‘Friends’ Category

  1. potatoes, reorganization, vacation week

    October 2, 2005 :: 8:17 pm

    this weekend i moved my art studio from the garage to my office upstairs. the space is much smaller and i can’t be nearly as messy as i’m used to being, what with the carpeting and all, but i think that if i have to see my equipment all the time i’ll be more inclined to actually work. not to mention the serious benefits of central heating and air!!

    in the process of moving my stuff upstairs, i decided to clean the garage too. not fully, but i just organized it a little, swept it out about 75%-assed (which is more than half-assed but less than perfect), and ripped up the astroturf that covered about 1/3 of the concrete and which had probably been there since the house was built. imagine 25 years of dirt and bugs ground into a sickly green plasticky sheeting. you can only sweep that crap off so much. it was really nasty underneath. but now it’s clean-esque.

    and it was 93 degrees out today (yes, it IS october). i’m pretty sure that i sweated at least 2 pounds off. maybe i should do this more often.

    left to do: get rid of a bunch of crap (old desk parts, broken monitor, huge cardboard boxes) next bulk trash day; thoroughly clean out the secondary fridge, make sure that its new “feature” of shocking the crap out of you when you touch it, which we discovered when we had it plugged in for the garage sale in may, was just a function of it being plugged into an extension cord.

    earlier today we went estate-saleing with kat and brett. these were rich peoples’ estate sales (one house appeared as if the rather young-ish family had just packed a few belongings and moved, leaving most of their stuff behind). doc likes to make up stories about what he thinks that the families that lived there were like, and i love to listen to them. i bought 3 glass christmas ornaments at the first sale — that really thin thin glass with a deep red anodized metallic coating, and a very tastful glitter pattern on it. doc found several other things that he liked, including a bag of plastic dinosaurs, some old leather photo albums, and an unused rapiograph pen set.

    we had lunch at holy smokes, which has good barbecue (some of the best i’ve tasted in dallas) and a coronary-in-a-bowl delicious southern potato casserole, which tasted like it had more butter, cheese, and sour cream in it than actual potatoes. it was probably good that i worked in the garage later on and sweated off a couple of quarts of water.

    i have had the last week off on vacation, and have really really enjoyed myself. we did not go anywhere out of town, but i spent some time working on the freelance brochure project, cleaning out my office, getting organized, doing a little catching up on housework, and seeing friends. for doc’s birthday on wednesday, i took him out to dinner at pei wei, and we watched a violent thunderstorm rage through town (birthday gifts: a salt grinder from williams sonoma, season passes to the state fair, and DVDs of shaun of the dead and garden state). thursday night we went to leslie’s art show at counterculture, then to the trinity hall for drinks afterwards. we had a great time — lori, brittney, leslie, mark, brittney’s friend robert, kathryn, and rachel all were there. saturday i had lunch with kathryn, which i desperately need to do more often.

    i hope to make our first trip to the state fair this thursday night. hopefully, doc’s schedule will allow for that… it is only supposed to be 76 on thursday. however, this is texas and the weather tends to not cooperate with the forecasts, so we’ll see.

    Category Food, Friends, House, Shopping | Tags: | No Comments

  2. birthday report

    September 15, 2005 :: 10:01 am

    had a nice birthday. 33 is a good number, double digits, divisible by 11. 3 is pleasing, a number that connotes stability.

    got taken out to lunch (thanks b.) and for ice cream in the afternoon (thanks boss). k2 sent me flowers. doc gave me some cool gifts, many of which made me laugh uncontrollably. mike & vanessa sent me a really neat cookbook, something about an herbfarm. can’t wait to try some of the recipes. got phone calls and e-greetings from friends and family.

    right before bed, i stabbed what turned out to be a main artery in my foot, using a red pencil. no idea how it happened, apparently i’m talented. the entire freshly-sharpened pointy end went into the top of my foot where the 4th and 5th toes come together. i was so surprised that i yoinked the pencil out immediately, and i have never seen blood come out of me that fast. i did not pass out, was too busy trying to stop the bleeding lest i die right there on the floor of my office (and, admittedly, worrying about getting that much blood on the carpet). doc got the bleeding stopped and bandaged me up, while i laid there having visions of paramedics laughing at me.

    suprisingly, it’s not bruised today… just sore with a big pencil-tip shaped hole.

