It's bad when you think, "I can't wait to write an entry about this!"

So I thought I could make it a little longer before I wrote another entry. First, a quick summary of things I thought I would address when abstracts were in and I was catching up on my posting.

* The new iPod arrived on Tuesday. Although I miss the touch-sensitive buttons of the 3G model, the convenience of the clickwheel design, the extra 10 GB (not yet filled), and other miscellaneous touches have convinced me that this was a good decision.
* The new computer arrived on Wednesday. It's hard for me to believe I own a computer this nice; I thought it would occur much later in my life. It's beautiful. I love it. The iMac's feeling neglected, despite the ongoing role I've given it (backup; fileserver; webserver; music player).
* FedEx, miraculously, manages to deliver things a day ahead of their appointed time, and, God bless them for it.

The rest of the week has been devoted either to abstracts or to procrastination thereof. Two are, mostly, done—in the sense that some quick judgements and minor editing will put them in their final state. The third abstract is still desperately in need of a topic; if tomorrow ends and nothing has come up, I'll move into emergency mode and generate something crappy, but fast. Also, Olivier and I, in a move that felt far too cavalier, picked my committee. I've got three committments out of four. When Monday comes around, some serious contacting is going to have to take place.

So, anyway, on to the events that led me to this somewhat preemptive wardlog post. Friday comes, I go into lab because the people I've e-mailed my abstracts to for proofing will be around, and I get their criticisms. I began to adapt my abstracts to that, and the time comes to journey over to Rice for the Keck seminar (which is now more imperative than ever, as they fund me). Post-seminar, -pizza, and -beer, I head home with the intention of continuing work on abstracts. However; the bus is running late, which leads to great consternation on my part. Finally, though, it shows up, and on it are Stephanie and Jennifer. Stephanie proposes that we go and see Napolean Dynamite; and I agree, since I've been serious about seeing that longer than I've been serious about getting my abstracts done. The movie was somewhat disappointing but suitably enjoyable, approximately in line with my expectations.

I returned Stephanie to our complex only to discover that we now have a doorman. Apparently, in addition to the previous burglaries of my car and one other, an appartment was broken into on Thursday. So, as I drove in late on Friday night, there was a man in what i think is a red blazer asking me which resident I was visiting.

I came into my apartment briefly, only to receive a phone call from Dan inviting me to join them in seeing Marah (not to be confused with Mirah, as I was wont to do) at the Continental Club. Knowing that I wouldn't accomplish anything, abstract-wise, the rest of the evening, anyway, I headed in that direction. Dan mentioned that the CC had a parking lot, so I yielded my car to the valet.

I don't use these words lightly, but Marah fucking brought the rock.

After the show was over, I headed back to where my car was and discovered a distinct absence of valets. It then occured to me that there was a club on the premises of the property on which my car was parked, and perhaps I had picked the wrong lot. I entered the premises, valet recepit in hand, and the doorman took it. The manager of the club returned, searched for my keys, admitted defeat, and passed me off to the young Indian-American owner, who profusely apologized, contacted the valet service, and offered me a drink.

I took him up on a gin & tonic. I got his name (and promptly forgot it). I finished my G&T, and started looking around for a bartender to provide me with a glass of water to help me sober up, in case my keys should show up. The next bartender to show up also profusely apologized for my being a victim of rare circumstance and, as it was past 2:00 (fucking police state), offered me the "non-alcoholic" equivalent of whatever drink I wanted, but mentioned whatever he got me would be "under the table". I paused to think, requested a whiskey sour, and a water, and received a whiskey and coke, and a water.

Some more waiting transpired. A couple of patrons waved me over, commented positively on my Postal Service shirt, and talked with me a bit about the band. A little more waiting, and a bartender suddenly offered me my keys. I examined them, briefly, and, spotting the Leatherman tool and Viper alarm remote, concluded they were mine. I thanked the bartender, looked briefly for the owner but didn't see him, and then exited, accepting the doorman's apologies, and drove home, once again explaining to our new doorman that I was a resident, not a visitor of a resident.

Lessons learned:

*Park in the proper lot
*Avoid valets whenever possible
*Always try to exchange inconveniences for drinks

i'm still not sure why my keys were lost, how they were found, or even what establishment I was at that was responsible for said events (and two free drinks!). But hell, good story, right?

