The internet has many many funny tshirts a geek like me can wear to emulate having a real personality. A lot of the ones I've liked over the years are no longer being made, but these are some of my current favorites.



From ThinkGeek:

• Keep out of Direct Sunlight
  
• Han Shot First (I liked PVP's old design better, but it looked too much like the Star Wars logo and had to be taken down. That led to a "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" shirt that I also liked quite a bit and that also appears to be gone.)
  
• Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock
  

From Goats.com:
Goats has changed the design on their "You rock my small, self-centered universe" shirt and are in the process of retiring their "Xibalba is for Lovers" and "Please do not eat this t-shirt" designs. I'm glad I snapped 'em up before they disappeared forever. They still have a few of my favorites, though.

• Republicans for Voldemort
  
• Stuff is Awesome
  
• I Am The Kwisatz Haderach
  

From Wonder-Shirts:

• Real Men Read (My fiance bought this one for me about a year ago and I've already about half worn it out. I'm thinking about just buying myself half a dozen or so as extras.)
  
• Driven to Read (I love Mo Willems' art.)
  

From TopatoCo: (representing many webcomics)

• The Revolution Will Not Be Telegraphed - Wondermark (I'm also quite fond of Wondermark's Futurism print.)
  
• Tiny Karl Jung - Dresden Codak
  
• Polka Dot - Silent Kimbly
  
• I Will Do Science To It - Dresden Codak
  
• Heart - Beaver & Steve
  
• Historical Preenactment Society - Dresden Codak
  
• The Monkey Represents Sharing - Wigu
  
• Kant Stop the Music - Dresden Codak
  

If I'm not wearing a plain grey tee or one of my shirts sporting bookstore logos, I usually find myself wearing the "Real Men Read" or "Xibalba is for Lovers" shirts. What are your favorite geeky tees?

A ridiculously huge Kroger opened near me last week. During their opening day festivities, I went in and filled out a few enter-to-win forms and then promptly forgot about 'em.

Got a call night before last that I'd won a $200 gift card. Last night ~e and I filled our fridge to overflowing. That's 99% of our holiday food shopping taken care of!

Friday night, we lit the first fire of the season in our fireplace. Some of the storebought wood is still a little damp, but the apple wood we got from my parents is nice and dry and smells pretty good when it burns.

~e and I spent 3 days in Ohio's Amish country at the beginning of this month with both sets of parents and 1/3 of our total siblings. Had a lovely time at the guesthouse where we stayed, ate much broasted chicken and other good food, and attended the Mennonite Relief Sale (mainly to marvel at all the quilts).

This is the 4th time ~e and I have gone to Holmes County and we've developed an unspoken (until now) list of places we absolutely must visit every time we're there.

1) Der Dutchman restaurant (usually multiple times): They have some of the best broasted chicken and real mashed potatoes of any of the places we've tried. Although it's part of a "chain" of 5 restaurants, it's still family owned and passes the all-important "Is there a lot of horse poo in the parking lot?" test that we apply to any restaurant located in Amish country.
It also has a bakery and is located only about 100' away from #3.

2) Heini's Cheese Chalet: I really like saying the name. If you get there early enough in the day (they're usually done just before noon), you can take a tour and watch cheese being made. They also have free samples of just about all the cheese and fudge they sell (but please don't reuse your toothpick if you've stuck it in your mouth). If you're not interested in viewing the cheesemaking, visiting this place is a great way to get a free afternoon snack, though you'll most likely wind up buying about $30 of cheese regardless.

3) Coblentz Chocolates: This is another place you can watch the stuff being made. We were there on Saturday morning before Easter this year and got to see the final frantic preparation of Easter bunnies. You can make your own bags of bulk by-the-pound stuff like chocolate covered macadamia nuts, cookie dough, almonds, blueberries, and etc, or you can select more premium chocolates at the service counter. They also offer sampler boxes. I'm incapable of entering the place without spending at least $50 (though that does get me enough chocolate to last at least 2 months at home).

