go...

Fast Serve. 47.

Marco is a little too timid to actually create a blog post about this. He had a tennis match at the USTA National Tennis Center on Saturday night, which is where they play the US Open. I tagged along and took some pictures. These are some of those pictures.

Cubs at Mets

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the greatest team to ever grace a baseball diamond with their cleats - and the only charter member of the National League to continuously play in the same city since the leagues inception in 1876 - the Chicago Cubs, allowed the New York Mets to host them for a three game set at Shea Stadium. In return for their hospitality, the Cubs agreed to play down to a level of a baseball conducive to the Mets being competitive with them. Very generous of the Cubs if I do say so myself.

Monday and Tuesday's games were night games so of course I had my tickets months ago and couldn't wait to go. As it was, these two games were the first opportunities I've had to see the Cubs live this season. I've been wanting to go to Chicago all summer, and I will at some point, but I haven't yet.

We got to the game on Monday night as early as we could in hopes of watching the Cubs take batting practice. The starting pitchers for this game were Steve Trachsel vs the future first-ballot hall-of-famer Greg Maddux. Here are the Cubs taking BP and the great Greg Maddux (#31) being completely awesome.

Our seats for this game were in the second (of three) decks, second row, directly behind Home Plate. The TV broadcasters were all directly below us. Check out our view of Michael Barrett, the catcher, warming up the gun to throw out base runners attempting to steal second (notice the ball in midair above the mound).

The Cubs, you'll be pleased but not surprised to hear, I'm sure, won that first game 8-7. Greg Maddux got the win, Trachsel the loss and Ryan Dempster got the save.

The ace of the Cubs' staff, Carlos Zambrano, was on the hill for Tuesday nights game against another future hall-of-famer Tom Glavine. Again, our seats for this game were spectacular as well. We were on the first level about half way between home plate and first base. This is big Z throwing the first pitch of the game. It was a strike. Obviously.

As expected, the good guys pulled it out for an 8-6 win in this game as well, though in slightly more dramatic fashion. Z got the win, Glavine the loss, and Bob Howry earned the save after getting out of a bases loaded jam in the ninth.

There's been a lot of talk about breeding issues. I read Jeff's book review about world food productivity and how without science backing it up, the world just wasn't meant to support this many people. Then I had a conversation with several PhDs of chemistry in which they said it was total arrogance to breed just so you can raise someone to be like you, which I pretty much agree with except that aren't doctors part of the small subset of people that should be reproducing?

Anyway, I initially figured everything would be cool if every couple on Earth only had one child, which would eventually cut the population in half, but then I thought again, wasn't it fun growing up with brothers? Another talk with a certain friend of mine (in which he blankly stated "I'm going to have a kid in 9 months") gave me a reason to consider whether the immediate freedom of remaining childless outweighs the uncertain future benefits of having babies (my current decision, emphatically the former). I finally escalated the issue to Code Navy Blue: important enough to dick around on the Internet.

First of all, I have always wondered whether young sperm is better than old-man sperm and that article says that in many ways the answer is yes. My next question was what are the fees for cryogenic sperm banking? Nothing too extravagent, especially considering the savings in birth control: it's approximately $500 for the initial procedures, screens, etc... and an additional $1000 for a 5 year freeze.

So is it too early to start thinking vasectomy? Yeah, I think so. But at the same time this statistically doomed contraceptive battle right now only has two possible outcomes, both of which are equally unfavorable.

Pitching matchups

I woke up this morning in a very weird mood. I happened drift towards being awake while dreaming, thinking about an ex-girlfriend in a longing fashion. Very strange because she and I never got along and I've never missed her. But this mornings dream was very different and I don't know how I feel about it. ... I got out of bed at exactly the same time yesterday and today: 7:36am. ... I wanted some coffee when I woke up but I knew that I had drank the last of my coffee yesterday. I contemplated going out to buy some but laziness took over. I went looking around my cubboards for tea and found an unopened tin of Maxwell House coffee. Needless to say, I was very excited. ... Does anybody watch that show on MTV The Hills? It's embarrassing to admit that I do, but it's not like this is going on the Internet at all. Can I just say that Jason is a complete douche nozzle and Heidi may be the dumbest girl every, but also one of the sweetest. Lauren is your prototypical distressed heroin just trying to make her way through adversity. I dig the show. ... Every post that Jon ever writes on this blog is simply tits. ... The Cubs are playing the Mets in Chicago this weekend and I love it because I actually get to see some Cubs games on TV. The weekend series is split 1-1 going into today's final game. The big rookie lefthander Sean Marshall vs. El Duque. Should be a good game. ... Next week the Cubs will be playing three games in New York and I've got pretty sweet tickets to the two night games in the set. Needless to say, I can't wait. First time I'll see the Cubs live this season.

Some thigns

I was curious today about what defined a second so I looked it up, as usual wikipedia had all the answers. A second is defined as "9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom"..." at rest at 0 degrees Kelvin." I never thought about this before but the word second is quite directly related to its position in the sequence "first", "second", "third." A minute was once referred to as a "prime minute" and the second was then called the "second minute." Where minute (small) just means a small portion of an hour. Pretty interesting, and to wrap up the blog post with the most quotation marks ever, I saw this in the news today "Do Not Define Zidane's Career by the Horrible Head Butt". I agree with the sentiment - he has certainly had a history of outbursts but it is his performance on the pitch which should win him lasting recognition- however I propose this header be changed to read "Do Not Define Zidane's Career by the AWESOME Head Butt." Because that shit was awesome.

Deep-Frying

I bought a deep fryer a few weeks back in order to realize my destiny of making the perfect buffalo wings. I was actually trying to re-create the taste of my favorite wings, those of Chuck’s in Princeton, NJ. My quest began when I first tried Franks’ Hot Sauce – I quickly realized the contents of Frank’s Hot Sauce along with some butter were used in the sauce at Chuck’s. The sauce consists of: spices( that’s what it said on wikipedia – I don’t have access to the bottle right now), vinegar, garlic and cayenne peppers.

Having nailed down the sauce, I began to think I could and should actually make my own wings. So I bought some wings, put them in the oven and bathed them in the sauce. They turned out decent, but I noticed that I wasn’t achieving the crispiness I desired. The oven was the weak link in this process - I would never be able to attain the ideal crispiness while using an oven. I realized that a deep-fryer would solve my problem, but I didn’t take immediate action because: A) I didn’t think I could find a non-industrial sized deep fryer; and B) I am pretty lazy. I’m not sure what it was, but something inspired me to actually search the internet for a deep-fryer for home-use and of course there were tons of them. I ended up going with one from Target because of its size and everyday low price.

People at the office were as excited as I was about the purchase and offered up some good tips for frying up some wings. I was told to use Peanut Oil because of its high smoke point and flavorful taste, and it was suggested I dip the wings in egg yoke to enhance crispiness

I was pretty excited when I used the fryer for the first time and it did not disappoint. It felt like I was in Chem lab all over again. The sound of the wings cooking in the oil was therapeutic –awesome enough to almost convince me that working at McDonald’s wouldn’t be such a bad gig. The wings turned out good – three people besides me have tasted them and have given their approval. I feel that’s a large enough sample size to call my experiment a success.

lil' dmk

Here is a picture of my newest little guy and I. David Michael Kraemer the third. He is the result of my good friend Dave's semen, Jennifers egg, alcohol and Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On album, played on a loop. Nine months (and week) later, here he is. The scary thing is that Dave and Jennifer trust me with the child.