Once again.


My only annual blog tradition is to post this poem I wrote a few years ago. Since I've moved into my condo and some of the references don't apply any more I've been thinking about updating it, but for now I'm going to post this old chestnut exactly as I have done since 2004.


'Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving.
by Andrew Boisseau.

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving, when all through the crib,
Not a creature was stirring, not even this lib.
The dirty clothes were strewn with no reason or rhyme,
In the hopes they would pick themselves up, given enough time.

The neighbors were stomping on my ceiling, their floor,
While the pizza delivery guy stood at the door,
And me in my pajamas, right after a shower,
I'd be in bed soon, in about an hour.

When out in the hallway, there came such a sound,
The fire alarm beep just would not quiet down.
I got up from my seat, and sprang to the hall,
When the alarm stopped beeping, up high on the wall.

The moon was not out, but perhaps it would be later,
And I got chills when I realized I was out of toilet paper.
So I got dressed to go out, and headed to the store,
And a neighbor took my parking spot, which made me quite sore.

He in a pick up truck, so eager to steal,
My spot was gone, and he took it with zeal.
More rapid invectives, I've never said,
But that did not mean that I wanted him dead.

Now BASTARD! Now JERK OFF! Now CRETIN and FOOL!
On, SPOT STEALER! On THIEF! You know that's not cool!
You could have parked elsewhere, you know that it's true!
I'll steal your spot one day, though, there's nothing you can do!

As dry leaves fell from my shoes into my car,
I raced to the store which was not really that far.
So into the store, i picked up my food,
And waited in line behind some girl and a dude.

And then in a huff, I realized my fate,
The couple had a hundred, but the bill was 108.
So I waited and waited, for them to sort out
What they would buy, while I tried not to pout.

He was dressed in a dark coat, she in bright red,
And I stood there waiting, and looking quite dead,
The manager came over, to help with the bill,
While the people behind me would not keep still.

My eyes -- how they looked, all bloodshot and dead,
I had to get home, and get into bed,
But I stood there in line, instead of just leaving,
I was okay, but the cashier was still seething.

The bill was paid finally, and off the two went,
It was my turn now, and it was money well spent.
I got stuff for the bathroom, the kitchen and such,
But carrying it to the car was really quite much.

I felt chubby and plump, in as poor shape as ever,
It's been so long since I worked out, it seems like forever.
So I made a commitment, I know I won't keep,
I'll work out everyday, and gets lots of sleep.

I spoke not a word, as I let the music blare,
I drove home quickly, and in no time was there,
I unloaded the groceries, and then parked my car,
It wasn't the same spot, but it wasn't too far.

I sat on the couch, to play with my mac,
And I surfed the ol' web, once I was back.
You may laugh at me now, and what I call living,
Even so, I wish all of you, a Happy Thanksgiving!

One just scratched me.


So I'm watching Steve and Allison's place this weekend and taking care of their cats so I get to party all night downtown and then just walk home to their place where I can pass of from all the alcohol, so of course Jay and I went to a movie and then I came home and now I'm on the internet, sans beer. Probably didn't help that it was raining. Weird how it always seems to rain on the weekends.

It also didn't help that one of the cats scratched me. Not too bad though. Fortunately I had my sweatshirt on so it only barely nicked a vein. I was able to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet. No more petting from Mr. Black Cat. I'm sure they named the bastard car and told me the name but I forgot it. The other cat is cool though.

Doesn't feel like I'm taking advantage of this opportunity right now with a place to stay downtown though. Somehow I pictured tonight would be a little more exciting. Oh well. Maybe I should use reverse psychology on myself and picture tomorrow night just like tonight.

Ugh. Now I'm going to have nightmares.

Really boring nightmares.

Early season blowout.


I had a pretty good time watching Texas blow out Western Carolina tonight. The game was pretty sloppy and the pizza I bought was nothing to write home about unless I wanted to end a relationship, but we had great seats and it was cool to see some college hoops in action again after such a long break. If I can't watch my Hokies live I guess watching the #3 team in the country is a good consolation.

Late night in Austin star gazing.


