Beth's Contradictory Brain

Nice Night Out

We not only got out of the house last night, we got to meet up with Maxine and Elizabeth for dinner and a book reading at Book Woman. It's always nice to meet up with other bloggers and put faces with words! They were a lot of fun to hang out with for the evening.

Nerdstar and I have been more gay than usual lately. Last Friday we went down to Cedar Street in Dallas and hung out at Sue Ellen's and JR's, lesbian and gay clubs on a city block of gay stores and cafes. In one store I decided I wanted to be a gay man because I loved the clothes and shoes on sale for them! Then the book reading last night was at the local woman/lesbian/feminist book store. Even within these places for gays and lesbians, there was space for even more defined subcultures. On Cedar Street there's a nice little shop mainly for gay men into S&M. It was fun to browse and try to figure out what was used how. Then the reading last night was by Susan Stinson, an author who writes novels who's main character is a woman of size.

Say what you want about blue states and red states and all that, I'm always happy to see that there's a place for everyone. No, that place might not be everywhere, although I think even the smallest of towns have more diversity than is perceived.

Carnival of the Capitalists

Check out this week's edition!

Post Thanksgiving

I'm not big on "the holidays." Although I can never really figure out why that is. Thanksgiving, for my entire life, consists of my parents cooking a fair amount of food Wednesday night, and then Thursday we sleep in, hang out until everything is ready for an early lunch, eat, nap, watch tv, eat again, and it's done. Christmas is a repeat with the opening of presents in the morning added. I guess it just doesn't seem all that special to me. Maybe it's because it's been the same for so long, maybe because I get to see my family throughout the year.

For Christmas we usually tell each other what it is we want/need, so there aren't usually any big surprises. I wish there were. But then again, I'm the one who thinks it'd be fantastic to get keys to a new car on Christmas morning, which will probably never happen.

I'd always hoped that when I got married I'd marry into a nice, big family so I'd have a new one. Instead Nerdstar's family prefers me to be out of sight, out of mind. We've gotten to where we agree it's better if I just stay home when she goes to see her family, which just means more time apart after all the time apart we've already had.

All that said, this Thanksgiving was pretty good. I have a bad habit of shutting down and tuning out with my family, and Nerdstar has kinda picked that up. My parent's house is usually loud because of multiple tvs being on and a little boy running around playing. I have no doubt that growing up in a loud house is why I hate noise so much now. So I went up there a little more determined to be patient and engaged. It helped.

We're not sure yet what this Christmas holds. Nerdstar wrote on her blog that she's probably going to get TDY orders to go up to Ft. Leavenworth, KS for a month starting probably not this week but next. I'm sure she'll get to come home for Christmas, but if it's only a two or three day leave then she'll spend it with her family in Houston. So I can't get all that excited about this Christmas.

It's not so much that I'm a big bah humbug, it's just that like with so much of my life, there's this vague feeling that the holidays just aren't what I'd like them to be.

Happy Thanksgiving

What a difference a year makes! Last Thanksgiving Nerdstar had pretty much just gotten to Iraq. All I could think was how long a year was going to be and I could only hope that she'd be home for the next Thanksgiving - alive and well. I'm very thankful she's home. I'm thankful for the mundane aspects of life that tend to be taken for granted.

My heart and prayers are with all the soldiers still far from home this holiday season, and even more with their families who miss them terribly. Thank you for all you go thru for our country.

Heh

Every time I see the commercial that says there is no safe cigarette, I think, well, then just put a condom on it!!

What

do you do for fun on a rainy Monday night?

Get a tattoo

Restaurant Web Sites

It's so hard to find a restaurant with a good website. The weekly lefty rag, The Austin Chronicle, has a resturant guide with a long list of local restuarants, but, the only info on them is location, hours, price range and type of food. Nerdstar was in the mood for a nice bowl of gumbo and we were looking for somewhere other than Papadeux to get one. What good is an online restaurant guide if it doesn't even have the menu posted??

Then I decided to google several of our favorite restaurants here in Austin to see if they even have a website, much less if it has their menu on it...

Magnolia Cafe's site. This is the only one I found.

And CitySearch, where the restuarants also get nice little write-ups, isn't any better for detailed info.

I told Nerdstar we should start a website called Eat Austin. It would be a huge undertaking to get all the info in there, then to keep it updated. If we knew how to get paid for the venture we'd do it in a heartbeat. Any ideas/suggestions??

Update:
I decided to submit this entry to next week's Carnival of the Capitalists.

