Well this looks like some good news...
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Monday, September 27, 2004
Top ten storms
This past weekend, Hurricane Jeanne made landfall in Florida, with its effects being felt in Pittsburgh by way of an ugly Steelers game that was moved back to 8:30 Sunday night. After dropping never beforeseen amounts of rain on Pittsburgh, Hurricane Ivan's remnants swirled back around to the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical depression... Since I haven't done a top ten list in awhile, now seems like as good a time as any to revisit the ten worst storms or weather phenomena that I've experienced personally...
10. Assorted freezes - Twice in the last five years, I remember periods of about three weeks in January where the temperature in Pittsburgh not once broke 32 degrees... Horrible cold snap, especially for someone like me who hates cold weather...
9. 1998 Pittsburgh Tornado - The sight of a tornado making its way across Pittsburgh's Mount Washington started many locals here... I remember not going to frisbee pickup because the weather was pretty bad... As it turned out, Washington Blvd, where the fields were, was also flooded... this I learned from someone who actually went to play...
8. Blizzard of '96 - The memory of this storm is largely folded up into the 185 inches of snow we had in Syracuse my freshman year there... After all that snow, I never wanted to see another flake again in my life... Ironic, since I wasn't actually in Syracuse when the storm hit... The subsequent thaw, which struck the day I flew back to Syracuse at the end of the winter break flooded Pittsburgh... One of the Weather Channel's honorable mentions in its Storm of the Century retrospective...
7. Poultry Days storm - 1999 - More than any other storm, I was in this storm. It came up quickly as I was at the Poultry Days ultimate frisbee tournament in Versailles, OH. Many of the players took cover under a pavillion at the fields, from which we coud get pelted by the sideways-flying rain and watch as the village of tents that most of the players stayed in (including myself) blew away... When the storm finally subsided after 30 intense minutes, nothing was left dry... To top off all the soggy wetness, my ex-ish girlfriend went to find hotel space for our team and wrecked her car in the process... My team didn't win a game all weekend, I lost my last Syracuse disc and someone locked my keys in my car... Perhaps the worst weekend of my life...
6. Memorial Day storm - 2002 - The skies darkened, the wind howled and the radar over Pittsburgh was all red. Sure enough, some fierce thunderstorms were on their way through... Long story short: badass thunderstorm killed some folks out at Kennywood, knocked out power lines that caught fire, burning a hole in Wilkins Avenue and I didn't have power for about a day...
5. Florida tornado outbreak - 1998 - OK, so this one is kinda cheating, since I wasn't actually in Florida during the tornado outbreak, but it caused a pretty spooky evening nonetheless. It was a week or two later, and my ultimate frisbee team was in Florida on spring break. Following the Frostbreaker tournament in Gainesville, we were headed to a vacation home in Destin. Sure enough, we were caught in some pretty strong thunderstorms as we drove across the panhandle along the Gulf of Mexico. We knew about the tornados that had been in the region but we also didn't have much else to do besides push on down the road. So we drove carefully, while tempting fate, listening to the soundtrack from the movie "Twister" and the They Might Be Giants album, "Flood." All turned out well, but for a few hours, we didn't really know what to expect...
4. Western Pennsylvania tornado outbreak - 1985 - Another scare from a big storm that I wasn't actually "in"... When I was a youngun', I used to fall asleep listening to Pittsburgh Pirates games on the radio... In May of 1985, I was only 7, but I knew two things: I liked the Pirates and tornados could seriously fuck your shit up... When the national weather service interrupted the game I was listening to as I fell asleep on May 31 to warn all of western Pennsylvania that there were tornados in the area, it scared the hell out of me... That the shutters were blowing open and closed didn't make my parents' reassurances that we were OK sound very convincing... Of course, all turned out well for me, but to this day I remember being terrified by the ominousness of it all...
