Oh, my stars and garters!

What I learned from watching the Super Bowl:

1. Football is only exciting to me when someone is able to break away and run and run.

2. Women are castrating bitches who are only happy when men cannot have any fun, ever. Luckily for these downtrodden dudes, there are many products they can buy to take the sting out of their daily oppression.

3. One bowl of Frito pie is plenty. Really. Jesus.

Lu Ann Platter

 

Brown food for a gray day. I'm told the Luby's at Cameron and 183 is one of the last good ones left.

Pouty news flash

Thanks to everyone for all your efforts, but I am sad to announce we did not make it to the finals round of the Austin's Cutest Couple Contest. 

I'm a little bummed. So we weren't the "cutest" or most "Austin-y" of all the contestants, and I'm willing to concede the picture we submitted was "supremely unflattering" and that maybe we just "aren't very attractive."

But in my heart, I think we deserved to win. In my heart, we did win. So as far as I'm concerned, all those other couples can eat a heart-shaped box of dicks.

 

Drowsy

The rutabagas were okay. Nothing special, nothing crazy, just another roasted root vegetable. They are cheap, though, and an excellent source of Vitamin C, so I say check them out. 

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Typepad's new thumbnail gallery. Do you like it?

Despite the spell of damn near perfect weather last month, this is becoming the dreariest winter I can remember. It's not getting to me, much, but I feel like I have to be very careful to not become slothlike or mean. Zzzz. Grr.

Rutabaga rutabaga

After our moderate success with beets, we thought we'd try the mighty rutabaga for dinner tomorrow night. I'm not even sure what a rutabaga is, let alone how to cook one, so this should be educational. 

Update, 8:47 p.m.: Aw, man, they're just turnips? 

Progress

So far on the New Year's resolution front, I'd say I'm about 30% of the way there. On the advice of my friend Colleen, I got a copy of Lightroom 3's public beta a few weeks ago and have been routing all my new photo uploads through that. I really like the program and am pretty sure I'll buy it when the beta period ends.

The program seems sort of redundant when you consider I already have Photoshop, Flickr Uploader, and a Windows "My Pictures" folder, but what I don't have is the discipline necessary to use all three consistently.

Like a lot of Adobe products, Lightroom is a pleasure to use. I feel like I'm playing with, even curating, my photos instead of just wrestling with them. The public beta is free through April, so you can try it out if you've been curious.

The second phase was to tackle my digital photo archives, I am lucky enough to know two--two!--library scientists who were willing to come over tonight and help me impose some sort of order on the snarled, mislabeled, duplicate-beshitted backlog that was my picture folder. It was interesting to watch my friend Angela size up the mess and immediately envision a system that was neither too broad nor too detailed and that took my personal habits into account, and it was fun to flip through all my pictures and herd them into the proper place.

I still have a ton left to go through, but now everything has a logical place to be. Yes! So now I just have to migrate all those, get an external hard drive to back everything up, and write a rap song. Then I will have accomplished everything I need to in 2010, leaving the rest of the year free to sit back, drink beer, and play video games.

Continued testing

I am not totally wild about the Typepad app, but so far it's been better than the alternatives.

More testing

A picture I took at the park the other morning. I've been trying to take a walk before work every day.

Look at this goddamn sunset!

I took a picture of the sunset from the roof of the parking garage at work tonight. Pretty, isn't it? Well, this picture looks like a box of cat dingleberries compared to how the sky looked five minutes later as I was trying to merge onto the upper deck of I-35.

The sky was so vivid it looked downright dangerous, like liquid fire, and with downtown and the Capitol and The University of Texas silhouetted against it, well, gosh, we all just freaked out.

Most everyone on the ramp was pointing and smiling and sticking their phones out the window to take pictures. We were all driving like complete shit, slowing down and braking and trying to catch up, and nobody honked because holy crap! crazy sunset! The whole thing was so amazing and fun that I didn't stop laughing until 51st Street. I really think that might have been the best sunset I've ever seen.

Google Maps, I do not always trust your directions.

View Larger Map There's just no call to send someone all the way up through Oklahoma City to get to Amarillo. I guess we'll haul out the atlas to figure out the best secondary highway route up to the Palo Duro Canyon. Has anyone been? I want to see it very badly all of a sudden.