Mike

Sometimes lo-tech is the best-tech

I know that my Mac has an app called Stickies but this is so much easier and harder to ignore.

[Click it if you want to know what I'm up to.]

Before you can ask, I was a blond, probably a dumb one, before it all went grey.

The King of the Jungle

Psycho is jealous.  He thinks I take more photos of Champ.

It's a miracle!

24 hours and 60 mg of prednisone later and Champ has almost stopped scratching.  I think I'll skip giving him a bath today and see how it goes.

I now have the prednisone side effects to cope with.  Champ is drinking 3-times as much water as he would normally drink and peeing 4-times as much as he would normally pee.  Don't ask me how that last part is possible, but it is.  There's no sleeping through the night for either of us.  When he's got to go, he's got to go.  I wonder if this is what my old age will be like when my prostate packs it in.

Champ also wants to eat continuously.  I'm not letting him because I don't want my 70 lb dog ballooning into a 100 lb dog over the next 3 weeks.  He's currently playing hockey with his empty food bowl because he's pissed at me for not refilling it after he ate his breakfast.  I guess I'll have to listen to that thump-thump-thump! until dinner time.

Prednisone also makes some dogs, fixed or not, try to hump everything in sight.  Be content with the mental image because there won't be any photos.  Photos live forever on the Intertubes.

Do they pray for God to save my soul? Probably too late.

Two years ago I poked gentle fun at the name of a Lutheran church on Bees Ferry Rd.  Since then I've had little reason to drive by the church because developers built a new street into Shadowmoss from Bees Ferry that gets me home quicker.  This morning while driving from Walmart to Bi-Lo I passed the church and noticed that it has a new name.

Is it because of something I said?

Beard Award Finalists

I mentioned last month that a number of Charleston chefs made the initial list of nominees for this year's Beard Awards.  The finalists were announced today.  Making the cut were Sean Brock from McCrady's for Rising Star Chef of the Year, Mike Latta from Fig for Best Chef - Southeast, and Robert Stehling from Hominy Grill for Best Chef - Southeast.  The winners will be announced on June 8th at a gala at Lincoln Center, New York.

Poor Champ - 2008 Edition

Last March Champ developed a severe allergy to something and went on antibiotics and prednisone for a couple of weeks.  I wondered at the time if the allergy was caused by all of the tree pollen swirling around.  By the time he finished the prednisone he was fine but pollen season was over, so it was hard to tell if that was the problem.

Now I know.  Tree pollen season started two weeks ago and so did the scratching, licking, and chewing.  The symptoms were mild at first and I thought maybe Champ and I could last it out but it wasn't to be.  This weekend all Champ did was scratch, lick, and chew if he was awake.  I took him to the vet this morning and he's back on prednisone for the next 3 weeks.  Since he hasn't yet chewed any sores on his legs he didn't need the antibiotics.

The vet suggested that I bathe Champ every day to wash off the pollen.  Oh joy!

It's going to be a very Sweet Sixteen

My lead continues to grow.

Mike +$7
William -$2
Justine -$5

William surges, Justine sinks

Mike +$6
William -$3
Justine -$3

At the end of Round 1

It's a good thing we're just playing each other and not people who actually know something about college basketball.  We all got burned yesterday.

Mike     +$5
Justine  +$2
William  -$7

After Round 1 of Round 1

Mike +$4

William -$2

Justine -$2

A hopeful sign?

I haven't seen many signs like that West of the Ashley.  More often I see signs like this:

Champ at sunrise

I'm up $2

Mount St. Mary's 69 - Coppin State 60

William and Justine had Coppin State.  I had Mount St. Mary's.

I'll keep ignoring you as long as that dog is in the house

Champ sez, "What about me?"

[You can click it too.]

JanetLee wanted me to post a new Psycho photo

[Click away]

Six Words

It's gone from being a meme to a book.  I know that other bloggers have done this but I've resisted because I thought that it was impossible to sum up a life in just six words - especially my complicated, at least 36-word, life.  After listening to an interview with Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser on "To The Best of Our Knowledge" on NPR this morning I thought, "What the hell?  Why not give it a try?"

You had to be at the very first Charleston blogger meetup to hear why my blog is called Notoriously Nice Mike, and I won't repeat it, but here's the six word explanation:

"Mike, you're a nice guy but..."

It was a dark and stormy night...

Brian would know better than I would but it seems to me that for more than a year the storm fronts that plowed across the south lost their strength, or even disappeared, before they got to our little piece of the coast.  That streak ended last night.  There were multiple reports of tornadoes in the area that the Weather Service will have to sort out.  Tornadoes are rare in the Lowcountry but I'm wondering if the spring of '08 will be as active as the spring of '06 was when we had, I think, 11 confirmed F0 touch downs.

