Austin City Limits Festival is this weekend. Three days of music in Zilker Park ought to give me the shot of music I’ve been craving for the past 7 months. REM is headlining, and other bands I’m psyched to see include David Garza, The Gourds, Liz Phair, The Dandy Warhols, and G Love and the Special Sauce. My friend Erin is coming in from NYC to see the show and hang with her sister, so it will be good to see her again.

Thanksgiving with the family in Little Rock was good. Lots of food, lots of Maya, lots of lounging. She’s starting to resemble a unique person rather than just any baby (babies all look the same to me). The greatest thing is making her laugh. Making funny faces, singing random tunes, and doing silly dances all bring smiles to her face and occasionally, she laughs. Her laugh is the best laugh in the world.

On a sad note, some morons in my sister’s neighborhood decided her husband’s car was in need of a new windshield. His car was parked on the curb, so they drove by and launched a 20-pound landscaping boulder at it and peeled out. The rock put a ginormous dent in the windshield, bounced off of the roof, knicked the fender, and fell to the ground. We called the cops but all they could do was file a report. Bummer, especially considering it happened the night before Thanksgiving.

In other news, I gave Protection by Massive Attack a second listen. I think I was overly critical (what else is new). Protection really isn’t that bad; it’s just that Mezzanine so completely eclipses it in creativity and execution that it seems like it’s a moot point. I just found out that the vocalist they recruited was Sinead O’Conner – no wonder I didn’t care for the vocal tracks. I returned the cd to Chris having not copied it. I’m quite content with my copy of Mezzanine, which is probably the best album I’ve heard all year.

Travel update: I was supposed to meet my Dutch buddies Daan and Jaap in Spain this December for a two-week jaunt through Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, and wherever else we felt like going. First Daan canceled; having been awarded the honor of placing at the top of his graduate program, he was asked to give some kind of speech in some kind of ceremony. Jeez, isn’t bouncing around Europe with a backpack and two friends more important than being recognized for outstanding scholastic achievement in mechanical engineering? OK, maybe not. Then, last week, Jaap informed me he got into a disagreement with his graduate advisor and wouldn’t be able to make the trip. It looked like I was on my own.

I debated on whether or not to go, and if I should go, where exactly should I go? I was no longer tied to Spain. After some research on New Zealand ($$$) and a mountain biking trip in Cyprus (dumb and $$$), I decided Spain was the place for me after all. I’ve seen 99% of Western Europe; the only remaining behemoth of a country left for me to conquer was Spain. So I booked a flight to Barcelona for December 12th and returning the 26th. That’s two weeks of me, a backpack, and Spain. The weather forecast is a tad worrisome: rain comes and goes and temps drop as low as 40. Not exactly what I call vacation weather, but I’ll be in Spain which is enough to be thankful for. I’m already preparing for the climactic uncertainty by buying a pair of waterproof shoes, a good rain jacket, and other wintery items. Most of what I used for last summer’s backpacking trip will work nicely for this trip, so that’s a plus. Now I only need to figure out how to cram winter gear into a pack that, last summer, was filled (to the brim) with just enough summer gear to get my by. I may be doing a lot of sink-washing on this trip.

Pictures from Thanksgiving and Tarfia’s and Amanda’s party will be posted tomorrow (or sometimes this week). For now, please take a look at the adorable Maya, sticking her tongue out in a typical display of her photogenic-ness (word?).

Second installment of the “things that happen to you while” series; alternate title: “too many p’s: p-man in p-town”; written after a five-day excursion visiting four bloggers I had never met [in person] with three friends I met at my [now previous] employer.

Note: The links don't actually send you anywhere, they just pop up witty witticisms.

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On the way to Portland, you sit next to a woman speaking a language strangely familiar to you. It’s Russian. You talk with her for the duration of the flight about living in Russia, traveling in Europe, how your Jewish parents are basically the same, how writing code gets old, how lucky her kids are that they get to travel the world by age 10. You exchange information. You have now made a friend in Oakland, California.

After several bumbling mishaps, your friends meet you at the airport and whisk you away to a five-day vacation. Your friends say they’re in an orange car. When you see an orange car carrying your arms-flailing-hands-waving friends, your mind flips when you realize the orange car is a bright orange Mustang convertible. Your friends have rented a speeding ticket waiting to happen.

You and your friends drive like maniacs [safe maniacs]. No tickets happen.

You proceed directly to an establishment called the Kennedy School and wonder how long it’s been since you went anywhere with a name ending in “school.” You are oddly excited because this place apparently serves beer. What a great combination. You meet your blogger friends there and you discover their blogs are accurate representations of who they really are: interesting, cool, witty, fun, and just a little bit saucy. Or is it snarky? Both.

You, a couple of the bloggers, and a roommate continue the drinking at another bar. Upstairs, Sonic Youth is making a racket – a beautiful racket you would love to hear in a venue you would love to see. One of the bloggers happens to be a well-known bartender and musician in the Portland area and gets you and your friends in for free. Sonic Youth slowly gets louder as you climb the staircase and walk into a historical gem of a music venue. It’s a ballroom complete with chandelier, frescoes on the wall, and a spring-loaded wood floor. One of your friends says “Welcome to Portland!” as Kim and Co. do their thing onstage. You wonder why the hell you aren’t already living there.

An afternoon spent wandering the many trails of Washington Park reminds you why you like being outside and how much cube life sucks. You find a bench under a redwood and sit. For a long time.

Sushi Happy hour results in many beers and several rolls of rice, seafood, and vegetables. One of your blogger friends ingests an ungodly amount of wasabi. You laugh. He cries. You laugh more.

You spend the evening at one of Portland’s many brewpubs, Bridgeport. You take pictures of your friend’s simultaneously hideous and glorious parallel parking job. Imagine: right next to the pub’s patio sits a bright orange Mustang convertible with half of its nose sticking out into the street. The patrons gawk in amazement: “who the hell are these people?” You enjoy yet more delicious new beers.

Two of your friends leave the next morning, and with them, the ‘stang. You and the remaining member of the Texan crew rent a Taurus to explore the Gorge. Within thirty minutes of leaving Portland driving on a picturesque highway [only a little more picturesque than I-10 in San Antonio] you arrive at mountains and waterfalls. You ogle the waterfalls, want them to be thirty minutes from your door, wonder if you’d ever get used to them and stop visiting them if you lived in Portland. You pinch yourself and think, “stop daydreaming, asshole. there are waterfalls here that need your attention.” Your friend’s new motto for the trip is “that doesn’t suck.” You agree.

Over the next two days, you continue to consume refreshing beers and visit places like the Pittock Mansion, The Japanese Gardens, and The Chinese Gardens. During those two days, you end up at the Kennedy School once again and wander off the beaten tourist path to a pub called Bonfire.

You spend Monday morning wandering the many stacks of Powell’s Bookstore. At 1, your friend leaves for her flight back to Crap Antonio. You hug and realize this trip basically changed your lives. Now you’re on your own with one more night and no hotel room, you wander the streets of downtown in search for lunch and a good time. You invariably end up back at the bookstore.

Your friend's husband calls you and invites you to the park to see if there is any kickball to be played. Looking down at your feet clad in sandals, you wonder if that’s such a good idea. You say, “Fuck it, worse comes to worse, I can play barefoot.” You meet a lot of cool people and head over to the Portland version of a dive bar called the Triple Nickel for beers and music geek talk.

A show at Dante’s featuring the Short Bus Dub All Stars is waiting, so you head back to the house to change and pick up your friend’s wonderful wife, the one that let you crash on their couch. While the husband plays pool, you and the wife skank to the opening ska band and wait for Short Bus to come on. While the bands are loading/unloading from the stage, a high school-esque drum line entertains the audience with cool beats and crashing cymbals. The crowd starts to pogo; you pogo; everyone is getting into it. For a split second, you wish you were in marching band in high school. Then the next second arrives and you’re glad you weren’t. Jazz band was way cooler.

You end the night at a strip club down the street from your friends’ house that oddly has one dancer that isn’t stripping. It’s late on a Monday night and she’s hanging out and talking to the few patrons left. You aren’t the biggest fan of strip clubs but you like this one. You talk with your friend, the dancer, the bartender, and the patrons till late.

The next morning, you and your friend eat cheese and crackers and watch the best cartoons since Transformers. Imagine the old Hanna Barberra cartoons on crack. And a couple 40s. After a short drive to the airport, you pull up at the departure entrance and tell your friend he and everyone else are always welcome in Texas and to drop you a line if they ever go, but as soon as you say this you realize chances are better that you will end up in Portland before he or his Portland crew will end up in Texas. Lo and behold, he says just that. You agree. You say thanks again, shake hands, and hop out of the car.

On the flight home, you sit next to an elderly nun. There is an empty seat between you and her. You spend the entire flight engrossed in one of the many books you bought at Powell’s and gaze out the window at the black sky, a little fidgety in anticipation of getting home. The nun spends the whole flight motionless – she stares at the seat in front of her blinking for the duration of the flight. Doesn’t move. No book to read, no magazine, no music, no journal to write in. Just sits. You wonder what kind of thoughts she has that keep her entertained or if she needs anything at all to be entertained, or if, more simply, she needs to feel entertained at all. She just is. You wonder why the hell you can’t do that. You look at her and notice you’re staring. She turns her head and smiles. You smile back. You look at your hands and try to think of nothing.

And then all the badass people you met and all the badass things you did in Portland flood your brain. Hey, doesn’t Portland have a law school?

I’m still gathering all the pictures from the Portland trip so I can’t send a link to them yet, but I can post links to the short movies I took with my digicam. They’re all .avi. Sizes listed below.

Multnomah Falls - sideways (1436 KB)
Driving across Bridge of the Gods (4119 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Pond and Surroundings (2542 KB)
Japanese Gardens - Rock Garden (4595 KB)
Driving across Morrison Bridge (1755 KB)
Circular panorama of trees at Washington Park (3016 KB)
Bigass redwood (1748 KB)

You can read about the Portland trip here.
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Finished Prague by Arthur Phillips last night. I burned through the first half, slogged through the third quarter, and regained some interest at the ending.

The book lost steam after the halfway point because characters started abruptly disappearing [desertion, marriage, whatever] which, combined with a series of conflicts and goals apparently coming to resolution, made for a vacant second half of the story. The characters themselves were interesting enough to hold my attention, though. There were a few surprises but also a few gimmies.

One thing that bugged me was Phillips’ repeated use of the same observation. He mentions how a character, deep in thought at a cafe, swirls his beverage and stares at the film of liquid left on the mugs’ interior. While this is kind of a cool observation to mention, it’s only cool once.

Oh yeah, and don’t let the book’s title fool you. The story is set in Budapest. The characters only have this nagging feeling that life in Prague is better.

Overall, my favorite part of the book was the writing. The narrator and several of the characters have that wry and biting sense of humor that always puts a smile on my face.

Other reader reviews here and here.

E’s sister lives in Austin (smart girl) and throws an annual crawfish boil boat party. She and a bunch of friends rent the equivalent of a floating platform with an engine, invite tons of people, buy tons of beer, and spend the day floating around Lake Travis eating crawfish. I was probably the only person on the boat that didn’t eat the crawfish and didn’t drink the beer – I don’t like crawfish and I brought my own beer (see the 6-pack of Blue Star below).

Eating crawfish is an entirely uneconomical activity. You stand around a table of crawfish (which, by the way, aren’t even fish) and pull these creatures apart, covering your hands in their intestines and various bodily excretions in order to get to a small morsel of meat. Why all that work? Yeah yeah, supposedly it’s fun and facilitates “hanging out,” though I’d rather forgo the crawfish eating, which would fail any basic cost-benefit analysis test, and hang out while eating chicken or beef. So, I brought my own chicken and grilled it on the on-board BBQ grill. After I had a piece, it became all the rage, and the rest of the chicken disappeared in minutes flat. Go figure.

The water in the lake was pretty much perfect. Lots of people went for a swim, jumped off the top level – oh yeah, this was a double-decker boat – and / or slid down the slide.

Some important info about this slide.

The slide was deceptively wet. Before one attempts to slide down the slide, one should ensure it is sufficiently wetted so as not to burn one’s hips or tuchus on the way down. E (poor thing) was the first person to attempt the slide, and did so quite valiantly. However, she was also the first (and last) person to get their hips burnt. I was in the water during the unfortunate event and it sounded like a car coming to a screeching halt. It sounded like it hurt. A lot. The resulting red mark looks no less painful than the initial injury. We should all send waves of sympathy her way.

Please commence waves of sympathy now. Thank you.

And as for all those people jumping off the boat, I also neglected to mention they jumped right after I took my shirt off. I’m not saying there’s necessarily a causal connection there, but I’m not ruling it out either.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating. They didn’t all jump off when my shirt came off. Just lots of them.

Dinner Saturday night was spent at Z Tejas on Lake Austin Blvd. E and I relaxed and took a walk around the block afterwards, noting the Amy’s Ice Cream down the street and the homeless guy mumbling things I couldn’t understand. We fulfilled our official Austin duty and had ice cream there on Sunday.

My dad happens to be a fan of Kerbey Lane’s pancakes, so I took the cash he gave me and presented it to the hostess: “Hi, I need to get as many bags of gingerbread pancake mix that $50 will buy.” She looked at me like I was an alien. My dad was ecstatic when I gave him the eight bags of pancake mix. That should hold him for a while.

Pictures from the weekend are forthcoming.

enjoy!

Third installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

You end up sitting next to a judicial clerk on the plane. Them lawyers just never leave you alone.

Your gf is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND when you get to the bus stop where she said she’d be. She shows up two minutes later and practically tackles you.

You eat delicious Greek food in an area of town known as Greek Town. Fancy that. The Walgreen’s “OPEN 24 HOURS” sign is also in Greek. Once at the restaurant, you watch as waiter after waiter serves guests an appetizer known as souvlaki that basically amounts to a slab of soft cheese lit on fire and placed on the table as the flames subside. The waiter lets out an “opah!” as he lights the cheese on fire. You wonder how it feels to say “opah!” every time someone orders that dish. You also wonder why every waiter is a waiter and there are no waitresses.

You proceed to an Irish Pub for a pint of Guinness. The place is packed and you’re greeted by a throng of guys singing drinking songs with glasses raised. You swear your flight took you to Chicago, not Ireland. GF leads you upstairs where a band of older guys in Hawaiian shirts plays a mix of Irish music and, you suspect, bluegrass. You smile and shake your tuchus with GF.

GF falls asleep on your shoulder on the bus ride home and spontaneously wakes up at precisely the right time because you had no idea where you were going and would have missed the stop.

