Things That Go Bump In The Night

Everyone's home now. The house gets so quiet when people who are supposed to be here leave. By which I mean one or more of the family members. Everyone's back now, which is nice.

I saw something really funny on the Rachel Maddow show today. She was doing a recap of her favorite moments of geek from 2009, and her #1 favorite clip was of a BBC documentary shooter getting humped by a parrot. The other guy making the film says, "You're being shagged by a very rare parrot!" This clip is so funny, its totally worth the effort of scouring the internet for a glimpse of it.

I still have no New Year's Eve plans, but mainly for lack of trying. I have a couple options, but I just haven't felt like committing to any of them as of yet. Deep down inside I kind of want to stay home, build a fire, study a bit, maybe watch a movie, maybe drink a manhattan or two...a quiet night alone could be just what I need right now. But who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll want to go out and go crazy.

Oh speaking of movies, tonight we watched Doubt. It was great. Not in the happy sense, but good none the less. I like the way a lot of the scenes were shot at a tilted angle instead of straight on. It kind of coincides with when things start to get really out of wack. In the scene where Maryl Streep's character is accusing the priest of being improper with kids there's a shot where he's on one side of the frame and the two nuns are on the other, and as he weighs their accusations it looks like his side of the frame becomes heavier. The movie was done really well. If you haven't seen it you really should.

Tomorrow I need to return exchange the movies I have now for new ones (I'm hoping to be able to snag a copy of 500 Days of Summer), and update my movie queue online. I also need to wrap/deliver/mail out the last of my holiday gifts. Somewhere in there I need to study, but I really don't want to. I think I'll get some coffee instead. That would be good...

I need to flip my sleep schedule, so I'm off to bed. Nite nite!

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: Oh to Be Young Again!

Tonight Mom and I watched our first blu-ray movie. It made such a big difference! I really want to see a gory action movie in blu-ray, but I think that's more of a me & Dad kind of night. Anyway, tonight's choice was Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. It was actually really super adorable and reminded me of being in highschool and undergrad. Those random nights of madness are permanently etched in my mind.

The story is a classic teenage love affair, full of the kind of awkardness that Michael Cera makes. Oh, add him to my list of young cuties. He's legal, unlike Taylor Lautner. The weird part is that the character Norah had a lot of the same mannerisms as a girl I knew in highschool by the same name.

I can't resize this picture appropriately, so hopefully it will look ok when it posts...

The Penis Painting

Today my brother and sister IMed me from their vacation destination. You can always tell when my brother gets on..here's a tidbit from the conversation:

11:24 PM D: hey it's me and V

11:25 PM and the penis painting

me: hii

the what??

D: you know what we are talking about

me: no idea

apparently they found some obscure old chat between me and my sister. neither of us remember what its about...i think it might be in reference to some link in her gchat status message or something because i often comment on those, but i can't say for sure... the conversation is dated Tuesday, March 24, 2009, and reproduced below:

10:42 PM me: the sad part is i've already seen that :)

10:45 PM D: ?

me: the penis painting

D: oh haha

me: why were you never that innovative?

10:46 PM hehe

mom was worried that people would see your drawings from the road...

I think the last line refers to how my sister would sometimes crawl out of her bedroom window and draw on the roof with chalk. But that's a story for another day.

Funniest Tweet I've Seen Today

I tried to retweet this, but it's too long. Andy Jenks is a local news anchor for NBC12.

"It's hard to log onto the station's web site, see a picture of yourself, and not wonder if you just got busted for something."

Body of Lies, or Why The Kid That Works In My Lab Would Make a Great Terrorist

(There's this kid that works in my lab. He'll probably kill me if I mention his real name, so we'll just call him The Kid.)

Today I saw Body of Lies with the fam. Despite some of graphic violence I actually enjoyed the movie. The part that really stuck with me is the idea of just how easy it is for terrorists to evade us. Clearly technologically there's no way a terrorist organization could really compete with US, but we're working under the false assumption they would want to. Ok so fine, technology makes communicating significantly easier. But that only holds in places where technology is easy accessible. I mean can Osama really Skype from his cave? I doubt it. I bet he gets no wifi. How or why he continues to live in a place that doesn't offer the basic technological amenities I'll never understand. Oh wait, yeah I do. That's the whole point of this: Osama (like other terrorists) evade our intelligence gathering attempts by staying off the grid.

