Relaxation/Hobbies
Relaxation/Hobbies
This section was expanding so rapidly, at one point, that I went ahead and broke it up into several subpages. Now at least one of these subpages has been further split and will probably be followed by a second. Here's the current breakdown:
|
Good music is pretty much anything that's not country or opera. Most of the
time I'm not terribly partial to some of the gangsta rap, but other than that
I'm pretty much wide open. I lean mostly towards hard rock and metal, but I'll
listen to most types of rock 'n roll. I blame a good friend of mine for my
listening to Hip Hop & other dancy type music again. It seems that my
daughter has largely gravitated towards that music as well. Jazz & Blues
style music works well when I'm just trying to relax and want to focus on
something that isn't the music, but I don't actually own much of that - I just
use Launchcast or hit the radio for those times I actually think of it.
There are too many good bands out there for me to possibly list them all, but some of my more recent purchases have included: 50 Cent, Black Eyed Peas, Garbage, Gwen Stefani, Jet, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Papa Roach, Pussycat Dolls, The Donnas, The Killers, Three 6 Mafia, and Ying Yang Twins. That's just the new stuff. I have lots of older stuff as well. Then there's all the bands that have 1 good song that I haven't gotten around to buying a CD for - lots of those.
Food-wise I'm pretty much your standard guy. I like the more basic foods, freshly prepared is the best. The really fancy foods don't tend to do much for me and when I'm eating them I'm usually humoring somebody.
I do observe some dietary restrictions which make me unusual. I eat poultry, seafood, and vegatation only. Recently I've eaten things that have a little pork sprinkled in them (like most egg rolls do), but I don't eat bacon, ham, beef, etc at all and certainly never as a main menu item. That's actually harder to do than you would think in the south as literally everything seems to have dead pig stuffed into it somewhere. In general I can pick around such things and be fine, but there are certain types of food that make me ill each and every time I eat them: sausage & pepperoni. Even if you pick them off a pizza before I eat it I almost always get ill afterwards. I don't know why. What I do know is that I went from being a constantly sick person to a fairly healthy one since I removed almost all beef and pork products from my diet. That's good enough for me. You eat what you want and I'll do the same.
As for ethnic foods there's a fair variety I do like.
Good chinese is great, but rather difficult to find. I sometimes think that some restaurants just go ahead and serve whatever they have because if you complain they just tell you that you don't know what chinese food is - after all they're chinese and you're not so who do you think you are? One of my favored chinese dishes is Hunan Shrimp because I rather enjoy spicier foods. I had one chinese restaurant serve me shrimp in a mild moo-goo-gai-pan style sauce. When I asked about this I was informed, rather annoyedly, that Hunan foods were sweet and I was wrong. A chinese friend of mine was rather surprised when I related that to him later. His wife makes the absolute best chinese food.
Recently I have been introduced to some Vietnamese and Cambodian dishes that I like. Mostly they are noodle/soup kinds of things and contain shrimp and/or chicken. Many are beef broth based, but this doesn't seem to affect me. Of course I don't eat it very often, so perhaps that's why I get away with it.
Mexican food is interesting and seems to come in 3 distinct varieties.
Variety #1 is OK and what I generally refer to as either "Texican" or "Yuppie Mexican". I don't mind it as the food is generally at least Mexican inspired food, though it tends to be a bit bland for me. Most of the people I know seem to prefer this style of Mexican food, though, so its what I get exposed to the most. Think "Rio Bravo" or "On the Border" when I say Texican.
Variety #2 is what I prefer. The food is probably slightly Americanized, but is prepared by people who know how to properly make the food. Generally they are Spanish. The food has the proper amounts of spice that some folk find a bit too much, but I love it. You can generally find the old standby meals for people who aren't feeling much like stronger Mexican food (like Taco Loco, Speedy with Beans/Rice, etc.) along with a number of more authentic dishes. The old "El Toro" franchise was the perfect example of this. Some of the splinters of that chain are still excellent examples, others aren't. There are several stand-alone Mexican restaurants that fall into this class as well.
