February 2008

In addition to have a top 5 lifetime sandwich today (thanks Gina at La Villa), I also got to have a little treat. A bottle of Dublin Dr Pepper which uses cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Yum!

This photo deserves an entry to itself. From WonderCon:

[via]

I’m so excited it’s wrong. My friend Jess is coming down from the Seattle area so we can go to the opening night showing together. After we have an all-day marathon of our favorite episodes and Fight the Future. If Bryan is going to leave me, July 25 might be the date. ;)

I mowed the lawn yesterday.

Normally this statement doesn’t really deserve to stand alone except that I can’t tell you the last time I used a lawn mower of any kind. It was probably more than fifteen years ago. My parents didn’t really have a lawn in the front or back, our house in Stockton didn’t have enough grass to mow, my apartment in Japan didn’t have any yard at all, and all of our rentals thus far have come with a gardener if there was a yard.

Because of the amounts of rain we’ve been receiving, our lawn has grown green and lush (yay winter!) and from the street our house was beginning to look abandoned. This house did come with a lawn mower stashed in the corner of the garage. However (and this is a gigante “howerver”) it is a manual push mower. When I got home from work yesterday around 3pm, I thought I’d just mow the lawn “real quick.” Not so much. It took me a bit to figure out how this mower worked (see above inexperience mowing lawns in general) and one of the parts that is supposed to be on it is clearly missing.

The experience of mowing took almost an hour. Our front lawn is not that big. It’s small, really. It seems that I don’t weigh enough nor do I have enough effective leverage to really push a mower through eight inch high grass and weeds. It felt much like my experiences trying to drive stick. Lots of stopping and starting and never getting any good momentum. It took an hour-ish but now our house looks moderately presentable from the street.

I now have a lawn that looks more like a lawn and less like a jungle, a good understanding of the ancient art of push mowers, and a sore lower back.

An article regarding Abraco, the closet coffee place I loved in the East Village.

I got a freshly roasted (less than 48 hours old) bag of \m/etal at Barefoot tonight. I can’t wait for a French press pot of this stuff tomorrow morning.

Bryan and I are terrible tourists. Really bad. I saw more of “tourist” New York in 48 hours (by myself and with a friend for the second day) than I’ve seen with Bryan, and we’ve spent nearly a month total time in New York together. We’d much rather visit with friends, lounge around, and eat. Thus I present to you a comprehensive guide to just about everything we ate in both Austin and New York. (And I do mean comprehensive. Grab a cuppa, we’ll be here a while.)

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It took an extra click because our travel skills seem like they need a little extra oomph these days. Bryan and I had our initial flight to Austin delayed by five hours. Then we got to the airport to fly from Austin to New York via Chicago but had our flight from Chicago to NYC canceled. We re-routed to NYC via Dallas, and all those flights didn’t work the way they were supposed to. To leave New York, we were busting ass to get out of the hotel to have lunch with our friend Peter and then Bryan got a phone call that our entire flight had been canceled and they’d re-booked us for the next day. GAH. Today’s flights actually went without incident and we got home on time. Freakishly exactly on time.

Photos from New York tomorrow, as well as a breakdown of the important stuff: all the food we ate.

Bryan and I both got haircuts today! Oh thank god. Bryan’s hair was getting a little big (I’d show you the frightening perspective photo I took of him two days ago, but you don’t deserve that) and mine was getting too long and too heavy. Now we look like relatively well-groomed people who are ready to go out in public.

Here is the whole reason we’re here in Texas. Bryan’s grandfather turns 90 this week, so there was a grand old party in Waco on Saturday to celebrate. This is Bryan with his hair, his grandmother and grandfather at the shindig.

There’s also the draw of our grand-nephew, Daylon Cade, who has managed to reach 18 months before we got to chase him around.

Bryan and I are in Texas through Tuesday. We spent today in Waco. No, realy. Say it with a flat tone of voice. If I weren’t incredibly tired, I would post photos of Bryan’s grandfather’s 90th birthday party. Tomorrow. Vacation runs through a week from Monday.

Since I seem to be on a video kick (that will be a pun in a moment), check out this parkour meets soccer video. Goddamn.

It’s 2:30 am. Here’s a smattering of videos that I’ve been hooked on recently. (And I’m not late to the party on the Fucking Matt Damon thing, I swear. YouTube says I added it to my favorites January 31, 2008, 09:53 PM)

I don’t actually like KT Tunstall’s original music. Or rather I’m very annoyed by her radio hits because they get forced upon me at work. However her recent cover of “Walk Like an Egyptian” (The Bangles, like, duh) is pretty sweet. Gotta love sampling yourself live to create your backing tracks.

There’s a REI employee who made a fucking awesome video and put it up on YouTube. Let her show you how you know you’ve worked at REI too long. I’m hoping no sea-worthy kayaks were harmed in the making of the video. (Thanks Sarah for the linkage!)

I went on a YouTube spree of odd Red Hot Chili Peppers videos, live performances, etc. the other night. My favorite find was probably this John Frusciante cover of The Bee Gees “How Deep Is Your Love” during a RHCP concert. Hit those high notes, boy!

Do you know what the Wilhem Scream is? You’re going to hear it in everything now, and some of your favorite movies will never be the same after you watch this compilation of screams.

And of course, Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon.

If you want to see everything I’ve been watching, you can see my YouTube faves and watch a lot of live music. But this is only if you’re really bored at work and can use your speakers.

A video to give you something to do that’s not watching the Super Bowl. I don’t know much about DJ Scriv, but I find this video mix to be enormously fun.

The latest by Improv Everywhere. They have 207 people frozen in place in Grand Central Station for five minutes. [via]