Mastication

Last night was a night of serious discussions about the importance of mastication. It all started with four of us in a SUV on the way to a sex toy shop, after dinner. Miriam was offering gum for the purpose of mastication. She's all, "Ya'no, that [masticate] is latin for `to chew'". Secretly, I knew it is actually English based on the latin word and I now know that it was derived from Greek, but I digress.

At that point, it was the word of the evening. Almost every other sentence made reference to mastication. We discussed the woes of over-mastication, including the threat of blindness. Also, the dangers of deprivation from under-mastication were brought up. Someone mentioned that mastication should be done in private, while another extolled the virtues of doing it openly in public.

Later in the evening, we relaxed at this other restaurant at an outdoors table. I'm masticating my second piece of gum for the night. I ordered Coke, and immediately realized I needed to demasticate it. The napkins where the fancy reusable ones, so I couldn't expel my gum there. Cor suggested that I demasticate it under the table, then he preceded to look under to see if others had already thought of this (and they had...yuk). In the end, the waiter brought out some restroom paper towels. I demasticated rapidly, to the amusement of both Cor and Miriam.

I can say that it was an evening filled with a healthy and open discussion regarding mastication. Someone should did a public service announcement on TV about masticating. Oh wait, they have!

Testing the Publishing Waters

Here's my start at writing and publishing on Amazon for the Kindle and Mobipocket for Palms and such:

Amazon: My Start as a publisher

Mobipocket: My books so far for Palm

Written times

Writing isn't coming easy to me right now. It's not for any particular reason, just that I've been doing a lot of it. Not on this blog obviously, but in other venues. So, even now there's nothing really on my mind. I mean, I had another pretty good weekend and all, but reading though my past entries, I find that I talk a lot about weekends. I don't think I will stop. Just not in the mode today for that. Other topics that interest me are being covered in other areas, such as my SolidWorks Legion website. It's been taking of much of my writing energy. Even now, I'm have a couple of article projects that are waiting to be penned on that site.

At this point, I'm mostly rambling, but then again, that's what a journal is for sometimes. As I write in this blog over time, I've discovered things about myself, and my writing style. I talk about myself a lot, but that's a given since this is about me. Also, I tend to write in contrasts. I'll make a statement, then mitigate or offset it with a "but". I wonder how many "buts" I've writing, not just on this blog, but in all my works, and even in my daily speech. As someone famous once said, "But, there be no buts." Not true here.

That's really all the thoughts I have today, other than to say this is likely one of the few truly personal thoughts diary-like posting I've ever made on this blog. Well the inner thoughts be surfacing here? Hmm...

My Wife is a funny one

So, Allie gets a week paid vacation for the whole week of the 4th of July. I've had this in mind for quite some time. Few months ago, I asked her, "Do you want to get away or do anything the week you have off in summer?" Her response was, "I don't know." A couple of months ago, I ask "What would you like to do during your time off this summer? I can take the week off with you." Her response was, "I don't know." A couple of weeks ago, I inquire yet again, and yet again, "I don't know."

I wake up this morning and snuggle a little bit with Allie. She turns to me an asks, "Do you want to take some time off next week to spend together?" Arg!

Miriam's BD and such

Welp, there was some fun last week. Allie and I met up with Miriam and some of her girlfriends at PF Changs for a diner for her BD. Save for her older neighbor that joined us with this wife, I was the only guy...something that Allie made sure to point out.

Afterwards, we all headed up to SF to a club to meet up with some more people of various varieties that one might expect to meet in SF. Thangs where fun. We were at this one roof top club with a fairly ok view of the city and a large number of drunk people, and some not so drunk people too.

Allie and I headed out home around Midnight, as did several others. Miriam and several of her girls partied on and didn't get home til about 6am.

On the recent movie front, Allie and I have seen The Happening. Funny how nothing happens in a movie with that title. It was OK. Save for rental.

Patent exhaustion rule upheld

Yet another blow for customers' rights last week via the Supreme Court which just handed down a ruling that upholds Patent Exhaustion regardless of a patent holder's notices or attempts to put limitions on the purchaser. I recommend this more detailed article found at Electronic Frontier Foundation. It provides many links on the topic along with a detailed description.