Breakfast at a bagel shop leads you to run into a guy in a Longhorn cap waiting at the front. He’s with two girls. While walking past, you see the hat, realize he must have gone to UT, and say, “Whoa Hey” mid-stride. One of the girls turns around and gives you an unsavory look assuming you directed your comment to her. In the split second you realize what just transpired in her head, you seize on the opportunity and give her a nod through the window as you leave the restaurant. GF laughs.

You go to your first Cubs game and first game at Wrigley Field and stand in awe at this historical monument of American sports. This is the first professional sporting event you’ve seen in a traditional open-roof structure. Actually, it’s basically just a field with seats – some covered. There is no jumbotron. A 10-year-old girl in the seat next to you is wearing a Cubs hat and a Cubs jacket. She’s keeping track of the game with a pencil and a scorecard complete with player’s numbers, the plays, errors, and other details. She’s engrossed in the game, deep in concentration. Dad returns shortly and she updates him on the latest happenings. You notice that homes across the street from the field have bleachers built on the roofs. The two or three story narrow duplex-like homes common in Chicago make perfect perches from which to watch a game over Wrigley Field’s short walls. The Cubs win. Everyone screams. Earlier that week, they beat your Houston Astros two out of three games. You’re not too happy about that, but today’s game against the Rockies posed no problems of allegiance. You see someone else in a Longhorn hat. Go Horns.

On the way to the Aquarium, GF realizes the Blue Man Group performs in a venue nearby. Turns out not only do they have tickets for that afternoon’s show, but they’re in Row G (ie, 7) and you bust out the Student ID to get half-price tickets. BMG put on an amazing show beyond your expectations. It’s a conglomeration of music, wit, physical comedy, and creative audience participation. Toilet paper is utilized. Twinkies are cut with hand-held power saws and consumed. Paint is poured on the skins of tall bongo-like drums that are played. Said paint flies into the air with each strike of the drum and eventually ends up on a canvas. Viola, painting.

You meet GF’s friends for sushi and stuff your face full of rice and fish. It is quite possibly the first time you have eaten sushi in a group setting in which all the sushi ordered was actually eaten – there were no leftovers. The group congratulates itself on ordering exactly the right amount of sushi.

You proceed to a local bar. You encounter the first friendly bouncer of your entire life. He asks where you’d like to sit. Inside or out? Shall he get you a table? Have a menu brought over? You say “inside, thanks.” On the way inside, the owner greets you and immediately offers a table.

While walking to bar #2, your old knee injury starts acting up. Riding a bike for 180 miles when you were 19 was kind of a dumb idea, especially when you stubbornly rode the last 10 miles in excruciating pain. You’re paying for it now, six years later. You go home and nurse the bum knee.

The next morning, knee feeling better, you have brunch with more friends of the GF. This time, an Orthodox Jewish couple. You are not to hug GF. You may not kiss GF. In fact, do not even touch GF. Also, do not touch the wife. The couple is exceedingly warm and friendly and are very, very happy to have guests. They don’t get out much. There is enough food on the table to serve a family of 10. After much interesting conversation, the couple is kind enough to give you and GF a ride to the Aquarium (which you skipped to watch BMG) in the husbands new Honda Civic Hybrid. When stopped, the engine basically turns off and you swear he stalled the manual transmission.

There is a huge line at the aquarium but since GF is a member, you WALK PAST ALL THE POOR SAPS IN LINE AND GET IN FOR FREE. You think to yourself, “ Wow, gf is pretty handy to have around. Excellent job.” The beluga whales are fun and make cool sounds. The dolphin show is impressive but would have been better if you had come an hour earlier and actually gotten seats.

There is no skydiving on this trip, but you do go to the top (95th floor) of a skyscraper and share a glass of wine with gf in the lounge. The views are phenomenal.

For dinner, you have one of the best filet mignons you’ve ever had. It really is an exciting restaurant. Afterwards, you head to a small jazz club and watch a quartet do their thing onstage from the upstairs bar. The singer, female, takes requests from the audience. All you gotta do is scream out an artist’s name. I scream “Ray Charles!” and she obliges, though I’m not sure she got to him before we left. The band is tight and the singer is right on key. She looks good sporting her dance moves. You make a mental check mark next to the “see jazz or blues in Chicago” check box on the “Things You Must Do One Day” list. Mission accomplished.

Brunch the next morning with more of gf’s friends leads you to a tapas restaurant. You gorge on seafood, veggies, chicken, bread, and sangria. There’s nothing quite like an afternoon buzz. You realize the last time you had sangria must have been when you were in Spain. That’s way, way too long.

You catch a ride to the museum and gf, the one without the watch, realizes you have like an hour before it’s time to leave for the airport. You speed through a series of paintings that reads like an art history course lecture. The heavyweights are all in effect: Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gaugain, Seraut, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Kandinsky, and on and on. Remember that painting of the old couple with the farmer holding the pitchfork? Yeah, that was there too. As was the painting of a few lonely people having a late-night cup of coffee in a diner.

Then gf, in a blaze of glory, puts the both of you on the wrong bus back to her friend’s apartment at which you’ve been crashing. You’re several miles away from your luggage and the apartment. In a rush, you find an ATM, get some cash for a cab back to the apartment, and cunningly leave your debit card in the ATM machine. Lucky for you, this little morsel of information occurs to you only at the airport. After smacking your forehead until you feel better, you proceed to the plane and continue a nifty game you and the gf have been playing since your weekend in Austin.

Back in Houston, you’re greeted by highways 10 billion lanes wide and wonder what the hell went wrong in this city. Haven’t they heard of public transportation? Oh, not that kind. That kind.

And that, in a nutshell, is pretty much what happens when you go to Chicago. I promise. Identical results not guaranteed.

I wasn’t really “with it” when I was a teenager. I’m still not with it, despite impressions you might get from this here quasi-hip blog.

For example, one day at school, some kids were talking about rap. We were probably outside at recess smashing snow in each other’s faces. A majority of the kids in school were children of US Diplomats, meaning they all lived in Virginia. So when one kid asked me if I knew where Compton was, I answered, “Virginia.”

Any reaction by the other kids you can imagine is probably accurate.

I’ve mentioned in passing here and there that I spent two years in Moscow. I was only 14 and 15, so I don’t remember that much, but I figure it’s worth a post or two. And since skorloff had control of the blog for a while, I had the time to sit and scrape the edges of my brain for what memories I can remember.

The company my dad works for had an office in Moscow and they wanted his help there, so they sent my family over for a two-year assignment. We lived on the 14th floor of an apartment building on a narrow residential street called Bolshaya Bronnaya. It runs directly into a major thoroughfare called Tverskaya, which leads to Red Square and the Kremlin. At the corner of our street and Tverskaya was a McDonald’s – a neighbor I found particularly loathsome as the traffic (human and motorized) around us was always nuts. Also, it was exactly the kind of American culture that I didn’t think should have been allowed out of America. Heading away from Tverskaya on our street, there was a small orthodox synagogue. More on that later though.

Remember that sorry excuse of a coup that happened in 1993? I was there when it happened. It’s one of the few things I remember well, probably because it was so whack. Politics in Russia has never exactly been a stable affair and 1993 was no exception: old man Yeltsin wanted to make changes barred by the constitution, so the members of the parliament declared Yeltsin’s presidency unconstitutional and holed themselves up in the White House until the military forced them out.

My school, the Anglo-American School of Moscow, was then on the American Embassy, which was strategically located across the street from the White House. The Embassy was in the middle of the city. Students were immersed in Moscow’s hustle and bustle – a cultural experience to say the least. With that, though, came certain dangers. Russians built the embassy before the fall of the iron curtain and thoughtfully placed bugs in the walls of one, if not all, of the buildings. That building was abandoned, of course, but it loomed over the school as a symbol of how things used to be.

I don’t remember the details of what happened that day, but I remember we were at school when the siege on the White House began. Everyone was evacuated and told to go home, which I can’t imagine was the wisest thing to do as who knows what was outside waiting for us. We might have been safer in the school’s underground areas. At either rate, I don’t remember anything during the evacuation.

The memories that have remained come from my room on the 14th floor of our apartment. The White House sat squarely in my view and the damn thing was on fire. Literally, black smoke poured out of it. It was shocking. Russians had set fire to their own White House. There it was, the symbol of their government, being blown apart by tanks and burned from the inside out. Coupled with that view was the sound of gunshots ringing out day and night for several days thereafter as the military drove out the stubborn politicians and other skirmishes broke out in the city. Meanwhile, I probably had some Led Zeppelin or Nirvana playing on the stereo, something a 14-year-old have been listening to 1993, which is consequently what this 25-year-old listens to in 2005.

And that’s what I remember of the 1993 coup. Since Skorloff allowed himself to use the “stuff” category for just about anything that didn’t fit in the other categories, I will follow suit. Good idea, dude.

For those of you too lazy to click the comments, the answer to the riddle is:

Which road would your brother say is the right one?

If you ask the liar, he will lie and tell you the opposite of what his honest brother would say, so you do the opposite of what he says. If you ask the honest brother, he would tell you what his lying brother would say, so you do the opposite. With this setup, you always do the opposite of whatever answer you get from whichever brother. You don’t need to know which brother you’re asking.

I hope you liked the riddle. It’s basically my only riddle, so now I’m out and I have nothing else to talk about.

Of course not, I can always talk. I’m in law school, gimme a break. Today was my last day at the court. It was an amazing experience and I encourage every law student out there to work for a trial court for at least half of a summer. It is an invaluable experience. You get an understanding of what goes on behind the doors of the court. You learn what the clerks do, what the court coordinator does, and how the judge thinks. You get a bird’s eye view of a smattering of lawyers from all walks of life. Some are good, some are great, and some are well, lawyers. Now that I’ve worked for a trial court, I’d like to work for an appellate court to see what happens at the next level, but I don’t know if I’ll get a chance. I’d like to work at law firms next summer, but we’ll see how things turn out.

School starts Monday. This summer has gone by way too fast. But at least I got to do a lot of cool stuff. I went to Chicago, Austin, and Little Rock (to see my sister) with E. I got to spend time with old friends. I got to work for a law firm and a judge. I got to read a few books. I got a roommate and a cool apartment. I also got mono (damnit) and therefore did not get enough beers. And by not enough, I mean like two. Yeah, two, and then my sore throat came back a couple days later. Relation? Who knows. But now I’m not drinking again until Doctor says so. But as a result of the mono, I also got a pinch-blogger. The verdict is still out on how cool that was.

In short, it’s been a pretty badass summer. I just wish I could fast forward to December, post-finals. That would be nice.

Fourth installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

Your gf tells you to chug water like nobody’s business the day before you get to Quito and on the flight as well, because if you don’t, you’ll get altitude sickness. You do as she says and end up having to climb over the person in the aisle seat about three hundred and eighty two times to go to the bathroom. Your gf also tell you to get some altitude sickness pills and start taking them the day before you get to Quito, because if you don’t, you’ll get altitude sickness. You get to Quito, and within 12 hours, your body goes into shock after realizing, lo and behold, there is absolutely no oxygen in the air.

When you land in Quito and walk into the arrivals hall, you spot your gf, who you haven’t seen in a month, and make a bee-line for her completely oblivious to anything or anyone else in the room and wrap your arms around her and squeeze her and breathe in her shampoo.

The taxi ride to the apartment is a whirlwind. You gaze at your gf. You stare at the surroundings. You gaze at your gf. You notice a Ford Explorer and ask, “What the hell, it’s bad enough we make these things for ourselves, we have to export them too?”

You wake up Saturday morning unable to do much because there is no air at 3000 meters. You have to spend the day in bed. Which, after a long week at school, turns out to be a good thing.

That evening, you and the gf head to a café recommended by her flatmates. It is known only by the name “Café Guapulo.” Gf doesn’t know where it is, but the cabbie thinks he does, so he radios his buddies and figures out where to go. The café is cute and quaint and is perched on a hillside overlooking a church and much of the city. It is relatively empty and you sit and talk with sassy music in the background. You talk and share “Crepes de Pollo” which turns out to be chicken baked with dough in a tiny pan. After spending a month talking on the phone and the computer, talking in person is a whole lot better.

You have more energy Sunday morning and you head off to the equator. As every other site on the equator is much less accessible because it’s either on a mountain, in the jungle, or in the water, this part of the equator is considered the middle of the world; hence the name “Mitad Del Mundo.”

After spending a good two hours wandering the city for the right bus to take – aka taking the scenic route – you find the right bus and come to a strange realization: you are a giant in this land. At 6’2”, you’re almost twice as tall as many of the locals. You feel like a walking circus.

You get to the Mitad Del Mundo and notice there are two equators. After lengthy analysis conducted in your head and out of the earshot of your gf, you decide two equators are not possible. One must be a fraud. Which one it is remains to be determined. You eagerly anticipate the collection of evidence to disprove the validity of one of the equators.

The sign for the outdoor equator museum, Inti-Nan (path of the sun), says “LAT. 00? 00’ 00” CALCULATED WITH G.P.S.” and you are satisfied that that must be the real equator. And lo, the tour guide demonstrates that this is indeed the true middle. She fills a bucket of water on the equator and drains it. The water drains straight down. She moves the bucket three feet to the north and the water drains counter-clockwise. She moves the bucket three feet into the southern hemisphere and it drains clockwise. You stand flabbergasted.

Afterwards, you decide to head to Plaza Grande in Old Town. On the way, however, you take the sage advice of a semi-local that turns out to be not sage at all. While Old Town lies towards the center of the city in the valley, the bus you’re urged to take sends you into the hills, where the streets are eerily deserted. Thankfully, you get on a bus that takes you back down into the city center and get to the Plaza Grande.

Plaza Grande turns out to be a little on the bland side. It’s basically a big statue in the middle of a plaza. What is interesting, however, is a police car parked on the edge of the plaza. Policemen are inside the car. Instead of watching out for shady characters waiting to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists (hi), they’re texting each other and playing games on their cell phones. Ecuadorian tax dollars hard at work.

For dinner, you had to the Mariscal district, also known as Gringolandia (Land Of White People). It’s a little on the touristy side. You eat dinner at a tapas restaurant and drink sangria. Whatwith the higher altitude, one glass gives you a nice buzz. Your suspicious that you are a cheap date are confirmed.

The next day, gf wants to go climb a mountain. You say, “cool,” especially since there’s a cable car that takes you up there. The mountain overlooks Quito in the valley lying below. You’re at an altitude of about 4000 meters, so it’s much colder there. The clouds appear to be within arm’s reach. Off in the distance is Cotopaxi, the volcano overlooking Quito. Gf was there just the week before.

