Coffee war of 2010

As with any office, the pulse of the Home Office relies on coffee.  It’s brewed before the morning dog walk, and sometimes even consumed while we lazily just let the dogs out the back, blaming the weather.  On average we brew 2 pots a day, usually filling it at the 7 cup mark on the Krups. We drink it out of big mugs. I thought everything was just fine, until Will woke up one day and said those dreaded words:

“I think we’re drinking too much coffee”

I rolled my eyes and gathered my defenses, because I knew what happened and what was coming. Either he read something somewhere, or he himself hadn’t been feeling well and decided to blame coffee. But, much like the Great Gym Push of 2009, once he has something in his head he was going to be a single minded prick and try to make me do something I didn’t want to do. In this case… drink decaf.

The new coffee bar. The secondary measuring cup is necessary because rare is the day that I can keep track of how many scoops I've put in the filter from start to finish. I start filling it up, but then start thinking of something else (ideas!) and have to dump it out and start over. I should be on medication. Or at least FULL CAF COFFEE.

Yeah, so Will implemented, without any vote, the “Half Caf” coffee brewing procedure. We got all this Gevalia coffee for Chrismukkah, so the idea is to blend it with the decaf. Let’s just say that I’ve been more eager than usual to make the coffee, so that I have control of the caf/ decaf ratios.

This new [ridiculous] rule has also made me much more motivated to do the food shopping. Because inside the Pathmark is a Dunkin Donuts. And inside that Dunkin Donuts is a large full caf coffee with my name on it. For extra spite I get half and half instead of skim. Last week I came in the apartment doing a dance, spinning around, then took out my empty DD coffee cup. I believe the word “sucka” might have been uttered.

Let’s hope this phase passes quickly.

Worth having a baby just to try this

Our friends introduced us to DJ Hero this past weekend. It’s pretty awesome. Even more awesome is that the male half of the couple, say we call him Josh, jazzed up his DJ turntable with an aftermarket skin.

There is something incredibly refreshing about a 33 year old buying a $15 decal for their fake DJ turntable. "I thought shipping was included," was his defense

Anwho, after seeing how good my girlfriend is at the game, Will promptly suggested that she play DJ Hero– and only play DJ Hero– for the full 3 hours that her new babysitter is at the house each day.  That’s it. No work. No emails. No radio. No reading. No cooking. No paying attention to the baby. Just play DJ Hero. While some 22 year old is changing the baby’s diaper in the next room. That night she thought that was a great idea, but I have a feeling she might have chickened out and actually did some work. Lame O.
DJ Hero is awesome, I can’t get my “My Name is”/ “Loser” remix out of my head.  It’s also fun because there is no end to the Sam Ronson jokes, of which we have a surprising number of in our repertoire.

I’ll have a pizza with extra gimmick, please

Someone commented to me on Facebook, “You live in Brooklyn, but ordered Domino’s pizza?” Why yes, yes I did.

All hail the Domino's pizza tracker, perhaps the best application of the Internet since porn

Tempted by their 2 pizzas for $5.99 promo, I was elated when the above pizza tracker was emailed to me after I placed my online order.  It tells me precisely what time my pie is processed, made, put in the oven, QC’d* and sent out for delivery, and who exactly is doing each step.  It’s riveting. I’m not kidding. Although the guys didn’t quite appreciate me interrupting the Jets playoff game with updates, a la, “GUYS, GUYS!!! Jonathan just put our pizzas in the oven!!”

So yes, it’s enough for me to order from Domino’s, even though I live in the pizza capital of the world. Must be the Long Island in me.

* Quality control needs a little Quality Control itself… our “pepperoni/ green pepper” came with sausage instead of the meat we selected. Jonathan’s “double check” is a bit questionable. We have a free pie credited to our account, though I’d have to call, eliminating my ability to track my pizza. Don’t know if it’s worth it.

And this, son, is how you get picked for a focus group

A timely follow up to the recounting of my side career as a focus group attendee…

I was thinking that it would have been funny if we had a camera ready when the focus group lady called the other day. Lucky for everyone, I got another screener call as I was hoping into the shower– sexy!–  and the camera was ready.

Watch and learn the steps to successfully getting selected for a focus group, with a real time demo. It could use some editing, but I’m lucky to have my computer on for 5 minutes at a time without blue screening.

I’ve been working on the railroad

I am a pretty pretty good interviewer. If only I could keep the Hollie show going for more than short bursts. Maybe I SHOULD try sales! Will was a little too excited when I told him at the station that I’m sick of talking today.

Anywho, I love love Amtrak if not for the stressless ride than for the snack car!

Business idea

You know how in “Knocked Up” the guys are trying to make a web site documenting the naked scenes in every movie?