Thanks for the ideas so far. Part of what I'm wondering is if there is a valid reason this sort of website doesn't exist already. Is it too time consuming to deal with at least 100 different restaurants, getting all their info, billing them every month if it's set up as a pay to be included site, keeping it updated for openings and closings?

Obviously it'd be easier to get restaurants owners/managers to pay to be on a site that already exists. Is there some way to get startup $$ to cover all the time getting the site up and running and then do something like blogads to keep revenue coming in?

We're just brainstorming this and wondering if anyone out there has tried this venture already.

rain rain go away

Thankfully the ark is almost built, because it's poured down rain 8 of the last 9 days and nights! If there were any truth in advertising Seattle would have to give up it's rainy rep and hand it over to Austin, we've had more rain than them this past year.

Not much going on to blog about really. We finally drove to the casino in Lousiana. Lost again. I did get to play some poker, which I've been wanting to do. I didn't play badly, but I didn't win any $ either.

And that's abou it folks. Wednesday we're driving up to Dallas to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I think we're going to take Zach to see Spongebob and Polar Express.

Update: I was watching the local news channel to check on the weather and I saw something I've never seen before - in some of the surrounding smaller towns they are actually closing schools early today due to the possibility of flooding. School Closings

New Pics

We posted a few new pics over at the fotopage.
There are a couple of the cats, one of Zach in his soccer uniform, and some of the flooded Barton Springs Pool. Check em out.

The Rest of the Story

Nerdstar wrote this Food Entry.

I'm here to tell the rest of the story. Little did I know when we hung up the phone after her asking what sounded good for dinner, just how much food she'd bring home! She left out the steamed veggie dumplings and a rice cake in addition to the onion pie. And that's just from CoCo's. From Rudy's there was the delicious brisket, but there was also smoked sausage, bread, creamed corn, and potato salad and root beers.

Now, out of all of that I ate a two little brisket sandwiches, 1/3 of the onion pie, two bites of sausage and one of the root beers. The rest was all hers!! Hence, "pig!" She might not have eaten it all in one sitting, but she ate most of it before going to bed.

We've been watching Invader Zim - she's totally Gir when it comes to food! I wish I could post the couple of clips of Gir, like when the pizza delivery guy shows up and Gir says "I Love You."

I swear she loves food more than me.

Feed Me

Nerdstar here, I finally got brave enough to set up a paypal link on my site, which you should be reading! I don't know what to expect, but I do know that any acts of generosity will be appreciated!

Will eat for $

Surreal

Life felt like it detoured into the Twilight Zone today. Partly due to the weather, partly the odd sleeping hours. Who knows. Just that feeling that life is never going to be "normal" again. Which is silly when it hasn't ever really been all that normal to start with.

It was a year ago that Nerdstar got on a plane to Iraq. I'm so thankful she was able to come home a couple of months early. I think we're both mostly recovered from our different ordeals, but we also know that there's no telling what the long term changes that year brought about in us.

Nerdstar worries more about jobs and money than I do at this point in time. I've been realizing there's some part of me that is totally resisting going back to the 9 to 5 grind. Hopefully even if going back to it is necessary, it won't be for long.

One of the cool things last week helping with the documentary was spending some time working and talking with someone who found his way in life to a place where he works at what he loves for a few days, weeks, or maybe a couple of months on something he enjoys and spends the rest of his time taking life easy.

My brain is too mushy today to really be clear. We'll see what this week brings.

Good Long Week

It's been a long week, but mostly in a good way. I spent all week helping two documentary film makers shoot footage for documentary about the Austin Habitat's 20th anniversary next year. I've written before that I really like the people I've met who are associated with Habitat. They all have really good hearts. I was glad Nerdstar got to come and hang out and help a lot of the time, too. We didn't make any money, but we were well fed, met some cool people, and had to have at least gotten a little good karma out of the deal!!

I'm vaguely aware there's a big world out there and things are happening in it, but honestly, I can't bring myself to care. Ok, so Arafat is officially dead and Peterson is officially guilty. So what.

It's a really cold, rainy weekend here in Austin, I've got some firewood indoors so it stays dry and the down comforter is on the bed. I'm going to see if I can put reality off until at least Monday.

Not So Different

Nerdstar and I had a bad relationship day yesterday into late last night that was all my fault. I have very deep self destruct tendencies that go off at random sometimes. I'm still learning to limit the damage and duration.

Today was perfect weather day and we had some things we needed to get done, so I played hookey from my volunteering today and we ran errands and went to the park. She's picking up her car from the shop, then it's ice cream time!

