team brunia

Mario Brothers : The reality

I don't buy that Mario was a good plumber. There's no way that fat man could have fit under a sink and gotten anything meaningful accomplished. Especially if he consumed a super mushroom, his size would have increased from an already 'Big Lou Albano' to something similar to King Kong.

No, Mario was not a plumber. I'd say he probably worked in the sales and marketing department or as the chief of the administrative functions of the Mario Bros. Plumbing Corporation (dba Mario Bros. 1/2/3/Super). Luigi probably did most of the grunt work which explained his calm and unaffected demeanor: If your love in life is what you do and you don't have to worry about the details, how can you not be consumed with bliss(as Luigi was)?

This is probably the best sibling working relationship you can imagine. Given Luigi's constant state of bliss and Mario's generally amicable and reasonable demeanor, or what can be inferred from his cheerful 'Here we go!' attitude towards missions in Nintendo 64*, I can't imagine many disagreements occurred.

The one underpinning of all these accusations is that historians accurately interpreted Mario's size. We see him as small as Bob Hoskins in Super Mario Bros the movie and as large as Lou Albano in the Super Mario Bros Super Show. Assuming that somewhere between the two was Mario's real size, he would likely be 5' 8" tall and around 220 lbs. It's actually the shorter height that would play a bigger problem than the weight. I'd think someone built a bit like an apple would have no ability to get under a persons sink and their short alligator arms would just make for a comical display for anyone watching from the kitchen. Something like flipping a turtle on it's back, or a 3rd grader with a full backpack.

* In the Nintendo 64 release of Super Mario, Mario is finally put into situations that can be realistically completed by a person of his physical composure. True, in the Mario Bros 2 release, there's a pretty good chance he was able to get involved (and the character bias shows the same) in most of the work, but may not have been ideal for some. It was really in this 64 bit release that he could truly be believable as a character. Given the size of the pipes in the original Super Mario Bros and the again in the Super Mario Bros 3 release, it was highly unlikely that his somewhat portly frame would have been able to enter most, if not all, of the warp pipes.

Reducing your ecological impact

While waiting on another conference call, I was trying to think of some ways for the laziest among us to become more environmentally friendly.

1. Stop pissing on the toilet seat
If you stop pissing on the toilet seat, one less person will have to pull some toilet paper to clean up after you.

2. Use hand sanitizer to clean your hands
I'm not really sure about this thing where everyone is washing their hands after going to the bathroom. Make use of the alcohol based cleaner as it'll make your hands just as sterile but save water, soap (water again), and paper towels

3. Wipe your hands on your pants
Yep, mom was wrong. Wipe your hands on your pants when you can, and it's not going to make a mess of other things. We can wash your pants and wash your hands, but we can't put a napkin back into a tree.

4. Use bar towels instead of paper towels
Seriously. $5 for 5 and all you have to do is wash them. Keep paper towels for special occasions

5.Use one less square of toilet paper each time you wipe your ass
Yep, pretty easy one again.

Well, that's all I have for today and perhaps this month.

Cowabunga Dude!

Oh Bruce. What have you done to your money maker? 

My husband loves to surf. He'll ditch me for the waves without a second glance (and thats ok). Monday night was no different. At 5 o'clock sharp Bruce skidaddled out of here to make his way to Carmel beach. Two hours later, when he normally skips in here like a school girl who just saw New Kids on the Block perform live at the mall, he slumped through the front gate. At the front door, he met me with, "I think I need your help." 

He pulled away a paper towel from his head to reveal a sweet, deep gash. After a flurry of questions -- did you black out? how's your eye sight? do you feel nauseous? -- it was decided the ER was our next stop. While I felt confident he was going to be ok, we weren't sure if stitches were in order and if there was anything else to worry about. Hey, when you have insurance you may as well use it when you have medical questions.

During the drive, I learned the head injury was sustained when Bruce was clobbered by a set wave while paddling out. He got separated from his board, pushed under water, and when he shot back up to the surface his forehead met up with the fin of his board. Cue blood...

We drove a few minutes up highway 68 to the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP!) emergency room and let me just tell you, if I ever need to go to an ER, no matter where I am in the country, I am demanding they helivac me to CHOMP. This place was, as the nurse who later saw us said, "the Club Med of ERs." It was clean, ER employees were genuinely concerned and helpful, there were living plants throughout the waiting room (see photo), decent artwork on the walls, and, most importantly, the restroom wasn't vandalized with the words, "CHOMP kills people dead"; something I was lucky enough to read during my stay at Brooklyn's Woodhull ER a few years back. 

After about 30 minutes we were seen by a nurse who let us know that stitches were probably in order. While the cut was small in length, it was deep. He was kind enough to pull the skin apart for me to see just how deep (unfortunately the camera didn't do it justice) and informed us that without all that blood in the way we may have even been able to see Bruce's skull bone. RAD!

The wound was irrigated, a surfin' nurse stopped in to poke fun, and then the doc came in to give the final verdict -- stitches! Seven stitches to be exact. Bruce got a tetanus shot as well, which I think ended up being harder to recover from than his head wound. 

Stitches come out Monday at 9 am. I predict Bruce will be in the water at 5 o'clock sharp later that day. 