Basically, we created the grid to keep track of people and things. One of the primary purposes of the grid is to make it easier to find people, so to remain hidden all someone has to do is stay off the grid. Deliver messages in person or written down on actual paper in some basic form of encryption. Don't touch the phone or a computer, don't ever let one near you, and you can probably avoid our CIA's prying eyes. True, this is probably an over simplification, but you get my point.

The real fear-inducing aspect of terrorism is the fact that anything could happen at any time. Its that sense of uncertainty that makes people really pee their pants, that feeling that there's a possibility the world as you know it can change in an instant.

This brings me to The Kid. The Kid is the only American I've met who really would be perfectly happy existing in the middle of nowhere with very few of the customary comforts most of us take for advantage. The Kid really likes playing with electronics, but be thrilled to give up his cell phone. He might miss his laptop and internet access, but just the fact that The Kid can detach himself from his cell phone is simultaneously impressive and disconcerting. (Disconcerting only because of the uniqueness of his situation: I don't know anyone else quite as willing to detach themselves from their cell phone.)

So this movie got me thinking...The Kid, in theory, would make a great terrorist. The only problem is his idealism and disdain for all things evil, like Google, but that's post for another day.

The REAL Avatar Movie

I can't wait to see Aasif Maandvi in The Last Airbender. He's such a great actor.

Today he did a little clip for the Daily Show as the show's Indian correspondent that really needs to be saved forever. He approached the issue of the guy from Chicago that was found to have played an integral role in the 2008 Mumbai bombings the same way Americans would approach it if we found someone in a random country that helped orchestrate a domestic terrorist attack. It was interesting to be on the other side as Americans. Then of course he made some obligatory joke about how India knows everything about us anyway through all the random "confirmation" questions we get asked by call center workers. Very funny.

Julie & Julia

Last night my mom and I stayed up late watching Julie & Julia on the new big screen tv. Its one of those feel good movies (read chick flick) about a woman named Julie who cooked all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 1. As the beginning of the movie states, its based on two true stories...the story of Julia Child and the story of Julie-some-random-girl-from-nyc. It was a great way to end the day after attempting to make a buche de noel, and definitely inspired me to write my last entry. In fact, the movie was just inspiring in general.

I love quest movies. There's just something that resonates deep within me when the main character is on a quest for Mordor, or figuring out what it is that they were meant to do. I have come to realize that pretty much anyone can do just about anything. I mean there are certain limitations, but generally speaking anyone can cook, anyone can write, anyone can paint, anyone can be an engineer, etc. Its just about finding what makes you really tick. What floats your boat. Or any of those other cliched metaphors.

Personally, I'm still on that quest. So far, I've been a secretary, a personal assistant, a lab tech, a grad student, a photo shoot production assistant, a stylist, a social media consultant, a web developer, and a technical assistant. Maybe one of theses days one of those things will stick.

Buche de Noel

First of all, a note of caution: when your adorable baby brother asks you for help with a project for his French class, say no. Even when he gives you that cute little puppy dog face, say no. Otherwise you’ll end up like me: 25, running home early from work school, worrying about whether it really matters if you can’t sift your cake flour. (And for those of you wondering, the answer is yes, kind of, probably.)

So after doing more than my fair share of research into the culinary art known as baking, here’s what I learned about the buche de noel we needed to make. Its a traditional French dessert served during the holidays, and is known in English as a “yule log”. Its a thin, genoise cake, rolled with frosting (jelly roll style) and garnished to resemble a real tree log. Interestingly enough, genoise cakes are actually Italian (and really not that straight forward to bake).

We started off with three eggs and three egg yolks. If you have never seen two teenagers (my brother and his project partner) try and separate an egg yolk from the white, I highly recommend it. Its hilarious. To the eggs we added a pinch of salt and a fair amount of sugar. Then came the whisking. We don’t have a fancy stand mixer so this was all hand done, old school. The bowl with the sugary egg mixture was then placed on top of a pot of simmering water and there was more whisking. My mom did most of this step, mainly because she actually knew how this was supposed to go. She even brought out the big guns: the hand-held mixer. This is where the recipe broke down, though. It said to whisk until the mixture was room temperature or about 100 degrees. Now call me crazy, but 100 degrees is not room temperature. So we kind of ignored the temperature requirements and just whisked until the mixture had nearly tripled in size.

