in case you've been living under a rock, blogs are not new. blogging is not some random new hobby for a select few. bloggers are not a rare and unusual breed that only travel in certain circles. the blogging community is, in fact, a legitimate group of individuals from all walks of life. there are all kinds of blogs, blogs about people's kids or blogs about politics or blogs about celebrities or stupid blogs about what people ate for dinner (although i really had a fantastic dinner last night. a classic stir-fry. yum). there are even people out there whose blogs are so popular that the on-site advertising is lucrative enough to feed their families.
and then there's me, a relative newcomer to all of this. i don't spend tons of time making this blog uber-special (as evidenced by the noticeable lack of interesting graphics). i don't make it uber-personal, it's not uber-political, nor does it have some uber-important theme (although i guess you could say that i am sometimes uber-repetitive... man, aren't i just uber-funny?). it's more so just a motley collection of my ramblings and random updates on what i'm doing here in austin... with the intent of keeping friends and family in the loop on my new life.
but it's still weird to think that my words are out there for anyone to see. people who don't know me that well and misunderstand my posts... people who think i'm lame and just lurk around on my blog to laugh at me and my silly exploits... people who are just bored at work and would rather read random blogs than do real work (hi chris)...
all of which is why i keep this blog relatively superficial (blogging lite, if you will...?). i don't necessarily pour our my heart and my soul for anyone with a decent broadband internet connection to enjoy. there are bloggers out there, however, who do just that - turn themselves inside out and write with crazy raw emotion and honesty and a clear sense of voice. they develop an audience of thousands and thousands of readers that log on every day to see what they're up to and what they have to say about it. they write posts like these that bare their soul to the scrutiny of the entire world.
and to be honest, i find it to be fascinating - this weird combination of extreme narcissicism and admirable courage. it's really odd to feel an emotional connection with the typed words of some stranger, because there was so much about that post that i related to (although i'm not nearly as bitter about it all, b/c honestly i'm just too lazy to feel that strongly about it). but hell freaking no, i would have never written something like that on a blog. it's just so... personal, and fascinating, and... odd. yet so well-written, and interesting to think about.
anyway. i have no thought-provoking conclusion or neat little bow with which to wrap up this rand0m-ass post.
in lieu of that, i will just inform you that this concludes the interruption in your programming, and i now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging lite...
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
odds and ends
i'm back from my brief sojourn into sunny-ish california (i'm goin, goin, back, back, to cali, cali)... back to a hot and sunny austin week and a towering pile of work, that is. quite the reality call, unfortunately.
since i am currently too scatter-brained to write a proper post, i present you instead with a random collection of things that have amused me lately:
since i am currently too scatter-brained to write a proper post, i present you instead with a random collection of things that have amused me lately:
- the spam email i got today in which the subject line read "grapefruit smugly." you know, b/c grapefruiting is a verb and i apparently need to learn how to do it more smugly. so much more entertaining and thought-provoking than the penis enlargement spam i usually get (b/c that clearly doesn't require much thought, really... apply magic potion, lather in, rinse and repeat, see amazing results "grow" before your very eyes!).
- the assortment of things you can find on craig's list, including a gun rack (a lighted gun rack, nonetheless) and monkey decorations.
- the woman in LAX airport who was using her (cheap, ugly, bright orange, ill-fitting) cotton orange tank top and her (non-secured, sagging, running wild and free) breasts as a convenient holder for her boarding pass. why didn't I think of that?! it's the female equivalent to the front pocket in a man's shirt. breasts as boarding pass holder. i could patent the idea and make a fortune.
- the couple on our cruise that were sporting matching hawaiian-print outfits. oh, yes. they were probably in their early sixties or so, a nice-looking grandma-and-grandpa type who clearly thought their matching outfits were OH SO COOL. grandma was wearing a beige dress with a hawaiian floral print, and grandpa was pimpin' in a beige blazer with the same fabric. several of my co-workers surreptitiously snapped photos of the pair, which i will definitely upload if i get my hands on them. hilarity, i tell you.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
a random sampling...
...of songs recently enjoyed whilst listening to my beloved jammin' 105.9:
- rumpshaker - "check baby check baby 1 2 3 4, check baby check baby 1 2 3." flash back to middle school and the "dance team" of pre-teen girls with extremely suggestive moves
- naughty by nature, hip hop hoorayyyy hooooooo hayyyyy hoooo
- michael jackson, it don't matter if you're black or white! or surgically enhanced! or mentally unstable!
- michael jackson, got to be startin' something! like my crazy pills!
