Crowd-Pleasing Bullets

Well, *apparently* album reviews are not certain readers cups of tea. And while some may ignore their readers' beverages of choice and post about the 21st century max-banal*, I am nothing if not a slave to my single-digit** readership. The people want Ulty updates? The people get Ulty updates. Abbreviated, ill-informative bullet-form updates - mildly appropriate given emoticon-titled subject posts - but updates nonetheless. The last few weeks, in (insert Megadeth scream here) BULLETS!!!

* - I kid, I kid. But seriously, you didn't think you could rag on my album reviews on facebook sans repercussion, did ya? :) But really, cute stuff from the Mark. If I'm ever forced to cover him in an Ultimate game, I will just say, "I've got Iheartyou."

** - My DFW impulse to clarify that "single digit" is a description of the quantity of the readership and not their individual mutant and/or shop-class-related finger-and-toe-statuses*** is kicking in. Clarified?

*** - My sensitive-'90s-ponytail-guy-sans-the-ponytail (and probably the sensitivity) impulse to clarify that there is nothing wrong with missing nineteen fingers/toes is kicking in. Morally or essentially wrong, I mean; let's be honest, you're probably going to deal with some functional difficulties in life, not the least of which will be throwing a flick**** and/or typing "Eff you Nyet" into the comments below in a timely fashion.

**** - See? Ulty content. In the fourth paragraph!

• When we last left our Sprawling heroes, they had won the Open Division of the Colorado Cup, even whilst missing famed superathlete co-captain Dheintime. This apparently went directly to the entire team's collective heads, as the plan - ramp up practices in August in preparation for the start of the Open Series proper in September - fell flat on its collective face. We started having attendance problems almost immediately as the month clicked "8," struggling to get sixteen-to-eighteen people out to the fields. And sixteen-to-eighteen people - particularly when that sixteen-to-eighteen is partially comprised of four-to-five non-Sprawlers - does not make for effective practicing with your top lines. Boo-urns.
• I can hardly talk, as I continue to be a mysteriously malaised, topping out at 75% wreck. Seriously, it's been better, but I'm still fading out here and there, and it got bad enough that I missed a couple of practices in there. Think about it - Nyet, willingly skipping Ulty practices! Not even going! Egads! The good news is that I've pursued all kinds of standard-issue medical explanations, and nothing overtly serious is going on. So put your worries away - cardiologists, pathologists, even surgeons assure me that everything is fine and this is merely some post-viral badness. One of those tests involved an incision and sitting out of all athletic activity for a week-plus - that was awesome - so maybe now you're starting to get an idea of why I haven't been entirely enthused about writing about Ultimate lately.
• Again, just to emphasize, DO NOT WORRY, and DO NOT WRITE me with bizarro speculations. "Nothing is effed here, dude," as Lebowski would say, so other than sympathizing with my suffering suckitude of late, you don't need to expend another thought on the health of Nyet. I'm fine. And raring to go for this weekend, taboot.
• Random side note - my funniest self-joke of the past month? Well, I'm still tracking my diet, which has been extra challenging with the sporadic cessations of exercise. But I'm maintaining my weight and eating well. Huzzah. The joke, though, is that the first self-e-mail chain I used to track things back in January was entitled "Food Diary." After a couple of months, I got tired of scrolling so far down the screen and created "Food Diary II." Then the nutritionist wanted me to track carbs / protein, so I started "Food Diary III." Tracking carbs means keeping track of a bit more info, so it was convenient to keep on elong e-mail and copy-paste frequent foods rather than repeatedly look them up. So this time I let the scrolling go long. And it turns out that e-mail threads in gmail max out at 99 messages; after that, it changes to "Re: Food Diary III." Annoying! So I had to start a new thread. Its title? "Food Diary Zoso." I. Am. Hilarious. Even if you don't get that particular joke, appreciate the meta-joke of having read one of the more mundane paragraphs e'er featured on this blog. Outside, you know, those dreaded album reviews.
• NEhoo, our solution to the attendance problem was to back it down to an optional practice on Mondays and a mandatory one on Wednesdays. This helped somewhat, but the curse of Phoenix-summer continued to afflict, and we continued to have problems. J-Ro even berated the team in an e-mail with the subject, "WTF?" When the excessively chilly and ubercool J-Ro gets feathers a-rufflin', things are problematic.
• We did (at least) continue to SLUG it out on Saturdays, occasionally having some stellar games. So there's been a thread of competition throughout, even if the practice issues have caused a lot of consternation.
• Speaking of consternation, we (in case I haven't mentioned it here yet) are going to be playing the series without stalwart Garret, who has run into way too much work and a new PhD program this fall. We're also going to be missing BP for sectionals (ugh), but it's better that way than having him miss regionals. And Cole has been 100% AWOL - I am relatively certain that I haven't seen him since CO Cup. Now, again, I missed three practices in there, but by all accounts, dude has just been GONE. So, um, that's disconcerting. Hopefully he rolls in this weekend to grab his reserved seat on the Pepsi Max Where-Have-You-Been-Dude? Bench. I mean, I'm one to talk, but I know where I was. Hopefully it's just been scheduling conflicts and not a dedication issue. Either way, communication is preferred.
• Speaking of, sectionals this weekend. Exciting times. We're carrying a roster of 23 and facing off against Monsoon, Le Tigre, El Ponderosa, ASU and U of A. You'll note the conspicuous lack of a Sweet Roll there - they have split between a master's squad and a co-ed team that could give Barrio a run. Pretty sure I mentioned this in the CO Cup writeup, but we never got that last official crack at 'em. Oh, well. Sectionals, fwiw, is conveniently located at the Scottsdale Sports Complex in Sunny Azz, so if you're around, be around! We play pretty much all day both days.
• I am sure all of that sectionals talk has you wondering how things have been going lately. Well, we changed practice fields to Eastern M(es)A in September, and have been making the trek to the east coast on Wednesdays for two hours of intense scrimmaging fun. Last week we played vert stack to give our D a look at the alternative O set, and then had to the D give the O lines nasty poaching sets. With the latter, we let the D play with eight guys - eight on seven! - and we still managed to score a good amount of the time. So hopefully that'll have us ready for the junk defenses our man-O will likely inspire.
• I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that things are intense enough at practice that some people on our D line - lets call them "& the Argonauts" and, um, "Red-headed Electrolyte" - got in an argument over coverage responsibilities that escalated in approximately six seconds into a drag-out, pit-bull-death-grip fight/wrestling match. YOWSERS! Shades of Nyet v. Ariel, 2002! (No, not really; we just yelled a lot. I don't think I'd seen a *physical* fight at a frisbee practice EVER before - you'll very, very occasionally see skirmishes at tourneys, but this was two guys who know each other at each other's throats with intent to harm). The whole thing was uncomfortable - it was broken up quickly and everyone was fine, so no biggie in the end. And the intensity was good to see on some abstract level, I suppose. But still. Eesh.
• So of course after all that quality O and leading-to-fights defensive intensity, we came out Saturday to SLUG and played sloptastic frisbee. Just didn't look good at all, tons of turns, people tired, leading to a lot of "glad sectionals is next weekend" sidebars. Ugh.
• Then fast forward to last night, where things looked a little better, but I - clicking on maybe three of my eight cylinders - managed to have a terrible, terrible practice. Qualify it - I was fine, more or less, for the "O" part of practice (when we were playing 7 against 8 and not allowed to throw it upside-down to simulate, as best we can, windy conditions) , and just had a really bad stretch of throws in the middle of the D section of practice, where we were running a vertical stack O. I probably took it too hard - it was just an exceptionally bad stretch of about ten minutes or so - but wow, can't go through that this weekend. I am sure the 106 degree forecast will help with that tremendously. Ugh, again.
• But all else considered, it was a good, hard, well-attended practice. Hard to know how we'll look this weekend, but for the first time in six weeks or so, we get to play someone other than ourselves, and that's always nice.
• So how are we feeling re: the weekend? Well, on some level, it's immaterial; all the teams who want to can go to regionals. I.e., our finish doesn't *really* matter. But we (obviously) want to win the section for seeding purposes, so we're going to have to crack down and get over the spottiness of late. Hopefully we will manage to play well AND work on our game, as regionals is still sitting as the smack-us-upside-the-head sudden change in intensity. We just don't have the same opportunities as JB and SG to engage serious competition at tourneys yet, so I envision a wake-up call in our future that we may or may not respond too with enough juice. All of that said, we look as good as we ever have of late, the people who are rolling out to practice are flat out bringing it, and there's adequate excitement in the air. O is crispy even without our blond deep threat, and D bothers me at practice, which is pretty much my barometer for goodness. So the weekend should be fun and enlightening. Wish us luck.
• In non-Sprawl Ulty news, my league team "The Way to Wikki Wakka" is 1-1, having staked out big leads which were choked away in both of the first two games. If I didn't mention it, my spring co-captain Lindsey is out for a bit with bad back issues (no!), but the league director made the sweetest - literally, sweetest - okay, you caught me, that would be figurative - of lemonades out of the situation for me and allowed me to captain with Jenga. She's a PHXaion / Spitfire player who is solid AND notorious for shattering all happiness/coolness scales, so despite our precarious play in the first couple of weeks, we're having a great time. Our team is the usual mix of skill/experience/talent - I'll do a full scale writeup at some point - but suffice it for now to say that I'm doing my best to run that team while my energies are really focused on and, more importantly, accustomed-to-the-level-of-play-of, Sprawl. So if I don't seem my usual fired-up-self with ridiculous VOTS game posts and such, it's only as an act of maintaining balance and not getting frustrated with the inevitable Sprawl-to-VOTS drop-off. I'm sure things will return to the usual VOTS-detail-obsessed state once I hang up these club cleats for good.
• In news a further step removed from Ultimate, school is back on. I have a relatively light semester courseload-wise, though I am writing this post at breakneck speed during a half-hour break from reading one of many five hundred page books that are staring me down. I am (allegedly) defending my prospectus at some point this semester, and continue to feel woefully unprepared. At least I don't have to grade undergrad essays this semester and can actually spend some time getting down to the brass tacks of, among other things, post-Darwinian evolutionary ethics. I know you're intrigued.
• As a final removed step, congrats to good friend Reena and her new husband Rob - the Nyetfam, Beck and I headed down to Dallas a couple of weekends back to attend her traditional Hindi wedding and had a fantastic time. We used the opportunity to spend Labor Day weekend in Texas and a good time seeing Aaron & Kristen, Grandpa, Deb, Pat & Ron, and my parents in various contexts, most of which involving delicious food. We *may* have even gotten my family hooked on grilled pineapple! May.