Genoise cakes have no leavening agents, so their ability to rise depends entirely on the air trapped within the batter. This is why it’s so important to fold in the dry ingredients, rather than stir them in, so we folded in the sifted cocoa powder, cornstarch, and cake flour. After all of that we poured the batter into a paper-lined, buttered baking sheet, smoothed it out as much as possible and popped it into the oven.

Fast forward 12 minutes and out popped a dark, chocolatey genoise cake that looked perfect. We pulled it off the baking sheet and set it up on some wire racks to cool. It didn’t take too long because the cake is so thin. This is where things started to fall apart (literally). When it came time to separate the cake from its beloved wax paper, the two refused to part. Actually most of the cake came off pretty well, but one part refused to leave the paper. We ended up with a little hole that was later patched with icing.

The kids spread one coat of icing (store bought…I would have seriously preferred to make our own, but in the interest of getting homework and stuff done I was overruled by both parental units) and tried to roll the cake. I tried to help them. This is where we realized that the edges of our cake were a bit dry, and thus prone to cracking. We got it into a roughly cylindrical form, which is more than I can say for Tyler Florence on last night’s Iron Chef (although I’m sure his cake was far superior), and then off it went into the freezer to firm up a bit.

I mentioned that the icing was store-bought, but I didn’t mention that it was super chocolatey…not dark or bittersweet chocolate, but that kind of sugary milk chocolate that soothes the soul in a primal way that we’ll never be able to truly understand. When the cake came out of the freezer, the kids coated it with another layer of icing, and then on top of that they added chocolate chips (luckily these were semisweet).

They were so proud of their creation, and who could blame them? The final product was this uber chocolate monstrosity that was so sweet that I think you have to be under the age of 15 to be able to truly appreciate it. The rest of us are just so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of chocolate and sugar. It actually turned out ok, which is more than I can say for our kitchen. There are egg whites (from one of the yolk extraction blunders) and chocolate everywhere, not to mention the millions of bowls, pans, and utensils.

I think next time I’ll try a homemade butter cream frosting and some espresso to keep it from being overwhelmingly chocolatey. Also, maybe I’ll consider getting a real jelly roll pan, instead of using an oversized cookie sheet.

Walk On

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Vertigo

Stuck In A Moment

Only To Be With You

New Year's Day

Elevation

Beatiful Day

Mysterious Ways

Massive Update

So I'm finally getting around to posting all of my U2 Concert videos. Keep in mind that they were "filmed" using my old LG Fusic...so you can't really see a whole lot, but you can hear some of the songs. It was definitely an amazing experience, and if you've never seen U2 I strongly urge you to. This was the concert they had in Charlottesville, VA in October.

U2 Concert

The U2 concert was amazing! I'll be posting pictures and videos as I get them off of my phone. Hopefully they're intelligible...

Bouchon: New Restaurant in Shockoe Slip

Yogi and I went to the new French restaurant in the Slip. Its right beside Tobacco Co, in the old Pomegranate building. Its a pretty interesting little establishment. I like it...hopefully it will last longer than Pomegranate.

?!@$^#@$&*^%$

My laptop is still not fixed. Seriously. The whole point of sending to "professionals" was to have things taken care of in a more timely fashion than what I'm capable of on my own. Unfortunately they didn't work on it all week. Hopefully one more week and things will be taken care of...

August in the Big Apple

I just went up to New York, again, to help my sister pack for her move back down to VA. She works the craziest hours...even on her last day she was in the office until 11 PM, and that was with me packing up and cleaning for her. And to think she's going to do that for a living...
Dinner was nice, though. We went to this French restaurant called La Granouille. The food was phenomenal and the service was amazing. And because of the economy they had a fixed price dinner menu, which was great for my grad school budget (although as I've learned this summer traveling is not necessarily stipend-friendly). All in all it was a good trip. I'd write more but my laptop is still in the shop.

Cat or car?

