Katzenklavier

Inauguration

2009-01-18T13:22:00.001-08:00

I worked on my laptop most of the day Saturday, after sleeping 'til
noon. After hitting the gym for a while, I went to the Black Cat
to catch the Raveonettes show. U Street was crazy- lots of Obama
shirts for sale, lots of spontaneous yelling in the streets. The
show was sold out, irritatingly; I had checked that afternoon on the
website to see that it wasn't, but I guess I didn't take into account
out-of-towners (of which there are currently millions) making
last-minute plans.

I hung out with another dude outside the club to hustle extra tickets-
he got one pretty quickly, and after another fifteen cold minutes I
scored too. My savior was pretty pissed- it sounded like he had been
stood up. I offered him $20 for the tic ($17 fv) and he shook his
head and gave it to me. "Merry Christmas," sez I. Nickel Eye
opened up- awful name, immediately evoking Nickelback. Solid rock n
roll, good slide and hollow-body country-feel to some of the songs.
Probably 200 people watching, which was fine, but I was irritated by
the maybe seven or eight hipster chicks with SLRs jostling around the
front. That, combined with the surprising tightness of the band,
made me suspect they weren't just a regular opening band. Turns out
I was right- the frontman is the bassist from the Strokes, or
something like that.

I ended up chatting between sets with a couple, lawyer-types, who went
on about how they had seen the R'ettes at sxsw, which, great, but man,
so much indie-rock namedropping. Turns out they lived down the
street from where I lived in Boston back in 98-99, and went to grad
school at BU. Some girl next to us joined the conversation, and
they did the "I saw the Pixies at thus-and-such secret show" or "I saw
thus-and-such back then at Paradise or Avalon." I miss the Middle
East and TT the Bear's a lot, so I just basked in the Boston nostalgia
for a while. The other girl went to Clark, though, which raised
unpleasant memories (ex-girlfriend a Clark dropout).

The Raveonettes played a short set (45 min) which was fantastic. The
total loudness, think J&M Chain with a Nordic ice-queen singer,
really isn't captured on their studio work. I'd heartily recommend
them live. Some more fog would have been nice, but then again I'm a
bit of a sucker for fog machines- too many Sisters of Mercy shows.

I got out 'round midnight and was going to head to U & 12th for a
party with a friend-of-a-friend who had mentioned it to me, but by the
time I got there she was leaving. I should have just gone to Ben's
Chili Bowl, as Our Lord and Savior did the other day, but just split a
cab home and watched the Galactica webisodes with a few Longhammers.

A good night.

Anarene

2009-01-17T09:22:00.001-08:00

I've been on a savagely depressing movie kick lately. Last week it was The Last Picture Show, which was worth maybe a quarter of the Christmas Chivas (courtesy of Cricket's folks). It's always a shock how prevalent nudity was in early 1970s (Oscar-winning!) cinema, but hey, it kept me from wanting to kill myself from angst while watching it. It was really good, though: I'd never heard of Timothy Bottoms before, but apparently he was a bit of a star back then. A young Lebowski was also awesome. Cybill Shepherd is the girl who Bottoms and Lebowski fall for. She apparently hooked up with the director, Peter Bogdanovich. Good times.

I only after realized that Bottoms played the dude in Johnny Got His Gun, the movie made from the good Dalton Trumbo book, most famously used (and now owned) by the guys from Metallica, everybody's favorite has-beens, for their change-your-life-good video for One.

Although this is cool too: One with Legos.

i'm back

2008-11-05T19:49:00.001-08:00

I'm watching a creepy-as-fuck movie called "Don't Look Away" with
Donald Sutherland and (I think) Julie Christie. Some Unfogged
thread led me to it. What a crazy times the 70s must have been:
nudity in the movies, weird-ass outfits, and (although I'm not
finished, I suspect) the god-damned Devil.

I saw the holy one speak in Manassas on Monday night before Election
Day. The wait was too long, the warmup speeches execrable, and the
smooth-jazz entertainment pathetic. But his speech was good, even if
it was his standard wall-street/main-street Fire It Up Ready To Go
bit, and I couldn't resolve him b/c of distance and failing eyesight.
America, Fuck Yeah.

I figure we'll be pissed at him in about a year. The gay marriage
thing is a pretty big clue.

I have become what I most abhor

2008-07-08T20:58:00.001-07:00

The barbecue on Saturday wasn't much fun. I took a forty-five minute Metro ride for the privilege of walking twenty minutes through the miserable swampy weather to the place in Ballston, where I hung out with some beltway bandit grown-up-geeks and their children at a backyard barbecue. The most fun I had was talking to a child by the beverage bucket about ice.

Me: "ice is really crazy, huh"

Kid: "Mmmm yaaaa"

Me: "how do you figure it floats? what does that tell you about the nature of the solid state vs the liquid?"

Kid: "ice melty. Kittycat!"

So, I did the proper thing: I stayed an hour, made chitchat, and did something I've never done before: took the sixpack I brought back with me. Nobody had touched it (still in bag), and it wasn't really a beerbecue anyway. I know it's a mega douche move, but a) sometimes a man has to go with his gut and b) it was really good beer.

In other notes, my work is glacially productive, my girlfriend is in San Antonio, and my knee hurts.

Also, why the fuck do old people like Panera so much? Every time I go there for a work-escape for reading and scones and decent coffee, it's swarmed with the elderly. What gives?

Finally, I just read this Feynman quote, which I like: he's a guy I pretty much roll my eyes at, and get sick of people worshipping him, but he hits this spot on. I know it's pompous, but I'm kind of a pompous guy myself at heart.

I would use the words of Jeans, who said that `the great Architect would seem to be a mathematician.' To those who do not know any mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the deepest beauty of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.

It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reported--I do not know if it is true--that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, `there is no royal road to geometry.' And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language.

I'm such a slut for secret-knowledge aesthetics.

Shooting

2008-07-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

A dude was shot thrice in the belly near my apartment the other night.
I only know because he's a blogger. He survived, but it's scary:
I'm a few blocks from 17th and Euclid, which is the shithole corner
where it happened. Right up the street from the new Harris
Teeter...

I generally don't have much regard for "safety" as such when I'm by
myself. Either I'm foolhardy or I have good intuition; I'm not sure
which. I've lived in cities-with-muggings since I've been 17 and
never been mugged, despite being the sort of person who is out late a
lot, quite often inebriated as well. A friend suggested it's because
I'm larger than average, which I think is bullshit.

It's July 4th weekend. Cricket is in Boston for a bachelorette
party. I'm gonna work work work, although there might be drinkies
tomorrow night; some suburban friends of mine are going to the
fireworks and want to drink the pain away afterward, the pain of
course being sitting on the National Mall with 100,000 people for
eight hours. On Saturday a fellow from my Boston years is having a
barbecue with his wife in Arlington. Should I go? It could be a
welcome social event, or a dull bear-trap!

Peace

2008-06-20T08:36:00.001-07:00

I'm flying this weekend to SeasideTown, MA, for the wedding of Cricket's childhood friend. It should be fun, although her parents' housecats give me the wheezie, and I hate not being at my charming best when I'm with the parents. I'm stressed, a little, because this is the sixth weekend of seven I haven't been able to work, and that gives me the Fear pretty bad. I had a major piece of equipment break in my lab yesterday, which lowered morale further.

On the plus side, I have a wireless router now, and am bit-torrenting the shit out of like 10 Galactica episodes. Go, me.

Start rich, stay rich

2008-06-11T21:17:00.001-07:00

After a conference where I gave not one but two short talks, which were well received even if not well understood, I ditched the final schmooze and hopped in my car to join my Cricket at the Princeton reunions.   These are strange affairs: it seems most of the people who go to Princeton delight in returning.    I went to a large (yet fancy!) public school, so reunions are the sort of thing reserved for Greeks, which I was not.   GDI, in the parlance of the time.

Princeton reunions are very cultlike.   Everyone comes back for their mod-5 reunions, and each of those gets a huge tent.   There's a lot of drinking.   There's a ridiculous P-rade.

Jakov, physicist and class warrior, joined me, so that in the moments when Cricket was overwhelmed with Princeton glee and forgot about me I would have someone to talk to.    We were both pretty shocked at the larval ruling class making beasts of themselves.   Then again I'm a bit of a hypocrite, and made a beast of myself.   A hell of a good time, actually.

We lunched at her Eating Club.   Great catering. I enjoyed the wood-paneled library.

Would I send my kids to Princeton?   Hell yes.   Am I a little bit bitter they didn't accept me for undergrad?   Yeah, a bit.    Is the Princeton thing a feature or bug re: Cricket?   Definitely feature.    Do I reserve the right to be a little weirded out by the whole thing?   Yeah, a bit.

On the way back to DC we hung out in Philly (her flying out of Philly to Chicago) with her bro and his wife and kid.    He's younger than me but has been in the Navy for N years and went to Annapolis.   So he feels older.    I envy him his permanent job, but not necessarily the stress of having a wife/kid/new house/new job combo.   Will that be me in a few years?

Nice

2008-05-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

A smooth drive up: 3 1/2 hours from Adams Morgan to the Liberty State Park ferry in Jersey City. Squalls and wind on the ferry out, sunshine on the way back. A disappointingly long line for security on the island, complete with those awful GE air-spritzing machines.

I spent half an hour getting through security once on the island, then an hour wandering around the monument itself. It's impressive. Needless to say, I was alone, but I kind of liked it that way. I'm glad I went.

The ferries were slow and peaceful, and were full of schoolchildren and moms. The view of NYC from the ferry was really stunning, especially once the sun peeked through the clouds on the way back.