    Category Friends, Health | Tags: | No Comments

  3. tales from a reluctant tech

    June 30, 2005 :: 3:07 pm

    the story you are about to read is real. only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

    noon saturday: i’m chatting online with my friend “tiffany.” i tell tiffany that i had a dream that i helped her upgrade her operating system to tiger. she says that maybe it’s a sign that it’s time to actually do it. you see, tiffany is still using os 9, five years after os x was released. tiffany actually purchased adobe creative suite, which will only work with os x, two years ago… but has yet to install os x. tiffany is a wee bit apprehensive about change.

    12:15: i throw some stuff together, head out of the house, drive to plano, drop by the bank, and arrive at tiffany’s house with tiger in hand. i estimate that we’ll be done with the installation and file transfer and setup process by early evening, if not sooner.

    1 p.m.: tiffany and i go out to get some lunch, where she promptly sees someone she knows. no big surprise here. what makes it even funnier is that we are the only other people in the restaurant besides this person.

    2 p.m.: we arrive back at tiffany’s house. her internal hard drive is making an occasional crunchy grinding sound. her brand new lacie external hard drive is acting flaky. i think she needs a new power supply/cord for the lacie. we manage to get most of her files backed up onto it, and the rest onto her ipod. i begin installing tiger.

    2:30 p.m.: we leave tiger installing and trek across the molten pavement to tiffany’s apartment pool. no one else is swimming on this boiling hot saturday afternoon. a couple of people are reading in lounge chairs under the crepe myrtle trees. creepy guy “chester” is not at the pool today — he’s usually out in a lounge chair in his shorts, ickily staring at any woman in the vicinity. five minutes after we get in, chester shows up and slowly walks through the pool area, but continues into the workout center. we swim for an hour. just as we get out and wrap up in our towels, chester finishes his workout and comes back to the pool area. good timing on our part today.

    4:00 p.m.: back at the apartment, tiger has finished installing and the computer is waiting for us with a setup screen. the hard drive is making that grinding noise, now rhythmically. i start entering the setup information and… nothing. i figure that it’s just taking a few minutes to respond, and wait it out. five minutes later, what i typed appears in the first blank. i click to the next blank and start typing… and nothing. i have a sinking feeling. five more minutes go by, and my typing suddenly appears in the blank. that sinking feeling sinks even lower.

    4:30 p.m.: i decide that the best course of action is to simply reboot and hope that whatever little trauma the computer is suffering will clear up. i restart, we get the fun little “welcome” animation, and the setup screen appears again. i type, this time successfully. on screen 4, the hard drive starts bleating again and things grind to a halt. i get the spinning beach ball of death. my patience with this lasts until screen 6. i restart again.

    5:00 p.m.: i try everything that i can think of to cancel out of the setup program, thinking that maybe there is something wrong with it. nothing works. i start typing on setup screen one, and almost immediately we go into the crunchy grind beach ball routine. tiffany freaks out about how she KNEW that change was a bad idea, and that she KNEW that os x would kill her computer. i assure her that it’s not os x’s fault; it’s her flaky ancient hard drive crapping out on her.

    5:15 p.m.: i restart using the os x install cd. i run disk repair. it finds nothing wrong with the disk. i restart using the diskwarrior cd. it also finds nothing wrong with the disk. i find this strange since this disk has likely never been repaired, de-fragged, or had routine maintenance performed on it.

    6:00 p.m.: after numerous reboots and a consistent hard disk failure about 120 seconds after startup, i realize that the disk is probably just not going to work. i consult my magic 8-ball (thanks, honey!) and decide to go purchase a new internal hard drive. tiffany and i go to fry’s and snag a seagate 120MB hard drive.