So there's this guy who works in my lab named R. R can't decide if he should get a cat or a car. Now, for most college kids this decision is pretty straight forward, but for some reason for R its a difficult one. I've been teasing him about this for at least two week now...ever since he first told me that he was debating between these two options when I came back from San Antonio. We went to Rostov's to get coffee around 5 today, and on the way back he was like, "I've made up my mind; I'm not really debating between the two anymore. I'm getting a car." Fast forward not more than two hours. R got a text from his dad regarding the availability of kittens. That apparently tipped the scales completely in favor of getting a cat. As of 7:30 PM today, R is fairly certain he's getting a cat.

advice from laura:

its really not polite to point.

Don't Lose Hope

I finally downloaded a bunch of random grad school pics off of my phone, so over the next couple days I'll post them. This is a picture of a rainbow I saw while driving home one day last semester. I had had a particularly difficult day in the lab, and I took it as a sign that I shouldn't lose hope in grad school. Then again i saw texas in laura's jello, so make what you will of it all.

(in)line

Burch and I have started a new line of t-shirts (pictures coming soon!). We call it our (in)line. Its kind of like the (red) campaign but proceeds don’t benefit AIDS charities. The first in the series will be making its debut Wednesday. I’ll keep you posted.

Lab Love

My laptop cord died. It lived a good life...over three years of intensive use (and probably more than its fair share of abuse). Unfortunately, though, it died in the middle of the day (around 2pm) while I was in the lab. To spare me the effort of having to drive home to find my other cord, my advisor adapted the working end of the cable to fit a power supply. I love my new laptop cord...its nerdilicious!

Red Mango

After dinner in Brooklyn with the fam, V and I went to spend the night in Manhattan with D. To satisfy a late night craving for icecream she took us to the Red Mango near her place in the Village. Unfortunately Red Mango has actual yogurt that happens to be frozen, not the frozen yogurt that tastes more like soft serve icecream. Needless to say V didn’t really like it. He did pick out all of the fruit topping the yogurt I got, though.

Broadway

Saturday afternoon we all went to see the matinee showing of Phantom of the Opera. I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure V. would really enjoy himself, but as luck would have it he apparently loved it. After the show he turned to me and was like, "That poor phantom...Christine should have stayed with him!"

The Tennis Match

Periodically my family attends random awesome sporting events…usually because D gets us tickets. For example, one year we went to the UVA/Tech game the day after Thanksgiving. It was D’s first year at UVA, and she got us tickets. Today’s tennis match is another example. I’m a little fuzzy on what the exact deal is, but it involves her law firm and a kids’ chorus that was going to perform.

But basically, we ended up with really awesome seats at a team tennis match in which Serena Williams was playing. Watching her play was really awesome. Unfortunately she didn’t sign any autographs for people in the crowd. On her team was an Indian tennis player named something Paes….I’m a little hazy on the facts surrounding him. I know he has played with Serena in mixed doubles before, and I know he’s really good, and my only fun fact about him is that he’s Malayali. Beyond that, though, i don’t have any details. Dad got his autograph, but you couldnt really see it well. So after the match I got an autograph that was actually visible for dad.

New York: Day 1

Driving in last night was crazy. The hardest parts of the drive were getting stuck in horrible horrible traffic crossing the Delaware River, and just being completely exhausted for the stretch of driving from the beginning of the NJ Turnpike all the way to Brooklyn. We’re staying at my cousin’s awesome place in Brooklyn Heights (I’ll get some pictures up tomorrow). When we finally got in at almost 3 AM we just crashed.

Day 1 was supposed to be: the bodies exhibit, lunch in midtown, the guggenheim, dinner in midtown, and then the tennis match. But because of our extremely long (and late) night, we ended up taking it easy in the morning…at least I did. Dad had to get up and move the car at 8, but I slept in until 10. We ended up having to scratch the bodies exhibit, but we still made it to the guggenheim.

The Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit currently running at the Guggenheim is fantastic….especially since he designed the museum. My brother wasn’t so into it, though, so after a while I took him to see the film running in the basement so Mom and Dad could finish checking out the exhibit. Mom caught up with the two of us in the basement theater and ended up watching the entire film (V. and I skipped out early to check out the giftshop and loiter in the lobby), while Dad saw all of the exhibits currently running at the Guggenheim.

