i’ve been twittering. twitter is pretty rad. you can find me here.

on the way out to the coast today for what is quickly becoming a weekly surf trip, i paid $1.84 per gallon of unleaded gas on the indian reservation. maybe it’s white guilt, but i can’t help but feel like i’m taking advantage somehow.

let’s face it, if he wasn’t being such a douchebag, this wouldn’t be as funny.

also, i got my absentee ballot in the mail today. shit is real.

nice job, handsome.

my pop is currently in league city, tx with the red cross. we’re all real proud of him. it’s an awesome way to spend time during one’s retirement, i think.

he flew down from strong island this past saturday to do a two-week stint handing out ~600 southern-baptist-cooked meals per day to people who don’t have food. with my pop being vegetarian, texas being texas, and southern baptists not believing that jesus was vegan, there’s a this-will-be-funny-later twist of irony in that he’s surrounded by food but doesn’t have a drop to eat.

he’s hanging in though, because dude is a scrapper. but if you’re in league city, tx. (close-ish to houston) and feel like bringing my pop a veggie burrito or something, lemme know and i’ll put you in touch. he’s easy to find — dark-olive skin, even thinner than he was a week ago, and he’ll driving a red cross truck like he’s on the race track that is the long island expressway. go get ‘em, pop.

i’ll post updates from him if/when he can send them.

because tonight during my soon-to-become-impossibly-boring run around green lake, i may have seen the only shirt that i think would be awesome on anyone:

everything i know… i learned in prison

it would work on: yuppies, assorted street thugs, hipsters, infants, and hockey moms. this particular awesome tshirt was being worn by an old guy, and not a particularly tough-looking old guy. if he had been in prison (and learned everything he knew), i suspect that he was there for some kind of white-collar crime, like arson. and if so, still funny!

mia got lasik done today and i got to watch/comfort/drop my jaw in amazement at modern science. the good news is that she can now see without glasses — one minute(!) after some oddly clockwork orange/chien andalou (both nsfw!) eye-opening/eye-slicing surgery (which was pretty awesome and pretty insane to watch from my ringside seat), she had 20/30 vision. the bad news is that it hurt when the valium wore off, so she’s now in a deep vicodin-induced sleep. i think that the wake-up-in-pain-request-a-vicodin cycle is going to persist until tomorrow morning’s follow-up appointment. and of course, lots of different eyedrops.

to summarize: cool to watch, cool that she can see, cool that she came out of it ok (touch wood), but megabummer that there’s so much pain.

also, in rereading this post, it seems that it was maybe written by an in-love-with-quirky-punctuation(and parentheticals) 12-year-old. bleh.

mia is in phila for the weekend because that’s the kind of patriot she is. she called me from the wedding of three centuries, which was taking place at independence hall. apparently the guy who plays ben franklin is marrying the woman who plays betsy ross. i had a million follow-up questions, but there was a concert starting and she had to go.

oh. wait. this actually made the news? really? follow-up questions averted.

full story here and here.

last sunday morning, i woke up with this mysteriously achieved cut across the bridge of my nose that made me look like someone (the cat?) punched me with some amount of force. it hasn’t healed yet. this weekend, pc was in town and we went down to the western bridge gallery. there was a bouncy castle installation. we went in and jumped around. i had this awesome idea to attempt a back flip, which led to me landing on my head (sucked) and then kneeing myself in the eye (double sucked). insult to injury: pc was taking video while the jumping around was happening.

there’s something awesome about receiving a black eye for conceptual art, there’s something less awesome about being taunted for it at work on monday morning.

and spending some time with her little brother in the magic kingdom. because she’s gone, i’m taking full advantage of dude time: catching up on movies i’ve never seen (the manchurian candidate was awesome), buying the queen mother of all juicers (used on craigslist), eating cilantro (she has that thing that makes cilantro taste like soap), going surfing up in the strait, and today i headed over to the range to fire off a few rounds on the rented ar-15 assault rifle.

it’s a fine weapon. light, accurate at 50′, easy to shoot. however, it’s expensive to rent, so i’m not sure i’ll be getting it again.

i first saw the plane on the train from my office window the other day and became giddy with excitement. there’s something about a plane on a train, the same way there would probably be something about a hare on a tortoise, if that ever happened.

my ride this morning took me through the train yards, where i spotted them again. but this time i had (a shitty blackberry) camera with which to document this love story.

a chance encounter on a train. a weekend layover in seattle before they had to get back to work on monday morning.

not even a small stenciled warning could keep them apart.

my baby brother, who just emailed me this gem:

i went to see a friend’s band play at the hollywood house of blues last night. super-weird night. i was in the bathroom next to dee snider when “we’re not gonna take it” came on. pretty awesome.

i have no idea how he kept a straight face, i suspect that he didn’t.

steinberg and i have been dating for four years as of march 1st. to celebrate, we went out to the olympic peninsula. it’s a really amazing place. huge mountains, views of canada, and beautiful beaches (and sometimes good surf, but not yesterday, luckily). we wandered around these beaches i’ve been wanting to show her, we went on a short hike, and took a short xc ski up at hurricane ridge. evidence below.

more photos here.

strangely, it only just occurred to me that if we had gone on our first date one day earlier than we did in 2004, we’d only celebrate it every four years. leap-year anniversary would maybe be cooler. anyway, it was a perfect weekend. thanks, berg!

sort of strangely, i can’t recall seeing any photos of my parents before their wedding portraits in 1968. there are stories: first date at aunt jemima’s house of waffles (my father ate his and then finished hers — if i remember correctly), my mother going against my grandfather’s wishes and visiting my father in incredibly snowy oswego ny for homecoming weekend, etc. but no photos.

luckily, lately, my aunt has been scanning and sending photos from her old collection. i think that this one is my favorite because it gives me a glimpse into my parents’ pre-married lives (i’m pretty sure this is pre-1968). though the more that i look at it, the more i realize that their pre-married lives don’t look particularly dissimilar from their lives now (minus the cut-off levi’s). that’s something, i think. forty years is a long time.

oh, and the other reason i love this photo is the hands on the neck. without smiles, the context changes, especially given the three people he already strangled on the ground behind them. just kidding, pop.

the year was 1982 and e.t. had just hit the theaters (my brother and i used to call him, ‘e.t. — the extra testicle’. which used to make us crack up. hey, fuck you, i was 8.). universal studios california did a whole big e.t. thing. my grandmother (gram, to us) went to visit a friend in l.a. and got her picture taken as elliott.

i had forgotten all about this picture until a few years ago when i went back to my parents house and was rummaging around in some boxes. finding it was like striking gold, only without the monetary reward.

i’ll spare you the sentimentality and simply say that she was rad. and funny. peep that grin.