Okay, I’m just warning you now, this is going to be long. I am going to try to edit where I can, but it is going to be long. Your reward? Not much, but it feels good to not have much. or something.
Friday
Duplex buddy, katie, brought us a huge plate of tofu spring rolls just out of the blue. They were fantastic. I made sure I did not eat too many as I knew we were going to the Riverview to see a movie.
The Riverview serves the best popcorn in the city with real butter. So good. David and I inhaled a large while watching “Broken Flowers”. Not a bad movie, very Jim Jarmush though a little too slick compared to his previous stuff.
Afterward, David and I threw the dogs in the car and went on a late night drive. So much fun. We ended up in Rochester. The dogs love going in the car, but it they get really disconcerted when we don’t stop at the dog park within a few minutes of leaving the house.
Saturday
Saturday was 12 flavors of chill. David had to go out in the morning, and he napped when he came back. I spent the day reading, watching movies and hanging with the dogs. We took the dogs to the dog park after dark which is a bit odd. You can barely see them, but they had fun.
After was Chipotle, more chilling, some chilling, hanging out, chilling and bed.
Sunday
Up early early early early. John and James were running the Twin Cities Marathon. John, James and their mother, Mrs Lee, came to the house sometime after sunrise but before my brain turned on. David and I drove the guys to the Metrodome where the race began. David, Mrs Lee and I went to Maria’s Colombian Cafe for Cachapas, the best fucking corn pancakes on the entire planet.
Then to the 15 mile mark to cheer the guys on and get pictures, then home to wait…
Then off to the capital to pick them up at the conclusion of the race. They did well, they made good time. This was John’s 3rd and James’ 1st marathon.
The five of us hung out at my place for a while and the dogs were the star attraction, how could they not be. My dogs rule. Actually they’re jackasses, but what are you going to do.
The Lees went home to rest and David and i took a nap. We made plans to meet for dinner at Hong Kong Noodle (honk honk noodle) for dinner before parting. I can not tell you how disconcerting it is to wake up to partial light that looks exactly like morning light and not be sure what time of day it is or if you are late for work or …wait, honk honk noodle!!
God I love this place and it is even better when you go with a group and 3/5 of that group is from china! We had beef with asparagus, tofu and black mushrooms with vegetables, squid with vegetables (spicy), hollow vegetable in bean curd sauce, seafood in curry broth and my all time favorite: crispy sole with crunchy (crunchy crunchy so good) garlic. We ate in the traditional manner where you just have your little rice bowl and you pick from the platters, adding a little at a time to your rice bowl. I was so in heaven with the food that I would occasionally space out. God it was good. So very very good. Who wants to go to honk honk noodle with us??
Monday
On top of everything else today, i also slammed my finger in one of my desk drawers. The pain was so bad i could not make a sound. I put a sushi bandaid on it to make it better.
Yeah, so what made today so fucking irritating? I go to show someone the photo i had up and I find some dick kids have hacked all my subfolders. It was a stupid and inelegant job, you’d expect more these days from these kids, but whatever. Last week i’d decided to move my website to a new host because I was just getting nowhere with my tech guys. Seriously, if you want to spend a weekend fighting circular logic, there’s an office full of wieners in India that would be happy to help you. So, my patience at an end I get to go open a support ticket named “okay, what the hell” which amuses me because it keeps popping up in my mail notifier. Today on the tech support roster we have ‘Gilbert’, ‘James’, ‘Jared’, ‘Rey’ and ‘James’ again. I think I have had all these guys before. of them, I love Rey the best. he seems to be the smartest of the bunch and his answers are not copied and pasted from somewhere else.
At one point they even blamed me and my password for my ftp log in. First of all, the ‘hackers’ didn’t even use my ftp log in, this was some automated process and secondly blaming me is akin to this:
Security guard: Your office got broken into because it has a door and windows
Me: but you left the door unlocked. and open.
So it got fixed, but not after I got emails and calls. and i got pissed.
The time has come, i’m investigating domain hosts. I am entirely willing (and capable) to pay more for a small company with in-house, in the U.S. tech support. I want people who are available, people who know the servers, people who have actual knowledge and not just the knowledge base. I have a short list already, if anyone has anything to offer let me know. At that time I will also be setting up Movable Type as I will be sure to confirm that they can handle it.
Easy ASP Hosting has been fine as long as everything was running smoothly (except for those early days when my database wouldn’t connect and they had some driver issues on their end but they fixed that). They are inexpensive and if you have few needs they’re good to go with. But, seriously, their tech support will make you want to rip your face off and send it postage due to cuba.
long long long day.
I’m going home. I’m going to pour me some Maker’s Mark and maybe do the dishes. Photo will be updated this evening when I get a quick chance.
Coming up….Lily will be here in less than two weeks. I had to send all my contact info for her to give to her mom so she could be sure that i would not hack her daughter to bits. Dear Lily’s mom, I will not hack your daughter to bits. I promise.
Goat farm at the end of the month!!!