3. Hurricane Ivan - It had been raining all day in Pittsburgh, but the big picture didn't start revealing itself to me until I started driving to DC that afternoon. Water streaming down staircases? Pooling on Beverly Road? It didn't take long to realize that this was the worst weather I had ever seen in Pittsburgh. By the end of the day, nearly 6 inches of rain fell on Pittsburgh, breaking the single-day record set just the week before by a whopping 2.4 inches! Photos like these do the storm a lot more justice than I could do with words. This, for instance, isn't supposed to be a canal, it's a major highway... The fountain at Point State Park was also completely submerged by Saturday morning when I drove through town and witnessed the storm's impact... Truly an unforgettable event...
2. Blizzard of '93 - I was living in Summit, NJ at the time, and most of all I remember the amazing amount of snow that fell. I want to say we had 30" or so... Some lady paid me to shovel her driveway, which was probably about 50 yards long and she was puzzled as to why I couldn't finish the job in one day. I guess somehow she was completely oblivious to what was going on around her. Over a foot of snow was seen from Canada all the way down to Alabama, with much of the Appalachian region getting over 20 inches and hurricane-like damage down in Florida. By the numbers, it was the worst storm to hit the east coast in recorded history. Ouch.
1. Labor Day storm of '98 - According to the weather forecast, thunderstorms were supposed to move through Syracuse early Labor Day morning. They didn't bother to mention that hell was also scheduled for a brief recess at the time. In just about an instant, heat lightning and the distant roll of thunder turned into blinding rain, unreal amounts of lightning and 110 mile per hour straight line winds.
10. Assorted freezes - Twice in the last five years, I remember periods of about three weeks in January where the temperature in Pittsburgh not once broke 32 degrees... Horrible cold snap, especially for someone like me who hates cold weather...
9. 1998 Pittsburgh Tornado - The sight of a tornado making its way across Pittsburgh's Mount Washington started many locals here... I remember not going to frisbee pickup because the weather was pretty bad... As it turned out, Washington Blvd, where the fields were, was also flooded... this I learned from someone who actually went to play...
8. Blizzard of '96 - The memory of this storm is largely folded up into the 185 inches of snow we had in Syracuse my freshman year there... After all that snow, I never wanted to see another flake again in my life... Ironic, since I wasn't actually in Syracuse when the storm hit... The subsequent thaw, which struck the day I flew back to Syracuse at the end of the winter break flooded Pittsburgh... One of the Weather Channel's honorable mentions in its Storm of the Century retrospective...
7. Poultry Days storm - 1999 - More than any other storm, I was in this storm. It came up quickly as I was at the Poultry Days ultimate frisbee tournament in Versailles, OH. Many of the players took cover under a pavillion at the fields, from which we coud get pelted by the sideways-flying rain and watch as the village of tents that most of the players stayed in (including myself) blew away... When the storm finally subsided after 30 intense minutes, nothing was left dry... To top off all the soggy wetness, my ex-ish girlfriend went to find hotel space for our team and wrecked her car in the process... My team didn't win a game all weekend, I lost my last Syracuse disc and someone locked my keys in my car... Perhaps the worst weekend of my life...
6. Memorial Day storm - 2002 - The skies darkened, the wind howled and the radar over Pittsburgh was all red. Sure enough, some fierce thunderstorms were on their way through... Long story short: badass thunderstorm killed some folks out at Kennywood, knocked out power lines that caught fire, burning a hole in Wilkins Avenue and I didn't have power for about a day...
5. Florida tornado outbreak - 1998 - OK, so this one is kinda cheating, since I wasn't actually in Florida during the tornado outbreak, but it caused a pretty spooky evening nonetheless. It was a week or two later, and my ultimate frisbee team was in Florida on spring break. Following the Frostbreaker tournament in Gainesville, we were headed to a vacation home in Destin. Sure enough, we were caught in some pretty strong thunderstorms as we drove across the panhandle along the Gulf of Mexico. We knew about the tornados that had been in the region but we also didn't have much else to do besides push on down the road. So we drove carefully, while tempting fate, listening to the soundtrack from the movie "Twister" and the They Might Be Giants album, "Flood." All turned out well, but for a few hours, we didn't really know what to expect...