A smooth four hours back, except for some commuter stuff on the beltway in DC.

problem

2008-05-21T17:19:00.001-07:00

I have a moral quandary. Tomorrow is May 22, 2008. Ten years ago, I graduated from college. And let me forestall your complaint- I'm not whining about age; I've spent this decade well: two years in a job I liked, six years in grad school, and now two years in a job I really like. So yeah, go me.

The thing is, I have a promise to fulfill. The summer after my college graduation, I stuck around for a while, working for a professor, and psyching myself up for Real Life. My best friend at the time (or local best friend, at least), who I had been through heaven and hell with, was this fellow I'll call T. We were the only ones in our respective majors who were double majoring, and the only ones who appeared to really be into one of those two majors.    Of our fellow majors, we each also were basically the only one the other could stand to spend a lot of time with.   There were a lot of late nights, a lot of bonding, a lot of good stuff like that.    We were pretty different personalities, but we got along out of a common thread of obsession re: our subject of study, and shared dislike for our peers.    The esprit de corps of shared suffering, if you will.    To this day, nobody has gotten me a better or more surprising birthday present, pace Cricket.

So one day, that summer, looking to a future, and being whimsical lads, we made a pact to meet ten years down the road.   The rules: it was to be at the Statue of Liberty, at noon, ten years from the date of our college graduation.   If the Statue wasn't open that day, then the immediate day following.

The other rule was that we couldn't ever speak of it again.    Failure to show up would be punishable by a hefty gift obligation.

So, awkwardly enough, and it pains me to even write about it, we had a huge falling out that fall after I left.   I had been in agony the last year of college over a girl, who I was good friends with, and on who I had a huge crush.     T knew her as well- we ran in the same circles- but he had mostly been my counselor through the process, usually of the sack-up/get-a-life pep-talk variety.   I had tried to escalate with her but had been clearly told that it wasn't going to happen.   It didn't change my feelings, really.    Anyway, the fall after I left, they got together.   I was alone in the new city, and was absolutely wrecked.   I was 21.   It was really pathetic.   I hated them both.   They apologized a lot, and broke up maybe a year later.

I've kept up with him over the years, but not with her.    He and I are ...civil.   We haven't been friends since the fall of 1998, though.

I had thought for many years that I would go to the Statue tomorrow, out of a sense of honor for my own promises and out of a spirit of the happy pre-screwing-me-over memories.    And I would, but...holy shit, is my job a shite-heap of stress and obligation right now.   I basically would waste day driving to NYC and back, although the effort would probably cost me enough emotional capital that I would need to track down one of several good friends in the city to get drunk with.

Should I go?    I put the odds of him going at maybe 1%.   He lives in the Bay Area and is writing a thesis, so it would be ridiculously inconvenient for him.

many worlds

2008-05-02T11:19:00.001-07:00

In one possible universe, I could see myself doing this:

Nature Physics editor.

It's funny how the first thought I had was that moving to England probably was a dumb idea, and second, that it probably didn't pay that well.

On second thought, though, I bet they do pay decent; plus, weak dollar!

For a guy who digs on both science and writing/reading, this could be a decent gig. My quest to become Cornelius Bear would be in full motion.

bears

2008-05-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

I went camping in Shenandoah last weekend with two grad school friends, Space-Monkey and Jakov.   They arrived Thursday night, and while packing we ate pizzas and drank beer and watched Highlander.    They slept on my floor, which they didn't mind, because they're tough.

We packed up and drove out to Skyline, picked up some fishing licenses from a tiny-ass redneck mom-and-pop ammo shop, complete with pronouncements on the gun laws of every state on the drivers' licenses we gave them.   "California is a retaaaarded state!"

We hiked down from some parking lot about 3 or 4 miles into the backcountry, along a stream called Jeremy's Run.   There were about five or six stream crossings, which were really annoying. I'd never had to do those before.   Jakov was Mr. Balance and probably only did two-thirds of them but I really didn't like the thought of falling facefirst off a log.

We found a good secluded clearing to camp in, and commenced two days of trout fishing, whiskey-drinking, and exploring.   I caught my first trout.   I cleaned my first trout.   I ate my first trout!   It was exciting.      We need more whiskey, though.

When we ran out of whiskey late Saturday, after hiding in our tents waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, we explored the ridge behind our campground, and ran into a black bear.   We saw him about fifty yards away, and stopped; he then disappeared, and then reappeared from another angle about twenty-five yards away.   That was our cue: slowly get the fuck out of there.   Thankfully he didn't follow us back to camp.

It rained a lot Saturday night, but my one-man tent's fly held.   The hike out was brutal and quick: one hour or so up out of the valley.

We had beers and good pub food at Ventnor's in Adams Morgan after coming back.   One thing I love about DC: even the shitty bars have decent kitchens.

A decent day.

2008-03-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

Today was the sort of day off that I haven't had for a while.    I slept 'til 11, made myself pancakes, and headed to a coworker's apartment in the distant suburbs to watch basketball, drink beer, and have Chinese food delivered.   The basketball games sucked, the Chinese food was forgettable, and I don't think I'll be hanging out there often.   But it was relaxing.

I decided not to turn it into a Saturday like last week's, so headed home to eat pie, clean my apartment a little, and watch season 4 Wire eps.   Tomorrow's a big day; I think all the pieces of the last month or so might come together in the lab.

I'm reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, mostly because my supervisor who I respect made a casual reference to it in a meeting and I'm kind of curious about what sort of books he reads.   John Irving is one of those authors who I've perpetually avoided for no particular reason.   It's OK, but I probably won't pick up more of him.   I mostly liked the parts about the old man in the "present" (1987) day, and the evocation of the 60s.   I didn't really care for the the New England WASP fetishization.    But Cricket went to a private school in Cambridge, MA, and then Princeton, so I really need to be careful about how I say these things.   But technically she was born in Cali, so fuckit.

Poor me

2008-03-19T21:58:00.001-07:00

Sorry no blogging.

It's feeling like tough times in Katzenklavier land.   I'm working twelve-hour days out of vague whim that it's my "scientific style," and I'm not getting much done.   That's partially because I'm an inefficient scientist, but also I'd like to think it's because I'm working on a tough problem.     The person a year ahead of me in the pipeline is getting the complete hairy eyeball from academia, and I don't think it bodes well for me, as this person is sexier on paper than me.   Granted nobody is sexier in person than myself.    I think I've really gotten decent at communicating the whole audacious enthusiasm thing in person, but I need to be able to get shortlisted somewhere.

In other words, I'm definitely starting to freak out about where I'm going to be in the fall of 2009.

Cricket is in Tanzania right now so I have nobody to talk to, which is fine, as I'm only thinking science and life strategy these days.   In grad school I had roommates and friends and people to drink with.   I don't dig too much on the phone conversations, so I pretty much isolate.   Last weekend I hung out with a friend from those days who lives around here, M, and another one who was in town visiting, P. There was a lot of drinking. I can't drink like I used to. I also was pissed that the house party ran out of booze and my people wanted to go to Wonderland. What would have been a $10 evening (Delerium Nocturnum, donated to party stash) turned into a $50 evening. But I had fun.   P and M were my cohort in grad school, and it's always sweet to see them.   I wonder where we'll all be in ten years.

Also, in good news: Cricket will be cohabitating with me this summer. The prospect of a girlfriend who isn't a million miles away is a nice one.    I like her friends who live in DC, too.    They class up my boring-ass joint, something sorely needed since I couldn't be fucked to even go to a show these days.

I'll probably play hooky and watch basketball and drink on Friday, though.

travel

2008-02-19T07:04:00.001-08:00

I was in Santa Fe this weekend. I'd never been to New Mexico before, except for crossing time and maybe a campsite during a roadtrip back in 1997. That was a good road trip. I took the train out of Berkeley down to Bakersfield, where my pal Smith picked me up in his truck. We were both rising seniors in college; I was playing hooky from a summer job working for a professor, and Smith was just willing to fuck off for a week from whatever summer action he had going. We drove to College Station, TX, to visit a mutual friend from high school we hadn't seen since high school, mostly because said friend has the bizarre desire to go to college in distant Texas and never return for holidays.   We probably should have taken that as a sign.

The clear memories I have of that trip include living off of a gallon can of refried beans we kept in the back of the truck along with a few bags of tortillas and a lot of water.    We exited California through Death Valley, near the bottom of which the truck overheated.   It was July, so a little bit scary.   We didn't really know not to take the radiator lid off when it was hot, so we both got sprayed with hot steam, thankfully not melting any features off.   Texas itself was boring, our friend wasn't a terribly great host, and we left after one night.   I was harassed for being purportedly gay in College Station, around the apartment complex in which my friend lived with a bunch of other undergrads.   I had long hair and an earring at the time, which must not have sat well with the Corps of Cadets.    I've thought ill of A&M every day since then, and am sad that not one but two close friends are taking jobs there.

Along the way back to California I had my arm out the window for half a day.   I don't remember if I put on sunscreen; either I put on lotion that wasn't sunscreen or I just plain forgot, because by the time we made camp I had bubbles rising on my arm.    By the time we got to Santa Barbara for Smith's brother's graduation, my full upper arm was a single, sheet-like bubble.    We sat outside that afternoon for the graduation, me in an agonizing button-down, in too much pain to even notice the unending stream of clingy sundresses and freckles.    When the light hits my arm just right ten years later, I still think I see a little scarring.

Smith and I are great travel buddies- we've gone on long trips to Scotland and Wales since then- but we finally got a little snippy toward the end when I didn't really know how to navigate the disaster of freeways around the Bay Area.   A few weeks apart (he was at Davis) and we were back to normal, though.   For better or for worse, he's constantly challenging a lot of my basic assumptions about life, which comes off as pointless argumentation to my other friends, but I get off on it.   I just hope he doesn't turn into some loopy old autodidact who's traded in curiousity for misanthropy.

