I Haven't Changed a Bit

Detroit Gas Prices - Find Cheap Gas Prices in Michigan

According to detroitgasprices.com, there is a station in Garden City, wherever that is, charging 3.92 a gallon. I searched gasbuddy.com and that is higher than any gas station in San Francisco, Honolulu, or New York City, you gougers. Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and the site has the 2 and the 9 reversed, it's still more expensive than buying gas in New Orleans right now! I'm sure the attorney general is paying attention, but in the meantime I'm going to cut back on driving the big car.

More Photos from Masayuki Monchichi

keito&shinsuke
Originally uploaded by How Bourgeois.

Yeah! Masa finally sent me some more pictures with his new camera. This is Masa's nephew Keito, he's only about 5 months younger than Noah. Isn't he cute!? Maybe someday the two babies can be penpals! Noah will send Keito Twinkies and Keito will send Noah glutenous rice balls. Yes!

keito&my_parents
Originally uploaded by How Bourgeois.

Note: Even Japanese Dads wear madras shirts too. (That's Masa's Dad)

Mt.Fuji
Originally uploaded by How Bourgeois.

Mt. Fugi as taken from somewhere near or in Masa's home town, Kawaguchiko. How beautiful. Um..what the heck is that though? A backyard? A backyard gravel pit?

outlet_in_Yamanashi
Originally uploaded by How Bourgeois.

Heck! We should all move to Japan. Look how nice their outlet malls are, Gees!

eye guy

BBC NEWS | Business | KPMG pays $456m for tax misdeeds

I know that the remaining Big 4 firms are raking in fees and turning away work thanks to Sarbannes-Oxley compliance requirements. I still would not want to go back, and every time I see a story like this I remember why.

Happy Birthday Nate!

Saturday night we went out to celebrate our friend Nate's birthday.


Watch him get down!


Meagan



Party people


Purple party people


And green ones


And blue too

Noah Fix

My cute boy.


Having fun.


I love those cheeks.


I tied up the curtain to keep it away from Noah.

It's as big as my head!

My Mom lent me her very old, VERY giant digital camera!


It's as big as my head!


Should I show him how to work this thing?


Ummm..yeah, that button...

Wife #2

Or at least she thinks so.

Friday!

Demoralizing Friday: Not getting hired by CMT

You might remember that back in February, I applied for a position as Vice President of the Dukes of Hazzard Institute at Country Music Television.

I didn't get the job, even though my entry was probably the best one they got and Waylon Jennings was one of my references. Yesterday I received this in the mail:


Funny, ever if it is 7 months past relevant. Nothing to do now but wait and see if I get hired on at the Patty Duke Library.

Pot Luck

We had a big meal at the office today. Here are my "cappucino crinkles," which are chocolate cookies with coffee and cinnammon.


I had my first White Castle ever. You know what it was like? Every other slider I've ever had in Detroit.


Which is not to say it wasn't good, it was just not a new taste. They sure went quick.


Today was not about proper nutrition....


...by a long shot. Everything was good though, and eating communally in the warehouse is always fun.

au bureau

According to his Grandmother, Noah dropped in this morning to "tie up a few loose ends."


"Tell him I'll call him back!"


"I only need them for reading."


"What, you've never seen a baby with his own office before? I have things to do man."

BloggerBot Offline

I use free Picasa to edit my pictures and free Hello to host them, and right now I have the greatest pictures to post and BloggerBot, who appears as a "friend" in Hello, is offline. This is so frustrating, but at least I'm not alone.

Closing in on 10,000

I just realized that we will probably hit 10,000 visits to How Bourgeois today! That's huge, because we just started writing this to tell a simple story and post some baby pictures. It's amazing to realize that we've been writing something that anyone would want to visit 10,000 times. I know there are blogs that get that in an hour, but we're about quality. Thank you to everyone who reads this.

CONTEST: IF YOU ARE VISITOR NUMBER 10,000, SEND A SCREENSHOT OF THE COUNTER TO HOWBOURGEOIS AT GMAIL.COM, BECAUSE WE HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU.

Oil breaks record at $68

"I'm going to get a Jeep Grand Cherokee to support local industry and tote around my new young cargo."

Oops.

In fairness to my decision, the lease under $200 with employee pricing and the insurance savings from not driving an Acura anymore are $500/year. I guess that offsets the fact that the Jeep is currently averaging 14 Miles per gallon in city driving, if the dash computer is to be believed. I can't even figure out why they put that feature in the car, it is extremely demoralizing to look at.

What chafes me though is that I am getting lousy mileage with the V6 engine, which I chose because I wanted to economize. I am kicking myself for not getting us V8 to enjoy listening to while we burn dinosaurs around Detroit.

I really like everything else about this Jeep. I love the space. It has a great stereo. There is lots of room on the back window for crazy stickers. It does get above 20 MPG on the highway, which I am almost never on. I can fit a stroller and all of our luggage for a week in the back.

On balance, I would do this again because we can't afford an Audi Allroad Quattro in Alpaca Beige Metallic with Ecru/Light Brown cricket leather, and the Jeep is extremely practical for moving a baby and a bunch of stuff. I just wish that I didn't need to buy petroleum futures to hedge against my commute.

Lucky Day!