After you return to the city, you and the GF run some errands around town. After stopping in nearly every toy and knickknack shop in the city looking for dice, you finally find some in a mall. She plans to use them to play English games with her students. You wonder what kind of shady operation the school is running, anyway. Since you’re in South America, you figure you ought to score yourself a nice Panama hat. You buy a cool one from a street vendor for $8, which seems reasonable considering some stores sell them for $30 (up to $300).

Then, you and the gf attack the grocery store. You pick up food to make for dinner and have a great time in the kitchen as the other flatmates cook too. One of the flatmates is making an alfredo sauce and notices it’s taking longer than normal to cook. Upon closer inspection, gf notices her mushrooms and onions aren’t sautéing very quickly either. Upon yet closer inspection, we all notice the gas burners are off, resulting in the lack of heating being applied to the pans. Turns out the gas canister hidden in the cupboard next to the stove ran out of gas. The flatmate cooking the alfredo sauce proceeds to grab a spare canister of gas and hooks it up to the stove. Viola, instant gas stove.

One of the flatmates’ friends, an Ecuadorian, is leaving the country, so they invite him and some other people over for dinner. Not only do they cook for everyone, but they also write him a rap song. And then perform it. It’s possibly the most entertaining musical and theatrical performance you’ve ever seen. Three Canadian girls rapping with their pants and hats on backwards is a sight to be seen.

The next morning, you’re on a plane back to real life, where books and alarm clocks and construction on Highway 59 await. The next time you’ll see your gf is on December 20th. Until then, you patiently wait for her, and think of the good times you’ve shared.

I’m skipping class Friday to fly to Little Rock. The bris is at 10:30 and I land at 9:12, so I’ll get there just in the nick of time (no pun intended). I’d go Thursday, but I invited a judge to come speak at my school Thursday afternoon, and I don’t want to put myself at risk of either having to leave my own function early or miss a flight. If you’re in my class and you’re reading this, please take good notes, I might be asking you for a copy (ahem, Sam).

I also went to a wedding this past weekend in the Texas Hill Country - in a small town called Concan, to be exact. It was a beautiful outdoor wedding on the river. One of my best buds from college was the groom. We used to go mountain biking a lot and took a road trip to Arizona to meet up with other mountain bikers and check out the trails there. So it was really cool to see a guy I’ve known for seven years - partied with, drank with, been to shows with, and generally been stupid with - tie the knot. They grow up so fast! Congrats bud.

Lots to say, not much time. Have to catch up on reading because spent weekend in Little Rock with new nephew he’s aweome gotta have more of him. Prepositions and articles superfluous.

Thursday afternoon invited local Civil District Judge to school to speak about recent spate of Ten Commandments cases and Establishment Clause in Constitution. Very interesting got a pretty good turnout.

Went to cool show with buddy John on Thursday night, headliner Minus The Bear. Used to have two of their cds but lost them somehow but still remembered some of the songs when they played them. Guitar player was freaking insane had some kind of pedal board that looped his guitar riffs while he played on top of them sounded like there were actually two guys playing at once though it was only one guy. Show was moved from original venue (Walter’s on Washington) to venue across the street (Fat Cat’s) because vocals at first venue were impossible to hear we were all screaming “VOCALS!!!” but sound guy couldn’t figure out problem so had mass exodus of indie kids in Converse All Stars and buddy holly glasses (hey that’s me) crossing the street like herd of trendy cattle. Sight to be seen. Opening band The Headphones were pretty weird. Can’t remember name of two other opening bands. Minus The Bear rocked though you should see them.

New nephew Max Jacob Lain is cutest little guy ever he got his bris and cried bloody murder when the moyel (Hebrew term for the doctor who does the deed) snipped his pee pee but now Max is in the Covenant after being 8 days old and to celebrate, all the adults ate. What else do Jews do, all celebrations must involve food one way or another. Interesting story the moyel told us I learned when I was a kid but forgot about: Abraham (first Jew) entered into Covenant when he was 99 years old and GAVE HIMSELF A CIRCUMCISION, as did all the males in his family. Man that must have totally sucked.

Did you see the Astros and Braves game today? Holy crap it was EIGHTEEN INNINGS broke all kinds of records I fell asleep in the 14th and woke up in the 16th and nothing had happened.

Thankfully the kissing disease didn’t get me this time. Neither did any other ailment. Instead, I had five law school finals to contend with, and Skorloff was brave (and kind) enough to take on the blogging responsibilities of this here vessel. For that I am very thankful. We all learned a lot from Skoroloff. For instance, I didn’t know that “no self-respecting list of post-modern soundtracks would be complete without a quentin tarantino movie.” I also didn’t know that “we feed them every day which keeps them from starving and has cut down on the number of dead bird parts we find in the yard.” Neither did I know that “then i got old.” I’ll be damned.

What I do know is that I’m getting the hell out of dodge. My dad and I plan to take a road trip of sorts this weekend to somewhere in central Texas. Probably a state park. Someplace where we can canoe, hike, smell clean air, look at stars, and otherwise act like the rugged guys we really aren’t. Then E comes back on Tuesday and the wait will be over.

But before that, I’ve got a list of things to do:

Fifth installment of the "things that happen to you while" series.

You wake up the morning of the flight with the beginnings of a sinus infection. You are thankful it’s not anything serious that could make flying difficult, like stuffed sinuses or ear issues. Oh, yeah, it’s a sinus infection, so you have stuffed sinuses and ear issues. You call GF at 5:50 am and explain the situation. She says, “Talk to my dad.” Dad is a doctor. Doctor Dad says I’m sending daughter over to your house with drugs. Take the drugs.

Drugs given to you by GF’s dad work. You fly on the big airplane and eat the breakfast of cereal and a banana. You are happy and sleep on GF’s shoulder.

Instead of having to pay money to stay at a hotel, GF’s cousins are kind enough to open their home to you and GF. They also open their fridge, which is a blessing. They also lend you a car, which is blessing upon blessing. You are very thankful for GF’s cousins. Thank you thank you thank you GF’s cousins.

You spend the night and following day recovering from the sinus infection and pop Advil Cold & Sinus like Reese’s Pieces. You are a useless lump of boy during this time. You drink so much water your bladder effectively becomes the size of a pea.

After the worst of the infection passes, you gather your strength to meet the GF’s family for Chinese food. Only part of the family of is present, which equates to about 10 people. You are particularly impressed by an 80-year-old member of the family named Bob who eats more than you, and takes longer doing it. He, like you, is thin as a rail. He, like you, stores the food in his hollow legs. The table marvels at the amount of food this man can put away.

You and GF decide it is your duty to find an In-N-Out Burger and purchase hamburgers for lunch. You do so. The burgers are good and you are happy. Mission accomplished.

GF goes with dad to Tijuana, Mexico to have a look around. You rest at the house and pray they come back safe. They come back and you expect wild and crazy stories of ligers and four-toed sloths. They say, “People tried to sell us stuff. It was kind of crowded. Sort of boring, actually.” Your heart sinks.

You and GF make an attempt at visiting the famous San Diego Zoo to no avail. By the time you get there, you only have an hour because you have to be somewhere else very soon to get ready for another Important Family Event. Instead of spending one hour at the zoo (and paying lots of money to get in) you opt to look at the seals on the beaches of La Jolla. They are fun and cute and smelly. You wish you were a seal so you could hang around all day and bask in the sun on the beach and be protected by national gaming laws.

You head to GF’s Parents’ hotel room to shower and get ready for the next Important Family Event, which happens to be the most important Important Family Event of the trip. One of GF’s cousins is getting married.

The wedding ceremony is beautiful and goes off without a hitch. GF even has a part in it, reading an English translation of some meaningful Hebrew passages whose meaning you have since forgotten. Thankfully, you got pictures of it, so it’s all good.

After the ceremony, it’s time to dance the Hora, the traditional Jewish dance originating in Europe. The Hora normally consists of a circle of people dancing around other people in the middle of the circle. Those other people in the middle could have their own circle or could simply be dancing with one or two partners arm-in-arm. Since only five people at the wedding actually know who you are, you feel compelled to make yourself known by throwing yourself in the throng of Hora-dancers. You work up a sweat and, satisfied you sufficiently contributed to the dancing, seek out the food.

The food must wait. First come the toasts.

The Bride’s parents and sisters toast the newlyweds as do the Groom’s father and sister. The final speaker, the Bride’s grandfather, gives a moving and witty speech on how the Bride and Groom met. The grandfather forms the speech in Biblical language – that is, for example, “Sam met Amy, and Amy was a comely young woman, and Sam was smitten, and Sam wed Amy, and it was good.” Etc etc. His speech steals the show and there is a flood of applause.

Afterward comes the food. You feast on salmon and mahi-mahi and pasta and salad and potato, and it is good. You and GF score margaritas, and they are good. Your bellies are happy.

You once again find yourself on the dance floor. The Deejay is playing music to which everyone can dance. Namely: disco, R&B, and Motown. You manage to avoid stepping on GF’s toes and, to you, this constitutes a successful dancing evening. You close the place down and are in bed by midnight.

You and GF and hop in the car and make another attempt at the zoo, this time allotting about two hours for yourselves. You take the guided bus tour to see as much as possible in the short time you have. Your favorites include the polar bears, the elephants, the Alaskan brown bear, and, of course, the Pandas.

You then head to the Bride’s parents’ house for a quick brunch before you leave for the airport and the flight back home.

The sinus infection is all but a memory and you reflect on all the amazing people you met and the fun you had.

First was San Diego. Now it’s Austin. The girl and I showed up at her sister’s place in south Austin on Thursday afternoon and plan to stay till Friday. We already went to Amy’s Ice Cream, Whole Foods, Malaga, Thai Passion, and Sullivan’s. Please note that each of these sites involves food. Food is really all we care about. We also went to Esther’s Follies and watched what is perhaps the most democratic comedy routine I’ve ever seen (well, we are in Austin).

I also had to introduce the girl to my old mountain biking stomping grounds – the Barton Creek Greenbelt. We hiked for about two hours. There was just enough water in the creek to skip rocks. Girl also happened to get dehydrated because I didn’t bring enough water, and the water in the creek was not suitable for drinking, aka, nonpotable (whatever that means). Girl and her sister are into scrapbooking, so while they do that on Monday, I’ll go for a ride at the Greenbelt.

We’re having a BBQ this evening. What else is there to do on a Sunday evening in January when it’s 75 outside?

idea graciously lifted from nerdygirl and hereby imposed upon heather, who must impose it upon someone else, ad infinitum.

and i'm tired of looking at that confession post. you'll occasionally find some drama here at particleman.org, but it doesn't last long.

waco was interesting. different. and a tad frightening. more details to come. for right now, i must read all about Payment Systems and Professional Responsibility. joy.

Waco, TX is essentially BFE with a Wal-Mart. And a highway. According to my tour guides, there are a couple bars. There is a university. And there is crime. Not just any crime, but really stupid crime. My friend’s girlfriend had her car stolen from her old apartment complex. The car was later recovered with various drugs and drug paraphernalia strewn about the interior. An extra special bonus party favor with the items recovered was a picture of the thieves posing with the car. The full extent of the thieves’ stupidity became apparent upon arrest. The story goes that the car was stolen and sold to a drug dealer for $20 in cocaine. TWENTY DOLLARS. IN COCAINE. A CAR. SOLD. $20.

Kee-riste.

Otherwise, the place is not all-together offensive or anything. Yeah, every other car has a Bush or “W” sticker on the bumper. But they still have NPR radio (to which my friend’s girlfriend is an avid listener). And apparently Baylor is crawling with hot Baptist blond girls with rich dads. I oughtta move to Baylor and set up a net to catch all the hotties. Hey mom and dad, look what I found in Waco! Her name is Whitney! Or Britney. I mean Tiffany. Shit.

My buddy and I made fajitas and watched the superbowl while his girlfriend went to a prep class to learn how to kick the crap out of the GRE. She came home and schooled us on fractions. Did you know that to divide fractions, you flip them and multiply? It’s the damndest thing.

I saw the Baylor law school and realized how lame my school is. Our classroom chairs are hard plastic contraptions bolted to long desks on a swiveling hinge. At Baylor, each seat has its own independent office chair. You know, like the kind you get at Office Max or something. On the other hand, Baylor makes their students stand up for recitation… for every teacher. I’ve only had three teachers do that in four semesters. I think the Baylor administration has issues.

Buddy’s girlfriend and I spent a couple hours studying in the library (which was beautiful) while buddy went to class and slept through his Business Organizations course. Yeah, I know he slept because that’s what I did in my Biz Org class last semester.

One thing I envy about my buddy and his girlfriend living in Waco is that they can see stars. The night sky is full of them. Here in Houston, our glorious pollution (chemical, light, and otherwise) drains out all starlight.

When it comes down to it though, Waco is still BFE with a Wal-Mart. And an HEB.

Thanks again to buddy and his girlfriend for hosting me. Next time I come visit, we gotta see about setting up that net.

I figure you may be wondering about the wave of bike posts the past few weeks. During my first year of law school, I maybe rode my bike a grand total of two times. Things got a little better the following summer. Things returned to their status quo of non-riding in my third semester. So what’s the deal with this semester? Well, first of all, I’m taking two less hours than I usually do and the classes aren’t quite as intensive. Call it a much needed “break” from law school, though I’m somehow still in school…

There is another reason, though. I was going to wait till the very last minute to spill the beans, but what the hell, I have zero willpower.

I’m going to visit my friend (posts here as ‘carrico’) and his wife in Denver in two weeks. I’ve known this joker known as Carrico since I was a college freshman. He rides mountain bikes and all sorts of other wheeled things – and he is much better at it than I am. He taught me a thing or two about how to not crash and burn on mountain bike trails.

Denver is basically located in the stratosphere compared to Houston, so there will be less air for me to breathe, and since I’ve been a slacker for almost two years, I need to get my ass into shape. Thus, the recent spate of mountain bike rides and cycling-related posts.

I’m flying up on a Friday and coming back on Tuesday. While I’m there, I’ll stop by and harass Heatherfeather. How could I come to Denver and not raise hell with Heather? Carrico, Mrs. Carrico, Heatherfeather, and the rest of Denver are totally unprepared for what is about to hit them in two weeks. The last time I visited a blogger I had never met in person it resulted in copious beer-consumption, wild music fests, late nights in strange places, barefoot kickball with punk-rock people with various piercings and colorful tattoos, sushi happy hours complete with funny hats, and an orange mustang convertible, among other things.