The point being, I'd only been to New Mexico once before.   We drove across White Sands, or near it, and it was pretty.    This past weekend I flew DC,ORD,ABQ, and rented a car on work dime to get to Santa Fe. I'll preserve anonymity and not talk about the work stuff there, but I spoke to 200 people for 40 minutes or so, and it went pretty well.    I even got sucked up to by some students afterward.

Boswell

2008-02-02T12:33:00.001-08:00

Have picked up a copy of James Boswell's London Journal: 1950, Yale University Press. I've never heard of him but it seemed like an interesting volume. Plus, only $10 at some surprisingly good used bookshop in Alexandria, a place I had not been to before. The bookshop and the Masonic GW memorial are all I remember, though. Apparently Old Town Alexandria is a festival of "cute," according to Cricket, but I seem to have missed it.

The book appears to be Boswell's diary from his years in London as a young man of 23 or so, arriving from his family land in Scotland circa 1762. I have a feeling I'm going to regret not having found this earlier: a passage from the introduction which I opened to in the aisle:

Probably Boswell waked with a headache more often than any human being on record. In his journals we read with terror his innumerable resolutions to be more "retenu," to build a more "solid" character, to quit "rattling" (talking like a fool), because we know it will immediately be followed by some grotesque excess.

I doubt if anywhere in literature there is such a bodily confession of of le diable au corps, the grotesque intermixture of human agony and absurdity.

Adventure

2008-02-02T11:56:00.001-08:00

They say that of the vast hordes of people that descend into the Yucatan each year, the vast majority never leave Cancun/Playa/Cozumel.   A small minority take buses to Chichen Itza.    A smaller minority go to Tulum.    We saw the ruins there. They were beautiful, especially being right on the water.   But there were a ton of people, and while I'm gregarious to a fault when in my humors, I didn't really want to be around people this vacation.    The iguanas had it right, though: lying in the sun on thousand-year-old pyramid, and not giving a shit as long as nobody with a fanny pack tries to pick you up.

The geology of the area lends itself these things called cenotes, which are essentially sinkholes carved out of the bed of limestone covering the whole peninsula.    We spent an afternoon in one of these snorkeling around.    I've never been snorkeling.   I'm not a terribly strong swimmer, and I was perplexed at how I was supposed to manage things.   I don't even float that well, and I certainly can't tread water.    What I didn't know is that even a bad floater will float just fine face-down, which is where the snorkel comes in, and the fins help a great deal.    Cenote snorkeling is essentially cave-diving: I didn't take any pictures that day but have the image of looking down through water a hundred feet or so, stalagmites everywhere, and fish the size of my thumb, mostly pink and blue, swarming about dodging the occasional sunbeam.   I only got scared once, when I found myself deep in the cave, away from walls, and the water leak into my mask got unmanageable.    It's strange feeling, panic on the horizon.   But there was a stalactite nearby (there being only a few feet of space between the surface and the ceiling) that I could grab onto so's to readjust.

We drove to Chetumal in the southeast corner of Quintana Roo province, near the border with Belize, and found a cheap hotel.   At this point we were the only gringos around.   Most of my traveling has been in Europe, and with some exceptions in the Czech Republic I've never really been quite so out on a cultural limb.   Cricket's spent a lot of time in Africa, though, including a year in Rwanda, so this was cake for her.   I was looking at the maps ahead for the next few days, though, and seeing 500km stretches without gas was making me really nervous.

Rock you like a hurricane

2008-01-13T09:14:00.000-08:00

I feel bad that I haven't blogged in a while. Part of it is that my usual internet connection at home has become flakier and I have to perch my computer in a very uncomfortable place (the back of a Volkswagen?) to get signal, which is amenable to checking other people's blogs, but not really updating my own. Also, worky worky, etcetera. The panic about needing to have enough juju to sell myself on the job market come next winter is beginning to set in.

You may recall Cricket spent Thanksgiving with my family, which went well. Certainly not the disaster foretold by stage and screen. She found them agreeable and charming, and they were of course smitten with her, and I'd like to think it was due to her qualities beyond being the first girlfriend I've brought home for the holidays, or even the first girlfriend my parents have met.

Being a long-distance type thing, we'd been planning a serious vacation for some time, and being poor but curious we opted for our NAFTA partner, and flew into Cancun on December 15. I had no desire to spend any time in Cancun proper, mostly because (like the Caribbean) it seems it's only worthwhile if you chuck a few thousand at the vacation and stay in one of the inclusive resorts. I've also just had waaay too many drunken all-night parties with topless Spring Breakin' (or snowbirding) hotties hanging on my every word; that scene just gets old, you know? Cricket of course understood this completely, so we rented a car as soon as we got out of the airport and headed south along the Caribbean coast. When she signed the rental agreement it said "manual" and I of course don't drive stick, so she (fatefully) signed up to be the only driver. We of course ended up with an automatic, leaving me the perplexing choice of being perpetual navigator and sleeping while she drove, or being a terrible boyfriend who doesn't want to risk trouble even if it means letting his girlfriend drive 1000 km or so herself.

Fact about Mexico: gas is nationalized and costs the same everywhere! Even in middle-of-nowhere places where you'd totally get gouged in the States. Sure, the attends try to screw you occasionally by starting the meter at a nonzero value, but hey- it keeps you on your toes!

We pulled into Tulum's hotel zone in the late afternoon. Tulum is home to some fancy ruins and really pretty beaches. Everyone who comes to the Yucatan goes to Cancun; of those people, probably half see Chichen Itza, and probably 5% go to Tulum as well, with essentially nobody doing anything else. So already we felt like members of a secret elite. Unlike my boss who recommended the town, we didn't stay in the all-inclusive extravaganza north of town, but in a cute 10-room or so hotel right on the beach. The rates hadn't yet tripled for the Christmas high season, which was nice.

Our room had saltwater faucets and showers, a brand-new mosquito net on the bed, and you could fall asleep with the crashing of waves. While we unloaded our stuff, Cricket pointed out one minor problem:

The view from near our room:

More to come. Novel-lenth blog-posts, so gauche.

worthy loot

2007-12-25T15:37:00.001-08:00

The Joy of Cooking. The new awesome edition.

Luggage, to replace my thirty-year-old duct-taped monstrosity with the Nashville Pussy sticker that gets me so many awesome looks when I travel.

Raymond Chandler: Trouble is my Business, The Simple Art of Murder.

I don't get Cricket's gifts until we have couple-Christmas in a few days in DC. I can't wait to get loot from her. Her family is very loot-centric so hopefully the apple won't fall far from the tree. I'd say what I got her, but if she read this and had the surprise ruined I'd never hear the end of it.

stuff

2007-12-24T11:48:00.001-08:00

I'm home for the holidays.   After a flurry of final cat-herding, I got a paper submitted and was able to leave town unencumbered by the usual obsessive thinking about work .    Cricket flew into BWI from Chi-town two Fridays ago; I picked her up, dropped her off at shopping-ville in WorkBurg, finished my workday, grabbed her, and went into the city.

Nam-Viet on Connecticut Ave. in Cleveland Park sucks.   The service sucks, the food is forgettable, even the difficult-to-fuck-up pho, and the people dining near us were douchebags.

There was puttering about the house, and packing. Her parents gave me much-needed kitchen implements. They're delighted that I cook, and surprisingly OK with the fact that I don't really have much by way of gear. I guess the degree has perks. Does getting presents from an SO's parents mean you are now truly committed?   In the morning we left for Mexico.

I'll post about Mexico later, when I have pictures to link to.

Friday I got into LAX and was picked up by high school friend Smith, who was on his way home from his perch in the Santa Cruz mountains.   He's scruffier than usual, and weighted down with the responsibilities of real job (with people under him!) which is difficult for me to wrap my head around.   But he's my oldest friend and seeing him after too long a time is like a cold compress on a fevered brow.

I'm in suburban San Diego now, with the parents.   They keep asking me about Cricket, which is cute and not yet annoying.

I bought all my Christmas presents in Mexico.   They are all nice gifts, but due to the vagaries of haggling and the third-world economy of rural Mexico, there's an order-of-magnitude difference in price between what I gave my Mom and what I gave my Dad.   I'm secretly guilty about this, but also secretly glad that I didn't spend too much money on gifts.

I'm pondering the awkward mysteries of income right now, too: my friend who I caught up with the other day who is a business-manager type at a bustling youth camp that also does corporate/group team-building stuff, pulls in about $1200 a month net, after a small retirement socking-away.    I pull in more than twice that, after about the same retirement sock.    But I have a car payment ($300) which he does not.   I have collision/comprehensive car insurance in the District, making my car insurance $950/6 mo to his $250/6 mo.   I pay $1300/mo for a small 1-bedroom apartment in DC, whereas he pays $100/mo for a place on the grounds of the camp where he works.    I have a student loan ($100/mo) which he does not.   And, finally, I have a elephantine credit card debt that I am aggressively paying down, springing from my PhD years and some youthful indiscretion, which he does not.   Neither of us has cable or internet (I steal it) and our cell bills are about the same, and we use about the same amount of gas.    I also have decadent habits like rotgut, book-buying, and a girlfriend, none of which he shares.

The upshot? He has waaaay more disposable income than me, and certainly waaaay more savings.   It makes me feel glad for him and very sorry for myself.

obsessive archiving

2007-11-12T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited about Gmail+IMAP.   I'm at a cafe with much higher bandwidth than the signal I usually steal from my apartment, downloading my Gmail archive for "offline use."   I've always been slightly perturbed that I don't have my own permanent archive of my e-mail; I don't think Gmail is ever going to vanish, but...you never know.   And it's nice to be somewhere without online access and be able to browse old e-mails.