- SWV, loooove wiiilll bee right herreeee (be right here)
- brandy & monica, the boy is mine (not yours, but mine)
- la bouche, be my lover, oh high school techno music... la da da da da da di daaaa
sigh. sometimes it takes so little to please me.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
anatomy of a sandwich
today i am working from home. or should i say, "working from home." i heart working from home b/c i can sit around in sweats, start the day off with a nice walk around the neighborhood and a stop for coffee, and sit on the balcony with my laptop, enjoying the sun and light breeze. much to my surprise, i am also being relatively productive.
one of the best perks of working from home is the ability to stop and make my lunch. today i made one of my favoritest sandwiches ever and am going to devote the rest of this post to telling you the exact contents of said sandwich. no, i am not crazy. just v. appreciative of a well-made sandwich.
how to create the ultimate sandwich:
one of the best perks of working from home is the ability to stop and make my lunch. today i made one of my favoritest sandwiches ever and am going to devote the rest of this post to telling you the exact contents of said sandwich. no, i am not crazy. just v. appreciative of a well-made sandwich.
how to create the ultimate sandwich:
- start with lightly toasted oatnut bread. lightly toasted is key - you don't want it so soft that it yields to the pressure of the contents and you don't want it so hard that it scrapes the roof of your mouth.
- apply liberal amount of spicy brown mustard to perfectly toasted bread
- add thick slice of sharp cheddar
- pile on thinly sliced roasted turkey
- add a handful fresh spinach leaves
- add thinly sliced cucumber
- add a few slices of ripe roma tomato
- and the piece de resistance - scoop out some fresh ripe avocado and smear onto one end of the bread.
- grind a little bit of s&p on there, b/c s&p makes everything better.
et voila! serve on clean white plate with two crisp, cold dill pickle spears and a glass of fizzy italian lemon soda and enjoy. mwah! 'tis fantastico!
Monday, May 15, 2006
moments frozen in austin time
after a loooong day at work (including a painful 8 am -11 am conference call that we didn't realize would be videoconference, which meant that my co-worker and i had to surreptitiously sneak bites from our breakfast tacos from beneath the table), i decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and go for a run. i left the apt around 8:15, just as dusk was settling in and the sky was changing from one brilliant color to the next in a rapid succession of palettes. the weather was perfect for a run - cool, breezy, and just enough light left in the day before we'd be plunged into darkness.
as i ran across congress ave bridge, i had to wend my way around the crowds that had gathered there in eager anticipation of the nightly bat pilgrimage. austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in north america, and they all live under the congress ave bridge. in the spring season, right around dusk, it's become a well-known tourist activity to watch them come out to go feed for the night, all 1.5 million of them zooming off in crazy patterns in search of a good mosquito feast, i guess, before coming back to sleep through the day.
now i've heard about said phenomenon on many different occasions, but i've never been able to time my jogs/rides properly to actually glimpse it firsthand - until tonight. it was honestly like nothing i'd ever seen before. scores and scores of bats came pouring out from underneath the bridge (and this is an elevated bridge, so there were people looking up from below and people looking down from the bridge, like me) and went flying off into the dusk in a long, streaming, pulsing arc of black dots. it went on for like 15-20 minutes. the thing that struck me the most was how quiet they were. you could hear their wings beating, but it's not like they were honking or screeching like all of the stupid birds out there. reminds me of this calvin and hobbes comic strip where calvin had to do a book report on bats, procrastinated until the last minute b/c he was playing w/hobbes, and then wrote his whole book report on bats: fanged bugs of the night!... and eventually got in big trouble with miss wormwood b/c bats aren't bugs and he had clearly made up his entire book report.
but i digress. i continued my jog down on the trail under the bridge (unexpectedly running into my good friend KAT who is in town for business when i jogged past her hotel - more on that another time), trying out a section of the trail i'd never jogged before. there were still enough people on the trail so that i felt perfectly safe, but it was also empty enough so that i could enjoy the relative peace. dusk was settling in full force and i could still see the bats streaming in the sky above me. at one point i stopped for a breath and a stretch on a little curved bridge and counted no less than 19 turtles swimming in the water beneath me (along with a big-ass fish which seriously was freaking HUGE. like, disalarmingly so).
it's moments like these that make me glad i took the chance of moving out to a city that i didn't know, one that would take me away from the familiarity of cleveland park and dupont circle and bethesda, and plop me unprepared into a completely foreign territory. it's moments like these that i will remember when i eventually move away from here and look back fondly on my runs along town lake where i had to swat the bugs away from my face but i could still admire turtles and bats and enjoy the sunny weather as i dreamed about the next morning's breakfast taco (hopefully to be consumed at the more preferable solitude and freedom of my own desk).
austin - such a mystery sometimes (where are the friends that i can call upon? the bartenders that know my favorite martini? the restaurants where i know what's good on the menu?), yet sometimes so charming that i am completely and utterly bewitched...
as i ran across congress ave bridge, i had to wend my way around the crowds that had gathered there in eager anticipation of the nightly bat pilgrimage. austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in north america, and they all live under the congress ave bridge. in the spring season, right around dusk, it's become a well-known tourist activity to watch them come out to go feed for the night, all 1.5 million of them zooming off in crazy patterns in search of a good mosquito feast, i guess, before coming back to sleep through the day.
