Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

Here there be cactii

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Sometimes I worry that I’m a bit too much of “that guy.” I’m currently sitting pool side at the hotel I’m staying at in Phoenix, Arizona for the NOREX International Roundtable. I’m wearing the standard black t-shirt with the nerdy saying on it, working on my computer, and sitting in the shade. I haven’t gone anywhere near the water or the pasty older folks who are part of the conference and frolicking in it. I’m not even drinking right now, settling instead for a tasty bottle of Fiji water.

Truth is, though, that even sitting here in the shade with my sunglasses on I’m getting a headache. That might be a result of trying to strain through my sunglasses to see the screen, or it could just be because I’m slowly but surely turning into Gollum.

Time will tell, precious.

From a “fun things to do when not in the conference” perspective this trip has kind of been a bust. My foot is currently gimped thanks to the fact that I was running with the wrong shoes for several months. I have inflamed tendons in my left foot and I’m wearing a compression sock and a splint. I can’t run. I can’t even walk all that far. I am surrounded on all sides by beautiful desert landscape and I can’t explore any of it. That, of course, is also part of the problem. I’m surrounded on all sides by desert. The only thing here to do is go to the casino next door,and I’m not really a gambler. I’ve been spending the daily credit that they gave me, but that’s about it.

Oh. I’m also not in the pool because I forgot my swimsuit and all I have is my cargo shorts and that’s really kind of ghetto.

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The silence of shame

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Link courtesy of Anderz Printz via flickr.

So.

It has been a while since I posted here. Two months to the day, actually. After making all these bold statements about how I was changing the way the site was going to be presented and talked about how things were going to be different I just kind of…went away.

I wonder how many of you I even have left at this point?

I wish I could say that the reason I’ve been gone is because I’ve been so busy whipping my ass into shape that I couldn’t even squeeze time to write a post because I was too busy squeezing awesome out of every second of my day.

I wish I could say that.

I can’t.

Truth is? I’m struggling, friends.

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Best. Corned. Beef. And. Cabbage. EVAR.

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St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, and as I’m a person with a “Mc” in front of his last name I believe I am legally obligated to eat Corned Beef and Cabbage while drinking beer on that day. I’m pretty sure the Irish Mafia will come take me out if I don’t or something. In any case, I found a recipe a VERY long time ago for pretty much the greatest corned beef and cabbage I have ever had. It was in a book called All Around The World Cooking by Sheila Lukins, which is apparently out of print so I don’t feel bad about posting the recipe here (I can’t say that fact really comes as much a surprise to me, as this is one of the cookbooks I lost in my divorce back in 2001).

And now, without further ado, the recipe of awesomeness…

  • 1 lean corned beef brisket (4 to 5 pounds)
  • 3 medium onions, peeled
  • 9 whole cloves garlic, peeled
  • 4 ribs of celery, with leaves
  • 14 carrots, peeled, 6 halved and 8 cut into 2-inch lengths
  • 6 flat-leaf parsley sprigs
  • 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
  • Strips of whole peel from 1 orange, pith removed
  • 16 small new red potatoes
  • 8 medium leeks (2 inches green left on), roots trimmed, rinsed well
  • 1 medium-sized green cabbage (3 to 3 1/2 pounds), cored and cut into 8 wedges
  • Salt and coarsely ground black pepper, to taste
  • 4 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Rinse the corned beef and pat dry. Place in a large ovenproof casserole. Stud each onion with 3 cloves and add to the casserole along with the 6 halved carrots, the garlic, celery, parsley sprigs, and orange peel.

2. Cover the meat with vegetables and cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, partially covered, until the meat is very tender, about 3 hours. Skim off any foam and turn the meat every 30 minutes. When the meat can easily be pierced with a fork, it is done. Remove to a plate, cover with aluminum foil, and keep warm.

3. Meanwhile, trim the roots and tough outer leaves from the leeks and discard. Trim the remaining leaves to about 2 inches and cut the leeks in half lengthwise. Stir the vinegar into a large bowl of water, add the leeks, and leave for about 30 minutes. Then rinse and drain the leeks.

4. Strain the broth and return it to the casserole. Discard the cooked vegetables. Add the potatoes, leeks, cabbage, 8 cut-up carrots, salt, and pepper. Bring the broth to a boil, then simmer uncovered over medium heat until the vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons of the parsley.

5. Before serving, slice the corned beef and place on a large decorative serving platter. Arrange the vegetables around the corned beef. Ladle some hot broth over all to moisten. Sprinkle with the remaining parsley. At this point the recipe says to serve with two sauces that follow in the cook book, but I do not have those recipes. I generally just serve it with horseradish sauce, if I serve it with any sauce at all. It stands perfectly well on its own.


Cable Anxiety

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I recently made the decision to cut the cable cord in our household and convert all of our televisions over to internet and over-the-air programming. By dropping cable television and our cable based phone service (all four of us have cellular phones) I’ll be saving about $135 a month. I spent about $300 on equipment needed to facilitate this transition, which I figure I will make up in about 4 months of not having to pay the monthly bill (I will still be paying $20 a month for Netflix and Hulu Plus).

What’s surprised me the most about all of this is how much anxiety the decision has caused me.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve had cable television since I was very, very young. We were one of the first families on our block to have cable, and it has never been an option NOT to have cable in a household I lived in. I’ve lived with having cable so long that I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like it’s something I “have” to have as opposed to something I “want” to have.

Isn’t that strange?

I’ve actually found myself wondering if I’m doing the “right thing.” Yes, those exact words went through my head. The “right thing.” Like it could possibly be some kind of monumental mistake to cancel our cable television and phone service.