    6:30 p.m.: we put the new hard drive in the computer, boot up using the os x install cd, and it doesn’t see the new hard drive. this is, of course, because it has not been initialized. i restart using the os 9.0.4 system cds that came with the computer. i initialize the new hard drive. i restart using the tiger install cd, and begin installing it on the new hard drive.

    7:30 p.m.: we leave tiger installing on the hard drive (sound familiar?) and go pick up doc to go to dinner. we meet stan at cafe express, where tiffany buys me dinner as thanks. i haven’t seen stan in months. he’s totally unrestrained at dinner and he and doc make me laugh a lot.

    10:30 p.m.: we drop doc off at home and tiffany and i drive back to her apartment. tiger has successfully installed, but we are frozen once again on the setup screen. i can hear her old hard drive crunching and grinding rhythmically. i shut down, unplug the power and data cables from the old hard drive, and restart again. this time it works flawlessly. i get through setup, get tiffany connected to the internet, and copy her files from her ipod and the lacie external, which seems to be working just fine under os x.

    midnight: just for the hell of it, we try restarting again with the old hard drive connected. even though we’re booting from the new drive, the mere presence of the old drive brings the system to a halt.

    12:30 a.m.: we decide to go to the apple store at lunch one day during the week and ask the geniuses about the best course of action for getting started up successfully from the old hard drive so we can make sure we have all her data and programs off of it. i’m exhausted and need to go to bed. at 12:45, i drive home.

    we have yet to deal with getting her stuff off the old drive, or even installing new programs on the new drive and getting all her email transferred over, but thanks to the apple geniuses, we now have a course of action. that will be another tale, for another day.

    Category Apple, Friends, Technology | Tags: | No Comments

  4. bimgyver

    June 29, 2005 :: 10:22 am

    i just learned that brett once channelled the spirit of macgyver and was able to rappel into his attic using a garden hose tied to a gazebo, when locked out of his house.

    he claims this happened when he was 13, but i’m going to ask kathryn if, in fact, it wasn’t just last week. :)

    Category Friends | Tags: | No Comments

  5. kathryn and brett’s wedding, part two

    May 25, 2005 :: 9:45 pm

    here are some of the photos from kathryn’s wedding. their photographers were really good; there are some fantastic shots. they shot digital, so there are more than 800 images. it took me a while to get through them all. here are some of my favorites.


    the wedding weekend was crazy but fun. we did all the flowers ourselves; kat mail-ordered them and we spent HOURS putting them together on thursday, friday, and saturday. they looked better than any professional florist shop could have done.

    kathryn and the girls and i did lots of girly fun stuff, like getting our nails done, getting dressed together at her new house and having mimosas, checking for visible panty lines, etc. :) we had a very cold and windy rehearsal lunch at a park in richardson. luckily the weather for the wedding the next day turned a bit warmer and sunny with no wind. it was utterly perfect.

    the wedding itself was fantastic. kathryn looked stunning, as usual. the weather cooperated, we all wore bare feet, doc looked totally hot in his official ushering uniform, i felt good in my dress (strapless! first time ever!) and not too cow-like, we all teared up at the look on brett’s face when he first saw kathryn emerge towards the aisle, the ceremony was short and sweet and included a handfasting ritual.

    it was kind of a long time between when the ceremony ended and when we could go inside and sit down, eat, and dance. but once we did, the food was pretty good, the drinks were free, the wedding cake was tasty and so were the krispy kreme donuts that served as the groom’s cake, we all started bawling when kat’s dad and his barbershop quartet got up on stage and serenaded her and brett with “sunrise, sunset” from fiddler on the roof. i have no idea how HE kept it together long enough to sing.

    kat and brett did a fake “going away” like doc and i did at our wedding. instead of bubbles, we all had fiber optic wands. actually there were some bubbles, too, if i remember correctly. brett planned their honeymoon secretly without telling anyone, but dropped a big hint at the reception: the last song they danced to before they left to go to their hotel was sinatra’s “new york new york”. and that’s exactly where they went!

