Okay.
I know two days ago I blew off the fires in California (to people I was talking to at work and elsewhere, not here at LoM).
I am sorry.
California burst into flames every year that I could recall, and I wasn't really clear until yesterday that this is a lot more serious than the usual fires which consume a few homes.
So, anyway, The League shares our sympathies and best wishes with the folks of Southern California and Mexico who are dealing with the fires.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Nerd Mailing List Catalog
Apparently my nerdiness caught up with me. Someone bought some nerd mailing list I was on, and this catalog recently showed up at my house: The Pyramid Collection
It's not nu-agey stuff. It's sort of a weird mix of Ren Fest wear, pixie costumes, fantasy-novel themed lingerie, and other good ideas.
My favorite item: Dragon Commode Lid
This item screams out to be found by the Admiral under the tree on Christmas morning
Don't worry, Judy! There's one for you, too.
I can't really make fun. Anyone whose ever been to League HQ knows what it means to commit to a particular geeky lifestyle.
One of the things I find bizarre about wallpaper stores, etc... are how all of the stuff looks pretty much the same. Inoffensive patterns on inoffensive earth-tone colors, so your house can look pretty much exactly how everybody else's house looks.
I don't really understand people who don't have a pursuit or two, so certainly that plays into my thinking on the subject. And while our doors are always open to whomever wants to pop by, it's still where I live, and if I can't use that space to suit my needs, what space am I supposed to use?
I do understand needing to compromise with your spouse on home decorating, our house seemingly not a good point to that fact. But sometimes you find particular stuff interesting and you go with it.
That isn't to say that people without lots of knick-knacks all over their houses haven't found something that works for them, or that home decoration isn't a passion of theirs to begin with. But I think when you cross a line from "this would look cool and people would like it" to worrying about what other people will think if they see your house and it somehow makes them itchy. That said, somethings are just bad ideas.
As much as I want everyone to be able to do whatever they want, there are some rules about what's in your house versus your choice of wardrobe. You can STILL go out and look like an everyday schmuck on the street. You don't need to dress up as Superman just because you like the character (although, you know... would it be totally crazy to do so...? Jamie says yes, but I don't know...).
The Pyramid catalog is full of all kinds of ideas, but you might want to save those for your special times. or LARPing.
Some ideas are just more socially acceptable, whether we like it or not. After all, Jason loves his music, live and recorded. Nobody bats an eye at his music festival posters or guitars strewn about his house, but you get one Monster Commode Seat (this one's for Mom!), and everyone thinks you're crazy.
So, if you're into your fantasy novels, why not decorate with the dragon lamp?
The weird one is sports. Into football? Wear a jersey like you're the fat guy who got cut and nobody cares. However, you can't paint your living room Viking purple and gold. And your child, at that, even though you have to look at them anyway.
It's not nu-agey stuff. It's sort of a weird mix of Ren Fest wear, pixie costumes, fantasy-novel themed lingerie, and other good ideas.
My favorite item: Dragon Commode Lid
This item screams out to be found by the Admiral under the tree on Christmas morning
Don't worry, Judy! There's one for you, too.
I can't really make fun. Anyone whose ever been to League HQ knows what it means to commit to a particular geeky lifestyle.
One of the things I find bizarre about wallpaper stores, etc... are how all of the stuff looks pretty much the same. Inoffensive patterns on inoffensive earth-tone colors, so your house can look pretty much exactly how everybody else's house looks.
I don't really understand people who don't have a pursuit or two, so certainly that plays into my thinking on the subject. And while our doors are always open to whomever wants to pop by, it's still where I live, and if I can't use that space to suit my needs, what space am I supposed to use?
I do understand needing to compromise with your spouse on home decorating, our house seemingly not a good point to that fact. But sometimes you find particular stuff interesting and you go with it.
That isn't to say that people without lots of knick-knacks all over their houses haven't found something that works for them, or that home decoration isn't a passion of theirs to begin with. But I think when you cross a line from "this would look cool and people would like it" to worrying about what other people will think if they see your house and it somehow makes them itchy. That said, somethings are just bad ideas.
As much as I want everyone to be able to do whatever they want, there are some rules about what's in your house versus your choice of wardrobe. You can STILL go out and look like an everyday schmuck on the street. You don't need to dress up as Superman just because you like the character (although, you know... would it be totally crazy to do so...? Jamie says yes, but I don't know...).
The Pyramid catalog is full of all kinds of ideas, but you might want to save those for your special times. or LARPing.