Sixth installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

Day 1

Your trouble with the law begins before you even get on the plane. The small folding allen wrench you packed into your Camelbak that you packed into your larger bag has piqued the security peoples’ interest. Piquing their interest is not something you want to do. A security person tears apart your bag, fishes out the Camelbak, and runs it through the x-ray machine again. She then pulls out the offending allen wrench and asks the supervisor, “Is this ok?” Yes, my friendly security-obsessed airport employee, it’s a freaking allen wrench. You might want to watch out for the guy with golf clubs, though. Those look painful.

You arrive in sunny Denver and it’s a glorious 50 degrees. You couldn’t be happier. Mr. Carrico (let’s call him C) picks you up and you speed off immediately to what you’re told is an Engineer Party. You see, C is an engineer of sorts – an engineer that designs poo treatment plants. As such, it figures that these people need to party quite a bit to maintain their level of sanity (sounds like lawyers). Hence, the engineer party you’re going to in Golden, about a half-hour drive from Denver, is first on the list of attractions.

The party is held at the house of one of the engineers (let’s call him J). It turns out that no one is home when you and C get to the house. You have beer on the mind and are feeling impatient, so C does the sensible thing and calls J to see how to get into the house. And now your troubles with the law escalate to what we in law school call “breaking and entering” or “trespass.” That is, C reached his arm up through the cat flap in the back door and manages to unlock the deadbolt (he has long arms) thus gaining entry. Mission accomplished. One tort and perhaps one crime are committed on your vacation. And you’ve only been in the state forty-five minutes.

After you help ourselves to some beer (thanks, J) more of the engineer crew and their significant others show up and the party grows to nine strong. You meet Mrs. Carrico (MC) for the second time and hope you might finally get to know her. You only met her at the wedding and didn’t get much of a chance to talk.

Now would be a good time to mention the fireworks display that you’ll later get to see at the Colorado School of Mines. Yes. A bunch of miners are going to blow shit up and it’s going to be awesome.

Before the fireworks, however, there’s something you have to see. You kick off the fireworks party in the college’s ‘lab’ as it were – a place where they store all their mining devices and whatnot. J asks you, “You wanna see a big drill?” Do I? He walks you over to what looks like something out of Star Wars. Or Robocop. Or Wyle E. Cayote’s stash of tools that catch the Roadrunner. This drill is as big as a moving truck. The ‘bit’ is the size of a Honda. You stand under the drill and wonder to yourself that your old jobs playing with computers all day were really pointless.

The fireworks are held in the college’s football field. You and the engineer crew get the best seats – on top of the announcer’s box high above the field. The fireworks are phenomenally loud and close. You can smell the chemicals. The crowd of chants “BLOW THE FUCKER UP… BLOW THE FUCKER UP… BLOW THE FUCKER UP…” Your jaw drops, and you join in. For the grand finale, a man – assumedly crazy – runs out to a string a fireworks mounted across the field and attempts to ignite them by hand. It rained the night before and the fireworks are not lighting in succession as planned. He has no choice but to keep going back to light the fireworks when the fuse runs out. He appears to be wearing protective ear-coverings but you see no other signs of protection. He injures his leg the last time he goes back to light the fireworks – perhaps some shrapnel got him. Firemen and EMS show up.

You’re more than satisfied with the day’s events, but the party hasn’t even started.

The festivities end up back at J’s, the scene of the original crime. J proposes a neat trick to the group. A drunken stupid human trick, if you will. Fold a dollar so that it can stand on the floor by itself. Supporting yourself on only one foot, find a way to pick the dollar up with your mouth. Your hands cannot touch the ground. It quickly became clear that this was a great way to get people to do stupid things for a dollar – or just to do them. To up the ante, someone put a $20 bill on the floor. To up it further, you put your wallet on the floor, which was in fact not an “up the ante” because you’re broke. Though many had gotten close and you managed to fall and hurt your knee in an effort to retrieve the dollar, J was the first and last to successfully perform the trick. Bravo J.

Your hosts’ cat apparently discovered the air mattress, and well, that was that. You and C try to find the holes in the air mattress and find one. C seals it with a bicycle tube patch kit and it works like magic. For several hours. By morning, your back is on the ground and your legs are in the air. You end up on the couch cursing your long legs.

Day 2

You and C start the day at Green Mountain. Your lungs are still stuck at sea level so you have a hard time getting up the mountain, or as natives call them, foothills. Anyone from Houston calls them mountains, though. You have to walk half of the final climb and on the way got passed by a runner going up, who then passed you going down, who then passes you going up again, all before you reach the top. When you do finally reach the top, you see him again, and he turns around again. That’s called meshuggah where you come from. You hit Red Rocks after grabbing some power bars and ride another two or three hours there.

For dinner, you and your generous hosts planned on going out but somehow the party ended up at home. You head to Whole Foods, score some chicken, and start a BBQ. Others show up with more goodies to throw on the grill and Heathfeather and her friend also join the party.

It’s not long before the stupid human trick from last night emerges. Except this time, instead of setting doing the trick on a wood floor in a house, it’s on a brick patio in a back yard. Brick hurts a lot more than wood when succumbing to gravity. Needless to say, you abstain, having sufficiently embarrassed yourself the night before. Other stupid human tricks emerge as well. MC introduces the group to a trick wherein you cross your arms in front of you and twist them around so that you end up with your fingers on your nose. Note that says on your nose, not in, but that might be interesting too.

The last stupid human trick is proposed by J (the stupid human trick expert?). This trick calls for two people. One person stands, legs apart, preferably on a soft substance like grass. Person 2, preferably limber, jumps on Person 1’s back, crawls over their shoulders, down their torso, through their legs, and back up to Person 1’s back. J volunteers to be Person 2. Heatherfeather volunteers to be the standing Person 1, claiming to have served a stint in a circus. Que pasa? Circus? Then she reminds you that she knows how to ride a unicycle, but not a bicycle. Oh, right. Unicycle. You realize your hosts have like six bikes, none of which are unicycles. Too bad. Heatherfeather is unfortunately too short or not strong enough to support J. C, as it turns out, is about 6'4" and strong enough to support the weight of another grown man (man that sounds weird). J hops on C’s back, crawls over his shoulders, down his torso, through his legs, and scrambles up his back. You really had to see it. Oh wait, YOU CAN*.

You round out the night at a bar called The Funky Buddha.

Day 3

Your back is a little sore from the previous night spent on the couch. Thankfully, one of your hosts’ friends who we’ll call G graciously swung by with his full suspension mountain bike for you to borrow, so any back pain should be rendered moot once on the trail. Otherwise, this morning starts out quite the same as the previous, meaning that a bike ride is in order.

You and C hop in the car and drive to Boulder for a ride at Walker Ranch, deep in the foothills just west of the city. The trail is breathtaking and you wonder why people live anywhere else. Things like law school come to mind. Bummer. After the ride you head to a local brewpub, Southern Sun Pub & Brewery, for nourishment of the liquid and solid variety.

You take it easy for dinner and order Thai food. The free movie channel is playing Donnie Brasco and you watch Johnny Depp turn into a Wise Guy.

Before crashing you and C resolve to find the other holes in the air mattress. Or rather, MC issues a directive that it needs to be fixed. You locate two more holes and seal them. It does the trick. You sleep soundly on a bed of air.

Day 4

Your hosts go off to their respective office lives designing poop treatment plants and whatnot. With five final exams rearing their ugly heads in a matter of weeks, you set your sights on the nearest hipster café and ride a ridiculously small BMX bike to Devil’s Food Bakery. It’s closed. In fact, everything is closed. It seems Denver sleeps in on Mondays. You hang your head in shame and head to Starbucks. A city of full of nifty cafes and all you have at your disposal is a national chain... For shame.

Several hours later, Heatherfeather rescues your vacation from becoming a corporate-coffee-shop-law-school-study-fest and takes you to the Crazy Asian Café for lunch. You chat about the UN, Connie Rice, and They Might Be Giants (naturally). Agreeing you should at least make an effort at studying, you head to Stella’s, a café that is actually open. After an hour of conversation interrupted by occasional bouts of studying you face the facts and call off the charade. The Denver Folklore Center down the street sells all kinds of cool instruments and the allure is just too much.

You noodle with guitars, banjos, mandolins, mandolinas, basses, and other stringed devices. Heatherfeather gives you a sample of her sublime voice and guitar skills. You wish you could put a digital soundboard in front of her and record what you’re hearing.

Heatherfeather drops you off at your (er, C’s BMX) bike at Starbucks and you ride home. Your hosts arrive soon after and you head to Sushi Boat with C, MC, and their friend, who we’ll also call G (different than the earlier G). After stuffing your faces full of sushi, seaweed salad, and miso soup, you decide on the perfect follow-up for desert: Bonnie Brae Ice Cream. It hits the spot.

Day 5

Has it really been five days? Feels like two. Your hosts probably think it feels like 10.

Your flight is at noon. But before your hosts can unload you, you get to accompany them to a very special occasion: the inspection of their newly bought home. It was built in 1906 but is somehow in better shape than most newer homes. You follow the inspector around and carefully watch (from a distance) what he does. One day you’ll have to buy a house. Or at least you hope to buy a house, maybe in Denver.

OK I can’t write in passive present tense or whatever it’s called anymore, it kind of hurts my brain. Much, much thanks to Mr. and Mrs. C for having me, to J and G (the first one) for lending me their bikes, to Heatherfeather for wasting her afternoon with me, and to the house cat for not accosting me too much.

All of you are welcome in Houston any time. Except the cat. Sorry.

* it’s a little dark, so if anyone has video editing software and is willing to help, contact me via the link at the bottom of this page.

i really wanted pictures of the trail itself, but Google Satellite hasn't gotten that good. yet. so this one's a little easier.

they should be at the top of the list, but you mighht have to sift through some others.

Finished my last final last night, and it took me THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES. And i wasn't even the first to finish. Then i partied. Now i have a plane to catch in two and a half hours to Midland, TX for a wedding. As far as i can tell, there's not much to do in Midland except drink and wed, so it's gonna be a party. Be good and i'll see you in three days.

I guess I should preface this by saying that I’m writing this on Monday night, the move is not yet complete, and I’m still in Austin, which was not the way things were supposed to happen. More on that later.

Crazy shit that happens to you while helping your sister and her family move from Little Rock to Austin. Let us commence:

The cabbie that takes you from the Little Rock airport to your sister’s house only has one good arm. His cell phone rings. You think, “no way he’s going to reach into his pocket and pull out that phone to answer it, his only good arm is driving the car.” The cabbie proceeds to let go of the wheel – mind you, at highway speed – fish the phone from his pocket, answer it, and hold a conversation with a prospective client. He drives a little with his elbow to humor you, then returns navigation of the cab to pure chance or Acts of God.

You get to your sister’s house which currently does not contain your sister, your niece, or your nephew. They have since left to Dallas to stay with the in-laws before driving down to Austin. That leaves you with the T, your brother in law. That also you leaves you with the moving guys, a ragtag bunch of tattooed toothless dudes. One of them likes talking to your more than moving anything. You find that odd. He later finds a patch of grass to lie on while the other moves continue to move stuff.

One of the moving guys catches wind you’re going to be a lawyer. Towards the end of the evening, he furtively calls you aside while the other guys are busy loading stuff onto the truck, and asks, “Hey man, I heard you a lawyer, I got a question. I got this felony on my record that I can’t get rid of man. How can I get it off?” A flurry of legally proper and appropriate responses come to mind, but all you can think is, “What did you do?” Thankfully, you weasel out of the question but coming up with some mumbo jumbo that you aren’t a criminal attorney. Some awkward silence follows and you say, “Yeah, um, I’m gonna go over here and help load that thing onto the truck.”

The big truck leaves and you and T are left with a smaller van containing the bare essentials. (The big truck is scheduled to arrive Tuesday).

You spend eight hours in the small van with your brother in law talking his head off about anything you can think of to keep him awake. You offer to take the wheel but he kindly refuses. You talk to him about girls, cars, jobs, your parents, your sister, his kids, Dallas (where he’s from) and whatever else comes to mind. Sometime towards the end of the ride he says, “Man, I didn’t know you could talk that much.”

The best part is that his every response to any female-related comment you make is: “You need to date around more.” This coming from a guy that married the first woman he seriously dated.

The next day you take your bike to a local Austin trial that you haven’t ridden in about three years. It’s a difficult trail, but you’ve got your new bike and you think you’ve got the cajones to make it through. After slamming your shin against a log once, crashing into the rocks twice, and getting racked by your bike seat, you slowly pedal out of the trail battered and bleeding. It was a brutal and humbling experience. When you get home, your family points at your shin as if you don’t know it has a bloody welt the size of a quarter.

Later that afternoon you visit your newlywed friends and hope to iron your dress shirt for a wedding you have that evening. You hang out, go to Target, veg out, and leave. Only when you’re five minutes from your sister’s house on the other side of town do you realize that you didn’t iron your shirt and you left it at your friends’ place. You have a wedding in an hour, a suit, and no shirt. And no wedding card. You haul ass to the nearest Target and buy a white dress shirt and an iron. You race home, iron the shirt on the kitchen countertop, change into the suit, and remember you forgot to buy a card. The wedding is now in fifteen minutes, you have a suit and a shirt, but no card and only a vague idea of where the wedding is. You race back to Target (this is now your third time in a Target in three hours), buy a card, and tear off down 620 passing four (4) sheriffs. None of them pull you over. God must have his finger on your car.

You get to the wedding in the nick of time to watch the bride give her vows. The wedding is a good time and you catch up with old friends.

The next morning, you hang out some more with your newlywed friends and then an old college friend, after which you plan to head home to Houston. But on the way back to your sister’s house something fun and exciting happens. The “D4” light on your ’95 Honda starts flashing and the speedometer goes wild. One second you’re going zero, the next you’re going 60, the next 50, and then zero again. No rhyme or reason. A few days earlier, the ABS light came on. Your car is, how shall we say it, fucked.

You get home and show your dad this new fun and exciting development. His solution: get it towed to the nearest Honda shop, wait till tomorrow for the quote, and if it’s more than the value of the car, buy a new one. Dads always have the best solutions. You figure the towing idea is probably a good first step, so you make it happen.

The tow truck shows up and loads your car. Just before he’s about to go, his engine cuts. No explanation. Just stops. He looks at the truck. “That’s not good.” You inquire if maybe he ran out of gas? No, he just filled up.

While you and the tow truck guy wait for his other tow truck buddies to give him a jump, and the irony slowly kills you, you and tow truck guy talk about the various cars that he most often is called to tow Hondas? Not so much. Toyotas? Nope. How about Saabs? Not really. Surely Jaguar. Of course. Mercedes? Not usually. BMW? Mostly the post-2003 models. And what car did your brother-in-law just leave the house to buy? A 2004 BMW 330i. Oy. At least it has a warranty.