    Category Friends, Love | Tags: | No Comments

  6. we won!!! sorta!

    May 17, 2005 :: 9:55 pm

    i knew it! i knew we were gonna win! our very first short film, “watchmaker,” has advanced to the finals in the dallas video association’s 24-hour video race competition!!!

    last saturday, doc, lori and i participated in the competition. at midnight friday night we were given our requirements: a theme (“first class”), a prop (saturday’s issue of the dallas morning news’ crappy commuter rag “quick,” and hey guess what, they were also a SPONSOR, how about that bullshit!), a location (mailbox), and a line of dialogue (“i thought that was fixed a long time ago”). at that point, we had 24 hours to write, storyboard, script, cast actors, shoot, produce, edit, and finalize our film. we had to turn it in by midnight saturday night.

    our film ended up being a very cool, esoteric artsy piece. the basic plot, if you can call it that, is that there is something broken with reality, and super-sensitive people on our plane of existence are noticing it. the reason that reality is broken is because the “watchmaker” — our term (that we’re not quite happy with) for a creator didn’t receive his invoice from first class existential services for scheduled maintenence on reality. he didn’t pay the bill, so reality was breaking down. once it was paid, repairs were made to the universe, and everything went back to normal.

    so we stayed up for more than 40 hours straight working on this project. we came back to our house, made some coffee, got some red bull (nasty, and never again) and potato chips, and went to work. leslie came by about 1:30 a.m. to hang out and help us. there was an awesome thunderstorm going on. we got our idea worked out, and leslie drew the storyboards for us, and we figured out what dialogue we needed. doc set up his microphone and we all read our lines, and he recorded them. we got this finished by about 5:00 and decided to get a tiny bit of sleep before starting shooting. i laid down in bed and my whole body was just vibrating, maybe from the combination of nervousness, excitement, coffee, red bull, and chocolate covered espresso beans. anyway, i laid there until 6:30 when the alarm went off, and got maybe 20 minutes of sleep the whole time. i think doc got maybe 1-1/2 hours.

    we met at leslie’s house at 7 a.m. from there we caught a dart train northbound at mockingbird station, and rode all the way to the end of the line and back, filming leslie’s role as “disgruntled commuter.” lori nearly got assaulted by a crazy woman on the train, and then another woman turned to me as she was getting off at her stop and said “you know, you should try doing this when it’s not rush hour.” i said “i apologize if we inconvenienced you [we didn't, there were plenty of seats], but seeing as how it’s saturday at 7 a.m., we thought there’d be fewer people on the train.” and she gave me this fuck-you look and said “you know, some people WORK on saturdays” and then stepped off the train. so we thought about calling our production company “some people work on saturdays productions”.

    after the dart train scene was done, we drove out to east dallas and filmed a scene that we didn’t end up using underneath a rusty abandoned train trestle. then we went to the railroad museum, paid our $5 admissions (i was hoping they’d let us in free to film for 10 minutes, but no such luck), and filmed doc’s repairman scene using some rusty gears and bolts on the side of a locomotive.

    this whole time, i felt like i was on the verge of throwing up. it got dicey from time to time. it was probably a combination of lack of sleep, caffeine, and actually having some sort of mild stomach illness (which i think i have had since last wednesday). anyway, all day saturday i felt like i had an awful hangover.

    back at our house, we set up our watchmaker scene using a felt-covered table and a lot of doc’s cool old estate sale finds, such as an old microscope, a 1920s era smith-corona typewriter, tiny paper dolls, tiny scissors, a crank-style counter, old books, my old brass mailbox from college, and some other really neat stuff. we filmed all of our watchmaker scenes and were done with that around 3 p.m.

    lori went back to her house to capture the video, while doc and i worked on the music and the titling, respectively. we got the files to lori as quickly as we could so she could add them in to the video. she did all the editing work. we came over to her place about 8, and we did some last minute editing tweaks, rendered the video, copied it to DV tape, and raced it down to fair park to turn it in with 30 minutes to spare.

    we were only the 24th team to turn our video in, so there must have been a rush at the last minute because 82 teams ended up finishing on time.