 

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State Farm: Dogs are made of emotions

You may remember this from a bit ago. It's a story about how a State Farm Insurance customer hit and killed a family's dog. State Farm handled it the best way possible, they billed the dog owner. Bru was annoyed about this and sent State Farm a mail asking State Farm had really taken this position and notifying them of how horrific a policy this was. Here's the response to that mail:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this very unfortunate incident. As you can imagine, we’ve heard from all sorts of people on both sides of this issue. Every day in this country wild animals, livestock and family pets wander in front of vehicles leading to accidents. Some are preventable and some are not, but when a family pet is killed or injured that emotional aspect can make a bad situation worse.

This is a very unfortunate circumstance and State Farm understands this is very upsetting to the dog owner and our insured. Accidents are just that….accidents. And after an accident, most times there needs to be accountability if someone experiences a loss. In cases like this, State Farm is obligated to represent our policyholders and try to recover the cost to repair the damage and the deductible which comes out of their pocket. That is a promise we owe all our customers.

We know a situation like this is made more difficult because it’s an emotional and sad story. It is fortunate that no one else was injured. We truly want to resolve the issue as amicably and quickly as possible with the dog’s owners and/or their insurer.

Sincerely,

Jairon L. Wills Public Affairs Manager State Farm Insurance

So you see, the never promised their customers taste. Interesting question though, if a dog isn't a living creature and is just merely property, I guess the dogs owners are due to be compensated for their animal and pain and suffering.

Friends, Sand, and Sun

It's been a while since I've posted. Writing blog posts all day for a living leaves little desire to write yet another blog post after hours, but here I am, biting the bullet for you. 

Justine and Sarah are two incredibly women I've been lucky enough not only to know, but to call two of my bestest friends. They endured a 5 hour bus trip from SF to visit us over a weekend back in April and let me just tell you, it was one of Team Brunia's best weekends. We spent the weekend exploring the beaches and tide pools near us, eating yummy food, and simply enjoying one another's company. I've been trying to convince the two to move down ever since. While I love living down here in Pacific Grove, Justine and Sarah made it that much more special with their company. 

We visited Asilomar, which is just a 2 minute drive from our house, Pebble Beach (10 minutes) and Point Lobos National Park (40 minutes). I can't believe we live so close to so much beauty. 

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Trader Joe's is the Best

I can't believe we haven't done it already but we're long overdue for raving about Trader Joe's. The place is amazing! It may only hit about 80% of your grocery needs but it hits them dead on. There's no High Fructose Corn Syrup in anything, just for starters. Next, nearly everything is either organic, cage-free, or in some other way, responsibly produced. It's really nice to be able to buy just about anything you want and never need to check the label to see what kind of artificial garbage you're putting in your system. The prices are also extremely competitive, and by that I mean lower than other producers. Let's go with milk, one of the best barometers outside of meat for pricing. Trader Joe's Organic 2% Milk in the 1 gallon size, $3.19. Safeway generic 2% organic milk, $5.39. There's never a sale at Trader Joe's so that is the price you are always going to pay.

TJ's also has a really amazing prepared and semi-prepared meals which are actually rather healthy for you. Even some odd ones, like vegetarian corn dogs, are made without strange unpronounceable chemicals. While I'm sure I could find things like that at Whole Foods, I'd still have to check each product to make sure it was similarly 'clean' of odd chemicals. That and Whole Foods is a Whole lot more expensive. If you're still laughing, I can wait.

If all of these very customer driven items aren't enough, when you finally go to check out, the people are friendly, approachable, and all around enjoyable to be around. I guess if you grow up in some parts of California, that's expected, but it's a massively welcome change on the east coast. And a very welcome one. So Trader Joe's, welcome to our family!

Surf-o De Report-o

Pretty consistent head high surf down at Carmel today. The bottom had a really uneven sand scalloping and it was causing things to break like a hot mess. Still, spent 3 hours or so being frustrated. I'm going to take Andy's lead and buy a pair of boots a size too small.

Oh, on another note, O'Neil 3mm fingered gloves are not very durable at all. However, Rip Curl's bargain basement E2 4/3 ($130, Rockaway Beach Suf Shop) has been holding up to 3 hour plus sessions since October. Sometimes doing 5 straight days in action. Really impressive for a suit that isn't using fluid seaming and has a pretty mediocre back-zip and neck fit (flush-tastic). But overall, I'm as warm in it for 3 hours as I could want to be and have only very minor seam breakdown. If the suit makes it through the summer, I'll be super impressed, but making as far it has makes me question spending $350 on the top end when the bottom rung seems to hold up just as long where it matters, warmth.

Fired Up the Grill

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A few months ago mama and papi Zjawinski bought the newly married McMorans a gas grill. We haven't been able to use it as much as we'd like because of all the rain, but things finally cleared up and today was just too beautiful not to fire it up. We marinated shrimp in a coconut milk, lime, ginger, and garlic sauce for an hour, then skewered and covered them with shaved coconut. While Bruce grilled I made a variation of dirty rice with onion, garlic, chili powder, and peas. After squeezing some lemon on both rice and shrimp we dug in and it was as good as it looks.