goat cheese quesadilla, revisited.

sometime i would like to take a day off of work... a day to sleep, read, relax, recover...
yesterday was not that day.

yesterday was nearly that day. it would have been perfect if not for all the vomiting that had to come first.

so... i have a weak stomach. plus i really like spicy mexican pickled acidic oily food, and i like to eat it fast. and often. i take one of those super-antacids, the ones that advertise on cable that you should talk to your doctor about getting your life back. so, i reclaimed my life about a year ago and mostly all i've gotten for that is an extra 10 pounds since now there's no stomachache keeping me from eating when i'm hungry. mixed blessing. thanks to my health plan i pay $5 a month for this privilege (as opposed to the $90 the drug company asks for) and i'm generally okay with that -- at $3/day i might feel differently.

i puke a lot. more, i think, than your average, otherwise-healthy 25 year old. i'm not bulemic... and i'm way to repulsed by the idea of myself vomiting to ever try, no matter how the spare tire's lookin'. i also have some other little pills that stop my stomach from seizing when i need that. i tried one of those but i'm pretty sure it came back up before dissolving.

so anyway, that goat cheese quesadilla might not have been a good idea. in fact, it is now safe to say that it definitely wasn't a good idea. wednesday morning, 3 am... surely not a good idea.

things i learned on my off-day...
1. riptide rush is not an acceptable food substitute.
2. friends you believed were gone will reappear when you least expect them... and when you most need them.
3. even a ticket to g love at roseland can't drag me into ny after a night of puking.
4. eggs and bacon from the americana diner are still the ultimate healthfood.

so marc, if you're reading this, i'm sorry i always puke when we're supposed to see shows together. i hope you had fun anyway.

and to everyone else who has ever rubbed my back while i hurled, thanks. i owe you brunch.

i was once like you.

i left work early yesterday and headed into the city to speak in a class at my alma mater, cooper union.
i should pause for a sec here and explain what a statement this is.

first, cooper union is free, as in each admitted student receives a full tuition scholarship.

people frequently ask the following questions about the free thing...
is it state-funded? no.
is it only for city kids? no.
is it a good school? yes!!
well then how can it possibly be free?!? it is funded by an endowment, set up by peter cooper and continually added to thanks to investment and further donation.
wow! how do i get in? well if you can't figure that out, you probably shouldn't go there.

so, we've established that the school is free and good.

next, i was a terrible student at cooper. i scraped by and did as little as possible because i was sure... i mean sure that i didn't want to be an engineer, at the time. of course, i am now an engineer. this is the way things go. of course back then i was also sure i didn't want to work in heating and ventilation, didn't want to work at a huge company, didn't want to sit in front of a computer all day.... i've succeeded on these fronts, thank goodness. i get to design parts and work with actual human people and build things and break things and parts i've designed actually exist! still to this day it blows my mind that i 1) never flunked out and 2) actually got a job... also 3) haven't been fired yet, but that's another story for another day.

so, anyway, it is quite an honor to be invited back to speak in this class, global engineering operations and management, or some such thing, oh and by the way i think i got a c in this class, or maybe it was a b... all i remember is that professor jacoby thought i was really good in the play (the importance of being earnest... i got to wear a peach bridesmaid's dress and see vik in makeup) and gave me obscene amounts of bonus points for charisma in my in-class presentations. come to think of it, that charisma usually came from the pre-class trips across the street to st. mark's ale house with david levine, but again, another story for another day.

professor jacoby, i should mention, rocks. she was trained as an engineer in romania, because, as she says, in romania, you become a doctor, you become an engineer, or you become hungry. anyway, she escaped... came to new york and got a new job, took classes at cooper at night to get her master's, met her husband at an engineering seminar of all places, tried to move to hawaii (an exotic but useless island in the middle of the pacific, according to her husband) but ended up in suffolk county (on an exotic but useless island in the middle of the atlantic, i suppose).