4. Western Pennsylvania tornado outbreak - 1985 - Another scare from a big storm that I wasn't actually "in"... When I was a youngun', I used to fall asleep listening to Pittsburgh Pirates games on the radio... In May of 1985, I was only 7, but I knew two things: I liked the Pirates and tornados could seriously fuck your shit up... When the national weather service interrupted the game I was listening to as I fell asleep on May 31 to warn all of western Pennsylvania that there were tornados in the area, it scared the hell out of me... That the shutters were blowing open and closed didn't make my parents' reassurances that we were OK sound very convincing... Of course, all turned out well for me, but to this day I remember being terrified by the ominousness of it all...
3. Hurricane Ivan - It had been raining all day in Pittsburgh, but the big picture didn't start revealing itself to me until I started driving to DC that afternoon. Water streaming down staircases? Pooling on Beverly Road? It didn't take long to realize that this was the worst weather I had ever seen in Pittsburgh. By the end of the day, nearly 6 inches of rain fell on Pittsburgh, breaking the single-day record set just the week before by a whopping 2.4 inches! Photos like these do the storm a lot more justice than I could do with words. This, for instance, isn't supposed to be a canal, it's a major highway... The fountain at Point State Park was also completely submerged by Saturday morning when I drove through town and witnessed the storm's impact... Truly an unforgettable event...
2. Blizzard of '93 - I was living in Summit, NJ at the time, and most of all I remember the amazing amount of snow that fell. I want to say we had 30" or so... Some lady paid me to shovel her driveway, which was probably about 50 yards long and she was puzzled as to why I couldn't finish the job in one day. I guess somehow she was completely oblivious to what was going on around her. Over a foot of snow was seen from Canada all the way down to Alabama, with much of the Appalachian region getting over 20 inches and hurricane-like damage down in Florida. By the numbers, it was the worst storm to hit the east coast in recorded history. Ouch.
1. Labor Day storm of '98 - According to the weather forecast, thunderstorms were supposed to move through Syracuse early Labor Day morning. They didn't bother to mention that hell was also scheduled for a brief recess at the time. In just about an instant, heat lightning and the distant roll of thunder turned into blinding rain, unreal amounts of lightning and 110 mile per hour straight line winds.
Once the storm had passed, Syracuse emerged to witness the amazing amounts damage: random debris everywhere... Nearly half of the trees around the University were gone with many falling onto cars, roofs and walls ripped off of buildings... It was literally a disaster area. 8:00 curfew was imposed and my apartment didn't have power for four days...
Friday, September 24, 2004
Survivorblogging
Survivor is back on the air, and along with it comes the return of Survivorblogging! After last week's Survivor season premiere, I didn't have much to say about the introduction to this season... well, not much beyond not being a big fan of the men vs. women approach... It seemed especially out of place since it was used not too long ago in the Amazon season... Certainly, I'd think that Mark Burnett and company could come up with some creative ways of dispersing the players into two tribes (the tribe draft from season five was brilliant)...
In any case, we have a tribe of women and a tribe of men... With the first two challenges having balance beams as a critical element, it seems as though they have been designed to favor the women... (yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and stereotype women as having more skills relevant to operation of a balance beam)... The challenge last week, where the teams simply had to navigate the balance beam was one thing, but tonight's reward challenge was pretty nuts...
In case you missed it, the tribes each lined up on seperate balance beams... The objective was to have each tribe member manuver him or herself past all other members of their tribe still on the balance beam while only touching one tribe member at a time (the one you're passing)... once the first person had snaked past fellow tribemembers, that person was off the beam and there was one fewer person to avoid... the winner was the tribe whose members had all reached the end of the balance beam...