Some ideas are just more socially acceptable, whether we like it or not. After all, Jason loves his music, live and recorded. Nobody bats an eye at his music festival posters or guitars strewn about his house, but you get one Monster Commode Seat (this one's for Mom!), and everyone thinks you're crazy.
So, if you're into your fantasy novels, why not decorate with the dragon lamp?
The weird one is sports. Into football? Wear a jersey like you're the fat guy who got cut and nobody cares. However, you can't paint your living room Viking purple and gold. And your child, at that, even though you have to look at them anyway.
Cookie Party
Last night we had a Halloween Cookie Party.
Nicole made a delightful spaghetti dinner (which was great, but nowhere near as shocking as Jason's decision to invite us over for Jambalaya on Monday. Jason often uses the grill, but his gas stove usually goes untouched). Anyhow, we all had too much to eat, even with both Steans Boys in attendance, and Nicole and Jamie having a pile of spaghetti. We still had leftovers. That's a lotta pasta.
Around 8:00ish, Steven and Lauren came over, and the cookie making/ nonsense commenced. Well, really, Jamie spent like, an hour sifting sugar.I have no idea what was going on, but when I asked was greeted with a disgruntled shout... something about lumpy frosting.
No sooner had Steven and Lauren shown up (with Australian delicacies in hand) than JimD called the house to instruct me to go see 30 Days of Night. I passed off the phone to longtime JimD friend and fan, Steven, and I sorta hoped that would push JimD over the edge and relocate him to Austin.
Anyhow, we watched a bit of Ed Wood and the 1931 Frankenstein (which I view annually). We glazed cookies, and then got into the Tim Tam (very good!) and the Vegemite (which tasted just as bad today as I remember it tasting when I was 10).
There were many delightful Halloween cookies. Sadly, few photos. Steven took some, so perhaps he'll post them.
It's good to have Steven and Lauren back in town and frosting cookies.
However, there was absolutely nothing spooky about our pre-Halloween party.
Nicole made a delightful spaghetti dinner (which was great, but nowhere near as shocking as Jason's decision to invite us over for Jambalaya on Monday. Jason often uses the grill, but his gas stove usually goes untouched). Anyhow, we all had too much to eat, even with both Steans Boys in attendance, and Nicole and Jamie having a pile of spaghetti. We still had leftovers. That's a lotta pasta.
Around 8:00ish, Steven and Lauren came over, and the cookie making/ nonsense commenced. Well, really, Jamie spent like, an hour sifting sugar.I have no idea what was going on, but when I asked was greeted with a disgruntled shout... something about lumpy frosting.
No sooner had Steven and Lauren shown up (with Australian delicacies in hand) than JimD called the house to instruct me to go see 30 Days of Night. I passed off the phone to longtime JimD friend and fan, Steven, and I sorta hoped that would push JimD over the edge and relocate him to Austin.
Anyhow, we watched a bit of Ed Wood and the 1931 Frankenstein (which I view annually). We glazed cookies, and then got into the Tim Tam (very good!) and the Vegemite (which tasted just as bad today as I remember it tasting when I was 10).
There were many delightful Halloween cookies. Sadly, few photos. Steven took some, so perhaps he'll post them.
It's good to have Steven and Lauren back in town and frosting cookies.
However, there was absolutely nothing spooky about our pre-Halloween party.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
More Fall is Falling
Today we got up and immediately agreed to hit The Salt Lick to get a plate of brisket and go hear the Flying A's. Fall is here, as evidenced by the lovely weather we had on our way out.
Tomorrow the temperature drops from the high 80's to somewhere below 65 for a high.
It's Austin. Don't like the weather? It'll change in ten minutes.
Tomorrow the temperature drops from the high 80's to somewhere below 65 for a high.
It's Austin. Don't like the weather? It'll change in ten minutes.
Return of Robb
It's been nothing short of a lovely weekend since I walked out of work on Friday, second to last to leave the building. No matter where I work, somehow I'm always last to leave.
Friday we headed to Manuel's on Congress where we met up with Matt & Nicole, as well as Lauren, who was flying solo as Steven prepared to return to Austin after a few weeks in Australia. Lauren had been with him, and for reasons I never gathered, she returned slightly ahead of our man, Harms.
At dinner I got very drunk. I have no idea why, but it seemed like a swell idea at the time. I do not drink much. Honestly, I never have. Certainly the years we were gone to Arizona, huge chunks of time would pass and I would have not so much as a beer with the fellows after work. But with Fall coming on, more than a year back in Austin under our belts, work seemingly going well, dinner with good friends and Lauren's birthday so recent... it seemed a good night to tie one on.