Hope that scratches the itch. Sectionals writeup due next week, though hopefully it will be a relatively boring weekend. We shall, as always, see.

This is Not a Fun Blog, Vol. 1: Breakfast Bars

When I was younger, there existed what can only be described as the best mass-produced, highly processed, highly caloric and in no way a nutritious part of your daily breakfast commodity: the Carnation Instant Breakfast Bar. In theory, you ate this widget with a glass of milk, and it replaced your normal breakfast; in practice, this was the closest I could get to an honest-to-goodness candy bar*, and it served as lunch add-on, afternoon snack, secret Nyet when-the-parents-weren't-counting double** dip indulgence, and general staple of my growth spurts. I remember them beyond fondly; they were, in short, friggin' delicious and one of my all-time favorite foods. And maybe they had some vitamins or were generally Niacin enriched, but man, they were fatty, salty and drenched in chocolate; there's no way they were just a Rice Krispies substitute. Here's a picture of a retro mid-seventies version of the box (I don't remember that particular packaging) that gives you the general idea: granola, chocolate chips, peanut butter - the illusion of healthiness - dipped in milk chocolate.

* - This has come up a fair bit lately, partly in response to my recent changes in eating habits - once upon a time, my parents were semi-militant about "good foods." Candy bars, and sugary items in general, were verboten. We weren't allowed to have sweet cereals (like Frosted Flakes, Trix, etc.), we could only drink half a can of diet soda per day, breakfast bars were limited to one per day, we generally had peas or another veggie with meals, and bedtime snacks were, famously, small portions of green jello. All of these restrictions, though, didn't exactly form part of a coherent system of hippie nutrition. For example, I couldn't have sweet cereal, but I could eat three heaping bowls of Cheerios every morning with corresponding heaping spoonfuls of sugar. When we went out to Luby's after church, I got more food than I can now envision, including two portions of "breaded beef cutlet" (which is a bizarre euphemism for chicken-fried steak). When my dad was in charge of meals - Monday nights, when my mom was at Jazzercise - we strictly ate pizza***, and strictly pepperoni pizza at that. There are numerous other examples, but perhaps more telling is that the strictest rules were only in place until I was about seven or eight (and Aaron was about four or five), and they then they died off... and how. We drank sodas left and right, ate party pizzas with reckless abandon, and had lunches that featured the infamous "Something Sandwich" - peanut butter, butter, and sugar - two to three times per week. We were slowly allowed to eat sugar cereals on the weekend which at some point morphed into every day - my brother's consumption of Cinnamon Toast Crunch is legendary - and three to four scoop nightly ice cream snacks became the rule. All of this speaks to two things - one, we were apparently psychotically active kids, and this had to be twelve thousand daily calories. Two, my parents were very, very busy and definitely lived the double professional career life. They tried hard to feed us right and all of that, but the "it's hard to come home and cook" rumors were certainly true; they just didn't have time, and the rules got lax accordingly. You can imagine what happened in high school when my crazy athletic schedule was added to the dual-professional mix, and *then* I was actively instructed to eat so as to gain weight - we were hitting up Wendy's on the way to baseball games, choking down real sodas and gigantor gatorades every day, Reece's Peanut Butter Cup four packs as a post-workout pick-me-up... yikes. It's kinda insane looking back on it, and very telling that I more or less instantly gained twenty pounds - the same twenty pounds coaches had long wanted me to gain - the second I stopped playing high school sports; those eating habits and that appetite were eighteen years-ingrained by that point. Anyhoo, all of this is not to question parenting techniques or anything, just to show that even with smart, informed parents with the best of intentions starting off, it's tough to raise American kids with good eating habits. Though my dad's aversion to fish and the general Midwestern lack of culinary imagination were probably culpable components in my boring preference development, too.

** - Or triple, or quadruple, sextuple, octuple... seriously, my parents had to be aware that I eating Breakfast Bars by the handful. I definitely ate entire boxes in a sitting; they were my binge food for sure. Again, I was a crazy-active kid, so the calories were probably needed, but no one ever said "hey, Nyet, I just bought six boxes of Breakfast Bars yesterday and we're down to one left; what gives?" So, um, thanks? I can't pretend that y'all didn't know.

*** - This Monday night pizza tradition is still going strong in the Nyetfam; who knew that Jane Fonda would continue to have such influence into the 2010s? This also sparked two other trends - one, my dad famously game my brother and me one piece of pizza per year of our ages. The math equations involved figuring out exactly how much skinnier each pizza slice got as we aged are astounding, but if you press him, you can get my dad to admit that he was essentially giving us the exact same amount of food as he made sure that he got his usual share. Two, aside from grilling and such, pizza was pretty much my dad's go to meal. On one occasion, when he and my mom were going out for dinner and time was limited - the babysitter was en route or something - my dad didn't have time for pizza and so cooked us hot dogs and lima beans smothered in Cheese Whiz. And yes, that would be my very last choice for pre-execution meal. I am gagging just thinking about it. For shame.

As you can probably deduce from the use of the past tense, Carnation Breakfast Bars were discontinued at some point in the late '80s / early '90s. And a sad gasp crossed the land. There were similar products here and there - Quaker had chocolate-coated granola bars, and a close, too-sweet facsimile called a Kudos bar (really, the savory aspect of the BB was the key) made some appearances in our house - but nothing could replace that preposterously tasty concoction. I have no idea why it was discontinued, and I wasn't paying close enough attention at the time to notice - they were just gone. We all moved on, I suppose - actually, probably to the aforementioned Reece's Peanut Butter Cups - but recently, again probably on reflection of my changing eating habits and pondering what caused me to develop the restricted tastes I until very recently have always had, I caught myself looking through the Carnation instant Breakfast Shakes and remembrancing things past.

And lo: that big introduction is just to point out that at some point this week I developed a hankering. A looming SLUG-free Saturday gave me an opportunity to do some cooking - WHAT??!?!?, I know - so I hit up the interwebs, found a loose-copy recipe, and set out to make some homemade Breakfast Bars. Just think of this as "Cooking for James." Here's my best Beck-post imitation:

Menu:

Faux-nation Instant Breakfast Bars

Nyet's Turkey-Eggwhite-Corn-and-Broccoli Casserole

Faux-nation Instant Breakfast Bars

Serves 8-16 (or one nine-year old Nyet)

1 Cup Spanish Peanuts (Peeled and Crushed to a near powder)

1 Cup Rolled Toasted Oats

1 Cup Rice Krispies

½ Cup Miniature chocolate chips

1/3 Cup Light Karo Syrup

8 oz. Milk Chocolate

1.
Combine all dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Mix in Karo Syrup until mixture clumps together.

2. Line a small pan with wax paper and PACK the mixture FIRMLY into pan.

3. Melt the milk chocolate and spread over top of mixture and refrigerate until firm (at least one hour).

Notes:

1. Spanish peanuts, as far as I can tell, means standard issue bagged peanuts. Easy enough. I went to town with a pestle and mortar, and it didn't even cost me a spell point:

2. No need to find rolled oats. But you can certainly toast your whole grain Quaker Oats easily enough - 10 minutes at 350 in the oven or toaster oven gets 'er done nicely.

3. Beck suggested honey in place of the corn syrup - they're calorically equivalent, so it really depends if you want a touch of honey or a touch of vanilla (which the corm syrup has). They're both sufficiently sticky.

4. The original recipe called for 36 (!!!) ounces of milk chocolate which is absolutely preposterous. Eight ounces was perfect, though you'll note that this recipe merely tops the filling whereas in the real deal the bars are completely coated. I suppose advanced cooking would have you dip the filling in chocolate, but that seems hella messy, and this gets the job done. And now, gloriously melt-y chocolate chips:

As long as I'm at it, more proof that I actually threw these together from scratch:

And now, the full on artistic-photography treatment of the finished product, courtesy of the Beck:

Review: Unsurprisingly, the home version falls short of the original - the taste isn't really all that close, and this has a much more trail-mix granola that just happens to have a chocolate coating feel. (The topping actually reminds me of Grandma's three layered cookies, fwiw). But it's very easy to make, and it does generally have that savory / chocolatey combo. I will employ my better half to se if we can spice it up to better mimic my memories, but this is a grade B recipe that gets it done for the time being.

It, as I suspect is the case for the original, is not good for you. The whole dish is 2,840 calories with 137 grams of fat, 367 g of carbohydrates, 58 grams of protein and a scant 16 grams of fiber. The bulk of those carbs and fat are coming from the chocolate, which makes it further hilarious that the original called for 4.5 times at much milk chocolate. Dios mio! Anyways, I split the dish into 16ths, making each square 180 calories. It would make a fantastic dense caloric Ultimate snack if not for the chocolate - particularly here in Sunny Azz, chocolate Ulty snacks get gooey fast. Anyways, a good little dish to be eaten in moderation, says a much older, much wider Nyet to his childhood self.