    “watchmaker” was shown onscreen at the angelika tonight, and we are now advancing to the finals!! our film will be screened again on thursday night, and then we’ll find out if we win. i’m nearly certain we won’t come in first (a team called “dropped on your head” did a really fabulous job with theirs; i think they’ll win), but i’m not ruling out 2nd place as a possibility.

    i still can’t believe we got to the finals on our very first film!! amazing.

    please come out to the angelika on thursday! tickets are only $3 and you can stay for as many of the films as you like. our film will be shown at 8:30 sharp.

    Category Art, Friends, Movies | Tags: | 3 Comments

  7. kathryn and brett’s wedding, part one

    May 10, 2005 :: 9:51 pm

    argh! i’m so annoyed. i’ve just written several hundred words about kat and brett’s wedding weekend, and i hit the wrong button, and *poof*, it all went away, just like ellen feiss’ term paper (it was like, beep beep beep).

    i’m not going to write it all out again tonight, because i’m tired and pissed off.

    i’ll post a re-cap on the 15th instead, when i can see pictures on the photographer’s web site.

    if you were there and took photos with your own camera, please let me know! i’d love to see them. i did not have a camera that night. thanks!!!

    Category Friends, Love | Tags: | 1 Comment

  8. tacovelopes

    April 27, 2005 :: 9:06 pm

    joel says…

    my favorite item in the SPIN 20 list in a recent issue of SPIN magazine, the one with trent reznor (who?) of nine inch nails (who? oh, them–you mean goth hasn’t died yet?) on the cover: 

    “TACOS: Like delicious envelopes, mailing cilantro to your belly.”

    Category Friends | Tags: | No Comments

  9. let the wookiee win

    April 18, 2005 :: 4:44 pm

    aah, harrison. a fine, fine actor. a fine, fine man. i don’t care that he’s 30 years my senior. here’s a great collection of him pointing his finger at various people in movies.

    just read that adobe bought macromedia. wow. seems like they’re approaching microsoft with regards to a monopoly. i wonder how this is going to affect dreamweaver. hmm. i like adobe and all, but sheesh, do they have to own EVERYTHING?

    yesterday’s dilbert was GREAT. this is exactly what happens in my office on a daily basis. i wish i had an ejector seat, but i’d have to go through the four floors above me before i broke free.

    kathryn is getting married in thirteen days. i’m trying to remember what i felt like 13 days out. probably pretty panicked. which is dumb, because it is JUST A PARTY, but for some reason even the most laid back and levelheaded among us get antsy and freaked out as it approaches. i guess it’s the whole “making sure that everyone has a good time, not just us” type of thing. at the end of the day, you’ll still be married, which is the important thing. but it’s always difficult, expensive, and time consuming to throw a party — especially one that big with that many people, many of whom have wildly differing expectations. you have to balance wanting everyone to have a good time with not doing something you don’t want to do just because it’s traditional or expected by traditional-minded people.

    Category Friends, Movies, Technology, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  10. penises, trinkets, and tulle! oh my!

    April 11, 2005 :: 10:01 pm

    we went out with kathryn last saturday for a wild and crazy girls’ night out bachelorette party. no, it did not involve excesses of alcohol (except for julie, who enjoyed herself a wee bit too much) or men paid to remove their clothing (two words: DISGUSTING and EMBARRASSING. okay, three words: DISGUSTING, EMBARRASSING, and CRABS. i’ve got my own crab-free hot guy who will remove his clothes for free at the drop of a hat.)

