I got to thinking about food and concerts today, and I remembered this little adventure:

Back in 1993, my brother, step-brother, and a good friend went with me to go see Asia play at some local club in the area. I've been a huge fan of Asia since the first album (yes, kiddies, that means vinyl) back in1982 (yes, kiddies, we had music back then). My brother was a fan as well, and the other two decided to join us for their own various and sundry reasons. So we met up the night of the show and went to grab some food before heading down into town.

We decide to treat my brothers, who are in from out of town, to our favorite Chinese buffet in Denton. My friend and I eat there somewhat regularly, so we're supposedly prepared for the mass consumption of eastern style cuisine, and my brothers, while big eaters on their own, aren't ready for what the night holds. We make not one, no two, but three trips through the buffet line.

Three trips.

And I'm not talking wimpy trips, either. My usual trip included a half-plate of rice, two or three entrees, a cup of hot-and-sour soup, and an egg roll. Multiply that by 3. Everyone else was keeping pace. That's a lot of food. even for big boys.

We hurt so bad as we left the restaurant we could barely walk to my small car that we all had to squeeze into. I was driving a stick back then, and it hurt to shift gears. We were in such pain, we started lauging at how stupid we were. Which made us hurt more. Which made us laugh harder. Which made us hurt more.

Thank goodness it took an hour to drive down to the club. We were almost human again by the time we got there.

Oh, and the show was pretty good, too...

This has been a miracle season for the Texas Rangers. At the time I write this, they are still 2 games out of first place behind Oakland, and 1 game behind Anaheim, and that's after losing 2 of 3 to Seattle. 2 back, 7 games left. I don't know that they'll make it to the post season, but let me tell you, the opposing teams better watch out if they do, because they're going to win every post-season home game. I know this, because I have purchased post-season tickets.

So what? you may be thinking to yourself. Let me share one additional piece of information with you - every game that AB and I attended this season, the Rangers won. That's right, AB and I are undefeated this season. This is the first time that's happened for us as season ticket holders. Unbelievable! So, should the Rangers make it to the post-season, watch out. All they'll have to do is win one game of the series on the road, and they're assured of moving on to the next round, because we'll be at each one of the home playoff games.

This season wasn't too good to be true. The Rangers are an awesome team this season. It's been a great ride!

My wife and I watch the series premier of Lost last night. I've been looking forward to this since I first saw the early promos for it. I was expecting that the series would open on the plane with the flight in progress and we'd get to see the whole crash sequence right up front. That's not what I got, but I was not disappointed. In fact, I was left wanting more, much more, at the end of the hour. I can't recall the last time that happened. End result, I know where I'm going to be Wednesday nights at 7pm CST/CDT from now on. I only hope that the creatures aren't so silly as to ruin the otherwise great setup for the series.

We also watched the much-hyped series premier of CSI: NY. Eh. I didn't have really high expectations of the show, but I was hoping it would be better than it was. I really like Gary Sinise, and that's what has intrigued me about the show more than anything, but I walked away from the episode wanting more, but in a completely different way than what Lost did to me.

But the normally technically accurate CSI franchise had one big blunder last night. Now, I don't know how technically accurate they are for a lot of the high-tech gadgets that they features in the other two parts of the franchise, and it probably frustrates the hell out of those who do use those devices, but people like me are oblivious to it, so it probably doesn't matter. But while most people in the US will rarely get to use a gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer (i.e., ever), most will be exposed to a film camera at some point in their lives. Note to the show writers and producers - you can't pull prints off of film from a camera that's been opened to the 'real world' and had part of the strip ripped out! There's a reason that film cameras are light-tight, because that kind of exposure will instantly ruin anything that may be on the film. Argh. That reminds me of the time in Junior High when a girl, who I was sweet on at the time but as usual she didn't know it, asked me if she had the film loaded correctly in the camera and proceeded to open the back of it to show me. She cried when I told her she just lost all the football game pictures she had already taken. But i digress...

Second, you don't see the photographic images for the first time when you put the print paper in the developer. I know most people probably haven't spent any time in a darkroom, but you have to see the image on the film to know to expose it on the print paper in the enlarger, so the tech's surprise at the image developing on the print was completely stupid. Argh. You're better than this, CSI writers/producers!

Still, I'm going to give it a shot and see if they overcome their shortfalls from the premier. They did a pretty good job in the crossover episode from CSI: Miami last spring, and I'm hoping that's where they'll get back to. In the meantime, I'm so glad I've got my Dish Network PVR in place. I need to get another, but this one will do for the next week or so until we figure out shich shows we're actually going to watch this season.

