compartimiento molesto

For some reason, I've been receiving the Spanish Sports Illustrated in the mail. It's addressed to me! So I'm wondering if I'm getting it as a joke. It figures that something I'd get for free would be something I can't read. Maybe I should use this as an excuse to learn Spanish.

Pretty Fun Game, Educational Too

I found a pretty fun game on the internet. The object is to place each of the fifty states on a blank outline of the United States. If you start with an interior state it's pretty hard to place it right, but not placing a border state correctly is almost inexcusable. As you place more and more states on the map it gets pretty easy, though.

Oh yeah, I guess you want me to tell you where it is! Click here.

Thwarted Attempts at Female Friendship

Most of my friends are guys. I would like to develop more female friendships, but it seems that I really have no idea how. This is not something that comes naturally to me. Events like the following, which happened a few Sundays ago at church, make me think that I'm doomed to never find myself in the right circumstances to meet female friends. I arrived at church on time for a change, so I had my choice of seats. I chose to sit in the back row because two of my friends were already there. A girl came in a few minutes late to the service and sat in my row, with one seat between us. She was someone I had seen before but never talked to. I figured I would have an opportunity to talk to her after the service. About 10 minutes after that more latecomers arrived. Among them was a guy about my age. He recognized the girl sitting near me and asked her if anyone was sitting in the seat between us. There wasn't, so he took that seat. Since they knew each other, they chatted for a while after the service, while I talked to my friends sitting on my left. When I looked behind me the girl was gone. So that's pretty much how things work with me. All attempts to just meet women are thwarted.

Laughing out loud by oneself

Is it okay to laugh out loud by oneself? I say most definitely. I do it all the time, mostly at things on television or the radio. Living by myself, I don't have many opportunities for group laughter. The reason I ask is that I seem to remember hearing or gotten the vibe that there was a stigma attached to solo out-loud laughing. Does anyone know if this stigma is real or did I just imagine it?

Fake babies are scary

The PS3 commerical with the fake baby really scares me.

Watch.

Frustrating Fruit Follies

Buying fruit at the grocery store causes me major annoyance. Chief among these is the purchase of bananas and peaches. Whenever I try to buy bananas they only have two kinds to choose from, really yellow or really green. You don't want either. If you buy really yellow bananas they are already ripe and like me, if you eat one per day, by the time the fifth or six day comes, the remaining bananas are past ripe and mushy. Then your only resort is to make banana bread and who wants to do that? If you buy really green bananas you have to wait a few days for them to ripen. Ideally you should buy a bunch that is mostly yellow, with only a hint of green, indicating that they are ripe and will stay ripe for the remainder of the week.

Peaches are my favorite fruit. Which made the discovery that they are seasonal quite unpalatable (pun intended). Around these parts you can only buy peaches in the store between May and October. I haven't seen them in any store any other time. If the planet we live on is a sphere (it is) and consists of two hemispheres (it does), one of which has its warm season when the other has its cold season, then we should be able to import peaches from wherever they grow around the world! We can put a man on the moon (12 men, actually) but we can't have peaches year-round?! What's wrong with the world?

Vocabulary Lesson #3

murf (v.) - to vomit. "I was feeling sick, but after I murfed I felt much better." Sounds a lot nicer than 'vomit,' doesn't it?

Tired of Credit Card Applications?

Tired of getting annoying credit card applications in the mail? Save some trees and your sanity by calling the opt-out number at 1-888-567-8688. By calling this number you can opt-out of getting credit card applications for five years. If for some reason you change your mind, you can call the same number to opt-in.

Weird/Interesting Dream

I have some pretty strange dreams once in a while. I think I may start documenting them for my own amusement. Once in a while I have a dream that seems like it could be the plot of a movie. Except that I always wake up before the movie's conclusion, so I never know what happened. Can I get a refund?

So anyway, the other night I dreamt that I had to defend my neighborhood from a roving band of ravenous alligators and my only weapon was a can of mace. For some reason I could only use mace, I couldn't use a baseball bat or, I don't know... a gun?! And I had to make sure that I maced the gators right in the eye, otherwise they wouldn't be affected. So I had to get real close to the gator before I could mace it! Sounds safe to me. I guess this is what makes dreams so weird. And of course, I woke up before I found out what happened. Maybe it's better that way because I probably was going to end up losing a hand. Chomp.

Panera Bread Update!

Woo-hoo! It cometh.

Panera Bread, get in my belly!

One of the things I miss about living in Maryland is having a Panera Bread close by. Can you believe we don't have these in Austin? Despite Austin's alleged "aversion" to chain restaurants, real or imaginary, P.B. is a very Austin-y place. A chain of bakery-cafes offering tasty sandwiches, fresh baked bread, soups, iced green tea, and Wi-Fi! So bring your laptop and surf the net while trying not to spill hot soup on your keyboard.

The reason I bring this up is that I have been making several business trips to Cedar Rapids, Iowa over the past few months. There is a Panera Bread within walking distance of my hotel, so I have been making several trips there during the week for dinner. It's definitely making me want to make a pitch for Panera Bread to expand to Austin. Who do I need to talk to to make it happen? Somebody let me know.