Ever since the fall of my junior year of college I've been archiving (mostly) everything.    For a long time this was some Pine, some Outlook POP, some Thunderbird POP, some (other) Pine...but I finally unified everything into three or four fake servers within Thunderbird.   It's a little buggy sometimes (the dreaded 12/13/1969 header fuckups) but it's nice to be able to find everything under the same standard.    And now my Gmail is under that aegis (although I'll still use the web interface 99% of the time).

What's even cooler is that I can contemplate integrating all this old e-mail into my G-mail IMAP server, so that I really can finally say I have everything in one place from 1996 on: work, school, and personal.   My initial attempts at this haven't really worked, though, as Gmail (web) isn't really recognizing that a sent-mail from 1996 put into the IMAP Gmail-sent folder corresponds to being in the Sent Mail label on the web.   It's also not recognizing the old date and putting today's date on it.

Oh well.   It's a step.

i'm not worthy

2007-11-08T09:41:00.001-08:00

I simply cannot believe my eyes. Human flying squirrels.

Grow up

2007-11-07T10:25:00.001-08:00

I'm sick of seeing Ron Paul bumper stickers show up in my neighborhood. I'm sick of people who think because he's different, he's better. I'm sick of tech-savvy people who think that capital-L libertarianism is a reasonable philosophy. You all can take your gold standard and your Ayn Rand and your shameful punting on abortion rights and fuck off.

anniversary

2007-10-16T10:22:00.001-07:00

As of today I've been at my DC job a year, and in DC for a year-and-two-weeks. Astounding.

Secret handshake, coming right up

2007-10-15T20:47:00.001-07:00

My good friend M just defended her thesis.   I remember her first year in grad school: she and another girl her year came over and watched The Ring with roommate F and myself. I had met her a few weeks earlier at some new student pub crawl and she immediately blew my mind by offering me a pull of the Glenlivet from her personal flask. I'm not sure how the movie night was supposed to have worked out, as everyone in the room was single at the time (I think) and Ringu should have had us leaping on top of each other in fear.

We did become fast friends, especially after I discovered that she was willing to put up with watching Pac-10 basketball in return for me favoring Duke, and she's put up with some pretty mopey moments over the years wherein I whined about Counterfly girls, without yelling at me too much. She also put up with me damning her first homebrewing efforts with faint praise.   But that's all inside baseball.   At this moment, I couldn't be prouder of her.   Welcome to the club, M.

My apartment stinks to high heaven of chili oil.   But the meal was so fucking good I don't care.

I'm watching my third ep of House in a row.

I'm going to Prince/ton next weekend.    What bar should I go to?   The trashy undergrad one, the trashy grad student one, or the trashy townie one?   Or are they all the same bar?

Hard to shower when there's fire

2007-10-01T10:08:00.000-07:00

Huge fire in my neighborhood last night: no water pressure this morning, either, due to incompetent city planning.

speech from Wonderful Life

2007-09-28T21:36:00.001-07:00

it's your money...and your money...and your money!

Apparently today my bank failed. I had no idea.

I apparently will witness no glitch in service though. Go, FDIC!

TV

2007-09-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

These days I'm living off the grid, in that I don't have cable or internet, mostly because Comcast sucks and I can't afford to pay the bill by myself.    I miss having roommates sometimes.   Internet isn't a big problem, as I can steal from my neighbors (like 2 out of 30 available networks aren't protected) although sometimes I have to lash the laptop to my metal bedframe with aluminum foil while reading Jackson or Griffiths in a hushed monotone in order to get a signal.

I don't miss TV too much: my basic stance of "TV is for proles and I think I'm better than you", while some comfort in the dark of night, really doesn't get me through the day.    But I refuse to have my TV-time scheduled for me and I'm too poor to get the solution I want, which would be DirecTV and some sort of DVR.    So lately I just watch sports at bars and occasionally buy episodes of television through iTunes, downloaded at work.   I should steal them through bittorrent, I know-- and I did, for a while, before I realized it was bad karma to use the few remaining wireless feeds I was stealing for high-bandwidth stuff.

The point? Lately I've been watching episodes of House on my commute. And it's good and wonderful and a great show, but does every fucking episode have to end with a thirty-second moody singer-songwriter bit? If there's anything evil that came out of the WB in the late 90s, and trust me, it pains me to say it because I loved me some WB, but it's that end-of-episode music crap. It's fine once in a while, but holy shit, don't writers realize it loses some impact if you do it every time?

By the way, if you're into Hugh Laurie, you should watch him play Bertie Wooster in the late-80s BBC Jeeves & Wooster shows.   Pretty good stuff; although it'll take some head-scratching to get used to his British accent again.

demand

2007-09-19T07:19:00.001-07:00

How is it that I cannot yet buy a t-shirt that says Don't Tase Me, Bro!?

I need one ASAP.

RIP

2007-09-17T07:29:00.001-07:00

James Rigney died yesterday.   Most people knew him as Robert Jordan.   I always assumed that he picked the pseudonym from The Sun Also Rises.    The Nielsen Haydens write it up here; if you want straight from the source, go to TarValon (the RJ clearinghouse, presumably, in this post-Usenet post-rasfwr-j age) or his own blog.

I first encountered him my sophomore year in high school, when I quietly noted what my sister's boyfriend (now husband) was reading; they were home from college for spring break or something, and I was very impressionable.   I have very clear memories of lugging around The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and the other really good first five, through the last two years of high school.   In college, I discovered the Usenet group devoted to him, and that became a big part of my life for a while.   I met a bunch of people from that group IRL, and still am friends with some of them, long after our active interest in RJ as an author, or Usenet as a medium, had petered out.

As that group grows up (and old) it's amazing to see what the folks who were on that scene are doing with their lives now. For some reason, while RJ was demonstrably not counted among the more literary of the sf set, he reached a lot of people, and had a pretty amazing talent for worldbuilding and character.   He certainly got to snobby ol' me, that's for sure.

If you haven't read him, and don't have cognitive blinders toward sf, I strongly recommend his work.   RIP.

Fine

2007-09-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

I haven't written for a while and people are getting angry.

My girlfriend (Cricket) has moved to Chicago to start a master's degree and we're being long-distance lovebirds. Fortunately Southwest flies between BWI/DCA and Midway for around $120. The holidays should be a nightmare so I'm postponing dealing with it.

As I have almost no friends in DC beyond some coworkers and a couple transplants from California who I really should spend more time with, I'm planning to coopt Cricket's social life and insert myself into it. They're mostly cool people, but I might have to work to find some other scene to explore. I live in Adams Morgan but work in Gaithersburg so when my coworkers are like "lets go have a drink in Bethesda! It's like the city but closer!" I die a little.

I hate that I forgot the three things I saw in the Express this morning that looked cool to do this weekend.

I hate that my building's gym is so small; I was using an elliptical machine today because my rugbied knees can't take the impact of too much jogging and it basically sits right behind the only treadmill. So one other person (girl) comes into use the treadmill and basically has to run with the only other person in the room ten feet behind her. A smidge awkward. She left after a while. Her aborted post-run situp/crunch technique looked violent and unhealthy. I studiously kept my eyes on my heart rate monitor the whole time. I would have watched television but she picked some shitty program. I should have put on football.

I hate that I think of cool blog posts every hour or so but don't have the mental wherewithal to get them down.

I hate that Penitent hasn't posted in a while.

I hate that my bike lock's key doesn't open my bike lock anymore.

I hate that I have to coopt Kotsko's Tuesday Hatred to get a post banged out.

I hate that I have to go to sleep at a decent hour.

Music

2007-06-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

Awesome albums I've picked up recently that I really have missed out by not having from the very day they were released:

Modest Mouse, Lonesome Crowded West.   Inspired by hearing a song in the car with my old roommate while on vacation, and upon asking who it was, was told.   Apparently they used to not suck.   Really, really not suck.   Wow.

REM, Lifes Rich Pageant.   Randomly heard "Begin the Begin" on the radio, realized it was REM, and that it was very good, and immediately bought the album.    The only old REM I have is Eponymous. I should get more. This isn't the first time I wish I went to college in the early 80s.

Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer, Jalopy Go Far.    I already had half this album in the form of tracks on mixtapes from F.   It was high time I made a commitment.   Great, great happy girl guitar pop.

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.   This album's holy writ in indie circles.   I don't know if it's the second coming I expected, but it's really good.   Like the skinny lady from Happiness said about the other lady whose name I forget in The Anniversary Party, "she's so fucking serene."   NMH appear to be quite fucking serene, but I could use a little serenity in my life.

Doh

2007-06-22T12:36:00.001-07:00

A reader e-mailed me chastising me for my pompous statements the other day re: the worship of Mammon. I do apologize. What remains true is that I really would like a job that is at least tangentially science-related. This means: not quant finance, not regular finance/i-banking, not software development, and not standard management consulting (I say standard because some companies, like Booz Allen, are quite intimately involved with science funding.)

Non-academic jobs that would be acceptable, should I go that path, include applied-science startups, where several awesome people I know from grad school have gone, national laboratory positions, FFRDCs, the vanishingly few industrial research houses, and, surprisingly, even patent-law advising, although that's a stretch.

This plan all sounds well and good, but I'm shitty at prediction. I'll post again in two years when I'm working at a hedge fund.

