9/11 Pictures

damnit

It's a boy. Collective groans of disappointment went up in the office when the news broke.

Lessons I learned at dinner tonight:

I learned the physics of a flying saucer.
I learned that Japan and Germany had the Atomic bomb before the United States.
I learned that there are orbs that are all around your body that you can't see but can be picked up by a camera if you are standing in close proximity to a properly charged crystal.

Who did I learn this from? My dad, of course, and all of his reading of the "Truth".

It's going to be a looong weekend.

It could be worse. It could be my mother and her best friend, Jesus.

BLAH

I have't felt up to writing much lately. No excuse really. I'm not particularly busy at work, but I have been a bit depressed I guess. I've felt the dread of the busy season creeping up on me. October is peak season for my company. Last year the earliest I ever left my office was 10:00 during the entire month. I was hoping to have a new job by this time but.... shoganai as they say in Japan. Nothing I can do about it except jump in.

My friend from work, Ayumi, moved in with me and J at the beginning of August. We love the combination of the 3 of us together, but unfortunately for us Ayumi ha decided to move back to Japan at the end of October. She wants to study for the GMAT, apply to business schools, and come back next fall. I've started working with her on the verbal section GMAT prep. It's a long arduous task. Saturday night in Starbucks we talked our way through 8 questions in 1 hr. Together we could ace that test; she the math and I the verbal.

So J and I will have to set about finding a 3rd girl to move in Nov. 1. The looming prospect of this roommate search comes on the heels of a wacked-out story she just heard from her best friend who lives in Chicago who I will call Andy.

Andy's ex-roommate Jan was a girl her age whom (who?) she had known for several years before they became roomates. About a year ago, Jan started screwing around with Andy's brother. They tried to keep it on the lowdown but Andy caught on easily. Things went bad when, a few weeks after Andy's brother and Jan broke up, Jan revealed that she was pregnant. She had an abortion and decided to tell Andy's brother about it by standing outside the door of his apartment and screaming at him that she knew his was in there with a girl and that she wanted him back and she had even had an abortion for him. Lovely. She then returned home to the apartment where she broke every dish in the kitchen, and went on a drinking binge for the next month. During this time she locked Andy out of the apartment on 3 separate occasions, attempted suicide once, broke in to Andy's brother's apartment and trashed it as well, and spent a few nights in jail when Andy called the cops.

That's the short story version of course. The moral of the story is watch out for crazy roommates. This is a difficult balance because we want to find somebody who is fun, but also sane, just like us.

Ummmmm..... what else.

My youngest cousin has decided to drop out of her fancy schmancy private college where she was majoring in Classics and return to her home-state's university to study biology. This came as a shock to everybody and a thrill to her parents, my aunt and uncle, who are overwhelmed by the task of paying for college for all 3 daughters at the same time. Public school will be way kinder to their bank account.

I should work. Or something.

Bike Messengers Are on Crack

I watched it without sound and was totally hypnotized.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

I went to a pool party in New Jersey today. There's a few pictures of me looking hot in a bikini, but I can't post those here. I can post some signs that I saw in the tunnel that runs between Port Authority and Times Square. Apparently Jews for Jesus has dropped some cash to buy out every single signboard for advertising in the tunnel:

The love goes both ways. Maybe Jesus's reps paid for this one:

They could have saved a lot of space and printing and advertising costs by using the word that the first Jews who believed in Jesus used to describe themselves...

email

Ok, I finally posted an email address on my profile.

If you so desire, you can email me directly at squirrelmeatblog@gmail.com.

Somebody already took the user name "squirrelmeat". How dare they! Who the hell do they think they are? Certainly not Kyaroko.

Harumph.

Wikiality

Tuesday morning, the morning after Stephen Colbert gave us the gift of "Wikiality", I sat down in front of my computer and Googled Wikiality to see what the buzz was. My search returned precisely zer0 results. "Hmmmmm" thought I, "maybe it isn't going to catch on after all".

This afternoon I tried again and was returned 260,000 results.

And that's the word.

I am so smart

Starbucks is giving away free iced coffees today from 1 - 3 at all Manhattan Starbucks locations (maybe all of NYC, I don't know). I thought it was maybe just a nice good-neighborly thing to do in the 100+ heat, but come on, this is New York. There has to be another motive. So I searched for articles on Starbucks at the Wall St. Journal website....

Starbucks Shares TumbleAmid Frappuccino Questions
By RICHARD GIBSONAugust 3, 2006 12:47 p.m.

Starbucks Corp. shares took a double-digit fall Thursday as investors wondered whether disappointing July comparable sales indicated more than a short-term service problem.
The stock was trading recently at $29.59, down $3.71, or 11%, on volume of 17 million compared to average daily volume of 7.3 million, continuing a slide that began in after-hours trading Wednesday.
Management blamed the 4% same-store sales gain for July -- which was less than Wall Street had anticipated -- on customers requesting made-to-order cold drinks during morning rush hours, thus slowing service and sales.
But several analysts questioned whether the sales sluggishness hurting many other restaurant companies was also partly responsible.
Thomas Weisel Partners lowered its rating on Starbucks to "peer perform" from "outperform." It cited "a heightened risk of multiple contraction amid slower same-store sales trends and increased investor concerns" about weakness in near-term spending by lower-income consumers.
CIBC World Markets said the July result was a combination of the cold-drink phenomenon and "a time of unprecedented cyclical weakness for restaurants."
JPMorgan Securities, holding to its neutral rating on the stock, said that "we cannot fully commit to the company's belief that July's sales weakness is due to increased Frappuccino sales during the morning daypart, and instead believe that a broadening consumer base and increased relevant competition has contributed to cyclicality."
Deutsche Bank said capacity constraints in Starbucks stores "highlights a larger concern: ever-increasing non-coffee offerings...cause more volatility and stray further" from the brand's "coffee culture" ethos..."
Management insisted late Wednesday that while it hadn't anticipated the demand for cold drinks, the resulting service "bottleneck" was quickly fixable and shouldn't hurt future results.
Among other remedies, it said it would shuffle work schedules so as to have more employees on hand to make drinks and would add equipment and increase training.
Hot weather may have contributed to the demand for icy drinks, but management said it viewed the problem as an internal one and wouldn't blame on outside factors. Although a 4% one-month increase in comparable-store sales is within the company's long-range goal of 3%-7% with anomalies, analysts noted that the July number was the smallest such increase since December 2001.
None of the analysts quoted personally owns Starbucks shares but their brokerages seek to do business with companies covered in their research reports.

.... so you see... people want their labor-intensive frozen drinks when it's hot outside, so it's worth the investment for Starbucks to promote its iced coffee.

Maybe I should have studied economics. I really like concepts like this. It's the math part that I hate.