Pardon My Absence While I Search For My Muse

Hello.  You're probably wondering why I haven't been posting for weeks.

I was going to have a nice beautiful long post about how I started this blog back in 2003 when I was a bored young pup working at a USDA Cereal Disease Lab, anxiously trying to track down my first design job, and my how times have changed, yadda yadda.

The short of it:  In the past year I've become more and more paranoid about what I should be writing online and who is actually reading it.  Also, I don't find my life that interesting right now.

I don't think I'll give up on blogging permanently, but in the meantime, while I search for my Muse, you can follow my photos on Flickr and get my tweet updates on Twitter .

And of course, if you really want to know what I'm doing with my life in this interim, you are more than welcome to e-mail me or call me.  The latter assuming you know my number.

Cranky Weekend

It was a difficult weekend for me. I spent nearly all of Saturday in a funk, which I couldn't shake. Not until I ran my ass off in soccer on Sunday did I feel better.  Wrap up:

1. Had dinner at Hoover's Home Cooking with Blane and Chrysta on Friday evening.  I had the ham steak with jezebel sauce.  Whoo boy.  Yummy.  The three of us spent the rest of the evening feeling full of comfort food.
2. I laid low Friday evening.
3. I woke up anxious on Saturday (fun!) and then seemed to be cranky all day.  I felt exhausted, even though I was well rested, which made me overly sensitive to pretty much everything.  Example: I txt'ed N. what he was doing and he sent back a laundry list of stuff going up to Sunday's Capitol 10k.  Because I was no where on the list I got upset.  Waa waaah.
4. I did a bunch of domestic stuff Saturday -- replaced my water filter, which was broken and spitting water everywhere.  Looked to buy a new window screen for my kitchen sink window -- because I don't have one and my Slumlord Millionaire won't replace any of ones damaged in last year's Hail Storm.  Turns out my windows are so old they don't sell screens at Home Depot.
5. I went to Brave New Bookshop -- a 9/11 Truther bookshop that Bruce Sterling mentioned in his SXSW rant.  Lots of crazy shit in there -- people talking about Ron  Paul's Recommended Readling List (ha) and asking where the Ayn Rand section was (ha ha).  I saw a paperback version of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and almost bought it, but then realized I didn't really want to support the bookshop, so I bought a copy at Barnes and Noble instead.  Klein seems to have a better thesis on 9/11 than the wingnut Truther's: the government didn't "cause" 9/11, they just knew how to exploit a crisis when it happened -- most were from the Chicago School of Economics (Milton Friedman).  (Funny, this is where Matt went to school).  
6. I laid low again Saturday night. Chrysta came over for tea late in the evening.  We did our thing wherein she finds it oddly comforting to sit around and talk to me and watch me clean my apartment and I clean my apartment and bitch at her about stuff.  My apartment is immaculate, yo.
7. When mopping the shit out of my kitchen I kept saying to myself "Why don't I just hire a goddamn mexican lady to do this?"
8. Sunday morning, I made the breakfast Alice Waters cooked for Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes - Diced tomatoes and chopped chives drizzled in olive oil and garlic, served on organic toast with fried eggs.  Yum!
9. I woke up 20 minutes to late to watch the hot people (and people I know) run by off my road for the Capitol 10K.  When I went out, I only saw old people, kids, and walkers.  Booooring.  There was a group dressed up as Zombies and the Austin DOT Zombies warning sign - awesome!
10. We had our worst game of the season Sunday.  We lost 5-0 (ouch!) It didn't help that several teammates were hungover, or that they cracked open beers before the game. Haha.  Regardless - I had the most fun playing in a while. I got to play Left Forward in the second half, after most of the team had given up.  
11. Went to Rain briefly for Mimosas and the Austin.com launch party.  
12. Spent the night over at N's, but started having anxiety dreams around an hour into sleeping, and started silently freaking out.  Felt better in the morning though.  Don't know why I was freaking out so much.  

RuPaul

Thursday evening I went to the encore performance of RuPaul at the new Austin Gay Bar, Kiss and Fly.  It was a fun time, but girl looks old! (She's 48). For some reason I've always pictured her as being the age she was in 1993, when she first made her global debut.  Here are some photos:



Some video of her arrival:



We didn't leave until 2 (despite my bitching that I was tired), so by the time I left I was drunkie doo and cranky. When we got to N's house, I immediately crawled into bed. I didn't even remove my socks (a Minnesotan thing -- sleeping with socks on cuz its so cold). N thought it would be funny to try to pick my nose, something he knows I hate, hardy har har. I drunkenly slugged him across the face. Nice, eh? Not too hard though, I'm not Ike Turner.

