Notoriety, or fame, or something...

Wednesday did bring answers as to what was going on at school, but not good ones. All of the wonderful, sweet data I had turned out to be a dirty, dirty lie. It should be salvagable, but man this science thing is very fragile.

You may recall that a duo known as Nedelle & Thom opened for the Magnolia Electric Co.. I happened to see that Nedelle was performing in to promote her new solo album From the Lion's Mouth at the Proletariat. I met Dan and Kristin there for an evening of music.

Local Benjamin Davis Murphy opened and managed to pull off the difficult task of performing alone with an electric guitar. He's one of the best local acts I've seen. Fred Thomas of Saturday Looks Good to Me played next and was also thoroughly enjoyable—I fully intend to check out his band's stuff. Dan complimented him on his set, but managed to call him Frank and consequently decided that he should buy an album. I went over with him, and he made sure to call him by the right first name. I said, "Don't you mean Frank, Dan?" and smirked. I talked to Fred/Frank for a minute about his band, mentioning that I got him confused with Jimmy Eat World-alikes Taking Back Sunday, but now that we had that cleared up, I'd have to give them a shot. I was going to buy an album, but he was out of the one I wanted. I did pick up Nedelle's new disc.

Nedelle was up next, and though I think that, stylistically, I prefer the material with Thom, she was great. Her voice is wonderfully sweet, and, like, say, Ukulele Girl Rhonda Roberts and Amy Milan of Stars, makes me melt, like her song "Puddle at Your Toes" (which I was thrilled that she performed). After her set, I said hi, mentioned I'd caught her last time she was in town, and that I loved the Nedelle and Thom album.

Nedelle: "What's your name?"
Matthew: "Matthew."
Nedelle: "Matt Ward?"
Matthew: "Yeah...? How did you...?"
Nedelle: "I read your 'blog."
Matthew: "Huh. Did you google it?"
Nedelle: "Thom brought it to my attention."
Matthew: "Huh."
Nedelle: "Well anyway, thanks, and I'll catch you next time I come through town."
(By the way, that's "read" as in past-tense; I assume Nedelle didn't find my personal life interesting enough to keep reading but just saw the one post pertaining to her show.)

Now I had to think through what I had written. I know I commented on her cuteness, but I couldn't remember if what I said would come off as creepy or sweet. Having checked it, I think it's the latter.

Anyway, Nedelle, if you happen to have come looking for another mention, a) leave a comment and say "hi"; b) make sure you come back to Houston; and c) thanks. Your album was a wonderfully calming influence during some stressful school stuff.

Strangely headlining was local act Meowcifer, who didn't impress me last time but managed to be worlds better this time around.

I returned home to find out that my copy of Apple's Mac OS X Tiger had shipped in time to arrive for its Friday release date. Surprisingly, when I woke up this morning it was already in Houston. When I arrived home, I was faced with a choice: play with the new toy and watch the O.C., or go see Ben Lee do an in-store performance at Cactus. The presence of free St. Arnold's beer tipped the balance, so I left the installation going and took off for Cactus.

It was surprisingly not crowded. One third of The Bens put on a nice show, and there was free beer. I doubt Ben Lee well stumble upon my site in the same way that Nedelle did, but I wish he would, because I didn't have the chance to tell him how much "Cigarettes Will Kill You" meant during the breakup. It's nice to have an anthem about how being taken advantage of and feeling like an idiot.

Dan and Kristin came along with Dan's daughter, who is the coolest six-year-old I've ever met. It was fun to see her enjoy the show. We hit up the other O.C. for some dinner afterwards, and then I came back home and enjoyed National Apple Day. I was very upset, however, to discover that Bush's fucking press conference had pre-empted the O.C. Thank God for Bit Torrent.

Thom Thom Thom Thom Thom

Because you asked for it (and by "you" I mean "Thom"), here's some info on the ways in which Thomas has impacted my life lately. Both concern t-shirts.

Thomas contacted me a week and a half ago to tell me that he had found the perfect t-shirt for me, and to confirm my shirt size and address. He told me that I wouldn't be embarassed to wear it out in public, and so I knew that it wouldn't have anything to do with my ego, politics, smug sense of supperiority, or sexuality.

That didn't really leave much except the beard. He requested a picture of me in the shirt. Here it is:



The text reads: "Beards. They grow on you." Sabrina, I know it's wrinkled. Don't worry; I would never wear it out of the house in that condition.

