Little Children; Valentine's Day; Dan & Modest Mouse; Bowling; Chinese New Year
2/12
Will and I resumed our Angelika Mondays with the viewing of Little Children, a tale of suburban ennui, extramarital affairs, and child molesters. It was certainly an interesting exploration of its themes. It's been a while so not all of my impressions are still remembered, but I think I was a little iffy on its conclusions. I could go back and read up on it, but movie reviews aren't exactly an emphasis of mine.
One thing I will comment on is this: if you go into a nearly empty theater, do not sit directly in front of the other people in the theater, particularly if seating options are plentiful. Sometimes, people like to put their feet up, or not have to listen to your idiotic chattering. It's not a big deal, exactly, except that it doesn't hurt you to fucking sit somewhere else. It really doesn't. All things being equal, if you have a choice between inconveniencing someone you dont' know, and not doing it, just don't. It's that simple.
2/13
Cindy and I decided once again to cook our own Valentine's Day dinner, so I spent my time going to the grocery store, etc.
2/14
There was morning run to pick up flowers and some last minute items from Central Market.
And then I ironed a shirt, got dressed up fancy, and started on dinner.
I had decided to try out Alton Brown's take on meatballs. The recipe includes the use of beef, pork, and veal; parmesan cheese for flavor, bread crumbs for body (I used the Italian-seasoned variety because hey, you can't have too much flavor), spinach and egg to bind it, and some various herbs and seasonings. Cooking them in a miniature muffin tin helps heat them evenly.
With this we had some fettucini and (just a little) marinara sauce, a salad (Cindy), tomato and white bean bruschetta (the secret is slicing open a piece of garlic and rubbbing it on the freshly toasted bread) (again, Cindy), and creme brulée with real vanilla bean (again Cindy). And a bottle of wine.
It turned out really nice. The meatballs were great and I would enjoy them a lot over the next few days. I'd love to always have a batch in the refrigerator.
The entire evening was nice as well. It was probably the first meal eaten on my dining room table since, well, last Valentine's Day.
I think we ended up watching TV instead of renting a movie, but as good as TV was this spring, that worked well.
2/15
Cindy came over for TV and then left early because of a conference the next day, and then Char called and invited me out for a beer. Details escape me.
2/16
The receiver was fixed and I went to pick it up but the guy wasn't there. Whoops.
Went over to Rice for seminar, but Char and instead opted to hide out in Valhalla and drink cheap beer until seminar was over, when we could move on to the free beer.
Cindy was away at her thing, so I enjoyed a relaxing evening at home before catching up with Dan online and deciding to pick up some beer and go hang out over at his place. We listened to music (including the new Modest Mouse, which had leaked out in an event almost as big as the Arcade Fire album), had beer, chatted. It was a pretty nice evening.
2/17
Picked up the receiver in the morning and everything was in good working order. More on that shortly.
Char and I ended up going bowling with BT and her friend whose name I can never remember but was Helen Humphrey's roommate at Baylor. We opted to get some beer at the closest non-bowling alley bar to the bowling alley, Bellaire Little Woodrow's. It's a quaint little place, right next to the railroad tracks. I liked it, but drinking in the Bellaire/Southside/West U area scares the fuck out of me.
Bowling was OK. I bowled a decent game though I discovered that my Wii bowling skills didn't exactly transfer over. For the second game I decided I wanted to try to learn how to put spin on the ball.
That didn't go well.
2/18
Cindy got back from her conference and since she had decided not to go to her parents', we grabbed some brunch—I think we hit up La Mexicana again.
Later on, we went to Dacia's girlfriend Lorien's Chinese New Year party. They had put out some nice vegan springrolls and potstickers, and there was plenty of beer. Everyone was glad to see Cindy as she brough an air of legitimacy (as well as legitimate foods) to the proceedings, despite not actually being Chinese. Cindy ran into somebody she knew. We talked to Lorien's roommate who it turns out had done some PR work for Baylor and interviewed Cindy's boss. Kristin was there, as was Dan, which was a little awkward, but it didn't stop Dan from chatting up a German girl whom he seemed to get on pretty well with, although it turned out she eventually stood him up. I know how that one goes.
Anyway, great evening all in all. As I often say, I miss parties and don't get to go to enough of them.