Wretched

2007-06-21T16:40:00.001-07:00

Is there anything more pathetic than waiting in line on the dirty
streets of Adams Morgan to get a chance to eat at Pasta Mia? For
those not in the know, it's DC's own Soup Nazi, in the form of a
mediocre pasta joint that makes people wait in line for its nightly
"sittings."

What-ev-ah. You'll catch me in that line when hell freezes over.

Sweet

2007-06-21T06:55:00.001-07:00

Cricket returned to DC last night after being away on business.   Combined with my business travel and a tacked-on week's vacation, I hadn't seen her in three weeks.   It's good to have company again.

I'm manically working to prepare for more business travel, but article like this one are just sapping my energy.    I suppose it's typical at this point in my career to have doubts about what I want to do with my life.   I really don't mind, except when I hang out with the one or two people my age I know who have an order of magnitude on me in disposable income, or those who are smarter than me and who I admire but do things I consider useless.   It also makes me sad when I learn of people from college who were smart and intellectually curious, iconoclastic even, but have largely decided to serve Mammon.    For that matter, I know people in the scholarly pursuits who have become provincial and hidebound.   If I have a career goal right now, I suppose it is to be able to (honestly) think of myself as a scholar but not live like a churchmouse.     I'm almost dead set on refusing to take a pay cut from my current job, which since I have a pretty good gig, will limit my possibilities somewhat.

I miss Los Angeles.   Seeing the mountains behind my old San Gabriel Valley home was a sight I'd been so used to that it took being away for six months to really appreciate.   Other institutions I miss: the Rancho, up on Lake Avenue, where it's quiet and divey, and the barflies are artsy, dumb, or both.    The Colorado, down on Colorado, which is a meaner and squarer dive, and one marinated in memories.    And, of course, Amigo's, where I learned last week that the margaritas classico are the way to go, which would have saved me gallons of tarwater gasoline margitas regularito that I've pumped into my body over the years had I been told right away.

DC is a much better town for me, though, the evidence being that I have a steady girlfriend of many months, which is something I never found in Los Angeles.    To all my friends complaining about the single life in LA: move here.   Move here now.

I'm taking Cricket to see Once tonight. I'm a sucker for sappy indie stuff like this.   I'm also a sucker for movies like Waitress .    She'll probably be annoyed at me for both, but then again, the last two movies we saw together were the ghastly and intolerable Volver and For Your Consideration.

And, as a final note, I bought my first bottle of whiskey in DC a couple weeks ago, at the place next to the carpet joint and shitty cheesesteak house near Woodley Park Metro.   I've avoided the water of life so far, as it's a drain on my already empty pocketbook, but I've found that nothing helps me transition from working a twelve-hour day to blissful slumber better than a wee dram and some celebrity gossip.     For this first bottle I selected the solid Irish bestseller, Powers.    Heartily recommended.

Prejudice

2007-06-14T17:34:00.001-07:00

I was eavesdropping at my grad alma mater's coffeehouse this afternoon, in particular on two graduate students in biochem talking about PCR and Western blots and who'd published what when, etcetera:

"I really hate chemical engineering. All those fucking numbers and shit."

Not doing much for my stereotypes...

Soap

2007-05-09T08:28:00.001-07:00

I spent yesterday at a huge industry conference.   It's not my style (too many sales types, in suits, huckstering, and talks about technology I don't care about), but the trade show definitely rocks.    But it certainly wasn't worth driving fifty miles through nasty traffic.

What also sucked was being approached by someone I didn't ever care to see again.   A fellow from my graduate school department, four years behind me, came up to me, shook hands, and tried to make small talk about where I was working, how good it felt to be out of school, etc.   The trouble was, the last time I interacted with him, he was leading a girl who I'd gotten together with a couple times (but wasn't yet 'dating', and who had really turned my head upside down) away from a party we were all at. She'd told me straight to my face at the party that they'd been hooking up.    She was incoherent and drunk, but it was that kind of party. This was at the bottom of thesis hell, to boot.   I'm actually kind of glad it happened when it did- if I was trying to get data, or something, I would have been useless, but just writing and banging out the thesis was doable, even when a wreck.    She was trouble with a capital T and I was lucky to wash her out of my hair, but at the time, holy crap, was I a mess.

Anyhow, independent of this triangle, the guy was a real shitbag, and I had disliked him before this all happened, which made it even worse.   I'm sure he got wind of my state, because we had mutual friends, and I saw him staring at me at the local dive several times in the following months.    The triangle didn't last; he was (long-distance) engaged, the girl was moving to a large Midwestern state, and I was leaving for the other coast.    Even at my most charitable, I wouldn't ever want to see him again if only to not be reminded of a crappy failed coupling.   I won't mention what I think of him at my less charitable.

But here he was, chumming it up with me at an industry conference?   I don't get it.   We probably didn't exchange more than three words back in school.    We're not even in the same subfield anymore.

And your little dog, too

2007-05-05T10:11:00.001-07:00

I've been compulsively watching tornado videos all morning, beginning with this one and moving on to a larger archive. That first link is to an article, and the link is buried, apple-F for "Oklahoma." Fucking CNN, unable to provide permalinks for videos.    Old media sucks.

Cricket (not her real name, by the way, to correct two e-mailing lurkers) is out of town on business this weekend, and instead of tearing it up with the boys, of which I essentially have none, or tomcatting about in unrestrained debauchery, I'm at work, mostly because my entire career hinges on the next month yielding positive results.

I haven't blogged much about what I'm reading lately.   I finally picked up Kavalier & Clay, as my distaste for universally adored books usually lasts until around such time as the author puts out another book.   It's all right so far.   I'm rereading some Marlowe mostly for comfort, although I don't like it as much as I used to.   The autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir is actually quite good, and I can't put it down.   You'd think reading someone talk about their childhood in a ridiculously self-absorbed fashion would be annoying, but I love it.   It's the sort of thing I'd probably end up doing if I ended up doing something with my life.

I also picked up The Oxford History of the American People but it's slow going, mostly because I just read it while I'm eating.   I'm only up to Henry Hudson.

Grateful for the sunrise

2007-04-24T21:12:00.001-07:00

I'm cursed with a job that I like and that I tend to get obsessed with.   This means that my benders have to be few and far between. This last weekend was a probably the hardest one (on my liver and pocketbook) in a long, long time.   I'm trying to reconstruct the sequence of events, and remarkably, modern technology comes to aid in the form of credit card statements, which I may or may not pay off this month.

Thursday

Metrorail, $30.   My friend Mug (from rugby and school) came to town and being a good friend I picked up $15 on a Metro card for him.    The other $15 was for me, which I actually needed this month since the harpy in Accounting who normally hooks me up with the $115 of government welfare Metrocheks wouldn't let me pick mine up this month.   Something about "missing the deadline."   Screw them.

The Diner in Adams Morgan, $30.   Dinner and beers with Mug after meeting him at at Reagan.   We caught up (having not seen each other since a New Year's Eve bender) and discussed plans for the weekend.   He expressed strong desire to meet my girlfriend (Cricket) and to fulfill a particular plan of attack vis-a-vis drinking and tourism.

I put him on the inflatable bed in my (junior) one-bedroom, the rent in which is greater than my grad-school rent by an amount greater than my increase in wages.    At least I can't see my bed from the kitchen.   It sucks not having a cleaning lady, though.   Having roommates made that particular luxury a no-brainer I'll start up again as soon as I make another few tens of K a year.

I digress: Friday

I work all day trying to get enough stuff done to not feel guilt for the weekend away from work.   I don't succeed but justify it to myself by taking things home to read on the Red Line.

Adams Mill Pub, $25.    First pints of the true weekend.   Adams Mill is a fratty mcfrat sort of pub, but in the happy-hour time it's a little more regular-folk.   It's the closest bar to where I live, so I wanted to show Mug the true flavor of my neighborhood.   He makes his first inquiries about 18th St.   I hem and haw and say maybe we'll go later.   I'm not sure if I or we can handle 18th St. at our advanced age of 30 and 28, respectively.

Brickskeller, $75.     The Brickskeller is a second home to me.   I take all my friends there when they visit, I took my online dates there before I met the lovely and talented Cricket (who thankfully also likes going there), and I'd take my relatives if they were the sort to drink beer at all, which they're not (with the exception of my sister and BIL but they're in a family way, making any attempts to drink them under any table kinda sketchy.)   Mug and I hit the obscure Colorado section of the menu, and I slowly lose track of what I'm drinking.   A waitress who's either LIthuanian or Black Irish takes good care of us, but brings us ghastly food.   The Brickskeller may be a little slice of heaven, but a Michelin star it ain't got.     Cricket and her fellow Princeton alum K join us around ten-ish after hitting Chi-Cha and getting their own party going.   I undergo the universal brutal stress of girlfriend meeting close friend, and I think it went all right.    I end up downing two pints of high-quality stuff that tastes like a blueberry muffin, and, well, so much for my taste.   I leave my dart-collateral driver's license at the 'keller and they of course lose it.   (Probably should head to the DMV.)     Crash at the house maybe 3:30ish.

Saturday

The plans to see George Pelecanos speak at Busboys & Poets ganged aft agley, as he started at noon and I was still in Dreamland.    Getting our shit together, Mug and I hit U Street.   As I was walking down U I saw a blogger and Unfogged commenter I recognized (Catherine) and felt like a total loser for recognizing a blogger and also for considering saying hi.   I was immediately distracted by a pile of free books on the sidewalk: I ignored the Garfield books and the shitty vegan cookbook and picked up two volumes of Simone de Beauvoir's autobiography.   It's pretentious but good, which is basically a summary of almost everything in my library that I really, really like.    The Bohemian Cavern is closed (so no half-priced Belgians) so we hit Solly's near 11th, which is a tight little pub tended by an Australian with cricket (the game, not the girlfriend) on the telly.   Mug picked up the tab here, I think; or maybe I had cash from the ladies the night before.