so professor jacoby totally thinks i'm this brainy but misbegotten fine young woman with multitudes of knowledge to share with today's youth... umm, right... so, she has me come back and speak to her class every year about what it's like to be me, how smart and charming i am, how tall and muscular i'm looking these days... oh, i also talk about my company and my work and try to put some kind of global engineering operations and management, or some such thing, spin on my life... basically it's a moderated ego-boost with a technical undercurrent.

so these precocious kids who think they are the next big thing remind me of how big i thought i was when i was 21... and how small i'll probably seem at 25 when i am 29, and 39... and 109... and each year i go through this and think about how young and annoying i must seem to everyone around me. anyway, i may realize i am young and annoying, but that doesn't stop me from pontificating on the greater meaning of life and engineering and hey! i was just saying that the problem with charisma is that charisma is so close to annoyance, especially when charisma constantly bombards those around them with their irrelevant social commentary and superfluous personal details.

so there you go. professor jacoby took me out for a goat cheese and mushroom quesadilla and told me not to worry about being single until i turn 30, and that i should try to meet someone soon just in case, and that whatever i do, i should be sure to marry up. so, it's a mixed bag of advice but she is my favorite former professor by virtue of the fact that she's the only one that doesn't deny my existence, so i take everything she tells me very seriously especially the part where she tells me how great i am.... umm, right.

so, anyway, here's my advice for cooper union engineering students, and the world in general, and even you, yes you... one of the two, or possibly three people who actually read this and yes, that does include me...

i actually wrote this down and took it with me into class and now i'm putting it here for all eternity, or for a while... or at least until this whole internet thing blows over...

1. learn how to write; learn how to speak.
2. realize that not everyone is as smart as you... likewise, you are just a beginner. they may be dumb, but they each have something to offer you.
3. take any training anyone ever offers you, and if you like it, add it to your resume immediately.
4. find a job you enjoy -- if the interview isn't fun, neither will the job be. if you hate your job, leave.
5. know your value and always have an up-to-date resume in both MS Word and html formats ready to mail off at a moment's notice.

that's it... go forth and be prosperously content... in retrospect i forgot my other rules of thumb... the first is always remember that your job isn't supposed to be your life -- it's just supposed to pay for your life, and second is never turn down free food unless you are in one of those foot and mouth countries. or if the food being offered is fish. never eat a free fish.

if i were a rich man.

weekend.
very pleasant houseguest.
shorts.
rowing.
AND... i got to drive very pleasant houseguest's VERY fast car, all the way from work to e&e's.
never have i been so the bomb as when driving the m.
must.... save..... money.
i should have been a consultant.
or an inheritess.
or a racecar driver.

oh well. if i had that car i would die straightaway, so... probably best that i don't.

things i've noticed making me

things i've noticed making me unusually happy lately:
alcon clerz 2 eyedrops.
a bite of toast... a gulp of coffee.
songs with lots of words.

last night i hit rose's end for a tony hightower - adam brodsky extravaganza. i've never seen the place so packed. they are both fantastic performers and supreme crowd-pleasers. they even took the whole audience out for grilled cheese after the show.

this show got me thinking about antifolk, and wondering what i was smoking in college with that scene going on pretty much all around me. (oh, wait... i know what i was smoking in college...) internet killed the video star is pretty much my vision of the future. and along those lines, i present my antifolk discovery process... first there was genrecide, and from genrecide came brenda kahn... and there i sat for years until presto! the internet sends me from bk to lach, to spin doctors via chris barron, to a rainy night in saratoga with a person i didn't much like, back to brenda kahn and then south to philly, to adam and butch and that scene, back to ny last night where i met this tony hightower, who's just helped finish up the last written issue of antifolk matters, an antifolk zine.

and one more thing, along the lines of video stars, is this incredibly terrible photo of christina aguilera in a terrible terrible outfit. that link is likely temporary so enjoy it while you can.

later. actually, hopefully sooner than last time.