The Real Pat Blair

Sure, I have plenty of real stuff to write about, but, in honor of Matt’s Lego obsession, I have decided to counter with some fun of my own. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Lone Strangers, live in South Park, Colorado.

In 6th grade, we learned the different time zones in the United States. They are, from left to right, Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern. My teacher, the still-revered and once-feared Mrs. Green (who took much pride in her nickname, Mean Mrs. Green), suggested a tool to help us remember these zones of time: use the first letter of each zone to come up with a phrase. She then suggested a phrase. I don’t remember what she suggested. I also don’t remember if she asked for more or not, but I volunteered one: Pat Makes Crappy Eggs. I’m pretty sure the entire class got that question correct when it came time (Central Standard) to take the test.
I’m also pretty sure that truer words have never been spoken. In fact, somewhere in the book of Rufus, there is probably a verse about my culinary abilities. To prove the point, I decided to make some eggs this morning. Over easy, of course. So I cleaned a pan – the second step in any cooking endeavor at our house (the first is staring at the empty refrigerator for 5 minutes trying to figure out what on earth you’re going to eat and how there can possibly be no food at all when someone went shopping yesterday) – and fired up the (very bad) range.
Though our range has dials indicating that you might have the ability to select a hotness of anywhere between 1 and 10, there are really only three settings: off/not-quite-warm (0-7), on/hot (7.5), and RIDICULOUSLY hot (8-10). This means that, in order to cook anything that requires any work (grilled cheese, mac & cheese… I guess that’s about all we cook) you must constantly toggle between off and on (7 and to try to maintain a “medium” sort of temperature. The first egg provided a pretty good indication that I suck at achieving a happy medium.
Half of the egg white immediately burned onto the bottom of the no-stick Teflon pan. And there it stuck. The other half sat there in a gooey, non-cooking mess with the yolk. I tried to achieve “medium” by taking the pan off the burner. Unfortunately, egg number two fared no better. Scrambled it is! Or… scrambled they are! Scrambled I be! Whatever!
Fortunately I am pretty handy with spices (add garlic and Lowry’s to everything, sometimes using or substituting Mrs. Dash), or it would have been a disaster. Instead, I ended up with dry, semi-scrambled, decent-tasting eggs, and the pan ended up with a new surface that looks shockingly like burnt eggs, but which is actually a new, top-secret DuPont coating. Honest! It’s like Teflon, but it never, ever comes off.
Pat makes crappy eggs. So let it be written, so let it be done.

Last Friday when Matt spoke at the Rock and told the (Very long) story of his Entire History of Dating, he alluded to the fact that I was there for a large chunk of the chaos. He didn’t go into detail because it would have made the story even longer (gasp!) and much more sarcastic. This is fine, but I thought I would use today to highlight one of his omissions of our great history together.
It was late-January/early-February of 2001, and Matt and Nancy had just broken up for the second time. More accurately, she had dumped his sorry butt. Thusly, his sorry butt was complaining to me, of all people, about the pending Hallmark Holiday. At one point, Matt, very depressed, said to me, “Do you realize this is the first Valentine’s Day that I’ll be single since I was 14?!?” I, very loving and sympathetically, replied, “Boo-freakin’-hoo! Cry me a river, ladies man.” Or something equally friendly. In hindsight, I may have not, at the time, been a very good friend. But that, too, is another (long) story for another time. But you do have to admit, that is the most nauseating complaint that has ever been uttered, and I should probably be sainted for not just punching him in the kidneys until I knocked some sense into him.
Anyway, this story has a happy ending. As most of you know, Matt and Nancy are now an organization, have their own website (redundant link, -4), and even got married. Matt is now 11-for-12 on recent Valentine Days, and, while it’s no 0-for-26, his streak is trending well. AND, if you come to the Rock this Friday, Matt is sharing the Entire History of Dating, Part 2. It should be epic.
So congratulations to Matt and Nancy (dot org), happy Valentine’s Day to all, and remember:

Your skin’s like satin to the touch.
Your visage is divine.
I long for your embrace so much.
(This crap works every time!)

