I think I know some doctors that - you know what? Sometimes I say too many words about things that do not require them. I'm going to let you paint your own picture here.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Medical Space for Lease
This is in a neighborhood on the north side of the city called Mountain View, one of those places that has been given a suspiciously pleasant-sounding name despite showing up a lot in the news when they talk about dead people but which we still sometimes visit because that is where the closest Bed Bath & Beyond is:
I think I know some doctors that - you know what? Sometimes I say too many words about things that do not require them. I'm going to let you paint your own picture here.
I think I know some doctors that - you know what? Sometimes I say too many words about things that do not require them. I'm going to let you paint your own picture here.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Review: Haircut
$15.00 plus tip, Various shops
I do not consider myself to be a thrifty person. I regularly and eagerly pay significant premiums for better versions of things: coffee, poultry, bourbon, electronics, outerwear, soap. Despite frequent self-consciousness about the appearance of my hair, I do not extend this philosophy to haircuts, for which I cannot recall ever having paid more than $15 + tip.
In middle school, I established a longstanding Hair Person at a place within walking distance of my parents' house. His name was Eddie, an affable Hispanic gentleman adept at grooming others but himself sporting an unkempt bundle of straight black hair extending to the middle of his back, making him an extreme outlier on the scatter plot of professional skill vs. personal application of same, like if the P90X guy was 70 pounds overweight. He was the only "stylist" with no female clients in a shop otherwise overwhelmingly reminiscent of a ladies' salon, operating a one-chair barbershop amongst the elderly perm-seeking women of midweek and bridal parties on Saturday mornings. Our arrangement was the sort where I could be squeezed in between other appointments and the cutting began immediately as I sat down, with questions about how my parents were doing instead of how I would like my hair cut, always for an inflation-independent $15 that I rounded up to $20. I even returned sporadically on trips home during college, and then reestablished regular visits after moving back to Texas, despite then living twenty minutes away.
I eventually moved across the country and then further back across it the other way, and in turn moved on from Eddie. He has been replaced with a rotating cast of creepy strangers and inept amateurs, my selection of which is no doubt influenced by a continued adherence to the self-imposed fee cap. I have reasons for doing this. There is the straightforward cost analysis - my standard coiffure is short (although long enough to screw up) and requires length maintenance at four- to six-week intervals, such that the savings vs. a $40 cut comfortably covers, say, a Netflix subscription. There is my stubborn but possibly wrong belief that the degree of difficulty for the result that I am seeking does not necessitate the expertise of an advanced-level technician. There is my acknowledged track record as both willing part-time profligate and undisciplined consumer, such that my only real hope for not leaping into the luxury world of extravagant bi-quarterly grooming sessions is a commitment to convincing myself that such a world does not exist. And sadly, there is the growing evidence that I may in fact perversely enjoy suffering through substandard service just so that I can go home and complain about it.
I have tried several places over the last 4 1/2 years, all of which are effectively the same:
Check-In and Waiting
I forgo making reservations with a particular person, or even calling ahead, as the place either closes at 6:00 PM such that it is completely unforeseeable whether or not I will be able to make it there on a given day, or it suffers such staggering regular employee turnover that any potential new Hair Person from whom I may have received adequate previous service and with whom I might be attempting to schedule an appointment probably no longer works there.
Although the wait rarely exceeds ten minutes, something uncomfortable usually happens. Two unattended boys scurry to the cutting floor to pick up handfuls of strangers' hair clippings for use as ammunition in a totally gross hair fight, in which I am collaterally inconvenienced but in a way that could have been much worse. A regular patron loudly asks the owner why the Italian magazines with the pictures of naked women got moved from the lobby to his office; "Bah, some parent complained," he says, with at least one parent/child customer tandem in earshot. Or the place is arranged with a row of waiting chairs parallel to the row of barber chairs at a separation of maybe twelve feet, with everybody facing everybody else, and I end up accidentally making awkward eye contact with like six different people with wet hair. Clearly, my best option is to claim the most isolated empty seat and just stare intently at my phone until my name is called.
Sitting and Consultation
I am summoned to a chair by a cutter (I contend that "stylists" cannot be had for this price). "How are you today?" she has been told to ask; I am fine. If I am wearing a collared shirt, the collar is clumsily rolled and tucked down into and under itself for neck access, such that I appear to be wearing some variety of tunic. I am outfitted with the standard giant nylon bib.
"How would you like your hair cut?" the cutter asks, as if I am at all qualified to answer this question using the quantitative terms necessary to outline a legitimate game plan. I say something like "Oh, just a trim all the way around," which is so horribly vague yet must be what everybody says. I continue with a series of ambiguous hand gestures while mumbling keywords, typically preceded with "maybe" and ending with an implied question mark, until the cutter nods impatiently and reaches for an implement.
I silently lament that we have not yet achieved the technology to just scan my head immediately after a satisfactory cut and convert the data into instructions for future cuts by some kind of robot barber, although the shop where I currently go has taken a first step toward this in allowing cutters to append my electronic customer file with a description of the haircut they just finished. Unfortunately, it appears that this has only been done once in my file, and now every time I sit down, the cutter is holding a cookie-fortune-sized slip of paper that reads "CHRIS K. - 1/2 INCH OFF ALL AROUND", which definitely sounds like something I would say but seems overly dependent on initial conditions.
The cutter approaches. "Are you enjoying the weather?" she asks; I am not.
Cut
The experience of the trim itself is not noteworthy; there is snipping and buzzing and the cutter's frequent disconcerting confused expressions in the mirror. It lasts no more than fifteen minutes, punctuated with sporadic questions about where I work and how long I have lived here.
It turns out that the most entertaining recurring quirk of not maintaining a consistent Hair Person is not my inept explanations of what I want them to do or the uneasy conversation; it is the predictable inter-cutter disparagement that ensues when the current cutter gets started and sees what a poor job the last one did. "Can I ask you where you got your hair cut last time?" they always ask. "Here," I say (if I did), to which they uniformly reply, "Well, I hope it wasn't me - this is really uneven." This exact interaction has happened at least three times.