I rode out the storm with friends in the comfort of a Mt. Pleasant restaurant.  Great food, great conversation.  I think at one point, during dessert, we looked out of the window and remarked, "Wow, look at that rain and lightning". Thankfully, the worst was over before most of us had to drive over the Ravenel Bridge.  BTW, thanks to JanetLee and Jason, Dave and Kathy, James, Janet, and Pam for a wonderful evening.  It was a nice change from beer and bar food.

(Last night was the fourth out of the last sixteen that I dined with someone other than Champ and Psycho.  I think I'm in danger of having a social life.  Scary.)

Playtime @ Bond

The best part of studying for your Master's degree in Sports Science is getting to play!  On Friday, I went to lab for my Emerging Technologies in Sport course and I was told to go take a jog!  Okay... anyone who really knows me knows that I don't find great enjoyment out of jogging, but it was better than being bored in class!  It was a beautiful day and a friend of mine had recommended a beautiful running path, so I jogged.  Why was I told to jog?  So that I could use our GPS devices, of course!  The goal was to experience using the devices and software, but as an added bonus I got to see where I ran on a Google satellite map!  The software also showed how fast I ran, my altitude, and my heartrate (when used in conjunction with a heart rate monitor).  When I put my running path on top of the Google satellite map of my location, it didn't show the different speed or heart rate zones and it was a few meters off at times, but otherwise awesome!  Take a look!!!

[Click it for a better view.]

The building I have all of my classes in is underneath the big red squiggle.  That particular building is at the bottom of campus.  If you care to see the rest of the campus just look up Bond University, QLD with Google Earth or Google satellite maps.  I live in the building by the pool.

-- Justine

Minute Movie Review (the last one for now)

The only reason I got Live Free or Die Hard from Netflix was to see how low the Die Hard franchise could go.  My verdict?  Pretty low.

Growing up in the 50s I watched lots of black and white horror and sci-fi films where the monsters were actually toys posed frame-by-frame, the UFOs dangled from wires, and rockets took off thanks to sparklers.  To a 9-year old it all seemed so real.

Fifty years later the computer generated images in today's films look impressive, but also just as phony as those crude effects from the 50s.

Minute Movie Review (almost done)

I'll make my review of We Own the Night quick. If you haven't already seen it, don't bother.  See The Departed instead.

Still here?  Joaquin Phoenix mumbled his way through the film, Mark Wahlberg phoned it in, and Robert Duvall, great actor that he is, was in danger of becoming a cliché.

Mutt Monday

No photo this time, just an overheard conversation.  When Champ and I went for our walk this morning we passed an elderly gentleman who said to the younger woman walking with him (and that I later learned is his daughter), "That's a dog that loves life".  She replied, "That's Champ".

Minute Movie Review (I'm just getting started)

I missed Lust, Caution when it blew through town and, while waiting for the DVD release, I wondered why the film had been snubbed by the Oscar nominators.  After all, it’s Ang Lee.  Was Hollywood nervous because of the NC-17 rating for graphic sex scenes, one of which was brutal?  After watching it I think I know the reason.  It’s not Lee’s best work.  Yes, the story is compelling.  Yes, it’s beautifully acted.  Yes, it is beautifully filmed.  Lee always manages to attract the best writers, actors, and cinematographers to his projects.  The problem is that at 2 hours and 38 minutes, it’s way too long for the underlying story.  I know that I’m just an armchair critic but surely Lee, screenwriters James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang, and editor Tim Squyres could have found a way to trim at least 30 minutes.  When you repeatedly click the display button on the remote to see how much longer the film will go on, it’s probably not a good thing.

Minute Movie Review (still more to follow)

Waitress is charming on all levels.  It’s told as a modern-day fairy tale, which can be irritating to some people (I know I hated it when Pushing Daisies did that) but for a 2-hour, small, indie film it works.  The big surprise is Andy Griffith as Joe.  Not only does he get many of the best lines but he looks and sounds better now than he did in the last episode of Matlock.  Waitress is also a great foodie film with food porn dialogue like this:

Joe:  This afternoon I want the “Singing Tuna Fish Casserole”, no pickle on the plate.  Well-done Frenchie fries with melted Swiss cheese and gravy on their own plate, and “Jenna’s Special Strawberry Chocolate Oasis Pie”.  You got that?

Jenna:  I got that.

Joe:  Give me a smile, Jenna.  Nobody makes strawberry chocolate pie the way you do.   Wednesday’s my favorite day of the week, ‘cause I get to have a slice of it.  I think about it as I’m waking up.  Could solve all the problems with the world, that pie.

Jenna:  You’re making too much of it.  It’s just a pie.

Joe:  Just a pie?  It’s downright expert.  A thing of beauty.  How each flavor opens itself, one by one, like a chapter in a book.  First the flavor of an exotic spice hits you, just a hint of it.  And then you’re flooded with chocolate, dark and bittersweet, like an old love affair.  And finally strawberry; the way strawberry was supposed to taste, but never knew how.

If a woman were to whisper things like that in my ear I’d melt and do anything she wants me to do.

