#WeekendCoffeeShare: Insane Idiosyncrasies Edition

On May 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Stories3 Comments

coffee2

If we were having coffee, I’d be in a better mood than I am right now, because I’m not drinking coffee. (Note that it is probably best to interpret this post less as whining and more as look what an idiot I am. Calibrate your expectations accordingly.)

Our coffee maker took a shit a couple of weeks ago, developing a leak toward the base somewhere that necessitated its immediate replacement. The new hotness was a more expensive & more technologically complicated edition. It had a timer on it! My wife was super happy, as you could set everything up before bed and have hot coffee already brewed when you get out of the shower in the morning.

Sounds great, right? It also has an auto shutoff, meaning that there’s no more early-afternoon trips that feature one of us saying Did you shut the coffee maker off? because it automatically shuts itself off after some predetermined amount of time. And for whatever reason I haven’t taken the time to figure out how the timer works and how it can be adjusted, which means that there have been several times since we got the new coffee maker where I’ve wanted coffee and not had any, because for some reason the idea of reheated coffee creeps me out. Once that shit gets cold, it’s permanently undrinkable.

Note that I drink iced coffee every now and again. If it’s cold on purpose, that’s fine. If it’s cold because it got cold, it cannot be made hot again.

Yes. I know.

That doesn’t make any sense at all. I am aware of the problem and I have top people working on it.

I just wandered into the kitchen– yes, I know, it’s a quarter to twelve, shut up— ready for a hot cup of coffee only to be greeted with what was best lukewarm liquid that wouldn’t have been hot at all once I added milk to it. Turning the pot back on or putting the cup in the microwave is existentially impossible, and making a new pot seems wasteful. So no coffee for me this morning, again, because I’m too damn dumb/lazy to figure out how to extend that auto shutoff feature by another hour or two or, better, just disable it altogether.

I am not very bright, is what I’m saying here. On the plus side, I discovered cold pizza in the fridge that I didn’t know was there, so the morning isn’t a complete loss.

How’re you?

Anybody wanna do a guest post?

On May 28, 2016May 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking7 Comments

Short notice, I know, but: I’m out of town for my brother’s wedding Thursday through Sunday of next week. If anybody has anything laying around (or stuck in their brains) that could make a good guest post, either hit me up in comments or drop me an email.

In which I approve of motherhood

On May 8, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

Big thumbs up to all the moms out there. Please continue to, as they say, do you. Or not, if you’d prefer otherwise.

My brother and his fiancee are in town for the holiday, and we got together yesterday to go over details for the ceremony, which I’m officiating– totally a bucket list item checked off there. I am currently on my fourth draft of the benediction, and by “fourth draft” I mean I have written three entirely different speeches and rejected all of them, including one that was nearly entirely references to movies and TV shows and songs that I mostly wrote to get it out of my system. My own proclivities as a writer are sort of working against me here; I do sincerity best when seasoned with anger and outrage, and… well, that’s not entirely appropriate to standing in front of a roomful of a couple hundred friends and family and the occasional random stranger and marrying my brother off. I need to do genuine sincerity here, and sincerity about life and love and a whole lot of other things that my Midwestern sensibilities make me occasionally reticent about speaking of in front of other people, and I need to do it without using the word “bullshit” or saying “labia” even once because that will scandalize people and apparently the officiant at a wedding isn’t supposed to do that.

There were meow jokes in one of the drafts. This is the level I’ve descended to. You can see there is still some work to be done.

Maybe one meow.

On the other hand, I managed to work a Princess Bride reference into the ceremony itself, so I probably ought not to press my luck any further.

Now turn the computer off and go hug your mom. Or the nearest available mom surrogate.

In which I make a Brief Observation, one perhaps Better Suited for Twitter than WordPress

On February 23, 2016February 23, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

…writing a wedding ceremony is hard. Like, not in fiction. An actual wedding ceremony that I will officiate.

Seven years

On February 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized11 Comments

…well, technically we got married on Leap Day, so our actual anniversary occupies some sort of odd null-space between today and tomorrow.

But still. Marriage is cool. I’d do it again.

Happy Anniversary, babe.

About that wedding…

On January 6, 2015January 6, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn StoriesLeave a comment

So this is a new thing. I’ve never come home from a wedding wanting to do research before. My cousin’s new bride is Lebanese, and her entire family are Melkite Catholics. The wedding woke up every last bit of me that used to be a religious scholar, and I walked away all kinds of full of questions. The ceremony was split fairly evenly between English and Arabic, which was already fascinating enough on its own, and the full name of the church is the Melkite Greek Catholic Church– and there was Greek in abundance all over the church itself– despite the fact that it is an Arab Catholic church.

There is history here, and I must learn it. I managed to wedge my way into an interesting conversation with the deacon at the reception, only to get called away by the distribution of wedding cake and Lebanese baklava, which caused me to ask my cousin all sorts of questions about the Melkite position on polygamy. Needless to say, I did not manage to acquire a second Melkite wife to make baklava for me. These are an interesting people, and I wish to know more of them.

So, yeah: the reception. The reception started off with what I would call typical reception music; the newlyweds walked into the hall to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck, which I approved of greatly. Maybe twenty minutes into the dancing, the DJ abruptly veered into what initially felt to me like Arabic pop music, but probably wasn’t, because her entire family immediately knew what to do about it. This was awesome, especially when the oldest, fattest dude at the wedding proceeded to manage to get every Lebanese woman at the reception, as well as most of the younger white ones, dancing in a circle around him while he cut a rug worthy of BB King in his prime– at which point he broke the circle and dragged my only-barely-willing cousin and his new bride into the middle of it so they could dance around them instead. Dude was amazing. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get good footage of him, because while my iPhone can handle darkish rooms for pictures, video with bad lighting just isn’t happening.

The song after the Arabic dance music? Yeah!!! Which was also hilarious.

Then there was this dude. I love this dude, just for rocking that suit:

The jacket matched the pants perfectly and was positively Zoot-suit like in its length. I didn’t get a chance to talk to this guy much but he is my favorite. Well, my second favorite, after that other dude.

Some wedding stories

On January 4, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

I enjoy this sign quite a bit: “There are cameras in the parking lot, but we’re not watching them, so do whatever you want.” The misspelling of “management” is just the icing on the cake.

Why the hell would you put that second sentence on the sign, unless you wanted people to think that they could get away with shit? Somebody help me out here.

I am tired as hell right now; tired to the point where I’m writing this paragraph probably fifteen minutes after finishing the second one. I’ve basically been staring off into space for most of the time in between. The boy fell asleep quickly enough at the hotel last night (and he had a blast at the reception, in the way young kids do) but I’m finding that I really can’t sleep without a fan on me, which I didn’t have, and we had to leave a light on for him, meaning the room was too bright for me, so whine arrgh gargle blargh etc.

(Five more minutes of staring)

Okay, maybe not. I’m just going to post this one picture, which was a stealth shot of the second coolest guy at the wedding. I’ll tell stories either tomorrow or later tonight when my brain is back on; right now I ain’t got it.