Last night was the first church-league basketball game of the season. As a team, we are much improved. And, in spite of playing hurt (jammed right middle finger, broken left elbow), Pat Blair (F), Stonebrook, went into the 4th quarter with a triple-double: 2 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists. Of course, I picked up a couple more boards and assists, ruining my falsely beautified box-score, but I’m willing to take a hit for the team. The team that managed to squeak out a victory, 43-23. Ugly? Yes, but it counts.

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Thanks to Paul Johnson for the fine photo-doctoring.

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Remember that really racy Superbowl ad that had the whole room scratching their heads, thinking to themselves, “I thought they were going to be tasteful this year?” Well, it turns out that, after one airing, the NFL complained, and Fox decided that “its content was very much out of step with the tenor set by the other ads and programming broadcast by Fox.”
I will grant that I was watching the game in a room full of mostly Midwestern church-going types, but EVERYONE in the room cringed when the ad came on. And continued to do so for the full, uncomfortable 15 minutes. Well, maybe it was only 30 seconds, but it felt like longer. My question is this: how out of touch with reality must you be to think that, in the wake of Janet Jackson and Desperate Housewives, running this advertisement is a good idea?

Today is Friday. Yesterday, Thursday, it reached temperatures of 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the fair city of Ames, Iowa. For non-Midwesterners, let me clarify that this is ridiculously warm. The predicted high for today is 61°, which surpasses the previous record by 14°. The average high for February 4th is 30°. In light of this, I rode my motorcycle yesterday. And I CERTAINLY plan to do so today.
In light of this, I figured that it was time to upgrade from my learners permit to an actual operators license. To do so, I need only pass the driving test. The reason I do not yet have a license is because the driving test is offered only at 9am, and I generally have other things to do. Like WORK. But no more. Fortunately, I have enough experience with bureaucrats to call first. Are you doing motorcycle driving tests today? “Oh, no. We don’t do those in the winter because it’s too wet.” OK, when do you start doing them? “(Voice in background corrects her). Oh, I didn’t know that. Hang on one second, I’ll go find out.” I hang on for about 347 seconds. The DMV opened at 8:30, which is when I called. I am beginning to think that, even if they do offer the test, I will miss it because I am still on hold.
A different voice. “How may I help you?” I was holding to find out if there were motorcycle driving tests today. “Oh, right, hang on just one moment.” Right, I’ve heard that before. This time, only one to two moments later, “I’m sorry, we’re not doing those today, the parking lot is too wet. We need it to be completely dry.” Alright, thanks for checking.
Now, I understand that the parking lot needs to be dry to accurately assess whether or not I can stop, start, and turn within the completely arbitrary guidelines. However, I’m assuming that these people realize that, though the lot may be damp now, it certainly will be dry (and freakin’ beautiful) later on this afternoon. And I will most certainly be riding my motorcycle on a 60° February day. And I will not feel guilty about not having a license.
The moral of the story is, if the cops pull me over, I’m running. What’s the worst that could happen?
Oh. Right. Nevermind.

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Word of the Day That I Have Never At Any Point in My Life Been Able to Spell Correctly or Even Close Enough that Microsoft Recognizes and Corrects It: bureaucrat.

Today I am going to Chicago with the Powers’. I will be back tonight. Just think, me in the car all day with Dave and Mandy… it will be like 12 Hours of Powers.
Last night I spent a great deal of time playing around with the Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer, which I found via Erik Sautter (whose name is misspelled in the links section of this page). This fine page will take a picture that you upload and morph it to change your age, race, or gender. Maybe it was because we were at this until 2am, but I don’t think Dan, Kleinke, or I have ever laughed so hard. We, of course, used pictures of our sleeping roommates (which we then printed and hung around the house), but in the interest of fairness, I will keep them off the internet. For now.
The site works much better if you use a high-resolution picture (I didn’t on these). I think they turned out OK anyway. So, just in case you were curious (and I know you weren’t), this is what I would look like if I had come from somewhere other than the United States. Or, in the case of the last one, looked like the age that I act. Or, in the case of the next to last one, was a monkey.

Asian Pat

Black Pat

Indian (Not Native American) Pat

ChimpPatZee

Crusty Old Pat

There, now you can all have lots of laughs at my expense. I sure did. And if you think those are creepy, be glad I didn’t post Baby Pat or Female Pat (both with goatee).
Have a nice day. To not to puke too much.