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.

The Alamo

First we went to the Alamo. For those of you who don’t remember the Alamo, feel free to look it up on Wikipedia. At this point I dont think either Laura or I want to go into it. Basically, what’s left of the Alamo is a church and the long barracks, and parts of the fort walls. Its a 4.2 acre complex only a couple blocks from our hotel, but a lot of that acreage consists of gardens. Was it interesting? Yes. Would we go again? Probably not. Its just one of those things where the legends and stories surrounding it are so big that you can’t help but be underwhelmed at the structure itself. I mean, its always awe-inspiring to visit historical sites and learn about what happened there, but there wasn’t an overwhelming sense of anything here. I think for us one of the most interesting facts regarding the Alamo was the fact that Davy Crockett died there. So our trip took us from the birthplace to the death place of Davy Crockett. There are some other interesting little tidbits, like the history behind the development of the Bowie knife (apparently Bowie was just really really good at stabbing), so we had a good time overall.

Day 5: Super Touristy

Today Laura and I decided to go ahead and do some real sightseeing. We went to the Alamo, the Buckhorn Saloon/Museum, and on a riverboat tour of San Antonio. My camera kept dying, but Laura was kind enough to take some pictures for me. Eventually I’ll post a link to an album with all the pictures, but I’ll try and limit the ones I post to the blog for now.

On the way to Alamo, Laura and I passed a curious store. At first, the name “Payless” was automatically associated with shoes in our mind. Then we read the sign in its entirety…only in Texas…

Email Update 2 From the Road

I wrote this one while we drove through Arkansas but then it took so long to type that we reached texas when it was sent.

hola amigos! We're in Texas ya'll!

As we mentioned yesterday, our differences in where we grew up have been of tremendous use. Laura is quite adept at avoiding people-based road obstacles, while my (Pallavi) strength lies in avoiding natural disasters. Also our normal daily schedules have been of great use. My vampire tendencies enable me to drive for long periods of time at night, while Laura's history as a day-walker makes her the ideal daytime driving candidate. Consider us a super hero team of two, if you will.

As yesterday's email promised, we would like to expand on our brilliant new business idea. But before we go on, we'd like to let you all know that we retain all rights to this idea. Consider this email our poor man's copyright.

We got to talking (in our 16 hours of driving so far) about how a lot of the products being marketed as "green" really are anything but. And nowhere is this more evident than in the housing industry. So Laura and I developed a truly green housing development idea. If executed properly it will develop into a nationwide collaborative effort to reduce our greenhouse gases.

It starts with a simple idea: hippie farming. Like true Americans we don't intend to be hippie farmers ourselves. Instead we will be raising hippies on a farm. They will cultivate their own byproducts into an eco-friendly housing material. We can't go into more details at this time as this is a patent-pending process (dipti: call us). But we expect this to be highly lucrative and self-sustaining. If you are looking for an investment opportunity, we are currently accepting cash and money orders (no personal checks please).

Signing off west of texarkana (dave: what state is that in?),
Laura and Pallavi
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Email Update 1 From the Road

For the sake of completeness I thought I'd throw in the emails we wrote while on the road. Here is the first one. Laura wrote it while I drove us through Tennessee.

Hello all!
Pallavi and I have had an exciting trip thus far! First, when I (Laura), was driving, a car spun out right in front of me! Thankfully, northern va aggressive driving has trained me well and I maneuvered around the obstacle with ease; Pallavi was completely oblivious to the danger.

Pallavi drove through treacherous weather conditions, the tornado was no match for her, and luckily the Tennessee drivers were able to avoid us as we drove 45 miles an hour in the middle of the highway! Phew! It was close.

So far we have been very productive, we have been coming up with business models for the ultimate green housing development. So far we have 3 different models. More details to follow.

Forward this on to people email I don't have and/follow Pallavi's tweets!
www.twitter.com/pallur

Which came first the chicken nugget or the Egg mcMuffin?

Laura and Pallavi
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Cynthia & Awkward Turtle & Stress Monkey

Cynthia is a stress monkey who is sharing the room with me and Laura. Tonight she taught us two new phrases. Awkard Turtle is in the video below, and stress monkey has already made its appearance in this post. For the record, Laura's quite the stress monkey herself (not to mention the embodiment of peer pressure!).

Texas Teaser

That's what Laura was tonight. Her dress got many compliments from passersby. It was sweet/creepy. We had a good time :)

The Riverwalk in the Evening

But apparently everything out here closes early. We went to a VCU thing tonight and the entire city was pretty much asleep when we walked home at midnight. It was wild.