4) Lehman's Hardware: Want an oil-filled storm lantern, cast iron skillet (seasoned, unseasoned, ceramic coated, or nickel plated), garden tool, fireplace insert, hand-cranked apple peeler, wrought iron hook, or any of about a zillion other things? Go here (I love that they provide GPS coordinates). I visit for my Beeman's Gum and to lust after nifty small tractors that won't do me any good in my current apartment (since the carpet doesn't appear to need mowing). ~e likes to look at all the cast iron stuff.

5) The village of Berlin: We've been through some of the other nearby towns, but we keep coming back to this one. ~e likes to browse through the Helping Hands Quilt Shop and I buy peach Nehi and teaberry gum by the case at Sommers General Store. Boyd & Wurthmann's, "where the locals eat", is another place you should visit if you're in town around meal-times (I love both their patty melt and their open-faced roast beef sandwich). Just keep in mind that they only take cash and have a really tiny dining area (so you may have to either wait for a while to get a seat or visit them just before or after the standard meal-time rush).

Other places worth visiting at least once include
1) Behalt at the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center. This is a 265' circular mural depicting the origin and history of the Mennonite and Amish faiths.
2) Walnut Creek Foods. Buy your cheese at Heini's, but come here for bulk foods such as mexican rice mixes, home-made peanut butter (grind your own), and really really cheap spices.
3) Local restaurants other than Der Dutchman such as Das Dutch Kitchen (really convenient if you're entering or leaving the area on SR 30), the Farmstead (a good place to redirect in Berlin if you're unable to squeeze into Boyd & Wurthmann's), Mrs. Yoder's Kitchen in Mt. Hope, and the Amish Door (which also has an attached hotel, bakery, and gift shop and a nearby bulk foods store and B&B).
4) At least one or two of the many antique malls and furniture stores.

If you do visit the area, please be respectful of the local Amish and try to avoid the temptation to snap photos of them willy-nilly. Also, watch your speed when driving to prevent any accidents with the horse-drawn buggies sharing the road with you. To avoid the crowds of fellow tourists, I'd recommend visiting earlier in the year (perhaps April) and avoiding early August (unless you really want to go to the relief sale) and the month of October (unless you're chasing fall foliage).

As an aside, is anybody else as bemused as I am at how many websites I was able to find for all these places?

Driving around Cincinnati recently, I found myself stopped at an intersection behind the following car:



Is it wrong that my first thought was that this was the perfect vehicle for Sarumom to use when hauling the little orclings to soccer practice?

A few days later, in the restroom of a local bookstore, I saw this graffiti on the stall door:



The letters T, A, H, E, and V all show that this dude has spent a serious amount of time jotting notes into a Palm device. Add to that the (illegible in this picture) LordZydor@aol.com email address (in blue) and the chemical formula C21H30O2 scrawled on the wall to the left (not shown) and this one stall absolutely reeked of nerditude (in addition to the usual urine aroma).

On April 12th, the Target near my apartment finally had the Nintendo DS Lite in stock for the first time since before Christmas. I bought one in Onyx (black) and a copy of Brain Age.

Barely more than a month later, I now own 5 games for the DS. In addition, I've purchased a Wii and a whole bucket full of controllers and accessories for it. I spend at least an hour a day playing video games - something I haven't done since college (and I'm playing the same game as then, too - Mario Kart 64).

However, perhaps the worst thing to come out of all this is the title pun of this post. I only hope you will someday forgive me.

I wonder what made the connection statistically significant enough to justify generating this headscratcher of an email.

Saw this tonight at Home Depot and just had to take a picture. Please pardon the craptacular camera-phone quality.

When called with the news that her order for When I Say No I Feel Guilty had arrived, a lady informed us that she no longer wanted the book.


Yeah. I'm easily amused. So?

ten days
two weddings
four parents
three grandparents
two sisters, one brother, his girlfriend, and her dog
one thousand six hundred sixty-eight point three miles
one girlfriend who endured being trapped in the car with me for the entire trip
i fear nothing anymore
listen to this song

(then listen to code monkey and mandelbrot set and, heck, most of the others too)