Pappadeaux's & the Ginger Man; Practice; Batman Beyond; Khyber & Snakes on a Blog; Minty drinks; Woodrow's; Cooking

8/14

We were interviewing a postdoc candidate in lab, and I was asked to take him to dinner, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

This was right around the time of all the "heightened airport security" bullshit, so after I ran home to get my car and picked up the interviewee, I had to take him to get bubble wrap so he could pack his laptop in his luggage. Then I had to run back up to school to pick up my lab mate that was joining us.

The trouble with dinner was, our interviewee he was (originally) from Algeria, and because of the culture he was raised in, didn't "like to be around drinking". So no beer on the lab budget, tragically. I took him to Pappadeaux's, as he seemed willing to try something new. Lab Mate (who happens to be a little dense) managed to order the cold shrimp and raw oyster plate—without realizing that the oysters were raw. Smooth. Seemed like such a waste. I tried one, but I wouldn't necessarily say that I enjoyed it. Thankfully, I had ordered crab cakes for us as an appetizer, which were good. Our interviewee went with fried crawfish; labmate went with some kind of plank grilled fish, and I tried the blackened catfish (which was actually disappointingly bland). Lab Mate also has an annoying habit of hearing things, misinterpreting them, and spitting out the misinformation at a later point, so I spent a good portion of the evening correcting some of his notions about the US, Texas, Houston, BCM, and the lab for our guest.

I talked them into getting the sweet potato pecan pie for dessert, though, so it wasn't all bad.

Then I had to take interviewee back to the hotel, and then David home, and finally, finally, made it back home to enjoy the rest of my birthday. Cindy came by and picked me up to take me out for beer at the Gingerman.

8/15

Band practice. I continue to suck less. We pick up a few cool covers. Jeff has a nice original called "Satellite" that's a waltz. Rocking occurs.

8/16

At some point I had borrowed a DVD with the first few episodes of the animated Batman Beyond on it. I had not long before that rediscovered my love for the excellent DC Comics animated TV shows (Batman, Superman, Justice League) and so was glad to get to fill in this missing piece.

I think I had previously watched the DVD, but since then I downloaded a bunch of episodes off of BitTorrent and so I spent my evening working my way through them. The show was entertaining, but probably the least so of the four cartoons. It seems to be a bit far from being a masterpiece, but I can't help but wonder if the feature-length movie corrects some of that—particularly, darkening the tone a bit, which is a bit kiddie because of its teenaged protagonist.

8/17

Graham and Angela hadn't made it to my birthday party, and offered to make that up to me by taking Cindy and I out to dinner. We ended up at Indian restaurant Khyber, which was quite tasty.

Afterwards, we had a date with Will to see Snakes On A Plane (seems overly pretentious to capitalize that). The movie delivered what was on the tin, and did so in a completely entertaining manner. So, surprisingly not criticisms from me.

Well, more tits wouldn't have hurt it. I mean, it was just that kind of movie. Oh, and that music video at the end was just awful.

8/18

Despite the best efforts of Kristin to get us up to the Prole, Cindy and I opted for a cheap night in. Cindy brought over some mint leaves and we made mint julips (which were good but would have been better with seltzer instead of plain water) and mojitos. TV was probably watched.

8/19

Matt, who had previously left school, was back in town for the weekend and wanted barbecue. He, Graham, Char, Will and I hit up Goode's for some sauce-drenched goodness before wandering across the street to Goode's Armadillo Palace for a round.

Notes indicate that I went to Woodrow's that evening. No more details available.

8/20

Notes would seem to indicate that I spent the evening cooking. I think (think!) that was probably the evening that I tried a couple of Alton Brown gazpacho recipes. One was sort of a dip that used Bulgar wheat in addition to the traditional tomato and bell pepper flavors. The other was fruit-based, but in the more traditional cold soup form. The tomato-bssed dip one didn't really turn out very well; it just never quite tasted good.

