Margs!

After having to deal with work bullshit all week, I was wanting to go out on Thursday night, and was thankful for the opportunity to do so. I went by and saw Will for a few minutes at Woodrow's before meeting Dan and Kristin at Poison Girl. It was good to get out.

I had to take my car in to be inspected Friday morning. Complete bullshit. It didn't pass because of a prexisting problem that I'm getting fixed tomorrow (and that just happens to be very audible) and because apparently my gas cap wasn't fucking good enough. So now I have to waste more time getting the car reinspected.

We had a welcome party for the new students in our program on Friday afternoon. Program administrator Wanda had asked me to pick up beer and wine for the party, and several people complimented my choices, including some professors. At least I can do something to impress them these days. The party was nice enough. The food, catered by Eatzi's, was sort of hit or miss, but lots of people were excited by the presence of sushi. The desserts were enjoyable, at least.

Chris and Lauren picked me up to go to see Le Tigre and Electrelane play at the Engine Room. After a quick stop to pick up Catherine, we went to the venue. Some riot grrl Bikini-Kill wannabes played first, and seemed a little too pleased with themselves. I was excited about seeing Electrelane, but, as with last time, I just wasn't that impressed. Le Tigre came on, and they're totally not my thing. Totally. too dancy, and not in a way I found at all interesting or compelling. Plus, the venue was very hot and crowded.

I did run into John, as well as Levi and Zana (Zanna? Zanah?). We then left to check out the afterparty in a warehouse east of downtown. The space was kind of cool, very artsy and decorated, but we were all tired by that point and didn't stick around very long. Still, it was cool knowing about the afterparty.

I replaced my hubcap on Saturday, did some laundry, had some dinner, and then started looking for something to do. I called Dan and Kristin, who were at Rudyard's, and joined them for a few beers. We relocated to Poison Girl for a while, and then they decided we should go check out a party at a freind's parents' house in the heights after picking up some limeade so that Dan could make "Margs!". I wasn't around for the first Margs! incident, but I'm pretty sure that in order to be proper Margs!, they must be consumed very late, and their prepearation the result of poor judgement.

Once we found the spectacular house (with slight difficulty), I knew this was going to be good when I saw the gas lanterns on the porch. The house was great. Dan set about making the Margs!. Once the drinks were taken care of, we moved on to the pool and hot tub to join the rest of the guests (eight of us, total). Improvised bathing suits seemed to be the order of the evening, and I was obviously quite drunk by that point in the evening as I didn't really hesitate to strip down to my boxers (thankfully, to discover I was wearing a pair with a fly that would button closed that night) and jump into the pool before moving onto the hot tub.

There were four guys and four girls present. Subtracting Dan and Kristin resulted in two couples, myself, and a possibly unattached girl. In my drunken state, I think I eventually sorted it out (and Dan can correct me here), deciding that Daysha (or Deisha, or something like that) was the most likely single. She apparently had grown up some in Rosebud, and I impressed her by knowing that Lott was right up the road. We talked Central Texas a bit, but as the evening progressed, I didn't really get a chance to talk to her much to see if I had ascertained correctly.

It mattered little, as the rest of the evening moved quickly into drunken antics, including Margs! in the hot tub, Dan's attempt at a Frescarita (once we ran out of limeade for the Margs!—which, by the way, I wouldn't recommend to anyone under any circumstances, no matter how desperate), and drunken chicken fights. Despite the disconcerting fact that I lost all of them to Dan's team, good times were had. I think I was home by about 5:00 AM and fell asleep on the couch listening to Death Cab. I awoke when it was light outside and migrated to my bed, only to awake with a painful headache that I had trouble shaking. I spent most of today in a hungover haze, but it was entirely worth it. Great time. More shit like that needs to happen more often.

Rambling

Friday night was a grad school happy hour at Buffalo Wild Wings. I enjoyed some wings and some company. Interestingly, a lot of the new students showed up (they didn't officially start until this week). There was one girl who seemed potentially cute, but she kept talking to this older guy in her program all night, and I wasn't going to be working any magic while that was going on, so I let that go and focused on the beer.