Tomorrow may or may not bring a trip out to Susan & Jerry's, but will definitely bring attempts to finish (and start!) this final, thorn-in-the-side abstract.

I will get so fucked up on Wednesday...

Government waste

On Tuesday, I finally got my ass moving and wrote up a proposal for my fellowship money. It got approved on Thursday, so I went to the Apple Store to order my computer, not realizing that they won't do custom orders there (though I could have sworn they did). After a not-quite-wasted trip to the galleria, and some final debate, I ordered my computer. Here are the specs on the PowerBook:

15" widescreen
1.33 GHz G4
80 GB 5400 RPM HD
1.24 GB RAM
DVD-RW/CD-RW drive
802.11g and Bluetooth wireless
Backlit keyboard

I've got to kick in a little, but it's mostly paid for. Also, there was a rebate on purchasing an iPod with an Apple laptop, and, by the time I sell my 10 GB 3rd generation model, I get a pretty much free upgrade to a 20 GB 4th generation model. The iPod shipped yesterday, and the PowerBook shipped today. Expect some pictures of Christmas in August when it arrives.

Weekend &c.

Friday brought the traditional West Alabama Icehouse gathering for beer and free hot dogs. Attendance was low, as it seems to have been lately. Graham and his girlfriend (can I say that now?) Kennedy were there, and Char showed up a bit later. We got a bit tired of having to shout over the band (beer count: 2), so we headed over to Woodrow's for some more beer there. Two beers later, we headed over to Star for some pizza.

I learned a very important lesson that night: don't order the veggie pizza. I thought I'd split one with Kennedy, since she's a vegetarian, and that it would be good, but the veggies were bland. Such a waste of a perfectly good trip to Star.

Graham and Kennedy split after that; Char and I went over to his place to enjoy some cigars. I had given a guy a Gmail account a while back, and he was kind enough to send me a couple of cigars. I hadn't had a good opportunity to indulge until then, and I have to say, it was a good use of a Gmail invitation. Anybody know any tricks to keep your mouth from tasting like cigar for twenty-four hours afterwards?

Mom and Dad came into town yesterday for a late birthday celebration with me (somebody had to have a wedding shower last weekend), and we had dinner last night. I got back to town a bit late, so rather than try to find something to do (and someone to do it with), I headed up to Woodrow's to hang out with Will (who always seems to be glad for the company) have a few beers, and watch the drunk people come and go.

There was what seemed to be the Young Republicans table, as there were both Bush/Cheney '04 t-shirts and loud discussions as to how all of Michael Moore's claims were disproved before Fahrenheit 911 even made it to the theaters. There were the guys who almost got into a fight after some guy heard them talking about his girlfriend. He backed off, then, they seemed to seriously consider following him to his car and beating him. Yes, drunk people are funny.

One of the mysteries that has slowly unravelled while I have been in Houston is the man who visits all of the local bars and sells mediocre (but cheap!) pizza to drunk people. The existence of this man was somewhat surpising when I first saw him, but, in retrospect, it is simply the filling of an empty economic niche. Apparently, this guy has a Ph. D. in pharmacology and hasn't been able to find work in that field, so, he has pursued this vocation. He must make a killing, because selling drunk people pizza they didn't order seems to be only slightly more difficult than getting them to drink more. I sampled the pizza for the first time last night, and it is truly mediocre—somewhere between frozen microwave pizza and frozen oven-baked pizza—but, as I mentioned, cheap ($4-5 for the whole pizza, at least around 1:30 AM).

Anyway, I caught lunch with the parents this afternoon. I'm headed over to Dan and Kristin's shortly for the weekly Six Feet Under ritual. Mmm... HBO...

Rocking Out

I made it up to the Proletariat Wednesday for the Magnolia Electric Co. show with Jeff, Dan, and Kristin. Emperor X was the first opener; the vocals and songwriting reminded me a lot of early Built to Spill, and the guitar had an angular Modest Mouse sort of feel to it. I thought they had potential, although they were perhaps a bit unrefined. Next up was Oakland-area girl/guy duo Nedelle and Thom. Thom played guitar and sang backup, while Nedelle sang lead and looked really cute. They at first reminded me of Belle & Sebastian; they had a similar sort of presciousness about them, but I think that Nedelle and Thom's music is rooted more deeply in sixties pop. I was at first concerned that the sound would be more sparse than what I like, but the songwriting was excellent and the harmonies so lush that I really loved their set. I tried to buy their album, but they had run out. Nedelle pointed me towards their label's website. After watching her up on stage and talking to her briefly, I think I've got a little rock star crush.