The fruit one, on the other hand, was pretty good. I should have cut the cucumbers, and I was short on walnuts, but the grapes, white grape juice, and apples combined well with everything and it ended up being tasty—especially after I added my own touch, one (carefully) seeded habanero.

The next night I would try an Alton Brown macaroni and cheese recipe, which turned out badly thanks to my managing to fuck up tempering the egg into the sauce. A suggestion for the recipe was to take a bar of the final product, chilled, and batter and fry it, which redeemed it, though I would imagine it would redeem just about anything.

Birthday party; Day of art; Lunch with Becca

8/11

Birthday weekend (or "Matt Tuesday" or "Ward Fest '06" rolled around. Left school early, met Rebecca and Cindy at my place, and took off for Rudz. Lots of people showed up (Kim & co.; David and Tiffany; Oliver & co.; First Years; Dan, Kristin & Co.; Jeff & Jim; Wanda; Will, Char, and Angela; Second Years; Law School Lauren & Chris—about 30 all together). I had a Rudz burger (a damned fine one), and Cindy tried their jerk pulled pork sandwich (also good). Beers were drunk. Darts were played. Cake was eaten. I managed to maintain well. I got lots of nifty presents:

• From Jeff & Jim, The Venture Bros. Season 1. Jeff's a fan, so he understood my apprecation of the show.
• From Sabrina & Shawn, a nifty shaker.
• From Wanda, a Spec's gift certificate, which will buy me all kinds of nifty hotness.
• From Rebecca, an "Elitist Prick" t-shirt that I had spied in Austin once and never been able to find again. Sort of true but sort of ironic...
• From Cindy, a wall-mounted bottle opener (which I had been looking for forever) and two tickets to see Ben Folds with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

As Rudyard's started to die down, we made our exit and went to Walter's for the Clientele show.

I hadn't really gotten into the album when it came out last year, but in the days leading up to the show I had listened to it for a few times and really liked it. The show was great. Very chill, very pleasant. It was a nice way to wind up my birthday party.

8/12

Saturday morning, I finally got around to checking out the Breakfast Klub. It's a Houston institution, and I'd heard great things.

The place isn't tiny, but not particularly big, and there's generally an hour wait. Rather than just having a line around the block, the owners cleverly purchased a building across the street for waiting space. They had a jazz combo playing, and some French Market-style vendors. It was all very nice.

Our number was called, and we crossed the street to the building, entered, observed the colorful interior, and ordered. Chicken & waffles and catfish and grits were specialities. I'm a big grits fan, so I opted to mix and match and do chicken and grits. Everything was very tasty, if horribly unhealthy and heavy. Great food to be enjoyed occasionally.

Cindy left and Becca and I went to check out some art. We started out at Project Rowhouses. We parked and started to walk around the block of identical houses, eventually finding one that was open, with someone inside working on art. He directed us to their office at the end of the block, where we found a group of African American men playing dominoes. One of them told us that there was no formal tour; that we could just walk around, talk to the artists, and check out what they're doing.

I liked it. Very free form, very performance art with audience participation. The artists there were artists interning there for the summer, each one given a house as studio space. One person did a sculpture (foot cast)/portrait/interview combination of Native American descendents. Another was doing some dramatic paintings with a crucifixion motif.

The whole thing was nicely casual, unpretentious, and interactive. It's funny, as we left I thought of classic role-playing games, where you're in a village (often of identically-formed houses), and you just go in whatever open doors you want and talk to the inhabitants. Funny, it always seemed completely unrealistic before.







Next up was a trip to the the Contemporary Arts Museum, but the Jung Center was right there, so we took a brief detour. Not much there, but some nice stuff...


The main exhibit upstairs at the CAM was by Kiki Smith. Her stuff mainly focused on body parts, organs, etc. Some of it I liked. Some of it I didn't. The stuff I didn't was... well, gross isn't the right word. But something about it seemed surprisingly low brow. The glass water droplets on the floor (pictured) were nice. The glass sperm on the floor? Meh.



