Category: Work

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Entertainment Music Work

The week so far, and some Radiohead

First, a quick recap of my week so far: WORK.

There, now that that’s out of the way, while reading through Digg tonight I came across a really good article chronicling the career turn-arounds of certain musicians/bands. The first on the list was Radiohead which included a music video for “Just” from their album The Bends. Having never seen it before, I was amazed by it’s brilliance. It’s among the best music videos I’ve ever seen (next to this video by Sigur Ros, and “Hurt” covered by Johnny Cash). The kind that is intelligent, tells a story, and is more like a short film than the kind of garbage that does nothing but glamorize the singer and his gang of “ho’s” and his “bling” (thinking about most rap videos, which is about all you ever see on MTV) or about how sexy and sensual the female singer is.

Below, for your viewing pleasure, is the video for “Just” by Radiohead

Categories
Beer Entertainment Movies Work

Week(end) roundup

Hello readers (the, um, five of you). Here’s a recap of the week, with an added bonus weird Portland fact at the end (which you must read through all the following junk to discover… because I say so).

Sunday: After spending most of the morning reveling in the rawk greatness I’d seen the previous night, Kelly and I watched Rescue Dawn, which was fantastic.

Monday: I met Snooks after work for a couple pints at Kennedy School, where I got to talk in a limited fashion about Battlestar Galactica: Razor (which Snooks hadn’t yet seen, so I had to skirt around, well, pretty much everything).

Tuesday: I met my friend MB at Rialto (around the corner from my office) for lunch. Had their reuben sandwich. It was no Goose Hollow reuben, but it was good. However, I was left that afternoon feeling generally full and icky. I’m not blaming it on the sandwich, I think I was fighting off a cold. Stayed in and read about 200 pages of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. Was nice to have an evening in while Kelly was out seeing a play.

Wednesday: Kelly and I met after at Binks after I left work for a quick beer before going home and watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was, uh, not great. Not quite as crap as I was expecting, but definitely not my favorite of the three.

Thursday: Kelly and I met at Rose & Thistle for a few pints before coming home and listening to some old cassettes (which came up because over the previous weekend I’d finally gone through all my old tapes and boxed a bunch up to donate somewhere).

Today: After a couple weeks designing the interface for a bunch of new features for SuperSweetCo’s next release of it’s flagship product (culminating with a demo at 4pm) I hung out at a work happy hour where I got to learn some funny shiz about some coworkers, before catching the train homeward. On the way I stopped at Moon & Sixpence for a pint of Old Speckled Hen before catching my bus connection home.

Oh, just in case you’re wondering, I’ve still got Van Halen stuck in my head. I’m still rawking out!

Lastly, I leave you with this odd tidbit I read via a Slashdot post regarding some folks wanting to rename 42nd Ave Douglas Adams Blvd, about the worlds smallest park, here in Portland. Odd.

Categories
Beer Food Television Work

Missing in action, again

Yup, it’s happened again, I’m blogslacking. Here’s a recap of the past couple weeks:

Work, beer, turkey, pie, more work, and more beer.

For a more detailed breakdown, it’s been a little like this: I took some time off around the Thanksgiving holiday and spent a lot of time doing things around the house, like finally getting some shelving assembled in my office, thus making it a bit more organized and manageable. I also finally got my printer and scanner hooked back up. Not sure what I have to print or scan, but whatever, they’re both there and ready to go after 2+ years since the move to the house.

Spent Turkeyday at my folks house, which was very fun and very filling. I ate too much dinner, and then ate too much pie (which is to be expected I suppose). Kelly made a delicious apple pie, that pretty much every member of the family had seconds of. Yum. Me == fat.

The day after Kelly and I met Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at Mash Tun for some dinner and beers.

After that, the work week broke down like this:

Monday: beers at Moon & Sixpence with Snooks.

Tuesday: home with Kelly watching movies and getting caught up on TV shows, like Heroes.

