My Cat

Because I don't want to shortchange our cat...

We started having her sit in response to a clip of Vanna White trying to make her cat sit for treats.

Oh... and next on my list of things to do: get a haircut.

Skin Test

I'm allergic to cockroaches.

I'm still battling hives, and after a week of scratching as I haven't been able to take any medication for my hives, I finally had a skin test done. The way they do a skin test is to write a grid all across your back and stick you with a bunch of different needles - by my count it was about 342 dozen painful pricks or so. The pricks up near the shoulders are relatively pain free. They are nice enough to start you out up there, but as the endless pricking continues, the lower ones hurt a lot and a number of them sent chills all throughout my body.

When your back is completely covered in small nicks of blood, then you have to wait twenty minutes and not scratch, even though almost immediately that is the only thing you want to do. This is when my long battle with hives has come in handy. I've gotten to the point where I usually don't think about scratching when I itch, which is a little messed up. My experience with the skin test yesteday is that the nurse is nice enough to check back in every so often with friendly reminders that you itch all over. "Oh, it looks like you have a few spots that really itch! No scratching! Fifteen more minutes!" I think she enjoys the torture.

My allergies include ragweed, dust mites, some sort of mold, and yes, cockroaches. I've never had seasonal allergies so ragweed was surprising. The dust mites, the doctor's free brochure tells me, are ugly little things that accumulate in my mattress. I first learn this during my brief time selling vacuums and quickly recall that dust mites excrete ten times their own body weight each and every day! Mold and cockroaches I'm sure that I'm around, but I almost never see them.

Anyways, the good doctor concludes that my hives are not an allergic reaction. What this means is that my body is causing the hives and I just have to live with it, for up to fifteen years, at which point it will be 2023 and I'll be comforted by my flying car and robotic housekeeper.

I also have a minor allergy to my cat, which still has no name, but isn't going anywhere.
Or at least that's what my wife says.

More on My Greatness

Building on that last post, I love England. I've tried to write about this before but I don't think I ever did so successfully, so if this is a repeated idea, I apologize.

I love England for it's greatness. And by England, I mean Great Britain. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. But I think if I were English I'd also be free, and I'd have a good chance of being great. I don't know any statistics, but just think about all the British people. The Beatles, Harry Potter, James Bond, the Rolling Stones, The Lord of the Rings guy, Clive Owen, umm... Sir Francis Drake... that's not too mention the English language and the English system of government and maybe some other stuff. I mean the English are great!

I think England's greatness stems from its size. The entire country is about twice the size of my state, or commonwealth, Virginia, albeit it much more populated. If you're English, you're English, whereas if you live in Virginia, you're American. I feel like there is a responsibility to be great if you're English; you have to represent, whereas for me, if I'm not great, I'm sure one of the other 300,000,000 will be. I know they're out there, I watch American Idol.

Furthermore, I just read that Raphael, the artist not the mutant turtle, was born in this tiny town called Urbino, which Wikipedia says is "small but artistically significant." For some reason it makes me want to be an Urbino-eer, Urbino-ite, Urbinese. I want to be from somewhere important and loved. I want to be important and loved.

I'm from Roswell, GA, which was a great place to grow up, but I don't really have a sense of pride about it. I have a hard time imagining what my future biopic would say about the place I grew up in. Maybe I'm saying I want to be surrounded by greatness, that I want greatness to be expected and applauded in all forms wherever it comes from. Maybe I'm just saying that as I realize my own limitations I look to whatever I can to cast my blame.

I am great. But I'm not English great.

My Greatness

As I've mentioned I do have an under-used notebook that is, for the most part, filled with a bunch of gibberish. I'm not sure if it's a journal or a diary as I write in it so little, but the over-riding sentiment throughout it is that of my greatness.

USA Today recently had an article about how the current generation of twenty-somethings is a drifting generation that has yet to settle on a lifetime goal or aspiration. The article I believe focused on how upsetting this is to parents, who just want their kids to be happy, but that part wasn't very interesting. As a member of that generation, and with a destiny of greatness, I feel like I should have something to say about this... let's see if I do.

...hmmm... well, when I was a kid I told my folks I wanted to be King of North Carolina. My parents encouraged this.

I guess I should say first that I am newly married and have started saving with the intention of buying a home, one day. However, my lifetime goals? I still have it in my head that one day I'll be a United States Senator, that I'll write the Great American Novel, that one day I'll be a beekeeper or at least own bees, that I will commission a giant skyscraper to be named The Tower of Duffy, that I will further popularize mass transit and be viewed as a savior for my efforts, that I will start my own business of selling bonsais, that I'll be a household name, not unlike Lance Armstrong or Jesse Jackson, that I will buy an entire street of run-down houses and turn them all into prize-winning homes with prize-winning rose gardens, that I'll win a prize, maybe the X-Prize for my extensive work on the human genome, that I will own a major sports team, that I will travel the world, learning seven languages in the process and finding beauty wherever beauty is to be found, AND that I will do all of this before I turn thirty... better make that thirty-five.