So last night I decided I'd check out the meteor shower with no planning what so ever. At about 2AM I'd finished making my lemon pudding for the Plan B dinner group and I headed out to the car with my camera and a vague idea where to go to get a better view of the night darkness, away from the city lights.

As I drove off I began to wonder how smart it would be to park my car on the side of the road in some rural area I'd never been to before and camp out in the darkness alone. I wondered if any horror films began that way. I could end up parking near a bear or some other vicious wild animal that could see perfectly fine in the dark. My only weapon would be the flash of my camera and the ear splitting childish cries of fear I would produce as I fumbled around for the keys I'd dropped right after I'd locked myself out of my car.

But wild animals weren't the biggest fear. I wondered how far out I would have to drive to avoid certain kinds of serial killers wandering aimlessly through the night.

I figured if I stayed where I was, at my apartment complex, I'd most likely get stalked by some knife wielding maniac like Michael Myers from Halloween. An unstoppable killing force silently creeping up on me until it was too late. I could drive a little ways out of town though and I'd probably wind up in Jason territory. A deranged animal of a man who protects his territory with a machete or just about anything else that can puncture human flesh.

There was really no way of knowing how far I'd have to drive to get out of possible Jason territory, but beyond him would be large swaths of rural land patrolled by half-mutant creatures that only distantly resemble humans, like those in The Hills Have Eyes. They would work as a team to distract me from the car long enough to disable it. I would run in fear through their gauntlet of terror until I was lost and had no hop of getting home.

Clearly I'd have to find some no man's land that existed between the territories of Michael and Jason or Jason and the mutant killer families or hope that the killers were busy stalking some other sky watchers somewhere else in their territorial borders. So I drove and drove until I found as dark a spot as I could and parked the car to catch a view of the stars.

After I'd turned off the car lights though I found the light pollution was really no better where I had gone than in my parking lot, so I decided to head home and spend a little more time star gazing at home before bed.

I stayed out for a little while and saw several streaks of light over about 15 minutes and then I went to bed. All in all a pretty interesting night, and no serial killers to speak of... wait, what was that noise... Great, it looks like something tripped the breakers and now all the lights are out. I guess I'll just post this and then go outside to the main breaker box and reset it. It looks like one of my neighbors is out there already just standing there like a bump on a log not knowing what to do. Didn't even bring a flashlight with him...what a moron. Oh well. Just got to fix this then its off to bed.

Thath hurth.


I bit my tonight today at lunch and so later on as I was thinking about the unpleasantness that is the right side of my tongue I thought about tweeting about it from my iphone. I started to type out "I hathe when I bithe my tonghue," but then I realized I was typing it out as if I was speaking it which really didn't make sense given the nature of tweeting, which is entirely based on your manual dexterity typing.

If I could record a tweet then it might make sense, but if I started typing out a lot of misspelled words people might think I was hit on the head with a rock and maybe I had a concussion instead of just a wounded tongue. I'm not even sure the spelling would match the sounds I was making while trying to say the words anyway.

Then there's the whole issue with my tweets showing up on facebook. I have it set up that way on purpose but it would be nice to privatize some tweets so I could say things on twitter that I wouldn't want on facebook because the tweets might upset some facebook friends. I guess that's what this blog is for now. A repository for things that might piss off various facebook friends.

Finally there's the whole issue of the iPhone always correcting my spelling. Like I need to spend 10 minutes fixing the spelling corrections the phone made.

I'll worry about it when I need it.


The other day I was joking with my friend Rock that I'd have to resort to Plan B if a woman said YES when I asked her out on a date.

Alejandro at the Continental Club.


Pretty cool evening tonight listening to Alejandro play some new songs he's working on for his next album. He's playing at the Continental Club for the next few months and each night he performs he plans on treating the stage as his own personal studio space where he plays different versions of the songs, either with a little accompaniment or with his full band. Eventually he'll settle on which songs he wants to include on the next album but it is pretty cool listening to him perform the songs in various ways. I'm definitely planning on seeing him play at least a few more times over the next few months.

And still champion.


