Hyper Dad - Life, unfiltered » long winded

In which peanut brittle, the Vietnam War, and my wife’s boyfriend factor

Paul — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:10:38 +0000

Our new kitchen is fantastic but since it’s at the back of the house I can’t see who’s coming up the driveway. A few days after I returned from Qatar I was puttering around the stove and heard a vehicle pull up to the house. Was it was the police (my moustache really makes me look suspicious)? Zombie Ed McMahon with a really big check?

Ed McMahon was unavailable so they sent Stephen Hawking instead.

“It’s my boyfriend!”, Louise said excitedly.

Now, if that was true it wouldn’t be all downside. He’d have to listen to all her complaints about me, for one (I alone get that honor now), and he’d spend money on her, maybe saving me a little out of pocket expense.

We’ve been through this drill before, however, so I know that “boyfriend” is her pet name for whichever UPS driver is bringing her “gifts”. If only they were the ones paying for the gifts…but since the boxes come from J Crew, Banana Republic, and Piperlime I’m pretty sure there’s a little self-love going on.

She quickly returned from her rendezvous with a stack of boxes and began going through them.

“Hey, here’s one for you. Who’s this Joan…Joan V…Joan View…I can’t pronounce this name. What is it?”

I thought for a second. “Oh! That’s my girlfriend!”

Louise wasn’t expecting that answer. “Wait, what? Someone sent you a package from the desert?”

She’d had the fear in the back of her mind that’d I hook up with some young hottie while deployed, which is totally plausible if you think about it. After all, I’m 45, overweight (though less so thanks to the power of P90X), and my graying hairline is receding. On top of that, such activities are against regulations and were really outside the realm of what was physically possible, what with my tiny bunk bed and the ants on the floor.

Then there’s that whole “I’m married” thing.

In short, the box was not from the desert.

My room in Qatar. Throw in a little Barry White and the babes would be lining up at my door.

Back in May, at the appointed time I bought gifts for the mother of my children…I sent her flowers and chocolates. I know, right?! Romantically original! (Guys, feel free to steal the idea) Since there were neither suitable flowers nor chocolates in Qatar, I outsourced it.

For the foliage I went with FTD. They dropped the ball…they ran out of the plant I ordered so they substituted another, packing it poorly so it arrived broken. Yay FTD.

Chocolates I take more seriously; my inner chick wouldn’t have it any other way. In the past I’ve ordered from DeBrand - their truffles are decadent – but for this occasion I went looking for a new chocolatier.

I take this duty seriously – I literally spent hours searching for the right place to buy from. I look for good chocolates, a good story (yes, I read the “about us” pages), and I search the Internet for positive reviews. I like to buy American when I can, too, though with chocolates that’s not really hard to do.

I settled on Choclatique and included a comment with my order authorizing them to ship as necessary to get to my wife on the Friday before Mother’s Day (because, as usual, I was ordering later than was prudent). I received a nice note in reply from Joan Vieweger, one of Choclatique’s founders, assuring me the chocolates would arrive in time.

They did and were quite good (so I’m told). I became a fan of Choclatique (a fancy website may bring sales, but service + quality breeds loyalty) and started following Joan’s Choclatique blog. Sensing one of my weaknesses Joan wrote about peanut brittle. Now, for my money you can’t beat See’s peanut brittle…and I’ve tried. I went through a “I can make great peanut brittle at home” phase, during which I cooked up many batches of peanut brittle, plowing through pounds of sugar and gumming up the stovetop horribly. I never was able to duplicate See’s great brittle…the closest I came was with a batch of microwave peanut brittle, of all things.

Joan spins a good tale and sitting there in the desert I began to crave peanut brittle. Several e-mails passed between Joan and I and after extensive shipping research by her (heat and poor handling would be bad for the precious cargo) I decided it would be better to wait until after I got home to order some.

I never got a chance to place that order, for in the package from my “girlfriend” was two boxes: one of peanut brittle and one of chocolate covered peanut brittle.

And it was good. Really good. Lots of peanuts…I hate skimpy peanut brittle.