Magnolia came out and made sweet indie music with just the right touches of country and classic rock. Jeff remarked that they were the most musically competent act he'd seen since he had been in Houston; I don't know if I would take it that far, but their set was excellent. Sadly, they were out of shirts (I seemed to have problems giving people money that night), but Jeff and I both picked up copies of the Magnolia Electric Co. album, which I had previously downloaded.

Magnolia pictures:





Also, on the way back home, my odomoter hit 144444, so I took a picture:

Dubious honor

I'll briefly recount the story for those of you who didn't hear me bitch about it last April. At our SCBMB (my program)/CMB (another BCM program) inter-departmental retreat this spring, thanks in part to large amounts of alcohol, I hooked up with this girl that I had met for the first time at the retreat. We made out a little bit and shared a bed that night; it was nothing terribly heavy. I got her number and later made a date with her, which was when things started getting weird.

I got a series of strange e-mails, saying that we should go out "as friends" and saying that her behavior that night was "uncharacteristic". After some additional e-mailing, I eventually discovered that the reason for this strange behavior was that a guy whom she had been out with a couple of times had, since the retreat, become her boyfriend. We still went out for dinner, which, tellingly, went more smoothly than some actual dates I've been on. I enjoyed her company, we laughed off the weirdness, and things seemed to go as well as they could considering she was already spoken for.

I've bumped into her on rare occasions since then, but haven't had any in-depth conversations. I got an e-mail yesterday from Jennifer, who is in her program, telling me that she was now engaged. The first ramification of this is that she didn't follow the Matthew Ward prescribed rules for engagement: you have to date for at least a year if you knew each other reasonably well before you started dating, or at least two years if you've just met. For those of you keeping track, they've been together no more than four months, and they've known each other no more than five, as they met through an internet dating service.

The second ramification of this is that, apparently, I have the dubious honor of being her only casual hookup/one-night-standish-thing ever (unless something has happened since), and the last one before her engagement and pending marriage. It's certainly not a role I ever saw myself fulfilling, but I suppose it's something of which I'm somewhat proud.

Catching up on posting...

Friday afternoon saw my temporary attempt to ignore abstracts long enough to enjoy my birthday weekend. Tiffany (also known as the girl I spilled beer on) had people over to her place to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and eat pizza. Dan had promised to let me know where he, Kristin, John, and perhaps others were going to end up for the night, but Dan's a liar. Hear that, Dan? Nathan and Melissa hosted an evening of drinking games ("presidents and assholes"). I made my promised appearance and played for a few hands, long enough to work my way up from asshole. In the first round, Nathan, as president, dictated that I should take a short of vodka from a very tall shot glass. He filled it about half way, but the result was perhaps three or four shots. I took it like a champ, though.

Saturday, I spent most of the day preparing the Ward Cave (also known as "Ward's House of Love", a name which didn't fit particularly well that night) for my birthday party, doing requisite cleaning, picking up some drinks and snacks from the grocery store (Randall's had Shiner for $9.99 for a 12 pack, rock; I grabbed two), and putting together a suitable party mix with which iTunes could DJ. I went and picked up Jeff around 6:30, and waited for the party to start.

Randall's, by the way, marked the second time in twenty four hours that I was IDed, making me wonder if I did, in fact, age any. My increase in grey hairs would seem to remove any doubt, though.

Note to self: don't start a party at 7:00. I thought perhaps those that wanted some hot Star Pizza action would want to eat around then, but apparently not many people had planned on getting in on the hot Star Pizza action. Shortly after 8:00, Jeff and I gave up and I ordered two larges. While I was gone, people started arriving, and the pizzas got consumed fairly quickly after my return.

I had e-mailed about 25 people the invite; those who came, in order of arrival, were: Jeff, Stephanie, Jennifer, Nathan, Melissa, Brandy, David, Tiffany, John, Dan, Kristin, Char, Graham, Kennedy, Graham's sister. Not a bad turnout, although considering I invited every girl that I have a putative interest in and none of them showed, that part was a little disappointing.

