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High Fructose Corn Syrup

is in everything.  I get frustrated buying bread at the grocery store because it’s necessary to keep upgrading one’s bread in avoidance of stupid ingredients such as HFCS, which appear even in the whole-grain snazzy kind.  Lately I’ve been purchasing “artesan” bread, whatever the heck that means.

Well, enough is enough.  Flour is cheap, I have an oven, and I think it’s about time I try my hand at bread.  I suppose it will be a high-effort food item, but if all goes well then maybe I will think about a bread machine.  Homemade to the max!

May = making bread.

Hair!

So here is my boss new haircut.

Front:

Side:

And back:

Runnin’

A while back, I decided that for April, I would run.  I had been thinking about exercise for a while but encountering some difficulties finding anything I could really do consistently.  For instance, there’s a great rec center on campus, but while it’s free for students, we staff people have to pay and do so by a deadline which I missed.  I’ve always enjoyed swimming, but it’s no good as a regular routine – with all the getting there changing and showering and being cold and drying off, it’s an extra hour of not-actually-swimming every time you want to swim.  I had been planning on using Dance Dance Revolution as a source of cardio, but the first time I played at length in my apartment we got a noise warning the next day.  I think our downstairs neighbors are old and cranky.  Anyhow, concerning running, I knew two important things: people who do it love it, and I can’t do it at all.  Combined with the ease and cheapness of put-on-shoes-and-go, it seemed perfect.  I bought some shoes.

This weekend, I asked a few friends about suggestions for someone about to begin running.  One guy put it very simply: “Don’t.”  Then I heard a lot about knees and pain.  His suggestion?  Power walk.

Um, but that’s lame

thought I.  But not wanting my shoes nor my April project nor my knees to go to waste, I decided maybe there could be something to this walking thing.  So last night I strapped them on and headed out for a not-quite-power-but-fast walk with about 30 seconds of jogging right in the middle.  Dude!  I sweated, I muscled, and I felt completely high afterwards, lying on my friends’ floor immobile but giggling.

April = walking.

Texas Part 4

After the show, the bars.

I made a few friends.

Or… parts of one.  The decor was odd.

Table:

Bikes hanging from the ceiling:

For the night’s entertainment, was there a rock band?  A dj?  A singer-songwriter?  Boring radio music?  Nope.  There was a guy playing the clarinet.

After he finished, he sat at a table nearby and started composing, presumably more clarinet music.  Photo op!

This place also featured the worst bathrooms in Houston.

After a hearty night’s sleep, I woke the next morning to a call from Southwest telling me my flight had been cancelled.  Fortunately there was another available a couple hours later, so I booked that.  Thus, we had plentiful time to go eat and look at fish!

First we loaded up at the Argentinian bakery: pastries, flan, and empanadas!

Mmm espinaca.

Then we were off to the aquarium!

We actually encountered some difficulty trying to get in.  We later discovered that there are two entrances, front and back.  The front entrance gets you to the aquarium exhibit – you know, the fish and stuff.  The back entrance gets you to the restaurant, the gift shop, the snazzy potties, and essentially everything that isn’t the fish and stuff.  The trick is, there are fish back there too, but only a few.  We took the back entrance and wandered around this lame part of the aquarium for about 20 minutes, looking for the exhibit.  After a bit we considered the potential embarassment of going to the aquarium but being unable to actually find The Aquarium, a thought which prompted us to wander about outside for a while.  Finally we found the front door, and within, fish and stuff.

Fish and stuff complete, and only a few hours left, we opted to hang out, wander around, and be cool.

YAY TEXAS!

Texas Part 3

After finally finding Mike, the three of us decided to go see Watchmen.  Mike dug up a couple of his local pals and we were off for tex-mex.  I commend Austin for its awareness of the existence of vegetarians: everything on the menu came in both meaty and meatless formats.  A few veggie flautas and excellent margaritas later, we were off to the movies/brewhouse.  Apparently Austin boasts a small chain of theatres that serve food and drink along with the flicks.  Sadly, we arrived after all the Watchmen tickets were sold.  At both nearby theatres.  Mike’s pals departed and we hung for a bit at his apartment and surrounding area.  Then James and I hit the bus back to downtown, where an extraordinary phenomenon occurred: Austin on Saturday night!  After scanning an endless selection of bars, we settled on one that boasted a giant aquarium occupying one long wall.  After a bit, we wandered over to another strange three-in-one bar amalgamation.  One side featured loud hip-hop with a live dj.  The other side featured a loud rock band with flash-n-trash lighting.  These two areas were separated only by an open courtyard ringed by a balcony, allowing both sets of music to mingle unpleasantly and unavoidably.  But the Guinness was good.  The bathrooms also featured some interesting graffiti, my favorite of which was this:

After drinks, we wandered the streets for a while, which proved easy.  At night, they block off several blocks of downtown Austin, allowing only foot traffic:

Of course there was one of these:

 

 

 

 

 Finally it was time for the 3-hour drive back to Houston.  I think I conked out about 20 minutes in.

Sunday, we stopped by James’ office to pick up one of these fantastic mugs:

FRONT

 

BACK

O the irony.