Gotta love technology...

Man. I've been spending so much time on my other project, I have not been able to update this as I would have liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could have made time, sure, but I've opted to devote pretty much every available minute that I'm not asleep and not at my day job to this project. So sue me.

However, I did become a grandpa this week. As I mentioned in the Zoo last time, we got some guppies to breed in our tank. Well, there were at least three fry that I've spotted in the tank in the last week. They're so tiny and cute! They're also about bite-sized for some of the other fish, so I don't know how many, if any, are going to make it. But I've been putting in the special fry food that's small enough for them to eat, so they shouldn't starve while they grow large enough to not get eaten by their neighbors.

In other news, I also picked up my new Mac. I'd been wanting to get a new G5 tower for a while, but I ended up getting a G4 Titanium PowerBook instead. I'm still getting it set up and configured the way I want, but it's fast (1.5GHz), has wireless (54MBPS AirPort card), and incredibly lightweight. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Hey! I just noticed that my last post was #100 for this blog! Yay me!

After I described our own little zoo in the last post, we almost added not only a new animal to the collection, but a specimen from a completely different species. You see, while I was out clearing brush out of my wife's garden and getting a sunburn in the process (damn Norwegian heritage), I found a turtle. Nothing special, just your average box turtle with little orange spots on his legs and neck.

We brought him inside and put him in a small box with water and some lettuce while we finished up outside (it was much hotter than it was supposed to be). Then I went online to read about the care and habitats of turtles.

That's when I decided that he was better off staying in the garden.

Oh, not that we couldn't have taken good care of him. In fact, I found a couple of good sites that had basic "keeping turtles" guidelines, and the process is pretty straightforward. However, seeing as we had no "spare parts" that we could turn into a well-planned terrarium, and I really don't need to be spending lots of luxury money right now, not to mention the potential vet bills if our little boxy turtle got a little too stressed out during his transition from wild to captive. So the turtle went back to the garden.

But not before our neighbors brought over their 2.5-year-old to take a look. The little guy has a fascination with crickets and worms and all things little-boy-ish, so we figured he'd be thrilled by the turtle. Stupid me, did we get out the camera and take a record of the turtle's short stay at our dwelling? Of course not. So Timmy the Turtle, as our neighbor named him, didn't leave any record of his visit. However, he may have a nice time hanging out in the garden, so we may well come across him again. I can only hope so.

I may have mentioned in previous posts that while my wife and I have no children, we do have our own zoo. The zoo got a bit of a face-lift this week, culminating in some major work yesterday that has pleased me to no end.

I've been cleaning out my home office, finally getting everything that got dumped in there when we moved in either put away or thrown away. One of the features that needed to be moved was a 29-gallon tank that had been sitting empty for well over a year. After a bit of thinking, we decided to put it in the space next to the entertainment center upstairs, a space which was apparently made just to fit this tank and its accessories. The main reason behind this was that our 15-gallon tall tank which we had downstairs near the back door was getting way too much direct sun and was becoming an algae farm instead of a tank. Thus, last weekend, we moved the 29-gallon tank to its new resting place and migrated the contents of the 15-gallon tank, minus the algae, upstairs. For a week, we watched the two fish and plecostamus adapt to their new, very, very roomy home. Fortunately, I didn't kill off anything in the move. Unfortunately, the two fish are a cardinal tetra (think neon tetra without the neon but all the red) and a black neon tetra. Both are schooling fish without schools. So they were kicking around, but without much enthusiasm.

Yesterday, I changed that. After checking the water chemistry to make sure all was safe, I headed to my local pet store and acquired some new roommates for the tetras. There weren't any cardinal tetras at the store, so I got 4 neons instead (I really like the neons better, anyway). I got three new black neons, and from the same tank (mostly by accident) a couple of ghost shrimp. But the real kicker was the four guppies, two male and two female) that I'm hoping to breed in the tank.

A few years ago, we had bred mollies in this same tank, and with pretty good success. Anyone who's in the live-bearing fish business will tell you that to really encourage breeding, you need one male and two females. My pet store (this is just silly) will only sell female guppies in pairs with male guppies. You can buy males singly, but the only way to get females is to buy them paired with a male. Ergo, two females and two males. At least I got two completely different males (one tequila sunrise, one red neon), and one of the females looks very, very pregnant.

All the new occupants were properly introduced to the tank, and mother nature took over. Within seconds, the cardinal tetra was schooling with the neons, and the 4 black neons schooled in a different part of the tank. A few hours later, I couldn't even tell which of the black neons is the one I'd had for years - his color had been kinda fading, but after hanging out with his own kind, he seems to have blended right in, literally.