The second year crew (formerly the first year crew, recently promoted) invited me to join them over at the Kelvin Arms which gets major points for having seating inside of a bank vault. I enjoyed the company for a while, but I was fading.

When everybody was ready to go, I ended up giving Oliver a ride home.

I should note that my windshield was dirty. The fuckers at Regal Carwash neglected to fill my windshield fluid, and I haven't gotten around to buying any, and don't even really want to since I'd have to find a place to store it. Plus, my windshield wipers have decided that if I turn them on, they're damned well going to stay on for five or ten minutes. So, dirty windshield. There was a glare off of it from an oncoming car, and I managed to hit a curb and blow out a tire.

Oliver and I managed to change it, but man did that jack suck. I managed to lose a hubcap in the process somehow as well. Luckily, not only did I need new fron tires, but I had been planning on getting them taken care of last weekend anyway. So, not so bad in the end.

Originally on Saturday night, Lauren was having a girls' night, so I went out with Chris, and Rodrigo, who was pretty much just an acquaintance.

Digression. I don't get gender-exclusion nights. I never have. I don't like them. If I'm with a group of guys doing something guy-ish, I'm perfectly happy to have female company tag along. Likewise, I'm usually interested in the chance to tag along with a group of girls. I don't see the point in forcing an activity to be unigender.

But it has occurred to me that for some people, it's an opportunity to be away from your SO for an evening. It's a rather inelegant solution, mainly because it has the result of depriving me of an opportunity to hang out with a group of girls. Maybe there are other reasons; if there are, I dont' get them.

Anyway. So the three of us went out for drinks, starting at LZ's. Rod's in an interesting little love triangle, wanting the girl (a friend of Lauren's that seemed nice until I realize what a complete princess she is) that treats him like shit, but not wanting the girl that's interested in him bcause she doesn't treat him like shit.

So we talked about girls some. Chris and Rod pushed their theories theory that getting girls demands measured amounts of persistence and apathy. As always I fear that they're right, but I hold out hope that there are people out there who are self aware enough not to dislike someone just because they're not playing you hot and cold. I hate these bullshit games; it may doom me to a life of being single, but at least it will be an honest life.

It turned out that one of the girls didn't get the memo about ladies' night and brought their husband, so, apparently they said "fuck it" and invited us to join them at the Social. The Social, though way too expensive, was much more likable this time around. Somehow, the previous conversation about the hot and cold game came up. I found it annoying.

Despite my personal issues, though, I enjoyed myslef. We went for some Late Nite pie afterwards, but the service was extra shitty, and we had an extra person showed up and ended up a slice short. At least I didn't get screwed over there, but damn, I really wanted a second slice.

After sitting there for a while, we were ready to go. It was late. Customer Service Matt is pretty passive agressive most of the time, so I did a quick survey of what we had ordered (one large one topping pizza and one iced tea). I did some simple addition, threw down a twenty, and said, "Let's go". As we walked out, the asshole waiter asked if we had paid. I thought aobut ignoring him but muttered something about cash being on the table. There might have been a slightly less mumbled obscenity in there too.

Chris went to take Rod and I home. Rod was first, but he was pretty drunk and insisted that we come in for another drink, so we did. I got home late. Slept late. Did jack shit on Sunday.

The week's been pretty quiet. There's been some bullshit at work that I don't really want to talk about right now. I put some half decent Thai curry together last night (a mix, augmented Ward-style). I did swing by Soundwaves to buy the new Death Cab live DVD. Those fuckers were charging full price for it. Plus, they had neither the Okkervil River CD nor the Wolf Parade EP I wanted to buy.

The Death Cab DVD is enjoyable; some nice interviews in addition to the performances from their tour last spring, though occasionally the interviews are overdubbed onto some parts of the music that should stand on their own. Interestingly, there are performances from both Dallas and Austin. Why no Houston? Because the Houston show was cancelled, since Numbers had a leaky roof and electrical problems. Fuck them and their incompetent management. If not for that, something cool might have happened, like me having a professional film of part of a concert that I was actually at.

