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October 21, 2003
I Miss Austin.
This weekend, I visited Austin. I had two superb reasons to do so. First, my friend Teel was moving down there, and was throwing a big party. Also, the Austin Lindy Exchange was in town, and several of my friends were headed down for that.
So, off I went! Teel and I drove down with this fellow Dan (who, until the previous Tuesday, neither of us had ever met.) He was in from LA on business, and got roped into going to the Exchange.
Teel and I dropped Dan at the dance at midnight on Friday (which, by the way, was going to more or less last for the next 36 hours), and decided that we were tired. I crashed out on the sofa, and thus endeth day 1.
On Day 2, we went shopping for food. Then there was cleaning (Becky and Gene were there to help until they went to phase III of The Dance Thing), and decorating of Teel's new bedroom (which is really nice). Teel came up with a great recipe for finger sammiches with cream cheese, dill, and cucumber. Yum. I grilled some veggies and threw some queso in the crock pot, and made pico de gallo.
Kelly (the Owner of This Abode Where the Party Is At) shows up with the keg (w00t!) and a couple cool cats I'd met at Kerrville a few weeks ago. The party then commenced.
Kelly had arranged for some bands to play. First up was Shane, a singer-songwriter guitar player guy. Very talented. Good stuff. Next up was Porter Davis, down from Boston. Very excellent.
Rusty, Sarah, and MattM came down for the party. Celena and her boy Anthony were there, which was super cool since I haven't seen them since the Superhero Party. I got to see Suzyn, who I haven't seen since the Gaud & Gaudess Party.
I must move back to Austin.
Sunday morning, I woke up and cooked waffles for them what was awake (that is, my Dallas peeps) and then we went to go play disc golf at Pease Park, where I learned the game. We played about half a game, and decided we were tired and hungry and still slightly hung over. I tried to take my friends to Kerbey Lane, but I got lost. Then I tried to take them to Magnolia Cafe, which was too crowded. So we went to Mangia for the best pizza in a 700 mile radius. It was JUUUUUST right.
Then the Dallas peeps went home, and I took a nap in Kelly's recording studio. A note about this house: It is, in fact, a compound, by virtue of the fact that there exist three buildings on the property. The house, the spa gazebo, and the recording studio (with a really cool loft which has the perfect sunlight for afternoon napping).
Teel and I went to Chuy's, thus making Lee go to two of his favourite restaurants ever in one day. Chuychanga GOOD. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get in touch with Tommy to find out where the dancing was occuring that night. This was bad, because I was saving a dance for Barb. I'll have to catch her next time.
Today, Teel and I drove back from Austin, and we went over to look at Rusty's new car. I must have gainful employment.
PS: There's a new skyscraper in A-town. I think it looks sort of like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. I believe that I shall rule the universe from a penthouse throne room in this building.
Posted by Lee at 01:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 05, 2003
Now THAT is what I call a weekend!
BIG weekend!
Thursday night, I crashed over at
help install the hot tub Friday morning.
Big Tub!
Friday night, the tub
was successfully inaugurated by a bunch o' people. But that was
just the warm-up.
Saturday, it was time for the
So here's the set up. Tommy decided to host a party to raise
money for local charities. He sent out about 100 invitations, and
asked people to bring items that they would like to auction off for
charity. All the proceeds would be paid directly from the winning
bidders, to their selected charities. We figured that it'd be
good for a laugh, and maybe we'd raise $400 or so for some needy people.
Well, we were half right.
Tommy had been sick, so after the first item or two he asked me to take
over the gavel and run the auction. It was a bit crazy riding
herd on a room full of 40 or so people, keeping track of who was
bidding how much, but several people told me that I did good
work. That made me happy!
MC 900 foot Lee
To sum up, our party guests contributed almost SEVENTEEN HUNDRED
DOLLARS. All the merchandise was donated by other generous
guests, so every cent is going to go to local charities.
So tell me that's not super-awesome, huh?
You can check out the list of goodies we sold, along with a lot of
pictures of party-goers, at the
I'll let the list, and the pictures, speak for themselves.
After the auction, it was time to jump in the HOT TUB! At about
3:30 AM, it was decided that it was time for breakfast. I'd
brought a waffle iron, and waffle batter, and some strawberries for
topping. I got to be the big hero again, and made up a big stack
o' waffle-age for my adoring fans.
I finally dragged myself out of the hot tub at about 5:30 and crashed
on a sofa.
Oddly for me, I woke up just a few hours later feeling like a million
bucks. I sat down at Tommy's computer and tabulated the bids, and
posted the results to the wrap-up site. Then I made soem vague
stabs at cleaning up. Sorta.
Sunday evening, it was Tomato Night for
Nite. We watched
Tomatoes, and ate spaghetti, and pizza, and red velvet cupcakes
(which although they did not include tomatoes, LOOKED like tomatoes,
which was neat, because in AKT the tomatoes eat people but we got to
eat them instead. Yum.)
Of course, I was beat, so I snoozed a bit and caught the really funny
bits.
Now I'm home. In front of my keyboard. Typing this.
I'm totally incoherent.
Tommy's blog is here.
More pictures
I am now going to sleep like the dead.
Posted by Lee at 11:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 02, 2003
This deserves a story all its own...
All the crazy monkey animated .GIFs you could ever need.
That's even cooler than the Hampster [sic] Dance.
Posted by Lee at 03:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I like to read.
Well, since I've been unemployed, I've had a lot of time to catch up on my reading. Of course, even while I was in school, I'd have a recreational book on my person at all times, so it wasn't like I ever STOPPED reading for fun. My consumption rate has just about tripled, that's all.