As an added bonus, this is what I had for lunch today:

Nyet's Turkey-Eggwhite-Corn-and-Broccoli Casserole

1/4th pound of lean ground turkey

7 egg whites

1 oz. soft goat cheese

1 cup raw broccoli crowns

1/4 cup skim milk

1 large ear sweet corn

Minimal Olive oil

Salt, Pepper

Crushed Red Pepper

Penzey's Adobo and Pizza Spices

1. Travel back in time and brown the turkey. No, really, keep a tub of ground, browned turkey in your fridge for a fast protein additive to any meal. It's a solid move.

2. Lightly baste the corn in olive oil and fry on med high heat, 3 minutes per "side.". Do not spray the pan with cooking spray and then put the heat on high, lest you spend an hour of your life later scrubbing burnt synthetic olive oil off of said pan with steel wool and industrial strength cleaner. Cut the corn off the cob in sheets into a bowl (if you do this on a plate, you will find corn kernels all over your counter).

3. Steam the broccoli crowns by sprinkling them with water, putting them in a Gladware dish and cooking them in the microwave for two minutes. I am so high class.

4. Mix the turkey, egg whites, cheese, milk, corn and broccoli in a bowl. Add the spices to taste.

5. Pour mixture into the frying pan and pretend you are scrambling eggs. Be sure to take off the heat before the egg part is "done," as you don't want to overcook it.

6. Pour cooked food into a big bowl and enjoy thy gruel.

Review: This is a very protein-rich, ~500 calorie meal. It's pretty voluminous, and you could certainly cut down on the corn or eggs if it's too filling. Spicing it well is key, and if you wanted to add hot sauce or ketchup or something, that would be a good call, too. But as is, it's a very workmanlike, easy-to-prepare meal.

Alright, that's my best Beck imitation. Back to the whining...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part VI - Bonus Houseguestapalooza!)

Parting is such sweet sorrow, which makes it nice that after sending the iPFam off on Tuesday, we would see them but a few short days later... in Texas! I collected a stack of 85 four page essays from the undergrads on Thursday and packed them up along with the usual accessories to make a trip down to San Antonio and Austin for the weekend. Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad was playing a show with G. Love and Special Sauce at the legendary (I think, but what isn't "legendary?") rock club Antone's in Austin on Saturday night, so Beck and I flew down to SA Friday for a nice weekend with the recently seen fam and the rest of the SA crew.

Got in to SA around 1 pm and hung out for the afternoon; tried to teach Dad the art of playlist composition in iTunes until Aaron got there around 2:30. Aaron, Dad and I headed up to Clark to toss ye olde frisbee around, which was a tonne of funne*. Aaron has crazy disc golf throws, so it was funny seeing our different approaches / angles of launching the disc. We came back to clean up and hang around the house a bit more with Deb and Mom, and then the iPfam pulled into town. With the set complete, we jumped in cars and took the entire crew - Pat, Ron, Grandpa, iPJ, iPMM, Dad, Mom, Deb, Aaron, Beck and Nyet - to the Alamo Cafe for some old time greasy food. We ate dinner and then proceeded to "camp," as Aaron put it, a behavior I'm sure made us lots of friends at the Cafer. Good meal and good times - the next day would be a busy one with all kinds of travel and coordination, so we went home, watched part of the Spurs game and then fell asleep. (Or, you know, graded more papers. THEME!). The iPFam headed on to Austin to meet up with the band and make sure they got into their hotels alright and were rewarded with a smelly Marriott and a band that never showed up for their troubles (they changed hotels, and the band would show up at about 3 the next afternoon. Sheesh, the GPGDS life).

* - Though in retrospect - especially given the balloon job my knee has done this week - running around without all of my braces was perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done. Sigh...

Got up early Saturday morning at roughly 6 aka 4 Sunny Azz time to get some grading done. Beck and I had been DYING for some Chuy's - real style, Texas Chuy's, not the facsimiles we have here in Phoenix - so we headed out of SA at about 10:45 to go to Barton Springs Road in Austin for some more Tex Mex delight. Aaron made the trek with us separately in his truck, the iPFam met us at the restaurant, and we also hooked up with Rice bud Jason and his relatively new wife Phoenix. Had a delicious meal, complete with left over burrito, and a fun time catching up with my old college roomie. Somewhere in there we got a call from Jamie; he said the band was in Houston, which was a tad bizarre given they had been in Oklahoma the previous night. Lesson learned? Between this and the iP "Tulsa = Tucson" MM, we should never trust an iP with directions. Seems the band is in need of an GP(GD)S.

Back to the tale - we bid Jason/Phoenix adieu and headed into the gorgeous Austin day. Nyetfam plus Deb was originally planning to meet us up at Aaron's place in north Austin, and Kristin (Aaron's SLF) was going to meet us up there as well. But given that the show that evening was in south Austin and we were already there, we threw a wrench in the plans. Aaron and I went for a too-brief trip to Waterloo Records (for my first honest-to-life bin scouring record store experience in quite some time) - I picked up the new Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars album, Rise and Shine, while Aaron picked out a Bela Fleck album and a Dodos album - while Beck and iPFam headed to Zilker Park. Turned out everyone and their dog was headed there, too, on account of the lovely Saturday afternoon, so the iPFam redrew the plans. We called the Nyetfam and coordinated a meeting at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, requiring all of us to battle the nutty Austjam. Eventually everyone got there, and we enjoyed some intriguing bronze sculptures in a shady spot. Evidence!

That's St. Francis of Assisi (1,1); Icarus (1,2 & 1,3); Gabriel (Michael?) & Lucifer (1,5 & 2,1 & 2,3); a stunning pieta (2,2 & 2,4); and a weird, distorted image of the Beck (2,5). And a nice romantic pond statue in full size.

Idyllic little place, even if the moisture in the air and the gnats quickly reminded me why I like my new home's arid ambiance. Hung out there for a bit, then the iPFam, Beck and I went back to the iPHotel to meet up with Jamie while the Sr. Joneses went up to Aaron's with the plan to reconvene in a few hours for dinner.

Great to see Jamie; he's doing very well and feeling much happier since the band rearranged its lineup not too long ago. They've been touring with G Love & Special Sauce, a '90s alterna jazz-blues-rap band of sorts that specializes in a sort of slacker frat vibe (their most famous song is Baby's Got Sauce," followed by "I Like Cold Beverages") that is legitimately known by anyone anywhere near my age group and into such things. Jamie regaled us with great behind-the-scene tales of band drama and personalities, of how Matt McHugh cornered G Love and got him to agree to let Matt use BGS for the soundtrack of a comedy short. Hilarious stuff, and quite nice to see a happy / healthy GPGDS bassist / (lead?) singer.

We combined our iPhones into some sort of Captain Planet monstrosity to locate a nearby sushi restaurant and grabbed some delicious sushi appetizers. Or allegedly delicious; I cannot pretend to know such things. I did, however, get my requisite Ziegenbock! Huzzah! Left there to meet the entire clan (all the aforementioned plus Paige!) at the Moonshine Cafe where we had some excellent down home food (I grabbed bbq chicken and red beans and rice). Beck easily won the award for innovative dinner choice as she got the biggest piece of apple pie a la mode I have ever seen (that's Aaron's gargantuan 6'5" person hand for reference):

Ay caramba! Good times and good dinner (part two); we walked a few blocks from there to Antone's and got ready for the show. GPGDS took the stage a little early (9:20?) and TORE IT UP. I was too stupid to write down a setlist, but they threw down a number of great new tunes as well as some hot versions of classics. "Seasons Change > Jam > On the Moon" was particularly shwank, and I finally got to hear a personal favorite, "45," live. The catalog has changed a little bit in the absence of Matt / Rachel - some "Matt tunes" are no longer in the repertoire, and the melodica tunes are no more, either. (Beck finds this a-okay, as she thought the meolidica killed all energy, and one song in particular that she is downright venomous against, "Pollen Song," appears to have been stricken from the record for good). (Btw, if you're interested in hearing the new quartet's sound, check a show at archive.org here, but trust that this is not entirely representative of the type of mixing that the band likes to employ on their live recordings). It was also shwank to see Aaron, the now sole keyboardist, able to really show his chops. He played two to three sets of keys at once at times, pulling off some serious wizardry. Two of the Special Sauce crew made appearances, too - Timo, the Sauce bassist, played a wicked "Summertime"-derived sax solo, and the Sauce keyboardist jumped in for some blistering solos, too. Fiery, energetic set that seemed to grab the crowd (Jamie gave it a 6 or 7 out of 10 in terms of the energy they had experienced on tour), and my parents got an anniversary shoutout taboot. Well worth the trek. I got some decent pics in the low light of Antone's - feel free to check out the set on flickr, but here are a few solid entries:

We stuck around a bit to watch G Love et al - they're exceptionally talented and delivered a solid set, but the entire shtick is a little samey and played at this point. Don't get me wrong; highly entertaining and silky slick, but gimmicks like the "smoke the joint from the guy in the front row during the song about weed" has got to be old by this point, no? Still, fun and catchy enough to entice Beck to buy a shirt (and later a CD on iTunes). We headed out a little before midnight and after a bit of an adventure taking Paige back to her car, we made it back to Aaron's by 1.

Left Aaron's early the next morning (he and Kristin were headed to her family's for Easter dealings) to meet the iPFam and the remainder of the band for a hotel brunch. Said goodbye for real to everybody - Houseguestapalooza iPEdition finally seeing its end - and drove back to SA. Had a laid back afternoon at the homestead, watching the Spurs and hanging a bit with Pat and Grandpa before eating some burgers and heading on our way. We got back to Phoenix around 8 and I jumped into super-work mode while Beck grabbed us some small MoJo snacks to cap our nice weekend.