now i've heard about said phenomenon on many different occasions, but i've never been able to time my jogs/rides properly to actually glimpse it firsthand - until tonight. it was honestly like nothing i'd ever seen before. scores and scores of bats came pouring out from underneath the bridge (and this is an elevated bridge, so there were people looking up from below and people looking down from the bridge, like me) and went flying off into the dusk in a long, streaming, pulsing arc of black dots. it went on for like 15-20 minutes. the thing that struck me the most was how quiet they were. you could hear their wings beating, but it's not like they were honking or screeching like all of the stupid birds out there. reminds me of this calvin and hobbes comic strip where calvin had to do a book report on bats, procrastinated until the last minute b/c he was playing w/hobbes, and then wrote his whole book report on bats: fanged bugs of the night!... and eventually got in big trouble with miss wormwood b/c bats aren't bugs and he had clearly made up his entire book report.
but i digress. i continued my jog down on the trail under the bridge (unexpectedly running into my good friend KAT who is in town for business when i jogged past her hotel - more on that another time), trying out a section of the trail i'd never jogged before. there were still enough people on the trail so that i felt perfectly safe, but it was also empty enough so that i could enjoy the relative peace. dusk was settling in full force and i could still see the bats streaming in the sky above me. at one point i stopped for a breath and a stretch on a little curved bridge and counted no less than 19 turtles swimming in the water beneath me (along with a big-ass fish which seriously was freaking HUGE. like, disalarmingly so).
it's moments like these that make me glad i took the chance of moving out to a city that i didn't know, one that would take me away from the familiarity of cleveland park and dupont circle and bethesda, and plop me unprepared into a completely foreign territory. it's moments like these that i will remember when i eventually move away from here and look back fondly on my runs along town lake where i had to swat the bugs away from my face but i could still admire turtles and bats and enjoy the sunny weather as i dreamed about the next morning's breakfast taco (hopefully to be consumed at the more preferable solitude and freedom of my own desk).
austin - such a mystery sometimes (where are the friends that i can call upon? the bartenders that know my favorite martini? the restaurants where i know what's good on the menu?), yet sometimes so charming that i am completely and utterly bewitched...
Sunday, May 14, 2006
even more progress
today's purchase: a TV stand for the beautiful philips TV and his dear little DVD-playing counterpart. have i mentioned how much i love my TV? he's just so sleek and silver and flat. i think i'll call him phil. and the DVD player will be named philly.
but back to the TV stand. it took me over an hour to put that bitch together, but i was ultimately victorious in the end. y'all would have laughed at me - i took the entire process WAY too seriously, as if it was a test of my intelligence or something. i spread all the components out on my floor, grouped all the little nails by type, gathered my tools, turned on some mood-boosting shania twain, read through the instructions and went to work. and, many minutes later... ta-da! sturdy black TV stand at your service to house my beautiful electronics and completely lame DVD collection. there really is no other word to describe my poor-ass DVD collection - am going to have to do something about that. i did recently join netflix, but i still need to get some of the classics in-house... hmm. oh, and speaking of classics - did you know that office space was mostly filmed in suburban austin! supposedly there is some tour that hits all the important sights... i so need to do that.
so yes, the apt is still relatively empty and there is nothing on the walls and everything is in a place "for now" - but at least there's a couch, a big comfy and cool green chair, a coffee table, a TV stand for phil and little philly (but no cable TV yet), and a kitchen table and chairs on its way (hopefully)... it's coming together, slowly but surely. baby steps, people, it's all about baby steps. it'll probably be at least another month or two before i really start to feel settled.
side note. i will be DC-bound in just a few wks to celebrate my dear friend debbie's wedding, and cannot WAIT to be back in my beloved city! all of you DC folks better pencil me in for that wknd -- june 2-4. plans are obviously still TBD but i'll send an email once i figure out what's going on. it'll be so nice to have friends again...! =P
but back to the TV stand. it took me over an hour to put that bitch together, but i was ultimately victorious in the end. y'all would have laughed at me - i took the entire process WAY too seriously, as if it was a test of my intelligence or something. i spread all the components out on my floor, grouped all the little nails by type, gathered my tools, turned on some mood-boosting shania twain, read through the instructions and went to work. and, many minutes later... ta-da! sturdy black TV stand at your service to house my beautiful electronics and completely lame DVD collection. there really is no other word to describe my poor-ass DVD collection - am going to have to do something about that. i did recently join netflix, but i still need to get some of the classics in-house... hmm. oh, and speaking of classics - did you know that office space was mostly filmed in suburban austin! supposedly there is some tour that hits all the important sights... i so need to do that.
so yes, the apt is still relatively empty and there is nothing on the walls and everything is in a place "for now" - but at least there's a couch, a big comfy and cool green chair, a coffee table, a TV stand for phil and little philly (but no cable TV yet), and a kitchen table and chairs on its way (hopefully)... it's coming together, slowly but surely. baby steps, people, it's all about baby steps. it'll probably be at least another month or two before i really start to feel settled.
side note. i will be DC-bound in just a few wks to celebrate my dear friend debbie's wedding, and cannot WAIT to be back in my beloved city! all of you DC folks better pencil me in for that wknd -- june 2-4. plans are obviously still TBD but i'll send an email once i figure out what's going on. it'll be so nice to have friends again...! =P
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)