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.

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.