Hey, It's Me

The last thing I posted was in May. Um. Well.

House is coming together. slowly. Tomorrow it will be coming together more as we rent a van and go pick up a ton of bookshelves and a grill and some insulation. We're at the point where it's easy to live in the house even though there are still many things in boxes, so unpacking has tapered off rapidly.

My parents came up to visit in June. That was fun (and I do mean fun and not sarcasm).

I recently geeked out about the last Scott Pilgrim book which came out a couple of weeks ago, and I am expecting to geek out about the movie in a couple of weeks. (I do highly recommend the comics!)

There was also much nerding out about the info about the next Avatar series that came out during Comicon (tell me this does not look badass). (I hope none of you saw The Last Airbender. And I really hope none of you will let M. Night keep you from watching the show. Because it is awesome. If you have Netflix, you can apparently watch the whole series on Instant Watch.)

Jerry and I went to see Mike Evin last night, who was fantastic as usual. It was in a cafe setting, so Mike was up near the front window and the door was open, and when Mike had the audience all singing/clapping/stomping along it was really fun to see people walk by in one direction, look in curiously, and then walk back past the window in the other direction, pause, and then just come in to watch. (Some guy who presumably couldn't stop walked past the window clapping over his head during "We Should Dance".)
In case anyone's curious, Mike hasn't heard anything one way or the other about S&D. He suggested possibly reminding the folks at Sixthman that he exists.

Oh, and speaking of S&D, apparently Great Big Sea is going to be on board after all. For those of you that are interested, plan accordingly. ;)

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 (by Mark Gray)

(Original entry: http://seasleepy.tumblr.com/post/570044221)


Edit: Sorry for the linkspam, by the way. I was clearing out my read it later folder and found a bunch of neat things I wanted to post at some point so they went to tumblr, and they all auto-crossposted over to here.

Farewell To Texas Stadium

Cool video inside Texas Stadium as it’s imploded — you can click and drag around to change the view as the charges are going off!

(Original entry: http://seasleepy.tumblr.com/post/569474039)

Dear LJ,
Yes, it's been a while since I've posted something.

So what has got me back here to post instead of just reading...? Take a guess. I'll give you a multiple choice:
A) Fantastic vacation with my family in WDW
B) Christmas/holidays
C) House-hunting
D) House-buying
E) I took pictures of fish I want to show off. Not real fish, mind you. Virtual fish. On the Wii.

( Answer: )

So I got into Google Wave a few days ago.... Any of you on there?  Talking to Eliza is getting old. ;)

(No, I don't have any invites yet.  I'm not sure I'm getting any since I was invited by someone and not by Google.)

I trust you can all figure out my username.

Here are, verbatim, the instructions that came on the label of the acorn squash I purchased last week:

Toss whole squash into campfire embers for 3 hours. (Or chop in half with axe, remove seed, slather center with butter, bake in oven at 350°F for 45 min. or till soft. Flavour as desired, salt, pepper, bacon strips, or cheese. Quite a find after panning for gold all day!

One day a few months ago, the Outback that was in a shopping center relatively near us suddenly closed up shop. The renovations for the new tenant began shortly thereafter, and they finished...well, last week, apparently.

So tonight, Jerry and Helen and I went out for dinner... to the Lone Star Texas Grill.

And now I have some inkling of what it is like to see your country's pavilion at Epcot.

All the staff are dressed up in "Texan" outfits -- lots of cowboy shirts, a few people with boots, some poor guy in a bolo tie. They have a triangle they pull out to ring to let everyone in the restaurant know there's someone who's going to attempt their 72 oz. steak (this is apparently a Texan tradition, according to the menu .....I guess it's been around for a while at one restaurant that has "Texan" in the name?). The decor has lots of boots and cowboy hats and stars and longhorns and wagon wheels, as you might expect, as well as a giant light fixture shaped like a horseshoe, which... is relatively unexpected. They describe taquitos as "spring rolls" on the menu, and the queso is listed as "con queso", which...what?

But the most seriously brain-breaking thing there for someone actually from Texas? Especially for someone from Amarillo?

They have an item on the menu called Panhandle Tilapia.

First: Evolution (the mail client for Gnome, which I was formerly using) has started eating my emails. I am now moving back to good old Claws.

So if you sent me something in the past little bit and unexpectedly not gotten a response, send me a poke. I haven't actually lost any mail -- it's still all up on Gmail, so I'm going to try to go through and see what I've been missing -- but it's possible something fell through the cracks.

Second: I am starting to see why people hate doing taxes, what with trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be withholding for a self-employed out-of-the-country income (I was a contractor at Secret Project X) when I've already paid the equivalent of SS and Medicare taxes which should count due to a tax treaty..... (I applied for the extension, so I'm not actually late yet.) This should be much easier next year, thankfully.

Third: I think I'm finally getting back my knitting mojo. I had been knitting a sock earlier this year, and it was going pretty slowly. And then I got to the heel! Finally, the interesting part! And then I realized I had the wrong number of stitches! And then I hated the sock and have not touched it since about late April.

What finally got my back to knitting was, oddly enough........ the NASCAR race. This makes sense. Really.

First off, it's a long drive there, and knitting is usually pretty good to do in the car since it's one of the few car activities I like that I can do and also pay some attention to what's going on and hold conversations with people.
Second, I figured I could probably do some knitting at the race (especially if it turned out that I found the whole thing utterly boring).

So what was the exciting knitting project I decided to start for the Michigan race? Why, a lace shawl, of course. ;)

I'm still only a few repeats into it (I got a grand total of one repeat done on the Michigan trip), but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting some momentum going.