And it came with a nice note too! (Click to enlarge, as with every other picture on the site)

Ok, I suck. I don’t know any highfalutin food words and I can’t spit out flowery phraseology to do a proper review, like “it evokes remembrances of my childhood kitchen, Mom at the stove lovingly crafting another delight for her family while I sat nearby, playing under the table and dreaming.”

Not that my mother made peanut brittle mind you, but that’s not the point. The first thing I came up with was a meger offering of monosyllabicity.

We loved the brittle and it was gone in fairly short order. It wasn’t too hard (I broke a tooth on brittle once) and not gooey. I’d never had chocolate covered peanut brittle before; it was excellent. My wife had her hand in that box frequently…and she doesn’t like peanuts, peanut butter, or peanut brittle.

Not my mother.

Thanks Joan and Ed, for your gift, your kind words, and for saving me on Mother’s Day when FTD let me down. The rest of you, go buy something from them.

And now, the rest of the story.

In response to my “thank you” e-mail I received a note from Ed Engoron, the other founder of Choclatique. When I was Internet-powered chocolate quest I’d read his bio on their website – “He studied in Paris at the famed Cordon Bleu and Meraux Chocolate Boutique, and has had a passion for chocolate his entire life” - and thought, “ooh, fancy guy.”

Keep reading and you’ll see, as I did, if you had to pick one adjective to describe Ed it probably wouldn’t be “fancy”.

He wrote

Thank you and your brothers in arms for watching over our security while making such a large family sacrifice. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. I have become a “twitter-bug” (if you don’t know what that means ask your kids) and every evening before we shut things down for the day we send a thought and prayer to all those overseas in harm’s way. I spent 2-1/2 years in Vietnam (another time and another place). I was the line producer for ABC News from late 1964 through 1967. So, I do have an understanding of all you may have experienced.

Whoa…2 1/2 years in Vietnam? Heck, Qatar’s a 5-star resort compared to Vietnam…or Iraq…or Afghanistan. I’m quite sure I don’t have an understanding of all he experienced. I wrote back and asked Ed about his stories.

My time in Vietnam was like a totally different century (and of course it was). The military was mostly made up of conscripts (not a volunteer-based military) none of who wanted to be in Vietnam .

There were only about 40 members of the press with notable names like Liz Trotter, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and even occasionally Walter Cronkite. There were no computers, no video tape, no satellites and no imbedded, well-taken care of, pampered reporters. Most of the anchors were based in Saigon and most of us—line reporters, producers, camera, men and sound men—were actively hitching rides with platoons to get to where the action was every day. We carried heavy 35mm film cameras and were required to be at the Saigon airport by 1pm to make sure our undeveloped film was back on a plane to the US .

Many of the troops became drug addicted by the time they left their 1 year tour. Since our job was to go and capture action shots we were right in the thick of many fire fights. We violated all of the company rules and were always heavily armed and on many occasions actually were fighting along with our troops. I was in Saigon from the earliest days after the Tonkin Golf incident. I shot footage from the ground, the air (bombing raids over Hanoi ) the sea (air craft carriers, destroyers and submarines)

The Vietnam incident was a battle that could have been won in a matter of weeks, but with all the government interference from Washington it dragged out for years. It was a war that we should never have inherited from the French and was described by the trial judge during the Westmoreland slander/liable litigation in the 1980’s, “It was a lousy little war lead by a lousy little general.”

I walk away a lot wiser than when I first came over. My life was saved on more than one occasion by members of our great military. Many of my Vietnam exploits and adventures were made into a documentary, Letters from Vietnam, several years ago using most of the footage I shot while in theater.

I went on to cover further conflicts in Egypt , Jordan , Israel and Cypress . I spent 5 days under a mattress in the Nicosia Hilton with another reporter from NBC. After being shot at on a daily basis for nearly 4 years I left ABC and went on to open restaurants, food companies and Choclatique. So as you can probably tell I am no longer the adventuresome, Young Turk I used to.

Well crap…why are they sending me stuff? Maybe I should whip up a batch of microwave peanut brittle and send it his way. Or a nice bottle of aged single malt whisky. I did disagree with him about one thing…I think being an entrepreneur is pretty adventuresome.

As a way of saying I was impressed by his adventures I asked when his book was coming out.