Today's Aaron Schock Sighting

Towleroad writes about how TMZ has picked up the story on Congressman Aaron Schock's abs:

I must admit, I get a little jealous and turned on when I read about my fellow Bradley '02 alum Aaron.

Grey Gardens Trailer

I'm so excited! Wish I had HBO!

Shitty Weather....

Austin has been getting some much needed rain this week.  We've had several wildfires as a result of the ongoing drought hitting central Texas; the rain is a welcome relief.  The 30-40 degree weather?  Not so much.  This is supposed to carry on until Sunday, which will make the first half of South by Southwest Interactive really difficult to enjoy.

I never really remember being this affected by weather when living up north, but my mood has dropped like a barometer this past week.  I've been cranky and miserable, and don't know what to do to get out of the funk.  I'll be $5 it goes away as soon as the sun comes out.

I've had my "transition" week at work this week, where I stop supporting bits and pieces of my old job in preparation of my new gig.  Needless to say, lots of shit went kablooey in the past week, and I've often had to go back and fix stuff.  It's been making me a little high strung.

On Wednesday, the first day of this crappy weather, I decided to cook for N.  We made Lentil  Soup with Smoky ham, a Whole Foods Secret Ingredient recipe.  It took two hours to make, and was very aromatic.  It was a perfect choice for the evening, as it was wet and cold outside.  My favorite part was the discovery of black olive tapenade.  Trying to cook at the N's new rental Coke Baron Villa was entertaining.  The range was kinda screwy, he had big Calphalon bowls that took forever to heat, and he didn't have a big Chef's knife or bread knife.  

Chrysta and I went to get our SXSW Interactive badges last night.  They opened Registration early to accommodate last minute growth in registrants.  Great idea, except they didn't have the bags of schwag you get ever year ready, so that defeated the purpose of me wanting to go early (to grab it and take it home, so I don't have to lug it around tomorrow).  Chrysta also had trouble getting a media pass for SXSW, because there was some screw up in the process.  We left bitchy and had Mexican Martini's at Z-Tejas.  I spent the night at N.'s

I see a theme here...

These were all my birthday cards (third one is a screen grab from a website that sells it):

Blue Penis Overload

I don't want it to be monday:

1. I went to go see Watchmen on Friday. I thought it was a good movie, but I didn't like it.  I rejected the thesis of the film, which is that humanity has no redeeming value and will eventually destroy itself.  Thanks Alan Moore.  Dr. Manhattan was a shower though, that was nice.
2. I made Depression Era Egg Drop Soup for breakfast on Monday, ala Clara:
   
   I cheated and added a Bouillon cubes to the broth.  Misake -- it made it way too salty for my liking.  I'd make it again without the bouillon.
   
3. Chrysta and I went outlet and IKEA shopping on Saturday.  I bought a bunch of organizational boxes and spent the evening putting them together.  
4. I went out with Dan, Clinton, and KB on Saturday night.  Met up with a few other people.  It was a pretty boring evening out.
5. I had brunch at Austin Java while my car got half-ass interior wash on Sunday morning, then took a drive up 360.  I bought driving gloves the day before which are fun to wear.  All I need now is a big white silk scarf and googles. 
6. Our game at 3:40 was really fun.   We tied 1-1 to a really good team of young kiddos.  We had a bunch of the Austin gays watching us as well (which someone joked as being the reason why we were playing so well -- no one wanted to embarass themselves).  The opposing team also had some guys watching them.  At first I thought they were straight, then I started to realize they had a touch of queer to them. (The give away was this overheard conversation "Do I participate in Team Sports?  Well, last year I went to Folsom.  Does that qualify?")  I played alot, rotating out with Ray.  By the end, most of us were schvitzing because it went from 90 degrees to 85 degrees during gameplay.  Afterwards, a few of us went for drinks at Rain.  That's where we met a roommate of one of the opposing team players.  His roommate had told him "we are playing the gay team today." HAHA...
7. I spent the evening at the Coke Baron's Villa. Family Guy was ridiculously funny to me for some reason last night.  

Labels: weekend wrap-up