Friday, March 31, 2006

Keep your ears open

Carly Patterson, the all-around gold medalist in gymnastics at the last Olympics, debuted her new song on the radio yesterday. 

No word yet on when the album will be released.

Oh, and Paris Hilton's album is supposed to drop this summer too.  I downloaded her single "Screwed" awhile back and it randomly played on my ipod the other day.

At first, I thought the song was kinda cheesy and sucked, but after a few listens, it grows on you.

Britney on Will & Grace

She rocked. 

She played this ultra-conservative talk show co-host who was hired to convert Jack's show into basically a mouthpiece of the government.

She really got into character, and nailed every line with perfect timing and precision.

If that performance didn't have Emmy written all over it, those people at the Academy really need to get their head checked.

Grade: A+

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

You're So Damn Hot

Finally, a song that's nice and honest:

(OK Go - You're So Damn Hot)
You don't love me at all, but don't think that it bothers me at all.
You're a bad-hearted boy-trap, babydoll, but you're...
You're so damn hot.

None of this sugar-coating, you're real beautiful, you're the only one for me, I really love everything about you. Nope, you're so damn hot.

Love it.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Psychic readings and other fun

It's been a pretty cool weekend so far. 

Saw 'V for Vendetta' on Friday night.  One of the better movies I've seen in awhile (I saw 'Thank You for Smoking' last weekend in DC).  The dialogue was great, the story was interesting, and how can you go wrong with Natalie Portman?  You can't.  By putting her in your movie, you're already almost guaranteed a winner.

On Saturday, I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch at this Italian restaurant near my place.  We both ended up at the intersection where the restaurant should be, but neither of us could find it.  I suggested we go to Brick Oven instead, since there's an Italian restaurant of the same name in Austin.  It turns out that this Brick Oven was actually a Mediterrean restaurant and for some reason it wasn't open (even though we were there between their listed hours).  Whatever.  We ended up going to the Mexican restaurant next door.  Surprisingly up-scale for the area, and pretty good food.

After lunch, I had to chill at my apartment for the next two and a half hours, waiting for JCPenney to deliver my recliner.  When I first saw them bring in the pieces, I thought, dude I could easily have fit that stuff in my car.  Why did you have to deliver it?  But then they assembled the recliner too, which is good since it would probably have taken me about 2-3 times longer.  It's weird, I can program a computer but I can't figure out how to put together a chair.

My recliner rocks!  Not literally, it just swivels and reclines, but it's very comfortable.  Now, I can be even lazier than before.

Went to a co-worker's party in the evening.  For most people, this would probably sound really boring and even like a forced 'company party' or something, where you have to be careful of what you say and/or do.  However, since we've worked together for so long and have hung out outside of work quite a bit, that isn't the case at all.  It's actually a pretty close group of people.  It's interesting too, since the party actually had employees from three different companies, but I've worked with all of them and see most of them on a regular basis.  The party itself was great: cheesy games plus alcohol adds up to fun.

Right, so you're probably wondering about the psychic readings (or you've stopped reading at this point).  Yeah, so our HR rep from our company decided that with a deck of Snoopy playing cards, she could tell people's fortunes.  She convinced a few people (including myself) at the beginning that maybe she was legit, but when she easily forgot what she had just said about specific cards, it seemed a little fishier.  Our hunch was that she told people whatever impression she had of their personalities and then made some vague predictions about the future.  She did a pretty good job on my fortune though (her personality assessment was accurate and her vague prediction had some basis), and based on the pics, it appears I was angry and skeptical of what was being told to me.

My goal for the night was to not say anything stupid (I tend to do that with too much alcohol), and I think I succeeded on that front.


Thursday, March 23, 2006

Head of Household

The IRS really needs to use better terms on its tax forms.

Specifically, "head of household" is such a vague term that it can ostensibly refer to anyone who leads their household, whether or not they actually have any dependents.  If you live by yourself, you basically are the head of that household, no?

Anyways, that's what I thought, and as such, put head of household as a deduction on my tax form when I first started working.  Well, it turns out that head of household is really only for people who have dependents and claiming head of household status is apparantly illegal.

