That crab cake salad could easily make two or three meals. You have to love working in Maryland sometimes.

As I write this, Bill (my father in law) just came out of surgery to implant a defibrillator to monitor his heart. I'm told that the procedure went smoothly, and he's recovering nicely. He'll be spending about four days in the hospital while they experiment with his medication a little.

After work on Friday night, Lyssa, Laurelinde, and I packed our gear to make the trek northward back to Pittsburgh, by way of Chili's for dinner just of the Beltway (to give the bridge and tunnel crowd a chance to get home and clear the way). We packed as little …

Lately, I've been noticing commercials on television (in particular The Food Network) claiming that high fructose corn syrup is actually good for you, and that you should buy products containing it to keep the corn farmers in business. A few of us speculate that this is in part a reaction to the growing community of organic farmers and consumers. On the Metro to DC on Tuesday, Lyssa and I saw this poster that subtly suggests that the use of fertilizers in agriculture are a good thing and that organic foods are somehow undesirable or inferior by implication. Using an image …

I roused myself from bed far earlier than I'm accustomed to on Saturday morning, around 0800 EST5EDT or so, for what is traditionally the most memorable event prior to one's wedding.. the bachelor's party. While most of the groomsmen weren't able to attend on Saturday due to their lack of proximity (most of them live at least one state, and usually more than that away from the DC area), the festivities were well attended by close friends from nearby. Shortly before 0900 local time most everyone had assembled on the doorstep: Jason and Jarin arrived first, followed by Grant and …

Contrary to most years, my Fourth of July weekend was far lower in impact and more relaxing this time around than it usually is. I've been running short on sleep for a while now and made up for all of that by sleeping as long as I possibly could, over thirty hours in total spread over three days (plus a two hour power doze (like a power nap, only I never actually fell asleep but instead elfnapped, the way I do when I'm on the road) on Saturday afternoon). I actually feel refreshed and clear-headed for the first time in …

At more or less the last minute last week, I decided to attend Walking the Thresholds 0x0B at the Four Quarters Farm, just over the Pennsylvania border, in the lands I simultaneously love and fear because they're so far off the grid that you're fortunate to get three GPS satellites to lock on to. After co-ordinating with Hasufin, Mika, and Sarah for a bit it was decided that I'd head over to their place, leave the TARDIS behind to save on fuel costs, and ride up with them. Our colleague in arms and all things nerdcore Jason would be going …

A couple of weeks ago, one of the trailers that was shown before the movie Iron Man was for a theatrical showing of the live-action movie based upon a popular manga and anime series called Death Note. As Lyssa and I are both fans of the series (she of the manga, I of the live-action movies), we made it a priority to hit the one night only showing at Tyson's Corner AMC last week. Mika was kind enough to score tickets for us early (she had to, because they were almost sold out by the time we got into line …

Well, not so much. I was hoping to riff off of a famous Red Dwarf quote or two to make this post more entertaining, but after a few revisions it's just not coming together the way I'd hoped, so I'll spare your delicate sensibilities and optics the horror and push on.

As the title to this post suggests, I'm in the heart of Alabama on assignment. Granted, it's not too bad... the people down here are quite friendly, and the stereotypical southern hospitality isn't a stereotype, it's a way of life. People down here are so nice, polite, and helpful …

1048 PST8PDT - Burbank Airport.

What a dump. I finally got to see more of it because I'll be stuck here for a few hours. When I originally arrived we were ushered out of the terminal to the curbside baggage pickup without ceremony, only security guards, so I wasn't able to take the fifty cent tour of the terminal.

It's small. There's noplace to eat, save for a really, really crappy cafe' that serves hideously bad wraps and lousy smoothies. By 'noplace' I mean just that - there are no other places to go in terminal B for food unless you want …