Will and I resumed our Angelika Mondays with the viewing of Little Children, a tale of suburban ennui, extramarital affairs, and child molesters. It was certainly an interesting exploration of its themes. It's been a while so not all of my impressions are still remembered, but I think I was a little iffy on its conclusions. I could go back and read up on it, but movie reviews aren't exactly an emphasis of mine.
One thing I will comment on is this: if you go into a nearly empty theater, do not sit directly in front of the other people in the theater, particularly if seating options are plentiful. Sometimes, people like to put their feet up, or not have to listen to your idiotic chattering. It's not a big deal, exactly, except that it doesn't hurt you to fucking sit somewhere else. It really doesn't. All things being equal, if you have a choice between inconveniencing someone you dont' know, and not doing it, just don't. It's that simple.
2/13
Cindy and I decided once again to cook our own Valentine's Day dinner, so I spent my time going to the grocery store, etc.
2/14
There was morning run to pick up flowers and some last minute items from Central Market.
And then I ironed a shirt, got dressed up fancy, and started on dinner.
I had decided to try out Alton Brown's take on meatballs. The recipe includes the use of beef, pork, and veal; parmesan cheese for flavor, bread crumbs for body (I used the Italian-seasoned variety because hey, you can't have too much flavor), spinach and egg to bind it, and some various herbs and seasonings. Cooking them in a miniature muffin tin helps heat them evenly.
With this we had some fettucini and (just a little) marinara sauce, a salad (Cindy), tomato and white bean bruschetta (the secret is slicing open a piece of garlic and rubbbing it on the freshly toasted bread) (again, Cindy), and creme brulée with real vanilla bean (again Cindy). And a bottle of wine.
It turned out really nice. The meatballs were great and I would enjoy them a lot over the next few days. I'd love to always have a batch in the refrigerator.
The entire evening was nice as well. It was probably the first meal eaten on my dining room table since, well, last Valentine's Day.
I think we ended up watching TV instead of renting a movie, but as good as TV was this spring, that worked well.
2/15
Cindy came over for TV and then left early because of a conference the next day, and then Char called and invited me out for a beer. Details escape me.
2/16
The receiver was fixed and I went to pick it up but the guy wasn't there. Whoops.
Went over to Rice for seminar, but Char and instead opted to hide out in Valhalla and drink cheap beer until seminar was over, when we could move on to the free beer.
Cindy was away at her thing, so I enjoyed a relaxing evening at home before catching up with Dan online and deciding to pick up some beer and go hang out over at his place. We listened to music (including the new Modest Mouse, which had leaked out in an event almost as big as the Arcade Fire album), had beer, chatted. It was a pretty nice evening.
2/17
Picked up the receiver in the morning and everything was in good working order. More on that shortly.
Char and I ended up going bowling with BT and her friend whose name I can never remember but was Helen Humphrey's roommate at Baylor. We opted to get some beer at the closest non-bowling alley bar to the bowling alley, Bellaire Little Woodrow's. It's a quaint little place, right next to the railroad tracks. I liked it, but drinking in the Bellaire/Southside/West U area scares the fuck out of me.
Bowling was OK. I bowled a decent game though I discovered that my Wii bowling skills didn't exactly transfer over. For the second game I decided I wanted to try to learn how to put spin on the ball.
That didn't go well.
2/18
Cindy got back from her conference and since she had decided not to go to her parents', we grabbed some brunch—I think we hit up La Mexicana again.
Later on, we went to Dacia's girlfriend Lorien's Chinese New Year party. They had put out some nice vegan springrolls and potstickers, and there was plenty of beer. Everyone was glad to see Cindy as she brough an air of legitimacy (as well as legitimate foods) to the proceedings, despite not actually being Chinese. Cindy ran into somebody she knew. We talked to Lorien's roommate who it turns out had done some PR work for Baylor and interviewed Cindy's boss. Kristin was there, as was Dan, which was a little awkward, but it didn't stop Dan from chatting up a German girl whom he seemed to get on pretty well with, although it turned out she eventually stood him up. I know how that one goes.
Anyway, great evening all in all. As I often say, I miss parties and don't get to go to enough of them.
Labels: bars, holidays, movies, parties, restaurants, Valentine's day
posted by L. Maxwell Ward at 3:59 PM