Variety #3 seems to be the highly specialized locality based restaurant. They present themselves, more or less, as a Mexican restaurant. Once you get inside, though, you find that they are strongly based on a certain authentic region. This means you won't find any of the foods you may be accustomed to. Many of them are serving a specific local clientele that represents a pocket community that originates from that area. Some of these seem genuinely hostile to any outsider entering the premises. I've been in a few of these, but I've quite often felt very unwelcome. Even if the food is OK I've not returned to any of these restaurants. I should point out that I am Spanish, so that's not the problem.
I like Italian food. The only way to spoil Italian food is to try to make it too fancy or too bland. If you can avoid those 2 extremes then you should be able to make it fairly well. Of course I tend to prefer spicier. When I make anything italian you can expect to find both garlic and chili powder in it. I can get tired of it if I get it too often, though.
I don't like Sushi. I want my food cooked, k? thx!
I'm not too partial to Thai food. I've not found a dish I enjoy and the spices don't seem to agree with me. It would take some pretty serious bribery to get me back to a Thai place that didn't offer some non-Thai food. Only Thai place I really go to at all serves Teriyaki. Guess what I order?
Indian food isn't bad, but I had a bad experience with a "friend" that thought it would be funny to have the restaurant substitute the mildest spices (what I ordered) with their strongest spices so he told them to do so. I didn't enjoy the food at all and had a fairly bad reaction to them which made me ill for some time afterwards. I can't help but think how stupid that was. In this day and age it seems like I could have sued the pants off of everybody involved. Its their lost business I guess.
A friend of mine introduced me to Bangladeshi food. I rather like it. Its got some similarities to Indian food, but more taste and less burning spices. The only complaint I have about it is that its a buffet.
BTW, I'm not fond of buffet or other self-service type eating establishments. I don't really consider them restaurants. To me a restaurant means that I walk in, either seat myself or get seated by a hostess (I prefer the hostess), and get waited on. It just seems to me that when I go out to spend money on food or drink that I'd like to be waited on. They take care of me and I tip them accordingly. I figure I'm generally regarded as a good customer and generally good guy because people tend to remember me and what I eat/drink. When business is slow waitresses and hostesses quite often come back to chat. That suits me just fine.
As for where I enjoy hanging out and enjoying that good company I don't think I'm going to share that with y'all this time around. The last time I did that my favorite place expanded so rapidly that I started having a rough time getting a place to sit even though I was known to the owner and staff. The place just sorta went nuts and got to be less fun to be in and I finally stopped going altogether. I don't know if it was my huge fanbase (yeah right) or I just stumbled on a great place early, but the place sorta fell apart. So now the only way you're going to find out is if you're one of the people I hang out with.
My first car was a 5.0L 1979 Mustang Cobra. It was just after I got my drivers
license - 1984 in NY. That car certainly facilitated keeping myself in trouble,
but I loved it anyway. One night returning from work we got hit by a tropical
downpour. I hit a flooded part of the highway and snuffed the engine out like
a candle. I had to coast off the side of the road and leave my car. I remember
trudging off into the downpour. I was soaked and unhappy, but at least I had
managed to steer my car well off the highway (several dozen yards off in the
grass). My brother took me back there the next morning to find my car gone.
Figuring it had been towed, we headed off to the local tow yard. My car was
there, alright, but it had been hit and the entire rear half was crushed in.
Turns out a tractor trailer had lost control and somehow careened way off the
road, hitting and crushing my car. My minimum insurance and the car's condition
made it a total loss to me.