So that's enough. I've probably sounded vaguely (or not so vaguely) pissed off for most of this post. Chalk it up to pent up aggression.

I still need to post the reviews I wrote up for Reel Big Fish and Okkervil River from last week. They don't sound particularly pissed off.

Redhead encounters

On Friday, my office mate Martin asked me if he could help some Finnish girl I knew with a small bioinformatics problem (she had two lists of genes and wanted to find the genes that were common to both of them). Her e-mail wasn't exactly clear on the details, however, so Martin suggested we meet her for lunch. "Is she cute?" I asked. Yep.

Eventually my thoughts made it back to the cute red-headed Finnish girl that I had met last year that lived in my apartment complex, but whom I had seen maybe once or twice in passing since then. Could they be the same?

Apparently so. We discussed what she was trying to accomplish and I decided the simplest thing to do was for me to writer a quick program for her. I gave her my card and told her to drop by the lab that afternoon. We talked a little more while she and Martin finished lunch; sadly, any hopes of some redhead action were dashed by the revelation that a) the funding for her project is gone and that she's off to find other things to do in October, and b) she has a boyfriend. It's a shame, because she's super cute. Kind of young-looking, big, expressive eyes, just plain cute.

Anyway, she came by the lab. What she wanted to do really wasn't that complicated, so I wrote the program while she was there, which was helpful since she was available to answer any questions I had. She seemed interested in what I was doing, so I sort of talked her through what I was writing.

So, that's that. One mysterious redhead is probably now out of the picture. Surely there's more where that one came from...

Huge catch-up post, part 3

Moving right along...

Monday, July 11

Jeff's boyfriend Jim was wonderful enough to not only drop us off at the airport but also bring us donuts, too—though he did criticize our decision to not dress up for traveling.

The plane didn't look too bad until the entire fucking UCLA men's water polo team got on. On of them ended up sitting between Jeff and I, and his physical condition lead me to believe that he was either accident prone or that water polo is a much rougher sport than I thought. He had an eye patch, and several scabs that were an inch or two in diameter and filled with pus—which he would not stop fucking picking at. I was glad when the flight was over.

And damn it, why can't I use my fucking iPod during takeoff and landing? Damned FAA. It's going to cause interference with exactly jack fucking shit. If it was really dangerous, they'd make damned sure it was off, rather than just checking to make sure I wasn't deriving any enjoyment out of it.

So a little background here. The organization that funds me hosts a conference for all of the fellows—this year in Bethesda, MD (which I learned is as much a part of DC as Brooklyn is of New York). We got $750 worth of travel money but we were required to itemize our expenses and could only use the money for food, lodging, and transportation (no entertainment or alcohol). We were also told that it would be preferable if we spent all the money.

So $200 for two nights at the hotel and $250 for the flight left approximately $300 to cover four meals, get us to and from the airport, and get us around town.

With that in mind, we took a cab from Dulles to our hotel. We checked in, changed clothes, and took the subway to Du Pont Circle to meet our associates for dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Thanks to our expense account, we went all out. Drinks were ordered. I of course got a filet, opted to get it topped with crab cakes and asparagus for a little more money, got some crab-stuffed mushrooms, a salad, and some potatoes au gratin. The steak wasn't the most flavorful I've had, but damned if it wasn't about the best texture. It just melted in my mouth. We stuffed ourselves, and, to ensure that we were doing maximum damage, ordered dessert. I couldn't turn down the creme brulee, and added a Mexican coffee on top of that.

I think it was the first time I've ever felt like I went to a restaurant and didn't have to be cheap. And it was enjoyable to see the waiter realize that we weren't just a bunch of kids that were going to stiff him on the tip.

Total damage for the seven of us? A bit over $700. Not bad... I certainly did my part.

We headed back to the hotel, and then Graham, Jesse and I venture out for drinks, ending up at a roadhouse that had their British beers on special. We talked to the bartender, who turned out to have done a stint in Houston and worked at Star Pizza. Small world...