Minute Movie Review (more to follow)

For over 60 years the Brits have made many of the best “heist” films, from The Lavender Hill Mob, to The Italian Job (the original, please), to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, so I was expecting The Bank Job to be great and I wasn’t disappointed.  There were many scenes that reminded me of Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and a few where I wished that Ritchie had been involved in this movie in some way, but overall it’s great fun.  (One thing that reviewers never caught onto with Lock, Stock is that the film was Ritchie’s hommage to all of those British films that came before.)  I watch, and have always watched, a butt-load of British films and TV shows, either in the theater, on TV, or on DVD so I had fun seeing a lot of familiar faces in The Bank Job.  If you remember her, see if you can spot Sharon Maughan, famous for her role in the innovative Taster’s Choice coffee commercials, in a small role.

Does DST mean Daylight Stupidity Time?

We already know that it does to Congress.

Yesterday I heard an anchor on Fox News say:  "I don't mind losing an hour of sleep because I'll get an extra hour of daylight."

Uh, no you won't.

It never fails to fail

My electricity, that is, whenever we have extreme winds and we had them yesterday.  (This has always puzzled me because the power lines in Shadowmoss are buried and SCE&G seems to be good at hiring crews to clear tree branches from the transmission lines leading into Shadowmoss.)  Whatever.  The power went out at 10:20 yesterday morning.  I took advantage of the internet downtime to run some errands and when I got back at noon the power was back on.  Temporarily.  In my house the smoke alarms and cordless phones beep shrilly when the power goes off and when it comes back on again.  For a 30-second stretch just after 1:00 it sounded like they were sending Morse code to each other before things went very quiet.  When I was convinced that this would be another long outage I went to see a movie (review to follow later).

The power was back on when I returned at 4:00 and the winds had died down a little.  I reset the cable modem, the router, and turned the laptop back on.  Then nothing.  The Mac couldn't find a router with the name Justine had given ours but it did find, and automatically log onto, one called "linksys" that didn't need a password.  The signal was 95-100% but there was a problem.  I couldn't connect to the internet.  Out of curiosity I unplugged my router and immediately lost the "linksys" signal.  When I plugged my router back in again the Mac immediately logged back onto "linksys". Evidently "linksys" is my router and during, or because of, the power outages it reverted to its default name which, I gather, screwed things up.

Not to worry, I told myself, which is usually when I most need to worry.  I can connect the Mac directly to the cable modem using the Ethernet port, which I did.  Nothing, nada, zilch.

Since I was in way over my head at that point I waited until this morning, went to Charleston Coffee next to the Bi-Lo on Bees Ferry, and used their free WiFi to email Justine with all of the details.  (I also got a large decaf and two danish.)  Fortunately she was still up studying (it was tonight there).   She emailed back, "The cable modem won't give you direct access until you call Knology and have them switch you from the router to no router.  Remember all the yelling I used to do because they wouldn't set it up to do both?  lol  Once you get that switched on, the best thing to do is run off that until I'm online...We'll leave the rest of it until I'm online and have a moment to figure it out."  I phoned Knology and even though I'm tethered to the modem, at least I'm back online and the withdrawal shakes have almost stopped.

Another review of dinner at FIG

Stephanie, from the Charleston City Paper, was there.  Her favorite?  The Over Easy Ravioli, of course!

I'll believe it when I see it

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

Sledding tonight!

-- LittleMike

Mondays suck, so laugh when you get the chance

Via Heather (she reads lots of blogs so that you don't have to) and The Chalkboard Blog, enjoy 25 of the Funniest Web Designer Links For Your Mondays.

My favorite?  Error 404 -- Document not found.  A must see for Douglas Adams fans.

What did you have for dinner?

This is what I had:

[Click it so that you can read it.]

FIG (which stands for Food is Good) was one of fourteen Charleston restaurants participating in the Dine-Around, part of the Charleston Food + Wine Festival.  Each restaurant hosted guest chefs from around the country and served a five-course dinner, each course paired with a wine.  Of the fourteen restaurants, FIG easily had the best lineup of chefs:

• Beard Award winner Suzanne Goin, owner and executive chef at Lucques in West Hollywood
• Beard Award winner Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin in New York
• Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez, owner and executive chef at Lassi in New York
• and, of course, FIG's own Beard Award nominee Mike Latta

I can't begin to image what the kitchen must have been like as 75 people were served each course simultaneously, with military precision, and with little delay between the courses.  A big up to the front-of-the-house staff for helping to pull that off.

Everything on the menu was delicious, perfectly prepared, and beautifully plated but the course that got everyone talking was Mike Latta's Over Easy Ravioli - ravioli filled with egg yolk.  Why?  Because the egg yolk was hot but still runny - not undercooked, not overcooked.  The woman sitting across from me asked, "How did he do that?" and the best I could come up with was, "Magic."

Actually the entire evening was magical.  Thank you, again, Janet.