She finishes and positions a hand-held mirror directly behind my head and exactly parallel with the big mirror, awaiting feedback while plainly exhibiting the failings of her high school geometry teacher. But that's not important, because I am unable to assess the quality of the job even in general terms until I can look more closely at home - it is shorter, and you fixed whatever the hell it was that last chick did, so at the moment, it looks better. But it is probably still really uneven.
Post-Cut
I interpret the mirror ceremony as the formal conclusion of our time together and await only removal of the smock. This usually happens directly, but once every five or six haircuts, just when I get complacent, I am ambushed with one of the following unpleasant surprise endings:
"You got a haircut," Kristen notices. "It looks...pretty good," she says, sometimes sincerely, sometimes just politely. She sighs. We both sigh. But in a week it will have filled in a bit and I will have figured out this month's way to arrange it into something acceptable, and Netflix is pretty sweet, so I will probably go back.
Summary
Pros:
Overall Score: 187
All reviews utilize their own unique scoring scale, each with no reference datum and extending infinitely in both directions.
I do not consider myself to be a thrifty person. I regularly and eagerly pay significant premiums for better versions of things: coffee, poultry, bourbon, electronics, outerwear, soap. Despite frequent self-consciousness about the appearance of my hair, I do not extend this philosophy to haircuts, for which I cannot recall ever having paid more than $15 + tip.
In middle school, I established a longstanding Hair Person at a place within walking distance of my parents' house. His name was Eddie, an affable Hispanic gentleman adept at grooming others but himself sporting an unkempt bundle of straight black hair extending to the middle of his back, making him an extreme outlier on the scatter plot of professional skill vs. personal application of same, like if the P90X guy was 70 pounds overweight. He was the only "stylist" with no female clients in a shop otherwise overwhelmingly reminiscent of a ladies' salon, operating a one-chair barbershop amongst the elderly perm-seeking women of midweek and bridal parties on Saturday mornings. Our arrangement was the sort where I could be squeezed in between other appointments and the cutting began immediately as I sat down, with questions about how my parents were doing instead of how I would like my hair cut, always for an inflation-independent $15 that I rounded up to $20. I even returned sporadically on trips home during college, and then reestablished regular visits after moving back to Texas, despite then living twenty minutes away.
I eventually moved across the country and then further back across it the other way, and in turn moved on from Eddie. He has been replaced with a rotating cast of creepy strangers and inept amateurs, my selection of which is no doubt influenced by a continued adherence to the self-imposed fee cap. I have reasons for doing this. There is the straightforward cost analysis - my standard coiffure is short (although long enough to screw up) and requires length maintenance at four- to six-week intervals, such that the savings vs. a $40 cut comfortably covers, say, a Netflix subscription. There is my stubborn but possibly wrong belief that the degree of difficulty for the result that I am seeking does not necessitate the expertise of an advanced-level technician. There is my acknowledged track record as both willing part-time profligate and undisciplined consumer, such that my only real hope for not leaping into the luxury world of extravagant bi-quarterly grooming sessions is a commitment to convincing myself that such a world does not exist. And sadly, there is the growing evidence that I may in fact perversely enjoy suffering through substandard service just so that I can go home and complain about it.
I have tried several places over the last 4 1/2 years, all of which are effectively the same:
Check-In and Waiting
I forgo making reservations with a particular person, or even calling ahead, as the place either closes at 6:00 PM such that it is completely unforeseeable whether or not I will be able to make it there on a given day, or it suffers such staggering regular employee turnover that any potential new Hair Person from whom I may have received adequate previous service and with whom I might be attempting to schedule an appointment probably no longer works there.
Although the wait rarely exceeds ten minutes, something uncomfortable usually happens. Two unattended boys scurry to the cutting floor to pick up handfuls of strangers' hair clippings for use as ammunition in a totally gross hair fight, in which I am collaterally inconvenienced but in a way that could have been much worse. A regular patron loudly asks the owner why the Italian magazines with the pictures of naked women got moved from the lobby to his office; "Bah, some parent complained," he says, with at least one parent/child customer tandem in earshot. Or the place is arranged with a row of waiting chairs parallel to the row of barber chairs at a separation of maybe twelve feet, with everybody facing everybody else, and I end up accidentally making awkward eye contact with like six different people with wet hair. Clearly, my best option is to claim the most isolated empty seat and just stare intently at my phone until my name is called.
Sitting and Consultation
I am summoned to a chair by a cutter (I contend that "stylists" cannot be had for this price). "How are you today?" she has been told to ask; I am fine. If I am wearing a collared shirt, the collar is clumsily rolled and tucked down into and under itself for neck access, such that I appear to be wearing some variety of tunic. I am outfitted with the standard giant nylon bib.
"How would you like your hair cut?" the cutter asks, as if I am at all qualified to answer this question using the quantitative terms necessary to outline a legitimate game plan. I say something like "Oh, just a trim all the way around," which is so horribly vague yet must be what everybody says. I continue with a series of ambiguous hand gestures while mumbling keywords, typically preceded with "maybe" and ending with an implied question mark, until the cutter nods impatiently and reaches for an implement.
I silently lament that we have not yet achieved the technology to just scan my head immediately after a satisfactory cut and convert the data into instructions for future cuts by some kind of robot barber, although the shop where I currently go has taken a first step toward this in allowing cutters to append my electronic customer file with a description of the haircut they just finished. Unfortunately, it appears that this has only been done once in my file, and now every time I sit down, the cutter is holding a cookie-fortune-sized slip of paper that reads "CHRIS K. - 1/2 INCH OFF ALL AROUND", which definitely sounds like something I would say but seems overly dependent on initial conditions.
The cutter approaches. "Are you enjoying the weather?" she asks; I am not.