Your parents are kind enough to help you buy a new car if it comes to that. You hope it doesn’t only because they want to get another Accord. Meanwhile, you’re still trying to avoid that “conservative suburban family man” thing because, well, you’re not. You’re young and you’re wild and you’re an animal. At least that’s the vibe you’re going for. The Mazda 3 hatchback is looking pretty sweet and you test drive one and fall in love. It has a peppy engine, sporty looks, and an auto tranny that has a manual option a-la the Porsche Tiptronic. Lots of fun in the twisties, and the car has plenty of space in the back for your music and biking gear. The only other contender is the Subaru WRX, but again, mom and pops are urging for a simple and no-personality Accord. This will only lead to argument.

(I know I know, life sucks so much to have parents want to help you buy a car, but when you’ve been driving an Accord with -40 horsepower and less personality for five years, you kind of want something more exciting to wake up to. Humor me here.)

Tomorrow, the movers show up with an 18-wheeler containing the contents of your sister’s house. You can’t wait to haul beds and dressers up the staircase and build assorted pieces of furniture. That Texas heat will be your nemesis.

Oh yeah, and you’ll be missing a day of work. For shame.

My sister and her fam are moving to Austin this weekend, and no one except for me can actually be at the house tomorrow, so I drive there tonight in time for the gas company to turn on the gas. They’re supposed to show up between 8 am and 5 pm, which probably means 5:30 pm. Someone over 18 needs to be there. That someone is me.

I then fly to Little Rock that night at 7:30 – or earlier if the gas people show up earlier – to help my brother-in-law load the moving van. Then, on Saturday, we make the 10-hour drive to Austin. Meanwhile, my sister and mom will drive down with the kids that morning and arrive before my brother-in-law and I do.

Still with me?

I help unload and unpack until Sunday at 7, when I go to my college band’s drummer’s wedding. I haven’t seen him in about two years so I’m really excited to see him and everyone else.

Then, Monday, if I’m lucky, I hope to ride my bike. I’ll have the new 29er with me and it would be nice to throw it around the Austin trails. I christened it Tuesday at – where else – Memorial Park, the first place I ever went mountain biking (sans the mountain). After a few minor tweaks here and there I think I’ve got everything dialed in just right.

Oh, and before I leave for Austin tonight, I need to drive my mom to their airport so she can get to Little Rock in time to drive down with my sister on Saturday. My ETA for Austin is 9 pm at which point I plan to eat and crash. I wanted to see my friend’s husband’s brother-in-law’s band (huh?), but alas, it will have to be another time.

You are now fully apprised of my life in all of it’s mind-numbing glory and I instruct you to proceed here (SFW). I think I have a new “thing” to say now.

I reckon it’s about that time. This born and bred Houstonian is off to Dallas tomorrow morning. Tall buildings and whatnot. Houston has it’s share of skyscrapers, but Dallas just has this vibe. The finance industry. The Federal Reserve. Those crazy highways. Hopefully big city life won’t corrupt me.

Who am I kidding.

Before i get into describing the staggering awesomeness and total exhaustion of the weekend, which will take me a couple days to get to, i have this to say: it felt good to be in a place where people have tatoos of Texas on various body parts. You don't see that so often in Houston. But in Austin it's standard issue. Gotta love it.

The Austin City Limits music festival has gotten cocky in its old age. They let you bring your camelback, but it has to be empty. WTF? No water allowed. Oh, but you can bring “two factory sealed water bottles up to 1 liter each.” I sweat two liters of water in five minutes. Two liters is a joke. Meanwhile, I’m betting a half-liter bottle of water costs $7. Someone out there in ACL-land is making way too much money, or getting a really good laugh out of this. Fuckers.

I just felt like channeling a little bit of the stuff that bugs me vibe.

The fun part is that I’ll be skipping class all of Friday and probably Monday since I won’t have read anything all weekend. Wait – I never read anymore. Looks like I’ll be in class Monday.

I saw:

• Gomez
  
• Thievery Corporation (only a few minutes)
  
• Gnarls Barkley (only a few minutes)
  
• Wolf Parade (only a few minutes)
  
• John Mayer (only a few minutes) (ugh)
  
• Ben Kweller (only a few minutes)
  
• Nada Surf (only a few minutes)
  
• The Shins
  
• The Raconteurs
  
• Massive Attack
  
• Ween
  
• The New Pornographers (only a few minutes)
  
• The Greencards
  
• Muse
  
• Tom Petty (only a few minutes)

My top picks were Muse, Massive Attack, The Raconteurs, and Gomez. Three of those bands happen to be from the UK and they happen to be bands I’ve been waiting to see for three years, so this ACL was kind of a big deal to me. These bands don’t come to the US often.

Muse was phenomenal.* Everything was there – musical accuracy, stage antics, variety of song choice, and sound quality. They must have a great sound guy. I was concerned they’d have a hard time translating the complexity of their studio recordings into a live performance but they seem to have a good handle on it. In fact, the same goes for Massive Attack. I didn’t know what to expect with them. I wasn’t even sure they’d have a full band, but they did. They had two drummers. I pegged them as more of an electronic outfit with various keyboards and synths doing all the work. I was also happy to see they toured with the two extra vocalists featured on their studio tracks. Massive Attack are experts at gradual builds and they pulled it off well in the live performance. The light show was also impressive. The main vocalist made a few comments about our buddy W, and on the next song, the light display behind the band scrolled factoids about the Iraq war: the number of Americans killed, the number of Iraqis killed, the cost of the war to American taxpayers, the number of displaced Iraqi civilians, so on and so forth. It was sobering.

The Raconteurs, Jack White’s new band, were insane. That guy is possessed. I saw The White Stripes a long time ago at Emo’s in Austin and I thought he was nuts then. He’s only more crazy now. If you get the chance, definitely check this band out. They will not disappoint.

Gomez was a little more reserved than I had hoped for. They didn’t really let loose and kept to the more mellow tracks. There was one song in particular I wanted to hear with a (surprise) distorted bass part, but they didn’t do it. What really bugged me was that the bass player hung back the whole show and stood by his amp. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a bass player who hides behind the band, musically or physically. Otherwise, they played some good songs and had a good time on stage.

What about Tom Petty? Yeah, there were about 50 million people standing between me and Tom Petty. Tom had already started by the time the Muse show ended. I walked for a while towards his stage and there was still at least a half-mile of people in front of me. There was no way I was going to get closer to see or hear anything. No amount of wattage could have moved the sound to where I and thousands of other people were. So I heard traces of a few songs and left with a couple friends. We ate at Magnolia, they went back to the hotel, and I hit the road to get home in time to sleep a few hours and be at work at 9.

Just my luck, I ran into a torrential downpour on I-71 that brought me down to 30 miles per hour. My sight was limited to 10 feet in front of me. Thankfully I finally got away from the rainstorm and cruised the rest of the way, getting home at 2 am. Seven hours later, I was at my desk, ears ringing and head groggy.

Pictures i lifted from flickr:

Muse:

Massive Attack:

The light towers:

The Raconteurs:

Jack White screaming his head off:

Gomez:

*Addendum: My only complaint about Muse was that ACL pulled the plug on them too early. They were supposed to have a forty-five minute set (which was already too short), but since Tom Petty had started playing, the singer said, "We'd love to keep playing but the people running show are going to pull the power on us because Tom Petty has started." Hence, some of my ambivalence towards seeing Tom Petty.

I love it when you’re out dancing with a group of friends and the dance floor is so crowded that you bump into a couple dancing and turn around to find them mugging down while his hands are exploring various intimate areas of her person. No problemo, I think we’ve all been there, right? But when their bodies coated in love-sweat keep bumping into you, it’s about that time when one of your friends says, "Yeah, looks like we’re caught in the middle of a porn."

Dallas was fun. I think I scored on the dance floor.

I’m going to Dallas this weekend to hang out with my Dallas crew and the law firm. I was supposed to go up there in September but never found a free weekend. My school is having a softball tournament this weekend that I wanted to see, but this is probably my last chance to goof off before I have to start studying, or at least pretend like I’m studying.

But before I can split town for Dallas, I have to sit through two hours of class. Senioritis has totally kicked in.

I’m taking my road bike up there but the weather doesn’t look good for outdoor activities (and it doesn’t here either… good luck softball people). Saturday might stay dry so everyone please do a rain dance or something. Or I guess the anti-rain dance. Whatever it takes.

This is where I’m going after I finish taking the bar next summer, or during the week preceding the release of the scores. Or both. I forbid anyone else from going there during that time. If I find you there, I’m chasing you down with my guitar and you’re gonna have to swim to the next island.

I was at a bar and someone in my group said, “that tastes like fermented curry!”

In other news, my three-week stint at the firm is over and I head back to Houston on Monday, but not before causing a little more damage this weekend. I’ve also rediscovered the awesomeness of Fish and Chips. If you’re ever at a pub and feel like something other than standard tex-mex or chicken strips, try the Fish and Chips. It’s really good and will give you horrible breath. You’ll be a favorite at the table.

I’ll miss zipping around in my friend’s BMW. Yes, I have gotten better at driving manual, but I’m still no expert. I either over-rev the engine or kill it when getting into first, and shifting to second will give you whiplash. After that, I’m golden, but most driving takes place in gears one through three (though this car is a six-speed, so I spend most of my time in fourth).

The cool part is that my friend is thinking of moving to Europe for a while after he gets back from his vacation there. He’s thinking Munich. That sounds good to me, because I can continue to “watch over” his car while he’s gone. I can’t wait to call my insurance company and say, “Hi, I’d like add a monstrosity of a BMW with a V8 to my plan. And oh yeah, I’m male, single, and have no kids. How much will that run me?”

My friend gets back sometime tomorrow so I better start cleaning this place up. Ironically, it was messier before I got here; I vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen floor as soon as I arrived, which are things I don’t think he’s ever done. But in the meantime, stuff has managed to pile up everywhere. So I might spend today in cleaning mode. Cross your fingers.

Do you ever get that feeling that you’ll be out drinking for the unforeseeable future? This always happens when you’re about to move out of one place and into another, or when friends are moving out of one place and into another. For me, all of those things are happening, which means I’ll be getting ‘see you soon’ drinks, ‘welcome back’ drinks, and ‘it was fun’ drinks for someone who is leaving Houston. Not that I’m complaining. I just feel like the bartenders at some of these bars are starting to recognize me. And that is a scary thought.

Seventh installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

For those not wise to Texas talk, The Valley refers to the Rio Grande Valley, or more generally, the area around the border. My friend Ricardo is from Edinburg, a smallish town in The Valley with about 50,000 people. I’ve known this guy for almost 10 years and I have yet to visit him in The Valley, so I figured it was about time I made the trip. So I hopped on a plane to McAllen (the closest airport) to spend four days exploring the bosom of the Rio Grande Valley.

I’m hoping you picked up on the bosom reference above. I’ll give you one hint: a coffee can and the pacific ocean.

Large quantities of beer were consumed and some excellent Tex-Mex was had. Note, however, that not all the tex-mex was good. Proximity to Mexico does not automatically result in higher quality levels of tex-mex. There is no correlation. Case in point: the first restaurant we went to served some pretty lame tex-mex. My mom makes better tex-mex, and she’s basically Polish. No matter. The rest of the tex-mex we had was good.

We managed to make a trip to Mexico, or rather the tourist area for buying souvenirs and whatnot called Nuevo Progreso just across the river. I have never seen so much useless shit for sale. I have also never seen such amazing prices on alcohol. Bottles and bottles of liquor at ridiculous prices. Otherwise, it reminded me of my time in Russia: children hawking all kinds of knick-knacks, low air quality, overcrowding, etc. It was not a pleasant sight. Kind of depressing actually. Keep in mind we only saw the shops on the tourist strip. I can’t imagine what it was like off the main road.

After Mexico, we stopped by South Padre Island. It was my first time there. Yeah, I know. What took me so long. I don’t know. I just never made it down there. It was kind of deserted since we were there in the off-season. It was kind of a ghost town. We did have some good seafood though. Or, actually, my fish po-boy was good. Ric’s shrimp platter was not that great. He wasn’t too keen on eating “shrimp poo.” The shrimp were not de-veined. Sorry bud.

To my surprise, minor league hockey is huge in The Valley. We saw the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees battle the Amarillo Gorillas and beat them in overtime. It was pretty cool. I haven’t seen a hockey game since I was a kid and this game reminded me how much fun hockey is to watch. It’s like football on ice, but the players are allowed to fight until one guy falls down. And the overtime shootouts are awesome.

Ric also has a small radio-controlled helicopter that totally mesmerized us every minute that we were at home. This thing is incredible. I have to get one. You can only use it indoors because it’s made of Styrofoam and any wind will blow it clear across your yard into someone else’s yard, or a tree, or a street, or who knows what.

We also watched a lot of movies, one of which was Nacho Libre with Jack Black. You have to be a Jack Black fan to like this movie. It is absurd and over-the-top in a way only Jack Black can pull off. He plays a Luchador, a Mexican wrestler. I took to calling him Luchador Grande because, well, Jack’s a tubby guy. Ric happens to have a little dog named Chato who liked to bark at me at every opportunity. He was a sprite little guy who could have been a wrestler if he were a person. So I started calling him Chato Grande in honor of his wrestling potential.

And that’s my Valley story. Hope you enjoyed it. Actually, I don’t care. I’m a Luchador and I’ll do an eagle jump off the ropes and take you out.

It's called the "Where Should Particleman Go After The Bar" game. I encourage your suggestion to be different and daring. Do not take cost into account, since I will most likely be borrowing (yet more!) money to pay for the trip. Do, however, take safety and digestive issues into account. With exception to Israel, I do not want to go any country I have already visited:

Canada
Costa Rica
Ecuador
England
Holland
Belgium
Germany
Austria
Italy
France
Czech Republic
Israel
Russia
Lithuania

The eighth installment of the series.

