is “Religion” by Exolucere and is licensed under Creative Commons.

This is one of the best Daily Show clips I have seen.

I’m 30 years old now. Well, 30 and a few months. I’ve decided that everyone else is right and I need to get married. You have to understand, this is challenging for me. I don’t know if you have noticed, but there are women everywhere. The grocery store, the mall, the gym, restaurants, inside, outside,… everywhere. I swear half the population must be female. How’s a guy supposed to pick just one? It was hard, but after hours of research and background checks, I’ve come up with five women I might marry. Brace yourself, this is exciting… somewhere in this list is the future Mrs. Rosey.

5. Natalie Portman

Truth be told, I’m not a big Star Wars fan, but I am a fan of Padmé Amidala. Natalie is a 26 year old Harvard grad. Cute and smart, what more could I want. On the down side, she is a vegan, but I can deal with that.

4. Julia Stiles

Julia Stiles just does it for me, I don’t know why, but she does. She is a 26 year old graduate of Columbia University and a former vegan. Hmm… I must have a thing for 26 year old vegan Ivy League grads, then again, who doesn’t?

3. Danica McKellar

Danica is a 33 year old graduate of UCLA. She is a little older than me, but she is also Winnie Cooper. In college, she coauthored a paper titled “Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z²“. Finally, a woman who appreciates Gibbs states.

2. Mandy Moore

Saved! Is one of my favorite movies, and I loved Mandy Moore’s performance in it. Mandy is 23 and apparently hasn’t been to college. Usually I prefer a learned woman, but I’ve heard that Mandy is very nice and down to earth. I like nice and I’m totally down with earth.

1. Reese Witherspoon

Narrowing my list down to 5 was hard, but picking #1 wasn’t. I’ve loved Reese since Pleasantville. Reese is a 31 year old former Stanford student. Of course she is divorced with two kids and never graduated from college, but it doesn’t matter, in my eyes she’s perfect. She’s smart, she’s cute, she’s quirky, she’s perfect.

To the lucky women who made this list: Congratulations! I’m sure this is as exciting for you as it is for me. Email me, and we can initiate the courtship process. I only ask one thing, please please don’t fight over me. Keep in mind, while I like you, it is possible (though unlikely) that you may not like me.

To all of the women who did not make this list, you were going to be #6, but we all know that lists must contain 5 or 10 elements. A list of 6 would be weird. In the unlikely event that one of the top 5 drops out, you will move onto the list. You know, because a list of 4 is weird too.

Today I did something I have never done before. I voted for a republican: John McCain. I was debating weather or not to even vote in the primary, because I couldn’t decide between Hillary and Obama. Then I realized that I’d be fine with either Hillary or Obama, but McCain is really the only republican that I’m comfortable with. To be honest, I like John McCain a lot, even if I don’t agree with him on every issue. This is what I know about John McCain: Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter don’t like him, He has called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “Agents of Intolerance”., and He believes in evolution.

I know a lot more about John McCain, but if all I knew about a candidate was the three things above, I’d vote for him/her. That being said, McCain is more socially conservative that I’d like. When it comes down to the real election, I probably won’t vote for him, but I might.

To all who come to this happy place: welcome, Roseyland is your land. Except that it is really only my land and it’s not so much a land as it is a blog. Technically this is my second blog, my first blog was a group project with some friends from college, but it has died of apathy. This time, I’m going it alone. Well not completely alone. I am happy to announce that my cat Earl had been named Vice President of Marketing for Roseyland Enterprises. His extensive background as a cat and in depth knowledge of all things Rosey will be invaluable to the growth of our organization. Earl has already done some groundbreaking work, check out the Roseyland advertisement below. I’m sure you will agree that it is highly effective.

Originally, I was going to name my blog PondOfScum. However, Earl ran a few focus groups and apparently “Pond Of Scum” registered statistically significant negative emotional feedback among a few key demographics. I’d share more details, but we consider them proprietary. Just a little secret between you, me, and the entire internet: you can also get to this blog by going to pondofscum.com. Cool, huh?

I’m not sure exactly what this blog is going to become. Like most blogs, I’ll share my general thoughts and observations of the world around me. There will probably be a little politics, a little current events, a little discussion of religion/spirituality, a lot of stuff about my cat, and a lot of stuff that defies categorization. My next blog post is either going to be about John McCain, Tom Cruise/Scientology, or my general thoughts on religion. In the mean time, check out my about me page, leave a comment, or email me.