Also, Thom mailed me another t-shirt—I had him pick up a Magnolia Electric Co. shirt when he attended their show since they didn't have them when I saw them. Anyway, Thomas likes stealing lab supplies and sticking them in packages to me, but this time, it's a miracle that homeland security didn't come down on his ass (that's live yeast growing on that plate). Still, it was the funniest damned thing that happened to me all day.




Let's see... last week was devoted to working towards my various academic obligations, for the most part. The talk Friday went OK, for the most part, except for the asshole who always asks annoying questions when the rest of us just want to hear the talk and get the hell out.

After Keck seminar on Friday, we stuck around to do what we could to get rid of the beer that was leftover, as it was the last talk of the semester. I'll look forward to not having Friday afternoon obligations, but I'll miss the free beer and pizza. I went home for a bit, and then went over to Jeff's and attempted to play his Moog keyboard while he and Vincent jammed. Jim came over toward the end, bitched about their choice of music, and then we went and got some Late-Nite Pie. We tried their pizza with black olives, spinache, and roma tomatoes; my conclusion is to stick to the pepperoni there and leave the fancy stuff for Star. I briefly caught up with Dan and Kristin at Poison Girl after that.

Jeff, Holly and I caught Wilco on Saturday night. It was at the Verizon, which meant that the sound was decent, but the crowd sucked. Their new material was a bit heavy on the guitar wankery, and not in a good Built to Spill Live sort of way, but when they played the old stuff, it was great. Overall, I give them a mixed review. Maybe if I had caught them a couple years back at a smaller venue it would have approached perfection. Still, they kick ass for doing two encores. I know it's just a formality these days, leaving the stage, coming back (and in their case, repeat), but I didn't know to expect it and it was a nice surprise.

Holly had won some free tickets to see the Death Ray Davies at Mary Jane's afterwards, so we went and caught that. It was the first time we had spent any real time together since she had me over for dinner a few weeks back. It was nice enough, and it's not finished yet, but like I've said, it was still on its way out.

Sunday brought work on my presentation for my committee meeting. Surprisingly, it went very well, despite my boss's earlier negative comments about a fellow first-year's presentation earlier that day. Despite the fact that Biologists tend to ask horribly irrelevent questions about my work, for the most part, things just needed clarification, and the feedback was positive. I was aided by the fact that the boss was due for an appointment and so the meeting was cut short, but overall, it was good.

But the project, which looked so good for a while, has run into some problems. It's always either in great shape or horrible shape. I wish it would just stick to the former... But hopefully, tomorrow will bring some answers as to what's up. I certianly won't bother you with the details.

Might be a busy week...

Several elements of my academic life ended up being confluent this week:

• A project summary for a class, due today
• Presenting a paper in that class on Thursday
• Writing a progress report for my committee to help them familiarize themselves with my projects; I'm shooting to get that out on Thursday
• A presentation to the students in my program on something I'm currently working on
• The committee meeting itself, on Monday
• A presentation on the project for the class on Tuesday

Here's the secret to how I'm going to breezily pull this off: the project I'm working on for the class is something I had to do for lab anyway, which I've decided is more interesting than my other work, so I'll present it to the students. Then, I have to present it for my committee meeting anyway (alongside my other work). Three birds, 1.5 stones. Not too bad... Still more deadlines than I like to see in the space of a week, but you can't win them all.

In other news, the White Stripes released their new single, "Blue Orchid", today. It doesn't have the über catchy bass line and insistent bass drum beat of "Seven Nation Army", nor does it have the 100 meter dash intensity of "Fell In Love With A Girl", but it's got a kick ass guitar riff. I haven't listened to the Stripes much in quite some time, and wondered if perhaps they were just a passing phase, but damn, it's nice to have them back.

Also, I was thrilled to discover that the Kroger Signature near me has half decent fresh tortillas. It's still no HEB, but it's better than the mediocrity of the Flagship Randall's and the other Kroger nearby.

Recovery; a night at the beach

Despite being trapped in a cycle of feeling better, overextending, and then feeling worse, it was a good, productive weekend. Thursday night, I got a call from the first years, who were grilling, so I dragged myself over to Anup's place for a little dinner and a little (not a lot!) beer. I managed to make it in at a decent hour and got to sleep.