After the Guggenheim, we got some water and sat down across the street from Central Park and just spent some time talking and enjoying the day. The weather up here is gorgeous…not very hot at all and not too humid.

my so-called life

i'm setting up thunderbird right now, and its loading all of my gmail messages in from the beginning of my gmail days. as it updates the list i keep coming across old emails. some make me nostalgic while others are the kind that you wish would just stay in the past or whatever. anyway, i found my first gmail signature and realized that all these years later nothing has changed.

"This life has been a test. If it had been an actual life, you would
have received actual instructions on where to go and what to do."
--My So-Called Life

Question of the Day

Why are you standing there waving? RUN!
(from david's status message)



image from wikipedia

Prayers on Dipti's Birthday

Dipti came home for her birthday last weekend.

The festivities started off with a havan.



Then there was dinner...which was elaborate, as usual.



Dinner was followed by a birthday cake, which was the classic Richmond birthday cake: Ukrop's yellow batter chocolate frosting yumminess :)



Hopefully Dipti had a good time...i know the rest of us did!

Living for a Century

Throughout my undergraduate experience I had a lot of very different friends, all of whom were very cool in their unique ways. One who has already made an appearance on my blog this year is Laura, of San Antonio trip fame. The thing about Laura, though, is that in college she was always the friend you could count on in weird social situations. Going to a party where you're not sure if you'll know that many people? Laura's the person you take. Or maybe you're hanging out for the evening with some people you do know but you're still not sure if you're really going to have a good time. Laura's your person for that too.

Recently I came across this article, and I've been meaning to post it for ages now. Apparently Laura's going to live for another 75 years!

http://www.realage.com/ct/tips/8955

Summer Drink

Here's a post from someone I follow on twitter. I knew there was a reason I followed him. The drink seems like it should be pretty good...like a cross between a mint julep and a mojito, but using vodka. I like all the dancing necessary to make the drink properly.

http://agentmlovestacos.tumblr.com/post/131437484/recipe-for-my-favorite-summer-drink

Linux

Accomplishing even the tiniest of acts in Linux makes me feel competent. Its wonderful :) I just installed adobe air and twhirl on my desktop. Now all I have to do is make sure Ubuntu actually boots in the morning...For some reason my desktop has been a bit fussy ever since I got rid of windows.

Packing

Packing is sad. Its not that I have an attachment to this place, its that I have an attachment to the meaning of this place. It was my space, for the first time in my entire life. 100% mine. I will have to wait a long time before I get this again, but that's ok. Now that I've had a taste I know what to look forward to. Besides, everything in life is a trade off. I'm losing the solitude afforded to me by this place but I'm gaining the ability to do other things with my money, like travel.

DMB Lister Supported just really fits the mood tonight. I'll try to post pictures at some point in time...Hopefully before the movers get all of my stuff ouit of here Monday afternoon.

Packing Song

The song I'm listening to on repeat until all of my mp3s have been loaded into Amarok.

14 Again

I'm supposed to be packing for the impending doom disguised as a move I have scheduled for Monday. Instead I found myself watching the last bit of a movie I used to love when I was in the 8th grade. I was flipping channels when I found Can't Hardly Wait showing on some random cable channel. A bit of background: my closest girl friends and I were huge Ethan Embry fans. The way his character feels about Jennifer Love Hewitt is the way we felt about him. He was soooooooooo cute, not just in the way he looked but he has the cutest mannerisms and way of speaking and moving. Everytime I see that movie or Empire Records I can't help but revert to my 14 year old self. Its terrible, and yet surprisingly fun.

investment offers

laura and i debuted our brilliant housing scheme from the road on the way to texas and so far we've received two offers for investment....i dont know what to say.

to send or not to send?

The million dollar randomly posed to a few friends who happened to be on gchat at the time (can you guess which is my favorite?):

Q: On a scale of 1 to 10 how mean is it to send someone a thank you card for reminding you of why you hate them?

Christine: don't even bother sending a card
just cut him off
delete his number, delete his email
why are you still talking to him anyway?

adityabondal@gmail.com: 10

Pushkal: haha
i think 4

Colleen: inversely related to the degree you hate them? if you hate them at a 10 then sending the card would be a 1 etc... ? =)

Vikas: huh?
U shouldnt hate
anyone
live, love and let live Pallavi


David: I don't like that syntax. Instead, I'm going to imagine you said, "on a scale of 1 to 10 how mind-blowingly awesome is it to send someone a thank you card for reminding you of why you hate them?" And for, I give it a 9.
And for that*
me: lol
i'm so tired of the same ways of telling him i hate him
so i thought i'd get creative
David: haha, good for you.
3:30 PM variety is the spice of life.
cocaine works too, but it's like the saffron of life spice.
variety is like the black pepper.