Cut
The experience of the trim itself is not noteworthy; there is snipping and buzzing and the cutter's frequent disconcerting confused expressions in the mirror. It lasts no more than fifteen minutes, punctuated with sporadic questions about where I work and how long I have lived here.
It turns out that the most entertaining recurring quirk of not maintaining a consistent Hair Person is not my inept explanations of what I want them to do or the uneasy conversation; it is the predictable inter-cutter disparagement that ensues when the current cutter gets started and sees what a poor job the last one did. "Can I ask you where you got your hair cut last time?" they always ask. "Here," I say (if I did), to which they uniformly reply, "Well, I hope it wasn't me - this is really uneven." This exact interaction has happened at least three times.
She finishes and positions a hand-held mirror directly behind my head and exactly parallel with the big mirror, awaiting feedback while plainly exhibiting the failings of her high school geometry teacher. But that's not important, because I am unable to assess the quality of the job even in general terms until I can look more closely at home - it is shorter, and you fixed whatever the hell it was that last chick did, so at the moment, it looks better. But it is probably still really uneven.
Post-Cut
I interpret the mirror ceremony as the formal conclusion of our time together and await only removal of the smock. This usually happens directly, but once every five or six haircuts, just when I get complacent, I am ambushed with one of the following unpleasant surprise endings:
- Surprise Assault with Undesired Styling Product: The least jarring and least intrusive. It catches me off-guard but I am about to go home and wash my hair anyway.
- Surprise Straight Razor Neck Shave: I suppose the shave itself is not a surprise since I know it's coming once I get past the shock of the zero-warning hot foam slathering to my cervical vertebrae. Truthfully, I found this to be pleasant upon return visits when it was no longer a sneak attack.
- Surprise Side Burn Truncation: The cutter grabs the trimmer one more time and slowly moves in to address what I assume is a stray hair near my ear before abruptly squaring off an edge and leaving an unfortunate gap between the end of my head hair and the beginning of my beard.
- Surprise Comprehensive Above-the-Armpits Massage: Not acceptable, especially from this Cambodian man in a denim shirt that smells so strongly of cigarettes. This only happened once and I didn't know what was going on until it would have been more awkward to say something, and then all of the sudden he's encircling my temples and then moving down behind my ears and onto the base of my neck and JUST EXACTLY WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE SIR. I just might have to file some sort of formal complaint, and I am definitely still only paying you fifteen dollars.
"You got a haircut," Kristen notices. "It looks...pretty good," she says, sometimes sincerely, sometimes just politely. She sighs. We both sigh. But in a week it will have filled in a bit and I will have figured out this month's way to arrange it into something acceptable, and Netflix is pretty sweet, so I will probably go back.
Summary
Pros:
- Upwards of 85% of individual hairs measurably shorter than before
- Good natural light and decent cell phone service in waiting area
- Zero head wounds sustained
- Fifteen dollars
- Constant unease
- Have to listen to story about cutter's car trouble, including route numbers, transfer locations, and schedule information for bus taken to work instead
- Excessive unintended asymmetry
Overall Score: 187
All reviews utilize their own unique scoring scale, each with no reference datum and extending infinitely in both directions.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Poorly Researched Local History: Hugi-Lewis Studio
In the late 1970s, Anchorage native Hugi "Huey" Lewis and his rock and roll band "The News" had developed a strong local following, primarily built on the reputation of their captivating live shows; their legendary appearance at the 1978 state fair in Palmer is generally cited (with little competition) as the greatest live music performance ever to occur in Alaska.
Looking to record a first album, Lewis and the band stayed local, renting a small space in a retail strip near the Spenard area of the city; there, they spent several months working with legendary Anchorage producer Pete Harskins, eventually releasing their self-titled debut in June of 1980. The album's modest success, in conjunction with the band's increased visibility from their regular appearances as the house band during the final months of the Chuck Woolery-hosted era of Wheel of Fortune, provided both opportunity and public demand for additional recordings. The band returned to Alaska to record their breakout self-produced hit Picture This in the fall of 1981, and again in early 1982 to reunite with Harskins for their third effort, Sports, which would eventually go on to become the best selling album ever recorded in Alaska.
The success led to change, as the band expanded to 14 members (including six saxophonists - the most ever in an Alaska-based band), and with the modest Anchorage studio no longer sufficient to host the growing horn section (and, some might say, the equally inflated Lower 48-style egos), all future albums beginning with Fore! in 1983 were recorded in a spacious abandoned distribution warehouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Although not often mentioned in guidebooks or walking tours of the city, the building remains, now all but hidden amongst shops in a thriving but unassuming strip mall on Northern Lights Boulevard. The suite housing the historic studio space was purchased by Lewis's estate in 2009 and named for him, using the traditional Yup'ik spelling of his given name. Today, the storefront houses a small museum showcasing band memorabilia, including several buckets of sand taken from the set of the music video for If This Is It, which was filmed on the shores of Kachemak Bay, near Homer.
Poorly Researched Local History is a recurring feature in which an Anchorage landmark is examined through a lens of outright lies and fake anecdotes that I totally just made up right now.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Well This is Misleading
OH THE HORROR hey wait a minute:
This was for a story about a bizarre (if not especially unique) landslide formation threatening to eventually block truck access to the North Slope oil fields. A mass of thawing permafrost soil is lurching towards the only road that runs through the upper interior of the state and the oil pipeline that runs parallel to it. The engineering challenges of contending with this "frozen debris lobe" are certainly significant; the thing is 60 feet tall, 300 feet wide, and over a thousand feet long.
But the sensationalism of the headline entertains. I suppose an editor can't be blamed for hoping to capitalize on the public's ongoing fascination with confounding viscous masses attacking Alaska, like the mysterious foul-smelling sea blob that made news in 2009 (which turned out to be algae) or the mysterious orange goo washing up on shores in 2011 (which was initially concluded to be as a bunch of microscopic eggs of some TBD crustacean but was later determined to be a mass of spores from a fungal parasite of spruce trees). But those were both weird smelly globs of muck adrift at sea that may or may not have been some new gross species from, like, space or something, identified by scientists only well after their initial sightings on the shores of villages. This is just a pile of dirt and ice - anticlimactically acknowledged as such in the very first sentence of the article, no less - moving less than half an inch per day, which is notable geologically but is not particularly blob-like per the traditional and more disgusting kind of definition that comes to mind.