Now there are plenty of guys with a good sense of balance, but they're not exactly the types that get cast for Survivor. Typically, the men are big, brutish fellows with plenty of muscle who may not exactly be light on their feet. This season is no exception. Just watching them try to squeeze past one another was pretty comical... You could see that they had precious little chance to get by...
Now the types of women cast on Survivor weren't exactly made for this challenge either... Once again, the women on the show are rather well endowed and this challenge involved a lot of full frontal contact between tribe members... Nevertheless, the women had to be the favorites here because the men involved were just so hopeless...
Eventually, the men did win a challenge and the women had to vote someone off tonight... Her statement at the end revealed that she really wanted to go, but I'm still disappointed Dolly left... Perhaps her "strategy" was only designed to get her kicked off, but if that weren't the case, I think she would have been a fascinating player to watch... Her discussions about who to keep and who to kick out stirred the pot quite a bit and made for exciting gaming that kept everyone on their toes... I don't recall if she was the one who suggested voting out Leann, but that sorta came out of nowhere...
In any case, we have a tribe of women and a tribe of men... With the first two challenges having balance beams as a critical element, it seems as though they have been designed to favor the women... (yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and stereotype women as having more skills relevant to operation of a balance beam)... The challenge last week, where the teams simply had to navigate the balance beam was one thing, but tonight's reward challenge was pretty nuts...
In case you missed it, the tribes each lined up on seperate balance beams... The objective was to have each tribe member manuver him or herself past all other members of their tribe still on the balance beam while only touching one tribe member at a time (the one you're passing)... once the first person had snaked past fellow tribemembers, that person was off the beam and there was one fewer person to avoid... the winner was the tribe whose members had all reached the end of the balance beam...
Now there are plenty of guys with a good sense of balance, but they're not exactly the types that get cast for Survivor. Typically, the men are big, brutish fellows with plenty of muscle who may not exactly be light on their feet. This season is no exception. Just watching them try to squeeze past one another was pretty comical... You could see that they had precious little chance to get by...
Now the types of women cast on Survivor weren't exactly made for this challenge either... Once again, the women on the show are rather well endowed and this challenge involved a lot of full frontal contact between tribe members... Nevertheless, the women had to be the favorites here because the men involved were just so hopeless...
Eventually, the men did win a challenge and the women had to vote someone off tonight... Her statement at the end revealed that she really wanted to go, but I'm still disappointed Dolly left... Perhaps her "strategy" was only designed to get her kicked off, but if that weren't the case, I think she would have been a fascinating player to watch... Her discussions about who to keep and who to kick out stirred the pot quite a bit and made for exciting gaming that kept everyone on their toes... I don't recall if she was the one who suggested voting out Leann, but that sorta came out of nowhere...
Thursday, September 23, 2004
Missing again?
OK, so I keep going a week or so at a time without posting... what's the deal? Well, since my lease expired at the end of August and I didn't have a new apartment to move into, I've been staying at my dad's place this month. Needless to say, the bulk of my stuff is still packed up and the things that are setup, like my computer, aren't in the most comfortable of locations... the setup isn't particularly good, making it difficult to blog... Besides, I'd really prefer that family members aren't among the OMB audience... it's just better that way...
To top it all off, the current setup has me a little off-kilter... Something about being unsettled really throws me off... I can go on vacation or to a frisbee tournament and be perfectly comfortable living out of a bag, but when it's the day-to-day type of stuff, it just doesn't work well...
The inevitable problem that goes hand-in-hand with not being settled is that you don't have the same independence you have when you're in your own apartment... If there's one thing I really, really like it's my independence... so that sucks too...
Now don't get me wrong, my family is great and it's nice to not pay rent... but I haven't lived with either of my parents since the summer between junior and senior years of college... For that matter, I never actually lived with my dad in the house he's in now... I don't even have "my old room" to go back to...
Anyway, I actually do have a lot of stuff to write about... Hopefully, I'll soon be resettled (exciting news in and of itself) and I'll be able to start sounding off more frequently...