I'm good at three things. Unfortunately, two of the three involve making desserts. The third thing I'm good at turns out to be table shuffleboard of all things. I've played it a few times in the last year and always done well. The other day while at the Va Tech watch party one of the other alumni asked if I wanted to play and I beat him 23-4. I really need to watch that. I should try to win by less so that whoever I play will want to play again.

That's not a problem for my brother, who hates to lose. We played a couple of nights ago. After I had mentioned wanting to play he challenged me to a game and was up pretty big on me at first. At one point he was up 11-1, and the deficit may have gotten even greater, but I came back and won the game 21-19, and so we played a second game. Best two out of three. When I won the second game, winning the best two out of three, we played the third game, which I also won.

So now my brother is planning on studying the game until he can finally beat me. Eventually he probably will win a game and maybe get better than me. He still won't beat me at making pumpkin chiffon pie, or hot lemon pudding.

A little bit of nature.


Yesterday while playing at Butler I spotted a walking stick on a post next to the last hole. I haven't seen a walking stick in the wild in a a very long time, not just because they are hard to spot, but also because I haven't been looking for them. But there it was, moving rhythmically back and forth like a little dancer. I watched it for a little while while the other players were teeing off. I hadn't played especially well and one last hole wasn't going to save the day. I'd found something that interested me more, at least for a few minutes.

I tried to take a picture from my iphone but the post was in shadow and the walking stick was far too skinny to get a decent shot. Instead all I got was a series of out of focus lines, so I put the phone away and tried to study it and understand it better. Where was it's mouth? What did it eat? What ate walking sticks? I wondered how it came to be standing on the post, with it's white painted top that completely ruined the walking stick's ability to hide in nature. On the post it stood out easily, or as easily as a paper thin series of twigs could.

As I stepped back, a gust of wind came by and the walking stick reached up with it's front legs. Suddenly it was floating away, a slender dark vertical line with it's even slimmer legs spread out. The wind carried it up a few feet and after it had travelled about fifteen feet I lost track of it.

Such a little thing cast against a post, then cast again to the wind, to drift wherever the wind would take it, not knowing where the journey would end.

My Hokie shirt is good luck for some people.


It's really simple. The previous two Va Tech games I went with other Virginia Tech shirts other than my traditional maroon with orange "HOKIES" on it. It's a cool shirt but for each of the games I had one reason or another for not wearing it. Actually, the reason was probably that it was dirty, so I had to go with one of my other Hokie t-shirts. Suddenly Tech went on a two game skid and is now out of BCS contention. Coincidence? I think not.

As proof I wore my "HOKIES" shirt tonight and what happens? Tech wins. That's pretty much the definition of proof in my book. My "HOKIES" shirt is a real good luck charm for the football team.

Now if I could only find that shirt that's a good luck charm for me with the ladies.

Oh, forget about it.

Little MIB.


Here's a shot of Agent N right before she neuralized me. There are so such things as aliens. There are no such things as Men In Black.

One to go.


I sold my old iMac this past weekend. For a while I was worried I'd spend all the money I made before I could deposit it today but fortunately I exercised some self control, which when it comes to money is a rare thing, and deposited most of it today after lunch.

Next I'll be selling the computer I'm using right now, and then I have to figure out how long I can go without a portable computer before i break down and buy a new one. Can I wait until MacWorld in January? That's a long way off, two months at least. I think that might be too long to expect me to go without one.

Oh well, I don't think anyone was really expecting me to buy them Christmas presents anyway.

At 8AM?


For some insane reason the Race For The Cure took place today at like 8:30 in the morning, as if that's going to help stop breast cancer. Here's the thing. It really doesn't matter what time I show up at the Domain and walk 5 kilometers. My walking isn't going to fix anything except the perception that I am a lazy ass, and I'm not sure that's an incorrect perception. Me getting up at the crack of dawn just might give people the wrong impression of me. As a matter of fact I'm sure of it.