Tuesday, July 12

We took the Subway up to the campus for the conference, diligently sat through a few talks, and reached the realization that they were going to be consistently both boring and of poor quality. The organization is moving away from computational biology and towards medical informatics, which isn't any real sort of science and contains trace amounts of medicine, computer science, and psychology. Many of the talks centered on such exciting subjects as note taking systems for doctors and structured medical vocabularies. What little computational biology there was was pretty pithy.

So we left, grabbed a quick (and, by comparison, inexpensive) lunch, and headed into the city. Jeff tooled around Du Pont Circle, doing some shopping and scouting out some possibilities for dinner. The rest of us went and checked out the monuments. I've got a few pictures I'll post later. Tiffany and I tired of the heat and humidity (you'd think that, leaving Houston in July, odds are you'd end up somewhere with better weather, but, no, not so much) and returned early. I enjoyed a short nap. Later in the evening, Jesse, Graham and I went to meet Jeff for dinner at an Asian fusion place.

When we went inside, we were informed that the chef had not shown up and could not be located (which explained the flyer on the door advertising a position for a chef, available immediately), but were told that if we knew any chefs looking for a job to send them that way. We ventured further and found a sushi place.

Sushi's not so much my thing, so I had a teryaki steak that was passable. It wasn't my favorite meal we had while we were there, but the important thing to note is that we managed to spend quite a bit of money once again.

Coincidentally, Courtney was in town on vacation with her parents, and she met up with us after dinner. Jeff had decided that he was going to make our Republican companions go to a gay bar, and had selected a nice neighborhood place. We went through a bottle of wine; Courtney and I had margaritas and Singapore slings (for which she called me gay), and then there were beers. The bartender liked us, either because we were dropping some cash or because she thought Courtney was cute. Jeff and Courtney bonded over the gay thing. The rest of the guys sat there looking awkward, but perked up when Courtney started talking about her current girl.

Once again abusing the expense account, we had the bartender call us cabs. Jeff and I went to drop Courtney off at her nearby hotel before returning to ours.

Wednesday, July 13

We got up, once again made a nominal attempt at conference attendance, made sure we were seen by a few people, attended a talk that one of our associates was giving, and then took off for a long lunch. Jeff, Tiffany, Rebecca and I set out with the intention of having Afghan ("terr'rist food," says Thom), but the place was only open for dinner, so we settled on a Mediterranean French place. It was cute, and once again, service improved when our snooty waiter realized we were going to treat him well. We ordered a bottle of a nice white something or another that was pleasantly peppery. I had a bowl of a chilled artichoke soup that was very nice, and then, once again, steak, which was passable. There was dessert, too, though I'm blanking on what I had, but it was good. Good coffee, too.

That accomplished, we took off for the airport. Our flight ended up delayed by a few hours, but we eventually made it back in town.

Friday, July 15

Not much. Looking for a weekend activity, I checked to see if Will was working the bar, and he requested that I bring him a newspaper. I had a few beers and we worked on the crossword. The waitress that was there that night seemed nice.

Saturday, July 16

I waited around for Harry Potter to show up before going over to Dan's to help him set up the networked mp3 player he had bought for his stereo. That accomplished, I did the usual laundry thing, returned home, and then met Dan and Kristin at Numbers for another indie rock prom (Dansepark). The DJs downstairs sucked, although the DJ upstairs was likeable, segueing from Radiohead's "National Anthem" to the Postal Service's "Natural Anthem" and then playing Wolf Parade's "I'll Believe In Anything" from Dan's mp3 player.

One nice thing about the Dansepark nights is the $1 drink specials. I was trying to get to the bar, but was right behind a girl who seemed to think that she was standing in some kind of imaginary line for the bar. I contemplated going on up there, as it seemed that waiting for her to go first would result in my not having a drink the rest of the night. Instead, I did the right thing and told her to go ahead... and she did nothing. I tried to explain that no, you don't wait in some imaginary line, you look for the first piece of bar real estate you can find and you stick to it until you get your drink, but the utility of the lesson seemed lost to her. Eventually, she got her drink and I got mine, and she thanked me for letting her go first.

