Hi, Diary. … Well. … This is awkward. I’m into the idea of specialized units of measurement lately, names insular groups might use to define common amounts. A good unit of measurement captures the standard amount or size or impact of stuff in question...
I drink tea. Coffee makes me feel sick. And: tea is clean. It comes in a little bag. You don't squeeze boiling water through its guts to make juice; you allow heat to coax flavor from its twigs and berries. Also, there's the British angle, which makes...
Following up on yesterday's roll of quarters whine-fest, I used my public confession as fuel to visit H-E-B between work and band practice, determined not to let a little thing like change stand in the way between me and a simple but necessary chore like...
First off, congratulations to the Texas Rangers for being the beneficiary of my pre-season pennant pick. In this World Series between the third- and fourth-longest championship droughts, I pick the Rangers once again (in either 7 or 4, depending on whether...
My fingers are black because I'm digging through hundreds of alternative newsweeklies and throwing away any pages without my name on them. It feels as narcissitic as it sounds, but I've been hauling around an entire issue of every publication I ever wrote...
With her father. He passed before I was born. The 1960s. I hear everyone made fun of this hat. It doesn't seem to bother dad. Photo booth. Notice the Western Kentucky sweatshirt. This is what college sweethearts look like. The nurse cares for a bunny....
To What Diary It May Concern, This morning, I took V to the dentist to have her wisdom teeth yanked bloodily out of her mouth, all four. It only took a half an hour, during which I learned how ESPN (the magazine) felt about Ken Burns’ portrayal of George...
Home from work today because of a layer of ice. Austin had snow last night, about an inch, but more importantly it got wet after three days of constant below-freezing temperatures, so the roads pulled on a thick blanket of ice. The city doesn't own plows...
If you haven't spent too many hours playing with Ngram yet, you are missing out. The tool mines the scanned pages of Google Books' increasingly massive Alexandrian library and spits out word or phrase frequencies upon command. To say this is a boon to...
I haven't slept well. I drank too much last night. I pussied out on my three minutes at the open mic and dashed off stage after two minutes. I lost my car downtown, and it took thirty minutes of wandering in the cold to find it. I came into to work to...
Texas West Texas Real Texas Not Texas Arkantexas Dallas Northern California Southern California Foreclosure California Raiders Fans Utah Nevada An Uncomfortable Spot Between Utah and Nevada (AUSBUN) Prairieland Colorado Boulder North Whatever Hawaii Canada...
Just posting quickly in response to this wonderful blog post on this wonderful blog (which, though no fault of its own, is on TumblrDevil). I, too, have had the hiss of a confused elder in my ear, commanding me to put away my (entirely silent and unobtrusive)...
Sunday's all-day hangover deserves an explanation. Ever since moving to Austin, V has been frustrated by the city's lack of art, so we booked a day of art prowling during the East Austin Studio Tour, hoping to have our minds changed. We started at Domy...
So we're actually getting a bit militant in our birthing preference here at Camp Magyar. Not with friends and family, of course, because there's nothing more obnoxious than implying that someone else is doing it all wrong, and we're very careful to acknowledge...
Last week was somehow wall-to-wall activity without anything to show for it, so I haven't had a chance to sit around think about useless stuff until this morning. That's when I read an article about radical realignment for Major League Baseball (in lieu...
Men’s wallets hold a weird fascination for women. It’s a classic flirtation or early date move for a girl to grab a guy’s wallet and rifle through it. Theoretically, this is a pretty major invasion of privacy, but I’ve never seen a guy do anything but...
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed last week but not really. There are a thousand arguments against this soft ban on homosexuals in the military, many of them concerning high-minded issues about equality and liberty, many of them concerning more practical...
The Wall Street Journal invites you to get your is today. Who knows how much longer the world's is supply will last? Some scientists believe the planet reached peak is in the '70s. With is prices this high, could we be seeing an is bubble? Find out next...
Because I am, through no fault of my own, a suburban kid from Denver, I was in a ski club as a teenager. Ski clubs had a pecking order, much like country clubs. The really nice ones went to Vail. The pretty good ones went to Summit County. The hardcore...
I just remembered that there was a period of life when Christmas did not involve buying gifts. You just got them. The only gifts that children are expected to give are the ones they make at school. (Some parents may put the kid's name on a gift, but that's...
1844: For an entire day in the town of Springfield, Illinois, the customer was always wrong. 1867: Ma and pa went fishin' together, so Bo tied Sis to a tree and she got stung by gnats. 1868: The Poughkeepsie Philharmonic was founded and, eight hours later,...
So, we're looking for a new apartment. In the rest of America (so far as I've experienced it), this means hitting up Craigslist or maybe driving around a neighborhood and dialing "For Lease" sign numbers. In Austin, it means procuring a rental agents....
I'm not normally a fan of "feeling" surveys -- "How do you feel about the economy?" stories dominate financial news throughout holiday shopping season, and while I understand the implied cause-and-effect, I'm not sure how this approach is better than...
I recorded a podcast last night with Veronica and Paul and Jenn. When I'm done being drunk and then sleepy and then slightly hungover and then busy at work and then busy with chores and then busy editing it, I will post it. Salivate, my little duckies....
This will be a big one. The three chapters are: 1) We're pregnant, 2) We're giving away our dog, 3) My mom is dying. I know these three sentiments don't belong in the same post. It's like going from joy to sadness to oh fuck. But all three events collapsed...