Trip Song

Sadly, dear friends, Pallavi and Laura’s awesome summer adventure has come to an end. I’m sitting in the Austin airport after dining at a place called Sonic where Laura and I ate our lunches in her car while listening to our audiobook.

I thought I would end this section of my blog with our trip song…Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon. Last June, around this time, Laura and I drove out to the eastern shore together for our dear friend Jennifer’s wedding. Our song for that trip was Dixieland Delight by Alabama. Sex on Fire was chosen for this trip mainly because its a great song to drive to, and boy did we do a lot of driving. So, for your viewing/listening pleasure, we leave you with Sex on Fire.

A Few Last Pictures

This says it all about Texas... "We don't dial 911"



The DC cops dont wear hats, so Laura needed a picture with this guy.



This is the picture Laura and I were going to recreate last night until we got into our hotel room and noticed that our tub was too dirty (not from us, we used the separate shower...just had to clarify).

3rd Email: The Last Supper

(written by Laura, sent out yesterday evening)

Today was a great day! I was late to my first lab session due to late night festivities at a go-go bar were I made new friends!
I was accosted at the exhibit hall where a man with a massage roller decided to demonstrate on me. Needless to say- Kent and I will not purchase this item for our training room.
After a solid lunch at a quaint sandwich shop in San Antonio, where I decided split pea soup isn't my 'thing', Pallavi and I decided to take a touristy trolley tour. WHO KNEW A TROLLEY COULD GO 70 MPH DOW THE FREEWAY!
As Pallavi and I bumped along in our wooden benches, we asked ourselves: "all these hotels, where do the people live?" Our question was soon answered as we exited the freeway and proceeded through south SA! From the safety of our trolley we shot drive by photos of the sights of the Mission district.
After a grueling hour of bouncing on wooden benches we decided drinks and dinner would be an excellent idea. Unfortunately, my choice in food establishments are just about as good as Pallavis' choice in expensive museums. (Yesterday we toured a museum with the largest 'Horn' collection - lured by the idea we could drink and walk around-we needed those drinks! Pallavi had a hard time NOT petting all the animals)

Anyway! I digress, back to dinner. Pallavi and I prided ourselves in our uncanny ability to avoid crappy live music-until today :( the live music at the Irish pub (specializing in southern food) had a man performing glorified karaoke: poorly. As the man sang toons from his IPod, two drunk men danced madly offbeat and sometimes inappropriately (for and early dinner).
We baked in the sun moving our lawn furniture hoping to stay in the shade. The alcohol content in our hurricanes was not enough to compensate for the heat, the music and dancers.
We leave you now in search of a gun and hat.


Soon to follow..... An inappropriate picture from our bathtub.

Love always,
Laura and Pallavi

We only hope you are having as much fun as us!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Day 6: The Trolley Tour

After Laura’s conference obligations were satisfied today we went on a trolley tour of San Antonio. We got on the trolley to find row after row of uncomfortable wooden benches, but we figured it wasn’t that big of a deal because we’d just be cruising around the city. Imagine our surprise when our trolley took an exit and started barreling down the freeway at 70 mph.

The whole time Laura and I have been exploring this city, we kept asking eachother, “where do all the real people live?” Everything looks so touristy and we had only seen hotels, until today. Today we went on a tour of south San Antonio, and now that we know where the real people live we kind of wish we didn’t. There were a couple nice houses in the old German part of the town, but the majority of what we saw wasn’t very nice. Oh, and we saw a couple of missions. And the San Antonio River, which looks like a canal. I realize it floods and gets bigger, but it looks pretty pathetic right now.






(yeah, we passed this place on our trolley tour too...the sign reads "Bexar County Juvenile Center.)

After the lame/painful trolley tour we grabbed dinner at this place called Pat O’Brien’s. It was an Irish pub that specialized in southern food. We had some giant hurricanes and terrible food while taking in the horrible “live music”. One thing that I’ve learned about San Antonio is that while nearly every place boasts live music performances very rarely are they any good. Tonight’s performance was no exception.


