Roseyland

Praise Jesus! (or Buddha, or Mohammad, or Mother Earth, or whatever…) My kitchen is finished. Actually, it has been finished for a couple weeks now, but I finally got all my crap kitchen stuff out of the spare bedroom and into the cabinets. My condo is back to normal, only better, you know, because the kitchen is new. There isn’t much to say here, since I covered most of it in this post. So, here are the final pictures and even a video. Try not to notice the smudges on the appliances. I’ve heard that stainless steel is hard to keep clean, so I haven’t tried. Enjoy!

I can’t believe I just found this. Bunnicula was my favorite book as a kid, and for some reason, I just got the idea to Google Bunnicula. Then I found this. The ABC Weekend Special version of Bunnicula circa 1982. Apparently there is a new book in the Bunnicula series published in 2006. Crazy. Anyways, enjoy:

So I was having lunch at my desk today and reading CNN.com. This is what I do most days, eat at my desk and read CNN. I’m a wild and crazy guy. Anyways, I read this article about the Amethyst Initiative. The Amethyst Initiative is a group of chancellors and presidents from United States universities and colleges that have signed a statement asking for debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. The Amethyst Initiative believes that the 21 year-old drinking age is not working and that it is creating a culture of binge drinking on college campuses.

All I can say is: Amen. This has been a pet issue of mine since I was a freshman in college (13 years ago, yeah, I’m old). A little background: I went to a small liberal arts college in small town in Nebraska. Doane College in Crete, Nebraska to be exact. Doane had about 1,000 students and most students lived on campus all 4 years. I loved it, everyone knew everyone, and there was this great sense of community. It was the best 4 years of my life. While I was at Doane, there was a fairly liberal drinking policy. Students who were 21 or older could have alcohol in their rooms and we could have parties on campus. Technically you were supposed to be 21 to drink, but as you would expect, this was frequently violated.

I had my first beer at Doane in the Spring of 1996 on the 4th floor of Smith Hall at the end of my fraternities Hell Week. It was okay. I wasn’t a big drinker then, and I’m not now. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a cold beer at a baseball game or visiting a winery every now and then, but I’ve never been drawn to alcohol they way some people are. Even though I wasn’t a big drinker, I always thought Doane’s alcohol policy was exactly as it should be. With most students living on campus throughout their 4 years of college, Doane had a great sense of community. The alcohol policy was a big part of that. It is hard to ask the average 21 or 22 year-old college student to live on campus if he or she can’t drink on campus. Doane’s alcohol policy also limited the temptation for students to go off campus to drink, which I am sure prevented a significant amount drunk driving.

There was a lot of underage drinking at Doane, but I never really saw it as an issue. If you put a group of 18-22 year-olds together, the 18-20 year olds are going to drink just as much as the 21-22 year olds. I’m struggling with how to say this, but if something is going to happen, right or wrong, it is best to let it happen out in the open. When you push groups and activities underground, things go bad. When I think of my time at Doane, the first thing I think of is the sense of community. In that community, there were heavy drinkers (I lived with a few ), moderate drinkers, and people who barely or never drank. We were all one community though, and within that community there was accountability and people to fall back on when you made a mistake. If someone got too drunk and out of control, there was always a sober person available to deal with it. If you got too drunk, made an ass of yourself, and didn’t remember it the next day, someone would remind you and then remind you again later.

If Doane did not have a liberal alcohol policy, I think the community that I loved so much would have been split into pieces. Students who choose to drink would do it secretly on campus, or worse, off campus. Not only that, they would have done so surrounded by nothing but other drunk people, which would only encourage more drinking, which would lead to all kinds of crazy. On the other hand, the students who didn’t choose to drink would spend every weekend night watching rented movies in the dorm lobby, and today they would have really crappy stories to tell about their college days.

Since college, I have always felt that the drinking age should be 19. 18 is okay too, but I like 19 because almost everyone in college is 19 or over, and few high school students are over 18. I also think it should be an unspoken rule that 18 year-olds on college campuses can drink. Whatever the drinking age is, it is going to be arbitrary. It’s not like there is a magic age at which you are suddenly responsible enough to drink, and if there is, it is probably closer to 35 than 21. I say pick the drinking age that is the most natural for our society, and I think that age is 19 (maybe 18).

