Charming weekend

Friday

The weekend started with our annual holiday dinner with Lisa and Tony. We started at the Corridor 44 happy hour. The $4.00 champagne cocktails are just good enough to be worth the $4.00. Champagne is so much fun...We ate dinner at Venice Ristorante in LoDo. The food was so-so. If you want good Italian food in Denver I'd recommend somewhere else. It wasn't bad but, for the money, you could do better.

After dinner we stopped at the Cruise Room (in the Oxford Hotel) and, finally, at the Corner Office (they stayed at The Curtis Hotel). We actually all got a bit more food at the Corner Office. The Szechuan fries were pretty good if you are a few sheets to the wind. Needless to say, after all of these stops we were feeling pretty...tired. This is Lisa and Tony at the Cruise Room.

No pictures from Venice and only a Szechuan fry picture from the Corner Office. There is this feather xmas tree picture from the Oxford Hotel lobby:

Saturday

Went to lunch and a movie with friends. We saw Precious, which some of you may know is the uplifting film of the season. The movie was pretty intense, especially if you've never been exposed to abuse.





The film was an extreme scenario but is still at least a sliver of what many abused children have experienced.

Afterward, we did domestic duties (laundry and so on) and then stared at each other trying to figure out what to do with ourselves and the thoughts rattling in our heads from the afternoon. We decided to go the the Bebel Gilberto concert at the Ogden Theater, which is pretty close to where we live. I had heard the songs of the Brazilian talent on various compilations and from friends but the show was fantastic and far exceeded expectations. She is such a good stage artist to say nothing of her singing and energy. Infectious in a very sensual way. This isn't the best video but does show some of her stage presence.





Sunday

I create some wine charms! A friend had a wine charm party and provided beads and materials with which to create whatever we could come up with. She also provided mojitos, margaritas and martinis. Good time! I created the wine charms below which were much better than I thought I could do. I made three of this kind:



and four of this kind (different words):

Now I'm home and it's snowing but satisfied with the weekend.

my skillz

Aside from solving problems with Excel and organizing my closets, I can also bake and knit. Although I am not claiming to do any of these things successfully. This past holiday weekend I tried a new cookie recipe - Cinnamon-Ginger Cookies. We ate them all that night. I recommend this - the recipe that is, not eating all of them in one sitting with only one other person.



I also spent about 90 minutes trying out various knitting patterns for this spare yarn I have in an attempt to put it to good use (besides sitting in a storage bin in the closet). This is what the temporary working space looked like:

I have several other projects going but have grown a bit bored of them...maybe those projects will be lucky enough to be featured in a future blah post.

If only I had a maternal instinct, I'd be all set with my knitting and cookie skillz.

Three Movie Weekend

Hi Folks, G here, reporting live from 306. This holiday weekend we went out to three movies. This is abnormal.

Wednesday, November 25:

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox: The latest Wes Anderson film, his first animated film and his first main stream (non-indie) release. I give it 4 stars. Aside from the horrible previews for bland kid movies, I enjoyed it, but then, I haven't seen a Wes Anderson movie I didn't like. Wes Anderson's attention to detail is something I appreciate. The movie is based on the Roald Dahl story of the same title. I'll let the preview speak for itself.




2. (same night - we got two free passes after the theater had a few blunders during the Fantastic Mr. Fox) 2012: By any standards this is not a "good" movie but it is worth seeing in the theater. There are so many ridiculous things in this movie that I found myself chuckling at the parts I don't think I was supposed to be chuckling at. Three stars and, though ridiculous, a fun movie.





Sunday, November 29:

3. The Road: I read the Cormac McCarthy book (by the same name) about a year or so ago and could not put it down - the fastest I've ever read a book. I have to admit part of the haste was the fear - it is a frightening film. The movie does right by the book mostly and I give it 4 1/2 stars.





Other than movies we ate and ran a bit and walked here and there and read books and listened to music as well as podcasts. A very mellow and fantastic Thanksgiving weekend.

I am thankful.

H - this is for you.

Look closely at the photo below (taken in September 2000) - "Quinn's Pet Hamsters" are awesome. This was hanging in the basement of the church where Sandy's sister got married.


I am a real sunshine (ha).

Good day!

Guess who cooked!

I did! I made two new recipes this weekend, which is two more recipes than I made this whole month! Don't quite know what motivated me.

I made Ginger-Lemon Pinwheel Cookies which are a serious pain in the ass to make. You're really making two different cookie recipes at the same time and then combining. Something went awry with the molasses dough. They look interesting (I would have loved looking at them in my high school years) but are a bit hard. I don't recommend the recipe unless you have a lot of time on your hands and enjoy frustration.