You know the phrase "it must be your lucky day?" I have never liked that phrase, because I never felt I had had one. Sure there were some great days, amazing days even, but never one where something great just fell into my lap. The closest we ever got was when a family member won a "Big Boy" look-alike contest about 12 years ago and received coupons for 52 Big Boy burgers - one a week for a year.

Naturally we were thrilled with this largesse on the part of the Big Boy corporation, but it is hard to compare that to what happened to me yesterday. I went home for lunch because Lauren's dad was in town, and when I got back to the office I opened my Gmail account because my friend Phil in Spain had asked me to read a draft of a proposal he was writing for a tool company in Toledo, Ohio.

When I opened my mail account my eye immediately fell to a new message from Virgin Atlantic. I had entered a contest on their web site a couple of months ago, but no one ever wins those, right? They just take your email to market to you until you get frustrated and change it. Or maybe, sometimes, you might win?

I am happy to inform you that you are the winner of our Virgin Atlantic Flight Number Sweepstakes. You've won two round-trip Upper Class tickets on Virgin Atlantic Airways. Please see the full terms and conditions on our website --> virginatlantic.com/flights. Please call me at ------------ or reply via email and we can begin processing the documents for your prize.

Congratulations, and we look forward to welcoming you onboard soon!

Best regards,
----

Manager, Customer Relationship Marketing
Virgin Atlantic Airways

Thanks Richard Branson! We're going to London! Did I mention that Virgin Atlantic is the best airline in the world? This really made my day, what a riot. Luck happens!

Thumbsucker

This new movie "Thumbsucker" looks interesting. It is about a 17-year old who still sucks his thumb, and it features Keanu Reeves as an orthodontist. It goes without saying that movies like this (ie interesting ones) rarely open in Detroit right when they come out, but hopefully we'll get it by October. Here's the trailer.

Echo Sushi

I was going through the take-out menus in my desk this morning to see if there was anything interesting to eat today or if I would have the leftover tomato and cucumber salad and "Tradition-brand" instant noodle soup (chicken flavor) that I brought.

I found a fabulous looking menu for "Echo Sushi,' with a 15% discount coupon for pickup orders and awesome prices. There was sashimi, an la carte sushi menu plus special rolls, salads, udon noodles, Bento boxes - it just looked amazing.

"Why haven't I ever been to Echo Sushi?" I thought. "This place looks fabulous!" My mind raced as I thought of all the tasty hamachis and tamagos spread out before me. A tofu salad! An Enoki beef roll! Spicy seafood udon!

"Where is this place? I'm calling in an order!"

Oh. It's at 2036 Yonge Street...in Toronto. I ate there last September when I was visiting a customer, and I must have thrown the menu in my desk, which I am now ready to crawl and curl up under due to the crushing unavailability of so much great food.

"Hey, it's only 3 and a half hours! If I leave right now I can be home by 9 pm...."

Summer Cold

Oh man, I am stuffed up. So's Lauren. We think we caught a nice summer cold from Noah, who had a runny nose for about an hour and a half last Thursday and hasn't had a symptom since. There is nothing like a summer cold, especially since the last couple of days (excluding the morning of the Dream Cruise) have been eye-poppingly gorgeous and moderate of temperature. Catching a cold at the end of the summer has been an unwelcome tradition for me since I was a little kid at summer camp in Canada, where the warm days and cold nights conspired to ensure snuffling by the time I went home in August. I think that the actual discomfort is nothing compared with how incongruous it seems to be sneezing so much when it's 80 degrees out.

That said, late summer might be my favorite time of year. The weather is beautiful because the heat starts to lift a little, and I still get the wistful feeling of knowing that school is about to start and its back to structure for 9 months. It made all of the remaining days that much more important to enjoy. In June you're wasting summer days like crazy, but in August every moment counts, so you have to cram the fun in to them while they last.

Dream Cruise Oddity

This odd little car is a Kaiser-Darrin roadster, one of 435 ever made. It was expensive, underpowered, and almost pretty - which to me makes it more interesting than if it were truly pretty. It was more than $3000 in 1954, and the Kaiser car business was almost finished at that point anyway. Now it is essentially a curio, an interesting experiment doomed by a high price, a slow engine and a vanishing dealer base. If you want one this is the only one I could find, and is sure needs some work.

Relaxing pretty much perpetually

Priya

Relaxing post-cruise

Dream Cruise 7: Euro Miscellenia

Look, the Dream Cruise is supposed to be for vintage American iron, right? Well, lately people run a lot of different kinds of cars, and there was no shortage of newer exotica: Check this Porsche Carrera GT (Cool Half Mil)


Austin Powers Jag


Lotuses at Auto Europe


Lamborghini Gallardo, Lamborghinia Murcielago, Porsche Turbo, Ferrari 430 Modena


Rare BMW Z8

Chevy Art

Dream Cruise 6: My Favorite Car

This VW Beetle was my favorite car of this year's Dream Cruise. Why a Beetle? Check this out:

Dream Cruise 5: Not just cars

Not just cars

Dream Cruise 4: I'll park wherever I feel like

Read the sign

Dream Cruise 3: Waiting for the Light

Dream Cruise 2: Chevys

I really like old Chevys, so I probably have more pictures of them than anything else.