This is probably where I should end this blog post, but I read a few more articles on the Amethyst Initiative, and some of them sent me off into an internal rant that prevented me from getting any real work done this afternoon. I found this blog post by Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune to be particularly irritating. You should read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt:

College-age people who favor the change might ask themselves: If the drinking age is lowered, whose funeral will I be attending as a result?

Seriously? Are you kidding me? This is a completely ridiculous thing to say. A lot of the criticism of the Amethyst Initiative seems to be based on the idea that a higher drinking age reduces drunk driving deaths. This is an old argument that gets applied to everything from alcohol, to cigarettes, to trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup. Ever hear of a little thing called personal responsibility? No? Hmm… Look it up. I do not doubt that that a higher drinking age lowers drunk driving deaths, but an even higher drinking age would lower them even more. Prohibiting alcohol all together would lower deaths even further. I wonder if that has ever been tried? Hmm… A rational person would say that we need to balance personal freedoms with the cost of those freedoms to society. I highly doubt that a 21 year-old drinking age strikes that balance any better than an 18 or 19 year-old drinking age.

The current 21 year-old drinking age is about as effective at preventing drunk driving as abstinence only sex ed is at preventing teen pregnancy and STDs. That means it’s not very effective. Rather than trying to prevent underage drinking, why don’t we put those efforts towards encouraging people to drink responsibly and holding them accountable when they do not. One good step in this direction is to lower the drinking age and allow college communities to exist in open and safe environments where young people can find their way into this crazy crazy world.

The votes are in, and it looks like the overwhelming winner is: “Am I In The Women’s Restroom Of The Internet?”. I have to admit, I am completely unprepared to write this post. I honestly thought everybody would vote for oatmeal fudge bars. The oatmeal fudge bars are delicious by the way, and if you had voted for them, not only would I have made them and blogged about them, but I also would have personally delivered an oatmeal fudge bar to each and every one of you. But I guess you would rather read about the women’s restroom. Freaks.

I started this blog a little over six months ago. I’m still not exactly sure why I decided to start blogging, but I think there are three main reasons:

1. I was really getting into Twitter, and everybody on Twitter had a blog, so I figured I should have one too.
2. I actually already had a group blog with some friends from college, but it suffered from apathy, so I decided to kill it and resurrect it as my own personal blog.
3. In college, my quadmates and I used to stay up late having these intense debates about religion, politics, whether there were more cars driving around with bowling balls in them vs. 20 pound bags of flour (long story), whether or not more people knew who Tom Osborn was vs. Phil Jackson (don’t even get me started), etc… I miss these debates, and the farther and farther I get from college, the less and less comfortable I am discussing politics, religion, and bowling balls in real life. So this blog is a place for me to express my thoughts without worrying too much about what other people think.

So after a few months, I was getting into this blogging thing. I was witting posts, reading other blogs, and interacting with a few other bloggers through Twitter and blog comments. Then one day I looked up and realized that I was surrounded by women. Suddenly, I felt like the only guy at a Tupperware party. Do they still have Tupperware parties? You know what I love? Statistics. Let’s do some stats.

1. Of the 32 comments to my blog, 3 are from men and 29 are from women. That is over 90% female for all you non-math majors.
2. Of the 23 personal blogs I have listed under St. Louis Blogs on the right, 15 are by women and 8 are by men. That is 65% female, but I have to admit, I tried to include more blogs by guys, so that I wouldn’t look like a stalker or anything.
3. Of the last 60 @ replies I have on Twitter, 28 are from men and 32 are from women. Okay, so that is pretty even, but I swear it feels like there are more women on Twitter.

When I first realized that I was surrounded by women, I became self conscious. Was I trying to join* a group that didn’t really want me? Is blogging like a scrap booking party, or a Pampered Chef party, or a sex toy party? Is blogging the women’s restroom of the internet? Is this paragraph offensive to women? Probably.