The unnecessary drama of the headline is seemingly conceded by the alternate phrasing used for the online version of the same story:
I like to imagine a negotiation between the guy who thought it needed to be toned down and the guy who wanted to stick to his guns. ["Alright, fine, we can change from 'Mysterious blob' to 'Frozen landslide', but only if we can also change 'threatens' to 'threatens TO DEVOUR', and I know you're not going to go for it, but I really think we could throw a few exclamation points in there too. Plus we get to use 'MYSTERY CLUMP' as the subheading for the second section."] Also edited out is the clarification that it is moving, which I guess is now assumed because that is what makes a thing a landslide instead of just land. But in retrospect, it was probably never necessary, inasmuch as we are talking about something that is threatening to devour but is not currently devouring a stationary stretch of gravel, i.e. it presumably has some ground to make up before it gets to the devouring.
But let us not overlook the second and arguably worse headline above the fold, in which a medical ailment - one of the few imaginable things than can be aptly described as literally being on a chart - has its prevalence noted by suggesting that it is instead off of the charts. Other descriptions by this guy:
This one, by the way, looks like this online:
In conclusion, the Anchorage Daily News could probably use a headline proofreader for the print edition, preferably one averse to idioms.
This was for a story about a bizarre (if not especially unique) landslide formation threatening to eventually block truck access to the North Slope oil fields. A mass of thawing permafrost soil is lurching towards the only road that runs through the upper interior of the state and the oil pipeline that runs parallel to it. The engineering challenges of contending with this "frozen debris lobe" are certainly significant; the thing is 60 feet tall, 300 feet wide, and over a thousand feet long.
But the sensationalism of the headline entertains. I suppose an editor can't be blamed for hoping to capitalize on the public's ongoing fascination with confounding viscous masses attacking Alaska, like the mysterious foul-smelling sea blob that made news in 2009 (which turned out to be algae) or the mysterious orange goo washing up on shores in 2011 (which was initially concluded to be as a bunch of microscopic eggs of some TBD crustacean but was later determined to be a mass of spores from a fungal parasite of spruce trees). But those were both weird smelly globs of muck adrift at sea that may or may not have been some new gross species from, like, space or something, identified by scientists only well after their initial sightings on the shores of villages. This is just a pile of dirt and ice - anticlimactically acknowledged as such in the very first sentence of the article, no less - moving less than half an inch per day, which is notable geologically but is not particularly blob-like per the traditional and more disgusting kind of definition that comes to mind.
The unnecessary drama of the headline is seemingly conceded by the alternate phrasing used for the online version of the same story:
I like to imagine a negotiation between the guy who thought it needed to be toned down and the guy who wanted to stick to his guns. ["Alright, fine, we can change from 'Mysterious blob' to 'Frozen landslide', but only if we can also change 'threatens' to 'threatens TO DEVOUR', and I know you're not going to go for it, but I really think we could throw a few exclamation points in there too. Plus we get to use 'MYSTERY CLUMP' as the subheading for the second section."] Also edited out is the clarification that it is moving, which I guess is now assumed because that is what makes a thing a landslide instead of just land. But in retrospect, it was probably never necessary, inasmuch as we are talking about something that is threatening to devour but is not currently devouring a stationary stretch of gravel, i.e. it presumably has some ground to make up before it gets to the devouring.
But let us not overlook the second and arguably worse headline above the fold, in which a medical ailment - one of the few imaginable things than can be aptly described as literally being on a chart - has its prevalence noted by suggesting that it is instead off of the charts. Other descriptions by this guy:
- Sees right-fielder swoop in to make unexpected catch, says "that guy showed up out of left field"
- Requests cigarette, receives cigar, says "close but no cigar"
- Describes awesome fish currently being reeled in as "off the hook"
This one, by the way, looks like this online:
In conclusion, the Anchorage Daily News could probably use a headline proofreader for the print edition, preferably one averse to idioms.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Review: Bundle of Firewood
$6.99, Carrs-Safeway Supermarket
Alaska does not lack trees. According to this Yahoo! Answers post, which I presume to be well-researched and reliable, estimates of the exact number of trees in the state include "i think 600 million trees," "probably close to a billion or more," and "Considering the state is larger than Texas....it's more than I can count even if I tried," although it is also recommended to "try a Wikipedia search on Alaska and go somewhere about the environment and such," which is a great suggestion that I unfortunately did not get around to trying. Regardless, even if considering only Anchorage and its immediate vicinity, one would undoubtedly be conservative to estimate that the number of trees here is totally bananas.
This data makes only more frustrating the reality that I regularly purchase wood from a store so that I can go home and set it on fire. But we do not own any of the fruitful birch-yielding acres that extend for miles in every direction, so if we choose to use our fireplace in the winter (we do), then that is what we are dealing with.
Procurement
The supermarket near our house stocks small bundles to serve my precise variety of sucker. They are wrapped snugly in several layers of transparent cellophane and stacked in the front of the store, beyond the registers, requiring an announcement to the cashier during checkout that you intend to purchase one and pick it up as you are leaving, as for a bag of ice.
I always feel a need to do this in a slick, spontaneous-sounding way, like "Oh, actually, you know what? I better go ahead and grab a thing of firewood on my way out, too," like it's some unfavorable commentary on my coolness if I don't handle this interaction with appropriate nonchalance. I suppose I am embarrassed to admit that this is my regular Wood Procurement Strategy, instead of something more self-sufficient, so I put on my best Guy Who Definitely Has His Own Chainsaw act and sell it hard that this is just a one time deal. ("Yeah, we just finished up last year's tree. Just need a few logs to get through tonight. I'm taking down another sixty foot spruce tomorrow. I didn't even know you guys sold this stuff. Do people really buy it?") I don't actually say any of this out loud.