And *that* was actually the end to Houseguestapalooza. Phew. Another good March / early April in Sunny Azz, but it was nice to have things settle down somewhat to normal, too. Of course, Rice friends Jamie and Elaine are in town this weekend, so...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part IV)

Alright, things are getting *really* fuzzy now. I lamed out like this last year, and here I go again. My best effort, staying in the reverse order:

Sunday - Beck and I cook brunch for Nyet- and iPFams; we all head to the Angels-Cubs game; steak / salmon back at the homestead
Saturday - Kid Hat Tourney; Nyetfam arrives late; Dinner at Breadfruit; Downtown Public Art
Friday - Breakfast Burritos; Home from school to grade papers; Downtown to look at brass bug sculptures (and saw bolo ties, too); Funny Girl at the Biltmore; Pizza / MoJo mmmm
Thursday - Midterm exam for the kids; Tuck Shop; Art Walk (Where we ran into EBay!)
Wednesday - Honestly, before that, I was still at school and not hanging much other than dinners. This night I had a BSS meeting and came home to chicken and Guinness, which was awesome.
Tuesday - School; Lost; Steak & Swordfish
Monday - Ultimate rained out; sickly feeling; lazy iPMonday; Dinner at Maizi's
Sunday - iPFam arrives late; Beck grills burgers
Saturday - Beck hikes Flatiron while I played disc and cleaned house...

And now we're back into previously blogged territory. Now we'll see if I can do this... flash forward to 2.5 weeks ago Thursday, when the iPFam alit again. What happened during Houseguestapalooza MMX II? Another post, as I grow weary...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part III)

Tuesday - after having stayed up very late the night before chatting with Mike NTPB about everything from law school to wedding plans to how I'm going to be the next Chuck Klosterman / Bill Simmons of pop philo writing, I got out of bed early early - I mean, around 2 in the AM, after having gone to bed at 1 - thanks to the throbbing pain in my toes. Seems I didn't tie my shoes tightly enough in Monday night's debacle of a frisbee game, so in addition to suffering the humilation of a lopsided defeat in front of my friends and families, I was suffering the particularly exquisite pain of blood blisters in the beds of my second toes. If you are an Ulty person or have ever otherwise had this misfortune befall you, you know that it's not a tolerable state - the toes just throb incessantly, so sleeping becomes impossible. The only solution is to release the fluid, either with a sterilized needle or a sterilized small cut in the nail. Being the squeamish type and fearing the needle in nailbed impact, I opted for the latter. This carries it's own crappiness, as now your nail is not as anchored and can wiggle around and hurt some more. Suffice it - no sleep that night; I ended up doing the wake up every twenty minutes thing until about 4:30 when I said screw it and got up and continued grading exams.

(Real-time interlude - I just had to chase away two little girls who were climbing our orange tree in the front "yard." Their parent (I presume) was standing in the driveway next door, not ten feet away, watching them climb a tree on someone else's property, doing / saying nothing. And she gave me crap about not letting the girls have fun. WTF people. How about *not* letting your offspring trespass and render me liable for their injuries. Dig?)

The iPFam were still houseguesting (my parents stayed in a hotel around the corner for the first few nights, as thanks to Fred taking up a bedroom, there are only two guestable suites in the Jones household these days) as they would not head for California until Wednesday morning, and they dictated the morning schedule. Their stay was actually something of a blur, because almost every day looked something like this - and actually, this is captured directly from the iPMM's itinerary:

8:00ish - Get out of bed, breakfast, coffee.
9:00ish - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 9:00.
9:01 - Declare "Alright, I am going to the gym. Things to do today!"
10:00 - Look up from iPhone briefly to nod to the iPJ as he declares he is "going for a walk."
10:45 - Look up from iPhone to notice that it's already 10:45.
10:46 - Redeclare, "Okay, *now* I am going to the gym."
11:00 - Go to gym.
1:00 - Get back from gym, sometimes with other people's underwear in tow.
1:01 - Declare, "I am going to take a shower so we can do X."
2:30 - Look up from iPhone to notice it's 2:30. Redeclare shower-esque intentions.
3:30 - Put down non-waterproof iPhone to facilitate shower.
4:00 - Shower finished, attack world. With iPhone in hand!

I kid, I kid. A little. But things were quite relaxed, which was great for that Tuesday - we lounged about and got ready, and Dad and Mom came over about 10:30 so Mike, Dad and I could head to a Cubs spring training game in Mesa. In the meantime, Mom, the iPMM and Beck went to Practical Art and kept them afloat in these troubled times, and the iPJ spread the word of Apple as far north as Camelback and 24th, where he ran into the Apple Store and lost track of time. The Cubs game was really, really quick, about 2 hours, so we came back and hung out about the house for a while. I am pretty sure this is the day where the news about the Texas Board of Education dropping Thomas Jefferson from the political philosophy curricula of high school text books (in favor of John Calvin, no less) came out, drawing some offhand "Texas should secede" remarks from the iPJ which in turn drew some "get a rope" commentary from the visiting Texas contingent. Remarkably, Civil War Part Deux did not break out in the Flower House, so we chilled in the living room for the afternoon and, over e-mail across the house, decided to go to Hula for dinner, where a great meal was had by all. Mike regaled us with tales of NYC, we had beers, burgers and ribs, delicious stuff.

We rushed home to catch Lost - really, it was an experiment in seeing if my parents, who had never seen an episode and knew nothing about the show, could track what the hey was happening. They could, more or less, but I don't think they were entirely sold on the show. We said adios (for the time being) to the iPFam as they headed to a Marriott before trekking to CA in the AM. And then, because we had to, we took Mike and my parents to MoJo. They were QUITE sold on that (as was Mike - we may have to start referring to Beck and her efforts to spread the good word as the MoJoJ). Headed home, and despite my best efforts to stay awake and hang with NTPB, I crashed at about 10. Pretty solid accomplishment given the 0 sleep the night before. Oh, and we also moved the Nyetfam into the guest room and got ready for what would happen when a Fred confronted a C-Pap machine (answer: nothing). A good Tuesday.

Monday morning was my first official day of spring break, so I woke up really early to grade. Sorry for the boring theme... Beck headed back to work that day after a pleasant week off hanging with the iPFam. My main mission was to successfully take everyone to lunch AND pick up Mike NTPB from the airport, not an easy task - got everyone over to the house and ready to go by 11 or so. We ate at Sacks, a sandwich place not to far from the homestead, and it was FANTASTIC. Love that place! I bugged out a little early and picked up Mike effectively in stride from the airport; didn't have to stop int he cell phone lot or anything, just pulled up right as he walked out with his bag. BAM! We headed home and hung around the pool for a bit, chatting with Mom and the iPMM about proposals, wedding plans, and trying to predict what accident would occur during this iP-NTPB interaction (nothing much - a knocked over glass of water; no bull-rides or eye infections this time). Mike and I headed to the fields at 5 to throw a bit before the start of the terrible, terrible 3BK game; there was a lot of talk of having Mike play with us, but we decided to stick to the rules. A lot of fun to hang and throw with Mike and have him and the fams at the game, even if it was a travesty of Ultimate.

We, as you will recall, played savage, and I ran my face off, leaving me exhausted after the game. This did not stop everyone from asking me where we should go to dinner - I just remember being so tired I could barely think and people staring at me. We decided on Jerry's for convenience's sake - it's a 24 hour diner close to our house and close to my parents' hotel, so it got the job done (even if I can't say it was the highest quality breakfast fare I've had, it did the salt-replenishing trick after the savagery). Beck got a milkshake that was super tasty, as I recall. We came home, Mike and I stayed up very late talking, and little did I know that my toes were swelling in my shoes all the while...

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part II)

Oh, my failures are too many to count. Here we are three weeks later, and I haven't written up Houseguestapalooza. I. Suck. The quality of the product has deteriorated substantially, I'm sure, as I can hardly remember who all was here, let alone what we did. But here's the best effort.

Wednesday and Thursday were the Grand Canyon experience. We (my parents and I) drove up on Wednesday and stayed the night at a lodge in the park which is *definitely* the right call if you ask me. The canyon is, as advertised, amazing, though I liken the experience of seeing it the throngs of people to the worst of the worst museum commentary experiences. "The colors; the play of light and shadow!" they exclaimed for the millionth time. I spent the bulk of my viewing time pondering the meaning of the term "reverence" and wondering whether Thoreau and Whitman exclaimed inanities at nature all the time, too.

I'm such a critic. Seriously, though, it was Spring Break, and the people were out in droves and exercising no self-censorship. Letting that go, the views were fantastic, and I got tons of photos (see below). We also had the pleasure of hearing a national parks ranger talk about going into the Canyon off-trail and the different precautions he takes to, you know, avoid death. He told us a great story about a pair of lost hikers and other ones about annoying, food-stealing ravens. Great stuff, and BEST OF ALL, he taught me how to tie my shoes to avoid "canyon toe" (no, that's something different) which hopefully means I'll be breaking my toenails less often. (Two days too late, actually, as I broke them Monday night).

I've spent the last five minutes trying to decide which pictures to post, and it's pretty impossible. So just check out a slideshow and enjoy this pair of enticing shots to whet your appetite with, you know, colors and light and shadow:

That first one is from sunset Wednesday; we failed to get up for the Thursday sunrise, so the second is a midmorning shot. Beck insisted that you can't get a feel for it via pictures, and she's of course right. I think you also can't really get a feel for it until you go down into it. Standing on the rim still gives you the vague impression that you're seeing something on TV, and the brown L.A. haze doesn't help matters.