The beer supply held out well, and my liquor was barely touched (except for Stephanie stealing shots of my sweet, sweet, Cazadores, yet failing to carry through on her promise to sleep with me). The evening ended with Jeff and Char giving me advice on clothing. Char told me I need to pick and image and dress accordingly. I'll get right to work on that... Nathan took some pictures at the party; however, a lot of them seem to be of feet or cleavage. If there any appropriate ones, I'll but them over on the main site. My official estimate for the evening is eight beers.

Sunday, my aunt and uncle took me to Texas Land & Cattle for dinner in honor of the birthday. I do love me some steak.

Monday was spent reading journal articles, feeling that I would never come up with a topic for abstract number two. After going to bed, I was struck by blinding inspiration, and now have drafts of abstracts one and two composed in my head and ready to write. I went up to school today to abuse the lab printer, and then read this afternoon and evening in support of abstract number two before Nathan, Melissa, and Jennifer kidnapped me to go read with them at the library, which, I discovered, eats at one's soul in a manner similar to the Baylor University computer science labs. I think it has something to do with white walls, fluroescent lights, and cheap furniture. I also sent off a proposal for my laptop purchase today.

Tomorrow will hopefully bring two drafts of abstracts. If things go well, I'd like to go see Magnolia Electric Co. (formerly Songs: Ohia) play their (his?—it's basically just Jason Molina) brand of country/folk. And it would be nice to catch last weekend's episode of Six Feet Under at some point.

Sorry, readers, that life is boring these days. Hopefully there will be glimpses of excitement between now and November; if not, expect a grand return to form at our departmental retreat. Or, possibly, my failing out of graduate school. Dan, I'm sorry I called you a liar. Care to keep a job open for me?

Not dead... yet

I haven't posted since Sunday, so I thought I'd preemptively post before I was accused of slacking off. The first part of my qualifying exam is due soon, and it's not going well. Whether that's due to my underestimating its difficulty and time requirements, or whether I've missed out on some crucial part of my graduate education, I'm not sure yet. Anyway, I'm working hard to churn out something, but it's slow going.

So, there's been a lack of fun adventures lately. I'll be taking Saturday off in honor of my birthday; I decided to throw a party here, so I'll post about that, time permitting. Beyond that, hope the scientific muse smiles upon me.

Weekend Adventures of Ward: Debauchery continues

After normal Saturday activites, I headed to the 1820 Binz St. party. Viraj, whom I haven't actually met, sent out an e-mail to the graduate student mailing list about his birthday party. I certainly had nothing better to do, and reasoned that, surely, if he had invited the entire graduat school, somebody I knew would be there. So, I grabbed the emergency six pack of shine and set out in search of the party.

It took a few passes, but I narrowed things down to the correct block. I thought perhaps I was looking for a house, but didn't see anything that seemed right. I did see a lot of people parking, walking, and carrying beer, so eventually I parked and followed the people to the courtyard of an apartment complex. Picture time:



I was, frankly, amazed. There were, at the peak, a good two hundred people in the courtyard of this complex (and a DJ). What truly impressed me was that they were able to get their neighbors on board with this. There were two kegs and an inflatable pool full of beer (to which I added my contribution). I was pleased to see some of the genetics crew there, and I renewed my acquaintance with the new first years. I ended up promising two people mix CDs (one was a Dashboard Confessional fan, so I thought that an introduction to Death Cab was in order; the other just wanted a mix, and all she gave me to work with in terms of her tastes was Dave Matthews, U2, and early nineties grunge). David W. and girlfriend/SCBMBer/girl-I-spilled-beer-on-at-the-retreat Tiffany were there. Tiffany shares my fondness for tequila (though I have not yet given her the introduction to my dear friend Cazadores), and had apparently been indulging in that habit. We went into an apartment to get shots. There were no clean shot glasses, so David asked me how much tequila (Cuervo) i wanted.

"Three shots."

I think that impressed him thoroughly. I guess he's never seen me chug liquor before. It's good to know I can still inspire my peers. Wanda, SCBMB administrator extraordinaire put in an appearance, which continues her strong campaign for coolest program administrator ever. The cops showed up about 1:00 and made us kill the music, but did little else to hassle us. It's nice to be of age. I also met a Brittish girl in line for the bathroom, and impressed her by a) identifying her as Brittish, b) understanding her when she said her name, c) confessing that I was probably attuned to the accent from spending part of my evening watching "The Office", and d) confessing that I had to watch it with subtitles. She was a geologist who worked for Exxon (again, I'm impressed that the party invites made it as far afield as they did), and seemed pretty cool, but I lost track of her after that.