There was a neat installation at Rice that Rebecca wanted to check out, a rainbow wall, constructed sort of like a mosaic or like scales. The building seemed to have closed early, though, as the doors were locked, but we got the general idea of it.

From there it was on to the Menil Collection. Rebecca is a Dan Flavin fan, so we checked out the building dedicated to his fluorescent light installation next. It was a neat installation, with very interesting uses of geometry, light, color, and space.


Finally, on to the Rothko Chapel. I liked that the foyer had a very wide selection of sacred texts. The interior was very interesting with its muted greys and purples. Reverant, but a little sad, too. It was paradoxically brightly lit from a skylight above, but dim due to interior color. The large canvases featured prominently on the walls were actually painted in two different colors, which I was surprised to discover. It almost looked like a trick of the light, as they were so similar, but close inspection revealed otherwise. My favorite thing was the skylight, which had a square opening with a solid cylinder sculpture hanging in the middle of it like a chandelier. Standing directly below it and staring upward, the skylight started to look like a solar eclipse, with a dark circle (the cylinder, appearing flat from that perspective), outlined by the sunlight let in from the skylight. It was a very dramatic effect. I would have liked to take a few photographs, but alas the room was guarded. I got the sculpture and reflection pool outside, though.

After that, we met up with Cyndi, I donned my new "Elitist Prick" shirt, and we met Sabrina and Shawn for dinner at Niko Niko's. I wasn't that hungry after such a heavy lunch, but an order of soup and salad turned out to be just right.

Dinner consumed, it was on to the MFAH for another night of the Starbucks mixed media series. Rebecca wasn't impressed with the quilting exhibit ("That's not real art."), but I found it reasonably interesting. The music was nothing special, but Dan had VIP access again, and while we didn't get into the VIP area, his wristband was good for free drinks, a privilege which I readily abused.

Afterwards, it was on to the afterparty, which was hosted in a warehouse north of town. The organizers almost had a riot on their hands when it took about half an hour to get the beer flowing from the kegs, and they were obviously concerned because they got very defensive. They were unwilling to start handing out the jello shots they were charging for (this after we had already paid $10 to get in and drink beer) to placate us, making matters worse.

Eventually, though, the beer started flowing. The party was fairly low key. There was a stench near the port-o-potties, which was a bit intrusive, and Becca disappeared at one point (but was just outside on her cell phone), which worried me, but ultimately, there was beer and good company. It was a nice denouement to the birthday weekend.

8/13

I decided to take Becca to La Mexicana for lunch. It ended up being a good choice. My eggs mexicana and tamales were great. Becca introduced me to horchata, which was, basically, a revelation. Becca's chilaquiles were also quite tasty.

After that, Becca took off for Austin, and I reveled in a chance to have some time to myself. It was a good birthday weekend.

Pictures added

Next time you come and are disappointed about a lack of updates, go take a stroll through the archives. I've added some cameraphone shots to some of the posts:

• Random Med Center Shots
• Committee Meeting
• Bachelor Party
• Becca's Art Openings
• The Walkmen
• Nashville

Will & Justice League; Practice and the Prole; Bloc Party; 702 soap opera

8/7

Will had no softball on Monday night, for once, so he came over and we watched some Justice League Unlimited, thanks to my Mac mini and BitTorrent.

8/8

Band practice, with the new gear for the first time. It facilitated much additional rocking. Stopped in at the Prole on the way home for a drink (with whom I'm not entirely sure; a safe guess is that Dan was there).

8/9

Bloc Party was one of the best acts at ACL last year, and the album managed an impressive showing at #7 on the top albums list last year. So, naturally, I'd been looking forward to their Houston show.

It was my first show in Warehouse Live's ballroom, and it turns out that it was the beginning of a burning hatred that I have for the place. I was none to fond of their "studio" room, but it looks great by comparison.

