happ-o-ween everyone!
well, it's been a crazy day at work with 32 of my 34 kids dressed as everything from wizards
to whatever these things are,
to even an appearance from yoda!
even i'm somewhat obligated to don a form of costume and since last year's Howie Mandel "costume" seemed so incredibly lame, I decided to try a little harder and went as Benjy Marley, one of Bob's illegitimate sons from a tour stop in Grand Falls, Michigan (hence the pale complexion). Sure, it was basically as easy as putting on a Bob Marley shirt, my normal olive green coat, and a $7 Fred Meyer Rastafarian wig, but it was a step above just putting on a suit.
so, after a day with the public school ghouls and goblins, i ran by the rite aid for candy. $16 later, and i'm set. so here i am passing out candy by myself. it's a terribly hilarious routine. my doorbell doesn't work, so usually i'm made aware of trick-or-treaters by my dogs barking as if someone was breaking down our front door. I then pause my DVD (the lookout right now, mr. smith goes to washington later), push the dogs back, spray the dogs with a water bottle because the pushing didn't work, then i grab the candy bowl, squeeze through the door without letting one (or both) of the dogs out, and then pass out the candy.
it's funny, because adolescents always get the bad rap for causing trouble on Halloween, but they have been the best behaved so far tonight. Surprisingly, it's been the youngest kids who grab fistfuls of candy without asking, or even saying trick-or-treat for that matter. i'm from the "grab a couple" school of thought, and most kids are cool, it's just the littlest ones who apparently don't know any better. then again, Halloween is for the little kids.
so cheesy i had to do it...
so, i know that a good deal of the blogging has been weight related, but have you seen me lately? I went to clean the gutters the other day, and threw on some "work" jeans. they then fell off. I pulled them up again, and again, they fell off. So i tightened up the old belt that was in the jeans and it went around me one-and-a-half times! now these were some older jeans, but i was still pretty shocked because at one point they fit me. wow. so there it is, my "look at how big my old pants were" picture. too bad i have no diet or weight loss plan to hit up for my 15 minutes of infomercial fame!
in rainbows
if you wanted a review, i'm not ready yet. i tend to be the worst at being subjective with new albums. especially when it is a band that i love putting out a record after some time off. i am usually so excited with the pent up anticipation that the whole experience builds with each passing song becoming my next "favorite" leading up to some odd auditory orgasm ...and premature at that.
enter radiohead's in rainbows. after consulting with the drum machine eating boy, i set my "name your own price" price at six pounds sterling and waited the week until the past wednesday. so now that i have a few days and a half dozen listens under my belt, i'm still not ready to place this record in radiohead's cannon of work. it's good. i feel that i like it more than some of the recent work already, but it's still a little too early. all that i know is that it's good. hella good. and in a few more listens it will probably end up being brilliant.
fujiya & miyagi
F&M at the doug fir last night. in a word, amazing. translated into british, brilliant. the boys from brighton were even more brilliant than their jaw dropping opening slot for peter, bjorn, and john in the summer. partly due to the simple fact that they got to play an entire set. i am the worst dancer in the world, and these guys make me forget that fact and enjoy myself (to the chagrin of everyone around me i'm sure). so well done lads, and please come back soon as i'm sure your fan base will continue to grow exponentially (but I hope that it's not so much that you'd be in a larger room where it's harder to get close and steal your set lists).
by the way, the new dave smith instruments prophet '08 (pictured above below the nord) is even more amazing in person. wow.
fashion faux pas
so I committed a MAJOR fashion faux pas today, a mistake that I haven't made in at least the last 4 years. It was half way through my morning, teaching my second science class when I touched myself (not like that) and realized that I had NO BELT ON.
For some this is no big deal. I like to call those people unrefined, ill-bred, barbarians. In any case, I joined their ranks today walking around sans belt.
While not as bad as completely losing one's trousers, the lack of a belt aesthetically is a fairly severe offense. My fashion mentor Terri would be so disappointed. I guess I'll have to watch a self-made Devil Wears Prada, America's Next Top Model, and Ugly Betty marathon in order to get my life back in order.
In case you need them, here are a few more everyday tips for the tasteless guys out there that want some help:
1) Always, wear a belt. Yes, you bought your jeans in the correct sized inseam, but always wear a belt-no exceptions.
2) Said belt MUST match your shoes. Brown belt with black shoes is as unsightly as catching someone teabagging.
3) Your socks MUST match your shoes. Black shoes=black socks, tennis shoes (even with a little color on them)=white socks, and so on. Don't buy red shoes without buying red socks!
4) For the sake of us all men, buy an ear and nose hair trimmer and then use them. Every other day at least.
Wow! I feel like I'm better and back in my place atop my high horse!
Happy Invasion Day!
For my people (the Tlingit tribe pictured above), today is not a day of celebration, but of sorrow. Columbus' arrival marked the beginning of the end for thousands of strong, powerful, and ecologically responsible nations. I do not celebrate Columbus Day anymore than I celebrate the day my grandpa died. It would seem to lake taste. Before you even begin to think about some sort of manifest destiny rationale, ask yourself why the Australian aborigines are still alive and thriving (and the answer is not because no one else wanted their desert lands).
new(-ish) tat
so by now everyone has seen it, but this is such great blog fodder that it had to be done. i finally got the sparrow tattoo that i've wanted for so long. major special thanks to
ryan @
scapegoat who is truly awesome, and to
sloop who rode shotgun for the whole experience.
as the stories go, sparrows mate for life
...sadly humans do not.
bedbug
they say never give a stray cat a saucer of milk, or it will no longer be a stray cat, it will simply be your cat. which by the way, is how I came to care for the only cat I have ever owned sidney, who followed my brother and I home from the school bus back when I was a freshman or so. Come to think of it that cat is still alive and well meaning it is 15 years old or something. I'm beginning to question whether Sid is truly a cat and not some kind of undead zombie.
In any case, the don't feed a stray thing also applies to dogs. When attempting (for the first few hours anyway) to crate train my wunderdog Kazu, I was faced with a similar conundrum. Kazu hated her crate and so she began to cry. For the first half an hour it was almost humorous. Then it began to interfere with my own sleep. So in a moment of weakness, I let her out and up onto the bed. Game over. So Kazu not only sleeps in my bed, she works her way up to the top of the covers and rests her head on the pillow. In her mind, she is a tiny, hairy, illiterate human with a poor vocabulary.
So here we are six years later, and she has not been able to sleep a night outside of my bed. Her habit transfers to other beds as well. In a hotel room, Kazu's in the bed, when camping Kazu's in my sleeping bag, when I sleep in my car, she's on top of me in the driver's seat and so on.
I honestly don't mind at all. That makes me a terrible Dog Whisperer, but I kind of like having a friendly heat source in the bed. Especially in these colder months, and even more especially as of late.
massive weight loss
it's amazing what a general tendency of laziness coupled with life changes like graduation and the stress of starting one's career will do for weight gain. I never was a skinny guy, but it was kinda scary last Christmas when all of the cookies and treats found me a large inhale away from 200 lbs. It was honestly kinda scary for a short guy like me.
So in January I set out to make some changes. Nothing crazy. I'm the worst vegan in the world, so now I'm really just a vegetarian. The thing that I found that worked the best was simply being health conscious. Amazing, all of those balanced eating recommendations seem to be right after all.
here I am 9 months or so later and I'm down over 40 lbs. go team. 198.8 in January, 158.6 in October. I went from a 36" waist to a 30, from size large t-shirts to size small. I can barely believe it myself.
now while I don't recommend major emotional trauma to anyone, it certainly helps you lose that last pesky 8 pounds or so... and fast.