The “performance” consisted of a guy singing karaoke with his ipod. Occasionally he would strum a few cords with his guitar or fail at trying to play Santana. The best part were the two older men who danced along to the music madly offbeat and sometimes inappropriately.

Our Night on the Town

Friday was our night to go out. We started out our night on the town with a drink and snacks at the bar in the hotel lobby. Our hotel is really nice. We’re staying in the Wyndham St. Anthony, a historic hotel now owned by Wyndham. Apparently it was one of the nicest hotels when it was built, considered as nice as the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC. The lobby is a perfect example of Texan opulence.

Afterwards we went to meet some of the VCU girls at a club called Club Rive. Rive has live gogo dancers. It was slightly awkward because you can’t help but look at them. Some of the girls were really good, but too many were just really bored looking. Occasionally guys would give the girls dollar bills, so I dared Laura to go give these two random guys who were dancing really well dollar bills. And would you believe it, the crazy girl did! She just walked up to these two guys and put dollar bills in their pockets. It was perhaps the funniest moment.

Laura's new friends are the two gentlemen on either side of her.

RB Tour con’t: The Optical Illusion

The Nix Medical Center in downtown San Antonio is built in such a way that from the right angle it looks completely flat.

Then we have the giant bronze statue of St. Anthony, the patron saint of children and where San Antonio got its name (because it was founded on the catholic day for St. Anthony).

Then we have the big mural from the hemisfair, which apparently is a big deal for San Antonio because it's the only major event everyone remembers. In the center are Adam and Eve. To the right you have the history of western civilization going from the colonists to the roman empire, and on the left you have the history of the Mexicans/Indians.

The Riverboat Tour

 

Every time we went to the Riverwalk Laura and I saw these boat tours floating down the “river”. So after a lunch of terrible barbeque (which is sad because we’re in Texas), we decided to go on one of the boat tours. Our tour guide was funny, but we didn’t tip him. Below are some of the pictures and facts.

Mission bells along the Riverwalk (above).

The octagonal-roofed building:

which has a bow-shaped sixth floor:

and gothic architectural details:

Buckhorn Weirdness

Not everything at the Buckhorn was cute and furry. Some things were downright disturbing, like those depicted below. Make what you will of them.

Laura was so overwhelmed by the Buckhorn that she said I was forbidden from choosing our next museum…out of fear of being overwhelmed by awesomeness again.

The Buckhorn Saloon/Museum

On our first night in San Antonio, Laura and I passed the Buckhorn and immediately declared it was not the type of place that we were interested in exploring. Upon further research, though, I decided it could actually be really interesting, so Laura indulged me and came along.

The Buckhorn has a really interesting history. The guy who started it started things off by trading men a shot of whiskey for their antlers. Soon he had one of the largest collections of antlers and horns of all types. Now it has all sorts of dead animals. Its kind of reminiscent of Gaston’s house in that song he sings in Beauty and the Beast, except taken to a wild extreme.

Laura and I were ushered into the establishment by this character:

Unfortunately the Buckhorn now also hosts the Texas Rangers Museum, which apparently (and after seeing it I understand why) is so unpopular that they have to use trickery to force people to see it. So we bought our tickets to the horn museum only to find out that they’re dual tickets for both museums. Then, upon entering the actual “exhibits” we were forced into the rangers part before we were allowed to see the horns. Needless to say, the trickery was not appreciated.

One of the redeeming qualities of the museum/saloon, though, was that it hosts the original saloon bar from when it was first built. Its a beautiful wooden structure, and it really has that old-timey Texas feel. Another redeeming quality is that you are encouraged to get a drink from the bar and carry it around while looking at the exhibits. Drinking in a museum? How cool is that! Laura and I had mango margaritas that were actually pretty good.

Its also interesting to note that the name Texas Longhorn is not an exaggeration, as we saw with one of the many taxidermied animals shown below.

Another gross picture: Shown below are three animal skulls. The center one is the skull of an Asian elephant, the right one is that of a hippopotamus, and I don’t remember what the left one was. Seeing the dead animals was kind of interesting, but also kind of sad.

Laura was afraid of a snake, so she wouldn’t smile for this picture of furniture made out of horns.

But she did smile for Teddy.

And I fell in love with a moose.