We slept in on Thursday as mentioned; my dad and I grabbed a free, powdered egg style breakfast, and the three of us took a bus tour to catch all the views. In lieu of lunch, we hit the general store on the way out for some road snacks where I spotted this:

It's pretty low on the universe's list of cosmic coincidences, but Cactus Candy is a shut down shop on a street I drive down in Sunny Azz Phoenix every day - seems at one point they actually did make a product. Who knew? Anyways, lots of good pretzel and light fare treats for the road trip home, and I'd say we did quite a good job eating well for being restricted to highway fare.

After spending the day site-seeing and visiting a couple of artists studios that overhung the rim, we made the drive back home without incident. I had the unfortunate job of grading undergrad exams all spring break (I think I mentioned this earlier), and I spent most of the trip home head down, red-inking. Less than fun. We got back to SA at roughly five and made some turkey burgers for Beck's arrival home from work. Delicious times, and we capped off the day of glorious natural wonders by watching Iron Man, which was entertaining if silly.

On Wednesday morning, I took Mike NTPB back to the airport so he could head on to California. Great visit with the Miguel which I will detail reverse time style in the upcoming posts. Came back to pack and head off to the Grand Canyon, and like I said, probably not going to do it justice with words and pics - we had a good time, though the place was overrun with stereotypical middle class overweight tourists who spouted nonsense with a vengeance. maybe headphones are in order next time...

Alright, TBC with Tuesday in a few.

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part I, it seems)

This may be premature, as Houseguestapalooza MMX is not technically over yet. The iPFam is still in Californ-aye-ay and will be swinging back through Sunny Azz in the next few days. Still, it was a solid couple weeks of much fun, so might as well get the accounting in while the accounting's good.

I'll go backwards because, well, why not. Today did not involve HGaPaMMX, but I didn't have to use my AK. I read three articles and an entire an entire book (granted, it was only 160 pages or so, and I didn't *write* it, as Beck demanded) this morning, hanging around the house so as not to give the S/W/F too long of a day. Took the D-O-Gs for a W-A-L-K, then booked it to school at about 11 for a quick weights workout (and weighed a crisp, little-sweat-loss 171 afterwards - not bad given the guests and dining outs of late). Ran a brief honors discussion section for the undergrad bio course, then finished up the grading for the midterms*. Meeting w/ Jason, meeting with Manfred, a more or less figured out thesis project (for which I still need to write a prospectus, but still, DAMN!), and a semi-interesting class on medical student ethics education, and it was a day. Drove home, warmed up some leftover pizza, and am currently blogging to the erratic spastic blasts of Ornette Coleman and what he claimed will have been the shape of jazz that came. Or something.

* - In case you're not the facebooking type, I had a crushing pile of 90+ essay midterms as part of my spring break joy. They were horrendous (average grade = a generous 73). Painful, though I did learn the invaluable lesson that "disjustice" is a verb.

Sunday was also productive, as I woke up early and got a good deal of reading / writing done that I could not catch up with while the peeps were in town. Decided I was a glutton for punishment and went to do a track workout at Rhodes *before* pickup - I got in a mile, some buildup sprints, some straightaway sprints, and tried to run a 400 before my hamstring said no. Oh, and I timed myself on 40 yard dashes, and could do no better than a five flat. Sadness. I did get myself good and tired, which was the intention, and then played pickup starting off more tired than everyone out there. Good deal - made a silly lay out grab over/around somebody at one point, met a dude named Kyle from Ohio who looks to have club potential, and hit Kaysie for some scores... on her boyfriend. Yikes. Came home to the industriously awesome Beck, who had mowed the yard after a day of work. She is, indeed, awesome. We ate leftover Chinese and watched an Eddie Izzard DVD which was so funny that I had to pause it so I wouldn't asphyxiate from laughter. Good times.

I left very early Saturday AM to head to Sprawl SLUG IV. My parents arrived on their way out of town just in time to catch a layout Nyet goal - WAHOO. We (the light team) won 12-6, 13-11, another free lunch for the good guys. Said adios to my parents - they were headed to Fort Stockton and got there quite late thanks to the two hour time change. I came home and powered through grading while watching NCAA basketball. Beck came home and, after some reading, took a nap. As you may have guessed we picked up Chinese food for the evening and made it all the way to the first skit of SNL, in which Sigourney Weaver looked a whole lot like the PGOAT. Woah!

Friday AM, my dad and I headed to the golf curse to demonstrate how not to hit golf shots. Or rather, my dad demonstrated how not to hit golf shots; I just demonstrated how to not hit golf shots (the distinction is subtle). We came back to the homestead to pick up my mom and head over to SMOCA, where we saw a couple of nice exhibits: Chuck Close prints and Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience. Very cool trip to the museum, and we followed it up with some nachos / a margarita at Los Olivos next door. Good times, only to be outdone by the GREAT times we had at the Biltmore movie that night - we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off over Slice of Sicily Pizza and followed that up with some off-the-hook MoJo. Very fun day to end my parents' stay in Phoenix.

Alright, I am running out of gas here, and the next days involve some pic posting, so I'll hold off until my energy comes back. Trust that they'll be great. In the meantime, NAP. And yeah, this has had surprisingly little houseguest content given the post title. My bad.

3BK-5 (For Real This Time)

Okay, this is easy - with the iPFam, the NyetFam, and Mike NTPB watching from the sidelines, 3BK got its collective ass handed to it last night, 15-6 from Huck You. Or perhaps half of its ass, as we only managed to field 8 players, one of whom was hobbling around on a sprained ankle. Savage for the guys and only three girls, and we were missing our first, second (sprained ankle), third, and fourth round picks, leaving us with few to no hands and a dire inability to cover pretty much anyone from the other team.

They threw a lot of zone at us, and it became readily apparent very quickly that working it up the field was not really an option (drops, throw-aways, etc.). I ended up consciously taking some rather ridiculous chances in light of this (figuring the 30% chance was more viable than the 5% chance we would work it up), but otherwise did fine; even had a layout D and a nice layout backwards matrix-style catch. Hit some people in the hands with hammers, forehands, missed Stefan just a hair deep a couple of times (he was the one playing on a sprained ankle), the usual. Not a good showing by the team*, but we kept running hard all the way through and seemed to keep spirits up, which was good. I personally was still cutting deep at the very end**, so I was happy that the week plus off from frisbee didn't kill my endurance.

* - Problem one - handling was terrible. Couldn't depend on people not to take the ridiculous shot up the line, or generally throw the disc directly into poaches. Problem two - we definitely had two men (if not four) running free on us on defense. That problem was actually bigger than the first, as we tried hard, but they were essentially able to walk it all over the field every time we turned it over. Ugh. I tried to play centerfield and got some mileage out of it, but it was a pretty impossible situation.

** - Mike (and Tom from the other team) nicely noted that I look skinny, which may or may not have anything to do with the cardiovascular being okay despite the relative lack of sprinting lately. . My mom, on the other hand, said that I look like a priest. We eventually figured out that she meant "monk" or "ascetic," but the initial comment was surreally awesome: "your nose is really skinny; you look like a priest." This, natch, inspired many a heckle from the Beck and iPMM. "Your legs are skinny; you look like a priest. You ears are looking thin; can you administer communion?"

Beck is still hobbling a bit but played well; she got the disc a bunch of times which was sweet. Probably best to stop talking about this; we were just severely outgunned and couldn't get anything done. We had a little run toward the end to close it to 10-5, but that was about it. No good. Pretty embarrassing, too, to have Mike et al see the low level of disc. Ah, well. We're 3-2 with a +10 point differential now and have a tough game against Griesy and the rest of Los Tigres Del Norte next week. We shall see...

Oh, btw, Beck's fam and my fam and Mike are in town. SPRING BREAK!!!!!

3BK-5 / March Tourism

Make that 3BK-5. Sunday's / this morning's rainfall canceled what would have been a cold and muddy affair against the likes of Griesy and Big Nate. Probably for the better, as Beck and I don't entirely feel up to it, Stefan's still injured, blah blah etc. Besides, I may have wasted all my Dawn-Plus Now With Gries-Fighting Action while finally taking free pizza from his pockets on Saturday. Huzzah*!!! Plus the iPFam has descended upon our abode (!!!), so we have more fun out-hanging to do. It would have stunk to once again make them watch a freezing cold Ultimate game, so hopefully the weather will turn better before next week.

* - Yep, I won my third SLUG scrimmage in a row (3-0 in '10, 7-4 all time) while Griesy lost for the first time in something like 8 or 9 games. Ah, well, all things must pass. Here's an action shot of Griesy in case you don't know to whom I am referring:

Yep, the iPFam is here in full force for their spring vacation - they'll be here for the next few weeks, the Nyetfam is joining us Saturday, Mike NTPB is coming in on Monday - it's the usual March madness here in Sunny Azz. I spent the bulk of the weekend wiping up actual grease, getting the house cleaned and the lawn mowed and all that in anticipation. The study, believe it or not, looks livable, and the various surfaces were dust free at least for a few hours there. Good times.

Beck and I had a great weekend - her last day at work for a week was on Friday, so we time-traveled back to 1950 and hit up the diner around the corner called, appropriately enough, Linda's on Osbourne. Why time-travel, you ask? Well, the 1950s was our best guess as when the decor in the restaurant was established, and there is little doubt that it has gone unchanged since. It's also "the best school lunch you've ever had" fare, with most everything coming straight out of the fat fryer or off the grill with copious butter and or gravy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It also didn't help that our fellow diners espoused values like "Santa Fe, Mexico, whatever, they're all the same" and, "She ordered San Pellegrino - what a princess!" And reeked of stale cigarettes. After a tasty if bland split meal of fried catfish and country fried steak (when in Rome...), we stepped back into 2010 and grabbed more free Froyo from yours and my favorite place of OMG all time MoJo. Good times! Came home and Beck packed up for her big Saturday trip.

