Susie; Shoes; Symphony; Jana Hunter; Chili
3/26
Band practice came a night early due to plans on Tuesday night; this may have been our first time attempting to record.
3/27
So right before South By, Dan had found himself a new girl. She's out of the picture now. But back then it looked serious. She was from San Francisco and thought she was moving to Houston, but then (oh, a couple months ago), she decided she wasn't. But in between, things seemed to be going well.
Anyway, she was in town for a visit, and Dan wanted all his closest friends to meet her, so we met at traditional Sharber gathering point Mi Luna (thankfully on happy-hour-priced Tuesday) for dinner.
The Proletariat was hosting a meet & greet with David Arquette, promoting his new film, with the Black Math Experiment, who had written a song about him, performing. We showed up, but it was too crowded and not really all that interesting, so we left for Poison Girl instead.
3/28
Char had recently gotten some Chuck Taylors, and Cindy was looking for shoes too, so we went shoe shopping. I ended up buying a pair at Urban Outfitters before we dashed off to Goode Co. Burgers for dinner. I've covered it before, but I really dig that place...
3/29
I realized that my size 11 Chucks didn't fit. The boss was out of town, so I took that chance to return them to Urban since they didn't have a size smaller. That and some school stuff made me feel somewhat ineffectual, so I made a run to Target to kill a few birds with one stone (new plastic cups for water, a record crate, presumably something else as well). Then I got back, found out that my friend from the MM list that works at shoes.com had sent me a nice coupon code, so I ordered a pair of Chucks in size 10.
Turns out, they're a bit tight. I can wear them, but prefer to do so when alcohol is involved because I don't notice how uncomfortable they are. I guess I can suffer for fashion sometimes.
3/30
I had to give my yearly talk to the students in our program, which was, as usual, a lame situation. Thankfully, almost no one showed up.
Afterwards, Cindy and I went to the symphony. I honestly don't remember what they played. I seem to recall enjoying it, though, as I usually do.
3/31
Jana Hunter played a good set up at Rudz to promote her quite good new album. Cindy and I were in attendance...
4/1
An e-mail had gone out from my funding agency that the local health sciences trade group was having a chili cookoff. Since I'm rather proud of my cooking, I quickly got in touch with Char and then got us in charge of things.
The fact that the event included lots of free beer didn't hurt.
Anyway, the budget allowed for a couple of test batches, so Char and I started our first one, basing it on Alton Brown's recipe. We did the first batch pretty much by the numbers, browning stew meat (beef, pork, lamb) with peanut oil and salt, then deglazing with beer, adding salsa (although we did a mix of salsa and pico to get some freshness in there), crushed tortilla chips to thicken it, tomatmo paste, homemade chili powder, smoked paprika, canned chipotles, and fresh peppers. Since this was a test batch for our consumption only, we also included some corn and black beans, which is heresy for a contest (a rather silly attitude, I think), but quite nice in my opinion.
Anyway, it turned out well, and Char made some honey cornbread to go with it. We had a good start on the contest...
Band practice came a night early due to plans on Tuesday night; this may have been our first time attempting to record.
3/27
So right before South By, Dan had found himself a new girl. She's out of the picture now. But back then it looked serious. She was from San Francisco and thought she was moving to Houston, but then (oh, a couple months ago), she decided she wasn't. But in between, things seemed to be going well.
Anyway, she was in town for a visit, and Dan wanted all his closest friends to meet her, so we met at traditional Sharber gathering point Mi Luna (thankfully on happy-hour-priced Tuesday) for dinner.
The Proletariat was hosting a meet & greet with David Arquette, promoting his new film, with the Black Math Experiment, who had written a song about him, performing. We showed up, but it was too crowded and not really all that interesting, so we left for Poison Girl instead.
3/28
Char had recently gotten some Chuck Taylors, and Cindy was looking for shoes too, so we went shoe shopping. I ended up buying a pair at Urban Outfitters before we dashed off to Goode Co. Burgers for dinner. I've covered it before, but I really dig that place...
3/29
I realized that my size 11 Chucks didn't fit. The boss was out of town, so I took that chance to return them to Urban since they didn't have a size smaller. That and some school stuff made me feel somewhat ineffectual, so I made a run to Target to kill a few birds with one stone (new plastic cups for water, a record crate, presumably something else as well). Then I got back, found out that my friend from the MM list that works at shoes.com had sent me a nice coupon code, so I ordered a pair of Chucks in size 10.
Turns out, they're a bit tight. I can wear them, but prefer to do so when alcohol is involved because I don't notice how uncomfortable they are. I guess I can suffer for fashion sometimes.
3/30
I had to give my yearly talk to the students in our program, which was, as usual, a lame situation. Thankfully, almost no one showed up.
Afterwards, Cindy and I went to the symphony. I honestly don't remember what they played. I seem to recall enjoying it, though, as I usually do.
3/31
Jana Hunter played a good set up at Rudz to promote her quite good new album. Cindy and I were in attendance...
4/1
An e-mail had gone out from my funding agency that the local health sciences trade group was having a chili cookoff. Since I'm rather proud of my cooking, I quickly got in touch with Char and then got us in charge of things.
The fact that the event included lots of free beer didn't hurt.
Anyway, the budget allowed for a couple of test batches, so Char and I started our first one, basing it on Alton Brown's recipe. We did the first batch pretty much by the numbers, browning stew meat (beef, pork, lamb) with peanut oil and salt, then deglazing with beer, adding salsa (although we did a mix of salsa and pico to get some freshness in there), crushed tortilla chips to thicken it, tomatmo paste, homemade chili powder, smoked paprika, canned chipotles, and fresh peppers. Since this was a test batch for our consumption only, we also included some corn and black beans, which is heresy for a contest (a rather silly attitude, I think), but quite nice in my opinion.
Anyway, it turned out well, and Char made some honey cornbread to go with it. We had a good start on the contest...
Labels: bars, concerts, cooking, restaurants, school, shopping
posted by L. Maxwell Ward at 2:10 PM