The most fun for me, though, has been watching the guppies. I'd forgotten how active and curious guppies can be. They spent a few minutes hovering near the middle of the tank, then split up and began investigating every piece of gravel in the tank, along with the plants and other rock features.

Less than 24 hours after moving in the new fishy neighbors, I've already spent hours just sitting and watching the tank. I had forgotten how relaxing and peaceful aquariums can be. So swim well my little fishies. We're going to take good care of each other in the years to come.

I think that summer in Dallas, Texas, is officially over. I'm not basing this assertation on the fact that September 21, the calendar end of summer, is approaching. Nor do I justify this claim because we've had temperatures ranging from the mid-50's at night to the upper 80's during the day this week. No, I believe that summer is done here in the area because I can smell it.

It's really hard to explain what I mean by that, but I'm going to try. For me, there's something about early autumn that feels completely different from the rest of the year. In the spring, as our hemisphere starts its journey towards summer, we'll often see temperature shifts in the same range: 50's at night, 70's to 80's during the day. But the "feel" of that weather is different in the spring than in the fall. I specifically noticed it on Wednesday as I left the office. I walked out of the building into the cool (for September) air, and the aura of autumn enveloped me in a way that spring air does not.

It's almost as though the remainder of the year has been in preparation for this moment: the weather has been put in cold storage in the winter; spring pulls it from the freezer and begins to thaw it, letting it come to room temperature slowly; summer cooks the weather in the oven until it's done; then when you pull it out of the oven as it begins to cool back to room temperature, it effervesces that lovely fresh-from-the-oven aroma like a batch of your favorite home-made cookies. You don't just smell it - you feel it in every nerve in your body, and the anticipation that you have for downing that still warm snack only heightens the experience.

Yeah, that's kinda what autumn feels like for me...

In case you hadn't noticed, I've added a new graphic to The Q Continuum. Sometimes, the creative bug just bites, and I have to do something about it. This weekend, it was a logo for the Continuum. Who knows what will be next...

Speaking of logos, we watched "Hulk" this afternoon. Eh. The visual look of the film was fantastic, and Jennifer Connelly is always nice to look at (plus my wife kept mumbling something about Eric Bana), but the rest of it was, well, "eh." The title sequence, prominently featuring the Hulk logo that is so easily recognizable, was not exactly like anything I had seen before, so that kept my interest. As did the 'comic book' styling that Ang Lee used throughout the film. But, in the end, eh. I'm not even going to bother running it through my little rating system, as I know how it would come out. Eh.

I have been looking for some logo design of late for a completely different reason. If you or someone you know is a graphic designer who's willing to work with me on a short project, drop me a line.

As I was entering my post concerning the minister and the stolen car, I spent some moments reminiscing about other pranks I have pulled in my day. I have decided to come forward and stake claim for a prank that for nearly 20 years has been left unclaimed.

My senior year in high school, I had the fortune to take Calculus from one of my favorite previous math teachers. We lovingly called her 'Stiggy,' and I think for most of us who had her for Calculus, we would claim her as our favorite teacher. Since I had to drop my brother off at Junior High on my way to school, I arrived well before classes started. So I would spend my mornings hanging out in Stiggy's classroom, often using the time to finish Calculus homework (she gave me a 'B' for the year, but I didn't really deserve that) or just chatting with Stiggy. Some days she would make it clear that she didn't want to be disturbed in the mornings by leaving her doors closed while in the room working on something. Since you could tell by looking through the windows in the doors that she was there, you knew immediately that you shouldn't barge in that day. That also made it easy to tell when she was absent - the doors would be closed, but the lights would be off and the room empty.

Sadly, misfortune befell Stiggy on April 1 of that year, as she was out sick that day. It was a Thursday, I believe, and I knew before anyone else that she was out, because my morning visit was met with closed doors and an empty, dark room. I didn't think anything of it until 4th period (band) as I was getting ready to go to lunch. Calculus was 5th period right after lunch (for those of us in the band - most of the other Calc students were in other classes and had earlier lunches), and I would often skip out on lunch to hang out in Stiggy's room before class started, as she had late lunch, too. When I stopped by class early, the doors were closed, and I peeked in the window to see the substitute teacher sitting quietly at the teacher's desk, finishing her lunch and reading the newspaper.