The crowd was, as I observed last time, very interesting. Lots of girls that at least look like my kind of people, but a noisy nightclub is certainly not the environment in which I'm likely to shine. Once you get here, Sabrina, I'm dragging you up there one night and we're going to formulate a plan of attack.

I picked up some Whataburger on the way home. It was wonderful.

Conclusion

And that's pretty much it. I still need to post the review I wrote for the Reel Big Fish show, and write one up for the Okkervil River show, and maybe in a couple of days I'll go ahead and cover what went on this weekend, but, in blogland, things are pretty much back to normal. That only took most of the month to accomplish.

Huge catch-up post, part 2

Sunday, July 3

After a nice lunch with Sabrina and Shawn at Macaroni Grill, the highlight of which was Sabrina being served veal instead of chicken, Sabrina and I headed south to catch Bryan and hit some record stores. We hit up CD world and I picked up an older Magnetic Fields album (Holiday). We then hit good records, marking my first visit in probably two and a half to three years. I picked up Johan Johannsen's latest neoclassical album which I've been listening to for a while, and also replaced my somewhat worn Good Records t-shirt. We then topped by Half Price Books where Sabrina picked up a few old hymnals to add to her collection, and I picked up a copy of Edwin A. Abbott's classic treatise on geometry, philosophy, and society, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

Once we made a trip by Central Market and Shawn had joined us, Bryan made his famous tomatillo chicken tacos and Sabrina had technical difficulties with a pie for her second time in Bryan's apartment. Shawn, Bryan and I soon went out to the Flying Saucer to meet up with Clinique Lisa for some drankin'. It was overcrowded, but they had a nice special on Texas microbrews, and I particularly enjoyed checking out Live Oak's heffeweisen, which had a bit of bubblegum flavor to it. Sabrina also made me spill beer on her, and then had the gall to act upset about it.

We went out in search of some drunken Taco C. goodness, but settled for Whataburger. Sabrina and I wandered the streets of East Plano after dropping Clinique Lisa off, searching for a way out (like so many residents of East Plano, I'm sure) and listening, once again, to "Mr. Brightside" on repeat.

Monday, July 4

Bryan came up to join me for some cooking in preparation for the cook out that the XanderNeffs (is that right, 'Brina?) were hosting. Bryan headed up the salsa project, while I, with his expert advice, prepared my soon-to-be-famous baked beans and my easy ice cream cake (both adapted from the Robert Ward Repertoire).

Thanks to the large stock of Seventh alums in the metroplex these days, we had a regular reunion, with the cast including Bryan, Lisa, Me, Shawn, Sabrina, Helen, Kelly, Blake, and some non-seventhers, Clinique Lisa and Randa. We gorged ourselves, my cooking seemed to be roundly appreciated, which was always nice as I'm used to only cooking for myself, caught some fireworks, some of us did some drinking, and then Sabrina introduced me to Nip/Tuck.

Tuesday, July 5-Wednesday, July 6

The drive home was uneventful.

Chris came over on Wednesday to help me fill the new speaker stands with sand. More sand equals more mass which equals more stability which equals fewer unwanted vibrations which equal less distortion in the sound.

I had thought this would be an easy project. Each stand has two hollow metal columns, I would just pour sand in through a funnel and fill them up. Easy. Except when I received them the previous week, I realized that the ends were capped, with only a screw hole an eighth of an inch in diameter, and three slightly smaller holes encircling it. Through them, I had to pour a good five pounds worth of sand (a quart or so?) for each column.

Thinking we would cross that bridge when we came to it, we took off for Lowe's to acquire the sand. First of all, where would you think the sand would be? In the gardening area with all the dirt? Wrong. Try with the concrete. That mystery solved, I looked and realized that I had only two options. I had read online that what I needed was oven-dried, fine-grained sand. Oven-dried so that it will pack more densely, drain into the columns more easily, and not corrode the metal; fine-grained to help it pack tightly and drain easily. The "playground" sand was supposedly both. We took the bag, which, surprisingly, was porous and constantly leaked sand. We looked for a nice plastic funnel but found out that Lowe's carries no such thing. We decided to improvise and returned to my place.

