Ouch

I singed my hand making tortillas for Huevos Rancheros this morning. There an angry red burn on my palm.

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

Bill and I saw Harold and Kumar last night. I was surprised that the theater wasn't more packed on opening night, because it totally deserved to be; the movie was hilarious, not it any way that I can properly descibe given my joke-telling ability, so I'll leave it at hilarious and just say go see it, if you're allowed to see evil, R-rated movies, that is.

It was especially fun because we saw it in New Brunswick, and each time it was mentioned, the whole theater would be all WOOOOO!! YEAH!!!! They even showed the "cineplex in New Brunswick," which was an Odeon that doesn't exist here. We were in the only cineplex, a Loews. It was also entertaining to pick apart the geography: "They have to go all the way from Hoboken to New Brunswick to find a White Castle, and then to Cherry Hill to find another?!? Dude, there are like four on my way to work!"; "They keep running into those guys, and that guy, and that other guy over and over, and not even in the same town, all up and down the state! Literally."

I do have to add that they played up White Castle like it was the tastiest thing ever, but this is a place that serves chicken rings. Their burgers are tastless and tiny. The patty has holes punched in it to save them an extra square inch of low-grade beef on each burger; the official reason is "to cook the meat more evenly". Um, ok. You people out west aren't missing anything. Be grateful you have In-N-Out.

Directions and Sushi

As I was walking from my train to sushi tonight, a guy pulled alongside and asked directions to a nearby hospital. I pointed him to the nearest hospital, and he proceeded to go exactly not the way I suggested. Turns out this was a good thing since I just looked up its location and my directions were completely wrong. Oops. I hope it wasn't urgent.

The sushi was great, though. So good, in fact, that it was almost impossible to stifle yummy noises, but somehow I persevered.

Thanks, Cyndi

I got this shirt in the mail this morning with a note from Cyndi: "Saw this shirt. Thought of you. Now you own it." The shirt makes me smile and will be great for working out or travel sleepwear. You won't catch me wearing it in public, though. Why? Because if anyone asks I will have to admit that I have a bunch of fun in karate, but I'm actually not very good at it, and there goes the illusion.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

It's a bad idea to fix a meal of scrambled eggs and veggies right before trying to watch a movie with subtitles, especially if you're wearing a white shirt. In retrospect, this seems obvious, but I guess I didn't visualize all the elements together beforehand.

Having really enjoyed both Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and All About My Mother, I was surprised at my dissapointment with Women on the Verge. I think it's that whole cross-cultural transmission of humor problem. I didn't even realise it was a comedy until I was reading a few reviews after I saw the movie. Yikes. Sorry, Jess.

On the other hand, I thought Starwoids, a documentary about the nutso fans who waited more than a month in line to see the awful Phantom Menace (and weren't even dissapointed - too much emotional investment, probably) was a lot of fun. I wouldn't recommend it for most people, but it appealed to the geeky teen in me.

Wet Karate

We got rained on walking both to and from class tonight, but it didn't matter much because we were pretty sweaty anyway.

Lesson of the Day

Save a backup of your template, because it can get eaten at any time. What a pain in the butt. I won't be making that mistake again.

Fashion Police

Today at the train station (I'm trying to take the train to work more, now that the weather is nice) I saw a woman who was wearing nylons on the outside of an anklet. Nylons and anklets don't mix well under any condintions, but the nylons on the outside? As if that wasn't bad enough, add the fact that they had a gold sheen and you have a real crisis.

Flight Plans

I got my tickets to California: arriving around 2:30pm on Wednesday, Aug 18, and leaving at 7:00am on Sunday, Sep 19. I still have to get my tickets to southern California, probably for the last week of August, if that's OK with dad and Cyndi.

Bye to Jess

Our best friend Jess is moving to upstate New York tomorrow to be a visiting faculty member at Hamilton College. Her parents got into town today, and we, along with another couple, went to Stuff Yer Face for bolis (stromboli, for the uninitiated) and beer to see her off. I got the Emily boli, naturally, and we all grubbed on their blue cheese dressing, except for Rebecca, who has to abstain from soft cheeses because she's expecting. Too bad, because that dressing is the best we've ever tasted; it's completely ruined us for any other.

