When you were young, did any of you drop candy into Coke to see what it would taste like, and more importantly, if it would fizz?
I used to love to do that. My favorite effect was with a cinnamon flavored Certs.
This is a really useful bookmarklet that I just found. It’s called Highlight word. Just follow the directions on the page for how to add it to your browser.
What does it do? Highlight a word in a web page, and then click that bookmark, and dictionary.com automatically opens up to the definition of that word. Very handy.
I now know how to drive a stick shift.
At the request of a friend of my grandparents’, I took a little trip down to Florida to pick up a car for her. Never mind the fact that I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift at the time. Oh, no. My mouth made a promise that my left foot couldn’t cash. At least not yet.
After a little bit of practice, I went down there and got the car and drove it all the way back up here. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I stalled out a few times, especially starting up hills, but I made it back in one piece. And that’s the important thing.
It was actually kind of fun to drive it. I could get used to it. But I’d want a lot more practice before I could really feel proficient at it.
Ricky took the day off today, so I went over to his and Tammy’s apartment today. We ate at Zoe’s Kitchen, a Greek place in Birmingham. I ate there a couple of times when I was working at Stonebridge. It was as good as I remembered. If you ever happen to be near the Galleria, give it a shot. And the pasta salad is the best I’ve ever had.
Afterwards, there was the requisite playing of Playstation. Many foes were vanquished, etc., etc.
Ricky and Tammy had a date tonight (all together now…awwwww…), so I came on back home. It was probably a good thing. I was going on about an hour and a half of sleep. So I basically came home and collapsed for a couple of hours. Then I got up to find that my grandparents had cooked steak. I rewarmed it in the microwave (which I know is a travesty of sorts, but I only used medium-low heat, so it didn’t reach nuked status) . Mm-wah. I ate well today.
Last night, I went with Ricky and Tammy to the Birmingham Steeldogs game. It was a good enough game, and it actually went into overtime. We lost, but oh well. At least the overtime period somewhat subsidized the $3.25 20-ounce Diet Coke I bought at the game.
Afterward, we all went over to Ricky’s parents’ house, where I got to see Dave and Cammie Eanes, Ricky’s brother and sister-in-law, for the first time since Ricky and Tammy’s wedding. I got to see Jacob again (he’s over a year old now), and their chocolate Lab, Mocha (I’m so jealous; that’s exactly the type of dog that I want one day). We all talked a lot, and played a little impromptu Smush. Good times.
Today, my grandparents returned from a two-week trip west with a couple of friends of theirs. They put about 6500 miles on their friends’ car, going all the way out to California, up the coast to Washington, and then back east again. Once again, something that I want to do one day.
One month until the big move!
Here’s a question for you all…what’s your favorite villain character from any medium (movie, TV show, even cartoon if you’d like), and why?
There are some relatively obvious choices here, but I’ll go with one that’s just a little unconventional: Warden Norton from The Shawshank Redemption. There’s just something completely sinister about the way he looks at Andy after Andy’s been in “the hole” for a month, and gets that “I hold your life in my hands, and you know it” look in his eyes. “Am I making myself clear? Or am I being obtuse?” Just another reason it’s my favorite movie.
Although I’m really tempted to choose (if only for the name) “The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight” from The Tick.
I’ve finished changing all of the GIF files over to PNGs on all of the pages. I’ve also updated the colophon with some additional information about design decisions (such as GIF-to-PNG) and some future goals of the site.
The old thoughts section is being mothballed. I’ve moved most of the old thoughts into the archives section of the blog itself (you’ll find all of the former sections in the category listing of the archives). A couple of thoughts haven’t been moved over yet, because they encompassed multiple pages when originally written, and that’s the way I liked their layout. So I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with them yet. For now, they stay where they are.
Another change that no one should really notice is that for the most part, I’ve switched all of the GIFs on the site to PNG files. I could go into a bunch of rhetoric about how GIFs are copyrighted and so on, but I’ll save you all that. Let’s just put it this way…their file sizes are smaller. Smaller file size = quicker download time. And bandwidth saving for us, although that’s not really a big deal. We’ll never come close to our bandwidth limit. 🙂
Well, by now if you care (or even if you just frequent ESPN’s website), you know by now. I watched it, as I’ve done all the games for us this time around. I have to say, I’m really proud of this team.
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A lot of people don’t care a lick about soccer. And I can understand that. After all, it’s never been very popular here; we’ve got other major sports to fill all the days in the calendar year, all much more popular than soccer. A lot of people think it’s a boring game (and I’ll admit, I was in this camp for a long time before I saw a few games) because there isn’t a lot of scoring.
That being said, this is the most important sports event in the world. It blows the Super Bowl out of the water. Don’t believe me? Find out just how many people will watch it worldwide. Don’t be surprised if the total’s close to two billion – roughly one-third of the world’s population.
If you just can’t see yourself getting into soccer full-time, that’s okay. Treat it like the Olympics. After all, how often do we watch track and field or gymnastics (Alabama and Georgia college fans notwithstanding) other than every four years? But we’ll cheer the U.S. and its players on like we were foremost experts in whatever the event happens to be.
This team outplayed the three-time champions of the game for most of the game. Even someone like me, who doesn’t understand many of the nuances of the game could see that. We like the underdog here, even if we don’t get a chance to be it very often as far as sporting events are concerned. After all, this country was founded by some of the biggest underdogs.
My point is, when the tournament comes around again in 2006 (and in a little bit better of a timeslot for us, considering it’ll be in Germany this time instead of Asia), at least tune it in for a little while. I bet you’ll find yourself cheering the team on. And who knows? You may actually get to like the game.
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