My previous job was ‘Rona’d and I’ve just started a new one, which includes a fair amount of work from home, and I’m dealing with setting up the home office (not taking the deduction, tax man), medical, etc.
Tag: family
When Your Drive through Resembles a Lab from the Andromeda Strain
When I dropped off Charlie at work this evening, I picked up some egg rolls and won ton soup at Seafood Wok. (Nat got spring rolls and hot and sour soup)
This is actually the one of the first restaurants that I ate at once I moved up to the Baltimore and was living in a hotel before we got an apartment.
I rather like their fried dumplings and soups.
In any case, they had shut down for a while as a result of the pandemic lock-down, but now they have reopened as a pickup only restaurant.
They modified the vestibule of their restaurant to provide a safe way for people to pick up their orders.
The new normal is profoundly weird.
I Hate Charcoal Briquettes
I like to grill, and I like grilling with charcoal.
I think that gas is a crutch for weak, and when smoking, I throw in some wood for flavoring.
Do to Covid-19, I’m trying to keep my traveling to a minimum, and the nearest store only had Kingsford® briquettes.
Chunk charcoal is made by taking pieces of wood, and heating them in a low oxygen oven to drive off all the non-carbon compounds.
Briquettes, on the other hand, are made from sawdust cooked in low oxygen ovens, and then combined with a binders (Lime and Starch) and a release compound (Borax) and pressed into a pillow shape in a mold.
Since I use a chimney fire starter, (Yes, I know, Amazon is evil, but if you buy from this link, they pay me) where you place paper at the bottom of a tube, and charcoal at the top of the tube, and set the paper alight, which ignites the charcoal with no residue in about 10 minutes.
This compares favorably to lighter fluid, where you need to wait about 20-25 minutes, and produces a lot more air pollution.
Unfortunately, it has been my experience that when I use briquettes, there is about an additional 5-10 minutes of foul smelling smoke as the binders and release compounds burn off.
It does not effect the quality of the food, and when you add a few briquettes to an existing fire, the smoke is minimal, but startup is slower and nastier than chunk charcoal.
As an FYI, I grilled dinner for Sharon* for Mother’s Day.
I grilled steak for Sharon and myself, and burgers for the kids, who do not like steaks and roasts.
I also did up some zucchini with salt, pepper, garlic power, onion powder, and olive oil on the grill in foil pouches, and grilled some pineapple (add a small amount of kosher salt to draw out the liquid so that it can carmelize) for dessert.
And a good nosh was had by all.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Important Covid-19 Related News
Charles, my son, has successfully cultured two sourdough starters, one from wheat (Willie) and a gluten free one from millet (Mike).
Charlie has not named the starters, I did.
He managed to produce a pretty decent loaf of sourdough this evening from Willie.
I still say that we should put googly eyes and pipe-cleaner whiskers on the jars, and do a meme video, but Charlie is unconvinced.
Deep Thought
3 days into Passover, and I am already sick and tired of Matzoh.
Vegetal Bukkake
It’s pollen season, which means that various plants are in the process of making life, and breathing miserable.
I’m starting to sneeze, and this will probably move to a cough, over the next week or two.
This sucks, particularly since every time I cough, it goes something like this:
OK, This Sucks
Kingspan will continue to pay 60% to workers who have been locked down to those who are required to shelter in place, which is a rather humane approach to all of this.
Truly shared sacrifice is something to be supported.
Considering my “Pinko” proclivities, this is an opportunity for my butt to cash checks that my mouth wrote:
Kingspan will cut executive pay by 50% and implement a 40% cut for the rest of its 14,500 staff for two months due to unprecedented production and demand disruption from coronavirus, according to a letter to staff obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
………
Kingspan, which earlier announced it would withdraw its proposed final dividend for 2019 and had a strong balance sheet with more than 1 billion euros in cash and committed undrawn bank facilities, would also immediately freeze all spending that is not business critical, Murtagh said in the message to staff.
Needless to say, things will be tight for a while.
If the governor locks down the state of Maryland, as have the governors of California, Pennsylvania, and New York, I’ll work from home. I have my work laptop at home, and can VPN in.
Do not expect updates, as I try NOT to blog about my work.
Went to a Public Event Tonight
The Open Space Arts 3rd Annual Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre.
A good time was had by all, and every single server was wearing gloves.
Charlie was one of the actors, and Sharon made a couple of the gift baskets at the silent auction.