    we had a nice dinner at momo’s italian, then went to a very bizarre and interesting place called pete’s duelling piano bar, which consists of two people on back-to-back pianos on the stage, playing in tandem and taking turns singing popular songs, making fun of people in the crowd, embarrassing bachelorettes, and getting everyone to sing along. kathryn thoroughly enjoyed herself, and got a chance to show off her swingin’ dance moves.

    i could barely hear myself think, it was so loud and crowded in there (at least we had reserved tables), so i spent most of my time talking to the girls on either side of me, brittney and dagmar. dagmar is a friend of kathryn’s, and she’s a lot of fun. she’s one of the few women i’ve met that i can see eye level with — and actually she’s got probably four or five inches on me. she’s from frankfurt, and she regaled us with tales of how germans don’t ever talk to each other in public. when she first moved here a few years ago, she panicked in a banana republic when a friendly salesman struck up a casual conversation with her. we asked her how germans met each other, what they did in bars and nightclubs, and she said that they mostly just stood around with arms folded, looking stern.

    later, we went back to rachel’s house, ate potato chips and chocolate, and talked for a couple of hours before going to bed. the next morning, we made pancakes with ice cream and a huge platter of bacon, as is tradition.

    here is something i fail to understand about bachelorette parties: traditionally, the point is to completely embarrass the bride-to-be by making her wear stupid accessories, most of which involve penises or condoms. i won’t get into the motivations for embarrassing a friend in public on purpose — that is another topic for another day. but why the emphasis on penises, condoms, and sex? realistically speaking, it’s not like most brides-to-be have never seen a penis before. her friends dress her up in sex toys and penis shaped trinkets, as if this is something new. “hey, now that you’re getting married, you’re going to be seeing a lot of penis! and here’s what they look like! oooh, you’re going to be having sex! hee hee hee!” i heard a statistic today that 99% of people who get married do not get married as virgins. so sex is nothing new for these women, either. anyway, it’s just a curious tradition. i wonder how it got started — surely not back in the age when many men and women did NOT have sex before marriage. those times would have been WAY too conservative for it to be acceptable to dress a woman in a penis-shaped hat and take her to a bar.

    Category Friends | Tags: | 1 Comment

  11. tom lauerman

    March 28, 2005 :: 8:50 pm

    i just reconnected with an old friend and artist, tom lauerman. we shared studio space from 1996-1998 at the shamrock hotel studios, formerly the blue stair studios, and were both founding members. i managed the studio and rented a room, and tom actually lived there.

    it was so incredibly frustrating trying to finagle rent checks out of 8 flaky artists each month (tom excluded, of course), so when in 1998 i moved out of my apartment and into a house that had space for a studio, i packed up my paint and left the shamrock in tom’s capable hands.

    i just did a web search and it looks like the shamrock still exists, to my delight and surprise. i wonder what it looks like now, and if anyone lives there anymore. i wonder if the stairs are still blue. maybe they have air conditioning and have taken care of that horrible cockroach problem. maybe i’ll drop by one day.

    tom’s been busy since leaving the shamrock. i own two woodcut prints of his, but it looks like he’s been focusing mainly on ceramics. installation pieces. he’s living in chicago now

    Category Art, Friends | Tags: | 2 Comments

  12. oh, for the love of god!!

    March 22, 2005 :: 9:37 pm

    okay, so i installed a hit counter on my site yesterday, and it’s pretty cool in that it allows me to see where my hits are coming from (the page the person was on before they came to my site). this is useful because it lets me see how i’m coming up in search engines and also where i might be linked from.

    most of my hits seem to be coming from folks using Google’s image search. and, for god’s sake, THIS is the image that’s been looked at most.

    i don’t get it! what’s the deal?? how are people finding this? i mean, we’re CUTE and all, but it’s not like either of us is naked!

    anyway, the wackiest part is, WAY more people visit my site than i ever thought. i’ve had hits from spain, belgium, iran, germany, uruguay, argentina, china, singapore, and more. this is kind of freaking me out.

    Category Blog, Friends, Technology | Tags: | 6 Comments

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