Apostrophic Chunder

Here is the obligatory rapidly inhaled road burrito. It's overstuffed with barbacoa beef, pinto beans, medium salsa, cheese, lettuce, and guacamole. I am the jerk who gets so much stuff that the burrito explodes and they have to re-roll it with a new tortilla (this holds up the whole production line). This reminds me of eating at Burrito Brothers in Georgetown back in the day.

We took the bus from RFK to Nats park. DC United had a home game, so bus service was running out of lot 7 instead of lot 8. According to "people" and "some experts" the buses were running more slowly than usual and taking a strange new route. There were some intellectuals from out of town on the bus... we overheard "You ever get shot at while driving through here?" and of course, "They should put condos in some of these industrial buildings..." The best may have been, "Irish Nachos? What do they do, pour beer on them?" Classic.

We missed the first pitch, but the new seats are excellent! It was an even trade for the loaded tickets, but well worth it. I usually ask or check who they're playing at least... 15 minutes before we leave for the game. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was the Atlanta Braves. Long story short, the game was tied at 8 all at the end of the 9th. The tiebreaker was very dramatic and the last run was walked in (bases were loaded) just as my baseball mentor NATSTRODAMUS predicted. The Nats won, 9-8.

This makes me wish I had studied at the CRT harder back in the day. To quote one attendee of this art show: "It's like porno nintendo... on drugs."

So next week I'm going to Las Vegas for NAPP's Photoshop World conference & expo. I have had many different versions of Photoshop and used them for my personal creative endeavors, but I am not exactly an expert user. I would not say that I'm a Photoshop "professional." So from now until then I am going to spend a little time each day playing with image editing and creation, watching our extensive training on it, and making ugly things like this. I might even go take some pictures with my digital camera. This is me sitting in my Mom's living room on Christmas Day. I know, I know. My work is so good, you can't even tell that the background is from Dublin Castle. You're too kind. Oh by the way, I don't have the rights to that photo in the background, so let's just keep this to ourselves, eh?

All photos herein taken with iPhone (first generation). I make no apologies for how crappy or boring they are. How's that for an advertisement? http://illumin8ed.net/elementary/

K. had some friends in over the weekend, so we took them downtown for some sightseeing. Big ups to my man in the field Agent Jones and of course Mrs. Jones for helping us get a sweet deal on lodging in the city. After getting extremely lost and seeing every square inch of Herndon on the side mission (and having a very good meal at Anita's) we (mostly K.) decided that we need a GPS as soon as possible. So eventually we got there and checked in, and went out walking. We checked out everything from the pre-cambrian to the modern at the museum of natural history (at lightspeed). I wanted to go to the Freer and Sackler galleries but they close at 5:30. So anyway we went to Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant on 9th. We tore up some tapas, crab and artichoke dip, house-made chips, and beer. I recommend their heffy. Now thoroughly infused with garlic and hops, we headed back to the room and washed up so that we could go to another bar. One more place that I say you should try Washington RFD, associated with the Brickskeller. They have the most insane selection of beer on tap. The highlights for me were the sweet white Belgian Delerium Tremens, the Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale, and the Weyerbacher Imperial Stout. We made the 4 block expedition back to the Marriott and punched the sack like a ton of bricks. Sunday morning, the lobby Starbucks made a good cappuccino, and the valet was prompt in returning our hooptie. We did the Washington Monument, WWII memorial, Lincoln, and Vietnam memorials in record time, zipped over to Adam's Morgan for a falafel and frites from Amsterdam with my main man M. (freshly delivered from the sweet life in SD to find a job and bring home some bread). He reminded me that it's TOURISTS like us that keep people at home in DC on the weekends. It's always terrific to get home and water the dying plants and hang with the cats. Without saying a whole lot of negative stuff about nobody in particular, I like going downtown better when it's just us.

We started remodeling on my sister's kitchen in March of 2007 and I left a few punchout items undone with the promise that we'd get to them. One of the things I wanted to do was fix the door casing that we ripped out to fit a corner cabinet through. It was a nasty gaping hole for ... the last 18 months. So I fixed it. It's almost like new. We put some trim up over the tile backsplash and it looks spiff. We're closing in on finishing this thing. I project we will have everything just the way she wants it by the time they want to sell the house or 2016, whichever comes first. There is some floor tile work to do, and that will require some industrial strength creativity. In between short bursts of work, we watched the olympics and some episodes of Freaks and Geeks. Anyway, here's a quick snap of the kitchen and one of Titus, the wild and woolly wildabeast that roams Elliott looking for chicken bones and barking at anything with two wheels.

It's 1:30 PM on Friday. Do you know where your huge pile of decrepit, obsolete, dusty, lightning-burnt pc hardware is?!

I survived the rigorous physical testing at the new health and fitness mecca (trailer, actually they're not done building the center). I was not surprised to find that I am inflexible, a little bit fat, and I have borderline hypertension. The lovely lady K. had all around better results, but she was unhappy to find that she tips the doctor's scale at just over one hundred pounds. She said "look what you've done to me!" I feel guilty, and there's only one way to drown that guilt: Fried food and cold beer. She wasn't going for it. We had healthy homemade vegetable pizzas instead, and watched Vantage Point. It held my attention. I like Forest Whitaker and William Hurt. I thought Dennis Quaid was better in Innerspace. Anyway, while I'm on the subject of movies... You may have already guessed this but HotRod with Andy Samberg was absolute rubbish! It was so bad that I had to watch the whole thing AND the outtakes. I couldn't believe it, but the outtakes weren't even funny. I was surprised because I find just about everything else Andy Samberg has done (Lonely Island, SNL) to be very very amusing. Whatever. I'm off to disable UUCP as much as I can and make copies of all my old logs before I wipe out my black box. You guys just take it easy, and if your situation is not such that you can take it easy - THEN SHUT UP AND LOVE IT.

Test post. Moved the blog to a smaller weaker machine while doing server maintenance that could take oh, I don't know, FOREVER. I want to add some memory and add a raid card and install a new OS. I haven't decided whether I want FreeBSD 7 or Debian 4 on there. I toyed with NetBSD but found that FreeBSD is only slightly more friendly. I guess that's why they call BSD "beasty." But look, here's the deal... I have to go get on a treadmill while doctors monitor my vital signs to prove that I'm healthy enough to work out. This is happening in less than an hour.