I went in a bit late on Friday, and by the time I needed to be walking from BCM to Rice for our Friday afternoon seminar, I was feeling drained, so I grabbed the next bus home. I got a call from Holly, offering to bring me dinner, which was sweet of her, so she came by for a few minutes. I spent most of the evening in, but around 10:00 started getting a bit stir crazy and called up Will. I met up with he and his lady friends at Two Rows (twice in a week is probably not healthy, but hey, it all averages out), and then, surprisingly, one of the girls' boyfriends proposed we go to Rudyard's for some darts.

The parking lot was awful. Normally, there's a U-shaped path through; enter the driveway on one end of the U and come out the other. Right around the bend, though, a driver would discover that the cars were parked too close together to actually make it through, and thus one would have to reverse back through some not-quite-so-bad-but-still-closely-packed cars and out the entrance. I subsequently parked on the street, went in, ordered a beer, went out on the patio, and watched other cars go through the same trial I had just been through.

Will's gang showed up pretty quickly, and we played darts. I'm not a all good, but man was I ever on that night—until the last game, when Will and I got our asses kicked.

Saturday, I was mostly feeling better but still had a bit of a fever and got tired easily. I was feeling fine by the evening, and ready to face the dilemma of whether to go to poker night with the first years or go to the annual bonfire at Quintana Beach down south of Houston. Opting for the devil I didn't know, I picked up Will, a case of Lone Star ("The national beer of Texas"), sundry other supplies, and decided to, in the immortal words of Modest Mouse, "head south".

It was a long drive (going to skip the Mouse reference here), but after a little over an hour and a brief side trip for some food, we made it out to the beach. The sand was packed enough to drive on, so we drove for about five minutes before we found the BCM group. There was a good size group of people there (50 or so, most of whom I didn't know), and a good size bonfire. Under cover of night, the beach was nice enough. I hadn't spent any real time on a beach in the last four years or so, so I enjoyed the cool breeze, letting the waves wash over my feet, watching the fire (and burning stuff!), and drinking some beer (and that Olde English forty—no wonder I was hurting a bit the next day).

Here's some typically poor pictures:






The drive back seemed long, but I had the iPod to keep me company, even if Will fell asleep. I got home, quarantined my clothes in the bath tub until they could be de-sanded, and slept.

Sunday was relatively productive. I hit up Sam's for a tire rotation, beer, chicken, and bottled water, and then went to IKEA to buy something to hold my DVDs, since my CD rack wasn't really made for that purpose. It's all put together now:



Today at work, we had one final candidate in for interviews, so I had one final free meal out. We went to Pappasitos, and I had a good burrito. It pained me not to order a margarita, so I got their bannana cream pie for dessert, which was tasty, but put me a bit over the edge. I think the margarita would have had a less deleterious effect on my work, in the end.

Still, I was inspired this afternoon and got a lot done. It's nice that when one project isn't working or is boring, the other seems to be going well. One way or the other, I'll have a paper soon; maybe even two. That would rock.

More isolation

In addition to other recent home improvements, I made a few further tweaks to my stereo setup. Wanting to do for the bedroom system what the SubDude had done for my main system, I took the advice of my dealer (and recycled one of Nick's old tricks) and bought a couple of concrete pavers. Combined with the can of PlastiDip spray paint, the total cost was less than $10. The concrete is both heavy and dense, and does a great job of isolating the subwoofer from the floor.

On the other hand, those bitches are heavy, and everything from getting them out of the store (oh, why didn't I use a basket?) to spray painting them (they're like damned sponges!) to hauling them upstairs (oh, why do I live on the third floor?) to getting them in position and underneath the sub (damn these things are heavy) was a pain in the ass. Still, it's hard to argue with the results. They match my cinderblock speaker stand motif. I put a quarter of a bar of blu-tack at each corner to join the two blocks, and then a half a stick under each corner where the sub went (the better to isolate the sub and not scratch the laquered finish), and when I put some Modest Mouse on to go to sleep to (Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks does nicely), I had nice, tight, clean bass.

They may be a bit ugly, but it's hard to beat concrete when it comes to killing unwanted vibrations:

Once every few years...

I've got a really, really great immune system. I very rarely get sick. The last time was back in November of 2002. Before that, I don't think I had been sick since my senior year of high school, and then a year and a half before that. Beyond that, I can't really remember, but hopefully I've illustrated my point.