To top it all off, the current setup has me a little off-kilter... Something about being unsettled really throws me off... I can go on vacation or to a frisbee tournament and be perfectly comfortable living out of a bag, but when it's the day-to-day type of stuff, it just doesn't work well...
The inevitable problem that goes hand-in-hand with not being settled is that you don't have the same independence you have when you're in your own apartment... If there's one thing I really, really like it's my independence... so that sucks too...
Now don't get me wrong, my family is great and it's nice to not pay rent... but I haven't lived with either of my parents since the summer between junior and senior years of college... For that matter, I never actually lived with my dad in the house he's in now... I don't even have "my old room" to go back to...
Anyway, I actually do have a lot of stuff to write about... Hopefully, I'll soon be resettled (exciting news in and of itself) and I'll be able to start sounding off more frequently...
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Plays of the week
Hurricane Ivan's menacing stroll through the Caribbean prompted precautionary measures from the Lesser Antilles through the Gulf Coast. But while many people were boarding up and taking cover in Aruba, one man found himself in a completely surreal game of poker that sounds like the stuff of fish tales. Check it out...
Monday, September 13, 2004
Huh?
The good folks at Nestle have decided to introduce the world to the inside out version of a Kit Kat bar. Now I don't know about you, but when I first saw this sitting on the convenience store counter, I yelled out, "but that's impossible!" After all, wouldn't this necessitate having the crispy wafers on the outside?? Sure enough, they're not, and I must say that I'm disappointed...
Now perhaps the very existence of this confection is in response to the inside out Reese's peanut butter cups... Only difference is that the Reese's folks actually put the inside stuff (the peanut butter) outside and the outside stuff (chocolate) on the inside... The site with the aforelinked review of the Peanut Butter Cups (or... are they now chocolate cups?) also reviews the inside out Kit Kats... needless to say, the one that makes sense gets the better review...
And as a completely unrelated aside, while looking for examples of the aforementioned candy bars online, I came across a blog about food titled "Chocolate and Zucchini" that at least one of my loyal readers will appreciate...
Now perhaps the very existence of this confection is in response to the inside out Reese's peanut butter cups... Only difference is that the Reese's folks actually put the inside stuff (the peanut butter) outside and the outside stuff (chocolate) on the inside... The site with the aforelinked review of the Peanut Butter Cups (or... are they now chocolate cups?) also reviews the inside out Kit Kats... needless to say, the one that makes sense gets the better review...
And as a completely unrelated aside, while looking for examples of the aforementioned candy bars online, I came across a blog about food titled "Chocolate and Zucchini" that at least one of my loyal readers will appreciate...
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Two for the price of two
I have a curious habit... OK, I have lots of curious habits, but one particular quirk pertains to my DVD shopping... I never explicitly go shopping for DVDs... instead, I randomly browse the selection of used stuff at my local music store looking for good stuff that's cheap... But unless I find something really good, I'll almost never buy just one DVD... In order to make a purchase, I feel compelled to find a second good yet inexpensive DVD to purchase along with the first one that I want...
So as I was killing time this evening, I found myself browsing the DVD section at The Exchange (nee: The Record Exchange)... There, I spied a copy of Three Kings for $6... at $2 per King, that's not bad! But would I buy it? No... at least not unless I found a second film that I wanted...
So I looked the choices over and over, coming up with the best options I could find... Almost Famous and The Matrix were each available for $6, but I have the former and I've been told that a friend has a spare copy of the latter... Eventually, I narrowed my choices down to three: The Terminator (T2 would have been an easy choice), Nothing But Trouble (starring Humpty Hump and Digital Underground) and Legally Blonde...
I hemmed and hawed over the choice... Take one of this trio, along with Three Kings or walk out empty-handed? For whatever reason, I feel compelled to go 'double or nothing' on my DVD purchases... (yes, you can also question my choice to purchase any DVDs when I don't have any notable income to be spending)... At this point, what choice do you - the OMB reader - make? Answer in the comments...