The office was unsurprisingly yet impressively snazzy as all get out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mugs in hand, we were off to an AMAZING vegan Chinese buffet brunch.  O Little Apple, how you suffer for not knowing the wonder of this food…  Then we rushed off to the Alley Theatre, where we arrived about two minutes too late for tickets to the matinee show.  Instead we headed out to the art gallery district. 

First, I took care of a little personal project I had been meaning to get around to but had lacked the resources in Kansas.  Then we hit a couple galleries.  These restricted photos, but suffice it to say the art was amazing.  After some time, we headed back to the theatre district and met up with James’ gal for pre-show snacks.

But do you see what I see?

Yep.  The pizza parlor had a house band.

This time around, we actually made it to the show (The Man Who Came to Dinner).  Good stuff.  Afterwards we went a little crazy in the lobby.

To be concluded…

Interlude: Kids Can’t Do Stuff

These are great!

This kid can’t hula hoop:

 

And this kid can’t kick a ball:

 

Tee hee!  This is funnier than cats having no opposable thumbs!

Texas part 2

Over some chips and salsa at the restaurant, James and I began pondering what to do next.  A random strange film from the festival sounded like an apt choice at first, but then it struck us: “Wait!  We have to find Mike!”  Mike is a band friend of mine from high school (in Annapolis) who James had met on previous summer visits.  Mike now lives in Austin, doing incredible things with his brain at the university.  Due to lack of foresight, I forgot to call Mike until the previous day, when I failed to get ahold of him.  We tried giving him several calls from the restaurant, but none were answered.  So our mission became apparent.  Mike must be somewhere in Austin, and dammit, we would find him!

[Commence iPhone commercial segment of the post]

Fortunately, James had his iPhone with him, so we tried facebook to see if Mike’s address was there.

It wasn’t.  After various useless proddings at facebook, it struck me that perhaps his contact information could be found on the university’s website.

Success!  We just had to write the address down.  Even this proved difficult, as my only pen malfunctioned.

But finally, we had it.

Now we had to find the place.  Resorting again to the iPhone, we placed the address some 30 blocks away, too far to reasonably walk.  Fortunately, Austin is blessed with great public transportation.  We referred to the iPhone for the appropriate route and arrival time.  A short walk took us to the stop, and after $1.50 for a day pass, we were on our way to Mike!

Yay!

We hopped off a mere couple blocks from the apartment and continued on foot, sure we were moments away from seeing Mike.

And then we were there!

We headed up to the fourth floor to find #409.

That’s when we encountered our most befuddling challenge yet.

There was no 409, nor indeed, any fourth floor.  The university website had gotten it wrong.

We tried the apartment office; it had just closed.  We knocked on a couple neighbor’s doors and showed them Mike’s facebook image; none knew which apartment was his.  We tried looking up his girlfriend’s contact info in hopes of enlightenment; she could not be tracked down.  Our puzzlement increased.

Feeling despondent, we wandered around the apartments, looking for clues.  That porch had plants on it – couldn’t be Mike’s.  Those windows have blankets hung over the insides – could be Mike’s.  A Batman poster – inconclusive.

Then we began to panic – what if he was at his girlfriend’s?  What if he was on spring break in Maryland?

But then!  I spotted a car with a Maryland license plate.  He was home!

Knowing that Mike had to be somewhere in our vicinity renewed our vigor.  I briefly considered this:

Ultimately we settled upon the less invasive calling-of-the-parents.  With iPhone once again in hand, we looked up the number online and made an awkward call to Annapolis.  It turned out the university site had gotten one number off.  Finally we had the right door…

Then at long last…

MIKE!

It turned out that Mike had received none of our messages, so we arrived quite out of the blue.  THIS is my hobby.

To be continued.

Texas Part 1

For my spring-break-let [and let me just say, spring break should be an institution for everyone; a few days' trip at the onset of spring did wonders for my outlook.  Also it's no fun watching students around you get vacations but not get to partake] I went to Texas.  Specifically, I flew in to Austin, spent a day there, then drove to Houston for a two day visit.  My friend James from UD joined me on this adventure and introduced me to much of interest in his new hometown of Houston.  Here’s part 1, arriving in Austin.

Upon arriving in Austin, the first order of business was of course parking.  This proved more difficult than expected due to SXSW (that’s South by Southwest, the giant arts festival) being present in town.  Finally we found an available lot with some unusual payment mechanisms.

DO NOT PAY IMPOSTOR!

Gasp!  IMPOSTOR!

After much searching for the person who was NOT the impostor, we instead found a little metal box.  Into the metal box, one insterts money to the tune of 7 bucks, via tiny little numbered slits.  The box comes equipped with a money-pusher to help cram your bills into these things:

After much careful folding…

Success!

Extra cramming.

Then we began searching for a place to eat.  We didn’t end up eating here, though it amused us:

Ultimately we settled on a place over by one of the SXSW film theatres to peruse the schedule and to decide what to do next.  That’s when we began… the Quest for Mike!  Coming up in Part 2.

This is too much

Sheep art:

Just wow.