That's why I thought that the sore throat that I developed a couple of days ago was just allergies. I woke up today, though, and after my shower, when I was going to eat some breakfast, I noticed that I had a stange headache, and was feeling very warm, and then cold, and a little weak and sore.

Yeah, I was probably due. But I wasn't ready to admit it yet. I caught the bus in to work and was in a bit of a daze. The walk in was tough. I checked on a couple of jobs I had running on my computer, attempted to do some real work, and decided that it wasn't happening. I went and checked in with the boss and caught the next bus home.

I took a nap and finally got around to eating something, and was feeling quite a bit better for a while, but now it's kind of hit me again. Oh well. Just need to give the ol' immune system time to get its shit together.

I worked late yesterday, came home, and began to fix dinner when I got a call from Oliver and Anup, saying they were going out to Two Rows for dollar beer night. We got some Texadelphia first (sweet, sweet Texadelphia) and then headed over. I love dollar beer night because I can either get out really cheap, or I can buy a few rounds for people and not spend any more than I would for a normal night out. Either way, I win.

Weekend, other bits

Bryan picked me up from school on Friday afternoon and we went o my place to play with my stereo for a while before going downtown to meet Lisa for dinner. Our original destination was closed, so we ended up at Bossa for their upscale Latin fusion. Lisa and Jennifer (?) had already ordered the plantain chips and black beans, which were tasty. I enjoyed their skirt steak, which was pricy but tasty, but was ultimately jealous of the excellent pork tenderloin and asparagus that Lisa had ordered—it was excellent. Bryan and I split a pitcher of mojitos; I hadn't had any of those since I was visiting Thomas and David. Bryan and I returned to my place for some of my jalapeño margaritas before joining Dan, Kristin and co. at Rudyard's for further drinkage. We eventually migrated to Poison Girl and partook of cheap Lone Star, goldfish, and pinball. Bryan and Kristin tried to convince me to drink combined dregs of a cocktail, white wine, and vodka gimlet that our table's previous occupants had left on the table. Kristin came close when she offered me $10, but I hated to take her money.

I caught up with Dan and Kristin again on Saturday night to go to Danseparc, a DJ night at Numbers, where I usually only go to see the occasional show. It was an interesting scene; the risers on one side of the room where people were congregating, along with the sparsely-populated dance floor gave the place a bit of a junior high dance air, but it was also very much what you would expect from a club populated by indie kids. The music was pretty good; lots of eighties stuff, but that could have been due to the fact that much of the current musical climate is eighties revivalism. It's easy to mix Franz Ferdinand and the Killers with the Cure and early U2. I also heard some Go Team!, which was perfect for the club setting, and they managed to make an Arcade Fire song seem appropriate as well.

Still, out of all the clubs I've been to, this was the most tolerable. There were lots of cute girls there, though I wasn't particularly impressed by the ones in their faux-seventies punk outfits, or the ones in bustiers, garter belts, and latex shorts. There were lots of smarmy-looking guys there, too, wearing eye makeup, or to put it in the words of the Darkness, "drunk and... surly in Latino lover mode". Exceptions aside, though, the were my kind of people.

I had been wanting, since it was first in theaters, to see Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl but was too scared to do it, especially if it meant paying money. I finally got the nerve to watch it on Monday night, though, and found it... innocuous. It wasn't completely scrubbed of Smith's usual fingerprints—the pop culture references were still there, as were the masturbatory references—but ultimately, it could have been made by anybody. He couldn't have entirely intended to sell out, though, as if he had wanted to make a purely feel-good family film, he would have taken out what little sex was in there. In the end, it's all kind of baffling. Still, there are worse ways I could have spent two hours of my life.

I had Pei Wei for dinner tonight and tried edamame for the first time, after Thomas and Rebecca had raved about it. I guess it was nice enough, but I wasn't overly impressed.

I've also been reading some of the Sin City comics. The degree of verisimilitude achieved by the film is nothing short of impressive. The movie was pretty much a perfect copy of the comic. The real question, though, is should it have been, or should they have made it more of an adaptation and taken advantage of the possibilities of a different medium?

A quick shout out

Happy birthday to my wonderful sister (assuming she still reads this thing).

Welcome to sweet, sweet legality.

Hope your 21st is good (and free from unpleasant events that happen on some 21st birthdays).

An iPod in the hand is worth two in the Bush

There's an article today in the New York Times about W's iPod.