The acoustics were nothing short of awful. Huge amounts of reverb resulted in a frothy santorum of indistinct, mushy sound. There aren't many ways to ruin a show by such a kick ass band, but those fucktards at Warehouse Live managed it. It's not gotten any better, though ear plugs and being close to the stage result in slight improvements.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the assload of good bands booked there. The Engine Room, the Meridian, even fucking Numbers are preferable venues. Hell, I might even prefer the damned Verizon and its atmosphere killing corporatism, seeing as how the sound doesn't suck there.

Plus, they have fucking bathroom attendants. For the love of God, let me piss in peace.

8/10

Will, as is his typical MO, managed to stretch the truth just so and involve me in it for the purpose of spending time with a girl. She was a waitress at Woodrow's, but also tended bar at 702.

So Will tells her that I'm trying to decide which bar to have my birthday party at, and that I'd like to come see 702. Which isn't quite true, since I've already picked Rudyard's, but I agreed to play along.

So we get there, and have some drinks. The place has some decent lounge-iness going on. Anyway, it's got a rectangular bar in the center of the room, and we're on one side.

On the other side are two guys in shirts and ties (presumably still dressed from work), talking to two girls. It's pretty obvious that the guy in the orange shirt is jumping on a grenade for the guy in the blue shirt. This goes one for a while.

Blue Shirt and his girl go outside. Cell phones come out, numbers are presumably exchanged, and they come back in. More talking.

We see Blue Shirt's girl walk back toward the bathroom, followed closely by Blue Shirt. They disappear into the men's bathroom. Char, his curiosity piqued, decides now's a good time to make a bathroom trip. Around the same time, one of the bartenders mentions this development to management, who goes in and tells the couple to get out.

More talking.

Pretty soon after that, Blue Shirt and his girl leave.

We figured that with the primary objective accomplished, Orange Shirt would leave to recover from his grenade-jumping-on. But soon, he and Grenade are making out. They leave together.

After an hour or so, Blue Shirt's girl returns, sits down at the bar alone for a while, and has a drink. Pretty soon after that, Grenade comes back and joins her.

Curtains.

It was much more entertaining in person, I swear.

Carpentry; Proletariat; Randa & Sabrina; Practice; Valhalla; Mom & Dad, Cindy's Reunion; Movies and Rudz

7/31

Unhappy with the fact that my keyboard wasn't really beefy enough to straddle my keyboard stand, my thoughts turned to engineering a solution. Luckily, I thought to consult Lab Dan, who himself was an experienced engineer in the Navy ("in the navy").

He had some good ideas, and offered to help me construct something that night, which was good since he actually had a space to work (his garage) and a full complement of tools (including those of the power variety).

We met at the Lowe's near me, and grabbed a pre-cut plank of wood, some rubbery shelf lining, some contact cement, and some spray paint. We headed back to his place and set to work. I glued the shelf lining to the top side of the plank, this would provide a nice non-stick surface to grip my keyboard.

Dan set to work cuting some small pieces of wood; these were then glued to the underside of the plank and provided hold the arms of the keyboard stand in place. Finally, we primed and painted the thing, and left it to dry.

8/1

Um, went to the Proletariat, I guess. Can't remember details.

8/2

Randa was in town, an occasion which called for drinking. She, Sabrina and Shawn picked me up from school, dropped by my apartment, and then we made for the Saucer downtown. It was pint glass night, and by ordering a pint of Sam Adam's seasonal summer beer, I scored myself a free logoed pint glass. Sweetness. We had dinner; I enjoyed their tasty buffalo chicken wrap. And then there was more beer. I finally got around to trying their "chocolate truffle": a pint of Young's Double Chocolate Stout, with a splash of Lindemann's lambic framboise (rasberry). Quite tasty.

We stopped by Woodrow's in the village for a round before calling it a night.