1. You are forced to steal your own car because the alarm has malfunctioned and locked the ignition
2. Your alarm goes off while driving, so you rip out the lead wire to the siren
3. Once in Dallas, the alarm drains your battery while you’re out partying at bars
4. You wake up at 6:30 on Saturday morning to attend a 5K run your law firm is sponsoring
5. It’s 35 degrees. You don’t run . Instead, you get the best 20-minute massage of your life.
6. It snows.
7. Later that day, you and your boss’ brother manage to jump your car and bypass the alarm by ripping apart the rest of the alarm assembly. Wires dangle from under your steering wheel.
8. You play your friend’s Nintendo Wii. You want a Wii too.
9. You almost bust a lung laughing at all the rabbits you’re shooting with plungers. Rabbits don’t like plungers and you have a plunger gun. Life is good.
10. You eat Mediterranean food with friends on Saturday night. One of the guests just happens to be the law student from whom you sublet an apartment last summer.
11. You can’t remember how well you cleaned the apartment when you moved out but you hope it was good enough, because she’s sitting right there.
12. Hennessey mixed with Grand Marnier becomes your new favorite drink when your friend insists you try it later that night.
13. You nickname one of your friends "Roshanda Bangkok Nigeria Horowitz."
14. You and your friends eat lunch the next morning in the part of town affectionately termed “The Gayborhood.” You might have been checked out, but you’re not sure. Your waiter is wearing bunny ears and a bunny tail (hello, it’s Easter).
15. You play more Nintendo and take the record for fastest rabbit runner, but running in Nintendo has nothing to do with feet.

I should have decided to move EAST.

WTF.

[ click for larger version ]

Mexico won the contest. It's close, it's cheap, and I've never been. I am going to Riviera Maya with two of my Dallas friends for seven days. The itinerary will go something like this:

1. Locate beach with white sand and crystal blue water
2. Secure alcoholic beverage
3. Claim easy chair or hammock
4. Decompress

Repeat repeatedly. Other activities may include:

1. Snorkeling, sailing, etc.
2. Visiting ancient ruins
3. Hopping to nearby islands for day-trips
4. Renting a moped and riding around
5. See four items above

Thanks everyone for playing. One day, I will visit all of the other places. One day...

I am cursed to have bad laptop luck. The laptop my dad fixed a couple months ago done broke again, and this time, the breakage was permanent. Fed up with buying laptops that consistently fail right when I need them, I resolved to never again spend a lot of money on a new laptop, which is convenient because I don't really have any.

I hopped on Craigslist while I was in Dallas over Spring Break and found an IBM X30 for $450. It's a tad low on RAM (256 MB) and it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, but it's well-built and very, very light. At least i thought it was well-built until i cracked the edge of the case. I put it in my backpack after one class, walked to my next class, and there was a crack in the case waiting for me when I pulled out the laptop.

No matter. It still works. As for the RAM, I sucked it up and bought 512 more MB. It's a little quicker now.

Via onotob. Sorry, but you kind of have to be a nerd to know what this means. Non-nerds will have to do the best they can.

var particleman = everyone.getPerson['Particleman'];
var myPerspective = {evil:'Having to take the Bar exam',good:'Riding bikes, drinking beer, reading books, and traveling'};
for (var personId in everyone)
{
var p = everyone[personId];
p.desiresNoBarExam = true;
p.proactive = true;
p.perspective = myPerspective;
p.send (particleman,p.assets.getAssetType('cash').getAmount(1,'dollar'));
}

Thanks Lee.

Much has happened recently. I went to my last law school class of all time. I've taken three final exams. I went to Austin for a wedding and got very drunk and danced up a storm. I rode my bike a few times. And I have enlisted the help of another pinch-blogger. Or rather, she volunteered. Her name is Pajama Grrl and she likes pajamas.

Tonight is my very last final exam of law school, EVAR. I am very excited. I graduate on Saturday and I plan on having a drink in my hand for the entire period in between.

I have this friend in Dallas. He's 26. He has two BMWs, a motorcycle, his own condo, and a bunch of random toys and gadgets to add "fun" and/or complexity to his life. He also has three degrees and is one of the smartest people I know. The other night, we had one of those conversations about life that makes you sit back and say, "I need a drink." Here are a couple excerpts cleaned up for your viewing pleasure. Words in [brackets] have been replaced for something less lewd. He gave me permission to post it. Names have been changed. Keep in mind Dallas Guy is more jaded than the average 26-year-old. He's a little on the bitter side for living in the same city his entire life.

(9:04:35 PM) Dallas Guy: so now where do I go?
(9:04:44 PM) Particleman: whereever your heart desires
(9:04:44 PM) Dallas Guy: if I had a plan I'd go do it already
(9:04:51 PM) Dallas Guy: or hell, if I had a goal
(9:04:56 PM) Dallas Guy: I can make plans
(9:05:08 PM) Particleman: tell me about your ideal week
(9:05:13 PM) Dallas Guy: I was always goal driven for everything my whole life
(9:05:19 PM) Particleman: regardless of location or cost of living
(9:05:24 PM) Dallas Guy: and now Ive met all my goals
(9:05:46 PM) Dallas Guy: my ideal week is one where I go solving
problems all day long and I never do anything repetitive
(9:06:09 PM) Dallas Guy: and then I go home and [sleep with] some hot chick that argues with me about politics and tries to put me in my place
(9:06:27 PM) Particleman: you want marriage
(9:06:47 PM) Particleman: and a cool job
(9:06:54 PM) Dallas Guy: but not to some dumb jewish chick that was raised to be a trophy
(9:07:14 PM) Dallas Guy: I want a smart ambitious girl that's out to prove her d*ck is bigger than mine
(9:07:45 PM) Particleman: but you didn't dispute the original statement
(9:07:48 PM) Dallas Guy: and the cool job, I think I know the route on
that, its just timing now
(9:07:49 PM) Particleman: you want marriage
(9:07:52 PM) Dallas Guy: I do
(9:07:56 PM) Particleman: you want it now?
(9:08:10 PM) Dallas Guy: not necessarily
(9:08:17 PM) Dallas Guy: in the next 3 years though
(9:08:35 PM) Particleman: thats what you think. you are totally in your quarter life crisis
(9:08:55 PM) Particleman: you are sick of the daily grind and are just waiting for the next cool thing
(9:09:55 PM) Dallas Guy: It's totally a quarter life crisis
(9:09:59 PM) Dallas Guy: in a bad bad way
(9:10:20 PM) Particleman: you bought the cars, the motorcycle, the toys, the crazy trips to far off places
(9:10:37 PM) Dallas Guy: that sounds more like a midlife crisis
(9:10:48 PM) Dallas Guy: thats what makes mine unique
(9:11:06 PM) Dallas Guy: most quarter life people are busy trying to find something stable to call home
(9:11:25 PM) Dallas Guy: I'm tired of the stable and craving anything else which is the midlife crisis
(9:12:26 PM) Dallas Guy: its like a desperate attempt to convert the fruits of my previous labor (salary, savings, freedom, etc...) into excitement for my otherwise uneventful life
(9:12:40 PM) Dallas Guy: only to be left with an uneventful life and lots of toys
(9:13:09 PM) Dallas Guy: I should probably talk to some 50 year olds about their midlife crisis
(9:13:17 PM) Dallas Guy: and their personal resolution to it
(9:14:05 PM) Particleman: i disagree. you have the new young-professional quarter life crisis
(9:14:36 PM) Particleman: your life turned into that of a 40 year old and it freaks you out. 9-5 job. house note. car note. traffic. monotony. boring job. you miss the excitement of being young(er) and without obligations and responsibilities
(9:14:59 PM) Dallas Guy: I guess thats it
(9:15:04 PM) Dallas Guy: so how do u fix it
(9:15:39 PM) Particleman: leave dallas. find a better job and/or move to a new place. just don't carry your problems around with you. and realize there will always be obligations and sh*t

...

(9:18:24 PM) Dallas Guy: right after I bought my place i realized that this was the beginning of the end of my life
(9:18:35 PM) Particleman: nothing is that permanent
(9:18:54 PM) Dallas Guy: it's like the people at work. they all have the same life as me
(9:19:15 PM) Dallas Guy: they have a job, some random hobbies, some loans, and whatever
(9:19:22 PM) Dallas Guy: some are married, some have kids
(9:19:31 PM) Dallas Guy: but in the end it's slavery to a system
(9:19:48 PM) Dallas Guy: and we do it so we can buy bigger houses and fancier cars
(9:19:53 PM) Particleman: give me a break. slavery my ass.
(9:20:09 PM) Dallas Guy: indentured servitude sound better?
(9:20:21 PM) Particleman: you're useless man
(9:20:30 PM) Dallas Guy: I really think I would be happy living in a jungle
(9:20:36 PM) Dallas Guy: or the side of a mountain
(9:20:44 PM) Dallas Guy: killing sh*t to eat when I got hungry
(9:20:57 PM) Dallas Guy: and otherwise banging some [sexy] jungle chick
(9:21:16 PM) Particleman: can i put that on my website?
(9:21:22 PM) Dallas Guy: put what
(9:21:30 PM) Particleman: your jungle thing
(9:21:32 PM) Particleman: that's funny
(9:21:33 PM) Dallas Guy: sure
(9:21:53 PM) Particleman: lol
(9:22:00 PM) Particleman: my site is too clean for that
(9:22:06 PM) Dallas Guy: u gonna keep the [sexy] jungle chick
(9:22:20 PM) Dallas Guy: you can use nicer words

And so I did.

This is the ninth edition of the "things that happen to you while" series.

Things that happen to you while on route to, at, and on route back from a wedding in Abilene, TX:

1. You drive through a bunch of small towns inhabited by people that probably consider a "home" to consist of no less than 100 acres.

2. You decide you should give up city life and get yourself some la-yand out in the country. It really does look like a nice lifestyle. Sure beats the hell out of sitting on 59 every day.

3. You meet (or re-meet) the groom's childhood friends who were an excellent group of people who you had a great time with.

4. With the groom present, you trade stories about the groom with said group of friends about his various and sundry exploits with women over the years. The groom turns red and buries his face in his hands. Only then do the really good stories come out. Almost every story starts with, "HEY, oh yeah, remember that time he..."

5. You watch one of said friends attach a ball and chain to the groom's ankle and give the key to the bride.

6. You drink a lot of beer. A lot. A really really lot. But somehow you don't get drunk, which could be a good or bad sign depending on your point of view.

7. One of the friends bought the bride and groom a Sony Playstation with a game called Guitar Hero. You try it out, and marvel at how much more difficult it is pretending to play guitar than actually playing guitar. You also marvel at the zen-like state of concentration exhibited by two of the groom's and bride's friends who are Guitar Hero experts.

8. You run into one of the groom's friends who you met when you lived in San Antonio and worked at "that company." You discuss all the crazy and stupid things the company did, and he updates you on all the crazy and stupid things the company is still doing. You're glad there is consistency in the universe.

9. You get to see your friend who you convinced to go to law school when you lived in San Antonio get married to a girl who went to law school with him, and you wonder what would have happened if he had gone to the school you advised him to go to instead of the school he actually went to. He probably wouldn't have met that girl, and he probably wouldn't have gotten married this weekend, and he probably wouldn't have looked like he was about to pass out for the thirty-six hours before the ceremony. "Dude, you're sweatin' like a mofo. Stand under this vent and have this beer. You need it."

10. As your friend is standing at the altar saying his vows, you silently pray and hope that he and his wife enjoy a lifetime of happiness and success. L'Chaim!!

10.5. You also pray and hope that he doesn't start using the excuse, "I'm married and boring now" to get out of trips to the bar and whatnot. It's not gonna fly. Like any good relationship, ours was founded while drinking, and it's important that we adhere to that standard.

I'm in Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun with Pajama Grrl and Evil I and we're having a blast. the water really is as blue as the pictures. We rented mo-peds to ride around the island yesterday and it resulted in a spectacular crash by yours truly. I clearly have no concept of how to regulate speed on a motorized two wheeled vehicle. I'm not even that great at regulating speed on a non-motorized two wheeled vehicle, to be honest.

The first problem was that my scooter kept stalling on me, so they gave me a new one. By the time the new one was fueled up and ready to go, my friends had already ridden off, so i hauled ass to catch up with them, found myself on a sandy road and accidentally gunned the throttle instead of pulling the brakes. You see, i have a habit of twisting the grips on my bike when riding, so when i twisted the grips on the scooter, it did exactly the opposite of what i wanted it to do. When i realized i had speed up and thay i was heading right for a parked go-kart, i turned the wheel and slammed on the brakes, thus causing the rear wheel to depart from its normal course and slide away from beneath me, sending me right-shoulder first to the ground.

It was glorious. Yes, i was wearing a helmet. But I was also wearing shorts and sandals, so my leg and toes are pretty torn up. Thankfully, i didn't lose a toenail.

But now that i have gotten the hang of riding motorized two wheeled vehicles, i kind of want a motorcycle...

Next on the agenda: more beer, more beach, more Mexican food, and more Neosporin to help my cuts heal.

I'm taking a vacation from my vacation. I forgot how totally exhausting vacations can be. Well, this was one wasn't that exhausting. I did log a good 30 hours of beach time, which basically equates to sitting under an umbrella sipping on mojitos. It was good. Much needed. I also turned into something of a tri-color version of myself. Some was my usual pasty white, some was burned, some was tan. I'm not telling you which part was which.

As for retelling the story of the vacation, so much happened during the course of those seven days that I can't really remember it all and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to recount the trip.

Ok, the real reason I can't remember it all is that the sun or the alcohol beat all memory capability out of me. We all got kind of loopy after a while. I do remember a few things though.

- The seafood was excellent. I spent the whole week eating fish and shrimp.
- Mexicans like their mojitos really sweet. There was a cache of sugar at the bottom of every one (more so than usual).
- My tolerance for alcohol has sadly gone up.
- Mexican women are gorgeous. I think I want one.
- Aussies, Israelis, Brits, Italians, and Germans love Mexico. They were everywhere.
- Restaurant owners assumed my friends and I were Israeli, and first spoke to us in Hebrew instead of English. Evil I does look kind of Israeli (he's brown). Thankfully, Evil I and I do speak Hebrew, so we were able to correct the mistaken restauranteurs.
- When I spoke to members of the public, a mix of English, Spanish, and Hebrew came out.
- In case you forgot, "C" on the shower knob stands for "calor," not cold.
- If you get a Mexican cabbie on coke, hold on tight. Try closing your eyes for extra fun.
- Seat belts are kind of pointless because you'd probably rather die in the accident than get sent to a hospital.
- Bus drivers drive like they're in a small compact car.
- Taking a bus is always more fun than taking a cab.
- It helps to know the CEO of a nightclub on the Cancun strip.
- White sand and turquoise water are intoxicating.

More memories may trickle in over the coming days. Who knows what's rolling around up there.

I start the job on Monday. I'm excited. My boss will apparently be out of town for my whole first week, so that should make things interesting. Oh yeah, and some fun facts about my apartment (a duplex): When we arrived, there were no numbers on the house, so I wandered around for 20 minutes before I found the place. The dishwasher did not work. The previous occupant felt a minimal need to clean before moving out. The back door did not lock. My shower drain did not drain. The smoke detectors were simply decoration. But everything is slowly getting fixed and our landlord is great, and the apartment itself is spacious and nice. Pajama Grrl and I are happy. No, PJ and I are not dating. Get those dirty ideas out of your head.

