the big catch-up entry

gee…catching up a bit…
thursday evening after work i headed over to the armadillo palace with the “co-worker i like to take weird pictures of” (we’ll call him “michiel”) and the co-worker who threw the meat and martini party (we’ll call him “chris”, and that’s a forward reference to an event later in this entry). i had agreed to buy michiel a well-deserved drink after he managed to, without using his hands or arms, call my phone with his blackberry (which began in his front pants pocket), then proceeded to build an origami cube just using his head and mouth. this whole thing started when we joked about him accidentally supergluing his fingers to his nipples, and he felt compelled to prove that he could still function like that. (who said my work environment was odd?)
after some empanadas and a couple of margaritas, i left the co-workers and headed over to the grand palace 24 to watch grandma’s boy. i kind of figured it might be a lot of low-brow sex and drugs jokes, and that’s mostly what i got. (but we were looking for something funny and shallow.) the saving grace for this movie was that the story is about a console game tester and the people he works with. while i’m not a gamer, game and computer culture tend to intersect quite a bit so i was able to find humor in a lot of little stuff and connecting characters to stereotypes or even people i actually know. and, honestly, there were a lot of jokes/gags in it i thought were funny. think of it as the illegitimate love child of revenge of the nerds and there’s something about mary in its teen years. i wouldn’t suggest a need to see it in the theater, but it might be something funny to rent at some point. (and no, please don’t relate it to adam sandler films. even though he is connected to it. bleh.)
friday after work i headed to pub fiction with some co-workers to celebrate one of them getting accepted into an mba program. pub fiction appeared to be a fairly trendy hang-out of downtown/midtown yuppies. joy.
after that i headed to the daily grind, which was closed, then to empire, which was closing, then to agora, where i met jamie and smoked my pipe while she experienced vertigo. (and evidently i helped to provide a “kinda eh” evening for her…i rock…)
saturday my brother came into town, so once he arrived we joined up with sue and her kids and headed over to st. arnold’s brewery for the tour. they are going to start charging for the tour soon ($5, but you get a special sampler glass to keep). that’s kind of annoying, but they are getting way too many people coming so they were trying to find a way to limit it some. and there were definitely a LOT of people there. at least 3 or 4 times more than the first time or two i went.
my brother had been sick earlier in the week, but was feeling better so he had decided to come down; however, he started feeling kind of sick again so that left me going solo to the meat and martini party a co-worker was having. this was the second m&m party, the first taking place a couple of years ago in the northeast. the spark that ignited this event was a conversation about how people complain too much about what they eat and about diet and light drinks…the conclusion being there should be a time where the whining stops and you just eat some meat and drink real drinks…like the rat pack did…like martinis. so the deal was each guest brings a meat-based dish (no sides), and the hosts provide the ingredients for numerous types of martinis. stylish dress highly suggested. since my brother was grounded, i tried sue…but she was occupied, so i asked natalie…and she was occupied as well. so alone i went, with my pipe and four rings of houston’s luling city market sausage. (this article in the houston press is the best synopsis i’ve seen of the city market in luling vs. luling city market situation, by the way. read, learn.) i ate some meat, i drank some martinis, i smoked my pipe. natalie did manage to show up later in the evening and after awhile we headed off to the house of pies.
sunday came early, but my brother — who had spent the evening on my couch watching movies and then sleeping — was feeling better, so we headed to bed, bath, and beyond. i hadn’t bought him anything for xmas or his birthday so he decided he wanted some kitchen items. we then met jack and sue and the kids at sylvia’s enchilada for lunch (mmmmm). after that, linc and i went to target where i purchased some more cooking/dining items for him. i also gave him a bunch of kitchen stuff i had but never use (blender, knives, waffle maker, mixing bowls, cooking utensils, etc.). he refused to take the cd/vhs cabinet…*sigh*. he took off for austin around 5pm.
later in the evening i met natalie at agora. where i once again smoked my pipe. for not having been to agora in a couple of years, i’ve recently gone there a lot in a short period of time.
monday after work i saw good night, and good luck. my movie partner decided the “good night” aspect sounded really intriguing, so she proceeded to perform extremely deep meditation after about the first 20 minutes. i brought her out of it twice, but she was dedicated and went right back to studying the inside of her eyelids. it was a really good film. i’m not sure how accurate a portrayal of reality it is, but the look and feel was nice. and what an interesting time in recent american history. as i saw someone mention somewhere, the amount of smoking and smoke in the film was insane, but i guess it helped set a mood and style. it seemed like some of the plot elements were put in as filler or to pad it out to feature length since they didn’t really have much to do with forwarding the plot or anything, but they weren’t out of place or distracting. we’ll just say they were creating a mood and backdrop with it.
tuesday after work i headed to the flying saucer for trivial tuesdays. i started doing that a few months ago, and am predictably inconsistent in showing up. as per the norm, after trivia the group moves over to sambuca. i hung out there until around 11:30pm and then headed home.
wednesdays after work i of course have the radio show. on this evening i managed to fit in references to the g.i. joe psa remixes from ebaum’s world (link) as well as 20 or 30 seconds of peanut butter jelly time.
which brings us up to today. so far today after work i’ve done nothing. but it’s still (relatively) early. ha.