Also, when the fuck did Canada suddenly because not part of the US? Seriously, I know we like to pretend they’re all autonomous and such, but for paperwork purposes they’re just part of the US right? Why did I have to pay to call Canada? I’m calling up the president, we need to invade Canada and rectify this situation. It cost me like $15 to call there!
how fortuitous
David and I went to Evergreen for lunch today. It was good but I was not so impressed. My noodles were bland.
We got our fortune cookies and our fortunes seemed to come from the Absurdity Collection. Mine read “It’s not about you. It’s better that way.” hmmm okay. Probably good advice, not necessarily what you would expect in a fortune cookie. David’s was more bizarre, “Sing a song every day. Sing the same song if it is a good song”. I honestly don’t know. Again, seems like good advice, but the chinese restaurant is throwing me into some sort of bizarro-themed advice quandary.
I don’t know how to feel about these bits at all.
So, as I’ve mentioned I’ve been sick. last night I went home, took a nice long bath/shower, got my hair washed by the boy (so nice) and went to bed at 7:30. Slept all night and got up for work 12 hours later. Still tired, still sick, but it was great to shut down for 12 hours.
While sleeping I had my crazy dreams that i have when i am sick. One involved going to visit my mother in prison. It was a lovely prison, set up like a really beautiful apartment complex with landscaping and outdoor walkways. I’d love to rent a place like this. I went to my mother’s apartment and her roommate, Ossie Davis greeted me at the door. He was cleaning the kitchen, sort of a crusty old man type. It was an amusingly detailed dream, I could spend hours describing the apartment. Probably a little more ivy, floral, darkwood for my tastes, but you can’t really complain about such things in a prison. Why was my mom in a prison in my dreams? No clue. Sorry mom.
After I tried to visit my mom (she was napping and I did not want to bother her) I went to the zoo. I hung out in the shade by the camels. The camels were seal-like in their entertaining of the crowd. They jumped around, they bounced balls, they were real crowd pleasers. As I sat in the shade I was writing in a notebook. I was writing some sort of political manifesto. I was going to change the world. Essentially, I was trying to end excess spending, keep people happy and maintain a safety net for everyone. I was really proud of myself. I didn’t get beyond writing about what should be fixed. I never really got to how I was going to do it because David called me on my cell phone to tell me he was by the elephants and I should go meet him. In my dream I had an incredibly detailed map of the park, and I would have been able to find the elephants but the alarm went off and sadly i could not continue my zoo journey.
So, what is today? Well, there was “Science Friday” on NPR. I do like Science Friday, today they were talking about theoretical physics and multiple dimensions and all that. I get very frustrated with these things because there is a real feeling of “you just made this up, didn’t you??!!”. Ira Flatow asked the guest about these extra dimensions, why can’t we see them or comprehend them and what were they all about. She told him we were not designed to comprehend these dimensions, we could only see our 3 (or 4 if you count time). I feel like such a curmudgeon when I listen to this stuff because I want to shout at the radio “if you can’t prove it exists, if i can’t see it then I don’t believe you!”. Microscopic things i believe, I can see tangible evidence of dinosaurs (but often will explain to people that the new popular color dinosaurs are just theory, we don’t know what color they were), I always talk about black holes in terms of theory. I love science, i love reading about new things and learning about them but you start talking about quantum mechanics and stuff like that and I want a goddamned picture. I want actual evidence. I don’t want to feel like you’re just some guy making shit up. There’s a lot of real, physical stuff that has not been discovered or explained and I want you to focus your energy on that.
Heather: Scientific Curmudgeon.
(don’t get me started on calculus, i got me some real brain problems with that).
I never thought I would ever find an art exhibit I would hate more than the looping videos that undergrads make and display in the gallery outside my office, but I have. A man saw fit to create the world’s largest and loudest rain stick. It’s a big contraption with levers and pulleys and loud noises (it’s not nearly as large as I make it sound, but it is large). It’s an interactive piece to be used with the world’s largest piece of suspended sheet metal to be shaken for simulated thunder. It is so…LOUD…and people LOVE to play with this stuff all the time (ironically the person with both the world’s loudest voice and world’s loudest laugh is standing out there with them. How perfect). I believe this exhibit will be up for 6 or 8 weeks. Please, stop by and cause noise and make me hate you.
and lastly, we need to emphasize with the lovely lily that while all manner of crazy and insane people would be welcome to visit while she comes to visit me, we do very much need to keep the exception on ‘batshit crazy’. This is so important, chica, so very very important. no batshit crazy people.
Photo to be updated soon, i missed last night for being asleep and dreaming wonderful dreams.
1.2.3.4.5.
1. Big news about Lily!! Lily has made a big, foolish, impulse purchase!! Dang, girl! I think that’s the sweetest impulse purchase I’ve ever had the honour of being part of. So, weekend of the 14th, if you have nothing better to do and you would like to ride the rollercoaster at the mall or eat rack of lamb or go to Cupcake (is Cupcake the ‘it’ place for me to take out of towners? I think so) or chill with the chica, stop on by (provided you’re not batshit crazy or allergic to lamb).
2. Spent a couple days wondering if I was suffering from heat sickness and excess dust inhalation or if I was truly sick. Vote goes to sick, I think we’re at ‘cold’ not ‘flu’ which usually bodes better for me, the queen of walking pneumonia.