Which was a 12 mile hike in the Superstition Mountains up to Flat-Iron. Beck found a group of fairly die-hard hikers and had been training to made the big trek; she got up at 4:30 (and so did Fred, which means so did I) to leave at 5 to head east out of town. Here's the hike iconic shot:


(Flat Iron is that peak to the far right in the pic). Big, big trip; I spent the morning winning SLUG as referenced, ate lunch, came home and mowed the lawn, and Beck *still* didn't show up for another couple of hours. Intense! She had some quad cramps that hindered her a bit - maybe not a big enough breakfast - and felt like to die at least a couple of times, but required no air rescue and completed the big time hike. Yeah! This resulted in a phone call at 4:45 demanding burgers and / or pizza to replace the lost salt; I decided that my free lunch be damned, we were doing pizza for the potassium benefits, and hit Slice of Sicily for another delicious meal. Beck was fairly conked out during the evening (though she did rally to break our normal rule and hit MoJo for a second time of the weekend. I, incidentally, tried fruit FroYo for the first time - my normal go-tos are chocolate and mint or chocolate and peanut butter concoctions - and I may be a changed human. Seriously, plain yogurt plus Acai (sp?) yogurt plus strawberry shortcake yogurt plus some dark chocolate chips was quite the flavortastic experience), so I spent time cleaning the study - the before / after shots would have been dramatic - until I could watch SNL, which was solid.

I woke up CRAZY early - 4:30 again on Sunday - for unknown though possibly Fred-related reasons, and decided that as long as I was up I would finish the study. So I did, and hung out with Fred / read to start my lazy Sunday. Beck woke up feeling much less sore, so we trekked over to Lola's for our first relaxing Sunday coffee and NYT XWord in a while. Despite the inclusion of "Flow Whistle" as an answer, we did quite well, thanks. Came home to watch an exciting Blackhawks - Red Wings game, do some more reading, and then put the finishing touches on the casa as we waited for the iPFam to arrive. (It poured on and off all day, killing Sunday pickup as well as tonight's game, so I don't really know how I'm going to get my Ultimate fix in the next few days. Ugh). Ate some cheeseburgers / fried potatoes for dinner (Beck still needed to complete the previous day's craving) once they arrived and had a a good time catching up. I was pretty zonked, though, as the consecutive early-risings caught up with me at about 10 and I went into zombie mode. Didn't feel great upon waking up and decided to stay home rather than brave the halls of academia (though I ended up getting a fair amount of work done here anyways).

So far, so good - Fred allegedly did not keep the iPJ and iPMM up, which is a minor miracle, given that she did manage to wake me up at 6 from across the house. It continues to drizzle and be miserable here - very wet and 50 degrees at most today, which is 35 in real degrees according to science. The game cancellation was surprisingly welcome, as referenced. We've been eating some hot food, drinking teas and coffees, and we'll probably grab some dinner out and possibly a movie tonight. I have to get up at 5 tomorrow for some PT and office hours and a full day of the usual - it's not my vacation until next week, when I'll have a pile of midterms to grade, too. Yeehe! In the meantime, fun times, good to see the iPFam, and I'm sure we'll have tales of craziness before the week is out. Though no Ultimate frisbee craziness, a state of affairs I'm not sure I'll be able to handle...

3BK-4 : Weekend : 7/8ths of a Nyet

What a friggin' waste of time. Tonight we played Nappi's team "I'm With Coco," a team that had previously been undefeated. But when their top three draft picks didn't show up, the rest of their roster couldn't even begin to pick up the slack. We completely played down to their level and still won 15-3. It's not even worth recounting; sloppy play on both sides, dropped passes, missed hammers, idiotic rushed throws... but the other team was so outgunned that it didn't matter. So we're 3-1, +19, and 3-0, +27 by my dad's rules that we only count games in which the Beck and I are present. (Beck sat out tonight's game in an effort to heal up her hamstring so she can go hiking this weekend, so maybe we're just 2-0, +15. I seriously doubt it's worth keeping track of these auxiliary figures).

I felt okay tonight - left knee didn't bother me too much. I did get really tired, though, for unknown reasons - I may be getting a tad out of shape because of all the not-running I've been doing lately to try to get my joints back in gear. And I may not have eaten enough today (see below).

This weekend was great - I got a lot of work done, but in between all the reading and writing, lotsa fun stuff. Beck and I went to movie and a dinner and a Froyo on Friday (Shutter Island, Tuck Shop, and MoJo - free MoJo* - respectively). I won a free pizza lunch at Sprawl SLUG on Saturday, and later Beck and I had breakfast for dinner (matzah brie, pancakes and bacon, YUM). I met Tuftsbuds Josh and Nicole who were swinging through town with a long layover on a flight from Montana to New York (yes, through PHX) and grabbed brunch at Acacia Cafe, and after that PM watched the gold medal hockey game which was thrilling even if it didn't have the best result. So GOOD TIMES, and the grind back at school this week has been all the more tolerable for it.

* - We go to MoJo a lot, so when I ran into a dude offering free MoJo coupons (value - $12) in exchange for donations to a cause ($5), I didn't blink - this was just a sound investment, as we basically go to MoJo once a week like good little crack addicts. The donation aspect was just gravy on a deal that was clearly worth it. Beck questioned whether I had just made a donation to e.g. Hitler Youth, but I looked it up, and the charity donations were made to the Special Olympics which, last time I checked, does not overlap very much with the neo-Nazi ethos. So I think we're in the clear. AND because I made a five dollar donation for two free yogurt coupons plus two buy one get one free coupons, AND I did it again yesterday, we're effectively getting 12 yogurts for the price of four + $10, or $72 worth of yogurt for $34, which is probably still HELLA OVERPRICED. But it is so good.

So, MoJo aside, I have been trying to keep my calories down since about a week before the end of January and have upped my calorie expenditure as much as reasonable. I was ~200 lbs. at some point last August when I was injured and not playing disc, but even in January I was probably around 188 or so. Long story short, I weighed 173 after physical therapy yesterday, and granted that was after a pretty intense workout and some sweating, but it wasn't *that* much sweating. I feel pretty good, look thin (I think), and it seems to be helping my knees to some extent. So yay! The goal is roughly the 165-170 range, which was about my real playing weight in high school football. And don't worry, I am taking vitamins and lifting weights and generally being smart about not starving myself or anything - the general deal is that I limit calories to 600 or so between breakfast and lunch, then eat something substantial for dinner around 1000 calories or so, and skip snacking during the day (or limit it to 100 calorie doses). This keeps me in the 1600-1800 range on a daily basis, and theoretically I burn through somewhere in the 2400-2800 range each day by just breathing (based on my height, weight, age and general fitness). So add in some Ultimate workouts and quite a bit of time on the bike / elliptical, and that was a pretty big deficit over the course of February. So YAY, I suppose, and hopefully this will help out in the wear and tear department. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to keep up the act when the iP and Nyetfams come to town, but I'll do my best.

Anyways, it may have caught up with me today, as I didn't eat a substantial enough dinner and felt very low energy at Ultimate tonight. It clearly did not matter at all, as our opponents did not entirely show up. But mental note - I am well enough on my way on the weight front, I need to eat a damn clif bar or something before playing. Ugh.

Alright, speaking of, I need to go stretch and ice and get to bed so I can go to the gym before school tomorrow*. Wish me luck - I am pretty excited that i have been able to have a definite goal in mind (lose weight for Ultimate purposes) and it's seemed to motivate me enough to get 'er done. Per usual, not slipping into the "just eat whatever" habits will be key. I have been counting calories, hopefully not in an obsessive way, and it definitely keeps me honest.

* - I am really, really tired, and if anyone wants to convince me that playing frisbee til 10 at night and then going to the gym the next morning at 6 may be a bad idea, I am all ears.

AR: Tales From Topographic Oceans

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)

Oh, what the hell. Surely an album this EPIC deserves the full LP cover, no?

Ah, that's more like it. When I read that Avatar's iconic fluorescent fern-world reminded reviewers of "some weird Yes album cover," this is the image that instantly came to mind. Because if you're talking overblown, extravagant productions with lots of flash and spectacle, loads of technical genius but a thoroughly questionable if not idiotic storyline, you are clearly talking about ... wait, lost my train of thought there. Tales From Topographic Oceans was, despite SA radio station KZEP's best attempts to get me to satisfiedly turn my head each day, my first introduction to Yes, one of the Nyet-Dad's favorite '70s rock bands. I clearly remember the worn psychedelic album cover sitting in our living room; I even better remember the one-song-per-twenty-minute-album-side double LP format and the liner notes that contained all kinds of Eastern mystic / nature-worship weirdness, incomprehensible to me then and no better after undergraduate courses in the exact topic. Oh, and natch, I remember "What happened / to the song / we once knew so well?" and "We must have waited all our lives for this...," because, well, how could you not. It was a prominent album from the collection, one of which at least side one made it into the rotation quite often, and the memories of mysterious music* certainly line up well with that album cover.

* - The music also reminds me of Beluga Whales, which I suspect has something to do with childhood season passes to San Antonio Sea World and the general spaced out soundtrack to the nighttime cetacean performances. Proust had his madeleines, I've got Beluga Whales. One point, Nyet.