8/4

The annual graduate student council night at Valhalla arrived. Cindy had grudgingly agreed to take off work early and drive me over there, but that afternoon Dan came by and offered me a ride over... on his motorcycle. It seemed to me that this was a way for everyone to win. I got to ride a motorcycle and start drinking early; Cindy got to work later and not have to alter her schedule. Apparently my changing our plans pissed her off, though she later got over it and realized that I was, as usual, right.

Anyway, the motorcycle. Dan's got a Honda VTX 1800, a cruiser-style bike with a 1.8 liter engine. That's bigger than some cars, like Cindy's (1.6, if I recall correctly). It's only slightly smaller than my car's 2.3 liter engine. And this is on a bike that's a fraction of that weight.

Anyway, I'd never ridden on a motorcycle before. Hopping on and riding out of the parking garage, I was scared shitless as I realized that the ground was moving below me, with nothing between me and it but my balance. Moving out onto the open rode, the feeling intensified, but I started to understand how it would be signifcantly less scary with the bike under your control. Dan had, wisely, informed me not to move around, and that you didn't actually have to actively lean into the corners, but that the laws of physics pretty much did that for you. All you had to do was follow what felt natural.

We made it to Rice without dying, and I actually found the experience quite thrilling.

So on to the beer. We had kegs of Shiner and Lonestar available to us. Not only that, but my car was safely back at my apartment, so I was free of responsibilities and proceded to start getting dee-runk. Char had cleverly gotten venders to sponsor the event, so the beer flowed freely. It was a good time.

The kegs began to run out and arrangements were made to move the party on to the Saucer. Cindy showed up to pick me up, and after a brief stopoff at my apartment, we headed to the Saucer. I got involved telling some story (oh, how mom had called me to ask for an explanation about my car being towed and me replying angrily that it was none of her business and that I had been well on my way to forgetting that little slice of injustice) and we missed our exit off of 59, and then our attempt to turn around somehow got me even more bizarrely turned around, which almost never happens.

We eventually made it to the saucer, where Oliver was working on a girl, Wanda was working on a guy, and Cindy and I got to work (more boringly) on an order of cheese fries (which were inferior to the Cricket's variety, though I've always thought that the Saucer was an inferior version of Cricket's, though the Saucer is probably the older of the establishments). Lots of grad schoolers made it out, which was always good to see. It's fun to get everyone in the same place every once in a while.

8/5

Mom and Dad came into town to catch a flight out to New England the next day. As an early birthday dinner we went out to eat at Pei Wei. Mmm... lettuce wraps...

Cindy's high school reunion was at the nearby Sam's Roadhouse, so a quick trip up the road from my aunt and uncle's got me there.

It didn't, however, get me in without having to pay their damned $3 cover. Cindy didn't know about it because she managed the ol' "I'm talking on my cell phone" trick. Regardless, it was idiotic, so they go on my monetary karma list, owing me $3 (along with my apartment complex and the city of Houston).

Despite the crappy venue with its crappy country and annoying suburban clientele, I had a good time with Cindy. It probably would have been a better time if I'd thrown back a few extra beers, but I had to drive us home.

On the way to the bathroom I snagged a bottle of Frank's Red Hot Sauce, nearly full. We'll be generous and put the value of that at $1, bringing Sam's Roadhouse debt to me down to $2.

One word of advice, though. If you have a bottle of hot sauce in your pocket and it leaks a little, and you move it around to keep it from leaking more, and you happen to be a guy using the bathroom at the time, be careful what parts of your anatomy you touch with that hand. Just FYI.

8/6

A nice, leisurely Sunday. I finished up watching the movies that Cindy and I had rented, including the aforementioned Jesus Is Magic. There was also that other movie Cindy and I had rented... maybe something she had seen but I hadn't. For the life of me I can't remember what it is now.

Got a call later in the evening; Dan and Kristin were up at Rudz. I stopped by for a couple of rounds, before taking off and making a Whataburger run. Will was up at Woodrow's, so I dropped by and consumed my food there, along with beer, conversation, and darts.