Before and after

The past week or so in pictures:

Fallen tree removed:



Island found:



Sunday dinner with George (Foreman):

Congrats!

Alison was officially accepted to grad school today. School starts for her at the Seminary of the Southwest next week.

Tonight was our weekly angry hour (as opposed to happy hour) dinner at Maki Toki. The restaurant is a family affair, owned by a European family of mom, dad, and five daughters. The dad and sisters take turn making the sushi. Joining us tonight was my brother, in from Houston for a visit. The group likes to mock my blog, so I threatened to put everyone's picture in it. I believe the only person looking angry below is John, my brother-in-law:

Glorious

East Side Pies is on my way home from work. But they also deliver if that's easier for you. I still like Salvation's pizza just a bit better, but East Side is so damn convenient. Their website, however, sucks.

My stylist invited me to a birthday party in far South Austin tonight - a Mardi Gras themed one. Not sure I'm going to make it. It's cold and wet outside, and my house is warm inside. Not to mention, my brother is arriving Sunday, and I need to clear out the spare bedroom for him.

Excessive...

Load. Storm knocked down a couple of trees in my yard today. One hit the house. Looks expensive:


Technology. Dustin, Emily Sue, Diego and Eric stopped by Saturday to chat and work on bikes. Actually, Emily Sue surfed the web on her iPhone, Diego played a game on the iPad, and Eric watched the game on the iTV:


Food. After cable-ling Dustin's bike, we went to III Forks for dinner. I had the filet mignon with an Oscar topping:


And Maurie stopped by with Julia and Mylo tonight with some homemade chili:

Lessons learned

You should never accept the last service appointment of the day on the last day of the week. Live and learn.

This all started Thursday night when I dripped a drop of grease onto the carpet in my office. You all know how I feel about grease in the house. Anyway - I got out the Resolve and spot treated the area. While I was down on the ground blotting per the directions on the spray bottle, I decided the carpet could use some professional help - there were distinct traffic flow lines that I wasn't too crazy about.

So Friday morning I called Chem Dry to see when I could get an appointment. They had an opening that afternoon at 5:30PM, which seemed like a perfect fit for my schedule. I came home from work, moved some crap out of the office to make things easier to clean and waited for the cleaning crew. They showed up at 5:30 as expected, went over the pricing with me, tried to up-sell additional services (which I declined), then set about to clean. And they were done - just like that. Honestly, I think they spent a total of 15 minutes to clean the carpet in my office, the stairs, and my bedroom upstairs. I'm positive they spent more time talking to me about my bikes than they did actually cleaning. Whatever...

After they said they were done, I noted to the crew that the carpeting downstairs still looked pretty dirty. It looked like the dirt had just been feathered out, so the transition from clean to dirty was just harder to distinguish. They said they did the best they could and to give the carpet a few hours to dry, and it might look better then. Foolishly, I agreed. Things dried up around 10:PM last night. Carpet still looked dirty. 10:30 at night and I was at Target looking for DIY carpet cleaners. Came home at 11:PM and started scrubbing the carpet by hand. And scrubbed and scrubbed. Still doesn't look great, but it's a lot better than it was.

The silver lining to all this is - my office hasn't been this clean in years:




Nor has my bedroom upstairs:

Not happening

I'm watching "The Happening" on FX while eating dinner. From what I can gather, it's an M. Night Shyamalan eco-horror film. I'm only 30 minutes in, and I can already tell it's the worst film ever made.

The biggest problem is the horrible mis-casting - Mark Wahlberg as a high school science teacher, and John Leguizamo as a high school math teacher. Wahlberg as a fighter I can believe. Even Leguizamo as an animated sloth I can believe. However, these two trying to explain the scientific method or amoritization schedules I cannot believe. And Zooey Deschanel plays the same doe-eyed character that's better suited for a summer-ier film.

Even the trailer sucks:

Funstyle

I've been a big Liz Phair fan ever since her "Exile in Guyville" album. Based on that Rolling Stones connection, the New York Times tasked her recently with reviewing Keith Richard's autobiography, "Life." I haven't read commoner Keith's tome - because I'm still struggling through "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," but I understand it's gripping. She also penned a Wall Street Journal editorial on 90's nostalgia that I found interesting.

Anyway - Ms. Phair has a new CD out and has been touring the West Coast. I haven't heard the new disc yet, but initial reviews were mixed. Here's a song by song explanation of each track by Ms. Phair. I wish I could explain what she's doing with her hand in the picture below:


On the West Coast and soon to be touring the Third Coast is my friend Belinda. She called me this afternoon to ask about visiting Austin next month. She was hoping I'd be less stressed with my new job and reminded me that the last few times I visited her in Calif I was not a lot of fun. I would have to agree.

One time, we went to a fancy wedding together at a very nice vineyard, and I spent most of the reception in a corner editing the book my dad and I were writing.

Another time, we drove up to NorCal for the weekend, but I had to take conference calls with a very upset client in Canada for most of the drive up.


Anyway, I convinced her that I was indeed less stressed now, and I assured her that my new boss would not be calling me up at 3:AM because there was a problem processing the New York Times or WSJ feeds.

There is, however, a small problem. She's coming the weekend of the Austin Marathon. And I really can't image asking her to wait for hours while I run a marathon, so I've decided to just do the half instead. And in that case, I'm already trained. It feels so good.

More meat

I had today off from work, so I decided to do a little grilling this afternoon. Nothing fancy - just pork fajitas and a steak:



I had a little of the fajitas for lunch and the steak for dinner (with the requisite mac and cheese and bok choy). I highly recommend the Shiner pairing (said in a regal tone):


I intend to eat the rest of the pork fajitas as fajitas, thus sparing you a week of mystery pork recipe posts.

Quiet weekends are made for movie watching. And I tried to get a few in - but the only film I actually watched to the end was Winter's Bone. Good movie, but bleak. Bleak as in, "I grew up in a very basic fishing village, but this part of the Ozarks make the fishing village seem like Park Avenue"-bleak.

Happy 2011

More food pictures - because eating is what I've been doing this holiday season...

Had a nice New Year's eve dinner with Alison, Emily Sue and Dustin at Fion Bistro.

We started out with some black eyed peas and cabbage for good luck and good fortune:


For my main course, I had a rack of lamb with purple and white potatoes. I like the look of the purple potatoes. Oh, and a couple of snakebites. The snakebites made running this morning particularly difficult:


I made bold claims last night that I was going to run the 7 mile loop twice this morning. Yeah, that's the problem with running a loop multiple times - it's way too easy to stop after the first lap. Which is what I did today. It was probably for the best. I did what I needed to do to sweat out the toxins and didn't injure myself - a good way to start off 2011.