Food was required so we hit Ben's Chili Bowl.   I had a half-smoke with chili and we got the chili-cheese fries, too.   They're better than the ones in LA at that place whose name I should remember.

Home again for a nap and some laundry and preparations for the night.   Cricket and I run circles around each other on the phone trying to figure out dinner plans.    Mug's brought his sportcoat so I figure what the hell and put mine on and go find Cricket and K at Bourbon on 18th st.   We all worship at the altar of Hefeweizen for an hour or so and I get some cross-table banter going with some dudes who were aghast that I didn't know Peter Jennings was dead.   Whatever.   I knew he was dead, I just forgot and assumed he was alive for the duration of the sentence.   The guy most aghast had a Duke Lacrosse t-shirt on, so screw him.   I know they're not guilty, but that doesn't mean you're not a jackass for wearing the t-shirt.    As much as I love Duke (although it's solely due to the influence of a dear friend who grew up there and whose father played ball for Duke) I just wanted to hit him.

Moving on, we hit Clyde's in Georgetown leaving a whopping 2 Benjamins.   Mug orders me whiskey from the bar (18-year Macallen) and is horrified when he gets his tab.   Yeah, buddy, shots of good whiskey run $20 a pop in G-town.   My paella is worthless and Cricket's pork chop is leathery.   Our waiter was unctuous and the check slow, but at least the cheese platter rocked.   I hope I don't get sick like the grandpa in the House episode, twenty episodes of which I've seen in the last week.   I don't know what I want to get when I get my final at-bat, but it sure as hell isn't heavy-metal toxicity or an amoeba that gets treated with legionella.     The wine and scotch leave me tipsy so the bill doesn't bother me, and we head to Martins of Georgetown and drink beer and watch prepsters for a couple hours.   Georgetown really is amazing to me-- it's another world, another culture, that I'm simultaneosly covetous of joining but repelled by.    The Mug, being partial (bless him) to petite girls with fake IDs and no illusions about their own intelligence, is in heaven.

This is when things get sketchy.    A lot of pictures were taken at a billiards joint in Adams Morgan (the one next to the sneaker store owned by Adrian Fenty's parents) which was oddly deserted for a Saturday.    The ladies went home after that, having had enough of booze and men and wanting to get some shuteye before their early-morning run-and-brunch.   I know I dropped $75 at the Adams Mill pub, and I know Mug bribed the bouncer a double sawbuck to let me in.   This was the height of gross indecency, as no bar in DC is worth paying to get into, most especially not the toolbox dives around Adams Morgan.   And yet it happened.

This is when my night turned into an episode of The Wire.    While sitting on the concrete stubs at 18th and Columbia eating Jumbo Slice and talking (amazingly enough) about the Mug's work (he's a scientist) I faded out in to a happy little limbo of thinking about work and tossing pepperonis at passing cabs.   I know, I'm thirty and not an 18-year-old having his first beer, but I was having fun.    Mug meanwhile makes friends with two women who offer us a ride to their afterparty.    We get into the backseat of not an Escalade but a crappy late-model Aerostar with rusted-out wheelwells driven by a friend who's doubly sullen: designated driving, and the company of two women spoiled by the arrival of two goons.

We get driven forty blocks over into waaaaaay NE DC, and end up in the basement of a house with a side door with a red light on it and a bouncer wearing sunglasses.    We're the only white dudes there and we are not in any way welcome.    The Mug's newfound friend has some pull that I think kept us from getting robbed.   Which is to say, violently robbed. Because I dropped $40 on two MGDs and who knows what they charged Mug.   I just remember the very, very bemused lady behind the bar refusing to take less.    There was a poker game in the corner with some bad, bad dudes, and our hostess told us to stay away from it.

I suppose it's anticlimactic but I want to wrap this up.   Mug and I get the hell out of Dodge after polishing off the MGDs and begin the long walk home.    After a few blocks, I realize I'm not in NW DC and am walking the wrong way.    I'm eventually convinced by an increasingly blistered and irate Mug to go along with his plan of hailing a cab; the problem is, there's none to be found.   A cop pulls over and asks us if we know where we are.    Some derelicts stare at us.   A couple hipsters on their own troubled errantry avoid us and cross the street hurriedly.     Roundabout U and 10th NE we find a willing cabbie to get us to an ATM, and home.

Sunday we lay in the park with Cricket, watch some more House episodes, and drink 40s at the Lincoln Memorial, as planned long ago.   It's an amazing memorial, and sitting on the stone slabs on the south side of the Memorial watching the planes coast into Reagan is peaceful and good.    I heartily recommend it.

Mug bought the 40s because I had no more money.   It's going to be a tunafish and spinach week, with a lot of work getting done.   Good times.

At least it's not used

2007-03-29T20:16:00.001-07:00

In the mail-area of my building (of which my apartment is on the fifth floor of): several old Economists, and one tin "Chocaholic Body Frosting". "FREE PLZ TAKE"

boneyard

2007-03-26T19:05:00.001-07:00

A very cool location. I love Google maps.

It had to be Jew

2007-03-25T20:03:00.001-07:00

Which is, of course, IMDB's alternate title to Annie Hall. I'm watching it right now and just made the connection between Christopher Walken's monologue in the bedroom and the Jawbreaker song "Jet Black." Actually, I think my friend F., who turned me onto Mr. Schwarzenbach's work, told me where the quote was from a long time ago, but being forgetful I'd of course completely misplaced the reference.

I'm only half-enjoying it. I think there's a lot of baggage about Woody Allen movies and it's rendered a lot of it unwatchable. I keep waiting for Charles Bronson to show up and get all Paul Kersey on Woody's ass. I like Annie, though, although the whole no-job thing is kind of a deal-killer.

Also, with the exception of Charles Bronson, and me being born, the 70s look like they sucked.

Santa Cruz thankfully not an Ivy

2007-03-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

I'm a big fan of my girlfriend for many reasons, but it definitely helps that she exposes me to items like this:

In 1923, a live tiger who had been captured in India by the father of a football player, Albert F. Howard '25, was brought to Princeton as a mascot; but after several weeks of mounting community anxiety he was given to a zoo.

(From a terrifically dorky alumni site)

The perks of science

2007-03-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your quote request from *labs. In an effort to familiarize you with both our level of service and quality of product, we have taken the liberty of sending you a Box of *labs Lab Snack . Our technical support department is available to answer questions on this sample as well as questions on any of the over 9,000 *labs products.

A finer time

2007-03-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

From Abraham Pais' Inward Bound:

Why did Rutherford and Soddy not use the term 'transmutation' but rather the more neutral one, 'transformation'? The following exchange took place while they were at work on the separation of thorium X.

Soddy: 'Rutherford, this is transmutation...'

Rutherford: 'For Mike's sake, Soddy, don't call it transmutation. They'll have our heads off as alchemists.'

Awesome. The reader should of course mentally say Rutherford's line with a Kiwi accent.

The reference, if you care, is from Howarth's (who?) biography of Soddy (who I've never heard of, let alone knew warranted a biography...)

Live music

2007-03-17T12:16:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago I saw the Thermals at the Black Cat, and while they were awesome, the opening act stole the show, a duo from Brooklyn called The Big Sleep. Pretentious Chandler reference aside, I've been listening to their record pretty much nonstop for a few days now.   It's a little less impressive than the live show; there's a certain loudness that they toned down in the studio, which sucks, but I've approached the feeling by playing it really loudly.

I was reminiscing about shows this week.   The first concert I went to, Metallica at the San Diego Sports Arena in January of 1992, was a solo affair.   My parents dropped me off and picked me up, which was less embarrasing than it sounds; logistics dictated that I be dropped off far from anyone who might have seen me, sparing me any mortification.

This was of course Metallica's "black album" tour.   I was disappointed in the album, having lived for the previous year on a pure and holy diet of their first four albums, but excited to see my first concert. I was fifteen and had grown my hair out for the first time. I had gotten floor seats at the arena, maybe twentieth row, and probably would have gotten even better seats had I not allowed some 909 types at the Ticketmaster outlet to piggyback on my top-notch lottery number.   In retrospect I should have been aghast that there were seats at all, instead of a mass of humanity, but I was young and didn't know what was appropriate.

The show was incredible; I have few specific memories but recall it being almost three hours of awe.   Almost dissociative happiness.   Eight minutes of The Four Horsemen.   For Whom The Bell Tolls. Fade To Black.   Master of Puppets. Battery.   One.   The only sour note was the band combining three epic ravers from And Justice For All into a "Justice Medley" which was itself screwed up by Kirk Hammett cocking up the climax of the title track's solo.   He was wearing a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt, and I later became obsessed with the Sisters of Mercy, and only much later realized that he had planted the seed.   He now distinguishes himself in my mind with the faint praise of being the lesser tool than Lars Ulrich or James Hetfield.

A final note: there was no opening act, which at the time I had no appreciation of.   Only recently did it hit me what an astonishingly selfish act that was, to refuse to help out a less well-known band.   Tools.

Tonight I'm seeing Explosions in the Sky at the 9:30 Club.   I'm bringing my girlfriend, who might not like it, but I had an extra ticket (premonitions of couplehood at the time the show was announced?) and there will at least be decent people-watching if it's not her thing.

Amusing

2007-03-01T08:52:00.001-08:00

I'm sure the mathematically oriented among you know all about this, but i was tickled pink to discover this:

Tupper's Self-Referential Formula.

penmanship

2007-02-23T16:48:00.001-08:00

I just got a new pen.   I'm a sucker for fountain pens, because they improve my normally ghastly penmanship.   Granted, they improve only slightly, but I feel more sophisticated and at least reasonably more legible when I use 'em.