I am going to launch DogBarkMovies.com

My dog goes absolutely ape shit whenever she hears a dog in a movie. And it’s not like you need to be watching Air Bud or Beethoven or Snow Dogs. There can be a barely discernible, dog somewhere in the background of a busy city scene (as we learned while watching Taxi Driver), that you would not normally notice if it wasn’t for Lucaya knocking over whatever is in the way between her and the window to go check it out.

We just watched Cool Hand Luke last night and the prison escape scenes were barely tolerable… the blood hounds chasing sexy Paul Newman nearly gave my dog a coronary.

I think I might actually get going on DogBarkMovies.com. To know where to fast forward to not have to deal with an out of control, mouth foaming dog would be great. Investors, please come forward.  Or others who might like to watch movies and document any scene in which a dog starts barking.

Birthday wishes

Happy birthday to the youngest member of the Home Office, Baby Lucaya

She might be 2 today, but we will continue to tell people she's "just over a year" until she stops jumping/ lunging/ attacking puppies/ stealing gloves/ not coming when she is called/ blatently ignoring any commands we fruitlessly order

Does the Hula Hoop Union have a health plan?

The big NYC snow storm happened exactly a week after Festivus .  We needed to get out of the house and ye olde buzz on since we  had a stressful snowy drive back from the latest stop on the 1 year old birthday party circuit. We had a solid 10 minute walk home from the pub where we watched some sporting event (I can’t recall what we needed to see, but it required walking far in the snow to find a place that had it on TV AND food). By the time we left, it was nutso snowing out, so that 10 minute walk became 20.

Snow storm got ya down? What else to do but 2 man pub crawl all the way home!

The last bar closest to home, Bar 4, is not my favorite place. It’s loud, often has live music, and is filled with people no older than 25 years old.  We walked in and it was the same old scene, and I was just about to suggest that we forget it and go home, when… I hear an announcement that it was the last chance to buy raffle tickets before the first performances started.  It ends up, God Bless Brooklyn, that we stumbled upon some theater troupe’s holiday party.  A pretty girl in a bomber jacket, goggles, and mini skirted Santa gear sits next to us, tells us she’s the Sleigh Driver, then takes a shot of whiskey. Take off your coat, honey, we’re staying a while.

To our delight, the first act was called to the stage and it was no other than the Sleigh Driver herself, who apparently is a professional hula hooper.  She had a whole pin up style hula hoop performance set to Feliz Navidad. The whole time I’m thinking, “how does one get into this, and how did opportunities like being a professional hula hooper pass me by?”

After some diligent googling, Will was able to find the profile of the hula hooper, pictured here at an event, on a hula hooping community web site. And here I was thinking he was networking on LinkedIn all day.

Best part — one of the raffle prizes was a personal hula hoop lesson with her!  I could not stop thinking about how this would had all played out if Festivus was that night. I know at least one friend who would have proposed to her, and another who would have spent about $2000 on raffle tickets to win the lesson (only to win season tickets to the troupe’s performances, I’m sure).

That chick has nothing on me hula hooping on Main St in Disney World. Just about as sexy. Just about.

Happy New Year, Maaaaaary

I brought 2010 in classy as usual, with my last memory of the evening being knocking a Jenga game over in my attempt to “keep dancing”, i.e., trying to stay awake and balance.  Let’s just say my drive home from Manhattan to Brooklyn the next day was not pleasant.

Anywho, our neighbors have been celebrating their holidays in style, as for about the 10th time since school let out (she’s a teacher, he a photographer) we heard the can-only-be-one-thing moaning and  creaking above our bedroom. I mentioned to Will that I think they might have just gotten engaged.  Will quickly needed to know why I thought this and was a little perturbed that I hadn’t shared my hypothesis and supporting reasons.

Because, you see, somehow over the past month Will has become the building yenta.  In drips and drabs he’d start mentioning how neighbor A is visiting his boyfriend in DC. And how neighbor B has a much higher than usual electric bill. And how it took neighbor C 2 hours to get over the GW after Christmas. Oh, and Neighor D usually makes black eyed peas and cabbage on New Year’s day (Will was hoping for an invite)… he must be from the South.

And so Will's new nickname is born. Welcome, Jackee.

He’s even been racing the old lady neighbor to shovel the snow out front, and has befriended her so that she continues to leave toys for our dogs at our stoop.  I’m afraid to go back to work and come home to find a canasta tournament going on in the apartment.

Ice Hot Squalls season tickets on sale now!

In an attempt to keep myself occupied while there is hockey on TV, I busted out the whiteboard

A peek into the "If you had a new hockey team, what would you name it" brainstorming session.

As you can see, the names started falling under the categories “Hockey related” ” Olde Timey” ” War” ” Occupuations”* and “Eskimo/ Cold weather related”

In the end, we think the SQUALLS win it alllllllll!

* Yes, I realize “Mercenaries” and “Emperors” are a stretch under the Occupations category, and that Millers should be there. You can’t disturb a good brainstorm