Yeah, so it's been a little while since my last update. Sue me.
It's been a rollercoaster the last two-plus months.
Four more funerals.
Rodman Bakley passed away on October 9, which was hard, because he wasn't just Cheryl's dad... he was one of us. It's really difficult to explain if you're not in the know, but Rod was MORE than Cheryl's dad. He was our friend. He was our mascot. He was awesome.
And then, a week later, on October 16 -- what would have been my mom's 62nd birthday -- Bob Craig's mom passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly.
Two parent deaths in our group, within a week of each other.
Then there was my car accident on November 1, which by now just about all of you have heard about.
Then two MORE funerals, back to back, mid-November. The first was Angelina Juliano, who was my landlord's mother, but who more importantly was a cool old lady I got drunk with in Poland. The other was Harry Jacobs, the man who lived nextdoor to us when I was growing up. Because of him, I'm used to the sound of gunshots in the morning. (You can read more about Harry here: http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/179/story/330534.html)
...and here we are.
Within the last four days, I've gotten several bits of awesomeness, with more on the way.
The first, and most expensive:
The Analon Advanced 10-Piece Cookware Set
- Includes: 1.5 Qt. and 3 Qt. Covered Saucepans, 8 Qt. Covered Stockpot, 8" and 10" French Skillets, 11"/4.25 Qt Covered Saute, 5 Qt Covered Sauteuse
- SureGrip Handles, a combination of stainless steel and silicone rubber
- Break-resistant dome shaped glass lid
- Oven safe to 400°F (Covered Sauteuse oven safe to 500°F)
These goddamn things are great. I'd been fucking around with 9-year old T-Fal pieces of shit that I got in the divorce. The Teflon had scraped off of most of them, making them damn near impossible to clean, the heat distribution was hellish, the handles were loose and I just hated them.
These, though? They're fucking wonderful. The saucepans are deep, not wide, which is perfect for the small-ass stove that my apartment has. The stockpot is bigger than my old one, and is the perfect size for a good pot of tomato gravy. And the best part? The nonstick surface is, by far, the best I've EVER encountered. Dinner the other night was rigatoni carbonara -- delicious, to be sure, but a sticky mess when dried. I mean, you've got congealed bacon grease, romano cheese and egg in the sauce. And the Sauteuse took me exactly 30 seconds to clean. That shit came RIGHT off. I've never seen anything like it.
Next up in my list of awesome acquisitions...
Star Trek Original Series Pez Dispenser Collector's Set
How fucking cool are these things? I was in Shop Rite tonight, buying pork chops and kosher salt (which, in retrospect, just seem so wrong to put together!), and there, right with the Christmas stuff, was this little bundle of joy. All by itself. The only one.
How could I possibly pass this up? It was $17.99, and I get decent likenesses of the orignal seven, plus a pretty cool Enterprise Pez dispenser. The only dilemma I have, of course, is whether or not to take these puppies out of their package.
And finally, arriving in a few days...
Star Trek: The Original Series, Season One Remastered
When this first hit the market, it was a whopping $132.95. See, the discs contain both DVD and HD-DVD content. "HD-DVD?" you ask. "Who the hell has that anymore?"
Precisely. Seems that HD-DVD lost the format war to Blu-Ray, so all of the HD content on these puppies is obsolete. As such, Paramount dropped the price from $132.95 down to $79.99. It's still high, but when you consider that there are 27 episodes, and I've paid $40 or so for 10 episodes of Battlestar Galactica, it's really not so bad. But it was still out of my price range.
Until two or so weeks ago, when Best Buy had this fucking crazy one-day sale, and this collection went on sale for $39.99. Jesus Christ on a shortbreak cookie, did I jump right on that motherfucker. Dipsy-doo-dunkaroo, click-click-boom, ordered, price locked in, and... backordered. No worries, though... just got a shipping email yesterday, and my prize is on its way.
Just for shits and giggles, I re-checked the SKU number on Best Buy's website, and it's back up to $79.99. Fuck me if I didn't get that just in the nick of time.
I'd gotten Season Two already when that came out, and Amazon had a pre-order special that dropped $20 off the MSRP, bringing it down to $59.99. Now all I have to do is get Season 3 -- and I'm hoping that Santa will be kind enough to bring that to me -- and I'll finally, FINALLY have the complete original series.
The best part of these sets is that it's the remastered series. ALL of the FX shots have been painstakingly re-done using CGI, so all of the cheese -- which apparently is much beloved by many a Trekkie, but I'm sure as fuck not one of those purist bastards -- is gone. The ships look like ships, the space battles are more convincing, and the FX no longer look like they were created using MS Paint.
But don't take my word for it, take a look. The original FX shots are on the left, and the new are on the right. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Fuckin' A, man.
With the new Star Trek movie coming out in May, it certainly is a good time to be a Trekkie. (Yeah, I said I'm a Trekkie. Seriously, is there anyone left out there who didn't know that? Where the fuck have you been for the last twenty years?)
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Anyway, that's what I've been up to the last two months. Hopefully my next post won't take me so fucking long.
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