Anyway, it's a Lamy Vista, it ran me $25, and is of the fine (F) nibbed variety.   I heard about at this rather interesting article about hacking your Moleskine , which is the sort of site that makes me wish I was that kind of person, that would both get off on hacking my Moleskine, but also have an improved life due to better daily planning.   At least somebody's doing it.   Dollars to doughnuts I would be a little annoyed if I ever saw anyone with a hacked Moleskine in public, though.   I enjoy the simple hypocrisy of affectations only being cool when I or a select close friend demonstrate them.

Amusingly, I found that link at del.icio.us, in another unnamed person's link-list (who incidentally doesn't seem to realize that their list is public).   Approximately 1000 people have saved that link, which means it was on metafilter, and that people are dorks.

Disappointment

2007-02-22T20:12:00.001-08:00

I had a perfectly good weekend imperfectly capped by a crappy movie.   My life is an unending stream of irritants.

My uncle came and visited on Friday.   He's a biochemist, and of the previous generation, and as such has some odd ideas about my own (not biochem) area of science.   Granted, he's nowhere near as bad as the retired engineers are; he knows what energy is, and he knows when to acknowledge that just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not true.    He's a good guy, and among my favorite relatives; for my high school graduation he bought me Kip Thorne's brick of popularization, Black Holes and Time Warps, and even went so far as to have it autographed.   I hope he didn't walk up to Kip's office at Caltech, as he lived in Glendale at the time, but I wouldn't put it past him, as he is/was an academic and would not think it weird.    The book didn't really change my life or anything, which is ironic as it's much, much better than the poorly written Brief History of Time which had a much greater effect on me earlier in high school, but the gesture really impressed me at the time.

Come to think of it, my other uncle had given me Hawking's book.   And his old XT, which got me into computers, and saving my paper route money for a 386 instead of a jalopy.   These dudes were seriously influential on my course of life.   I'll have to let them know one of these days.

Friday I showed him my lab, and we had dinner at Luigino's near Metro Center, which was reasonably expensive and totally forgettable.   The caprese was flavorless and my risotto's texture was screwy.   Mental note: never order a risotto in a high-throughput restaurant, no matter how fancy.   It's too easy to screw up.   At least the calamari wasn't rubbery.    Saturday we caught up in my apartment, having coffee over my grandfather's (his father's) ancient desk, and talked about the science business a bit before decamping off to Acadiana, which was unbelievably good.   I had a Sazerac before dinner, which blew my mind.   I've been looking for Peychaud's bitters for so long now I'd forgotten why I wanted them.   And now I know.

The upshot is, the next day found me watching The Illusionist with the girlfriend.   And it was terrible.   What a lame, lame movie.   Visualize me shaking my head with wonder just like the Sideways guy does at the end, only I'm shaking my head in wonder that the movie could be so bad, not at the awesomeness of Ed Norton's caper.     Boo, hiss.

Goals

2007-02-13T19:22:00.000-08:00

My goals upon arrival in DC were many. Meet women. Reverse debt curve. Go to more shows. Dress better. Be awesome scientist. Blog regularly. Figure out life path and early career. It's a snowy night, and I'm not feeling profound, so I'll address the simplest. Upcoming shows I'm excited about:

Mastodon at the 9:30 Club. Heavy music. I won't be bringing a date. Converge is opening, who at some point put out music I dug.

Explosions in the Sky, also 9:30 Club. Soft-loud post-rock. They're possibly past their prime, and I haven't listened to the new album. But they've earned a little attention from me for their amazing first few albums and the fact that Friday Night Lights (the movie) became a must-see because of them, if it wasn't already, which varies widely from person to person.

The Thermals at the Black Cat. An old friend turned me on this poppy Sub-pop punk band. Half the songs are in my head now.

Netflix

2007-02-07T19:54:00.001-08:00

I just returned Kissing on the Mouth.    I don't know where I got the recommendation-- probably the AV Club over at the Onion. It's shot like a documentary but isn't one, and revolves around a 25ish woman in a nameless American city that felt somewhat Portlandesque.    Oregon, that is.   Revolving around her are three other people: a female friend, a male roommate/friend, and an ex-boyfriend.   It's a little universe that's full of angst.   I wasn't surprised, as the movie purported to explore post-college aimlessness among the non-driven set.    What was surprising was my lack of annoyance at it all.

Ellen is trying to figure out what to do with her life, and she's sleeping with her ex-boyfriend Bucket on the sly while her roommate Patrick pines for her secretly and is the sad-sack nice guy.   Her mousy friend kind of likes Patrick but he's oblivious.   The device which drives the film is Patrick's art project, which is a collection of interviews with twentysomethings about their expectations for love and marriage and all that good stuff.     These interviews are the intermezzos and sometimes plain old soundtracks to the real scenes.    It was all pretty bittersweet, and while it didn't really resonate with me (the post-college period for me was an explosion of awesomeness, rather than a pining for the simpler campus days) it was a reasonably good character study.

There's also a lot of sex, shot in an offhand and unglamorous way which I liked.    I wouldn't watch this with your parents, that's for sure, and if you're at all prudish about, say, dudity, I'd avoid the hell out of it.   And while it should be obvious, it's as indie as gay cowboys, so if you're in need of a boost to your cred, check it out.

Milestones

2007-01-26T20:04:00.001-08:00

It's taken a long time, but I'm finally going camping a deux.    It's odd that for an activity that in principle is so important to me, I've never taken a girlfriend camping, but I guess the timing or urge has never worked out.   I'm oddly not all amped up about getting cuddly, or about seeing the particular forest, or having Coleman-stove pancakes and Nutella; in fact I'm pretty stressed out about the whole affair.

Initially the plan was to do solo camping this weekend.   I'd take off work early Friday, car-camp Friday and Saturday nights and get a long hike in on Saturday.   Yes, it's cold, but relatively clear.   I've wanted to lose my solo-camping virginity for some time now, and it seemed like a great idea, as I've hit a confluence of gear-ness where I have everything I need.    But oddly the subject of camping came up separately with the new(ish) girlfriend, and she seemed pretty psyched to get a little trip in.   My immediate doubts as to whether she could handle a really cold night out when she gets cold in my to-me-toasty apartment were immediately squelched, and I don't doubt her.    But she's not an experienced camper and I've basically been given carte blanche to get things organized.

So, obviously, I'm stressed about minutiae. What we're eating, what the fire situation is, what the disaster-preparedness situation is.   It's new to me.   My camping experience is twofold: with my parents, who are ubercompetent, or with buddies who are far more expert than I.     I guess the point is that I associate camping with backpacking or drinking, and I'm a little lost when neither intense physical exertion nor irresponsible inebriation (or both) is going to be the point.   Note the common thread of the pushing of personal limits.   Camping solo, the screwups are mine to deal with, but now, if the camp stove breaks, we're both screwed, and I don't dig on that.   So I'm hammering on details to make sure everything goes smoothly, because there are expectations.    And bears.   And rednecks.

Anyway, I'll try to post and let everyone know if drunk Maryland hunters kill me or I freeze to death.

Apologies

2007-01-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'll have to figure out how to live with the fact that I can't include label information for Blogger Beta when I do post-by-email. Hopefully it won't mean that you RSS feedreaders will see duplicate posts days after the fact when I decide to add labels. I like the idea of labels.

Of course, I could just suck it up and not do post-by-email, but then I'd have to sign out of my non-anonymous Blogger/Google account and sign into this one, and, urrg. No comment yet on the fact that I have to enter Gmail's rich-text version to add basic html like italics and links to my posts.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2007-01-21T18:20:00.001-08:00

It snowed today, while I assembled IKEA furniture and watched playoff football.   Some of you may recall that I made two ill-advised bets in Vegas after Christmas with funds garnered from a double whammy of getting the victory and the over in the Holiday Bowl.    The first-- NYG to win the Super Bowl at 40-1-- was laughable; they faded away miserably in the wild-card game.   The second was one I seriously intended to win: NE at 6-1. And right now I think I've got that locked up.   Peyton's got too much baggage to win this one, and I'll give you two great quotes to help us laugh at him:

We're talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off.

I'm trying to be a good teammate here. Let's just say we had some problems with protection.

Of course, as I type this, it's now a one-possession game and Peyton's driving.   I'm calling it now: he runs for President within twenty years.

So this post isn't about Peyton.   I want every post to have a purpose, even if it's grousing about the people in my building who annoy me or carrying on about some date.   But that's for another time.   We have a film review today at Katzenklavier, from a live viewing referred to in an earlier post.

I chose a terrible venue to see Children of Men.    The Dupont Loews is a little art-house with what seem like twelve-foot-high screens and theaters that feel like screening rooms.   It's basically a first-run version of the Academy, which some of you may know.   The advantage of the Academy was that it was poorly attended, and you could find yourself alone in the theater, except for the mice, and as long as they're not too active it's a great way to spend an evening out solo or dated.

Oh hell, they've tied it.   I'm such a jinxer.

I sat up front and was privy to the annoying conversations of Dupont couples and groups, mostly drunk and younger than me; I was honestly surprised at how well-attended it was, considering the schtick of the film: both serious and genre.    Yikes.    I won't spoil anything not already in the previews, which is a blessing and a curse.    The setup: 2027 or thereabouts, and people stopped having babies 18 years ago.   The world is in flames and this blessed isle, this white rose, this fried gobbet of fish, this England is the last bastion of civilization.   Except even they've tended toward martial law as everyone else in the world tries to emigrate there all while everyone becomes understandably crushingly depressed.