We all came back to League HQ after dinner, where I gradually sobered, and Lauren unwittingly popped open old wounds regarding my opinion of portions of my undergraduate education which led to an unpleasant tirade about the critical analysis of film as an academic pursuit vis-a-vis the Narrative Strategies course I took circa 1995... Anyway, it got late and Matt and Nicole bothc amped out at League HQ.
We woke up today, got breakfast for our guests, found the game on cable and watched Ut spiral out of control, eventually pulling it together again in the 4th quarter and putting a score on the board that suggests things were much more in hand than they ever actually were.
Ate an early dinner at Chuy's as we never had lunch (Matt and Nicole had departed), and came home to a message that an old friend, Robb K, was in town and would be appearing at the Texas Showdown for a limited engagement.
Once upon a time... when we were young and probably much more fun than we are today... Anyway, it had been, we realized, seven full years since we'd seen Robb. Honestly, I wasn't really sure what continent Robb was on. I'd heard he'd been craching in Berlin for a while, and would occasionally hear dispatches from the Seattle contingent that he was in New York or God-knows-where.
So, really, a sudden appearance by Robb is something one should really always have in the back of their mind as a possibility, even when one has not seen Robb in seven years.
We met up at the Showdown, pulling together with a fragment of the folks from back in golden, old days of college. Pat, Jeff, Matt, Robb and Jamie. It could have just as easily been an evening in 1997 or so, sitting around with a beer out back of some bar with Robb still hand rolling cigarettes.
We've gotten older now. Jeff is married, and so Keora was there. Nicole came and saw a glimpse of Matt's sordid past. But we're not all so different, even with jobs and mortgages and all that. We worry about different things, maybe. Certainly not school or grades or whatever we were worried about then. We're now almost ten years from when college graduation, and life's rolled on.
A gentleman cut in on our conversation and asked for a haiku.
We tried to push him off, but, as Matt said, there's so little Austin weirdness left, sometimes you have to grab onto the weirdness when it happens. Even when the guy ashes on Jeff by accident while asking for the haiku. So we had a collaborative haiku.
And despite the fact I kept wondering how this guy was going to try to make money off of us, I dashed off the final line and handed it off. "Time passes us by."
Because sometimes it does.
Whether we've been doing the same things for ten years, or whether we occasionally manage to pull it together and catch a glimpse of good days, I don't know. The days in Austin have been good again. We talked over that while we were eating at Chuy's thsi evening with Jason. It's been a strange 15 months or so. Lots of good days and bad, as I guess it goes, life is evening itself out. 24 months ago, going to Chuy's for an early dinner was something we would have talked about wishing we could do.
As much as I loved parts of yesterday, the parts you can remember while watching your friend hand roll cigarettes for the first time in seven years, there's always tomorrow. You sort of have to think about what you're going to do then, and the next day.
We made our Mister Miracle escape from the X-Pit and the Orphanage of Granny Goodness, but, like Scott Free, I know that's only the beginning. The traps aren't always so obvious, and complacency is as much a trap as anything else. We'll keep moving, listening for the pinging of Mother Box to tell us when its time to spring the manacles and jump free from the nose cone of the rocket.
Lately, I hear people grumbling a bit about Fall coming on, about shorter days and the end of summer. Maybe its too many years at universities and in education, but Fall is a time for new things, for thinking about the year ahead.
Up in Seattle, My and Brandy have found out they're pregnant. Jeff and Keora are talking about trying. On Thursday Peabo and Adriana stopped by with Owen (who looks like every other male member of Peabo's family already), and Peabo's as happya s I've ever seen him. Xander is already moving so fast, CB should put him in red jammies and call him The Flash, and David is here from North Carolina.
The world moves on, and time passes us by.
That's not a bad thing. We're doing okay. Both despite and because of the events of the past year, so are our family and friends.
Friday we headed to Manuel's on Congress where we met up with Matt & Nicole, as well as Lauren, who was flying solo as Steven prepared to return to Austin after a few weeks in Australia. Lauren had been with him, and for reasons I never gathered, she returned slightly ahead of our man, Harms.
At dinner I got very drunk. I have no idea why, but it seemed like a swell idea at the time. I do not drink much. Honestly, I never have. Certainly the years we were gone to Arizona, huge chunks of time would pass and I would have not so much as a beer with the fellows after work. But with Fall coming on, more than a year back in Austin under our belts, work seemingly going well, dinner with good friends and Lauren's birthday so recent... it seemed a good night to tie one on.