I don't know what inspired me, but the idea came to me right then, and I had to act quickly if I was to pull it off. I grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote in my best faux-Stiggy writing (don't ask why I was so good at that): "5th Period Calculus - Meet in the Library today." I affixed the note to the back door to the room, the door all the students entered through, because it was closest to the main hallway, knowing that the substitute could not see the occupants of the hallway through the window in that door. I also knew that no one would look through that door to see that Stiggy was in absentia when they stopped to read the note. My plan in motion, I made myself vanish from that hallway and momentarily bumped into a few of my other Calculus buddies as the bell ran releasing classes to go to 5th period.

One by one, my classmates went up to the classroom door, quickly scanned the note, and turned back down the hall to head toward the library. By the time I got to the door, I was with a group of three other students, and the first one in our group read the note and told the rest of us that we were meeting in the library. Dutifully, we turned around and headed to the library. As the bell rang again announcing the end of the passing period, the entire roster of 5th period Calculus were sitting in the library, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Stiggy and the reason for the change in location.

Did I mention that I went to a magnet high school for gifted and talented students? I say that, because otherwise you'd never believe that 5 minutes after the bell rang for the start of 5th period and Stiggy had not shown up in the library, all of us started working on the next section of homework that we knew would be assigned. No one questioned why we had been redirected to the library. Well, yeah, people asked, but when we realized we'd have some quiet surroundings to catch up on homework, no one much cared. When 5th period ended, I made my way surreptitiously back to Stiggy's classroom, where the doors were still closed and the substitute still sat reading the paper, and quietly removed the note from the back door and disposed of it quickly.

All I really remember about the next day was that Stiggy was back and she was pissed. The substitute had left her a note that not a single Calculus student had shown up for class, but she figured that there had been some miscommunication about that particular class (the only Calculus class offered at the school) and maybe we were off on a field trip or something. Stiggy assumed that we had all skipped class when we found out that she was absent, but finally believed the rest of the class when everyone told her the same story. Eventually, everyone realized that it was an April Fool's prank, but no one owned up to it that day. Or any day since.

Until now. Perhaps, now, I can finally get some rest after getting that off my chest. I am a free man again.

I've been cleaning out my home office the past week, and this morning I ran across something I hadn't seen in a while. It's a little trinket, a small plastic dinosaur (kinda looks like a Stegosaurus, but with a bunch of spikes on its back and tail), no more than 4" long and 1.5" tall, that's green and yellow and shows a bunch of nasty looking teeth. It was made in China, probably worth about 5 cents. No big deal, right? Except that I've kept this little dinosaur around for over 14 years because I still recall vividly the night it came into my possession.

Travel back with me to the fall of 1990. I was starting what should have been my last year in college (if you're on the 4-year plan - I wasn't), and I was pretty much wandering aimlessly between classes and a part-time job. I had met a girl who was an incoming freshman and we hooked up briefly, and while the romance was short-lived, we remain close friends to this day. A few weeks into the semester, we met for dinner at one of my favorite places of the time - Oak Street Bar and Grill. Don't look for it now, it's long gone. But at the time, it was a great place to meet and eat, because it was close to campus and the prices on the menu were close to campus as well. (You former starving college students know what I mean.)

So my friend and I were sitting at a table, waiting on our food to be brought out from the kitchen, when I noticed an unusual sight. A man, dressed kind of like a hobo or one of the semi-homeless that wandered around campus frequently, was moving around the restaurant from table to table. I only really noticed him at first, because after he left a table, the occupants wore very odd expressions on their faces. I watched him for a minute or two, methodically moving from one table to the next, heading from the back of the room toward the main entrance. I knew it was only a matter of time before his feet would bring him to our table and we would endure whatever action he was bringing to the other tables and booths in the establishment. I turned away from him so he wouldn't see me staring at him, and I tried to steel myself against whatever onslaught was encroaching, but I didn't even have time to warn my dinner partner what was about to happen.

Less than a minute after I averted my eyes, the stranger was upon us. He stood next to our table on my right, between my friend and me. I looked up at him and saw that he wasn't quite as disheveled as he had seemed from afar. While he did have the homeless/hobo vibe to him, I did not notice the smell that one might expect from such an individual. I barely had time to take all this in when it happened.

He did not make eye contact with either of us that I recall. He simply bent slightly toward the table and extended his right arm so his hand rested on the table next to the sugar jar and the salt and pepper shakers. He said, "Remember the dinosaurs," pulled his arm back from the table, and left the restaurant. The only remaining trace of his presence at our table was this small, plastic dinosaur.

I've never named the dinosaur, but I probably should. It's lived for long periods in my various cars, and I probably need to put him (I think it's a him) back in my current vehicle to resume his place of honor.

But it was nice to get an unexpected visit from a long-lost friend this week.