I Am Not as Think as You Drunk
Happy Purim everyone.
If you are reading this, I am hopefully having a problem distinguishing between Haman and Mordecai.
I Love Our Cats
One of those cute murderous bundles of mischief has just thrown up in our washing machine.
Thankfully, there were no clothes in there, so a quick wipe and a quick cycle, everything is OK.
No Debate Drunk Blogging Tonight
Charlie is in Open Space Arts‘ production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which is opening tonight.
The curtain is at 7:30, so I will be missing the debates.
My liver is relieved.
Had to Change My Wife’s Tire
It was as uneventful as a tire change on a road with a minimal shoulder.
Unfortunately, my huffing and puffing for about a half an hour in 31° (F) weather has left me with a runny nose and a headache. (I am currently hydrating)
Worst Impression of OJ Simpson Ever
No, not THAT one, the other one.
I got home to Baltimore, but almost missed the flight from Memphis.
I had to run through the terminal in an imitation of OJ Simpson’s Hertz commercial from the 1970s.
Trust me, this nonathletic, poorly coordinated, and chubby Jew did not fly over anything.
Will Wonders Never Cease
I am on the flight, and for the first time for me in literally decades, the flight is only less than half full.
This means that Sharon and I have a row to ourselves.
The flight might not be the usual agony.
Tweet of the Day
— Sword lesbian. (@TMSTSTFD) August 30, 2019
Who amongst us has not been tempted to bring home a fake “Boyfriend from hell” for the holidays just to jerk our parents around?
I’m Busy Tonight
My wife just got back from Memphis, where she was visiting her mom, who is in hospital for complications of pneumonia. (She’s doing better now, but if you want to say a Mishabayrach, her mom’s Hebrew name is Miriam bat Chana Shifra)
I intend snuggle bunnies.
1⁄4 Century
On November 30, 1994, I married Sharon Rachel May, now Sharon Rachel Saroff.
It’s our 25th wedding anniversary.
Unfortunately for the single women of the world, I am still unavailable.
Fortunately for me, Sharon* has not (yet anyway) murdered me.
Lord knows that she has ample (no jury in the world would convict her) justification.
Here’s to women with exquisitely poor taste in men. It’s how Saroffs find mates, I guess.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Ouch
My shoulder has been bugging me for a while, so I went to the doctor, and I had my first session of PT today.
I just finished the home exercises.
Then I had Naproxen Sodium.
What a Concept
This is pretty much where Rome was when it began to collapse:
In 2014, Zach Dell launched a dating app called Thread. It was nearly identical to Tinder: Users created a profile, uploaded photos and swiped through potential matches.
The only twist on the formula was that Thread was restricted to university students and explicitly designed to produce relationships rather than hookups. The app’s tagline was “Stay Classy.”
Zach Dell is the son of billionaire tech magnate Michael Dell. Though he told reporters that he wasn’t relying on family money, Thread’s early investors included a number of his father’s friends, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
The app failed almost instantly. Perhaps the number of monogamy-seeking students just wasn’t large enough, or capping users at 10 matches per day limited the app’s addictiveness. It could also have been the mismatch between Thread’s chaste motto and its user experience. Users got just 70 characters to describe themselves on their profiles. Most of them resorted to catchphrases like “Hook ’em” and “Netflix is life.”
After Thread went bust, Dell moved into philanthropy with a startup called Sqwatt, which promised to deliver “low-cost sanitation solutions for the developing world.” Aside from an empty website and a promotional video with fewer than 100 views, the effort seems to have disappeared.
And yet, despite helming two failed ventures and having little work experience beyond an internship at a financial services company created to manage his father’s fortune, things seem to be working out for Zach Dell. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is now an analyst for the private equity firm Blackstone. He is 22.
America has a social mobility problem. Children born in 1940 had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. For children born in 1984, the odds were 50-50.
Most accounts of this trend focus on the breakdown of upward mobility: It’s getting harder for the poor to become rich. But equally important is the decline of downward mobility: The rich, regardless of their intelligence, are becoming more likely to stay that way.
You know, this explains a lot: Donald Trump, Dan Lipinski, Liz Cheney, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Jared Kushner, and Hunter Biden. (also, those folks from Hyannis Port)
Get lucky with the right parents, and any sad sack can become a mover and a shaker.
Light Posting for a While
Some family stuff needs tending to.