I was wondering why I had to pay so much in taxes this year.  Maybe this will fix it.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

i hate the ipod

FYI: When you're trying to put more songs on your iPod, and it flashes the big red circle with the cross saying "Do Not Disconnect," don't disconnect it from your computer!  It's not just a suggestion; it will erase all the songs from your iPod, and make you copy them all again.  Trust me - it's a bad idea.


 

Sunday, March 12, 2006

St. Patrick's Day

Went to the St. Patrick's Day festivities on Greenville this weekend.  It was pretty awesome to see this vast sea of green everywhere you looked up and down the street.  Block parties for like 4 or 5 blocks with alcohol freely flowing, live music, and beads for all.  The parade itself was better/longer than I expected, but I'm a sucker for parades and it doesn't take much for one to impress me.  The best part of the parade was all the free stuff they gave out: beads, ashtrays, frisbees, t-shirts, etc.  It was great.. I scored about 10 strands of beads, and an ashtray.

From there it was on to the "hashing"; not sure if I mentioned this in a previous post, but it's this event where you follow a trail marked by flour to a point (the "beer check") where you stop, drink some, and then continue on the trail until you get to another spot (the "on-in") where you drink some more.  After it's all over, everyone heads to a bar or restaurant to drink some more.  Their slogan is that they're a "drinking club with a running problem."  Normally, the trail is kinda tricky and can take you across highways, through forests, and even trodding through water.  This one was decidely less complicated (mostly due to the fact that most ppl were already drunk before the hash even started), and we ended up just calling someone and asking the address of the on-in.

So, by the time it was like 3 pm, most of us were already drunk and pretty tired.  Yeah, that's insane.  That's the earliest I've ever been drunk.  Hooting and hollering (at the parade) combined with a lot of walking and a lot of drinking ends up really tiring you out.  I would guess that I walked about 5 or 6 miles yesterday, and we were just on one street!

We finished the night off with karaoke (and more drinking) at a hole-in-the-wall bar.  This is only the second time I've done karoake, and the first time was in a private room, so everyone sucked and it was a lot of fun.  This time, it was in out in public, and everyone who performed besides our group was freakin' awesome.  We decided that they were probably part of some professional singing group that goes to karaoke nights in various bars across Dallas just to embarass everyone else.  Oh well. We still went up there and made fools out of ourselves.  I sang The Real Slim Shady with my friends' help.  I'm surprised how much of that song I remember.  Haven't heard it in a long time.

Fun, but exhausting weekend.  Oh, and made about 20 bucks in poker on Friday.  Best I've ever done.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Lunchtime Quotes

"So yall are like foreign exchange students or something?"
~ our hot Albanian waitress at the Italian restaurant where our company went to lunch

Yeah, so there were a few white people, some Romanians, an Asian and me, so I suppose you could confuse us for foreign exchange students?

The waitress was definitely crazy though.. she's almost as crazy as our secretary.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Oscars

Jon Stewart's sarcastic style makes him a great Oscar host.

"I'm surprised Cinderella Man didn't win in the Makeup category. It must take a lot of effort to make Russell Crowe look like he got in a fight."

"I think it just got a little easier to be a pimp." - after "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" won for Best Original Song

"For those keeping track, Martin Scorcese: 0 Oscars. 3-6 Mafia: 1 Oscar."

Friday, March 03, 2006

Happy Hour Part Deux

Had our second happy hour yesterday. Most of the same people showed up, with the addition of a few new faces.

We (well, fine, I) decided to try Humperdink's this time instead of Fox & Hound since the service was so slow last time. Pros: non-smoking section, cons: not so much of the bar scene that you'd get elsewhere at a real happy hour place. I think there may be one or two other bars in the area, so we'll have to pick a new place for next time.

After most people had left, the remaining folks headed over to the nearby bowling alley. Yeah, so we're cheap/poor and it would have cost a lot of money to actually bowl, so we ended up just lounging at the bar. That's right, we left the happy hour at Humperdink's to drink some more at the bowling alley bar.

Anyway, the happy hour with the 10+ people was a lot of fun. The part at the bowling alley - not so much. I've been drunk before (bet you didn't know that), but if everything happened as I vaguely remember it, then last night was definitely one of those times when I probably said way more than I should have. It almost felt like an intervention, and I didn't even know that I had a problem. Note to self: drink less at next happy hour/post-happy hour.