I'm going to Boston for work for a couple days. It's only my second time in Boston and I'm really excited. I had a great time last time I was there.

In other news, I went to an 80's party on Saturday night and I have great pictures of my outfit. Or rather, Evil I has pictures. I think. Someone took pictures of me in that sweet turquoise blazer...

I'm back from my trip. Turns out we didn't go to Boston. We went to Cambridge, which is close enough if you ask me. It was essentially a trade show combined with seminars given by experts in the field. And by trade show, I mean that I sat at a booth with a marketing person from my firm and met all kinds of intelligent and interesting people, some of whom are on the cutting edge of the industry. The industry I'm talking about is the information security and privacy industry, i.e., the protection of your personal information as it is held by financial institutions and other companies that might get access to your personal info.

I met computer security professors from George Washington University, law professors from the John Marshall School Of Law, VPs from AIG, directors from Shell, attorneys from USAA, security people from Microsoft, so on and so forth. It was incredible. I had a really good time.

Now for the weird stuff. I went to a pub with my colleague and bought us beer at the counter. I made a motion to sit at a table, and the bartender said, "You can't sit at a table if you buy beer at the counter." What? What kind of stupid-ass rule is that? Aren't I spending money regardless? I offer to buy food at the table, and the bartender acquiesces. My colleague and I pick a table which could seat four or five people. There are only two of us, however. Right after we sit down, a waitress approaches us and says, "If it's just the two of you, you can't sit there, you have to sit at a smaller table." What the &#%@!!! Can we please drink our beers in peace! Fine. We go to a smaller table for two.

After a while, I get word from my boss that she's coming by to have a drink with us. Her client meeting had ended. I drag an empty table over to ours to make room for her, at which point our new waitress says, "Why did you do that, do you have more people coming?" No, I just like having extra space for my imaginary friends. Can't you see them? YES, more people are coming. She asks how many. Ugh! "Two," I tell her. Turns out it was only one, but screw it, I don't give a damn by this point. Oh yeah, and I didn't think much of their quesadillas either, but that was to be expected. Hell, we were in Massachusetts. I will not name this particular pub to save it from any embarrassment. If you want to know, post a comment and leave your email address.

That was the not-so-great service experience. The good service experience came from a burger joint called Charlies Kitchen (no, it doesn't have an apostrophe before the 's'). Our waitress was 78 years old and had worked there for 45 years. She was a sweetheart and totally entertaining, but unfortunately their iced tea was not that sweet. In fact, it tasted a little like cough syrup. But my colleague and I bought T-shirts nonetheless. For the record, we got the signature double cheeseburger. Get it. The fries are good too.

Overall, I found the trip a success. We met some great people, possibly got some new clients, learned a lot about the industry, and gained more exposure for our firm. Mission accomplished.

To pre-empt some questions: no, I did not have any chowder. No, I did not pick up a Boston accent. Yes, I did visit Harvard but was not that impressed (sorry, the grounds were kind of lame). Yes, I did go to the Harvard Co-op, which they strangely call The Coop. Those crazy New Englanders.

It's been a long time since I've been to San Antonio. I promised my friends there many times I would come visit, but alas, law school and work continually got in the way. Well, last weekend, I finally made good on my promise. I caught a flight down to San Antonio (aka SA aka Saytown) on Friday and hung out with all my old friends.

Friday found us at Blue Star Brewery for First Friday, which is a monthly art, music, and food extravaganza held in South Town, an area of San Antonio south of Downtown. After beer and dinner at Blue Star, we stumbled over to Beethoven's for Oktoberfest, where my friend consumed yet more beer and I got to play DD, which was fine by me because I wanted to see her have a good time (read: get drunk... friends are always funnier when drunk). Her friends also met us at Blue Star and were thoroughly entertaining. They tried to use my lawyering skills to sue each other. I got to explain the difference between assault and battery. I hope I got it right.

On Saturday, we had lunch with the infamous Skorloff and his Girl at Liberty Bar, which is really half-bar, half-restaurant. We got to learn about British toast soldiers and humpty dumpty, and Skorloff and I had Guinness for lunch. Good times. After that, we visited the Skorloff-Girl residence and I marveled at all the progress he's made on the house in the last three years. I think it mostly has to do with the addition of Girl, and the contractor Skorloff hired.

Then we went to a football party to watch the Texas Longhorns lose a great football game. Good job guys! I forgot that the object of football is turn the ball over to the other team as many times as possible. I'm glad you cleared that up for us.

After loafing around for a while, we got off our collective asses and went bowling with some other folks I hadn't seen since I left SA in 2004. They reassured me nothing had changed since I left. That was good to know. So, when are you moving???

I discovered two important and profound things while bowling that night. First: bowling with a beer in one hand will improve your performance. Second: bowling with your non-dominant hand will also improve your performance. Net result? If you're right-handed, hold a beer in your right hand and bowl with your left. I promise your score will go up.

Everyone slept in Sunday morning and we ate lunch at Twin Sister's, which is kind of like Liberty Bar, except with less alcohol and more breakfast. I caught a three o'clock flight and was sped off back to Dallas just in time to chill out at home for a little while and head to band practice at six.

It was a fun and crazy weekend and I had a great time. Thanks again to the coolest girls in San Antonio for driving me around and playing host for a weekend. You are both welcome in Dallas any time.

I got to Mexico city last Saturday and have gotten the pleasure of experiencing the backwards third world for a few days and thought I would share my experiences.

First of all, the city is filthy, dirty and disgusting. Please see the picture below for an example. (The square thing is a mall)

Secondly, the government services are ridiculously slow. It took me 3 documents, 30 dollars (not bribe money), and 3 hrs to get a voter registration card (which is the national id card needed for any transaction ever), a drivers license, and another card I apparently need which I still cannot figure out what its for.

Thirdly, the service on my blackberry took nearly 5 minutes before it was seamlessly syncing with my company at home so I can continue to receive paychecks.

I know I just got here, but I think I am ready to go home. The live in maids and natural food are making me crazy. Please feel really really bad for me.

Peace
-Evil I

While we're on the topic of Mexico, and fake cities, I was fishing around in my wallet the other day and found the following slip of paper I picked up at one of the hotels Pajama Grrl, Evil I, and I stayed at while in Cancun. It said (yes, in caps):

SI UD NADA CON DELFINES, CONTRIBUYE A QUE MUCHOS MUER DURANTE SU CAPTURA

The English translation said:

IF YOU SWIM WITH DOLPHINS, YOU CONTRIBUTE TO MANY OF THEM DIE DURING THE CAPTURE

I'd like to reiterate that this message came in a handy, portable medium, capable of being folded up, placed in a pocket or wallet, and retrieved later additional consultation. You know, in case you forgot what it said.

Does blogging from a blackberry on public transportation in Guanajuato make me a douche?

Does blogging from a blackberry on public transportation in Guanajuato make me a douche?

Aside from testing the limits of my douchiness, I have also been doing other stuff and felt this would be an appropriate time to update my loyal fan-base!

I spent a week in San Miguel de Allende and loved it there; but a week was about as much as I could handle. Its really pretty and peaceful, but a little too peaceful for my taste.

I was set up with a nice very young girl by my family and felt like a dirty old man the entire time, she was 22, and I am 27.

I had my tarot read and found out 2008 would be a good year for me. I also found out that my aura was in bad shape and needed a cleansing. I have been given some magical potions and soaps to clean up my aura. My primary concern now is what happens if I realize I like it dirty? Where is the karmic mud to go play in?

Ive had to watch first hand the drama of having maids steal jewelry out of someone's house. I still think live in maids rock though and that an investment in a safe is always appropriate anywhere.

I have eaten lots of street tacos and fresh fruit from the street (gasp!!!) and did not die. I also brush my teeth with tap water. I really am living on the wild side!

Otherwise Ive been working and hanging out and going to random ruins and tourist places and it has been a good time.

I am going to the beach on Friday for new years which I am really looking forward too.

I hope everyone has a great new years and had a good christmas and an even better next year.

Evil I

I had a crazy weekend. Maybe not crazy according to Evil I's standards though, because he brushes his teeth with Mexican tap water and goes out with 22 year old girls. That's what I call crazy!

I hauled ass to Houston right after work on Friday and got in around 10 and went to straight to a bar, where I met up with some law school friends and John (he gets special mention becasue he's not "law school"). I then proceeded to get drunk. It's amazing what four pints of Harp will do when you have an empty stomach and you just sat in a car for four hours. Good times. After the hangover wore off Saturday morning, I realized I was completely congested and couldn't breathe. It seems I'm allergic to Houston.

After stopping by my parents' house to pick up a few things, my friend Megan and I went to a Jewish dining staple in Houston - the New York Hot Bagels Coffee Shop. I had bagels and lox (what else could I order?) and she had some kind of tuna salad thing. Megan is Catholic and loves learning about my Jewish-ness, so I had to show her a little bit of Jewish Houston. After that, we ran some thrilling errands - Bed, Bath, & Beyond and Target. I bought a new shower head and new towels. They rock. I had no idea towel-buying was so intense. Racks and racks of towels with varying degrees of softness. I'm happy with my purchase. My towels are amply soft, yet stylish.

I had dinner with a couple law school buddies at Barnaby's, which was fun. Then I went to another law school friend's party and schmoozed till 1 am - a truly late night indeed. I woke up this morning with that funny feeling you get when you're getting sick. I think I may be coming down with a sinus infection. Lucky me! Just in time for New Years Eve! With any luck I'll be hacking up gobs of gooeyiness in no time. Sorry for the unnecessary detail. I guess it's too late now though.

Getting back to the title of this post, I am about to leave town and head back to Dallas so i can catch the Ghostland Observatory show tonight with one of my workmates. I'm totally psyched. I saw this band at ACL and they were awesome. Totally unexpectedly good.

However, if I find any 22-year olds at the show, I may ask them out so I can live on the edge like Evil I. Details to come.

I'm off to Austin this weekend to see the kiddos, aka M&M aka Max and Maya aka my niece and nephew. It will be a good trip. I need a break. Work has been rough the past couple weeks. I inherited a monstrous case and it was my turn for it to overwhelm me, and overwhelmed I was. I might take my bike to ride around the beautiful hills around my sister's house. Outside is calling me. Clarity is calling me. I need to clear my head. There's a lot of crud in there and I'm hoping a change of scenery will help. I feel kind of broken. Maybe Austin can fix me.

Oh yeah, it snowed here in Dallas yesterday. I woke up and found an inch or two of snow on my car. Fun.

Happy weekend.

I'm back home from Austin. It was a good trip. Max and Maya are the cutest and funniest kids I've ever seen. Maya likes to dance to radio stations on cable TV - especially KISS and Tears For Fears. Max likes to repeat whatever the adults say. My brother-in-law was feeding Max some macaroni when Max spontaneously announced: "No More Attitude." I guess it's something my sister and brother-in-law tell his older sister when she gets saucy.

Otherwise, I hung out and chilled with the fam. On Saturday afternoon, I did a fun thing I like to call "hill repeats." Find yourself one hill, or a set of hills, and ride your bike up and down until your lungs seize up and your legs fall off. Going 37 miles per hour down a hill is pretty thrilling, and kind of scary. Cranking back up the hill at four miles per hour, with no end in sight - not so thrilling. Regardless, it's a form of self-torture I find cleansing.

On Saturday night, my friend and his fiance made dinner for the three of us at their house and we drank wine and caught up. After his fiance went to bed, my friend and I watched a Bugatti race a fighter jet on You Tube. It was a nice and relaxing evening. Not to mention they gave me a bottle of wine - that they made and bottled themselves.

Since I don't like Microsoft, and I don't want to pay stupid sums of money for Office, I downloaded OpenOffice, free of charge, from their webite and have been running it for about six months. I'm happy to report it doesn't suck. It's actually pretty good, especially considering how much I paid for it. No, it's not a flashy as Office 2007, or even Office 2003, but it gets the job done. Its version of Excel handles formulas just the same as Microsoft's version, and the documents are all cross-compatible. Just be sure you save your "Word" doc as .doc so Microsoft can open it on someone else's computer.

In other news, I'm buying a plane ticket to NYC to my friend over the July 4th weekend. I'm psyched. I'm also pondering a trip to London or Israel, depending entirely on scheduling and flight prices. What was once an $1100 ticket to Israel is now $1700. Bummer. Even England is over a grand now. I remember when flights to London could be had for under $500, and I'm not talking about the "Go to London for Three Days, Starting Tomorrow" deals.

My sister and her family moved into a new house this past weekend. Being the dutiful brother, I drove to Austin to help with the move. Thankfully, they hired movers to do most of the heavy lifting, allowing me to avoid permanently injuring myself trying to move things that require actual strength. The cool part is that one of the movers' names was Devo. As in, the band. How cool is that? Way cool.

Less cool is having to be asked, "Like, the band?" for your entire life.

I have three options where I could go on my next vacation:

1. Sevilla, Spain, to hang out with my friend and her boyfriend.
2. London, with the singer in my band, to hang out with our friend and all the fun random people she's met by the time we get there.
3. Akumal, Mexico, just south of Cancun, to hang out with some college buddies and their friends and go snorkeling and sit on the beach for a week and drink.

What do you think? I went to Mexico last summer. I was in London for three days in 2001. I was in Sevilla for one day in 2003. Cast your vote.

June 4 - 8: NYC with my boss. We're meeting with clients on Thursday and Friday and then staying for the weekend. It's my first time to New York proper so I'm psyched.

June 21-22: toobing in San Marcos.

July 4-6: NYC again. This trip was planned months ago; the one above was planned well afterward. I'm going to hang out with my friend who is interning at a law firm in NY. July 4th in New York! Woo hoo!

July 17-27: Israel. I haven't gone to visit my cousin in five years, so I figured it was time to suck it up and make the flight. I'm gonna plop down on the Tel Aviv beach and take in the scenery...

I'm in Israel visiting my family in Hertzliah. My cousin and I are about to go out to a "dance bar" with his friends. Apparently it's a bar with different kinds of music in different rooms. I think these things exist in Dallas, but I wouldn't know, because I keep going to pubs.

I got here yesterday afternoon and we went straight to the beach after I landed. It was awesome.

The rest of the week will consist of more beach, more bars, and some traveling around the country to go hiking, kayaking, and maybe camping. I haven't been in Israel since 2002 (I think) so it's nice to be back and see everyone.

More to come...