The book… well the book is out to 20 publishers as we speak. The proposal went out last week from my literary agent in New York . The only difference is it is all about chocolate—Chocolate Out of the Box is the title. If published it will be the first adventure/travel cookbook chronicling my travels to over 130 countries in search of “perfect chocolate.” It includes 150 fool-proof recipes using Choclatique Ganache Sauces (out next year). I love to travel and I love to eat. I can tell you that my crazy, stupid and risky exploits canoeing down the Amazon or trudging the cocoa forests in Columbia or hiking across the cacao plantations is Malaysia raised the hairs on my back years after when I was writing the chapters for the book. It was a great experience to share these adventures with people who never knew any of the things I had done in search of great food and the ingredients to make it—all for the sake of food and chocolate.

And I thought I liked chocolate. He’s like the Indiana Jones of chocolate. Me, I take the kids to Hershey PA on the way home from camping.

Hey, give me a little credit…it is in a different state after all.

Thanks Ed, for permission to quote your e-mails here. I didn’t think I’d do such wholesale lifting but what could I cut out? It was all fascinating, Plus it’s way more interesting than anything I’ve had to say. I look forward to the book coming out.

To answer the cynics out there, no, Joan did not know I’m the mastermind behind this darling of the Internet called “Hyperdad” (a magnet to dozens of people a day) when she sent me the peanut brittle. She was just doing a nice thing for a serviceman she’s never met.

That’s pretty darn cool, wouldn’t you agree?

Welcome to Htrae

Paul — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 16:27:30 +0000

I wondered why he was hanging around my house.

I thought I’d return home from my deployment and find things as they were, but clearly something happened on the flight home and I’ve returned to Bizarro World. I should have known: my kitchen/dining area is nice, open and light instead of the dark, laminated cave I’d left. My wife, now trim and buff (two tickets to the gun show please), had been going to the gym regularly. She even wired up new ceiling lights…and didn’t die from it.

Still, being somewhat slow of brain, it took me a while to catch on. Only when I ventured out into the real world did I learn about the alternate reality I’d landed in.

In an earlier episode I wrote about my life-wide reset. To recap, I need two new jobs: a “day” job and an Air Force Reserves job. Scheduled on the day after a camping trip were two appointments that held promise of advancing my quest to satisfy my job needs.

First up was lunch with the senior Reservist in Air Force weather, someone who works directly for the director of Air Force weather. While this wasn’t strictly a job interview he does hold some sway and impressing him could only be helpful in finding a new position.

I’m generally quite good in these types of situations - meetings, interviews, and introductions to parents. I’m skilled at feigning intelligence and can usually bust out the right word or an appropriate story as required. I’m like a movie set…things might look good at first, just don’t poke around too much. In other words, to know me is to hate me…I make a good first impression but my lustre diminishes with time (hence the rapid courtship of my wife).

On this day, however, I couldn’t pull it off. My head was full of so many things to talk about and it was as if they were all fighting to come out at the same time. I could only watch myself spew forth this stream of consciousness rambling…bouncing from one topic to the next, the whole narrative bound loosely by a nearly invisible thread. I wanted to stop but the words just kept flowing.

Fortunately the food soon arrived, giving me something else to do with my mouth.

I removed the toothpick from one half of my wrap and took a bite, promptly ejecting tomato pieces, avocado, and dressing into my lap. There was no way to pretend this didn’t happen so I made some small joke and cleaned up as best I could.

I then stabbed myself in the face.

A dramatic dramatization of the events at lunch.

Halfway through my second bite I discovered my failure to remove an unseen additional toothpick. This eureka moment came courtesy of the piercing of my chin and consequent bleeding. Staunching the flow with an index finger I excused myself and made my way to the bathroom where I was overjoyed to find I didn’t bleed on my shirt.

Thanks to my rigorous pre-deployment training I heroically applied direct pressure to the wound, though in the interest of time I really wished I’d brought along some QuikClot. After a minute the bleeding had slowed enough that the slow ooze of vital fluid could be managed through normal napkin use.