Clive Owen plays this guy, who's a run-of-the-mill bureaucrat, long grown out of his youthful activism.    He's brought out of what basically is him running the clock out on life by his old flame, Julianne Moore, who he hasn't seen in twenty years and is running a revolutionary organization.   She convinces him to use his influence to get traveling papers for someone, and the movie takes off from there.   This someone is a macguffin-- a pregnant woman, the first in almost twenty years, and the film follows Owens' journey to get her to some offshore research installation.

Tom Brady steps up.     This is gonna be a good one.     There's a challenge on this TD, though.

The feel of the movie was remarkably similar to 28 Days Later but is helped by a much stronger sense of characterization and, let's face it, not being about zombies.    It was a little tough for me to accept Owen as a good guy after having seen Closer (in the theaters, twice) wherein he plays perhaps the least broken member of a colossally broken foursome (Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Jude Law).     I wish I had read my dad's copy of Herbert's The White Plague when I was younger; I seem to remember it had a very similar plotline.    Maybe I'll order it from Amazon tonight.

There are so many nice touches that mark great worldbuilding in a film like this: little scenes or characters that build a sense that there's real subcreation going on and the storytellers have put a lot of thought into everything.   I'm talking about Julianne Moore's character, Michael Caine's hinted-at past, Owen's brother/friend who collects art rescued from the torched cities of Europe, the subtle hints that it's the near, not far future, and the constant attention to detail in every scene, even when attention to detail means making everything as dirty as possible.   I particularly liked the understated religious symbolism throughout-- the baby born to save the world arriving in "such mean estate", and Clive Owen taking a bullet in the side as part of saving the life of mother and child...maybe I've taken one too many English classes, but as a result some of the scenes that could have been treacly and eyerolling were quite moving.

Indy's making another move.   Damn.

The refugee camps that feature very obvious Abu Ghraib references rang a bit of a wrong note to me; I don't like being preached at, and it could have been handled with more delicacy.   But that's a quibble. If you're at all into well-done sf, you should see this, and even if you think sf is all about Ren Faires and doors irising into crappy libertarian commentary, you should still see it: it's great filmmaking, too.

It's stopped snowing.   Not soon enough: the commute in the morning will still be insane.   I'd better go stock up on bread, milk, and toilet paper...if there's any to be found.   It was two whole inches of powder, after all.

And now another Holy Roller to tie it up! Somebody wake me up.

Disappointment

2007-01-16T21:02:00.001-08:00

Hey, it's my first book-related post.

A couple years ago (okay, four) I picked up Waging Modern War by the-word-made-flesh Wesley Clark, partially out of military history interest, and partly out of some sort of personal library affirmative action for non-fiction, which I typically ignore. It seemed like it would be a good read, being a story of the Kosovo campaign (which he was SACEUR for) and the lessons drawn about modern warfare, and how they'd be applied to the War on Terror that the US found itself involved in at the time of the book's publication (2002). A choice quote:

The range and intensity of the challenges we face is increasing. They defy easy solutions or simple responses. The fight against Al Qaeda is not finished. Long-standing quarrels in the Middle East are boiling, amidst the continuing efforts by several states to acquire more potent weapons of mass destruction. There are even longer-term problems associated with political and economic development if we are so [sic] survive and prosper in a global community. In developing the right strategy to meet these challenges, we would be well-advised to digest the experience of the 1990s and the lessons of the Kosovo campaign.

I can't read this book. It'll be too painful. It's hopelessly irrelevant now-- not only did the War on Terror take a path that Clark at least isn't going to admit to knowing about in this book, it makes us look so bad. Who knew that the problem wouldn't be ignoring the lessons of Kosovo, but ignoring the lessons of goddamned Vietnam?

I'll soldier on a little way, mostly to get his perspective on the Big Dog, and hell, to read Clark talking about himself (I have a sizable man-crush on him, as I do on any Rhodes Scholar who gets wounded in Vietnam, teaches at West Point, goes to the Army War College, then commands a battalion, brigade, then division before really getting started) although when I read things like this I just want to cry:

Why did this new style of warfare emerge, this aversion to casualties, the reluctance to put ground troops into the fight, the reliance on airpower, the continued tension over unintended civilian casualties, and the frictions and constant scrutiny by the press?

I don't know, Wes. But it didn't stay around for long.

Me and every other blog

2007-01-15T18:57:00.001-08:00

A disturbing Modern Love in this weekend's Times. I read it and felt sorry for everyone concerned. But the story's a little more complicated, and a lot less rosy for the man involved than Cross' portrayal. A post at Daily Kos is spittle-flecked but makes the obvious point that the facts of the case are different than Cross describes. Amusingly, Camille Paglia also weighed in, in her typical soft-and-fluffy fashion. One suspects she was looking to rant, and didn't do much digging.

I have an instant dislike for this Cross person, but something rings true in her writing, that obviously doesn't resonate with the Kos poster-- the personality of the boy when she was with him.

My useless intuition in this case is that this guy was wrecked with remorse for what happened, and then completely confused at how to deal with women afterwards, and he ran into absolutely the worst possible next relationship (not to be construed as apologetics for a convicted sex offender). But my intuition told me the Dukies were guilty, guilty, guilty, and it looks like I was pretty off the mark there, although the moms interviewed on 60 Minutes last night left me feeling ill.

Nothing is creepier than Cross' final line: "I wish he had found me first."

Weekend

2007-01-14T21:23:00.001-08:00

This post was written in Dupont Circle, while I waited for a few minutes before going to see Children of Men.    DC is unseasonably warm today, and what really bugs me is that it's humid.   How a city can be sixty pleasaant degrees and I'm breaking a sweat walking a leisurely twenty minutes downhill is just beyond me.    It's possible I'm just hella out of shape, but I walk everywhere in this damn town and while I won't be playing any contact sports or running a marathon anytime soon, I'm hardly pathetic.   So yeah, humidity BOO.

The football games were adequate today.   I wasn't hung over, but the fancy Lebanese restaurant food left me feeling unnaturally delicate.   I had a shit-ton of hummus and the lamb osso bucco, so I probably only have myself to blame for my soda-water and bits-of-lettuce football-watching diet.    Maybe some coffee an' a doughnut, too, but that was before I really felt the full onslaught of last night's culinary extravaganza.    I'm a little sad about the Chargers losing because I have two close friends who live and die by the Bolt being Back (or not) and they'll be bitchy for a while about this.

I have no NFL loyalty of my own and merely imprint onto my nearest friend like a gridiron duckling.    This means that my hierarchy of fan-hood goes something like this: the Chargers and NY football G are tops, followed by vague support of the other three NFC East teams, with some love for the Packers and Bears thrown in there, as I have Midwestern roots.    I also liked the Patriots for a while but I've largely been cured of that, with the exception of this playoff season, when I have $50 on them at 6-1 to win the Super Bowl.   Fight on, Mr. Brady.

As much as I've been dating lately, I haven't forgotten the pleasure of going to the movies by myself, which, speaking of, it's time to do.

Mental note: I'm alone now, but don't ever sit with a date on the benches surrounding Dupont circle.   The area's lousy with mice and I've seen three scurry across the benches adjacent to me in the last ten minutes.   This hot DC date tip is one in a series; next, what to do when you find out your date is a Republican staffer!

Delicate times

2007-01-13T16:57:00.000-08:00

It's not altogether appropriate that I start the real posts on this blog with pre-date ramblings.   I'm supposed to lead with a clever book review, or a tale of personal woe and redemption, or something funny having to do with my work.    But no.   By puttering around on the internet before a hot date I  consign this blog to the confessional.    At least I can be pompous and call it a roman a clef, although I'm probably misusing that.

It should be obvious, by the way, that this blog is anonymous.   If you know me don't be a jackass.

Several weeks ago, before Christmas actually, I spotted a pretty girl on Nerve.   I paid to send her the usual brief e-mail, the usual basic hi with a touch of wit, the specifics of which I don't remember.    The online dating scene is weird, not in the least because of the gender dynamics, which are positively Victorian.    I've totally bought into it; I don't expect girls to respond to winks, and I don't sweat it if they don't respond to e-mail, ever.    On the depressing side I appear to have no respect at all for the girls who contact me, which means I've totally bought into the system.    But they're few and far between.

I'm holding some kind of perverse pride in that of the four girls I mentally placed as being the highest on the cute+interesting+sane scale, I've had dates with two.    I feel like a bit of a catch, these days.

A second date with one of them is coming up in a few hours.   She declared after a fun couple of drinks at the place downtown that she'd like to see me again, and further declared that it would be at one of DC's posher establishments.   I of course reacted poorly to this, as I react similarly poorly to the whole East Coast urban-achiever vibe of men always paying.    Being a bright girl, she sensed something was up and coolly informed me that it's DC's Restaurant Week, where posh eateries offer a $30.07 prix fixe.    It's a total scam at the midrange eateries, but if you're going somewhere where the entrees are usually in the $30-$50 range it's awesome.   Correspondingly it's the Wheel of Pain itself to get reservations at a decent hour.

We waited until yesterday to deal with this, so we're eating at 10:30; drinks in Georgetown beforehand.    Outfit: khakis, black semi-hip dress shirt, grey sport coat.     I'll admit up front that each of those three items are the only ones of their class that I own (although I do own several blue and white dress shirts.)    My stated promise of preppifying myself after moving East hasn't yet materialized.     My shoes are decent although scuffed.   Hopefully she won't notice.

Another test

2007-01-10T19:03:00.001-08:00

Maybe now italics will work? or maybe a link? Posting by e-mail is fun.

Hello, world

2007-01-10T18:38:00.001-08:00

Hello, world