The second recipe was a Breakfast Tortilla, which, surprisingly, is a Cooking Light recipe. I say it's surprising because of the amount of fat and cholesterol in it but I guess you're supposed to eat it in moderation...This is a hard task because it was tasty. The end product is here:


I made if for a knitting get together and it looked much nicer on the table with the other treats:


This is the real money shot though - a yuppie's dream :) - some Darjeeling tea, quiche, fresh strawberries and breakfast tortilla. It was so tasty and satisfying.


I think I probably gained weight today.

utube

More evidence of my exciting life: I found some funny shit on youtube. Yeah, I know I'm not alone but I mean LOL kind of funny, which is rare for me. Sure, I chuckle quite a bit and think to myself "that's funny" often but don't regularly laugh out loud at things. That said, I laughed at this:




This guy has several other short films of equally funny stuff but the astronaut one is my favorite. A runner up is the snail:



Stay tuned - more useless stuff coming your way soon! right here!

Blah

Dang - October 2009 may be an all time low for blog posts...all the action happens on the other blog. Here I'm meant to have more G's blah life moments. So, let's recap the blah life today:

• Wake up
  
• Eat cereal while perusing the interwebs - thankfully other bloggers updated their sites and I had something to read!
• Change the cat litter - hopefully this cheered up the kitty
• Put away laundry
  
• Go to grocery - passed the same group of homeless alcoholics twice in the alley - saw an interesting bit of graffiti
• Work on travel research for a possible holiday road trip
• Eat cold, left over pizza for lunch
  
• Make spicy pumpkin bread
  
• Pay bills and reconcile bank statement
• Make black bean soup - this took forever. I have gotten out of cooking and I didn't time things very well but the soup turned out to be tasty.
• Skim through the latest issue of Cooking Light while listening to weekend All Things Considered
• Work on knitting a blanket while listening to podcasts of Real Time with Bill Maher and Slate's Political Gabfest and drinking Lefthand Warrior IPA.

This day was about twice as productive as usual. All right so you're definitely full of blah now.

I do want to officially make an endorsement. In a previous post (actually in two previous posts) I included a picture from a web site I've frequented lately but didn't actually put in a web site link. The Darth Bunny below is from the web site Animals with Lightsabers and I can't get enough.

Anyway, this post has really tasked my atrophying blogger muscle. I'm going to watch Jon Stewart now.

the end of the world is coming...

Actually this isn't another blog post about cute animals, it's about dystopia in the arts.

Today I went to the book signing for Margaret Atwood's new novel - The Year of the Flood, which I highly recommend. But before you read that, you'll have to read Oryx and Crake, which is something of a precursor to The Year of the Flood.

As the book review in the first link indicates, both books are about a possible future in which climate change has had some of the more obvious outcomes (you know, the ones we hear most often - sea levels rising, droughts and desertification, etc.). Also the gaps between the social and economic classes have grown wider. The military has been privatized and permeated everyday life. The media is controlled by this military - but in a subtle way so that not everyone knows. Oh and there are the "secret burger" franchises in the future. These secret burgers are called that because the meat from which they are made is secret (meaning it could be any part of any animal - including human). Interestingly, there was an article in the NY Times today about hamburgers.

Some call this science fiction but Atwood calls it "speculative fiction." If you ask me, some of these things don't sound that out there. Anyway, I'm not doing the book justice because there a lot more themes than I'm recognizing here.

My point of this blog is that I'm fascinated by stories of these possible futures. I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy last year and that really started it. I couldn't put that book down! Well, except for one time when I was so scared I had to put it down for a minute. I won't tell any more about that book.

I've read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books, many of which are "speculative fiction." One of my favorites is Galapagos. In this tale the human race is wiped out by, what else, a disease that makes humans infertile and things are going to poop anyway with, you guessed it, food in short supply and the gap between the rich and the poor growing.

Recently I (finally) read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 - also about a possible future. I have the Ender's Game and a zombie book on my list next. Zombies are not really a possible future (I hope) but I find the various manifestations of zombies in books and movies fascinating. Not sure why...

And one other thing:

hamstah this!

It's a bit late for me but I'm surfing my cute animal sites in search of uplift and found this awesome bit of genius, which is the perfect response to the original hamstah.

Oktoberfest dogs

I recently attended a fairly lame Oktoberfest in Vail, Colorado. I say lame because it was very small and had no real German flare. I mean the beer offerings were bud, bud light and Beck's. So while Sandy and David, our guest from Texas for the weekend, drank a beer and tried out a variety of meats, I tried to get pictures of small dogs. But first I got this picture of a shop dog hanging in and out of a store:

This one had a wee fountain of hair on its head due to its person putting a rubberband in it.
This one was fairly agreeable but had its tongue sticking out all the time.

This one has a great little doggy fro.This floppy hound was hard to resist.
I got all of these photos while the owners were looking the other way. I didn't want to get into any long conversations about their dogs or the breeds or whatever. I just wanted to pet the dog and get a photo. Success!