The party started slowing down around 2:30 (a bit early for my tastes), so we gathered up a crew for Taco C. David W., thanks again for all your hard work trying to propagate the Taco C. habit.

Not a whole lot happened today. Stephanie made dinner and a birthday cake in honor of mine and Jennifers's birthdays, of which I partook. Then I headed over to Dan's for Six Feet Under (great episode this week), and then over to Lisa's to see the ring, spend a little time with her and Bryan, and enjoy some of Lisa's birthday cake.

All in all, a great weekend. Hell, it's been a great week.

Weekend Adventures of Ward: Trying to take the debauchery crown from Randa

Valhalla officially rocked. Three kegs, a hundred or so graduate students, thirty or so pizzas (Domino's—damn you, David W.), three hours. Record time. I showed up, got my first beer, drained it quickly, and then came back for more. The bartender's response: "That was fast." Yes, indeed. Thanks to Rice's liberal alcohol policy, the party quickly spilled out to the better-ventilated campus grounds outside of Valhalla. I quickly worked my way up to the six beer mark and then slowed things down a bit. By the time the kegs ran out at 9:00, I had probably had ten beers or so, Stephanie had bitten my neck (not sure what's going on there), I had made the rounds and hung out with some people whom I don't see frequently enough, and I had even introduced myself to some first year girls. Will & co. went to work moving the party to Woodrow's once the kegs were out, which, as always, wouldn't have been my first choice, but hell, I'll go where the people are.

Jeff took on the task of driving me around; we dropped by his place so he could change, and I got to try out Doom 3 for a few minutes. We made it back to Woodrow's, and amazingly, a good portion of the party had reconvened there. I'm not sure how it happened, but whoever pulled that off has my eternal respect. I had a couple more beers, heard about how there had been a golf cart joy ride back at Valhalla (golf cart theft and BCM gatherings quickly becoming like peanut butter and jelly), met a couple of the other first year girls (I really should have been in the genetics program, in retrospect), and discovered that Jeff can be a good wingman if you don't get him started on politics. Will started gathering up a crew to head to his place and partake of illicit substances, and, having just had the girl I was talking to casually work into the conversation the 'b' word (ladies: don't be paranoid that every man is trying to get into your pants, but if a guy you don't know spends a substantial portion of the evening talking to you, do try to work details such as boyfriends early on), Jeff and I made our exit.

I was thrilled to discover a substantial portion of the Miller High Life 24 pack I had bought a month ago still sitting in Will's fridge. It was shortly after that I reached the pinacle of fucked-up-ed-ness. I ended up lying on the floor, wanting desperately to communicate my desire to go home and hide in my bed, but not quite being able to. At one point, nausea swept over me, and I tried to fight it, but it just wasn't working.

Now I rarely vomit due to drinking, but when I do, it seems the results are spectacular. There was the time in New York when David and Thomas insisted on going to dinner after we had been drinking all afternoon on no lunch, and I lost it on the table. There was the time that I had just made it into my entryway at home, realized there was no way I could make it to the bathroom, and instead thought I'd make a run through the door for the yard, but failed to get the deadbolt undone.

This was different, though. In a moment of brilliant clarity, I noted the plastic shopping bag lying close to me, grabbed it, and positioned it correctly before I lost it entirely. If James Bond was fucked up and had to vomit, he couldn't have pulled off anything smoother than this. It was that good. I seriously impressed those present with my plastic bag-wielding prowess.

Pretty soon after that, I managed to convey that I should be given my keys so that I could walk the block home and go to bed. I thoughtfully placed a trashcan by my bed (which turned out to be a good idea), and slept. Next up, I'll have the Saturday report.

And now, a few pictures. First up, this is from Rebecca's return on Wednesday; dig the cool new hair:



Here's a shot she took of me and Kelly, also back on Wednesday:



Next, here's Stephanie at the Valhalla shindig:



And finally, another Valhalla shot:

Flawless execution of flawed plans

Rebecca and co. returned to the country yesterday. I'd been keeping an eye on her ETA all day, planning to time things perfectly so that I could pick them up curbside, rather than having to park, etc. At about 7:45, her flight (originally due to land at 7:20) was projected to arrive at 8:20. Allowing time for them to get through customs, my timing was going to be perfect. And then I checked her flight one last time, and it had change dto 8:02. So much for the best-laid plans of mice &c.

