things and stuff

Hey check it out. I beat Civilization III on "Emperor" level finally. I did it as Tokugawa with my new favorite Civilization, Japan. I'll tell you what, having a ton of Samurais maurading around early in the game is a real advantage. India never knew what hit them and Germany thought they had me pinned down, right up until I captured thier only sources of horses and oil. I don't care how many technological advances you've made Bismarck, if you aint got oil or horses, you can't move around.

Also, if I hadn't mentioned it before, I defend my thesis on March 13th, and I'll be in the UK that entire week. Now that my campaign with Civilization is over, I think I need to start brushing up on algal fatty acid metabolism again.

Clearing the Backlog - Part 2.

Between my last post and this one, I tried playing Civilization III on "Emperor" level as I recently managed to beat the game on the next lowest level, "Monarch". I think I just have to resign myself to being happy as a Monarch, cuz that Emperor shit is impossible. Maybe one of these days I'll get Civilization IV.

Anyway, I thought that I might get Part 2 done and maybe that will be the end of the backlog. Some of you may remember that really warm weekend we had here in the mid-Atlantic last month, maybe the second week of January? Anyway, my wife and her friend Jen managed to rouse their lazy significant others (me and Tom) up for a really nice bike ride along the paths winding out of central DC to Old Town Alexandria over the Potomac. I couldn't believe how warm it was that day, it felt like any other day in the spring (definitely not winter). Along the way we decided that this day would be the day that we started our awesome hipster bike gang. Chris dressed in some electric blue dress with a matching tiara and Jen had a devil's tail poking out of her waistband and some clip-on horns. Many heads were turned along the bike path.


Chris, Casey, Jen, Tom - the bike gang

The three of them each had decent bikes. I on the other hand had a real heavy POS I picked up for $75 from Toys 'R' Us, with knobby dirt tires. Needless to say I had to work pretty damn hard to keep up with everybody. Thank goodness Tom agreed to take the Metro back with me to DC from Old Town, because I'm certain I wouldn't have made it.



Okay on to the next topic.

In a previous post I made brief mention of Christmas without actually saying anything. So, just so you know, Chris and I spent the holiday at Chris' folks house in Long Island (as we do every year). It was nice and relaxing (as it is every year) and Ollie came with us to keep us walking around. I ate alot, gained some weight, and picked up some nice loot. The best of which was a new cookware set to replace our old shit, particularly the frying pans.


Guess which ones are old and which are new...

The interesting part of the trip for me though was the half day we spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the day before and after Christmas (we did one floor one day and the other floor the next). I had never been to this museum before and was therefore totally unprepared for all the amazingly cool shit there was to see. I only have a very small sample of the pix we took up on the old Flickr photo dump. I thought I should leave you with at least one thing to look at though. So here's a picture of a goofy looking Japanese Emperor. Maybe he just beat Civilization III.

Clearing the Backlog - Part 1.

I have all these old topics littering my brain, which I had meant to blog about as long as 6 weeks ago. The reason I haven't blogged them before is because they are all photo-associated and I got lazy about uploading the pix from my camera, to the puter and then to Flickr. I don't want them to get too stale so I've decided to just blast them all out now in one big push, akin to my adventure on the side of I-270 the other day.

So here we go, in reverse chronological order:

Last weekend was fairly awesome for me. Somehow I had this huge surge of energy, which I parlayed into finishing several old projects I had lying around the house for a year or more now. The first of which was the installation of a nice display shelf for all of my radioactive Fiestaware.



If you were to Google "radioactive Fiestaware" you might find a link to Cecil Adams' "Straight Dope" column on the subject. Mr. Adams is usually right about most things but you shouldn't consider the guy the last word on anything. In particular he states that, "The actual amount of radioactivity [of the red Fiestaware] is extremely low--less than the normal background radiation you get from rocks and stuff." which is 100% unqualified bullshit. I would show you a picture of my Geiger counter pegged out when the probe is next to one of these Fiestaware dishes, but that's a little bit of show and tell I prefer to save for real life. So if you don't believe me, stop over for a visit some time.

Anyway, my second big project I finished last Saturday was this fish tank. Which I set up on the bookshelf just below the Fiestaware.



It is currently populated with three Danio Zebrafish, which are essentially the cheapest fish you can buy. My thinking here is that if I turn out to be a horrible fish-dad, their demise won't hit the wallet too hard and I can try again, hopefully the wiser. I have kept the fuckers alive for a week now, so I think I'm doing OK. These guys are a ton of fun to watch. I'm going to give it three months before I try to upgrade. And by "upgrade" I'm referring to an ulterior motive I have in setting up this fish tank, but I won't reveal that until I've already executed the plan (and no, it doesn't have anything to do with the nearby Fiestaware).

Alright. I think that's enough for now, maybe I'll blather out the rest later today or tomorrow.

Craigslist rules

I sold some stuff on Craigslist last week. I've only sold stuff on eBay before this, so giving Craigslist a run seemed like a good experiment. What I've learned - Craigslist is awesome if you just want to sell something fast. I did, so it worked out nicely when I got about 20 inquiries regarding my ad. I got what I asked for (100$) and the stuff was gone within 48 hours of posting. Capitalism can be so satisfying. The experience made me want to scour my house for other shit to sell.

Somebody won the Superbowl!

...but I have to admit, that this year, I hardly cared who. Thanks to everyone who came by to watch the Superbowl. It was fun having everyone over and I hope you all had fun too. I will say this though, next time I throw a superbowl party, I will have to make a rule, No Chatting in the room with the big TV! It became difficult to get into the game because I couldn't hear any of it! I must admit though, I'm not sure what the "causality" was - whether people were chatting because few cared about the game, or whether people didn't care about the game as much because of all the chatting. In any case, I apologize to anyone who came by really hoping to focus on the game itself. I hope the social scene made it worth it and you still had tons of fun watching the antics of the tots and the dog and Molly's spectacular demonstration of strength.