Vocabulary Lesson #2

I have decided to attempt a regularly-occurring vocabulary feature. Snood was the inaugural word. This feature will attempt to explain words that I created so that you will know how to use them in everyday conversation. So without further delay I give you...

snügens (interjection) [snoo-genz] - an expression of frustration. The u-umlaut is critical. It is highly recommended to use snügens with an exclamation point. Example of use: "Snügens! I left my [highly valuable object necessary for my survival] at home!"

Biked 35 Miles Today

Most of you (those who read this) know that my favorite recreational activity is mountain biking. I have my friends Shane and Aaron to thank for getting me into it. This spring, wanting to branch out and add something different to my recreational portfolio, I bought a road bike. So now I have dual bikeablilty and I'm trying not give either type a higher priority. But it's difficult to do so because I have more friends who are into road cycling.

This morning I rode with 3 friends from church along some of Austin's suburban scenic roads. The route consisted of the northern part of Loop 360 down to Bee Caves Rd, then out to Route 71 and back. The whole route is about 35 miles. It's a very scenic route with a lot of hills, so it's definitely a workout. I'm still sore even as I write this. My hope is to be able to do some kind of biking most weekends and try to improve on my distance and hill-climbing ability. We'll see how it goes, as I don't have a great history when it comes to achieving exercise goals. Wish me luck.

Proof that Texas has hills

My parents recently bought a 2-acre plot near Medina Lake, 20 minutes west of San Antonio. This is where they hope to build a home for their retirement years. Not all of the land is usable, unfortunately, because it descends the side of a steep hill. The region to the west of San Antonio and Austin is known as the Texas Hill Country. As you can see from the pictures the area lives up to its name.






Starting from the road, there may be about 25 feet before the hill descends. The plan is to build the house along the slope of the hill so that a walk-out basement/lower level is possible. For those that don't know, basements in Texas are rare because underneath the thin layer of topsoil is an unyielding mass of limestone. Making a basement-sized hole in the limestone is cost-prohibitive. As such I've never seen a basement in any Texas home, unless the house is built on the slope of a hill.

Confessions of a Wikipedia addict

I use Wikipedia alot, which is an online encyclopedia whose entries can be edited by anyone. Anytime I want to know more about a subject I'll just look it up here. Usually if I'm not careful I'll keep clicking links within articles, taking me to other articles, and on and on until I've wasted a large chunk of time. The variety of articles that you'll find here is a lot more encompassing than your standard leather-bound encyclopedia. Click here for an example of an article you won't find in Brittanica.

Recurring Dream

Do you ever have recurring dreams with a similar theme but the details are a bit different? For me, the dream that I have more often than any other always has the same basic premise. I'm back in high school (only the school looks nothing like my high school and as far as I can tell my classmates are different) and it's first period and I have a huge semester-long assignment due in my seventh-period class and I haven't even started it yet! In fact I totally forgot about it until that day! This is such a scary premise for me because I was such a good student in high school and never would have completely blown off an assignment. Fortunately I always wake up before seventh period rolls around. The feeling of relief when I wake up is like no other!

So this makes me wonder: What do people who were bad students in high school dream about? Turning in assignments on time??

What is a snood?

Don't believe what the dictionary tells you. A snood is not a hairnet. Nor is it an addictive PC game where you have to shoot weird creatures out of a cannon in the hopes of matching them with prearranged creatures of the same type and in doing so disintegrate them.

When I was in college I used to make up words. Usually these words filled a gap in my vocabulary. I would think, "Hey I need a 1-2 syllable word that describes this situation." One of the words I made up was "snood." Yes, I know technically it was already a word, but I didn't find that out until later. And it was before the game came out. So I'll still take credit for it, thank you.

Snood is an extremely versatile word and can be used in several contexts.
(1) As a semi-insulting term to describe one who is either annoying you, is acting in a manner contradictory to how you think they should act, or has changed his plans with you at the last minute.
"You snood!" "C'mon, don't be a snood!"

(2) As a means of prefacing a statement that may be obvious or a question to which the answer may be obvious. "I don't mean to be a snood, but ___ ." It's a way of saying, "Yes, despite the obviousness of the statement or question, I'm going to say/ask it anyway!"

(3) Alternate forms of snood include:
"snoodery" - the state or practice of being a snood. When someone stumbles across a group of snoods he could exclaim, "What's all this snoodery?"

"snooding out" - just a minor variation to describe the last-minute changing of plans. "So you're snooding out on me?"

Hopefully that was enough to convey the subtle nuances of "snood." You won't really start to get it until you use it in conversation. So go ahead and try it and report back to me.

This could be the start of something... weird

Well, I couldn't take it anymore. Everyone else in the world had a blog except for me. I have a lot of things to rant about (I mean discuss!), so now I'll have a place to share them. For now I've decided to title my blog "Snoodery." I'll explain what that means in the next posting for those that don't know.