I'm sitting in the lobby posting all of this because Laura and Cynthia are asleep, and I scared the bartender. Apparently the hotel is haunted and he didn't expect to see me sitting here...so he mistook me for a ghost. I'm not quite sure how that works, but since I was always a ghost for halloween as a kid and never scared anyone I think I'll consider this mission accomplished.

The Tower of the Americas

I want to go there either tomorrow or Saturday. There's a revolving restaurant on the top floor.

To My 1028 Girls

If you're not one of the roommates this probably won't make sense to you.

Here's the prototype for the latest model of our HPPs:

The First 48 (or Crime 360)

Laura turned on the tv and The First 48 was on. Apparently its a show about the first 48 hours of a murder investigation. She was about to change the channel when she heard the location…near Jeff Davis Highway. Yup, that’s right, this episode was about a murder in south Richmond. Charming. I realize this kind of stuff happens all the time, especially in Richmond, but its still funny to see how we’re being portrayed elsewhere.

Apparently its actually a show called Crime 360. And the next episode is also about Richmond. I’m starting to wonder if the whole show is about our dear little river city. As much as I hate to admit it, its probably not a bad place to film such a show…I mean you’ve got guaranteed activity. For those of you who are interested the show is on A&E and new episodes begin tonight at 9/8c. (I don’t have internet right now so this might not get posted until later.)

Riverwalk Trash

The Riverwalk is actually really pretty (pictures to follow soon). Unfortunately, that makes it really touristy. There’s a constant stream of boat tours and there are always throngs of people walking up and down. (Actually, along parts of the Riverwalk there are no guardrails, which is a little scary because there are a lot of little kids and drunken adults walking about, and when you combine the shear number of people with presence of tables and restaurants, the walkway can get quite narrow. I wonder how many people fall in each year…) Not everyone appreciates the Riverwalk quite as they should. After the rains today, Laura and I saw this at one of the water sources for the canal that is the river at Riverwalk.

.

Day 4: The Riverwalk

Last night we went to the Riverwalk to get dinner. Unfortunately neither Laura nor I are huge fans of crowds, and the Riverwalk at night is packed with tourists. All the restaurants and bars were completely packed…and outdoor seating was pretty much out of the question. We ended up at a British pub called MadDog’s. I thought about getting the fish & chips, but service was so slow that I was afraid if they actually had to fry my dinner I’d never get it. So we both ended up getting BLT’s, which were actually really good (when they eventually came). After dinner we went to the hotel and went to bed fairly early because we were both exhausted and Laura had an early morning today.

Today we went back to the Riverwalk for lunch. This time we went to a place (Polermo’s) that had Mexican food. We got a great table literally right on the water. The food was really good, but the portions were huge. To make things better, in addition to the food we got a pitcher of sangria. Normally when you think of sangria you think of wine + fruit, right? Well this pitcher of sangria came with a three inch layer of melon liquor with normal wine/fruit sangria floating on top. We both got about three glasses of it. Needless to say, we had a great time. As we finished our lunch it started to rain, and we decided to wait it out sitting at our table under an umbrella, polishing off the pitcher of sangria.

Oh and while we were at the table Laura took a liking to a duck. She even shared her tortilla chips with it. Apparently she confused it for a dog, though, because she tried to make it jump up and get the chip. I think the duck attempted to jump, but from what I can tell ducks just aren’t that good at jumping.

Air Currents

Its kind of hard to tell, but in the video below if you look closely you can see air currents. While we were driving we could see smaller, wispier clouds moving across the sky underneath larger, fluffy clouds. All of a sudden those moving satellite images the weatherman always uses made a little more sense.

Dallas

We didn't stop in Dallas, or anywhere near Dallas really, but we did take some drive-by type shots. Enjoy!







more Texas country side on the other side of Dallas:

The Vast Expanse

Everything I've ever heard about Texas is about how big it is, and when you look at a map of the US it does really look big. But when you're driving through Texas, I think one of the main reasons it feels so big is because of the short vegetation. In states like Virginia and Tennessee your range of visibility is limited by imposing trees. Sure there are fields in those states too, but the fields and roads tend to be lined with huge trees. In Texas, even the trees are smaller (and stubbier). It probably makes sense if you think about the climate and weather patterns, but none the less i think this miniature vegetation is largely responsible for that ever extending expanse feeling that you get as you cross this state.

Nothing in Texas

Apparently there's nothing near the road we were on in Texas, as you can see in the picture below.

The Backside of Texas

24 hours into a road trip and your sense of humor degrades to that of a preteen. At least that's my excuse.

Texarkana

In a stroke of what I can only attribute to pure Texan brilliance, the town bordering Arkansas is called "Texarkana".