You know those ubiquitous bathroom hand dryers, the ones where “on” is scratched out from the instructive “Press Button” placard and that aren’t really much help in drying one’s hands? It turns out they are good for one thing…drying a wet shirt. As is to be expected on this day, I happened to be wearing a wet shirt in the only bathroom lacking a hand dryer on the east coast, having splashed water on myself as I cleaned the dried blood off my chin.

I handled this latest crisis with the same aplomb with which I tackled my punctured chin: I grabbed a paper towel and fanned myself like a Victorian lady in her final throes before hitting the fainting couch.

Yes, it’s overdramatization day here at hyperdad.com.

Surprisingly, my lunch companion was still waiting for me when I returned to the table some minutes later. I’m sure he was thinking that lunch with a damp, babbling, bleeding idiot wasn’t the best use of his time, but I guess his chicken salad sandwich was too good to part with. For the rest of lunch I worked to keep the food in my mouth and the words in my head.

Just as surprisingly as his continued presence at lunch, he talked about some real job opportunities that he thinks I would be a good fit for. No, not street sweeping, toilet cleaning, or sidewalk gum removal…actual thinking jobs, with responsibilities no less (though in truth I’d probably be just as happy sweeping streets, cleaning toilets, or prying up gum).

When I got to my truck I called my wife. “How’d it go?”, she asked. “It was a complete and utter disaster”, I replied, “but I think things may work out great.”

A few hours later I was off to a job interview. There are a few companies that ping me from time to time asking if I’d consider a switch, so I figured while I’ve got some time off I’d chat with them.

When interviewing for a job I’m old school: suit and tie are required. My suit was already too big on me…in my post-deployment reduced state it’s definitely unwearable (my wife said I looked like I was “playing dress up” when I tried on the coat). I grabbed a tie and made the most of what I had. I still had on my pants from lunch…they looked clean enough to me. Louise had previously assaulted the dressing stain with a Tide To Go pen and I went at it with a wet paper towel. She didn’t think they were clean enough to wear but they looked fine to me (and it seemed like a lot of work to change them) so I headed out the door.

Driving towards the interview location I looked down at my pants. Louise was right – the stain was glaringly obvious. I guess it was the angle or the light in the bedroom…I could have sworn the stain was gone. Since the spot was on my right leg I couldn’t just keep my hand in front of it – handshakes are usually de rigueur at interviews – I’d have to hold my portfolio in my left hand and use it to cover the stain on the right.

Hey, Paul, is that a portfolio you’re holding or are you just happy to be interviewing with us?

During this meeting I faced the opposite problem from my lunch meeting: I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I spent most of my 2+ hours there with the head of the division in which I’d be working. I tried to speak a few words in during his monologue but he’d cut me short and keep talking. I learned about the company history, his employment history, the division’s history, their employment philosophy, and a meteorologist he’d heard on the radio.

Finally, I had my chance.

“Well, Paul”, he started, “as you know interviews have two parts. We’ve just covered the first part…”

Here’s my chance, I thought. The first part is where he sells me on the company; the second part is where he asks me questions about my knowledge, my goals, and what kind of animal I’d be. It’s time for me to shine…he told me in no uncertain terms that they’re very picky about who they bring on board.

He continued, “…now we’ll just need to make you a contingency offer so we can shop you to different contracts. I’d really like to bring you on board with us.”

I quickly shut my mouth and cocked my head to the side as if to say, “but of course.”

When in doubt throw in an Office Space shot; there's one for any occasion. Here's me getting a job offer without even trying.

I’m stained, un-suited, carrying around a folder in front of me like a priapismic teenager, and this guy is talking about making me an offer during the interview. That’s the blind date equivalent of the woman ripping off her top after the appetizer. It just doesn’t work like that (at least not on the blind dates I’ve been on).

Reviewing the box score for the day, I run my mouth, dump food on myself, and start bleeding…successful meeting. I show up to an interview underdressed, holding a folder in an odd manner, don’t say a word…likely job offer.

Of course I’ve only got two birds in the bush and I need them in my hand, but at least they’re pecking around the seed I’m holding out, but it’s not seed I’m holding out but a low quality imitation seed that…

Crap. that’s my sign to stop typing…my metaphor tank is on empty.

Still…weird day.