It was raining a bit, which I thought would probably be bad for keeping the sand dry, so we elected to work on the project in my apartment, a decision which I was sure would only end in tears. We did have the foresight to put an old sheet down, which probably saved me a lot of trouble.

I constructed a funnel out of paper and tape. Chris elected to cut a hole in the bottom of a plastic cup. We were both stymied, thanks to Houston's humidity, as the sand became moist enough to start clumping. When it did come out, it came out faster than it would fall through the holes in the columns.

But, after much spilled sand, blood, sweat, and tears, we were successful. I had quite a bit of sand to take care of, but it wasn't a nightmare to clean up. And I pretty much doubled the weight of the stands. Once I get around to levelling them, they'll be rock solid.

Friday, July 8

We get paid every two weeks, which means that ten months out of the year we get two paychecks, and two months out of the year we get three paychecks. Because I manage to live relatively comfortably on two paychecks a month, twice a year when I get an extra paycheck, it's bonus money.

The last time this happened was in January, and lead to an orgy of buying that included my bedroom stereo, my subwoofer, and my iPod shuffle. This time, I was ready to make what may be the last upgrade to my stereo for some time: a new, audiophile quality receiver.

My speakers did pretty well with the brave little Onkyo that was driving them, but I knew that something beefier would allow them to really shine. My dealer, John, is a big fan of New Acoustic Dimensions' (yes, that's NAD, go ahead and laugh) products. They're pricy (by my standards), but I went with his recommendation.

The new receiver, an NAD T753, showed up on Friday, and when I went to pick it up from the office, I noticed one thing immediately: it was fucking heavy. Getting it up to my apartment involved incredible feats of strength. The thing's built like a particularly heavy brick. Fifty pounds. My old receiver was about twenty. My subwoofer is about fifty, and it's several times the volume of the receiver.

Weight's a good thing to have in a receiver. The components that allow it to process large amounts of power weight a lot. This one doesn't look like it proccess a lot of power according to it's specifications (80 watts x 6 channels, compared to 65 watts x 6 channels on the old receiver), but when they say 80 watts, they mean that come hell or high water, this thing will produce 80 watts until the cows come home. Some electronics companies way 80 watts and it means, maybe on a good day when the wind's out of the southwest and the moon's full.

So, after unhooking the huge mess of cables from the old and rehooking them to the new, I started configuring. It displays its menus on a TV, which makes life easier. It lets you name sources, instead of video 1, I have cable, instead of video 2, I have gamecube, instead of CD, I have iTunes, and so forth. Which is nice.

So, I finally get to fire the thing up, and, wow. Huge diifference. Everything's crisper, clearer. The subwoofer blends better into the the main speakers. The bass really pops. The dimensionality of the sound is much more covincing. I never realized what a big deal it was... Anyway, it cost me a lot, and I probably overgouth, but it'll keep me happy for a long time.

Saturday, July 9

I joined Chris, Lauren, and Colin over at Lauren's for a little predrinking before we headed to see Maria Taylor and the Statistics play Mary Jane's. Once there, I continued to work on getting quite drunk. Maria Taylor (formerly of Azure Ray) was bitchy about the sound and the crowd noise, wanting to make sure that heard her unremarkable pop rock perfectly. The Statistics, while much more friendly, weren't really any better. We hung out out back for a while. Good company, if not good music, made for a good time.

Conclusion

Moving right along. I'll cover my DC trip next, the nonevents of last weekend, and anything else that occurs between now and then. And soon, I hope (please, God) I'll be caught up.

The week so far...

I'll finish catching up tomorrow, perhaps. I've only got, what, two solid weeks of material to cover? It'll be easy! But I thought I'd write a quick note.

The boss has been back for just a week and has been busy writing a grant, but he has made it clear that he expects a paper soon. When I told him I was finishing up some experiments, he asked why I hadn't written anything up yet, claming I didn't need to have the data to start writing the paper. Of course, the last time we had a similar exchange, I wrote up an outline for the paper and then he asked me why I didn't have all the data yet. Is it the chicken or the egg you want here?