But there I go talking about food again. Seriously, Jess, we will miss you terribly. No one else has gotten along so easily with both of us. You were never a fifth (third?) wheel; in fact, it will be weird just being the two of us. We always laughed a lot more when you were around, even if it was about flashlight worries or hairdryer mishaps. Who are we going to have sushi with? Who will tell us we should read Borges, or take us to salsa parties?

We plan to watch Rebel Without a Cause tonight, drink Old Fashioneds, and brood. We miss you already.

Lunch

Mmm... cheese, mustard, and onion on rye, with pickles on the side.  I'm smelling tasty.

Quasi-Japanese Themed Links

Language: Engrish - funny translations

Movie: speaking of translations, Lost in Translation is a great movie.  It's Sophia Coppola's second film, the first being The Virgin Suicides, a beautiful, dreamy adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' book.

Pretty: Zen gardens - a large collections of beautiful places

Funny: Bonsai Kittens - hilarious site that some extremely gullible people actually got the FBI to look into a few years back

Slasher

This movie was both amusing and depressing.  The Slahser is a mercenary used car salesman who travels around the country hosting weekend liquidations sales.  The filmmaker follows him through one such sale and shows him to be a compilation of every used car salesmen stereotype times ten.
 
It made me very glad that I a) do not live in Memphis, b) am not an alcoholic who drinks beer for breakfast, and c) do not have to buy a used car from any one like this.

Xanadu

Jess and I watched Xanadu last night, which was really worse than you can imagine if you haven't seen it yourself. I expected the cheese, the musical numbers, and the bad acting (although I could never believed it could be that bad), but I didn't expect her to be some sort of bizarre Ms. Pacman, as Jess put it, or to be bummed out about an old Gene Kelly with a pasted on smile and a faded voice. He was still ten times more gracefull than Olivia, and it was a pleasure to watch him dance, subdued as it was.

Despite the awfulness, I considered myself lucky because I had no residual Olivia Newton John songs clinging to my brain. That is, until Jess emailed today and they came back full force, or the one or two words that I remember came back full force and have put themselves on a constant loop.


Xanaduuuuu... ARGH!! No Home Depot trips for you, Jess.

And in other Olivia Newton John news, we'll be seeing Grease outdoors tomorrow night, assuming the weather holds. Yay for sing alongs.

Day in The City

Saturday was spent showing Tom a bit more of New York. We walked through Central Park, spent a couple of hours at The Met, watched the dogs and the kids play in the Washington Square Park fountain, and had some delicious East Village chow. We of course took him to have the best french fries ever, and we tried a new (to us) place in Little India for dinner. The Vegetable Vindaloo was so tasty and spicy my eyes were watering and there may or may not have been some panting, too.

Star Trek Coffee Table

No Way!  Must be seen to be believed.  I recommend surfing for a while: lots of other interesting furniture on this guys blog.

Shoes

Really, the purchase of three pairs of shoes should be a cause for
celebration, not consternation. Somebody please explain this to
Bill. I know I'm probably the only person in teh world who thinks
the flats are adroable, but I'm simply over the moon for them. I
mean capris? petticoat skirt? Does no one see the hotness?

The cute

The cuter

The controversial (ice blue one)

Cartoon

Bill's Uncle Dray brought this to our attention. (You need your sound on.) Funny.

Elevator incompetents

The parking garage elevartor stopped on every single floor and on at least three of them, no one even got off. When the door shut on 6th floor and there were only two of us left and three lit buttons, we just looked at each other and rolled our eyes. It really shouldn't take that much brain activity to realise you should only be pushing the button for one floor. These people are developing/manufacturing drugs? Scary.

Mmm... tacos

Tom will be visiting this weekend, which means we will probably be heading back to the city in search of some alcohol. We had great margaritas and sangria at the new Dos Caminos last weekend, with even better guacamole, tuna ceviche, plantain empanadas, shrimp and lobster tacos, and roasted veggie quesadilla. Yeah, amazing food. Little too far on the trendy side, being in SoHo and all, but it was worth it to eat yumminess outdoors on a beautiful night. Fortunately, it wasn't so snobby that they refused to let us in, even in all our touristy glory. We put our names in for the 40 min wait and Bill decided to drop off his laptop backpack in the hotel. When we returned after an hour, they recognized us and seated us immediately rather than having us sit out the now hour-long wait.

