Musings, observations and other useless drivel.
So the other night I was able to check out a new place downtown called Switch Restaurant and Bar and though the place was pretty empty that night, it was pretty darn good. I had the prosciutto and mozzarella gallette as well as baked lobster and crab puff appetizer and they were both terrific. Evidently they also do breakfast on the weekends so I am sure I will get back there soon.
Plus it is way cool on the inside and has patio seating in the back alley…
So I went and saw the movie “Vantage Point” last night; I had mediocre expectations and it actually turned out to be fairly decent. It has non-stop action, but the cooler thing was that it keeps showing the same event from the perspective of different people who were involved. I guess I like movies that take an interesting method to delivering the story; another example is a movie from ten years ago with Gwyneth Paltrow called “Sliding Doors”, where the story splits into two possible story lines near the beginning and switches between the two stories throughout the movie, obviously reconciling at the end. Or “Memento”, which was shown out of sequence.
I know it is weird for some people to have to THINK while at a movie, but give it a shot sometime; you might like it.
It was supposedly “The CLIMB to Conquer Cancer” but we certainly spent a lot of time on buses. School buses.
So I joined my friends Princess, Max, Esther and Elmer on the Climb to Conquer Cancer this morning, which consists mainly of walking about six miles to the top of South Mountain but ALSO consists of multiple rides on real school buses to get to and from the parking area and also down the mountain after hiking to the top. I realized that in all the years since I last rode a school bus (be nice) the technology has NOT CHANGED AT ALL. Even the windows have the exact same “squeeze in on both sides and slide up or down” kind of latches. And either the seats seem so close together:
or maybe I am bigger. I’m not sure what I expected; maybe drop-down DVD screens, a small Starbucks counter or at least wireless internet access. Nada.
And check out this little guy who made it to the top!
Had a wonderful time; wish you were there.
Yup, I went out and tore up Scottsdale last night with my friends Erica, Chris and a couple friends of theirs. Actually we just tore up Kazimierz Wine Bar but it was really fun. It turns out that Dennis Rowland plays there Thursday nights so the music was pretty cool. Here is a shot:
We had fun messing with one of Erica’s friends named Ryan; Erica, Chris and I were there early and were tucked in a corner so when Ryan came in he was sitting by himself at the couches reserved for our group. I got some scoop on Ryan from Erica and went over and sat down next to him and started talking to him like I’ve known him for years; I fessed up right when I could sense he was going to ask “Who the hell ARE you?” He was a great sport and all of the people there were cool and witty.
One other interesting note: I guess it was Scottsdale ArtWalk night so there were a lot of artists in the house. It was obvious because it TOTALLY threw off the usual 90%/10% Snottsdale ratio of blondes to brunettes!
Thank you Lord.
Taken from my friend Erica’s blog:
“The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.”
– A.P. Herbert
My thoughts exactly. It’s not WHETHER a long term relationship will have disagreements (uh, they WILL), it is how they are RESOLVED.
Have you ever known one of those couples who always seems to get along great and they always tell everyone “We NEVER fight.”? You ever notice that they often SUDDENLY split up and everyone is like “WTF”?
Of course they didn’t fight; they held in all their issues with one another with a smile on their face and then one day it all came out in a BAD way. Game over.
…unless you’re drinking it! My Dad is going in for a “procedure” this week and he has to drink SIXTEEN eight-ounce glasses of liquid chalk (a gallon, essentially) in a four hour period to get ready for it.
To put this in perspective, this is TEN AND TWO THIRDS cans of Coke (except, you know, it’s chalky and lacking all good high-fructose corn syrupy goodness of soda):
My Dad’s actually a Pepsi drinker, so I guess it should look like this:
But you get the idea…
Hey, it was a tough week and I DID catch an early movie (Jumper; I had to see it ’cause I read all the books; kinda goofy though).
Nice fire, huh? And yes, that IS a TiVo’d episode of Judge Judy up there. How sad 🙂
Whilst dining at lunch today, I witnessed a middle-aged woman take a stack of about THIRTY paper napkins for her lunch with her and a single companion. WTF???
Look, unless you have some serious hand-eye coordination issues or you need to make an impromptu toilet-seat ass-gasket, there is NO reason to need that many napkins. She could have made a napkin muumuu out of it, for Christ’s sake (granted she was wearing a muumuu ALREADY, but you get the point).
Next time, please just take a napkin or two and move on, or just bring your own frickin’ bib.
While I was sitting and “thinking” this morning I was internally debating various ideas on toilet tissue. Though in this amazing country we probably have more than 700 choices for this one function, I feel is basically comes down to two things:
Dealing with #1 (no pun intended), the obvious choice is two-ply; it is fluffier, softer and better yet creates a thicker barrier between “the handle side”, and you know, the business end. The only downside is that when starting a new roll I invariably get it started BETWEEN the plys and then end up pulling it off the roll with it making that pulling apart noise that you can get when dismantling forms that are in triplicate.
And for those of you who say two-ply is more wasteful and therefore less ecologically sound than one-ply have no idea how much extra hot water I would have to use washing my hands after using one-ply before I felt comfortable. Trust me, two-ply is better for the environment in my case.
Dealing with #2 (DEFINITELY no pun intended), there really isn’t anything to decide; it’s a given. Over the top if you don’t have a cat, from underneath if you do. It’s to avoid this:
Wayne's Whirled 