But that's OK. I just make token efforts to appease him while trying to get the real work done. So far, so good. Such are the perils of picking the field you want to work in and taking the professor that comes with it, rather than the other way around.

So Monday night I went and saw Reel Big Fish play; I decided to attend both for nostalgia's sake and in honor of my high school homies (I poured a 40 out on the curb after a show for them). Chris has asked me to start reviewing some shows for his 'blog; I wrote this one up and will republish it here, as well. I'd just link to it, but it's probably not a good idea for him to find this; not yet anyway. Particularly when a post or two ago, I made mention of murdering him and stealing his girlfriend.

I caught Okkervil River on Tuesday night at the Mucky Duck, a venue I hadn't previously visited. I'll save the details of that for another writeup for Chris and will again repost here.

Other than that, I've been reading Harry Potter. It's been keeping me up late tonight, so I had two goals this evening: finish it, and blog. Both are now accomplished. The book was wonderful, as well it should be. To a certain point, that doesn't even really matter (I refer to this Penny Arcade comic and the first two paragraphs of this newspost). But I was very sad to finish it, both because the ending was very sad (I'll be good and not spoil it, but damn it, I better find someone with whom to talk about it soon), and because I'll likely have to wait another damned two years to find out what happens next, and, when I do, it's all over. Bittersweet. But damn was it good. I'll probably go ahead and read it through again and take my time this time around.

Juxtaposition

Shooting for the all important five complete listens of Weezer's new album Make Believe before I come to some sort of judgement as to it's quality—as required by Lauren's Theorem—I decided to queue it up on the iPod for listen number 4.

In doing so, I happend to see one of my all time favorite one-off, throw away Weezer b-sides, "I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams", the only Weezer song that I know of that features female vocals. I queued it up before the newer album, listened to it, and marvelled at the kick ass synth lines and emotional vulnerability—highlighted by the wonderful vocals of That Dog bassist Rachel Haden—that were so characteristic of Weezer's brilliant Pinkerton error.

Then came the lead track (and single!) from the new album, "Beverly Hills". What a world of difference.

I miss the good Weezer.

That's it for now; back to work. I'll try to continue catching up this evening if I have time (going to a concert), but in the mean time, know that nothing of huge significance has occurred lately with the exception of the release of the new Harry Potter book.

Huge catch-up post, part 1

Over two weeks since the last post, and further behind than that, even. I could just let it all go, but I'm way too compulsive for that. I'll try to be brief, at least.

Saturday, June 25

Lauren's boyfriend Chris (hereafter, Chris) did, in fact, stay in town for the weekend. Like myself, he is a lover of music, and so when he proposed that we catch bluegrass/folk act Mofro, I agreed. We started off the evening with a little La Tapatia for dinner and margaritas before moving on to the Rhythm Room (can't hear it without thinking of "the rhythm method") for the show. The venue was very likable, with some nice tables and booths lining the edges of the venue. The listing for Mofro's performance had, it turns out, been wrong, and so we ended up seeing New Orleans' Soul Revolution instead. They were solid, if maybe a bit homogenous, in their brassy funk, and did some nifty hip hop covers, too.

I enjoyed hanging out with Chris. He's a good kid, he really is. We have a lot in common. I learned a lot about he and Lauren, and the history of their relationship. He's a Louisiana boy, and was interested in hearing the Rachal story, particularly as it concerned her as a product of Louisiana culture and how it compared to his experiences. We bonded. Man, this is going to make it reallly hard to kill him. Good thing Will offered to do it for me.

Well, actually, things with Lauren have mellowed a bit lately, which is for the better. I'm glad to have she and Chris as friends. I'm glad to know that there are girls like her out there in the world. I wish I had the opportunity to find out if there could be anything between us, but I'll be OK. I've said all along I wasn't going to let this get me down, and now I can mean it.