Political quiz

This is an interesting site that shows you exerpts from the platforms of the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green parties (without telling you which is which) for seven issues. You rank how closely their blurbs coincide with your views, then at the end it tells you which party you agree with the most. Some of the blurbs are vague or full of nearly meaningless rhetoric, but it was still pretty neat. Not suprisingly, out of a total possible score of 700, none of them even got half the points. I'm so disagreeable.

My results:
Green - 235
Libertarian - 185
Republican - 150
Democratic - 145

Correction

Bill insisted that I post a correction to the microwave post, or rather put it in context. The "certain someone" was nuking such obnoxious garbage that one of Bill's labmates actually moved out of the lab to get away from it. Hence the sign.

Control Room

Skip the incoherent propaganda and see a movie about propaganda, on both sides. Control Room was really excellent. Especially moving was this statement from a military press officer:

"The night they showed the P.O.W.'s and dead soldiers . . . it was powerful, because Americans won't show those kinds of images. It made me sick to my stomach."

He then recalls Al Jazeera's coverage from the night before, of Iraqi civilians killed and wounded in a bombing in Basra.

"They were equally if not more horrifying,and I remember having seen it, in the Al Jazeera offices, and thought to myself, 'That's gross, that's bad,' and then going away, probably to dinner or something.

"It didn't affect me as much. It upset me on a profound level that I wasn't bothered as much."

I highly recommend that you see it. See it, see it, see it.

Cabbie Cliche

We're having ice tea and reading the paper in Cafe Doma in the West Village. On the way down, our cab driver suddenly annouced, "OK, OK, I confess, I'm the actor right there," pointing to the head shot taped to the back of the drivers seat. Apparently Bill and I are so scary we can wring a confession out of guy by staring silently out the window. It turns out he's the guy who used to play Les Moonves on some old David Letterman sketches. He got dropped after a sketch with Fidel Castro. We heard All. About. It.

Weekend Plans

My weekend plans rock. They could so kick your weekend plans' butt. (Except for Cyndi, her plans sound pretty good, too.)

Tonight Bill and I are going to see Anchormen. Then tomorrow we're going up to the city and will ride a tandem bike through Central Park. After lunch, I'm going to meet Jess for some shopping, followed by dinner and Control Room. And we're spending the night, so I foresee the Cornelia Street Cafe in our future.

Bill's Microwave

Heh. To keep away the undesirables. There are exemptions for pretty much everyone but a cetain someone.

Yes, that says Sausage Kingdom. The only place to eat in the crappy, crappy terminal I was stuck in for over two hours.

Trip and Job Hunting

Despite the circumstances, my visit to California was really good. I got to see the family, eat several burritos, and go to a BBQ where I met some of Grace and Jason's friends that will be at the wedding. As always, I wish I had remembered to take pictures.

Since I've been back, I've been focused on writing my resume and cover letters, and identifying companies to apply to, ugh. I hope finding a job won't be too tricky in light of that fact that I don't want to start until November, and hope to be in California most of September. It would suck to have to fly back to Boston all the was from CA, but I guess there are worse problems to have.

Screamer

Lying Train Guy

This afternoon I was on a teleconference and one of the participants would not stop breathing directly into the phone. Either that or there was very loud wind at regular intervals in his/her office. It got on my nerves so much, I was almost ready to hang up. I don't want my meetings to have anything in common with obscene prank calls, thank you very much.

Today was the last day for Hannah, the consultant who sits in the cube next to mine. Boo. But yay in the long run, since I'll only be living about a mile away from her once we move to Cambridge. She's cool, but you don't have to take my word for it; you can check out her blog for yourself.

After dinner with Jess, we went to another movie in the park, this time On the Waterfront, which was really good. I haven't seen many Brando movies and will have to check out more. A big, fluffy white dog provided pre-show entertainment by chasing around the geese. Speaking of which, people need to stop giving them their scraps. It's not good for their digestive system, as evidenced by the gross green puddles that were all over the place.