Tube postcards

My friends Nadine and Ted recently traveled to London. Not only did Nadine bring me a cool bike postcard but she also brought the postcards below back for me! These hilarious postcards are referring to how one should behave on the Tube.

Colorado State Fair and Camping

This past weekend our niece and nephew, Morgan and Jake, were out to visit (with their parents) from the east coast. So, of course, we all went to the Colorado State Fair to get some real western culture.

The animal stuff was the strangest. I mean the fair with the rides and the greasy food and the people, some of large size, was no surprise. Here is a sheep being prepared for show and judgment:
We came across a sheep contest and I swear as we passed by the only words I heard were "...and the body cavity..." I have no idea what this has to do with judging the sheep and I don't want to know.

We also saw swine in repose:

This one is called "Sandy with Swine":

The cows were also present - here is a choice image of the view:

I found this odd but it was very popular, one of the "interactive" things kids could do was milk a cow. Now, I'm sure this is a great experience, perhaps once in a lifetime, and educational for the children but it sure seemed...I don't know just odd to watch. What also caught my attention was the look on the cow's face as she was handled by one child after another:

Unfortunately we missed the "mutton busting" which was on Friday night. This is basically small children competing with other small children - who can stay on the running sheep the longest...



Other than animals there were marching band complete with color guards competing for some trophy or other. Here is a view of the tortured kids in their marching band outfits in the heat of Pueblo, Colorado.

Then there were the rides...this is the "Wacky Worm." Sandy got to ride it with Jake.


As you can see it was a pretty scary ride:

After the day at the state fair we took Jake to Jellystone campgound just south of Castle Rock, Colorado. The main event was a campfire and roasting marshmallows. Jake didn't like his very toasty so he held it pretty high over the fire:


Sandy on the other hand likes his burnt. Not really but I think Jake found it amusing to see three marshmallows on fire.


Jake wanted to stay up late but it was a chilly night. Sandy put him in his rented REI kids sleeping back and put him on the picnic table.


It was a pretty tiring weekend for kid-less folks like ourselves.

Bento

I got my bento box in the mail today! According to the interwebs a bento box is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. I can buy that (literally) but it also happens to be a cool snack container for American goods. As some of you probably realize, a bento box owned by me will not be used to carry Japanese food.

But anyway, my bento box is decorated with birds and leafy twigs but it is also two tiered. Yes folks that is two containers stacked and clipped together. Check it out:



For all of you who can't wait to get one of your own you can go to Iloveobento.com. Other than Japanese food, I am open to food suggestions to carry in my bento box.

Cat treats should be genderless?

I assume your grocery store has this automatic coupon generating thing. With modern technology the special grocery computers can analyze your purchases and pop out coupons for items that you know you want. This evening Sandy came home from the grocery with this coupon:


At first I thought "how did they know our kitty Yota is a female?" but then my brain actually started working and I realized that "Satisfy her every craving" is just what they put on the coupon (regardless of the gender of the recipient's feline). So why would they assume that only female cats like Whisker Lickin's? or do they think if you buy these your girlfriend, wife, partner will be satisfied? Those marketing folks have stumped me.

hamstah

I lied.

More cute stuff

Ok, I'm drooling over here. My IQ has fallen that low...I have another post about cute animals. I hadn't intended to do it and I actually had another topic picked out but I got sucked in. You see, since I've been keeping my eye on FU Penguin, I noted that FU Penguin is on Facebook (!). Well, let me tell you, the fans of that page comment with some cute stuff - you know, to provide fodder for the FU Penguin site itself.

I'll give you an example. I just came upon a "cute overload" site and I found both an extremely weird but strangely endearing post "This Just In: A peeg in a crocheted hat." I just didn't expect to see a guinea pig in a yellow, crocheted hat tonight...or ever.


Next time I promise something other than cute animals.

I'm just a sucker for cute animals

Well, I guess it depends on how you define "cute." Some people don't find pugs cute for instance.

While waiting at the wine bar for Sandy, I was searching for "awesome colorado hikes" and came across a somewhat silly but entertaining blog: I am so excited...to be a pug. Specifically, I bumped into the post about dad taking Jemima hiking, which she does with dad frequently it seems.

Part of the reason this is so amusing is that there are so many blogs that are about babies or older children that are in the voice of the child. So, it was pretty funny that someone did it with a pug.

Anyway, here in the blah life I rely on others (esp. via the internet!) to spice things up.

Until later...

Mining the internet - for you!

That's right, all these hours I spend online looking for random stuff is done for you! I was recently clued in to a blog that I find to be cute, offensive and extremely funny all at the same time: F*ck You, Penguin.