Getting back to me walking at 8AM though. I'd feel a little better about it if the walk was scheduled for later in the morning, say after 10AM. but then if it was that late then I guess I'd have to put on sunscreen. They could have the walk in the afternoon, but then that is my golf playing time at Butler. How about if they have the walks at night, as kind of a breast cancer research fundraiser and crime prevention watch, except that if 30,000 people are walking on the specified route then there would probably be a lot of homes burglarized during the walk. Okay, so maybe the early morning would be the best time since burglars are generally a lazy bunch.

I guess the thing that irks me is that I walk 5K and donate some money and at the end of the race there aren't any breasts to touch. What kind of bait and switch did I fall for? I guess I shouldn't complain too much. It's just that I could have slept in and had the same "no touching breasts" experience.

Still thinking about a halloween costume.


So i went downtown to a party tonight and everyone was dressed in their costumes. Jay had suggested I wear my Green Lantern shirt since he was wearing his Batman shirt but I don't think anyone really knows who the golden age Green Lantern was so it probably went over or below their heads.

Since everyone else was dressed as a slutty this or that I tried to spice up my costume a little by going as a slutty golden age Green Lantern by undoing my belt buckle and unbuttoning my pants but I don't think it went over as well as I thought it would.

Tomorrow I'll probably go as a russian soldier. A slutty russian soldier? We'll see.

What a lousy sports night.


The Hokies lose, the Spurs lose, and the Yankees win? What bizarre alternate reality have i fallen into? Or is this Hell? To top it off the service at the bar was pretty poor. And I drank and ate too much. And I had to listen to the woes of other people's lives and it was much worse than my woes. And I found out I have to be downtown at 7AM on Sunday if I want to walk with Nic and Jay in a benefit walk, which I've already said I would do. And I came home to find something reeking in the trash can so I had to clean it out. And I couldn't think of anything clever to write about, again!

Dinner is served.


Had a nice get together with some friends tonight who are alternating cooking duties once a week. This was the second week and my turn to cook for what ended up being five people. Since I really only know how to cook two desserts I made one of them, my pumpkin chiffon pie, but that left me with dinner to make.

One of my friends picked the dinner and was supposed to send me the recipe after I bought the ingredients but she never did send it. Instead we walked through it once she got to my place and it all turned out pretty well. Probably could have used some more spices but I didn't have them.

I was happy the mini pies were devoured. Everyone went back for seconds and/or thirds. That's really the best compliment.

The nice thing about the whole making dinner thing though was now my refrigerator looks like it is actually used to store things as opposed to how it looked the other day when it was barren of anything resembling food. I did have an old beer and a couple of condiments but not much else.

Also I now have some left overs from the meal and a few mini pies for dessert, but neither will last very long.

I should probably buy a cookbook before my next turn cooking though.

If only it lowered your weight.


I made some pumpkin chiffon pie tonight because some friends requested at dinner tomorrow, which I'm also supposed to provide...we'll see how that turns out, but I think the dessert turned out well. I modified my grandmother's recipe a while back to make individual little pies instead of one big pie, and I started using graham cracker crust instead of the normal pie shells, and I think it all came out pretty well tonight although the taste test will come in the morning when 20 pies mysteriously transform into 19 pies.

Unfortunately I am trying to diet so I'll only be able to eat a couple of them, at least that's the plan unless my friends don't like them, in which case I might have to forgo the diet until after the weekend.

A miss and a hit.


I've been checking out a few films at the Austin Film Festival over the past few days and fortunately I'd managed to miss any films i really didn't like until tonight when I went to see Small Fish, Strange Pond at the Alamo tonight. Not a good script, not a good concept, and not really well executed. I'm still not sure why I had to listen to Matthew Modine's bizarre english/australian accent throughout the film when his character is not from either of those countries. The best I could figure out was that he was some kind of unhinged angelic being sent down to provide balance, which somehow involves taking part in serial killings. No one in the film remotely acts like a normal human being. At best one could root for Adam Baldwin as the detective but he's not in the film that much. There was a whole lot wrong with the film and I couldn't think of what was right, so I left once the credits started rolling and headed to the second film.