3. So the boy makes me a cheese/salsa/chocolate chip quesadilla thingy the other day and most people would say ‘eeeeeuw’ and I’ve got just enough problems in my head to go ‘damn! good! more!’ (apparently, stuff like this makes me caveman-like). Now I want them all the time. I’ve got problems.
4. I am the last person on the planet to see ‘The Office’. I am just now catching up on this pop-culture phenomenon. I got it off netflix and loved it, bought the series and the special. Just finished watching the special, and I know I must be pms-ing because I totally wanted to cry when Dawn came back to the party for Tim. I did not cry, but I did pet the dog. Petting the dog is a culturally accepted alternative to crying at the television. True.
5. The dogs will NOT settle down. I do not know what the deal is but my head hurts, my body hurts, my nose hurts and they won’t stop moving.
[H]
Sometimes the nicest gift you can get is the word ‘HIPPO’ incorporated into a piece of art work. Ethan gave me a piece of art that he created, it’s a wonderful, beautiful piece. His work is so detailed, so full of tiny surprises. I get it home and start staring at it, looking for all the neat little messages, and there it is. ‘HIPPO’ on the fridge. You’ll be able to see it in November.
Thank you, Ethan.
Also, thank you for an incredible, wonderful weekend.
First off, Rita was so scared of my hurricane ass-kicking technique that the could not even be bothered to show up in Austin. Most I got were a few bands of curved clouds, the very outer edge of the hurricane. Not enough to provide any relief from the sun, just enough to remind us that it exists.
Austin is insanely hot. Upper 90’s over the weekend, 106 on Monday. It was like an oven. And so dry and dusty…I’m still coughing up mudballs.
But the shows!
Saturday:
* Death Cab for Cutie: Rocked in their seattle emo-nerd way.
* The Fiery Furnaces: Eh, not bad, but then I was passing out in the shade by the Starbucks stand. Man I never drink Frappuccinos but I totally had one then.
* Jet: Pointlessly fun. Completely forgettable but definitely a good time while you’re there.
* Bloc Party: I was not convinced, people kept telling me to see them. Ethan brought me to see them. I was then convinced. I’m sorry I had not checked them out before.
* Oasis: Okay, seriously, why the fuck are these guys even alive? I am positive there is SOMETHING in the Geneva Accords about them. I have to disagree with Ethan here, they are not even a fun-to-watch-trainwreck kind of thing. Hey, Noel, why don’t you shit another powerchord onto the stage because there obviously isn’t enough crap festering at your feet with those lyrics you write. God, I really hate Oasis. Live Forever? Fuck you, just die. (yeah, that feels better)
Sunday:
* Arcade Fire: mmmmm French Canadian pop! Fun to listen to, moderately rock-outable, chief lyric is “woooooo-ooooooo-ooooo”. I didn’t know much going in, I’m not unimpressed, I’ll probably catch more of them later.
* The Decemberists: For my money, the best goddamned show I saw. Period. I loved them anyway, then they get up there and make us squat down silently and later make us scream like we’re being eaten by a whale!! Could you love them any more? NO! GOD, I LOVE NERD-ROCK MORE AND MORE EVERY DAY.
* Franz Ferdinand: Again, great fun! We watched them through a thick thick haze of Austin dust! I will forever equate them with bbq brisket sandwiches and my 8 millionth beer. Sorry guys, I was hungry and inhaling my food at the time.
* The Black Keys: We caught about half their set. Not bad, worth checking out again. The intense heat made it hard to hang out for long. We were exhausted. This leads us to…
* Tortoise: Don’t know who they are, don’t really care. They seemed to be some sort of chill percussion thing. Don’t care. What I do care about is that I got to grab a lawn chair at ‘The Beach’ and completely pass out for a half hour. God, that was so nice. After 2 days, many hours in the intense heat and sun it was so nice to find relief after sunset. We relaxed, pulled it together, got some Ben and Jerry’s and headed over to…
* Coldplay: I’m not a fan (sorry, Lily). Ethan determined they were U2 without the politics and Radiohead without the pain. Just not a fan. We caught a few songs and I will say this, I may not care for Coldplay but at least I could rock a little to the music. I could not even do that with Oasis. I couldn’t do it with Oasis because they sucked so very very hard.
We got out of there, headed home to the AC and cool showers and relaxation.
Let’s see, good food all weekend, good company, falling in love with Simon Pegg’s hair in “Spaced”, Katamari Damacy, Sonic, lots of coffee. And let me give a shout out to the inventors of the AeroBed!
WOOOOO
Tomorrow, big news about Lily!
Why thank you
yes, i have returned. I have not had time to call anyone or return emails. This is my blanket “I’m home!”
I had a wonderful time, I saw many many great shows, drank many many beers and got to see ethan.
I’ll write more in detail later. Right now I am eating the chocolate/cheese/spicy quesadilla that Davidu-san has made for me. I missed him.
I will tell you this…when you do bad things your karma punishes you in terrible terrible ways. Not only will you miss Mike Doughty, but you will also have to endure Oasis. It’s like a one-two punch to the gut. You take this lesson and you learn from it.
Later chochos