My conclusion: I don’t have one. In reality, I think I knew that more bloggers were women than men before I even started. I seem to remember CNN doing a report about this a few years ago. At the time, I didn’t really know what blogging was, so I just filed that little tid bit of information away in the not so deep recesses of my mind. I do feel like blogging brings a certain balance to my life. I am an engineer, and I spend 50 hours of my week surrounded by men. Middle aged men who have 2.5 kids, live in St. Charles county, and like to talk about sports, their lawn, and the weather. I love my job, and I love the people I work with, but everyone needs balance. Maybe blogging while surrounded by a plethora of female bloggers helps me find that balance. Or maybe, deep down inside, I secretly want to be a woman. Yeah, I’m going with balance on this one, definitely balance.

Thoughts? Opinions? Do you wish I had blogged about oatmeal fudge bars now?

*Initially I used the phrase “insert myself into” instead of the word join. This um, just didn’t sound right. It was kind of funny though, so I included this note.

The image in this post is “Women’s restroom sign” by eszter and is licensed under creative commons.

I’m tired of trying to decide what to blog next. You pick. Also, please let me know if the poll doesn’t work. I’d test it myself, but that would screw up the results.

I was reading this post about shoes on the Under The Arch blog, and I thought to myself, “I have shoes, and I’m not above blatantly stealing another bloggers idea for a post”. So here we are, I have a shoe fetish. Not that kind of fetish, it has nothing to do with other people’s shoes, only my own shoes. It’s a self loving shoe fetish. What would you call that?… um, never mind, moving on. Here are my shoes in their natural habitat. Please don’t tap on the monitor, it stresses them out.

My shoe fetish started 6 years ago when I started my first real job. This job came with an unwritten dress code. Khakis and a polo shirt. I’m not exactly what you would call fashion conscious, but I do get bored easily, and wearing the same thing day in and day will slowly drive you insane. Sure you can wear any type of polo shirt you want, but after a while, they all look the same. I feel sorry for polo shirt designers. I’m pretty sure every type of stripe that could have been invented has been and is on a polo shirt somewhere. So how do I stop the insanity? Shoes. There are all kinds of different shoes out there. The shoes below are currently my favorite pair. I like them so much, I couldn’t be bothered to take them off for this picture. Also, isn’t that a nice calf muscle? Say yes.

I think these are my second favorite pair of shoes. They remind me of the first somewhat fashionable bowling shoe style Steve Madden’s that I bought when the whole shoe fetish thing started. Notice the frayed shoe lace. The cat has a shoe lace fetish.

I tried to do a catless post, but the cat had other ideas. I like these shoes a lot, because they are understated. At first they look like any other brown shoe, but that stitching gives them some type of extra touch or something. Unfortunately, I don’t wear these shoes much in the summer, because they don’t work with shorts. No, I don’t wear shorts to work, but for some reason I still can’t wear these shoes in the summer. Issues, I has them.

These are my default tennis shoes. I don’t wear them much, but they are a staple.

I call these thongs, that’s right thongs. When I was little, flip flops were called thongs, and once my brain has assigned an object a name, it sticks. I don’t wear these much either. I’ve never gotten into wearing thongs. The strap between my toes annoys me, and I always feel like they are going to fly off. Also, I think I have ugly feet.

I think these shoes are totally cool, and I need to wear them more. The only small complaint I have is that they have a very soft sole. It’s almost like wearing a moccasin. They are very comfortable around the house, but out on the street, they feel weird.

I loved these shoes when I bought them, but for some reason when I see them on me, they feel just a little too out there for me. I still wear them though. They are a good casual shoe.

There you have it, my shoe fetish out in the open for all to see. I used to have more shoes, but I never wore most of them, so I donated a lot to goodwill. I buy most of my shoes at DSW shoe warehouse. It’s really the only option I’ve found for men’s shoes in St. Louis. There used to be a cool store for men’s shoes in the Galleria, but they were expensive and my fetish isn’t that strong. When I was in Chicago, I found a lot of cool shoe stores. If you know of a good place to buy men’s shoes in St. Louis, please leave a comment.