Bundle sizes vary noticeably, clearly apportioned by no more accurate a method than some dude just eyeballing it; this makes for a critical moment as I approach the display and subtly deliberate which of the plainly visible ones is most generously stuffed, aware that the flat $7/bundle fee I just paid is irrespective of the specific one chosen but also intent to not undo all of that sweet image-building I just did with my cavalier routine in the checkout line (which I totally nailed) by loitering around and methodically ruling out the lightest bundles in a manic single-elimination tournament of bundle-to-bundle comparisons, like some Extreme Couponing nutjob bent on eking out every possible cent worth of wood. [Although this is, in fact, the exact exercise I undertake while selecting the optimal 2/$3 bell pepper, which notably takes place in the scrutiny-free produce section.]
I awkwardly shuffle-waddle through the parking lot with the bundle wedged between a hip and a wrist, both hands carrying bags filled with far too many groceries. I lunge and drop everything six feet from the car, grimacing and making that inhaled hissing sound through clenched teeth while massaging a thigh contusion and examining three splinters in my arm, wondering how bad the bread got smushed.
"I bet that guy built his own house," the cashier probably says.
Use
After passing about 2,000 trees on the one mile drive home, I open the fireplace doors and arrange two logs over a handful of scraps from the paper shredder and some twigs gathered from the yard (which I believe are fair game as long as they have fallen naturally from the trees that we rent). I light it and triumphantly retire to the couch, content to spend the next two hours sipping hot chocolate and marveling at my Promethean accomplishment. I feel like Survivorman on that one episode where he gets dropped off in a remote grocery store with only $20, the details of which I may be misremembering.
This lasts a humbling 40 seconds until the kindling burns off without igniting the wood. Fortunately, I have prepared for such a setback by also purchasing two separate varieties of manufactured fire starter products - one a resin formed to resemble overcooked french fries, the second a cocktail of splinters and sawdust and wax that has been cast into half of a hushpuppy, which leads one to question whether there are any similar products that are not bizarrely reminiscent of side dishes served at Long John Silver's.
I place one of each starter at the base of the wood, and they burn for about six minutes, engulfed in substantial flames. This seems adequate, and although beyond the scope of this review, I would hypothetically award both of these products excellent scores. That is: I do not blame them for the ultimate outcome here, in which this alleged "firewood" appears to be immune to heat. The only damage to it is some incidental charring on the underside of one log, the sort which might result in high fives and hearty back-pats amongst the engineering team after testing a prototype fireproof safe. Just to be sure, I rearrange the logs a bit and throw like four of each kind of starter in there. This produces quite a show, but only for the six minutes, which is long enough to down my hot chocolate but not what I was hoping for.
Have I been swindled with some sort of imitation wood product? Perhaps this is an issue of excessive moisture content? Or might I just be a fundamentally flawed fire builder? I hope for the moisture thing and let the rest of the bundle sit for several days in our garage, where ambient humidity is typically low enough to cure most kinds of jerky. In the meantime, I shamefully hedge by investing yet another $12.99 in combustibles - at this point I am like $30 deep and may have been better off just lighting a stack of ones - this time for a six-pack of fake-wood store-brand Duraflame log equivalents. Survivorman would be so disappointed that I went over budget.
I try again with the starters and the drier firewood; it ends similarly. I stand over the hearth, staring at four smoldering hemi-hushpuppies with my hands on my hips and offering a hearty "Oh come ON!" - and I punt. The next night, I shove everything out of the way, place one fake log on the rack, and light the arrows printed on the bag, and the thing quickly goes up in a successful but ill-gotten fire. I recline and angrily enjoy it, but something is not right: the flames are too uniform, and there is no sound.
Ignoring explicit instructions on the fake log's packaging, I use the giant fireplace forceps with the fancy handles to corral one of the defective real logs and relocate it atop the flame, which does finally achieve whatever it is that I was going for - the wood starts to burn, if only slightly, popping and hissing, with an asymmetric, inconsistent, natural-looking fire. This lasts a couple of hours, until the fake log is spent, and what remains above it is a stubborn mass of log-shaped charcoal, maybe half the size of the original log and quite clearly mocking me.
In a most honest assessment, then, it appears that I have paid upwards of $1/log for the sole benefits of a fire that looks slightly more like a real fire, which is unnecessary, and some sweet crackly sounds, which could be adequately reproduced with a recording played on a laptop sitting on the mantle.
Summary
Pros:
Overall Score: 33
All reviews utilize their own unique scoring scale, each with no reference datum and extending infinitely in both directions.
Alaska does not lack trees. According to this Yahoo! Answers post, which I presume to be well-researched and reliable, estimates of the exact number of trees in the state include "i think 600 million trees," "probably close to a billion or more," and "Considering the state is larger than Texas....it's more than I can count even if I tried," although it is also recommended to "try a Wikipedia search on Alaska and go somewhere about the environment and such," which is a great suggestion that I unfortunately did not get around to trying. Regardless, even if considering only Anchorage and its immediate vicinity, one would undoubtedly be conservative to estimate that the number of trees here is totally bananas.
This data makes only more frustrating the reality that I regularly purchase wood from a store so that I can go home and set it on fire. But we do not own any of the fruitful birch-yielding acres that extend for miles in every direction, so if we choose to use our fireplace in the winter (we do), then that is what we are dealing with.
Procurement
The supermarket near our house stocks small bundles to serve my precise variety of sucker. They are wrapped snugly in several layers of transparent cellophane and stacked in the front of the store, beyond the registers, requiring an announcement to the cashier during checkout that you intend to purchase one and pick it up as you are leaving, as for a bag of ice.