The blog author brings to the world cute photos and talks about how disgusted he is by all the bloody cuteness!!! I myself am not disgusted because I am one of those people that goes all mushy over baby otter photos. But I am amused by the rants and the embedded cute pictures in the text links.

For example, on June 1st I found a post entitled "Baby Flying Squirrels: a mini 9/11 in your hand" with this picture:


There is even a book! The description provides some explanation behind both the site and the book:

"Attention, all you clumsy pandas, lovable puffins, huggable bunnies, and penguins that elicit ooohs and aaahs: The jig is up! We have lived under your furry fists for too long.

There is a cute and present danger lurking out there–in the wild, in the zoos, and sometimes even in our very own homes. Spurred on by the Cute Industrial Complex, these cuddly animals have taken over blockbuster films, inspirational posters, and computer desktops everywhere, further weakening the innocent civilians who are beguiled by these fuzzy frauds.

But you are stronger than them, aren’t you? Those soft bellies and wet noses are no match for you–and their free ride has just come to an end.

F U, Penguin is the rallying cry for those who choose to fight these power-hungry cute-mongers. Loaded with color photographs and hilarious commentary, this book will have you laughing out loud while it simultaneously saves you from the tragic fate of tossing yarn with big-eyed kittens and bottle-nursing baby pandas forever."

youtubin'

Ok, this is a little explicit for me but I love the Muppets and it has good energy:




Next...who knows.

Happiness

That's right! I'm back with another blog post in less than a week! I may have had a bit too much caffeine today but it may also be that my ears didn't hurt or itch and my head didn't feel like it was going to explode today. I do have this weird rash on my feet though...

Anyway, there's something I've been meaning to ask you: are you happy? if so, how do you know?

When I do a google image search for "happy" I get a lot of happy birthday or happy new year, this makes me think humans are only truly happy on holidays or special occasions. For the record there were a good number of photos of naked or scantily clad women also. I did find this tidbit though:


When I google image "happiness" it's just random stuff but dominated by happy face pictures and children smiling with sun on their faces. This piece of art, entitled "My happiness is riding on your misery" did come up:

I was dismayed there weren't more kittens or puppy pictures in the happy/happiness search. I guess google's idea of happy may be different than mine.

There are other happiness phenomena out there at the moment. For example there is the Happiness Project, which people like myself (who need happiness tips from time to time) do peruse. Though, truth be told, I didn't buy the "how to be happier in four easy lessons bit," which I liken to ads that claim you can lose 20 pounds in a month by exercising only 10 minutes per day.

Oh, there is also an extremely disturbing movie entitled "Happiness" by director Todd Solondz. Not really sure I would recommend it to anyone but I have seen it.

That's the end of my thought trail for this topic for now. Remember "happinesss is a choice and suffering is optional" and "choose to have a great day...because you deserve nothing less!" [note: I would never say either of these thing and I lifted them from the San Diego Happiness Club teaser - the club is now closed - and thought it would round out the post nicely.]

Mindless hotel tv watching

Over the 4th of July weekend we stayed at a the Winter Park Lodge (or something of that sort). It was nice. We took the "cabriolet" to the little village across the way. the cabriolet is a small kind of aerial transportation thing. It was quite fun to ride for the 2 minute trip.


Anyway, once we arrived in the village we had dinner at Lime. Along with dinner we opted for the 21 ounce margarita - it was more cost effective than the 12 ounce. The waitress brought us some complimentary shots too. It was a good time.

When we got back to the hotel we were really only good for one thing - watching tv! This is something we rarely do since we don't have cable. We came across an episode of the Family Guy where in the dad character drinks a lot of beer and his wife accuses him of killing all his brain cells. The clip below is what the show depicted as the final brain cell in the dad's head:

[ok, it's 2010 and the video was "removed by user"!  Essentially we're given a window into Peter Griffin's head and it shows just one remaining brain cell with glasses on.  It is looking around and noticing that it is all alone, "I'm the only one left."  Then it says, "well, at least I have my books."  It promptly trips and breaks the eye glasses and laments, "but, but...there was time now...that's not fair!"]


That was all I wanted share, I just had to set up the context to be able to show the brain cell bit.

Someone save me

The internet is dissolving my brain. My blog suffers because of Facebook - all my pictures and comments of note now go on Facebook. I get sucked into watching full episodes of Jon Stewart. I check Icanhascheezburger twice a day. The iphone doesn't really help with this problem...with my Facebook and NYTimes "apps" my browsing is more efficient.

The most interesting thing that has happened to me lately is that I saw a Boston terrier puppy at the gym yesterday. You know how most women want babies? That's how I feel about puppies. I can't even find a picture of a Boston terrier online that is as cute as that little guy.

Otherwise, I had this strange dream that was animated (like a cartoon) about traveling in a canoe in the swamp but there were lots of alligators. Maybe this has something to do with my internet consumption.