The second film, Happy Ending, was full of win though. It's a very low budget film and I don't expect it to get any distribution but I enjoyed it. The film follow Momoko as her friends start to convince her that life is slowly falling into the pattern of a romantic comedy, the film genre she hates the most and has the least understanding of. It's a clever film with little bits that really made me smile. After the film during the Q&A the moderator described the film as a cross between Punch Drunk Love and Scream and that's not a bad description of the film.

Unfortunately there are only three more days of movies before the festival is over so I'm going to try to get as much in as possible. Hopefully the rest of the films will be as good as Happy Ending.

Austin is a great town.


Jay and I made a last minute decision to see Matt Kearney at La Zona Rosa instead of wasting our time trying to get our Austin Film Festival badges tonight. It was a pretty good show. I like his music but I could have done without all the tall people standing in my line of sight. I don't think I've ever seen a crowd with so many tall people.

Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to pick up my badge early but I might have to wait for Jay. If I do though there's more music to see with Jet playing a free show and Quiet Company not but they're so good I'd pay to see them again anyway.

Hopefully though at some point during the film festival I'll actually get to see some movies. I'm looking forward to that.

The healthy lifestyle?


It's weird how getting together with friends for dinner to eat healthier and cheaper somehow ended up with all of us going to Amy's Ice Cream for dessert. I'm not sure how that accomplished either of our goals.

Enjoying Austin's Live music scene.


Some friends had suggested going to see Rodrigo y Gabriela at Stubb's tonight. I'd never heard them play but I'd only heard good things about them so I paid the high ticket price and met my friends at Stubb's outside for a beautiful, cool evening under a partially overcast sky where we listened to some amazing acoustic guitar work.

It was pretty amazing how much sound and what different sounds they got out of their guitars, not just by strumming the strings but also by tapping and slapping the guitar to produce the percussion sounds as they played. It reminded me a little of listening to the Robert Johnson recordings in the way that he could produce more different sounds at the same time than most guitarists could. When listening to his music sometimes it sounded to me as though he was playing two guitars, but of course he wasn't, and while listening to Rodrigo y Gabriela if you closed your eyes you might have a hard time believing there were only two people on stage.

Once again I am beaten.


I saw online the other day an article at Huffington Post (that unfortunately I can no longer find) that stated in it's entirety that George Clooney had kissed a girl on the red carpet.

Well played, sir. Once again I have been one upped by you.

I shouldn't complain.


The weekend went by so fast. It didn't start out that great but after an initial bump in the plans and a debacle by my alma mater on Saturday everything worked out pretty well. I had hoped to go see Where The Wild Things Are with some friends but I got off work too late and couldn't make the show so instead I ended up going out with an old friend for drinks and getting accosted by the Bud Light Girls who forced me to take part in a taste test to see if americans would like it if Budweiser imported Imperial Beer from Costa Rica. The lovely lady provided out table of four with free bottles and asked that I compare with my Dos XX I happened to be drinking because they thought it was the closest competitor to Imperial. Needless to say that in the interest of science I agreed to said taste test and my personal opinion is that Bud should import Imperial right away.

I have no idea what I did Saturday night other than watch Saturday Night Live. Really, the less said about Saturday the better.

Today I slept in, got some lunch and then played golf at Butler for a while. I lost a little bit of money playing skins but I made a great putt in front of a whole bunch of people and that felt pretty good. It would have felt even better if it was for money but c'est la vie.

Later this evening, I went to the movies with Misha and David. It wasn't my first choice but Misha wanted to see Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and I'm glad she picked it. We all laughed and enjoyed it. It's not a film that's going to change to life or anything but it had it's moments and it was fun to laugh for an hour and a half.

After the movie I had intended to clean up the condo quite a bit but then I bailed on that idea when i realized I didn't really want to clean, so I'll have to schedule that for another time when I do want to clean. I'm sure that it wil be sometime soon. HA!

And so not much of a weekend and now it's over. Tomorrow it's back to the grind, but my week night schedule is filling up which is pretty unusual for me. If I keep it up people might actually think I'm a social person.

Great show at Reliant Stadium!