I'm still trying to make coherent my thoughts on the people in this country not being nearly as divided or different as we all seem to think this week. One thought I had is that the media seems to be like that one kid in school who's always going around causing trouble by whispering "did you hear what so and so said about such and such?" Except they're shouting and not whispering.

I thought years ago that it would be fantastic to be able to do a study where X group of people goes about their normal lives without access to "news" - and Y group goes about their lives and has reasonable access to "news" and Z group goes about their lives and are inundated with "news" and see how each group views "the world" after about six months.

Because I just don't think that 90% of the people in this country are really that different from each other. I've got a pretty diverse blogroll, and I believe that if we all got together with some decent food and drinks we wouldn't be trying to kill each other, we'd be talking and laughing and finding out the things we have in common, in spite of the things we don't have in common.

I think we all pay to much attention to what we're told we're all thinking and feeling and why we voted the way we did, when if we just look around at our families and co-workers and friends and such, we just see people trying to live their lives just like we are.

And that's why I'm not all hysterical about how anyone or everyone or red states or blue states voted. America isn't going to become a fundamentalist Christian nation in the next four years just because of the last election any more than it would become a socialist, liberal, athiest, gay nation if Kerry and the democrats had won every office possible. That's not the kind of people who live in America.

Just because there are very loud, outspoken fringe elements claiming they speak for the rest of the larger group, doesn't make it true.

Variety

It was fun, as always spending time with Zach, he's such a character. Friday we took him to see The Incredibles before school was out so the theater wouldn't be totally packed. I just wasn't moved by the movie. It lacked the stunning color and animation of Finding Nemo, and the story telling was the weakest of the Pixar films. Yes, I liked that they actually said, "If everyone is special, then no one is." But, I felt the themes were too muddied. Oh well.

We spent today, and will spend a lot more time the rest of this week, helping the people who are doing the documentary part of the Habitat history project I've helped with the oral histories on. Thankfully, Nerdstar wrote a great post on this so I don't have too!

I'm worn out from all the coughing, hopefully it'll be over soon.

Hmmm

Here's an interesting article on the idea out there that Bush won because of moral values and the measures against gay marriage. Here's another look at the moral values explanation.

Rag Tag Entry

We're up at my parents' house for a couple of days. We brought a lot of stuff up here to put in a garage sale, and Saturday morning we're going to watch Zach play soccer - or, you know, whatever close approximation little kids have to soccer.

Yes, I'm relieved about the election. I'm glad it wasn't close and it didn't drag on.

The referendum's on gay marriage don't thrill me, but I'm not really bothered by them. I was telling Nerdstar last night that I have a sort of "Everyman" view of things, which I'm not sure I can explain fully. The short version is that it means I don't assume everyone who voted against marriage being anything other than a man and a woman would shoot me given the chance, and I don't think anyone who voted for it would necessarily be someone I'd get along with.

Instapundit has a lot of good thoughts and links on the issue.

I've got a kid to play with, more later.

Oops

I love MT Blacklist, but lately I've accidentaly deleted good comments, I just get in too big a hurry glossing over the 100 comments I'm deleting. I don't intentionally delete any comments left by real people. No crushing of dissent here :-)

So, if I do accidentally delete your comment, feel free to leave it again and know that I'm truly sorry.

Maxine, I just saw that I had you accidentally blacklisted. It's fixed now.

Blog Anniversary

I've had this site for two years now. Seems like so much longer. It's too early in the morning after being up too late because of the election to be very coherent yet.

I just want to say a huge, heart felt thanks to all of my readers!! Here's to the next year of blogging bring more fun!

Election Day Plans?

While our menu won't be nearly as yummy as Stephen's, we're planning on settling in for the long haul and channel surfing elections result verbal diarrhea until there's a winner or our heads explode.

What are your plans? Did you pick up scrumptous groceries, gonna order pizza, or get some take-out? Any particular channel you'll be tuned into?

Or, are you going to do something all together different and ignore the whole mess?

Drawn Together

I love South Park. I love smart humor as opposed to juvenile humor. I'll take Eddie Izzard any day. I'm also pretty hard to shock. Yes, there's a line of decency, and while it changes from person to person, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to entertaining adults.

That said, Comedy Central's new cartoon Drawn Together just about left me speechless and thinking - I did NOT just see/hear that! Not that I wasn't laughing, I just couldn't believe some of the jokes, gags, songs, and general goings on. It's eight cartoon character spoofs living together ala Big Brother.

So if you like your humor bold, offensive and edgy - check it out. It's on Wednesdays after South Park.