Wednesday: went to Kells for a couple beers after work… finally ventured downstairs to the ‘cigar’ area (meaning, I could have a smoke down there, pretty neat area, watched a bit of the Liverpool match on the plasma TV down there)… and then met Kelly at Moon after getting off the MAX for a beer before heading home for dinner and more TV watching.

Thursday: met Travis at Moon (yup, back there again).

Friday: Kelly was downtown when I got off work, so I met her at Huber’s, then we went to Kells (she wanted to see the downstairs ‘cigar bar’ that I visited on Wednesday), then we went to Shanghai Tunnel for a bit before taking the MAX homeward… stopping at Moon (yes, again, 4th time this week, urgh!) before going home.

Categories
Beer Food Work

Friuesday

So today, Tuesday, was my Friday… that makes Friuesday. Right? Right. I had a bunch of PTO days to use before the end of the year, and seeings how Thursday is my birthday, I thought I’d treat myself to a five-day weekend, starting tomorrow. Hooray!

Today after work I met my friend JB (joined later by Kelly) at the Mash Tun for some beers and dinner. Had a great time out, and then Kelly and I walked home.

Today was a beautiful day for late October, reaching 72 degrees. Of course it figures that it would be this nice on a day I couldn’t possibly escape the office for a walk, since I was trying to finish up all my work before taking the rest of the week off. I guess it’s going to be decent, but a lot cooler, for the rest of the week. Oh well, At least it’s not supposed to dump it down like it did over the weekend. Might get some yardwork done tomorrow. OR, I may just be a lazy slob. Not sure yet, I haven’t decided. 🙂

UPDATE: for the 2nd time in the past few days I got to do a bit of video chat with my friend Martin who is currently in Shanghai for work. It’s one thing to video chat with someone only a timezone or two away, but an entirely different experience sitting at home and seeing a friend several timezones away, sometimes hearing your voice echoed nearly halfway around the world. I childishly said “Hello China” at one point, hearing myself transmitted from my laptop’s mic, to Martin’s speakers, back through his mic, and back to my laptop. All delayed by no more than a second. Neat! – 1:30am, weds

Categories
Beer Entertainment Food Music Television Work

Heroes, Radiohead, and The Doctor

The week was pretty busy with work, though I did manage to go out some. Spent time with Snooks on Monday at Kennedy School, and my brother Travis at Moon & Sixpence on Thursday.

Friday I was pretty exhausted and Kelly had class, so I came home and relaxed. Had a couple beers, but ended up going to bed pretty early, though Kelly and I did finish watching the first season of Heroes, which was fantastic. What a great show. Now I’ve got the first four or so episodes of season 2 recorded to do a mini-marathon with. Brilliant!

On Saturday I woke up unusually early for me on a weekend, 7:30am (just as Kelly was headed to class) and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I just got up and got a lot of little things done around the house. It was pretty easy to do, it was pissing it down outside, just a miserable rainy day.

One of the things I finally did was buy the new Radiohead album In Rainbows, which in case you’ve been living in a cave (or don’t care for Radiohead) is being sold directly by the band now that they’re out of their recording contract with the big labels. Reports have been good regarding the sale, despite the fact that it’s a “name your price” sale. I opted for the box set route (which is VERY expensive) because I want the physical CD, though I wouldn’t have probably done it had my friend JB not gone in on it with me for the vinyl that I have no use for. It’s a really good album, and if you like Radiohead, I suggest going and buying the digital download for whatever you feel it’s worth to you, $2 or $20, if for no other reason than to ‘stick it to the man’ and prove that big labels have become largely irrelevant in an age of cheap recording options and virtually free distribution and promotion options.

Sunday was another largely lazy day, Kelly had some schoolmates coming over to do some studying, so I went and picked up pizza for them from a spot down the street and then hid out in my office for a few hours surfing the net. Later Kelly and I watched the last couple episodes of the 3rd season of Doctor Who, which was also really good (if you’re into that sort of thing, like I am). It was a good, relaxing weekend.