I always feel a need to do this in a slick, spontaneous-sounding way, like "Oh, actually, you know what? I better go ahead and grab a thing of firewood on my way out, too," like it's some unfavorable commentary on my coolness if I don't handle this interaction with appropriate nonchalance. I suppose I am embarrassed to admit that this is my regular Wood Procurement Strategy, instead of something more self-sufficient, so I put on my best Guy Who Definitely Has His Own Chainsaw act and sell it hard that this is just a one time deal. ("Yeah, we just finished up last year's tree. Just need a few logs to get through tonight. I'm taking down another sixty foot spruce tomorrow. I didn't even know you guys sold this stuff. Do people really buy it?") I don't actually say any of this out loud.
Bundle sizes vary noticeably, clearly apportioned by no more accurate a method than some dude just eyeballing it; this makes for a critical moment as I approach the display and subtly deliberate which of the plainly visible ones is most generously stuffed, aware that the flat $7/bundle fee I just paid is irrespective of the specific one chosen but also intent to not undo all of that sweet image-building I just did with my cavalier routine in the checkout line (which I totally nailed) by loitering around and methodically ruling out the lightest bundles in a manic single-elimination tournament of bundle-to-bundle comparisons, like some Extreme Couponing nutjob bent on eking out every possible cent worth of wood. [Although this is, in fact, the exact exercise I undertake while selecting the optimal 2/$3 bell pepper, which notably takes place in the scrutiny-free produce section.]
I awkwardly shuffle-waddle through the parking lot with the bundle wedged between a hip and a wrist, both hands carrying bags filled with far too many groceries. I lunge and drop everything six feet from the car, grimacing and making that inhaled hissing sound through clenched teeth while massaging a thigh contusion and examining three splinters in my arm, wondering how bad the bread got smushed.
"I bet that guy built his own house," the cashier probably says.
Use
After passing about 2,000 trees on the one mile drive home, I open the fireplace doors and arrange two logs over a handful of scraps from the paper shredder and some twigs gathered from the yard (which I believe are fair game as long as they have fallen naturally from the trees that we rent). I light it and triumphantly retire to the couch, content to spend the next two hours sipping hot chocolate and marveling at my Promethean accomplishment. I feel like Survivorman on that one episode where he gets dropped off in a remote grocery store with only $20, the details of which I may be misremembering.
This lasts a humbling 40 seconds until the kindling burns off without igniting the wood. Fortunately, I have prepared for such a setback by also purchasing two separate varieties of manufactured fire starter products - one a resin formed to resemble overcooked french fries, the second a cocktail of splinters and sawdust and wax that has been cast into half of a hushpuppy, which leads one to question whether there are any similar products that are not bizarrely reminiscent of side dishes served at Long John Silver's.
I place one of each starter at the base of the wood, and they burn for about six minutes, engulfed in substantial flames. This seems adequate, and although beyond the scope of this review, I would hypothetically award both of these products excellent scores. That is: I do not blame them for the ultimate outcome here, in which this alleged "firewood" appears to be immune to heat. The only damage to it is some incidental charring on the underside of one log, the sort which might result in high fives and hearty back-pats amongst the engineering team after testing a prototype fireproof safe. Just to be sure, I rearrange the logs a bit and throw like four of each kind of starter in there. This produces quite a show, but only for the six minutes, which is long enough to down my hot chocolate but not what I was hoping for.
Have I been swindled with some sort of imitation wood product? Perhaps this is an issue of excessive moisture content? Or might I just be a fundamentally flawed fire builder? I hope for the moisture thing and let the rest of the bundle sit for several days in our garage, where ambient humidity is typically low enough to cure most kinds of jerky. In the meantime, I shamefully hedge by investing yet another $12.99 in combustibles - at this point I am like $30 deep and may have been better off just lighting a stack of ones - this time for a six-pack of fake-wood store-brand Duraflame log equivalents. Survivorman would be so disappointed that I went over budget.
I try again with the starters and the drier firewood; it ends similarly. I stand over the hearth, staring at four smoldering hemi-hushpuppies with my hands on my hips and offering a hearty "Oh come ON!" - and I punt. The next night, I shove everything out of the way, place one fake log on the rack, and light the arrows printed on the bag, and the thing quickly goes up in a successful but ill-gotten fire. I recline and angrily enjoy it, but something is not right: the flames are too uniform, and there is no sound.
Ignoring explicit instructions on the fake log's packaging, I use the giant fireplace forceps with the fancy handles to corral one of the defective real logs and relocate it atop the flame, which does finally achieve whatever it is that I was going for - the wood starts to burn, if only slightly, popping and hissing, with an asymmetric, inconsistent, natural-looking fire. This lasts a couple of hours, until the fake log is spent, and what remains above it is a stubborn mass of log-shaped charcoal, maybe half the size of the original log and quite clearly mocking me.
In a most honest assessment, then, it appears that I have paid upwards of $1/log for the sole benefits of a fire that looks slightly more like a real fire, which is unnecessary, and some sweet crackly sounds, which could be adequately reproduced with a recording played on a laptop sitting on the mantle.
Summary
Pros:
- Visually and texturally reminiscent of wood
- Convenient prepackaging requires no axe work
- Thoughtfully-sized bundle can be easily carried by person of average size and below-average upper body fitness if only he would wait and buy the milk and spaghetti sauce and other heavy stuff next time
- Produces pleasant crackling sounds and slightly prettier flames when placed adjacent to an alternate fuel source that is already aflame
- Does not burn
- Paid for with money instead of taken for free from nature as partial compensation for agreeing to live in desolate subarctic hellscape
- Kind of splintery if you're not wearing gloves
Overall Score: 33
All reviews utilize their own unique scoring scale, each with no reference datum and extending infinitely in both directions.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
I Can't Believe I'm Crocheting!
We saw this magazine at a craft store:
It is possible that I am misinterpreting the intended tone of that title, but I would have ditched the lady with the brave face and gone with something more like this:
It is possible that I am misinterpreting the intended tone of that title, but I would have ditched the lady with the brave face and gone with something more like this:
Monday, November 26, 2012
One Last Update-Style Update
In the interest of continuity for those that sat through the unsolicited dispatches on our Alaskan existence in the previous format, here is one more account sort of like those.
