Playing Politics

I work with this one guy who loves to talk politics. He’s a nice guy, but loves to spout the conservative rhetoric. Seriously, he comes in with the latest talking points from Sean Hannity or Michael Medved and throws them at us verbatim. I don’t think he even believes a lot of the stuff he’s arguing, but it still gets my dander up. I find myself agreeing more & more with the guy on the other side who argues all the liberal points, tho’ I still claim my position as an unaffiliated moderate with libertarian tendencies.

But the other day the conservative was rambling on about the Right Wing’s current ‘distract-from-Iraq’ topic: Immigration. He’s not opposed to immigration, but he wants all immigrants to enter legally. Fine. But then he goes on to talk about the citizenship test; that it’s not that hard, but that all the liberal college grads (he didn’t go to college) who want to open up the borders have a hard time passing it. So I called him on it: “Hey, I’m a college grad, do you think I’d have a hard time passing it? Seriously, do you think I’d fail the test because I went to college and learned to think for myself? Huh?” Apparently the talk show hosts didn’t tell him what to say when a degree-holder calls bullsh*t, because he just shut up.

So I went online and took a couple citizenship sample quizzes. I scored 18 out of 21. Not too bad for a short white college graduate with critical thinking skills. For the record I was wrong on what year the constitution was written (1787) twice, how many amendments to the constitution there are (27).

Now that I’ve passed the citizenship test my next goal will be to teach my conservative friend how to speak Spanish so he’ll be able to cope with the ever-changing demographic in his Federal Way neighborhood.

Hot Times Living in the City

Anyone notice it's hot out lately? Holy Smokes! We've resorted to taking the hide-a-bed mattress & sleeping on the basement floor. I have to say that these last few nights I've enjoyed some of the best sleep I can remember.

It might strike some as funny, but about the only thing I like to do when it's this hot out is training - either a long, hard bike ride or a good hard run. Perhaps I feel like I accomplish more when I get such a good sweat on. Of course I'm completely miserable afterwards, but at least I can justify the cool-ones I drink by the calories I've burned.

On a separate note: the new TV has the P.I.P (which rocks). I have the M's vs. the Blue Jays on one channel and Hell's Kitchen on the other. I've never watched Hell's Kitchen before, but I'm loving it; mainly because I don't have to deal with those kinds of chefs anymore. I've been selling a lot of restaurants lately, but since we don't do a lot of linen cleaning I haven't run into any ego-maniacal kitchen managers lately. And any time I do I just remember the sage words of Simon: How seriously can you take guy who goes to work in his pajamas.

That's Sooooooo Seattle

I had a moment in which I realized how much a product of my environment I truly am. Today I stopped into my local QFC in the middle of my bike ride, and, while clad in lycra bike shorts, purchased a head of organic romaine. I'd make a lousy Midwesterner.

!Por Fin!

We finally finished the "redeployment" of our patio today. It's been nearly a month-long process but we're done! It was hard, hard work - we had to pull up aprox. 500 8"x15" cement pavers, knock off any existing grout, level, and re-lay them in the new pattern.

I started out de-grouting the blocks with a cold chisel, but found out quickly that this wasn't what Snoop Dogg meant by "Cold-Chizillin'". After cleaning off aprox 2/3rds of the pavers I rented a wet saw to make some custom cuts for corners & odd angles, and found that it was much better than smacking the grout off with a chisel. It only took me 4 hours to do what it had taken me over two weeks to do earlier!

We rented the "Wacker-Packer" again today - it's an industrial-grade plate-compactor. We used it to pack the gravel base a few weeks ago; today we used it to settle the pavers into the sand between them and the gravel. After packing we swept more sand into the crevices between the pavers and called it good.

We celebrated with a pitcher of Margaritas and a feast from the smoker: bacon-wrapped corn & chile pepper (N.Y.) steak. Mrs. Fishpimp found a couple recipes that sounded awesome, so we gave them a whirl. I don't mean to be controversial, knowing that generally speaking bacon improves any dish that it is added to, but the bacon-wrapped smoked ear of corn was nothing special. It was good, but I couldn’t taste the bacon at all. The steak, on the other hand, was fantastic! Even though chipotles are so ubiquitous now a days that they may have jumped the shark, the recipe is a definite keeper.

The Fine Cuisine of Paris

My main man, Jefferson, snapped this while dining in France:


So much for the Huate Cuisinse of Europe.