I went to New York for the July 4th weekend to hang out with one of my friends. It was a great time. I'm trying to recall everything we did but it's only coming back in pieces (as usual), so here is a jumbled list of what we did:

1. Saw Sonic Youth at a free outdoor concert at Battery Park
2. Waited in line to see Sonic Youth only to get turned away, but found a way to watch the show anyway with a bunch of people that were also turned away
3. Drank too much beer at a pub in Brooklyn, a bar in Brooklyn, and a Belgian bar in the West Village. The Belgian bar only served Belgian beer.
4. Ate street pizza in Brooklyn, and the West Village.
5. Convinced my friend's friend to propose to a girl in the subway with a quarter and a ring box I found attached to fake plastic Christmas tree branches wrapped around a light pole in Brooklyn. (she said no)
6. Went to the New Museum.
7. Went to Chelsea Pier and slept on the grass.
8. Went to Brooklyn Bridge.
9. Walked a lot.
10. Ate a lot of good food.
11. Watched a bartender spank a customer with a belt. He asked for it. So did a lot of other guys. They took pictures. She liked it too.

Thank you Jess for an awesome weekend.

I went to Israel in July to see family and hang out with my cousin. My cousin, a 28-year old computer engineer, managed to get all 10 days of my trip off from work. We did a lot of random stuff, so I'll just list everything out in completely nonsensical and unchronological order, as usual.

1. Went to Haifa to see the Bahaii Gardens and ride a cablecar. The gardens are on the side of a hill and are the most lush gardens I have ever seen.
2. Ate a lot of shawarma. A lot as in every other day. The shawarma in Dallas just isn’t the same.
3. Went hiking somewhere outside Jerusalem after the trail closed but also after my cousin was able to convince the guard to let us in anyway.
4. Manage to not get blown up (it’s not really not as bad as the media makes it seem. Don’t believe the hype. The country isn’t self-destructing).
5. Went to a lot of bars and pubs. Drank and danced.
6. Went to Hertzliyah beach twice and Tel Aviv beach twice.
7. Got completely sunburned at Tel Aviv beach. But not the time I stripped down to my boxers and jumped in the sea without sunscreen. I got burned when I wore sunscreen.
8. Avoided Jerusalem.
9. Discovered that lawyers have a worse reputation in Israel than they do in the US.
10. Met a lot of amazing people.
11. BBQ'd hamburgers, hot dogs, and shishkabobs in a park.
12. Went to Yafo, one of the oldest port cities in the world.
13. Embarrassed myself with my broken Hebrew on a daily basis.
14. Was informed my glasses were out of style and that I ought to get some new ones (I did. Once back at home. They’re cool).
15. At my uncle’s home-made falafel.
16. Gorged on humus.
17. Did I mention that I ate a lot?

My parents and friends are without power. I spent most of my life in Houston and I don't remember any hurricane causing this much damage, and Ike wasn't even that severe of a hurricane. If all goes according to plan, I will be in Houston this weekend helping my parents clean up and get things back in order. Thankfully, their house wasn't damaged.

In other news, um, I have no real other news. Except for that the summer is over and it's officially been one year since I started working full-time as a lawyer. It's been a great year. Challenging, but great, and I'm looking forward to the next year. A lot of interesting stuff is happening with copyright law and music law, stuff that no one except copyright law geeks like me care about, but here's one thing that you guys might appreciate: Lars Ulrich Fine with Metallica Album Leak.

I signed up for a bike tour in Glen Rose, TX called the Paluxy Pedal. Don't know where Glen Rose is? Yeah, neither did I. Turns out it's about 50 miles southwest of Ft. Worth in the Hill Country. Small towns all over Texas host bike tours throughout most of the year to attract tourists and support local businesses. This tour comes in four flavors: 30, 45, 60, and 80 miles. I opted for the 45-mile version since I'm out of shape and figure three to four hours on the bike is about all I'll feel like at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.

I signed up with my colleague and manager. When I sent the email to them asking if they were interested, the responses included:

Glen Rose is all about the hills. With me on a MTB (I'll get some more appropriate tires) and mostly out of shape, I hope you're ready for a slow ride.

45 miles? I've never even done 30.

Troopers they are, they both agreed to come along. The ride is Saturday, October 11, at 8:30 am. Show up hungover, out of shape, asleep, or on a tricycle. Whatever. I'll be at least three of those things.

If you're interested in other rides, check out TexBiker.net.

Winter showed up a while ago. I went into hiding. I've been working a lot. Working at work and working on my band. We played a show at a local Irish pub. Good times. I've also been doing a lot of traveling -all within Texas. Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. All of this is basically my attempt at making an excuse for not posting for two months. Oops. At either rate, I'm here, I'm back, and I'm ready to write. Run and hide.

I saw the Polyphonic Spree Holiday Extravaganza a couple weeks ago at the Granada Theater here in Dallas. In case you have no idea what any of that means, The Polyphonic Spree is an odd orchestral rock band with a varying lineup of musicians depending on the size of the venue. It's a little difficult to describe. The Polyphonic Spree creates positive music. It rocks. It's huge. It's complicated. It's a firehose of instrumentation. It's a wall of sound. Imagine a scaled-down orchestra complete with strings, horns, harp, flute, and percussion, combined with a six-piece choir, a rock band, a keyboard player, another keyboard player with sampling devices, and singer/conductor who sporadically jumps onto a podium to sing.

Some of the instruments get lost in the mix. The harp, flute, and strings were completely drowned out by the horns, choir, and rock band. There's a reason why orchestras don't have that many different types of instruments. Strings only work well when accompanied by other instruments when there are lots of strings to boost the sound. Horns, on the other hand, naturally push more air and need less amplification and can easily cut through the mix. The Polyphonic Spree ignores all of these usual constraints and throws together a patchwork quilt of instruments. I've been told that getting the sound mix right at live shows is a tricky task, and that if the sound is not mixed just right, the show is unlistenable.

The show itself was phenomenal. They played moving images on two gigantic movie projectors on either side of the venue hall throughout the entirety of the show. The first part of the show was the Christmas set. They covered Christmas songs of all types, some of which i knew, most of which i didn't. They also played a song from The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack which prompted me to watch the move twice the following week. I hadn't seen it since its release in the 90s.

The second half of the show, which went till after 2 am, was the "normal," non-Christmas set. Interspersed throughout the evening were other side-acts that helped distract us from the length of the show (it started at 8 and ended at 2:something). I was late to the show so I only caught two of the side acts. One was a subset of musicians from the main band that donned baroque wigs and played original and cover songs, one of which was Because by The Beatles. The other side act I saw was Morgan Taylor, a guy who created an entire world of music, images, and other media about a character he created named Gustafer Yellowgold. It seemed to be geared towards kids, but i found it catchy and kind of refreshing and innocent.

The Polyphonic Spree also liberally blasted the space above the audience with confetti and dumped balloons on our heads. The guy next to me lost his glasses to a stray balloon, only to recover them thanks to someone 10 feet away who found them on the floor.

A photographer also took pictures of the band and audience. I made it into several of the pictures. Here's one of them.

Where's Particleman?

Blog posts to come: New Toadies album, new Breeders album, re-discovering old music, finding the funk, and trying to stay in shape.

I went to Las Vegas for the first time. For a bachelor party. And I lost some money at a variety of establishments in and around the strip. I will not comment where I left my money and how I left it, but let it be known that Las Vegas is a money pit. A wild, crazy, and fun money pit. And it just so happens that I'm going back for Valentine's Day. The Girlfriend's birthday is February 13, so we're flying to Vegas to see Billy Joel and the Beatles Love show and to generally lose money together. Because losing money with your special someone is much better than losing money with a bunch of strangers.

Maybe this time the blackjack gods won't curse me hand after hand.

Here at particleman.org, we never make excuses for not posting regularly. Even when "not posting regularly" means not posting for three months. Oops.

Quite a few notable things have happened since we last spoke. My Beatles band finished a recording a demo, which was a lengthy and challenging experience, mostly because I was the one that did the recording. Let me tell you folks, recording a band is no simple feat, especially when recording with limited equipment and recording knowledge. We succeeded, however, and the demo is complete.

I decided to buy a house. I guess that makes me "responsible" and "adult" and "fucking broke." I had no idea buying a house was such massively costly ordeal. I'm not complaining, though, because the market is so favorable for buyers right now that my interest rate is ridiculously low, the gentlemen who owned the house sold it to me for less than market value because he was older and "wanted to help a young fella out," and Obama is going to give me $8,000, or so he says. I'll believe it when i see it.

Where is the house, you ask? In the cool part of town, of course. But not the cool part of town where everything is new and Europe-esque and completely overcrowded and overpriced (not that there's anything wrong with that - if that's what you like, hey, more power to you). My house is in the cool part of town where the houses were built in the 1950s, where someone's grandma and grandpa likely still live in their first house, where not three minutes away is a funky street lined with bars, cool restaurants, and a kick ass music venue, where literally across the street is a lake with a 10-mile bike path, and most importantly, where the land value will create a long-term investment for me.

Now, let's be realistic. A 1950s home? Wouldn't an older home be a slightly different owning experience than, say, a new home? Yes. Resoundingly yes. This house needs work. Quite a bit of work. But I'm determined to bring this house from 1955 to, at least, 1995. Maybe one day I can bring it to 2005. That shit gets expensive though, so I may hang out at 1995 for a while. Anyone have some nice used appliances they can sell me? I kid. Not really.

Consistent with that authentic particleman flavor of posting pictures of dishwashers, I will take a picture of the dishwasher in this house and post it for your amusement. It's a piece of American history. It should be in the Smithsonian. Or National Geographic. It will probably end up on Craigslist.

Other cool things that happened recently: As the previous post indicates, I went to Vegas, again, but this time with my special someone. We saw Billy Joel and the Beatles Love show and lost money at the craps table. Yay! I went to my girlfriend's parents' birthday party in San Antonio and spotted an older gentlemen reminiscing about the old days walking around with an oregano joint. I managed to not ride my bikes for two months (lame). I accidentally got really drunk last night at my friend's wedding rehearsal dinner after-party, and I woke up and wrote this blog post. My head still hurts. I'm going back to bed.

Particleman.org now has a webmaster. Not just any webmaster - but my beautiful, intelligent, and charmingly geeky girlfriend, henceforth known as CK. She got the captcha password thing to work on the comments after I failed miserably ages ago and then gave up entirely on having comments. Thank you, CK, for fixing my broken comments.

So - comment away. I guess this means I should start blogging more now.

Um, I planted grass this weekend. My legs hurt like a sonofabitch. I also saw bits and pieces of The Chronicles of Narnia, which has to be one of the longest movies I've somewhat paid attention to.

CK and I are planning a beach vacation. Should we go to Cancun proper, Isla Mujeres, or one of the other towns down the Riviera Maya coast? We're not too crazy about the touristy parts of the area, so Cancun does not score high on our list. I've been to Isla Mujeres and Tulum and liked them both, and I'm inclined to go back.

CK and I booked our beach vacation. We chose a hotel/resort/compound 30 minutes south of Cancun that seriously looks like another planet. I've been to Mexico before and I've seen the beaches, but this place just look ridiculous. They have their own jungle. I'm pretty excited.

What, you've never lived in Oman? Never even been there? Would you want to know what happens when two charismatic and outdoorsy engineers (I know that's kind of an oxymoron) from Texas pull up their roots and move to Oman for six months for work? Of course you do. Go here:

Bree and Brian's Excellent Adventures

Remember my old friend Mr. Pinch Blogger? He blogged on this here blog for quite some time, and did a bang-up job of it too. Well, he's the one who ran off to Oman with his wife. See more of his witty writings at his new, Oman-centric blog.

CK and I are in Aspen for a few days visiting her parents, who come to Aspen every summer for one to two weeks. So far, we've walked around the town and looked at a lot of things and eaten a lot of food, which I've found is extremely taxing and has alerted me to the low oxygen levels at this altitude. CK and I found several cool pubs frequented by what appear to be locals and 20-somethings with nothing better to do than drink.

Today, our plan is to go white water rafting. Depending on how beat we are, CK and I may also rent cruisers and ride around town, or maybe go for a hike with her folks.

Other planned activities include: nothing at all, more cycling, more walking, more eating, and more drinking. It will prove to be a difficult and challenging few days. I'll keep you posted on our progress.

I turned down an opportunity to see Depeche Mode with my work friends in order to go to Austin and help my sister celebrate her 35th birthday. Am I good brother or what?

I leave for Argentina with The Evil I (remember him?) in two days. I sent my passport in for renewal with four weeks to spare, and they turned it around in about two and a half weeks, even though the website says it takes four to six weeks. So in case you were wondering, sending your passport in for renewal is a good idea after the summer travel rush but before the holiday travel rush.

Evil I and I plan to do the backpack thing - that is, no suitcases, just a big traveler's backpack. We're also staying in hostels to make sure we give ourselves plenty of opportunity to meet people our age who are traveling. I did the backpacking thing in Europe for a month many years ago and liked it.

I've been reading about the general dress code in Buenos Aires and, so far, I've gathered that BA is quite the fashion-conscious city. The blurbs I'm reading compare it to New York. My general rules when traveling abroad are:

1. No tennis shoes
2. No logo shirts
3. No backpacks
4. No caps
5. No cargo-style zip-off pants that travelers seem to like

Basically, dress the way I do at home. But I would like to have some kind of bag for carrying water, camera, guide book, sunglasses, etc. I'm thinking the best option is one of those shoulder bag things. I have a Timbuk2 messenger bag that has served me very well for 10 years, but it's rastafarian green, yellow, and red colors may attract too much attention, so I may end up getting a simpler day bag of some kind. Then again, wouldn't the rasta bag make me stylish, and therefore I'd fit in? Whatever. I'll figure something out.

I've been busy busy busy lately doing bicycle advocacy in Dallas. The advocacy group is called Bike Friendly Knox-Henderson and its goals are to improve cycling infrastructure in Uptown and parts of East Dallas, raise awareness of bicycling in the area, and get businesses and neighborhoods to support our endeavors. We've gotten some traction in the community and we're looking forward to improving cycling and transit options for people in our area.

I've also been hard at work building a commuter bike. It started life as an early 80's Raleigh road bike. It will complete its transformation as a one-speed road bike purpose-built to not break down, not be expensive, and be totally fun to ride. Details coming soon...

In other news, I learned how to ski (yay!) and I now wish we had skiing in Texas (boo).

This was my shrimp sandwich until a San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf seagull fell in love with it and swiped it from my hands. Look at him, grinning. Bastard.

CK and I took a driving trip around Ireland a couple weeks ago. It was quite the adventure. Here's a shot of my introduction to Ireland.... more pics to come.