I fought through two sepparate traffic jams on 59 (no carpool lane for me this time), and made it to the airport at a solid 8:30, which would have been perfect—had Rebecca's flight not arrived sooner than expected. Still, as it stands, I think I deserve credit for executing my plans flawlessly, even if my plans themselves were flawed.

They were quite tired. We made a quick Taco C. run, came back, and ate. They were ready for bed, and I was ready to party.

I met Holly at the Summer Hymns show back in May. She was there solo, and I recognized her from the bus, so I introduced myself. She threw a party last night at her place, and called to invite me (as well as Stephanie and Jennifer). We had no luck getting Jennifer to go, but Stephanie came with me. I quickly helped myself to a tequila and tonic (mostly tequila; it turned out really well, which surprised me), and continued the evening with an Abita Turbo Dog, an amber beer from Colorado, and two Budweisers (perhaps more? I felt pretty drunk; I hope I'm not losing my touch). The evening's activities included a viewing of Labrynth; Mario Kart and Mario Party N64 style; and part of a Bond film (no, not a bondage film). Stephanie demanded to be walked home at some point, and I refused on moral grounds, so Hunter was nice enough to do so.

Anyway, all in all, it was a good evening. With the exception of the Of Montreal show and some assorted bus encounters, I hadn't gotten the chance to hang out with Holly since we met, and of course I'm always thrilled when somebody decides to throw a party. It doesn't seem to happen nearly enough around here. Perhaps I should try my hand at it one of these days (next weekend for my birthday is one option if I opt not to return to Waco), though I worry that my apartment's too small to really to it up right. That, and I fear for my liquor and beer stashes, though I suppose there are ways to deal with that.

I returned home and slept on the fold-out; I couldn't refuse the girls my bed. I didn't sleep well and am consequently a bit tired today. Rebecca, take note—I sacrificed for you. We hit up Pei Wei for an early lunch and some hot lettuce wrap action, and then I went into lab and the ladies returned to Austin.

Bryan's in town for his and Lisa's birthday, and Lisa was working, so he was kind enough to pick me up from school, and we got to share some quality time. We got some Star Pizza, and watched a couple of episodes of "The Office", thanks to a generous loan of the season 1 DVDs from Dan and Kristin.

I managed to fall into some sort of weird slump afterwards. I managed to put some dishes and clothes away, but other than that, I spent a good deal of time on the couch. An order from Amazon came in today: two Belle & Sebastian singles for the competeist in me, and a copy of Alan Moore's Watchmen. I decided that if I was committed enough to my not-so-well-kept secret comic book hobby to stick to it through some of X-Men's worst days, I should also see what the heights fo the medium offer as well.

Anyway I'm sitting, reading, thinking that Sabrina has stood me up for our phone date tonight. She calls (ye of little faith), and we talk for a few minutes, and then I hear the call waiting beep. It's Bryan; I knew he was cooking dinner for Lisa tonight for their birthdays, so I was surprised to hear from him. I switched over to see what was up.

"Guess who's engaged?"

I'm caught completely off guard. For some time I've known that this would happen, but I didn't expect Bryan to act for another six months to a year. Of course I'm thrilled for the both of them, and almost immediately switch back to Sabrina to tell her. Of course, she wants to know who asked whom.

Back in the days of lunch in Penland Cafeteria, there was a conversation between Bryan, myself, and a few ladies present about the tradition of men asking women to marry them. Since I'm not a huge fan of gender roles (at least consciously), I fully support the idea of a woman choosing to make that definitive step, and I certainly think it shouldn't be thought of as the man's obligation. Surprisingly, the ladies disagreed; the best I could get was that a mutual agreement upon being engaged was all right, but that it was still horribly wrong for a woman to propose. I'll save the rant about gender roles and women's expectations of men for later, but the point here is that Bryan saw this as an endorsement of his lazy stratagem of waiting for Lisa to propose. Of course, Lisa was none to happy about this, and I had to backpedal a bit and explain that I was speaking of relationships in general, and my opinion was certainly not prescriptive for their relationship.

Anyway, the half-joke about Bryan waiting for Lisa to propose has continued over the year or so since its inception, and thus Sabrina's immediate curiousity. I switched back to Bryan, and it turns out they both got what they wanted. They had been having a conversation about their future, as I understand it, and Lisa had jokingly proposed with a ring constructed from a napkin. Bryan masterfully produced a real ring and proposed to Lisa, having planned to do so all along, but having no idea that fate would produce the perfect circumstances under which to do so. By the time I return to Sabrina, we're both sufficiently surprised that we've lost the ability to continue the conversation that we'd been having.