Wednesday, June 29

Called Will to see if anything was going down. He was at the U of H Hilton with a friend of his who was in town to train optimistic, spirited college graduates to go teach in the inner city and assuage their liberal guilt. In driving to U of H at night, I realised, for the first time, exactly how ghetto U of H really is.

So anyway, I met them at the bar, and the were chatting up two young ladies. Will was playing his "I work the door at a bar" routine, rather than, say, his "med student" routine or his "grad student" routine. One of the girls seemed genuinely interested; the other was being a bit bitchy and made sure they didn't stick around long. On a trip to the bar to obtain a Shiner, I saw one girl wearing a Modest Mouse shirt and another wearing a shirt that said "I Heart Nerds" and it occurred to me that perhaps there were opportunities to be had, but, sadly, the bar closed down rather early.

I also made the mistake of deciding that I would drink the Shiner that one of the girls had left behind, only to discover that a packet of sugar had been dumped into it. Nasty.

Thursday, June 30

The first-years had finished up their abstracts and were looking to party and invited me out to happy hour at Woodrow's. I grudgingly left the package that I had just received behind (a new pair of speaker stands) and went with them, proceeded to get surprisngly drunk, and then had some good Indian food with them. I'm pretty sure it might have been the spiciest stuff I had ever eaten, as my mouth was on fire, but I was drunk enough that it was tolerable. The food was worth it, anyway.

When they dropped me off, I drunkenly assembled the speaker stands (which came off fine, actually). I wanted a new pair because, back in my more naive days, I had mistakenly purchased stands that were too high, misunderstanding the eccentricities of my particular model of speakers. Additionally, these were more sturdily built, which also improves sound quality, and can be made even more solid by filling them with sand or shot (an adventure for another post).

Once I had them set up, I immediately noticed a very positive difference. It's amazing what such a small thing can accomplish.

Friday, July 1-Saturday, July 2

After packing Friday morning, I set out for Dallas to spend the weekend with Bryan, Sabrina, and assorted hangers on. Traffic was a pain in the ass up to Conroe but then thinned out substantially. I had decided to try out Apple's new Podcast feature and so had downloaded some of the talk radio-style programs they offered, and I enjoyed the novelty if not the quality. I arrived at Bryan's Friday afternoon and saw he and Lisa's place.

Sabrina met us for dinner, at which point we got our vietnamese on. Some Dr. Mario was played.

Sabrina, Bryan and I went and checked out the Dallas chapter of the Gingerman. It was like a bigger, more crowded version of the Houston establishment, with the same positives and negatives. We had some drinks and I was reminded of why the three of us need to get together more often.

Sabrina drove me back to her and Shawn's house in Plano, and we pretty much listened to "Mr. Brightside" on loop. For the rest of the weekend, too.

Sabrina had to work on Saturday, so Shawn and I met her, Bryan, Lisa and Kelly for some Chipotle before Bryan, Lisa and I went to pick out tuxes for their wedding. I should note that the fact that I was brought in for fashion consulting demonstrates exactly how dire the situation was, but despite Bryan's complete indifference, we managed to pick someting nice out. We payed a quick visit to Sabrina at the Clinique Counter to see where the magic happens (or used to happen) before going to see Star Wars in DLP. The DLP experience was nifty—very sharp and vivid, without any dust, scratches, or cigarette burns. I was surprised the difference was so dramatic.

After the movie we went out for some Mexican food and then watched X2 back at Sabrina's.

Conclusion

So I've moved us ahead an entire week: not bad for about fifteen minutes' worth of work. Coming soon: the rest of the Dallas trip; Sabrina's Houston bound; the speaker stand/sand fiasco; my big new electronics purchase; the return of West Alabama Icehouse; catching a show with Lauren & co.; the Washington, D.C. trip and pictures; the return of my boss; and I clear out the pictures that have accumulated on my phone.

Quick Note

Updates coming eventually... Probably near the end of next week when I return from DC. After being gone last weekend and then trying to catch up on other things I wanted to accomplish in the time that reamins, this hasn't exactly been a priority.

In the mean time, you can read a bit about last weekend's events in Sabrina's account of things (1, 2, 3).