I wonder if it’s not one of many signs of how hard we’re pushed to consider these kind of things necessities by “the man.”

In any case, the transition continues apace. I have one more television left to hook up the antenna to and after that we’re pretty much done with cable. I’ll just need to return the equipment. We will undoubtedly miss having access to Bay News 9, but I can no longer justify spending that kind of money for 10 minutes of news every night. Besides, I’ve already found a 24 hours weather broadcast channel from one of the local stations.

Meetings suck

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Forget fire and brimstone. Convince me that Hell looks like this and I'll be at church every week. Photo courtesy of the International Monetary Fund via Flickr.

As much as I may not like to admit it, I work in Corporate America. My company is a not-for-profit credit union, but regardless of that there are certain aspects of the organization that are no different than any other small to mid-sized corporation. We have a “culture,” we have a dress code, we have rules about what exits you can use to leave the building and what kind of decorations you can have in your cubicle. We make five-year plans and talk about improving efficiency. We have department rivalries, rumor mills, and the occasional scandal. Like I said, in a lot of ways we’re pretty much your average every day organization. The big difference, of course, is that we’re not bending our members over for billions of dollars in profits that are being paid out to shareholders or overpaid executives.

So we have that going for us anyway.

We also have meetings. Lots and lots of meetings.

I hate meetings.

A lot.

I do not, however, hate alot of meetings. The presence of an alot at a meeting would make it infinitely more interesting.

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Equivalencies

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Photo courtesy of Archigeek via Flickr

I recently celebrated my 10th anniversary with Weight Watchers.

Honestly, I can’t say that I really “celebrated” it. Hell, I didn’t even go to my meeting that week (not from a lack of desire to do so, but we have been down to the final few weeks of a show that I’m in and I haven’t had the time). One would also think that, after ten years, I would have hit Lifetime status and that my relationship with Weight Watchers would be restricted to maintaining my goal weight.

That, unfortunately, is not the case.

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Full Circle

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Sometime around October of 2001 I got a phone call from my friend “ranney.” He was directing a musical with a young theater company in Tampa and he was having a hard time casting one of the characters. He had directed me in a musical adaptation of The Birds that he wrote while I was a student at the Polk Community College and he felt I was a good match for the part. I came in and auditioned for him, and a few days later I got the call offering me the role.

The show was Maxwell: A New Rock Musical By Joe Popp, and it was the first paid acting gig I ever got. It was also the beginning of my year relationship with The Jobsite Theater. I was very much an unknown factor in this production, and I had the extra baggage of being recently divorced with the need to occasionally bring my five year old son with me to rehearsal. “ranney” put his full support behind me, though, and he managed to convince the Powers That Be to give me a shot.

Ten years later and I’m still working with them.

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Starting Over

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It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

ShrinkGeek came into existence as a company just over two years ago. At the time I truly believed that by combining what was a great name and the talents of a small handful of my closest friends I’d be able to create a web site that was the go-to place for geeks to get their health and fitness information.

In some ways we were very successful. We managed to get a decent page rank out of Google. Rafe and I were hired to do a series of diet and fitness related articles for WoWInsider. We had several advertisers offer to pay us in exchange for links (and we even had the integrity to turn a few of them down because we didn’t think they fit with our image). We were given several products to review, and we got some decent interviews. Ultimately, I think we were able to produce some extremely stellar content.

Unfortunately we haven’t made any significant money in the process of doing so. In fact, when you factor in the costs associated with running the site as an actual business, we’ve operated at a loss the entire time. You know that old saying about how time equals money? Well, it takes a lot of time to produce quality content for a web site and when that time isn’t being rewarded by any money it gets harder to build up the motivation to actually devote the time necessary to do it.

Long story short? We burnt out.

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Facts are pesky things

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I was going to write this in a tweet but there’s a little bit more detail than I could fit into 140 characters.

As I’m sure most of you have heard by now there is a new version of the Mark Twain novel Huckleberry Finn that has removed all references to the word “nigger” and replaced it with the word “slave.” They have also removed the word “Injun,” but I am unsure as to what they have replaced it with (I’m guessing “Indian”).

There’s a lot of folks who are up in arms over this and who want to raise the specter of Political Correctness or blame this on the Obama Administration.

Here’s some fact juice for you, sparky –

Huckleberry Finn is in the public domain. What this means, if you aren’t familiar with the term, is that it was written so long ago that the copyright has expired. This is why you can download all of Mark Twain’s work for free if you have an e-Reader. This also means that, because of the lack of copyright, anyone can publish the book and edit it to their heart’s content.

Which is exactly what one publishing company has decided to do.

If you want to read Huckleberry Finn with all the original language intact you will still be able to find a copy. The firemen have not come to take away your precious words, and Big Brother isn’t stepping in here to protect you from reading something that might be offensive.

NewSouth books thinks that there is a market in this edition, and they are putting their money into that belief. It may very well pay off for them. So, if anything, this incident is an example of our free market in action and nothing more.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go back to collecting tin foil for my new hat.

The Searchers

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Jeffrey Hunter (Martin Pawley), John Wayne (Ethan Edwards)

Last night I sat down with Krystalle and Jareth to watch the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers.

The reason we picked this particular movie is because it appears on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time. While we were waiting in line to get on the Great Movie Ride at Hollywood Studios last week we decided that there were a lot of “classic” films that we haven’t seen and that one of our goals in 2011 should be to rectify that situation. The Searchers was the first movie we picked off of the list, largely due to the fact that it is only going to be available through Netflix for a few more days.

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