TfTO is, arguably, THE prog album, because while it most certainly contains moments of brilliance, its meandering noodly tunes with obtuse lyrics scream of an indulgence that even hardcore Yes fans tend to acknowledge. Its expanse, technicality and detached intellectualism are about as far from punk on the rock spectrum as one can get, so it's an extreme example of that general charge at '70s progressive rock. I.e. it's everything the haters hate. The instrumentation is all shimmery guitars, organs, slide-wheel-excess synthesizers, falsetto voices and big echoing chambers; I've always thought the general vibe while evoking the bizarre space fantasy world that adorns the cover, is something like futuristic laser baroque of the distant past. (You'll note that listening will tend to cause your writing to be riddled with equally obtuse constructions). There's a crushing sense that the band and the album can't figure out what the hey they're up to - even with a backbone of a concept about some Eastern mystic scriptures regarding Truth, Culture, Knowledge and Freedom - and the result is some wowser over-the-top-colossal noodling. And that, friends, is an indictment coming from a Phish guy. What makes the album suffer is the pretense that the clinical improv has some kind of actual message to deliver that amounts to more than its ever-shifting, disconnected runs and textures. Were it just improv that stuck to its own confines, that would be one thing, but that it claims to spit nirvana from between the notes makes the enterprise feel a tad gratuitous.

On the first five listens, anyways. What is sort of endearing and infuriating about the double-discer is that the fleeting engaging moments that are peppered throughout the disc - if you let them sink in enough, the rest of the wandering works in service of these anchor-points. Most reviews stop at my above paragraph with a sort of "WTF is this?" take, but if you forgive the excess and can be patient for the rare moments - or if you, say, heard this album several times during your formative years and can't help it now - there are some rewards peppered about the disc. I suppose what I'm getting at is that while I would fully forgive anyone who balked at this album, I almost can't help but leave it playing. Is the third track, "The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)," a good one? No! But it has that lovely folk melody acoustic section at the end. And so I will generally sit there for 20 minutes just to hear it. Huh?

And that goes about two thousand fold for the opening track / side, the 20 minute "The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn)." That has gotten to the point where as ridiculous as the chanting intro is, I actually do get excited by the bombastic synth riffs. It's become a great song, in my head anyways - there's no use to trying to describe it, as again, these tunes are shifty beasts that refuse to occupy any particular space (other than perhaps, as mentioned, a large salt water aquarium). But trust that there are tons of interesting passages in here, and the atmospherics are like Boston weather - if you don't like it, just wait thirty seconds. (That won't change the lyrics, though; they're still going to be about not raping trees. Try to ignore that). This one also has two serious earworm lyrical moments I mentioned above.

So I'm going to make an odd rec here - if you are into prog at all, this is probably an important document to own as it clearly demonstrates what happens when Yes takes things way too far - it mayhaps should have been titled Well Past the Edge*. Ha, a Yes joke. The opening track is a superb Yes gem, despite its awful lyrics, and the rest is listenable enough, particularly for the few good runs. Make no mistake, though - the second disc of this album should not be described as "good," and there are way better Yes albums to get into first. So this is sort of a qualified qualified rec, mainly because I just can't honestly not recommend TfTO - for all its preposterous qualities, I like it too much for its childhood associations; its grandiosity is encoded in me and surely has shaped a lot of my musical inclinations. I gotta admit when I like a bad album (if I still had it, I would probably have to rec (solid) Milli Vanilli), so here I am, doing so. Seriously, though, Fragile, Close to the Edge, or The Yes Album are all better places to start.

* - It's like when Joey walked really far away from the U2 stage. The Edge was a dot to him. Wokka wokka.

Status: Recommended (solid) (sorta)
Nyet's Fave: "The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn)"*

* - No, I will not put two songs even if it is a double LP. One twenty minute behemoth is enough.

100000

I've let this run far too long without acknowledging the awesomeness that was ye olde - and I do mean olde - 32nd birthday. Last Wednesday, I attended my office hours (no one attended) and a couple of meetings and then came home to spend a great day with the Beck. We had DeLux Burgers for lunch, grabbed some MoJo, and narrowly missed rooking ourselves out of mad cash by getting some new cell phones - we still have a couple of months left on our contracts, apparently, each of which carries a $200 termination fee*. So, glad we didn't do that! Came home briefly to play with the S/W/F, then went over to Scottsdale to catch Crazy Heart, a movie Beck concisely reviewed as another "Slutty Gumby Saggy Maggie" piece. Beck's review was accompanied by an unbelievable interpretive dance, ftr. We followed that up with a thoroughly healthy dinner at TexAz, a slice of home, if you will, where we got Texas Country Fried Steak and a Shiner Boch. As though the day's caloric onslaught had not been enough, we came home to five mini birthday cakes - "cakelets," let's call them - and I got to eat and open presents. Thanks to everyone for the books (Deb, Nyetfam!) and the iTunes gifts (iPJ/iPMM!) and the amazon gift (Aaron!) and magazine subscriptions (Ellis-fam!) and money for yet to be determined purposes (Grandpa!). Beck also got me some great gifts including a stylish wicking shirt and some cool books. I am a lucky dude! Gracias everybody!

* - What vaguely puzzles is me is how they can get away with a termination fee that is higher than the actual amount of money left on the contract. That doesn't seem to make any sense...

Anyhoo, fun day, fun times, and glad the rain conspired to allow me to spend it with Beck. Oh, I also had the following funny conversation with my brother:

A: Happy birthday! I remember, 31 years ago today...
N: 31 years?
A: Yeah, 31. 2010 minus 1978 is ... oh wait!
N: Ha!
A: Okay, let's try that again. Welcome to your 32nd year!
N: Actually, it's technically my 33rd year...
A: Shut up.

I don't know if that will make anyone laugh as much as I did, but it was pretty solid in the A/N comedy tradition. What else? Facebook, it turns out, is a cheap way to get lots of people to wish you happy birthday. This is cool, but if you at all are feeling slightly aged because you woke up that morning with locked arthritic knees, that little red bubble just keeps popping up over and over with more stabs to your decrepit body. Yeah, I'm 32, but as Sprawl pal EBay noted, I am not master's eligible just yet.

Speaking of Sprawl, things have been busy. We made the calls for the two teams at NYF, electing to go with an A- team and a B+ team instead of a strict A / B split. (Meaning that we made A and B teams and then overlapped some players each way to get people experience on both sides - some of our A players more PT and opportunities to try things out, some of our new guys a chance to run in teh tournament's A bracket and see if they could hang). This caused a perhaps predictable amount of strife with people "on the bubble" - sometimes it's not fun to be in charge, but it's been a good experience learning to smooth out the vagaries of sensitive behaviors. Or maybe I haven't learned it and have solely managed to piss off 36 dudes. Hope not.

That's right, 36 - 17 going A-, 19 going B+. Big squads, lots of rest, my favorite way to play Ultimate. Practice was crackling with energy tonight; I hope we can drive that through to the weekend and make a good showing with both teams. On Damon / Paul's suggestion, we ran a scrimmage where the stall count was capped at 6 instead of the usual 10; this basically made play very bang bang and got us better about getting rid of the disc. Lots of fun, and it bled over into the next normal stall 10 scrimmage. Fast-paced action! People are pretty excited for this weekend; should be intense.

I, of course, managed to fall on my knee tonight - I've got an inflamed patellar bursa in my left knee, and every time I bang it, it swells up. So my left kneecap has a nice jelly protrusion. Awesome. Am currently icing, for something new and different.

ASU continues to roll along. I'm trying to get really focused on particular aspects of the project, and it's slowly coming together. As always, we'll see ... I have to go into office hours early tomorrow, so staying up until 1 AM is probably not the most productive thing I can do. But here I am, Fred in lap, ice on knees ...

Oh, and just to give the entry some symmetry with the caloric explosion at the top, I've resolved - perhaps three and a half weeks too late - to shed some of this winter weight (not bad, I'm still in the 190 ballpark, but I think dropping down to 170-75 might help the knee pain). So in pointless self-congratulatory mode...

2 oatmeal packets = 280 calories
1 Dollop of milk in coffee = 10?
1/8 bottle powerade = 25
2 Lean pockets (lunch / dinner) = 560
1 Clif Bar before practice = 260
1 Powerade after practice = 200
--------------------------------------
Total = 1335. And I didn't have to go to a Taco Bell Drive Thru or ANYTHING.

And yes, I recognize this is a horrible diet. Long day at school plus practice afterwards kinda messes things up. Underachiever, please try harder.

EL-SLUGged, Too

Lost another EL-SLUG Saturday, this time due to a little wind and a lot of fellow handler incompetence. Too bad, too - Garret and Jon Miller showed up, and all they got to see was some inability to work against a zone. Ugh - not exactly the recruiting job we want to be doing. On the plus side, at one point Cole tossed an upwind huck down the right side - I was playing his dump at the time, but I saw that the throw was going to hang up badly. I sprinted 50 yards downfield and got a good read on the disc which was floating out of bounds. Ran to the front corner, laid out out of bounds, caught it and flipped it back over my head before I hit the ground ... straight to EBay for the score. GREATEST! In a reasonably competitive game, no less. That's the fifth (or so, I can't really remember for sure) in-game completed Greatest of my life (To Mike K at Rice down the right sideline at Stanford; to Brett R in New Orleans; to Kate (?) in a BUDA game - lay out the back of the endzone push back, complete with parents and Aaron in attendance, and the one to Paul last spring) plus there have been a bunch in pickup and such. Good times, and a very important skill to work on when you're goofing around on the quad. So at least the scrimmages weren't a total disaster (he said, out five bucks, AGAIN). :)

Good weekend - Sunday disc was fun, too (Minnesota Tom showed up and wowed us; he might be moving to Phoenix this summer, which would be awesome), and was probably the last bit of Ultimate for the year (excluding maybe a pickup game on the 30th; regardless, my toes / feet / ankles / knees / hip / back / shoulder / elbow / wrist / hand / finger can use the rest) (and YES, that is a catalog of currently dinged-to-injured body parts, LOVE IT). Afterwards, Beck and I caught the inept Favre over steak dinners. We ate local for the weekend, going to Asi Es La Vida up the street (under the pretense that it was under new management; it's not, and the food, while still good, is stupid pricey) Saturday night and getting takeout at Slice of Sicily on Friday night. Had an early Christmas present-fest with a package from my parents on Friday night; great gifts! Thanks! Finally caught the "Epitaph" episode of Dollhouse which I've been meaning to do for quite some time now - it's a cool, futuristic outcomes of the Dollhouse storyline, and it gives a nice foreboding flavor punctuation mark on the whole series. Otherwise, just hanging with the S/W/F (and yes, I just realized that) and getting some reading done for school. We're Rachacha-bound later this week, and other than the multi-hour flights, are looking forward to it greatly, dreaming of an un-sandy Christmas as we are.