I’m a GPS nerd. I love knowing my exact location and the exact time. You know, cause it’s really important… for stuff. This is the main reason that I just had to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. Now I have a GPS device with me at all times, Woo Hoo! This will be useful if I ever get lost in the wilderness of St. Louis, or if I ever need to target a cruise missile. Of course targeting a cruise missile to the exact location of my iPhone may not be the brightest idea, but it would be damn cool.

I found an iPhone application called GPS Tracker by InstaMapper. This application lets you make GPS tracks with your iPhone. It uploads your GPS tracks to the InstaMapper service, which will then create a map of your current and past locations as well as your speed and heading if you are moving. Then you can provide someone a link to the map so that they can track you, or you can even embed the map on your blog. You can also create a KML file, which I used to make the picture below.

This is everywhere I went today. I had lunch at San Sai, then I went to MetroTarget, then Ted Drew’s, and then I just drove around so that the track would be more interesting. Click on the image below for a larger version. You can also download the KMZ file (to view in Google Earth) of my track here.

The only complaint I have with the GPS tracker application is that it seems to stop working if you turn off the iPhone’s screen. This is annoying, because the LCD eats up the battery and you don’t really need to see the screen if you are just making a track. Also, the application doesn’t run in the background, so if you are making a track, you can’t do anything else on your iPhone. This of course is Apple’s fault, and it doesn’t really bother me that much. I’m thinking about driving back to Nebraska in a few weeks, and I think I’ll set up a map so that my friends and family can see my current speed, heading, and location as I drive across Missouri. You have no idea how much this excites me

Hello blog, I’ve missed you. I’d give you a long list of excuses as to why I haven’t visited in a while, but I know you wouldn’t understand. You are after all, just a blog. I will give you one excuse though. I’ve been remodeling my kitchen. Well, more accurately, I’ve been watching other people remodel my kitchen. If you remember this post, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my kitchen for some time now. I finally got around to getting an estimate and getting it (mostly) done. Here is how it went. The first step was getting my kitchen completely cleaned out. This took a good four hours. I don’t know who put all that crap in my kitchen, but when I find you, it’s on. Here is a picture of my sad empty kitchen.

Here is the contents of my kitchen relocated to my second bedroom. I also threw away 4 large trash bags of stuff. No I should not have donated it to goodwill, because trust me, nobody wanted it.

Here are my brand new appliances waiting to be installed in my kitchen. The cat thought there might have been a problem with the top of the refrigerator, but it turns out it’s fine.

This is my kitchen with everything stripped out of it and most of the new floor in place. They did all this in less than 8 hours. Impressive. It is amazing how small the room felt with nothing in it. It felt like my kitchen was about the size of a walk in closet.

This is a picture about half way through the remodel. I was worried that the ceiling height cabinets would make the room feel closed in, but I love them now. I didn’t realize how cheap my old cabinets were until I saw the new ones. They are so pretty, sometimes I go into the kitchen just to touch them. Wait… forget I just said that.

Here is a picture with more of the cabinets in place.

Here is a picture with everything except the counter tops in place. Unfortunately, the people I went with do not do any painting. I didn’t think this would be a big deal, because there is hardly any wall exposed, but it took me a long weekend to get it all painted. Partly this is because I had to do a lot of wall repairs, since removing the old cabinets left many dings and tears in the walls. Then I had to tape everything up and do a lot of edging. I was insanely paranoid that I was going to accidentally paint my new cabinets. Also, I picked out those cabinet handles myself. I was worried I would pick out handles that ruined everything, but I think they look good. They do right??? right???

There has been a bit of a mishap with my counter tops. They made them the wrong color, so they gave me this temporary counter top while I wait for the new ones. This is my new sink though, the facet pulls out into one of those sprayer things on a hose. You know, in case somebody visiting me ever wants to wash a dish by hand or something. Or maybe I’ll develop a death wish and decide to give the cat a bath. I wish I didn’t have to have a corner sink, but there just isn’t room for anything else.

So there you have it, most of my new kitchen. You can see more pictures in my flickr set here. When I finally get my counter tops installed, I’ll post some final pictures and my final thoughts. Overall, I think I’m very happy, but I waiting to see the counter tops before I express my final opinion