Consulting my records, the last entry was emailed on August 5, 2012, since which certain things have changed significantly:
Person born. Her name is Megan, she was born on August 7, and she is adorable and tiny and bald and awesome. Objective analysis proves impossible yet somehow still conclusive that she is amongst the top five cutest and smartest human babies that have yet existed. To date her favorite things are vigorously kicking both legs simultaneously and craning her neck to look directly at light sources; her least favorite things are coordinating her nap times with non-baby things I might be trying to accomplish and putting her second arm through any variety of sleeve.
Alaska Travel(b)logue officially retired. It was a logical point to stop, and an attempt to sustain it for any longer in its established form would inevitably have left me saying things like "Much like it was cold last year, it is cold again this year," plus people will only tolerate so many discussions of holiday plans that do not involve them before they start seriously considering a graceful way to request removal from a distribution list. This is to say nothing of the increasing inaccuracy of the "Travel" part of the title, which even initially was suspect since we were in fact semi-permanently relocating, and is even less justifiable now that notable excursions include trips to that grocery store that is slightly farther away than the usual grocery store.
To avoid second-guessing the decision to end it, I formatted the whole thing into a printable layout and produced a somewhat respectable-looking bound paper version, the sole copy of which now sits on a shelf in our living room. I intentionally did not label it "Volume 1" or similar, but did subtitle it "First Year in Anchorage", which, upon further consideration, probably does not convey the sort of finality I was going for.
Now I have moved on to this, which obviously is entirely different. Or possibly not very different. Interesting travels and miscellaneous Alaska observations will show up here, but beyond this post, I will be aggressively avoiding Christmas letter-style updates on what we are doing, so there's that.
Traditional craft of bookbinding learned from the internet. Turns out you just need paper and glue.
Giant box of business cards again rendered obsolete. I left my engineering job here after 13 months of employment. It was a good firm with good people, and although much of the day-to-day work left me desiring something more challenging, I enjoyed my time there. But as Kristen and I discussed our options for childcare, which would have begun after the military's brief six-week maternity leave plus some nominal extra time that Kristen could take as vacation, we began considering whether it might be feasible for me to stay home with Megan during the day. I decided to give it a shot, and as of September 21, I have temporarily departed the world of full-time employment.
But I was extremely happy to almost seamlessly reconnect with the company I previously worked for in Dallas and Washington D.C., for whom I am now again working, part-time from home. This provided an excellent excuse for me to build an unnecessarily complex desk out of things that are not intended to be pieces of a desk, which was fun. I generally work while anyone else who happens to be in the house is sleeping. It really is a great setup that lets me maintain both my engineering skills and my adult-world sanity, albeit remotely. It also means that I have somehow arranged a shift toward an even more casual dress code than my previous office, which is a remarkable feat.
Much like it was cold last year, it is cold again this year. I really do try to avoid being the guy who constantly discusses the weather, but I suppose it is a notable distinction of living here, and people seem to care, so I oblige. The thing that they call "autumn" here consisted of a vague blur of some dying leaves and a lot of wet diapers and screaming; winter has now returned, although quite differently from a year ago, when over 32 inches of snow fell in November en route to a record seasonal snowfall. So far this year we have seen less than seven inches, but the first of it was several inches at the end of September. That did quickly melt before the real stuff started up a few days before Halloween. The days are predominantly clear and cold - it is currently 1.8 degrees outside per one needlessly precise website.
And that is enough of that. At least until I go a few months without writing anything and have more gaps to fill in.
Consulting my records, the last entry was emailed on August 5, 2012, since which certain things have changed significantly:
 |
| Infant Human |
Alaska Travel(b)logue officially retired. It was a logical point to stop, and an attempt to sustain it for any longer in its established form would inevitably have left me saying things like "Much like it was cold last year, it is cold again this year," plus people will only tolerate so many discussions of holiday plans that do not involve them before they start seriously considering a graceful way to request removal from a distribution list. This is to say nothing of the increasing inaccuracy of the "Travel" part of the title, which even initially was suspect since we were in fact semi-permanently relocating, and is even less justifiable now that notable excursions include trips to that grocery store that is slightly farther away than the usual grocery store.
To avoid second-guessing the decision to end it, I formatted the whole thing into a printable layout and produced a somewhat respectable-looking bound paper version, the sole copy of which now sits on a shelf in our living room. I intentionally did not label it "Volume 1" or similar, but did subtitle it "First Year in Anchorage", which, upon further consideration, probably does not convey the sort of finality I was going for.
Now I have moved on to this, which obviously is entirely different. Or possibly not very different. Interesting travels and miscellaneous Alaska observations will show up here, but beyond this post, I will be aggressively avoiding Christmas letter-style updates on what we are doing, so there's that.
Traditional craft of bookbinding learned from the internet. Turns out you just need paper and glue.
Giant box of business cards again rendered obsolete. I left my engineering job here after 13 months of employment. It was a good firm with good people, and although much of the day-to-day work left me desiring something more challenging, I enjoyed my time there. But as Kristen and I discussed our options for childcare, which would have begun after the military's brief six-week maternity leave plus some nominal extra time that Kristen could take as vacation, we began considering whether it might be feasible for me to stay home with Megan during the day. I decided to give it a shot, and as of September 21, I have temporarily departed the world of full-time employment.
But I was extremely happy to almost seamlessly reconnect with the company I previously worked for in Dallas and Washington D.C., for whom I am now again working, part-time from home. This provided an excellent excuse for me to build an unnecessarily complex desk out of things that are not intended to be pieces of a desk, which was fun. I generally work while anyone else who happens to be in the house is sleeping. It really is a great setup that lets me maintain both my engineering skills and my adult-world sanity, albeit remotely. It also means that I have somehow arranged a shift toward an even more casual dress code than my previous office, which is a remarkable feat.