Anyways, while I'll admit that I have my work cut out for me, I'd hardly label myself a drifter. I'm more of a dreamer. I dream of my own greatness. I want to be great but am well aware of the reality and I would be happier unknown in a quiet place than in the spotlight. As I wrote once in my notebook, it's not that I have delusions of grandeur, it's that I have delusions of delusions. And who knows, maybe my parent's should be worried about that.

I'm an NCAA Loser

Just a quick update: after the first two rounds of March Madness, my bracket is completely busted and I don't stand a chance. With so many upsets this year, I would be surprised if anyone will win the $5 million prize from Yahoo to someone who gets them all right.

Oh well, bring on the baseball season... and soccer.

NCAA Bracket

Okay, so Tiff is gearing up for the big dance and started a Tournament Pick 'Em group if anybody wants to sign up. I think you might need a yahoo email account, but otherwise it's free. And, if you get the picks all right you have the chance to win 5 million dollars. It's a small chance, but it's cheaper than playing the lottery. While I haven't paid any attention this year to who's who, I'll be rooting for Clemson, who lost in the one game I did watch this year, the ACC Championship.

The Madness of Sports

It's March and I am not happy. Believe it or not it has been March for awhile now, but the Madness that comes with March is just about to arrive. That's right the NCAA Tournament is gearing up and looks to be as exciting as always.

I'm not happy because I have unofficially sworn off basketball and this time of year it is hard not to follow along with the festivities. I am prepared to give up baseball as well. For baseball, the departure of Andruw Jones from the Atlanta Braves sealed its fate in my eyes, but I am also determined to get into soccer this year and I didn't want conflicting sports. I also believe soccer to be the next great sport in the US.

My home team is DC United. They are undoubtedly one of the best in MLS, and with a little luck, hopefully they can prove it this year. They've started out right, advancing yesterday to the semis of a pre-season tournament.

It is admittedly hard to get into soccer though, mainly because of the lack of media coverage. One game a week on ESPN2 is about all you get. For this reason too, it's hard to avoid baseball and basketball without giving up on all sports. Baseball's season hasn't even begun and already they've captured many of the headlines. The games aren't even that exciting, and last season I followed along mainly by reading about the games, and if there were any great plays mentioned I'd look to see if they made it onto YouTube. Basketball is a little easier to avoid for me for whatever reason, but this March Madness thing is everywhere.

Basketball has it's advantages though as it's the only sport that Tiffany will sit and watch with me for an extended amount of time. And without any questions too! What I'm getting at here is that they are exciting to watch. Most sports are. That's why most people watch them. That's why there are entire channels devoted to them. So why not enjoy them. Why not join the madness that is March Madness and root for the underdog.

Bees!

Bees are dying off. It's a fact. There aren't nearly as many bees around today as there was just a few years ago. It seems like everyone is so caught up with the fate of polar bears, that this whole bee issue has gotten a bum deal. "Everyone" being anyone who cares about that sort of save the world stuff, of which I proudly stand.

Don't get me wrong, the polar bear thing raises huge concerns and we, as a society, should be worried about the big furry beasts. However, I believe the decline of the tiny buzzing beasts is much more concerning. Plus, with polar bears, we know what's happening. For whatever reason, the ice caps are melting, which is problematic for these bears. With bees though, there's no reason for the die-off. There isn't even a good guess, or at least not a frontrunner. My guess is it has to do something with the all the meds in the water... or MTV.

While bees can be seen as a frightening nuisance - a dead one has rested in peace in the back of my car for over a year now in part because I don't want to get stung by it - they are an important part of agriculture. They help flowers bloom, apples grow, and let's not forget their sweet, sweet pee... I mean, honey. When you get right down to it, they are pretty miraculous little animals, bees are.

Anyways, all this bee-talk is to lead up to a news story about a flatbed truck that flipped over in California. It was carrying some 30,000 bees, which if I'm doing the math right, translates into a whole bunch of bee stings during the clean-up. Luckily, "several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling." It's good to hear that the beekeeper population hasn't taken a hit. I mean if several beekeepers are just passing by this turned over truck and stop to help out, I have to wonder just how many beekeepers are there in California?

Also in severe decline in recent years is the bat population, which are just ugly animals all around, so they're not quite as important.

Sanbai Kaeshi

Happy White Day, everybody. Is it wrong that I feel politically incorrect saying that?

White Day is a Japanese holiday celebrated one month after Valentine's Day where women generally give candy to men. The idea behind it is that you give back thrice the value of what you got. In Japanese this is called sanbai kaeshi, or "thrice the return", which like all Japanese terms, I have fun saying. This year, according to sanbai kaeshi and thanks to the savings challenge, I won't expect too much.

For some reason though, women are suppose to be wearing white today, two months before Memorial Day... the horror! On a side note, white is also the color adorned by those who have completed the Shikoku pilgrimage, which admittedly I want to do in part because I want to be able to use the word Shikoku in normal conversation.

In America, while white is not part of the deal, I have heard of a similar celebration of sorts with a much cruder name. If the creators of this holiday weren't quite so blunt with their name giving, it might have actually caught on.

By the way, it seems strange to me that Japan celebrates St. Valentine's Day. I guess Japan falls victim to crazy marketers just as much as the US does... I'm expecting to see Mother's Day decorations at Wal-Mart any day now.