I just finished Tom Clancy's Teeth of the Tiger. (Note: I know you all can search for books on Amazon, so links will be to author's pages when possible. Not like THOSE are hard to find on Google either...) Now, I've been reading Clancy since about 10th grade or so. His first five books were all pretty good, but after that he'd started to lose steam. My dad (who turned me on to Clancy in the first place) and I both think that it's because he's a prominent enough author that he doesn't need an editor. Hate to break it to you, sir, but a good editor is Your Best Friend. Teeth of the Tiger wasn't as amazingly long as most of Clancy's books (just over 400 pages, as compared to nearly 1000 for most of the other novels), but rather than being edited better, the book pretty much stops halfway through the story arc. It's pretty disappointing, to tell you the truth, and had I paid $20 for it rather than checking it out of the library, I'd be pretty pissed off.
Next on my agenda is Neal Stephenson's new opus, Quicksilver, courtesy of my Best Friend of the Week Sarah. I think my friend AnthonyC turned me on to Stephenson to begin with, and I've read everything the man's ever written. Even those sneaky ones he tried to publish under pen names, like The Big U (now republished under his own name) and Interface (as Stephen Bury). Can't fool me! (BTW, Neal, I'm not a big fan of your new site. That's OK, you're probably not a fan of mine. Still love your books, homey.) He's written about undersea cable laying (which I never thought would be interesting, but it was) for Wired, and explains everything you need to know about computer operating systems. (Note that you can download and read the whole essay for free. It is worth your time.)
So yay new Neal Stephenson.
Terry Goodkind has a new book out. I was really enjoying his epic fantasy, until he got all objectivist on me. I've got a history with objectivists, and the philosophy pretty much annoys me. We'll talk about that some other time though.
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is also in desperate need of an editor. After writing four great (and great big) books, he's been marking time for SIX VOLUMES. No substantial character development. Just meandering around, nabbing small bad guys (or not!) and Not Telling the Story. Come on, Mr. Jordan, let's go ahead and wrap this one up and go on to something else. You let me know when you're done, and then I'll start reading again. Not until.
One reliable new author I've discovered is David Weber. Think Horatio Hornblower meets Star Wars. Good space opera/melodrama. Clever storytelling, fun pretend physics, neat characters, and much buckling of swashes and derring-do. What's not to like? (Another parenthetical: The Baen Free Library is a really good place to check out a bunch of writers in a similar vein. Many authors have each ponied up a couple novels each, and made them free to download. w00t!)
Got to mention Orson Scott Card. Ender's Game is the prototype geek book. I doubt there's a literate outcast male computer geek over the age of eighteen that hasn't read this book. It's absolutely awesome. The rest in the series? Well, ehh. But Card's "Prentice Alvin" series is brilliant alternate history. Enchantment is a wonderful fairy tale. Pastwatch is great speculative historical fiction. On and on...all good stuff.
Sheri S. Tepper was my first love (well, unrequited "I love this author's work!" love). The Gameworld series is brilliant. I finally found the first three books at Half Price. You may borrow them from me if you leave a sizeable pile of money in escrow, or your car. She's written dozens of books, each different and weird and feminist. Great stuff.
Rudy Rucker is the Man. He's a math professor at San Jose State, which is enough to make me want to go back to school and study math. Oh wait, no it's not. Anyhow, his cyberpunk goodness is peerless. Trippier than Sterling, funnier than Gibson, and short. Nice.
Speaking of cyberpunk, I love William Gibson. I named my car after one of his characters (Rei Toei, from Idoru). His most recent novel Pattern Recognition is outside the loose trilogy of trilogies he's been writing since, like 1985. It's quite accessible, unlike some of his other stuff, with equally beautiful wordsmithing. I owe much of my sense for clever turns of phrase to Mr. Gibson. j00 ROOL! (Mr. Gibson has started blogging recently, which I don't believe is a good showcase of his munificent cleverness.)
Can't talk about William Gibson without talking about Bruce Sterling, Gibson's contemporary, collaborator, and general Less Angsty Brain Twin. Actually, these authors share little other than a loose genre affiliation, but Sterling's work is easier to read, and equally brilliant. Heavy Weather is probably my favourite.
What else is on my stack right now? Robin Cook, who has written about four medical thrillers, and then chops up plot threads and makes 'em into whole new books with the same stories, is on my shelf. Don't know why...call me an optimist. Got a non-fiction Clancy book about Special Operations soldiers. That should be fun. A novel called Chinese Takeout that somebody recommended to me...don't know why. I'm going to strap on Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves again. Rusty has commended unto me a four inch stack of books that I can rely on to be good, hard sci-fi, because that's what Rusty really likes. I've got a book about antigravity research, a book about how to get a private pilot's license, a great big book about maritime knots (yes, I'm a geek), and some space opera by a guy named Iain Banks.
What just came off my stack? Well, I finished Harry Potter book 5 (and if you can't find a link for that, you're just beyond help). Enjoyed it thoroughly. Wonder of wonders, I even got Tommy to read all five books. The man has many virtues, but he's never been in the habit of reading. Well, he's roped me into dancing, and now I've finally gotten him to read some books. Everybody needs friends like that. Let's see...I read Soul Music by Terry Pratchett, another in the interminable series of Discworld novels, most of which are pretty amusing. Mr. Pratchett has done other things I like better (like Good Omens, with Neil Gaiman, who by the way is brilliant and you should run out immediately and read everything he's ever put on paper. Start with Neverwhere, read Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and then start on the Sandman graphic novels. Get back to me in a year when you're done.)
Maybe I'll keep this up with other books You Need to Read In Order To Be Cool Like Me. Oh yeah, go read a bunch of Chuck Palahniuk. He's teh roolz.
Posted by Lee at 03:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack