Spoonerism

Many months ago I was talking on the phone with my gf and I meant to say "I gotta go; I gotta go meet my kickball team." But what actually came out was "I gotta go kick my meatball team."

I thought of this because it's the middle of winter and I want it to be summer so I can jump in my pool with my cell phone in my pocket (again) and play kickball with my fabulous kickball team. Go away, winter.

Flatirons

Flatirons
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

This is what the flatirons looked like from my office window after my workout this morning. I love Boulder.

Breaking News...

It was announced this morning that Denver has been chosen to host the 2008 Democratic National Convention! Woot!

Helpful tip from your friendly neighborhood Thew

Try to avoid sneezing when your mouth is full of partially chewed banana.

I'm just sayin'.

Snowshoeing!

tongue-operated cell phone
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Yesterday a few of us went snowshoeing up flagstaff mountain. The trailhead is literally right outside my girlfriend's front door, so this photo was snapped mere minutes into the excursion. This shot is looking north from the base of flagstaff, so there's a bit of Boulder there in the background. And of course ScottyB being his usual self in the foreground.

new table

new table
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

I finally got around to getting an end table for my fancy eco-glam sofa. I ended up going to a furniture refurbisher right next to my house. They had one that's a perfect fit and it hadn't even been painted yet so I got to customize what color I wanted. I was actually going for more of a deep blue and less purple, but I'm pleased with the result. When they were done with it I walked to the store and carried it back to my place. It felt very Boulder to have walked to the furniture recycler and carried my recycled furniture back to my house.

nice rack!

nice rack!
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

This is the pot rack my awesome girlfriend got me. Isn't it spiffy? And I only drilled one unnecessary hole in my ceiling!

Notice the delicious home-made banana bread in the bottom of the frame. MMmmmmm.

Old Friends, New Adventures

Ten years after my study abroad experience in Bupapest, there's only one fellow BSM'er with whom I've kept in sporadic contact. Rebecca and I travelled together after our program ended, and spent Christmas Day amidst the new-fallen snow in Dracula's Castle, and New Year's Eve dancing the macarena in Istanbul with French Canadians. The last time I saw her was a few years ago when my ship pulled into Boston Harbor and she lived in Cambridge. I was pleasantly surprised when, yesterday, I found an email in my inbox from her. I had been considering a trip to California and possibly visiting her at her relatively new job at Stanford. But, surprise! She's joined the Peace Corps! And is leaving for Guinea, Africa imminently!



I wish her the best in her adventures, work, and self-discovery. Fair winds and following seas, the sailor in me would say.



You can follow her adventures on the blog she has created to detail her experiences in the Peace Corps: www.rebeccahunt.com/peacecorps

Back to Michigan For Christmas

I managed to make it safely out of the Colorado Blizzard and on to Michigan for Christmas without too much difficulty. I did miss my connection in Houston on the way out and ended up crashing on my sisters couch. It was good to see her, her husband, and her two kitties. Above is the result of me playing with my new digital camera that I got for christmas. Whee!

By popular request

I got a comment requesting that I get around to posting a picture of the mercury transit. Here's one from Spaceweather.com. It was taken by Howard Eskildsen of Ocala, FL. The dark area in the top left of the picture is a rather large sunspot that produced several CME's when it was around the limb and almost nothing when it was on the disk. The small spot towards the bottom of the image is Mercury. Man, I need to get a solar filter for my telescope.

Update - Percussion thingy

Evelyn Glennie learning the coolest thing in the world.

Shortly after posting the last entry I found this picture of Evelyn Glennie learning the instrument I wrote about. I still don't know what it's called, but this is what it looks like. Oh man, I really must learn this.

Stoopid cold, Day 5.

On my birthday I came down with a cold. Fortunately I wasn't scheduled to work that day or the next, so I could stay home and recover. But now it's day 5 of the cold and it's still not gone. Sure, I feel mostly better, but it's getting a little old not being able to breathe through my nose. And what a waste it was to have a couple perfectly nice days off and spend them in bed dreaming the feverish dreams of the ill. Grr. But now it is friday and I'm on the mend. Oh happy friday.

I was going a little stir crazy doing mostly nothing while fighting off the cold. I finished the book I was reading, "Pastwatch" by Orson Scott Card. I also finished watching all the netflix discs I had at home, Word Wars, a Deadwood season 2 disc, and "Touch the Sound", a biography of sorts of the deaf master-percussionist Evelyn Glennie. I can't honestly recommend "Touch the Sound" as it was quite slow paced and, at times, a little out there, but as a percussionist myself I enjoyed the footage of the music making. I had the good fortune to see Evelyn Glennie perform live and in person at Stetson Chapel back at good ol' Kalamazoo College in my school days. She really is amazing, but the movie, sadly, is not.