U2 puts on the best shows. I'm not that crazy about all the songs on the latest cd but they do sound a lot better in concert and the band also has a huge list of great songs to play. I was very happy to hear Ultraviolet and Your Blue Room last night, and how many bands can get a video of the astronaut on board the international space station to quote the ending lyrics of your song? Amazing.

Yes!


I'm pretty excited about going to see U2 tomorrow at Reliant Stadium tomorrow for several reasons. I'm a huge U2 fan, although I haven't really listened to the new CD because I've been listening to a lot of local bands lately, I know the new stuff is going to sound amazing live, in fact, I expect it will sound 10 times better than on the cd.

It's also been several years since I've seen them in concert. I saw them on their last tour in 2005 and then before that twice in 2001, and then three times on the Zoo TV tour way back when, and every show big or even bigger has been amazing and that's what I'm expecting tomorrow.

However, as excited as I am to see U2 though I'm also planning to drive slower than the last time I drove to Houston and got a speeding ticket.

A world with Karma would rule, but should I wish for it?


A few weeks ago I was thinking about a bad situation and wondering if there was such a thing as karma. If the person who made me upset would eventually suffer equally, or would I get some great boon for my suffering. Actually I was less concerned about the boon coming my way.

It occurred to me that as much as I might want someone who has done something wrong to pay for their actions, hoping that it would all be resolved through some karmic experience wasn't really in the spirit of karma in the first place. Wishing ill of an asshole is still wishing ill, and that karma has to be balanced out as well.

This was one little thing that I don't even remember now. Why was I upset? Who was the person that upset me? I honestly don't remember now. I just remember thinking that I probably shouldn't wish that karma would fix it. I should probably just let it go and let life handle it in anonymity.

Movie night!


A few of us went to see Paranormal Activity, a pretty intense found footage film of a couple trying to figure out what is terrorizing their house and how can they get rid of it. I enjoyed the film but the characters were pretty stupid throughout and after a while I began to wonder why these two people were together in the first place.

The woman should have ended it with her boyfriend when she learned that he thought he could deal with an unseen malevolent entity by taunting it.

The man should have ended the relationship when he learned his girlfriend has a malevolent entity in her life.

To me that's a deal breaker, and I'll have to add it to the list of deal breakers:

1. she's a racist
2. she smokes
3. she's just not in to me
4. she has a malevolent entity follows her around
5. her favorite food: eggplant

What a great, muddy, messy ACL this year.



This pic of my feet in no way tells you what a muddy mess Zilker Park was by the time ACL had finished. One person described it as walking through a giant field of chocolate pudding.

by the time I got home there was no blue visible on my sandals. The mud had covered my feet to my ankles. I am so glad I didn't wear my sneakers.





Walking through the mud was easy though.The though part was spending all day each day standing up in a very small, confined space in a crowd slowly drinking my water and hoping my bladder would hole up.

My legs and feet are sore and my left knee was giving me some problems but I made it and for all the discomfort it was all worth it.

I'll post much better pictures some other time.

Tomorrow the music starts.


I can't wait to see all the bands this weekend. I'm sure DMB and Pearl Jam will be excellent, but I'm hoping to see some new bands that blow me away, and I'll probably catch the bands I like that don't play here that often, like The Greencards, or Heartless Bastards, pictured below:

I have a few.


I picked up a couple of new CDs today but I haven't had time to listen to them. I've got Quiet Company's latest in my car and I can't seem to take it out and put something else in other than their first CD. I need to start listening to U2's last CD to get ready for the show in two weeks and I have the new Living Colour CD I picked up at their show a short time ago that I still haven't listened to yet. Now I've got Bob Schneider's latest and the latest from The Greencards to also cycle through in my car.

At some point I probably ought to sell some of my CDs. When am I really ever going to listen to that An Emotional Fish CD, or the Booze Brothers disk i picked up because Mark Knofler plays on it. Probably never.

I guess there's always the chance I'll meet someone who sees one of these disks and we end up sharing a special bond based on our love of this or that music we don't really listen to anymore (at least I don't but hopefully I can fake loving the music enough for that special bond), but that requires having people over, so I may be screwed out of that special bond moment.