So, time to read / work / drink some coffee for today. Don't try to stop me.

Desert Turkey

Beck and I more or less survived our first Thanksgiving weekend sans travel in our collective history. Beck had to work Wed-Fri-Sat-Sun, so booking it over to Texas or up to Rochester for a single day was out of the picture. We ended up having the meal proper with Beck's internet friend (now real life, brunch-going friend) Lorena and her family/friends which ended up being a nice little pot-luck affair. Beck made some ridiculously good sweet potatoes, one dish sweet and one savory, which received an onslaught of compliments. Unsurprising. No turkey-dancing, no potato-peeling, so it obviously suffered by comparison, but we managed to have an okay time. Football was not on, which struck me as sacrilegious / bizarre - what easier conversation-lull filler between people who don't really know one another than the pleasant drone of Turkey day football cheers? Ah, well.

Spent the bulk of the vacation grading essays, the final set of position papers for the Bio 311 Biology & Society course. I've got a collection of gems once again; maybe later they'll find the webs, but for now, here's the winning introductory sentence:

"Along with satisfying our desires and needs as humans, there comes the burden of its consequences."

Truer words, etc.

Last weekend brought a merciful end to VOTS Fall League. Justin's team May Cause Dizziness beat Cole's Huck My Life in the finals for the championship, so congrats to Dheintime again; we got nowhere near either spot. We had some attendance problems for the final weekend - we were pretty much eliminated already with the received shellacking the prior Tuesday, but on Saturday people came late, got injured, and didn't do a whole ton of running in the game besides. 'Twas a fairly exhausting couple games of effectively-savage for me; we tried to keep things close but couldn't do a whole lot. Beck played well - threw a forehand for a score despite a girl mugging her pretty significantly, so that was cool - but by the end of the day, I think she was just as tired of this fall season as I was. We had some good times, had a good run in the middle there, and the lesson is thoroughly learned - always draft your own team.

Between those three losses, a scrimmage loss last weekend and a scrimmage loss Friday, I've had a bad string of late. Pickup this afternoon, and men's league (which started last week, but we had a bye), so hopefully things will turn around before long.

A presentation and two papers due in the next week and a half. Shwank. I got quite a bit done yesterday by planting myself in a coffee house for six hours straight, and when I came outside to Phopenix rain, I was quite thoroughly disoriented. Beck and I have made the most of the time we've had this weekend - watched a few movies (Capote, Living in Oblivion), done some crosswords, eaten great food (including MoJo!) and dipped our head in the occasional can on paint. I am also told our banter on facebook is "quite funny." Go us.

Oh, and we have a little guest staying with us.


She's a super cute cat named "Sophie" (her old name was "Found," but Beck thinks that's lame). Incredibly social and having a grand ol' time locked away in our guest bedroom where Sparkles can't eat her. AND she hasn't made me explode with allergies yet, so that's nice. She does occasionally meow and cause World War III in our living room as S/W scamper to investigate, but otherwise no major issues. Anyways, if you'd like a great cat, she's hanging out in our pad for the time being.

Alright, enough breaking, more presentation preparing. Catch y'all soon, hopefully with more entertaining posts.

Texas Two-Steppin' and a Duke Jansen Weddin', Pt. 2

Showered at Aaron's, and when I sat down on the inflatable mattress to put on my socks, I noted the dubious quality of the mattress's adjective. Seems it had sprung a leak. Worth noting. We got ready, Beck in pretty sundress and I in suit, and drove down Mopac to 290 West to head out to the wedding locale. We thought it was going to take us a while to get down there, so we rushed to get ready and left at about 5 for the 6 o'clock wedding... and got there at 5:30. Others who shall rename nameful (Here's to you, Mr. Robertson) made temporal errors in the opposite direction and were lucky that the wedding started fashionably late. All's well in the end; our favorite Elway look-alike father-to-be continues to lead a charmed life.

The plus of getting to the wedding early was that we got a couple minutes to chat to some of our Rice friends. Jason* was a class above us ('99) at Rice, and so the majority of the people there were from that class. So we got to see Charity, Josh, Big Joe C, Marcus, Rayo, Will, Amy, Christy, Laura (Jason's sister) and Angie, all for the first time in quite some while. Carrie and Ryan joined us for the wedding ceremony itself; Carrie was very excited to finally see a Jewish wedding as apparently this is on her life's to-do list. Harrison managed to find a babysitter for the evening, so the Stallings were in full party effect.

* - Jason is a genuinely hilarious guy, a great friend, and the epitome of Jewish computer science major indie-rocker bleeding-heart-on-his-sleeve cool-geek. He's 5'6"-ish and probably weighs 140 lbs. if his Wilco t-shirt is wet, and displays crack-addled flying squirrel levels of energy. He pulled us on campus our sophomore year with his juniority, so we would be in his eternal debt even if he weren't one of the coolest dudes we know. One of my favorite Jason quotes requires a set-up: at Rice football games, there was a dumb cheer that went "Let's Go Rice Owls!" and had everyone put their hands up like, supposedly, Owl's wings (with thumbs interlocked and fingers waving). Jason noted that this hand signal looked a whole lot like 9 candles, and so changed the cheer to "Let's Go Rice Jews!" I am sure this is going to be lost in translation, but the svelte Jewish guy jumping up and down yelling "Let's Go Rice Jews!" at what, success aside, were still Texas football games, was impossibly hilarious. Good times.

Anyhoo, Jason is a super sincere, romantic guy who seems to have been searching for the one - and loudly - since we met him. And he could not have looked happier at his wedding; he really seems to have found her in Phoenix, and is generally living a very great techie kind of life in Austin. If you had lived through some of his comp project deadline shenanigans, you might have spent a lot of time worrying about this outcome back in the day, and seeing him successful and superhappy was a real treat. Props to Jason aka Duke Jansen, thanks a ton for having us at your wedding, and I remain impressed that you remembered our Fresh Prince rip-off secret handshake.

Really lovely ceremony in the (somewhat) traditional Jewish vein, complete with groom-circling, Chuppah, glass-breaking, etc. The pre-wedding music included a mix of the usual (Pachelbel) and pop (Beatles, Once Soundtrack), which was neat (and very Duke Jansen). Phoenix was lovely; we unfortunately barely got to talk to her over the course of the night as she was busy in typical bride-fashion, but she seems appropriately sweet for Jason. But why tell when you can show, right? This is the ADD-age; so here's there save-the-date video:

See? Supercute the pair is. We all yelled Mazoltov to a beaming couple as the ceremony concluded and headed upstairs for a luscious cocktail / appetizer hour. The food was excellent; I'll refer you to Beck for details, but a post-wedding Waffle House was entirely not in order. Stuffed mushrooms, cheese and fruit plates, pasta bar and prime rib, egads. Too good. The party was fun (a Jason-DJed iTunes affair), and we had a good time chatting and dancing. Solid wedding*, all in all.

* - I realized in writing this that I never did write about our New York trip to Andy's wedding or Julliette's wedding. Shame on me. I will recount one thing here - at a certain moment on the dancefloor in NY, the DJ put on Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," a quite ballsy choice for a wedding. And I look around, and Andy, Josh, and Elliot - all regular couch-residents during Tuftsmen parties of yore - were up and tearing it up. Josh and his SLF Nicole in particular decided to embody pure youthful energetic love; it was quite a sight/ memory. Good times. I'll try to recount more of this in full posts - as promised - time makes the memory grow blonder. Ugh.

Back at Aaron's, we briefly hung out with Kristen and bro before heading to bed. Kristen had noted the deflated mattress and had actually bought another one - only it, too, did not hold its air. Beck and I woke up several times over the course of the night, as there was just enough air such that whenever one of us moved, the other one rolled along the airwaves and onto the solid floor. No one's fault, but that did not exactly make for a great night's sleep. We got up early and had some time to hang out with K&A before going to Jason's place for brunch.

Another excellent meal provided by our hosts - Jason and fam had provided to-die-for breakfast burritos that entirely quenched my go-to-Taco-Cabana urges. Sooooo good. We said adios to Carrie, Ryan and Harrison as they left for Dallas and got a tour of Jason's sweet digs. Nice place, pleasant brunch, and all of our Rice friends had their wee ones scampering about. We got our fill of food, gave Jason and Phoenix our best wishes, and headed back to SA.

Oh, right - it was cold and rainy all weekend in Texas. I think my dad had planned to take us out to the driving range Sunday, but instead we hung out, knitted, read, watched football and baseball. Low key, but after our violent night's rest, it was a welcome chill day. We had turkey- and hamburgers for dinner, and headed to Grandpa's for pie afterwards. Another ten pound delta trip to Texas.

Got up very early the next morning to fly back to Phoenix. Beck had the day off and tried to use her wiles to get me to play hooky; alas, I had class at 12 and a slew of angry students to answer. So i said hey to the pups, grabbed a little lunch, and then fought through the day at ASU like a zombie. And survived! Fun trip home, really glad we got to see the fam and the Rice folks and Aaron's play/ce and everything. And thus ends the tale.