One thing about the movie I did find fascinating is a new percussion "instrument" I don't believe I've seen before. Imagine, if you will, a wooden ball, about the size of a softball, in this case painted red. Now imagine two specially designed wooden "sticks" such that you can balance the ball on the ends of the sticks in carved out shallow cups. The player holds the two sticks, one in each hand, and sort of juggles the ball in the air using various points on the sticks to make contact with the ball, thus creating different clickety-clack sounds. When done in rythm, this creates a percussion beat.

I must acquire this and learn to play it. If I knew what it was called maybe I could find it, but I don't even know where to start. Anyone have any ideas?

Transit of Mercury

NASA - 2006 Transit of Mercury

I just got back from watching the mercury transit on the heliostat we have at the observatory at work. Mercury was still in the solar disk as the sun set behind the flatirons. It was awesome to see in real light coming from the sun, rather than in digital images on a computer screen. The transit is in progress as I write this, so I don't have an actual photograph to link, but perhaps I'll find one a bit later.

T-Bird and Balanced Rock.

T-bird and Balanced Rock
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Just got back from a trip yesterday that included a couple days of Arches National Park. This is our obligatory "interacting with the crazy scenery" shot. Click on the picture to view more from the trip.

We also spent a couple of nights in Glenwood Springs enjoying the hot springs. The hot springs were fun, but made me miss the summer days when I can enjoy my own (unheated, non-natural spring) pool.

Me Picking Giant Reagan's Nose

Me Picking Giant Reagan's Nose
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

When given the opportunity to pick the nose of Ronald Reagan's Giant White Head, I obviously jumped at the chance. I mean, who wouldn't?

Filmspotting

Filmspotting.net

A few entries ago I talked about the brilliant and hilarious NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me...", in which I mentioned that I like to listen to the podcast version of the show during my daily workout. Well, there's only one Wait Wait podcast per week and lots more days in which I like to do my workout, so I've been searching for other good podcasts. Here's my problem. One can go on a site like Podcast Alley and search for podcasts by genre, but that doesn't really work for me because really I'm looking for one that's interesting, not necessarily about a specific topic. My other requirement is that it be free. I'm interested in the Splendid Table podcast but in order to download it you have to pay for it. Dude. I'm a product of the internet revolution. Everything online is supposed to be free.

And so I finally found another worthy podcast, Filmspotting. Like Wait Wait, Filmspotting is based in Chicago, but I don't believe it's nationally syndicated. If you live in the greater chicago-land area you can hear it on Chicago Public Radio, or you can do what I do, and download their free weekly podcast. The show is great. The format features two film-nerd buddies who often dissagree about which films are instant classics and which are trash (For example, one absolutely adored The Illusionist, the other hated it). The typical show starts with a featured review of a recently released movie, ventures into some listener feedback, detours into a segment they call Massacre Theater in which they act out a scene from a movie and listeners are invited to figure which scene for prizes, and frequently finishes with their top five list. Each week's top five has a different theme. A recent favorite of mine had the following premise:

The Situation

Every film made between 1980 and 1989 is going to be wiped from the Earth. Your mission: save one.

The Request

Give us a call and leave a voice mail. The one film you'd save from the 80s and why.

The hosts, Adam Kempenaar and Sam Van Hallgren typically reveal their runners-up (numbers 6 through 10) before alternating between them as they reveal their top five. In this case, the five movies from the 80's they would save from destruction. Which five movies from the 80's would you save from destruction?

The discussion is often interesting and the analysis is often real and heartfelt. They tend not to clinically analyze the films but truthfully acknowledge how the film hit them at an emotional level. And it's always fascinating to listen to two intelligent people disagree on a film and hear why one of thinks it's a masterpiece and the other a piece of trash.

I will admit that the podcasts can tend to be long-winded, frequently going over an hour. But this is why I like them for my workouts, as it inspires me to keep going just a bit longer on the elliptical trainer.

Here's my list (off the top of my head, I might have forgotten some classics):

1. The Princess Bride
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. Back to the Future
4. Ghostbusters
5. The Right Stuff

The Punch Bowl

The Punch Bowl
Originally uploaded by areageek.

This picture has achieved legendary and classic status among my family. In the picture, I'm the cute one.

This was taken at my Grandparents' 40th wedding anniversary celebration. I remember a few things from the party, but I don't remember being around the punch bowl while this picture was being taken. I do remember eating some red grapes that I thought were disgusting because I wasn't expecting them to have seeds in them. And getting locked in the bathroom with my cousin Kim.

Hoo-ray!

Hoo-ray!
Originally uploaded by thewbert.