I also should point out that both Bryan and Lisa's original hookup and their engagement have involved three-way call waiting events with Sabrina.

A big "congratulations" to Bryan and Lisa is in order. I will readily admit that I'm a bit jealous. I'd love to be that sure of my future and who I'd be spending it with, but my previous Chance at that was another instance of the flawless execution of flawed plans.

Tomorrow is a night of free pizza and free beer at Valhalla; with any luck I'll have some good antics to report on this weekend. I'm still holding out high hopes for some cuties in the incoming class, as well, and perhaps I'll find out tomorrow. For now, I'm going to put on some music and retire to the couch before I retire to the bed.

"You're not the only one who can abuse a non-profit organization"

I'll start of this post by mentioning that I've just popped open a Lone Star tall boy. Let's hear it for the national beer of Texas.

Second, Dan seemed to get a kick out of being mentioned in my last post. He proposed that he, John and I should all create weblog posts about how we are the three coolest guys in Houston. So, there you go. I've done my part.

I finally broke the news to David tonight about the Wardlog. He was a bit disappointed—I could hear it in his voice—but, as he observed, "Ward, your life is a sitcom." With that, I feel I have permission to continue.

Now, on to the titular topic. I recently received a fellowship. Nationally competitive fellowships result in us being given a $2000/year raise. Sadly, this is not a nationally competitive fellowship, so the principle benefit is to my lab and my professor, who save around thirty grand a year by not paying my salary, tuition, and benefits. However, the fellowship does include a nice chunk of change to be put towards "lab equipment" and it is this money that many like myself use to derive personal benefit from the fellowship.

I heard tell of one man who used his money to buy a '30" display', which is actually a plasma TV in his living room. This has the possible ring of an urban legend, but it captures the spirit of things. It seems to be pretty common to buy computer upgrades, and then install them in one's home computer.

It's with this in mind that I approached one of the fellowship administrators about the possibility of putting the money towards a laptop. I was informed that in order to follow the letter of the law, the laptop would techincally belong to my lab, but there's generally no problem with retaining posession of the computer when the student leaves.

With that information, I know am seriously thinking about retiring the quickly-aging orange iMac (or Charlene, as she is seldom called) to a second career of web serving, file serving, and music playing, and moving more intensive work to a new PowerBook. I'm currently trying to decide between the convenient smallness of the 12" model and the extra screen real estate of the 15" model. I'm currently leaning towards the latter; not only does it have a sexy wide screen, but there is also this beautiful phrase: "ambient-light sensitive fiber-optically lit keyboard". That's right, folks, turn out the light and the letters and numbers light up. Totally hot. But stepping up the 15" model is a slippery slope; for a little more, I can step further up to a faster processor, and then it's just a little more to the better graphics card, the faster hard drive, the better memory. And then there's the necessity of the after-market memory upgrade to get things up to a nice, workable gigabyte of RAM...

Not only that, but Apple's currently running a promotion whereby purchasers of a Powerbook and an iPod can get a $200 rebate. So for a mere $70 net, I can upgrade to a new iPod that's twice the size of my old one. Market forces on eBay dictate that my current model has a resell value of upwards of $200, so I could upgrade and turn a bit of a profit, even.

Folks, it's an exciting time to be alive.

I have been handily bested

I always thought I had a fairly large music collection. It's around 250 or so; my iTunes library (which includes some things I don't have on CD) works out to about 17 days of continuous music. Assuming a cost of $13 per CD, that works out to a total expenditure of $3250. Here's a visual:



However, watching "Six Feet Under" at Dan's on Sunday night, I was once again awestruck with the majesty of his collection, whose size he approximated at "about 4000" (correction: Dan says 3000, which is still impressive). Now to be entirely fair, a significant portion of those are live shows that he's recorded and traded for, but that would still leave a thousand or so. It's most impressive when witnessed in person, but this should give you an idea:



Also on Sunday, I stopped by Sam's to pick up a new floor fan. I have problems with air distribution in my apartment; though there is one vent for every room, they are all fairly centrall located, and my living room has the largest space but only one vent. Additionally, the living room contains all of the heat producing electronics, and the worst offender, the iMac, happens to be located at one of the most distant points form the air vent. I have a celing fan, but it can only do so much. So, I got something similar to this (but with a short stand):



These things are amazing. Putting it near the cool part of my apartment and aiming it towards the hot, it manages to, on low power, keep my living room evenly cooled. I've even been able to bump the thermostat up a few degrees. Honestly, I think a small array of these could create a tornado or hurricane of horrible destructive force. You should all write your congresspersons to alert them of the potential danger to America's security. Or, better yet, armed with this knowledge, a select group of us could rule the world, James Bond villain-style. Think about it.