And what's on it? Well, let's just say that I am not at all shocked that he listens to a combination of schlock contemporary country and popular 70s rock hits. Nor am I shocked to learn that he doesn't know how to load the thing up himself, but rather his assistant goes and buys some of this songs from iTunes. The others were, at least according to the standards of Senator Orrin Hatch, illegaly copied from his former chief media strategist. I'd like to see the RIAA sue him.

By the way, there's three new posts that I put up yesterday, down below, for your reading pleasure.

Feeling isolated and SubDude

As part of my efforts to maximally enjoy my system and maxmize my rocking out time, yet also keep from pissing off my neighbors, I took a step to keep my subwoofer from sending all of its sound straight into the floor and bought an Auralex Subdude from Sweetwater who sell musician-oriented gear. I wish they sold more stereo equipment, because they were a pleasure to deal with. Great prices, really great service—they called me to confirm my order and make sure everyting was OK, and also did a followup call to make sure I had received and was happy with my order. And they put some candy in the box, too.

The SubDude, as mentioned in Stereophile is an MDF (medium density fiberboard) platform, wrapped in carpet, mounted on top of foam. The MDF absorbs most of the vibrations that would otherwise go straight into the floor from the sub, and the styrofoam keeps them there. The floor barely picks up any vibrartions now, unelss the sub is loud enough to, say, rattle the windows (which it did when Bryan and I watched a bit of the Matrix), and it cleans up the sound a, too.

A couple links

This music video is a disturving example of patriotism gone horribly, horribly awry. It's hard for me to believe that it's not a joke, but I don't think it is.

This promotional video is probably the best animated music explanation of new magnetic storage technology that I've ever seen. Seriously, watch it even if you're not into tech. It's very much in the Schoolhouse Rock vein.

I finally got around to listening to the bluegrass tribute to Modest Mouse. It's not quite as disturbing as the Kidz Bop version of "Float On", but it borders on parody. I thought maybe they would just be acoustic instrumental renditions of classic Mouse songs, sort of like muzak, but it was far worse. They even whitewashed the songs and got rid of those nasty swear words.

Finally, I'm rearranging the name of the wardlog. I think it makes much more sense this way. Feel free to bitch if you don't like it.

The week

After "Scrubs" and "The Office" ended on Tuesday night, I discovered that I had nothing of substance that I really wanted to do, so I decided I'd go ahead and see closer, which I'd meant to do ever since the DVD came out a couple of weeks ago. A quick trip to Blockbuster later, I returned to watch it.

Tuesday had, it turns out, seen the subject of the end of relationships on my mind fairly consistently. The combination of the Holly situation rapidly drawing to a close, a dream about Rachal (the first in about several months, an improvement, but dear will this shit ever stop?), and viewing Closer. I don't have any astounding conclusions to offer, but the movie was excellent, beautifully honest, and I highly recommend it.

Bryan came to town on Wednesday to play (and I guess visit Lisa, too). I joined he, Lisa, and assorted hangers-on for some Balderdash that night. I swear, I used to be good at that game, but I wasn't that night.

On Thursday, I attended the first ever thesis defense by a member of our lab, which is encouraging since it often feels like, as Magnolia Electric Co. puts it, "Almost no one makes it out." My boss has been here for seven or eight years and got his first graduate student in 2000. He managed to make it out in just under six years, which is about average for BCM graduate school, but is probably pretty good considering he was a founding member of the lab. It gave me hope to see him finish. When he leaves, he leaves behind his posh office, which is his alone and offers both a door and a window. I think it will go to either the person who's been in the lab the longest (one of a couple of graduate students) or the post doc who's been there the longest. Either way, it won't be me, and hopefully I won't be there long enough to ever be in the running for it.

After my usual viewing of the OC on Thursday, I joined Bryan and Lisa for a repeat viewing of Sin City which held up rather well the second time through. It might be one to buy.

Seeing myself on stage

M. Ward was playing at Mary Jane's on Sunday night, and how many times do you get to see someone with whom you share a name play their special brand of folk rock? Dan and Kristin were going, and Lauren was supposed to (though didn't make it), which added to things.

I presume that he uses the initial M. because of that religious nut, but his name is, in fact, Matthew. He was good; I had listened to Transfiguration of Vincent previously but not really gotten into it. He really came through live, though, and his carton-a-day vocals gave his songs the appropriate flavor. I went ahead and picked up a copy of Vincent, figuring that I would want to support me if I were a musician, which apparently I do and I am.