Much like it was cold last year, it is cold again this year. I really do try to avoid being the guy who constantly discusses the weather, but I suppose it is a notable distinction of living here, and people seem to care, so I oblige. The thing that they call "autumn" here consisted of a vague blur of some dying leaves and a lot of wet diapers and screaming; winter has now returned, although quite differently from a year ago, when over 32 inches of snow fell in November en route to a record seasonal snowfall. So far this year we have seen less than seven inches, but the first of it was several inches at the end of September. That did quickly melt before the real stuff started up a few days before Halloween. The days are predominantly clear and cold - it is currently 1.8 degrees outside per one needlessly precise website.
 |
| Fall color in a gorgeous spot east of Palmer on the Glenn Highway. I made this drive just before I left my job to go visit a construction site for one of the projects I was wrapping up. Probably the prettiest scenery I have seen since we moved here. |
Sunday, November 25, 2012
The (B)logue is Dead, Long Live the Blog
[COMMENCE BLOGGING]
Sometimes I write. The result is never anything with a discernible message or any lasting significance, and it is usually at least 20% too long and unfailingly cluttered with too many adverbs. But I like doing it, and people tell me they enjoy reading what comes of it, if only in a "Well, it's this or refreshing Facebook again" kind of way. Since a stint of semi-regular productivity for a satire newspaper in college, I have more recently found outlet only in sending a lot of unprompted and possibly unread emails to friends, who seem entertained but likely wonder if there isn't a better forum for me to go about this, preferably one that carries less of a perceived obligation for them to respond.
Sixteen months ago, under guise of a military assignment for my Air Force pediatrician wife, the United States government deported us to Anchorage, Alaska. This was quickly identified as a comically poor fit for my sensibilities and hobbies, especially as we were finishing a third delightful year in Washington D.C., with its cosmopolitan charms like interesting restaurants and useful public transportation and people who do not talk constantly about fishing.
More than one person suggested I start a blog to document this likely-hilarious folly of Miscast Man vs. his Drastically Modified Surroundings, which was a pretty good idea if not for my unwillingness to learn how to actually go about getting online and setting up such a thing. Instead, I put a few thousand words and some pictures into a Word document every six weeks or so and sent it out as a mass email, which I determined to be the best way to flaunt my refusal to learn something new while simultaneously paralyzing inboxes with unnecessarily large attachments. I spent the better part of an evening coming up with the title of "Alaska Travel(b)logue" (totally worth it) and delivered it with the email subject line "Status: Sill Alive".
I did that until our daughter was born in August. It was a good stopping point, as I had made it through almost exactly one year of plowing through all of the good low-hanging "Isn't Alaska Crazy?" content, plus I was suddenly left with much less time to work on the thing. Having since established a loose routine for keeping the baby satisfied and again finding an occasional urge to write and distribute something, I figured I might as well do so in a way that is slightly less reminiscent of 1997.
I have now progressed nearly two months into a grand life experiment as a stay-at-home dad and only-part-time structural engineer; thus far it has been quite successful, but the newness and unfamiliarity of the whole thing renders my expectations for even the very near future fuzzy and probably mostly wrong. So it is difficult to speculate what the content of this might be, except to say that I will try my best to not just regurgitate whatever it is that I heard about on the tape-delayed broadcast of the Today Show that morning.
And so thus begins what I hope to be a fruitful exercise of posting on here like four times in the next few weeks, then once in May of next year where I say "Alright, time to get back into this thing!", then infinite silence.
Sometimes I write. The result is never anything with a discernible message or any lasting significance, and it is usually at least 20% too long and unfailingly cluttered with too many adverbs. But I like doing it, and people tell me they enjoy reading what comes of it, if only in a "Well, it's this or refreshing Facebook again" kind of way. Since a stint of semi-regular productivity for a satire newspaper in college, I have more recently found outlet only in sending a lot of unprompted and possibly unread emails to friends, who seem entertained but likely wonder if there isn't a better forum for me to go about this, preferably one that carries less of a perceived obligation for them to respond.
Sixteen months ago, under guise of a military assignment for my Air Force pediatrician wife, the United States government deported us to Anchorage, Alaska. This was quickly identified as a comically poor fit for my sensibilities and hobbies, especially as we were finishing a third delightful year in Washington D.C., with its cosmopolitan charms like interesting restaurants and useful public transportation and people who do not talk constantly about fishing.
More than one person suggested I start a blog to document this likely-hilarious folly of Miscast Man vs. his Drastically Modified Surroundings, which was a pretty good idea if not for my unwillingness to learn how to actually go about getting online and setting up such a thing. Instead, I put a few thousand words and some pictures into a Word document every six weeks or so and sent it out as a mass email, which I determined to be the best way to flaunt my refusal to learn something new while simultaneously paralyzing inboxes with unnecessarily large attachments. I spent the better part of an evening coming up with the title of "Alaska Travel(b)logue" (totally worth it) and delivered it with the email subject line "Status: Sill Alive".
I did that until our daughter was born in August. It was a good stopping point, as I had made it through almost exactly one year of plowing through all of the good low-hanging "Isn't Alaska Crazy?" content, plus I was suddenly left with much less time to work on the thing. Having since established a loose routine for keeping the baby satisfied and again finding an occasional urge to write and distribute something, I figured I might as well do so in a way that is slightly less reminiscent of 1997.
I have now progressed nearly two months into a grand life experiment as a stay-at-home dad and only-part-time structural engineer; thus far it has been quite successful, but the newness and unfamiliarity of the whole thing renders my expectations for even the very near future fuzzy and probably mostly wrong. So it is difficult to speculate what the content of this might be, except to say that I will try my best to not just regurgitate whatever it is that I heard about on the tape-delayed broadcast of the Today Show that morning.
And so thus begins what I hope to be a fruitful exercise of posting on here like four times in the next few weeks, then once in May of next year where I say "Alright, time to get back into this thing!", then infinite silence.
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