11 posts from September 2006

In a bout of something, I bid on a pair of jeans used in the movie "Talladega Nights".  Much to my amazement, I won the jeans.

They were worn by Sacha Baron Cohen, who played Jean Girard, the nominal bad guy in the movie.  As a bonus, I received a Kabbalah bracelet, i.e. red piece of string, that he also wore in the movie.

Here are some pictures of the booty:

I am trying to see how bad my hair can look before my girlfriend makes me get my hair cut.

Yeah, the one without my face looks better.

Here's his Kabbalah bracelet.  I have no intention of ever wearing it.  Maybe Madonna would want it.

That's the wardrobe card that was pinned to the jeans.

They are "Citizen of Humanity" jeans.  I have been told they are expensive.  They are the first pair of low rise pants I have ever owned.  I need to buy some fancy low rise underwear for them.  My normal underwear I have to tuck into my ass so they don't show in the back.  Waist-wise, they fit perfectly but Sacha is taller than me so I need to get the length altered.

Perry's Deli has the best sandwiches in Chicago.  Period.

The sandwiches are huge, they use great meat, and they are only semi-friendly, like a real NYC deli.  Since I grew up on Long Island, I know a little something about real deli food.

The other nice touch is they do not allow cell phone use in the deli.  There is a very loud horn that they set of whenever someone tries to use their phone.  It is very effective.

They are at 174 N. Franklin in the loop.  Here's a link to the map.

The next time I go, I'm going to take some pictures.  The sandwiches are amazing, triple decker with a pound of meat in it.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

It is the worst of all worlds, I am a night owl with an 8-5 job.  I want to stay up to 1AM every night and when I do I feel like crap the whole next day.

This promotes a bad upper / downer cycle at times.  I drink lots of Diet Coke during the daytime.  I never joined the "coffee achievers".  So when I get home, I'm fully caffienated.  So the evening is ok, but I realize I'm never going to be able to get to bed at a reasonable hour, so I drink a few beers to try to help sleeping.  This kind of helps, but I still don't get to sleep early enough, so it starts over again in the morning.

The weekend is the where I catch up on sleep.  But, of course, Monday morning still sucks.

This was much worse when I was in school.  Having to be alert until 9PM was really awful.

What was the highlight of your summer?
Submitted by ladym.vox.com.

Well, I would choose my trip to San Diego to go see the World Baseball Classic (and the zoo), but the end of March is a little too early for a best of summer post.

Look - a panda!

So, the next best thing I did was go visit my sisters, brother-in-law and nieces & nephew up on the Wisconsin / Minnesota border, near Minneapolis.  It was my niece's birthday and, on top of that, the Cubs were in town to play the Twins & I had never been to the Metrodome before.

Another first for me was eating deep fried cheese curds.  Outside of the Metrodome there were a number of food and beer stands, like a permanent mini fair.  The curds were really good and really greasy.  On our drive home we tried the curds at Culvers, but they weren't as good.

In case you were wondering, the Metrodome is pretty awful.  I can see why the Twins want a new stadium.  It has all of the features of bad multi-purpose stadiums, the outfield wall of retracted seats, the overly tall upper deck, the mass of unuseable seats in the upper deck hidden by a curtain.  The Twins beat the Cubs, but this season that isn't a surprise.

The highlight of the trip was seeing my niece's birthday party.  She turned 3 this year and my sister had a party for her with a bunch of the neighborhood kids, including two kids who weren't really invited, but showed up around when the party started, so my sister included them as well.  It is really nice watching little kids at things like this, she was really happy playing the party games and being the center of attention.

We tried to go up to see them in January and had to turn around because of glare ice up by Madison.  If it wasn't for the traction and stability control on the car, we would have ended up in the ditch.  This time the drive was much easier.  We had to stop for gas and ended up at the Ho Chunk Casino in the Dells.  It is a huge place, we hung around for half an hour, Jonnell made a few dollars, I lost a few.  They closed their poker room at some point before we got there, it was a just a roped-off empty room.  The casino wasn't a place that I'd want to spend a lot of time in, it's too depressing.  As someone I can't remember the name of said, "casinos are places for people who are bad at math".

I really enjoyed visiting my family, this is the first summer that I have had my immediate family less than 750 miles away from me, in fifteen years.

One more zoo picture:

Show us something you use every day.

My Nano:

I use my nano every day.  I listen to it commuting to work on the bus.  I use this Vaistech adapter to listen to it in the car.  My case from Power Support I also really like.  My headphones are imported Sony earbuds that are ok, but not great.  I'd really like a pair of Etymotic 6i's.  They would probably save my hearing because they isolate noise so well I could reduce the volume I listen at.

This is nano #3, the first two had "issues" & the nice people at the Apple store replaced them for free.

Well, half-marathon, but it's still way longer than I've ever run before.

I ran in the 5 mile Nike "race" in August (here's my "after" picture), but this will be a real test of what the heck I can do.  I co-worker had a good training guide I'm going to copy. 

I ran track in high school, very poorly, and then took 18 years off before starting up running again.  It is a long slog back to health.

Thanks to Leo Laporte's Inside the Net podcast, I am now signed up with Bookmooch, a really neat online book trading site.  I put an asterisk after free because even though the site doesn't charge anything to host the big book database, you pay to mail your books to the people who want them.

In order to get a book, you need a book credit.  You get 0.1 credits for each book you list on the site and 1 credit for each book that is taken from you.  There is a limit on how many books you can get per book given away, but as long as at least some of your books aren't too obscure, you shouldn't have a problem.

I have put 26 books on the site so far & will probably put more online this weekend.  I can't wait for the first person to mooch a book from me!

The site really is free, John Buckman, the person who owns the site, made a boatload of money on some previous internet businesses and can afford to do this gratis.  It is very nice of him.  Go see the about page and check out his funky sweater!

Update:  I had my first book mooched in less than 2 hours.

How many languages can you speak?  Which languages can you read or understand?

I used to speak some Spanish, one of the benefits of my Long Island education.  I probably should have taken Italian, it looked like more fun to learn.

I can understand most English dialects at this point.

What was the last game you played?

I have been playing Fallout 2, an post-nuclear RPG from 1998.  I bought it when it came out and never finished it.

I haven't played a board game in a while, I'm guessing the last time I played I was someplace with my sisters & brother in law.  They have some cool board games.  Jonnell doesn't really like to play board games with me.

If you could write a book about anything, what would it be about?

Here's the idea I came up with in the shower this morning:

Consolidated Suds: Brewing in America, 1940-2000

This would be a history of the beer business from World War II through the present day.