Weekend Adventures of Ward, pt. 3: No topically appropriate subtitle

Fridays at West Alabama Icehouse have been going downhill lately. Last week, I showed up and Graham was there, alone. This week, it was Graham and Kennedy (sans the girl she wanted to set me up with). We hung out a bit, drinking beer and eating the free hot dogs, before they retired for the evening to watch a movie, and I went off in search of something else to do. I don't know what's behind this fall-off in attendance; perhaps Graham's e-mails reminding us to come out are no longer as effective as they used to be; perhaps the change in time (moved later due to the heat of the summer) has thrown people off; perhaps it's just become boring; or perhaps people are just busy. Who knows? Certainly not I.

I called up Jeff, post-doc extradonaire, and we decided to go see a movie. Shymalan's The Village narrowly won out over The Manchurian Candidate, and not-so-narrowly won out over Napolean Dynamite and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (which, shamed though I am to admit it, I want to see—it would be perfect Drunk At The Dollar Theater fodder, were Sabrina only here).

I liked it. It was well filmed, written, and acted, and I thought that Shymalan's signature twist ending was clever, though Jeff found it distracting, and many others in the theater loudly complained that it was lame or cheesy. I'd recommend it highly had I not heard so many dissenting opinions; so, your milage may vary.

Saturday was reserved for traditional Saturday afternoon activies; I went to Susan and Jerry's and did laundry, and we went to dinner at the Black-eyed Pea, which, though not a personal favorite of mine, was free and therefore beyond reproach.

When I first got interested in computers, I got a subscription to MacWorld, which, thanks to my genetic predisposition to read things cover-to-cover, was in large part responsible for greatly expanding my knowledge of computers. Since home audio is becoming a big hobby of mine, I went ahead and purchased a subscription to Stereophile. It was only about a dollar an issue, but I have a feeling it's going to wind up having a bigger budgetary impact in the long run. Still, most of the products they deal with are not only outside of my pricerange, but way outside of my pricerange, so hopefully it won't incite me to do anything rash. I also picked up a copy of The Absolute Sound to see if the grass is greener on the other side of glossy-print fence. All of that is to say that I started working my way through my first issue of Stereophile while I was doing laundry.

Road construction is a perpetual fact of life in Houston, and loop 610 was down to one lane for a couple of miles on my return trip, near I-10. This was clearly signed ("left 2 lanes closed ahead"), and so I took the opportunity to go ahead and move into the lane that I knew would remain open. Of course, there are those who think that they're better than everybody else and instead drive ahead in the soon-to-be-closed lanes, knowing that somebody will let them over at the last possible second when they have to merge. These people are absolute failures as as human beings and will be the downfall of society as we know it. In return for a minimal gain for themselves (moving ten or twenty cars forward in line) which saves them an insignificant amount of time, they are responsible for further exacerbating the situation for those of us who actually know how to drive. As far as I'm concerned, they can all go to hell. I ended up in a battle of wills with one particular car trying to merge in front of me. I lost, because though I'm willful, I'm not entirely stupid. I think a little part of me died.

Jeff and I met Dan and Kristin at Mary Jane's (ignore their gradual transition to the name "Fat Cat", it will always be Mary Jane's in the harts and minds of the hipsters of Houston) to see The Damnwells:

and Jesse Malin:


The former produced enjoyable if somewhat generic alt-country/power pop. Their lead singer criticized this article in the Houston Press which referred to Jesse Malin as a "solipsistic fuckface" and said that we, as a city, should be ashamed. What I was not prepared for was learning that the Press's reviewer was, in fact, more or less right. Malin played sub-par Ryan Adams-ish frat rock between telling stories about exposing himself to girls when he was in junior high. We left early and made the rounds at the Harp, Whataburger, and Woodrow's.