Can't eat fish either

I heard this interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and it turns out that we can't eat fish without feeling guilty either... Basically, we're killing all the wild fish and any fish that's farmed probably is pretty bad for us.

Kind of a bummer right? You wish you didn't know that, right? That's the way I felt, too.

Sorry.

Brusha, brusha, brusha

I can't stand buying toothpaste.

When I get to that aisle, I'm immediately overwhelmed by all the choices. I can never remember if I want Colgate or Crest... Their names are too similar.

And then I can't remember if I want paste or gel. I know I hate the pop-top toothpaste because that always gets that awful glob of dried toothpaste at the top, but I can't tell from the box whether it's a pop top or a twist top. So, the only way to tell is to open the box, which is unseemly and time consuming.

Once I've resigned myself to the pop-top crap shoot, I stare blindly at the prices. There's always five or six different sales. Buy one get one free. Buy one get half off. Buy two and get a rebate for half the cost. You need to understand calculus in order to figure out the best deal... Oh, excuse me sir for blocking your way. I'm preoccupied with entering all these price variables in my graphing calculator...

I'm hoping someone will hear my plea and open up a medium market that has fewer brands. That would make my life a lot easier.

My New York Times debut

Amazing! I have officially made it in the New York Times! I answered David Pogue's (@pogue) call on Twitter for app ideas a few days ago. And sure enough, my brilliant idea made it into his latest tech column. You have to click through to the second page, but it's there.

Now, I should also point out that my idea was slightly edited. I originally wrote:

"A grocery store app that tells you the aisle of the item you are looking for... No more searching for capers!"

And the copy editors at the Times changed it to "An grocery-story app..." The "an" sounds awkward to me, but perhaps there is some archaic grammar rule they are trying to follow. Whatever! I'm in the New York Times!

The great outdoors

I've become a fan of recording audio on the iPhone. I combined sounds from our camping trip at Housatonic Meadows State Park in Sharon, Conn., with some photos. Check out the result:



A birdwatcher on the trail said the distinctive, chime-like bird call was a Veery. But when I listened to that bird call online, I didn't think it sounded the same at all. I'll let you be the judge.

Hometown pride

Check out the unveiling of Bobby's new sneakers... Unfortunately, they arrived when Bobby was in Maryland, so I decided to record opening the box for his benefit:

Your new helper

So, today at a Worcester Xtra Mart the cashier was quite a character. He was covered in tattoos. More specifically, he was completely bald with a spider web tattoo covering his skull. And then he had blue ink tattoos on the skin above his eyelids.

Welcome to Worcester!

This one's for Peter...

So, we recently made a trip south to Savannah, Ga., and I proved myself to be an ugly New Englander.

Bobby and I were at a restaurant on a slow night. There were only a handful of people and we were sitting on top of another couple. Well, it turns out I talk too loud (surprise). We had this strange waiter who was easily 6-foot-2. He had a different accent every time he came back to our table. At one point he sounded French, next he sounded Italian, and finally he threw in a y'all for good measure.

I had noticed while in Savannah that practically everyone uses y'all even if they have no business using it. The town is filled with college students that are clearly from the Northeast, yet they feel obliged to say y'all after nearly every sentence.

So, I commented (a bit too loudly) to Bobby something to this effect:
"Everyone in this city is so fake. They all use Southern accents even though they aren't from here."

After the couple next to us left Bobby informed me that the woman sitting next to me was not happy with my comment and said so to her dining companion.

In my defense: Could you ever imagine a college student in Boston taking on the local accent just for show? Of course not. But for some reason in Savannah, everyone wants to have a drawl.

It's just weird.