After a month or so of trying to get things to work, I finally got some preliminary data on my secondary project. It's only about 10% of the total data, but so far it looks amazingly good. Unbelievably good. It has no right to be this good considering how blindly we set this thing up. Here's hoping it sticks that way. It would be great to know that I had two papers in the pipeline. That would be two thirds of the way to getting out of here, conceivably.

Holly made dinner tonight, which was nice. But things are definitely waning.

That doesn't leave me much. There's Lauren, with her boyfriend, and then the girl that withdrew, but that doesn't seem all that much more promising. Don't I have a committee that's supposed to be hard at work on this stuff?

In much happier news, I today managed to download a pre-release of Ben Folds' new Songs For Silverman. The mastering isn't right on it; the level is way too loud and it clips at the peaks, but I'm prepared to compromise certain standards in order to hear Mr. Folds' album a few weeks early. Ben's been one of my favorites almost as long as I've been listening to music, and whether his best days are behind him or not, I'm always pleased to hear more.

Also, the new Magnolia Electric Co. album comes out tomorrow. I forgot to pre-order it from their label, Secretly Canadian, but I've had it downloaded for a month or so, so I figured I could wait a few more days for them to mail me a copy. Magnolia's one of my favorite discoveries of the past year or so, so it's exciting to get more material from them. Here's hoping they play Houston soon...

I should probably also mention the new British Sea Power album, but that's more Jeff's thing than mine, really.

Grilling, the Decemberists, and Sin City

I was at work Thursday afternoon when I got a call from the first-years, who were grilling and invited me over for beer and dinner. I contributed a 12 pack of Shiner ($9.99 at Randall's—at least they've got some things that are cheap), walked to Anup's, and started drinking. They were grilling burgers, sausage, and ribs. Lots of meat and beer later, I was feeling very satisfied and a little drunk. I came home, put some music on, and mixed myself a margarita. Life was good.

Friday night was the Decemberists' show at Mary Jane's. Jeff, Holly and I showed up to a packed house and met Dan and Kristin there. Dan's a big fan of Okervil River, and though we had attempted to show up more or less on time to catch them, they went on pretty early (maybe 8:30?), so we only caught a few songs. What we caught was decent enough.

The Decemberists were on by 9:45, and were excellent. Their live set wasn't very different from their records, but somehow, their one-act-play-like songs were absolutely transcendent. Due to the general craptitude of Mary Jane's, though, Colin Meloy couldn't hear himself in the monitors, plust his voice was going, so we didn't get an encore. I was hoping for a rendition of their epic "The Tain" or the similarly extravagant "Mariner's Revenge Tale", but it was not to be. Despite feeling a little cheated, though, the show was excellent.

We picked up Jeff's new beaux Jim afterwards and headed to Rudyard's for drinks and food. Holly had a long week and wasn't feeling well and took off early, but I stuck around and enjoyed the comparny. I don't know what's up with the Holly thing these days. I've ddefinitely been cooling towards her since the party incident, but it could also have something to do with not having spent much time with her in the past two weeks. Things were definitely a bit weird Friday night. I'm not calling anything off yet. We'll see what's up. No point killing the potential for fun times, and for those of you who are worried about me, don't worry. I'm not going to let myself be hurt here.

Saturday, Will, Jeff, a couple of their labmates, and Jim went and saw Sin City. If you don't mind lots of violence, nudity, and general depravity, I highly recommend it. It was beautiful, stylish, and delightfully sadistic. If you can handle the average Tarantino movie, you'll probably like this. It was a lot of fun. It's not perfect, but it sure seems that way while you're watching it.

Afterwards, we went to get some beer, and I had my first encounter with Miller Light (or was it Bud; they all run together) in a plastic bottle. What the fuck? You can't break those over the table and use them as the ol' face shredder. And the wide-mouth neck just feels wrong. They try to pitch it as keeping the beer colder, but whether that works or not, it's a crime against the good name of beer. But then, so's Miller Light.

Post-bar, we hit up La Tapatia for some food. Service was a bit sketchy, but what do you expect at that time of night?

Of course, last night I also had to pay back the hour I was loaned last fall on Halloween. Remembering what I did with it, I can't really say whether or not I regret that particular instance of temporal bargaining.