My next car was a late 70's Firebird, painted canary yellow, with an early 70's Formula 400 engine transplanted into it. Let me tell you something about driving a car like that. You couldn't drive 50mph down a highway without the windows rattling from all the radar guns bouncing signals off you. It was as if the cops couldn't believe that car would possibly be driving below the speed limit, so they'd keep on checking until you were gone. I suspect many of them then sent their guns in for recalibration, because they just had to be wrong. I even got pulled over once for an 'equipment violation' - my rear driver side wheel wasn't perfectly straight and wobbled slightly. Yes, that's exactly what he told me as he wrote the ticket out. It didn't matter that I wasn't speeding. I eventually gave that car to my brother (I bought it from a friend of his and he'd expressed regret several times at not having bought it for himself) before I left NY. He eventually junked it.
My next couple cars were pretty non-descript as I was tired of drawing so much attention. I had a 1986 (V6) Thunderbird while I lived in Florida which I sent my ex-fiancee home with, then I picked up a 1985 (V4.. ugh) Chrysler Laser. I stuck with the Laser for many years.
I jumped back into the 'fun' car mentality when I bought my 1985 Mustang GT convertible. I drove that car for several years and it was even my primary car, on and off, for part of that time. I finally decided that I needed a reliable primary vehicle for work so I could turn the GT into my part-time fun car and do some work on it. Unfortunately, the Mustang's engine had not been well cared for before I bought it and had possibly been in an accident so despite my constant work on it something trivial (a bad water pump) became a real showstopper. I also rebuilt the AOD transmission once (boy don't those just suck). The car is still in my garage, but is currently not running. I need more time and money to fix it properly, and I don't intend to do anything kludgy with it, so there it will sit for now.
The wife came along and added a couple of clunkers to the car history. The first one she had bought new. I sold that one to her brother for $50 and a promise that he would never come back to me and complain about it.
He only complained once.
I picked up a 1985 Suburban for those times when a truck would really come in handy. Nice to have a truck. I've redone the engine in it twice, though. I still have the truck, but pretty much reserve it for times when I really need a truck since gas costs on that thing are insane.
My first 'work' car was a 1992 Mercury Grand Marquis. This was a great car for a long time until it took a hit during the CDC's shelling of my workplace. I work next door to the new CDC campus and, during construction, they were using a lot of explosives to dig down into the bedrock. One time they used a tad too much. They launched bedrock and really smashed up a bunch of cars and offices where I worked. They fixed the damage, but the car was never really the same.
My current 'work' car is a 2002 (V6) Mitsubishi Galant that is mostly maintenanced by the dealer. I've just been too busy to do it properly myself. I'd like to devote some time to my old cars, but in the meantime I have one car I let the pros handle for me.
A few years back, a good friend of mine rewoke some of my sleeping interests
in reading which soon grew into an overall reawakening of my love of learning.
This led to a renewed interest in writing and so my creative writing website,
KILVARI.com,
was born. I cornered myself into writing one story and managed to get it out
(barely) on time. I started a couple others, but they weren't evolving 'right'
and so I shelved them. I then got tangled up in a bunch of other things for
the rest of the year and produced nothing. Looking back on that now I'm a bit
miffed with myself for letting that slide. I have, however, read simply tons
of books in that time which has helped to restimulate my creative side. I
feel like its just a matter of organizing my time appropriately. Its really a
juggling act trying to devote enough time to hobbies, family, and friends,
but ultimately I think its a juggling act worth perfecting.
I planned to write some stories in 2006 and I just got all wrapped up with work instead. I went from being a pure tech to being a team leader and then to being the manager of my group in about the space of a year. It was a major transition, but one I welcomed. Unfortunately, it severely cut into my free time. I think it was worth it, though.
I've finally started reading again and I'm hoping to devote some time to my writing. I really do enjoy it. I'll probably stick to the fiction stuff since that's what I enjoy writing about the most.
I do find the concept of blogging fascinating, though. I have had people tell me I should blog as well. My main problems with blogging are that it would be yet another drain on my most precious resource (time) and the fact that people get genuinely ticked off if they think you're blogging about them. The last thing I need is to annoy friends, family, or work associates, but if I was blogging I'd not care to be restricted in my topic selection. We'll see.
Return to Christopher's home page