furniture shopping with my bro

greetings from phoenix.

my bro took me furniture shopping today. for the second day in the row, we went to a place with the word 'dump' in its title.

the town dump

greetings from phoenix. have been here for a conference for work, and am staying the weekend to hang w/ the bro.

he wanted to buy some furniture, so we went to a store called the town dump. bizarre. pictures tell it better than words ever will.

coming up a bit short in austin

disappointing results at the UT cup for the big H. we had one of the strongest teams in recent memory (i've played in this cup five of the last seven years). very solid lineup, and we came out strong despite being placed in a very tough group: columbia, ut-austin, and upenn.

handled columbia easily, 3-1. tied a surprisingly tough ut team, 2-2. good game for us as we came back to tie. really should have won it, as they cleared two balls off the goal line.

against upenn, dominated the first half and found ourselves up 2-0. we were looking to sail through group play until the last twenty minutes. our center mid (and best player) got a red card, two defensive lapses led to two goals, and then we got another red card when one of our defenders stopped a sure goal with his hands after our goal keeper was caught out of position. it's actually the right play to make, because it keeps a sure goal out of the net in return for a penalty kick, which is something less than a sure goal. as it turned out, our keeper made an amazing save to block the penalty kick, keeping us in the game. but playing with nine players proved too difficult for us to put in the winning goal. at 1-0-2, we finished group play with five points, not enough to advance to the quarterfinals.

made the pilgrimage to salt lick, the best bbq on earth, out in driftwood. picnic tables, live music, and byob. we brought a cooler of beer and reserved a table for 27 (yeah, i know salt lick doesn't take reservations normally, but talking to jaime at the corporate office helps). the all you can eat deal, plus blackberry and peach cobbler was delectable. afterwards, bloodninja and mrs. bloodninja took us to the broken spoke. an honest honky tonk--none of that new country or line dancing garbage. a real blues country band in the derailers, and nothing but texas two-step on the dance floor. ok, what dr. wintermute and i did was not exactly the two-step, but we were out there.

i was in a terrible mood, sulking and holding my head pretty much the whole night (in addition to being pretty sore after playing close to 180 minutes of soccer that day). in short, i was not pleasant to be around.

after the derailers, we hit club deville, which is actually the first bar in austin that i ever went to (sometime around march of '02). very strange crowd that night. the best i can describe it was the manson family-meets-lumberjack vibe-meets-tweekers-meets-post islamic conversion cat stevens.

at least someone is keeping austin weird.

at the urinal? really?

greetings from charlotte, on my way to daytona beach.

i fly a lot. not up in the air a lot, but still a decent amount--41 round trips this past year for work, plus some trips for fun. so, not much fazes me about travel. i've seen a lot of weird things, and don't get stressed about too much. however, one thing that still weirds me out: guys who talk on their phone at the urinal at the airport bathroom. even if you have mastered that particular hand-eye-doogan coordination, it is unsanitary, and it's just weird. what is the person on the other line thinking? do they really want to hear the various sounds in the bathroom? and i sure as shit don't want to hear your conversation about picking up the dry cleaning.

do chicks do this? my guess is that it's a guy thing.

it's always sunny on lost

lost is not answering questions. they introduce a whole new group of others? ridiculous.

and mac from it's always sunny on philadelphia was on season two (or three, or whatever)?

here's what i want answered (in no particular order):

1. what was the deal with walt? why were the others so interested in him?
2. what happened to miss clue?
3. why was libby in the same mental hospital as hugo? what's her back story?
4. how did flight 316 travel back in time, given that all it did was follow the coordinates from the lamp post (and presumably, the dharma initiative folks did not time travel each time they went there)?
5. what's the deal with richard (i.e., not aging)?
6. what's the deal with all of the dharma initiative stations? why did the notebooks end up shooting out into a field?
7. what's the connection between hugo's winning lottery numbers and the countdown clock (the one desmond was keying in when they found him in the hatch)?
8. who built the four toed statue?
   

more later.

snowpocalypse now

the snow has been pummeling dc. at first it was kind of fun. last friday night, i was out with a couple of the guys on the block, shoveling everyone's driveway and walk on our street. it got less fun over the weekend, by which point the accumulation hit 30 inches. by sunday, spending four hours digging out the car left me wishing:

1. we didn't live in the new tundra
2. we had a garage

i can't complain too much, as

1. some neighborhoods near us didn't have power
2. our street got plowed (since we live close to the access booth that houses power switches for our metro stop)
3. our neighbors pitched in with the shoveling
4. we had the foresight to buy groceries ahead of time

by yesterday, round two was absolutely ridiculous. about eight new inches have fallen since last night, and it may reach twenty by tomorrow. our flight plans for this upcoming weekend are absurd.

at first, dr. wintermute and i were supposed to fly to daytona beach to visit the fam tomorrow. mom and pops are spending a month there with my dad's older brother, who is doing his first snowbird winter after buying a place on the beach.

then, it turned out i had to go to nashville for a meeting. so i got a ticket to fly out wednesday (today), then fly from nashville to charlotte on thursday morning, where i would meet dr. w, and join her on her connecting flight to daytona.

my flight to nashville (this morning) got cancelled. no point in going there later. but now i don't have a way to get to charlotte.

so i call us airways to reschedule. turns out that i can't back on my original flight (with dr. w) from dc to charlotte because it is sold out. so i have to leapfrog her, and get a ticket for friday morning. it's an early flight that gets me to daytona by 11:30am, so i figure, hey, not so bad.

then dr. w's flight (for tomorrow, the original flight from dc to charlotte to daytona) get canceled. but now, the flight that i'm booked on (for friday morning) is sold out, so she has to in turn leapfrog me. there are no later flights on friday, so we book her on a flight for saturday. unfortunately, with the connection, it does not get her there until 6pm saturday.

thankfully, us airways agrees to put us on a new return flight on monday so that we can at least have a day-and-a-half together in daytona, at no additional cost.

fun. let's see what happens.