We all came back to League HQ after dinner, where I gradually sobered, and Lauren unwittingly popped open old wounds regarding my opinion of portions of my undergraduate education which led to an unpleasant tirade about the critical analysis of film as an academic pursuit vis-a-vis the Narrative Strategies course I took circa 1995... Anyway, it got late and Matt and Nicole bothc amped out at League HQ.
We woke up today, got breakfast for our guests, found the game on cable and watched Ut spiral out of control, eventually pulling it together again in the 4th quarter and putting a score on the board that suggests things were much more in hand than they ever actually were.
Ate an early dinner at Chuy's as we never had lunch (Matt and Nicole had departed), and came home to a message that an old friend, Robb K, was in town and would be appearing at the Texas Showdown for a limited engagement.
Once upon a time... when we were young and probably much more fun than we are today... Anyway, it had been, we realized, seven full years since we'd seen Robb. Honestly, I wasn't really sure what continent Robb was on. I'd heard he'd been craching in Berlin for a while, and would occasionally hear dispatches from the Seattle contingent that he was in New York or God-knows-where.
So, really, a sudden appearance by Robb is something one should really always have in the back of their mind as a possibility, even when one has not seen Robb in seven years.
We met up at the Showdown, pulling together with a fragment of the folks from back in golden, old days of college. Pat, Jeff, Matt, Robb and Jamie. It could have just as easily been an evening in 1997 or so, sitting around with a beer out back of some bar with Robb still hand rolling cigarettes.
We've gotten older now. Jeff is married, and so Keora was there. Nicole came and saw a glimpse of Matt's sordid past. But we're not all so different, even with jobs and mortgages and all that. We worry about different things, maybe. Certainly not school or grades or whatever we were worried about then. We're now almost ten years from when college graduation, and life's rolled on.
A gentleman cut in on our conversation and asked for a haiku.
We tried to push him off, but, as Matt said, there's so little Austin weirdness left, sometimes you have to grab onto the weirdness when it happens. Even when the guy ashes on Jeff by accident while asking for the haiku. So we had a collaborative haiku.
And despite the fact I kept wondering how this guy was going to try to make money off of us, I dashed off the final line and handed it off. "Time passes us by."
Because sometimes it does.
Whether we've been doing the same things for ten years, or whether we occasionally manage to pull it together and catch a glimpse of good days, I don't know. The days in Austin have been good again. We talked over that while we were eating at Chuy's thsi evening with Jason. It's been a strange 15 months or so. Lots of good days and bad, as I guess it goes, life is evening itself out. 24 months ago, going to Chuy's for an early dinner was something we would have talked about wishing we could do.
As much as I loved parts of yesterday, the parts you can remember while watching your friend hand roll cigarettes for the first time in seven years, there's always tomorrow. You sort of have to think about what you're going to do then, and the next day.
We made our Mister Miracle escape from the X-Pit and the Orphanage of Granny Goodness, but, like Scott Free, I know that's only the beginning. The traps aren't always so obvious, and complacency is as much a trap as anything else. We'll keep moving, listening for the pinging of Mother Box to tell us when its time to spring the manacles and jump free from the nose cone of the rocket.
Lately, I hear people grumbling a bit about Fall coming on, about shorter days and the end of summer. Maybe its too many years at universities and in education, but Fall is a time for new things, for thinking about the year ahead.
Up in Seattle, My and Brandy have found out they're pregnant. Jeff and Keora are talking about trying. On Thursday Peabo and Adriana stopped by with Owen (who looks like every other male member of Peabo's family already), and Peabo's as happya s I've ever seen him. Xander is already moving so fast, CB should put him in red jammies and call him The Flash, and David is here from North Carolina.
The world moves on, and time passes us by.
That's not a bad thing. We're doing okay. Both despite and because of the events of the past year, so are our family and friends.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Friday Superman
On which Earth did THIS occur?
It's nice to know there was an Earth (pre-Crisis) where Superman met Lucy and Ricky, and all three of them stayed completely in character.
I grew up watching "I Love Lucy" in re-runs, and it was the first place I ever saw George Reeves' Superman.
As much as I like the current run on Superman, and the direction the comics and movies have taken, there's a part of me that wishes that there were also a place for this sort of take on Superman.
Viva George.
It's nice to know there was an Earth (pre-Crisis) where Superman met Lucy and Ricky, and all three of them stayed completely in character.
I grew up watching "I Love Lucy" in re-runs, and it was the first place I ever saw George Reeves' Superman.
As much as I like the current run on Superman, and the direction the comics and movies have taken, there's a part of me that wishes that there were also a place for this sort of take on Superman.
Viva George.
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