Some of you may have noticed that my Flickr account was updated weeks ago with pictures from my vacation to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, but that I haven't blogged about it yet. Well here's the blog entry. Over on the right you can see a picture from the top of Mt. Washburn. We, being my parents and I, hiked up to the top on our first full day at Yellowstone. The veiw from the top, a mere 10,243 feet, was spectacular. There was a bit of haze in the air from all the nearby forest fires as it was forest fire season when we were there but the weather was perfect, warm and dry without being too hot. Click on the picture for more select pictures from our vacation.

Fun is awesome.

On friday I attended the Great American Beer Festival in glorious Denver, Colorado. This festival is apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the event with the largest number of beers on tap.* Guinness was not in attendance. Here are some random observations.

• Every damn brewery in the US thinks they're clever and unique. They're not. Seriously, every brewer had some clerverly punny-named IPA or Porter. They pretty much all tasted the same. I stopped sampling anything with a clever name after the first 10 minutes.
  
  
• I want a pretzel necklace. I didn't get the memo on these. About half the people in attendance had a pretzel necklace. I guess so they could snack on pretzels between 1 oz. samples of beer.
  
  
• Some brewery in Alaska makes a smoked beer. The rep said they actually smoke the barley used to make the beer the same way one smokes salmon. It was better than it sounds, but I can't imagine what one would pair this particular beer with. I certainly wouldn't want smoked beer with my smoked fish.
  
  
• Surprisingly, my favorite new find came from a brewery in my own backyard, the Wynkoop in LoDo. I've been there a few times and always noticed the "Patty's Chili Beer" on the menu. Intrigued, I was thrown off a bit by the menu's promise of ancho and annaheim peppers. Don't get me wrong; I like peppers and peppery foods. But I wasn't so sure it would make a good addition to beer. Beer isn't supposed to be spicy, it's supposed to be what you drink when you're eating something spicy. Turns out, this beer is delicious. In the sample I had the pepper aspect wasn't spicy per se, it simply contributes an organic and earthy freshness to the beer. Drinking it was like the smell you get when you take a ripe, fresh pepper and make that first cut into it on the cutting board. The smell overwhelmes you, not in a spicy\hot way, but in a flavorful smell of nature itself way. This is what the beer tastes like.
  
  
• Another favorite of mine was called "Orange Blossom" from Papago Brewing in Scottsdale, AZ. It pours a cloudy golden color and, as the name would imply, has a slight aroma of citrus. The taste is smooth and slightly sweet, the kind of beer you can quaff rather quickly without realizing it but has enough flavor to hold its own.
  
  
• I'm apparently allergic to the Colorado Convention Center. About two hours into the tasting my nose started running like crazy and my eyes were itchy as hell. I didn't realize immediately that it was an allergic reaction (I thought I was getting a cold), but it must have been. Not long after leaving, my symptoms started going away and I awoke the next morning feeling fine.
  
  
• Fun is awesome. So read a sticker handed to me by a guy manning some kind of "beer glove" booth. I'm inclined to agree with said sticker.
  
  
• There was a booth there by the Mormon Drinking Team, also known as X-communicated. They had several hilarious t-shirts for sale, my favorite being the one with a picture of a happy jesus holding a glass of beer with the words "What Would Jesus Drink".
  

A fun time was had by all. Props to my beer-drinking cohort Lynne who came all the way from Atlanta to attend the beer fest with me. We got a couple of pictures of us at the fest on her camera. She left it on the bus when we came back to Boulder but rumor has it that she retrieved it from RTD's lost and found this morning. Huzzah! I'll post a picture if/when I get one.

*This is unverified. I personally have no idea whether or not this event is in the Guinnes Book of World Records.

The George Allen Insult Generator

Slate's latest Low Concept column features The George Allen Insult Genertor. As the column says:

George Allen has spent all summer with his foot in his mouth. On Sunday, Salon reported that a handful of the Virginia senator's former football teammates claim he repeatedly used the word nigger. The New York Times wrote on Tuesday that two of Allen's former acquaintances recall that he said the word. Allen has denied the allegations. "The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false," he told the Associated Press. "I don't remember ever using that word and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary."

Last week, Allen accused a reporter who asked about his mother's Jewish background of "making aspersions about people." He later remarked that his newfound Semitic heritage hadn't brought about any dramatic changes: "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch." Allen also drew attention over the summer when he referred to one of his opponents' campaign volunteers as a macaca—an ethnic slur in some North African countries. What was his excuse this time? "I don't know what it means."

We know what you're thinking: When's George Allen going to insult me? That's where Slate's George Allen Insult Generator comes in. Are you black? Fat? Allergic to wheat? Sen. Allen's got an insult—and a rationalization—waiting for you.