Luckily for me, I wasn't bound by the limits of Choose Your Own Adventure... Careful examination revealed a copy of Summer of Sam for $8, and that ended the debate... Thusly, the DVD collection has grown again...
So as I was killing time this evening, I found myself browsing the DVD section at The Exchange (nee: The Record Exchange)... There, I spied a copy of Three Kings for $6... at $2 per King, that's not bad! But would I buy it? No... at least not unless I found a second film that I wanted...
So I looked the choices over and over, coming up with the best options I could find... Almost Famous and The Matrix were each available for $6, but I have the former and I've been told that a friend has a spare copy of the latter... Eventually, I narrowed my choices down to three: The Terminator (T2 would have been an easy choice), Nothing But Trouble (starring Humpty Hump and Digital Underground) and Legally Blonde...
I hemmed and hawed over the choice... Take one of this trio, along with Three Kings or walk out empty-handed? For whatever reason, I feel compelled to go 'double or nothing' on my DVD purchases... (yes, you can also question my choice to purchase any DVDs when I don't have any notable income to be spending)... At this point, what choice do you - the OMB reader - make? Answer in the comments...
Luckily for me, I wasn't bound by the limits of Choose Your Own Adventure... Careful examination revealed a copy of Summer of Sam for $8, and that ended the debate... Thusly, the DVD collection has grown again...
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Pick 'em
Josh has posted his week 1 NFL picks... I've added mine (even if the preview of the comment didn't look quite as awful)... You should add yours, since you're just about guaranteed to do better than myself...
Saturday, September 04, 2004
New Poll
In honor of my recent post about the glory of Emerald Nuts commercials and to please all the folks who've found OMB via searches such as this (#2 hit on Google, baby!) and this (#2 on Yahoo!), this week's poll is about those commercials... which group of E.N's is your favorite? Look over the list on the sidebar (below "Recommended Reading") and vote!!
So much food!
Much to my delight, I see that there is now a Carnival of the Recipes... Once I'm settled and have a kitchen, there's no doubt I'll be a regular reader/tester...
If you're not familiar with the Carnival concept, it is a weekly roundup of interesting blog posts about a particular topic voluntarily submitted by the authors of the aforementioned posts... The Carnival of the Capitalists, for instance, is a roundup of posts about economics... I believe that the Carnival of the Vanities was the first and it has been the inspiration for many other carnivals...
If you're not familiar with the Carnival concept, it is a weekly roundup of interesting blog posts about a particular topic voluntarily submitted by the authors of the aforementioned posts... The Carnival of the Capitalists, for instance, is a roundup of posts about economics... I believe that the Carnival of the Vanities was the first and it has been the inspiration for many other carnivals...
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Fortune teller
Last night, I cleared out and walked out of my apartment of the last three years for the final time... Leaving the apartment of the law school years was kinda tough... after all, I liked the apartment... I hadn't lived in one place for this long since junior high school, so it was a bit strange... Anyway, while I was packing up some of my stuff sometime over the last month, I came across an unopened fortune cookie... Instead of busting it open at the moment, I chose to save it for the moment I walked out the door as an omen of things to come... Somehow, that seemed appropriate even if it was a bit like betting blind...
Now there are plenty of fortunes that aren't so much forward looking... The one I carry in my wallet reads, "you are sociable and entertaining"... It's astute, but not really the stuff omens are made of... But despite that, it was something I felt compelled to do anyway... As I stepped out of my world of law school and into the vast abyss of "real life", I read my fortune: "Everywhere you choose to go, friendly faces will greet you."
Now there are plenty of fortunes that aren't so much forward looking... The one I carry in my wallet reads, "you are sociable and entertaining"... It's astute, but not really the stuff omens are made of... But despite that, it was something I felt compelled to do anyway... As I stepped out of my world of law school and into the vast abyss of "real life", I read my fortune: "Everywhere you choose to go, friendly faces will greet you."
