Babygoat rocks the boat

Babygoat is enjoying her daycare but recently caused a stir: I had dressed her in a nice Iron Maiden onesie that we'd received as a gift. Apparently the image of Eddie on the front disturbed the other children and we've been asked that she not wear that to daycare anymore. It's good to see Eddie is still scary, I guess. On the other hand, I'm sometimes disturbed by how many high school kids are wearing Eddie shirts just to wear something cool looking and not because they like Iron Maiden.

Support the TV writers

Do you really want more reality shows? Of course not; so why not write to the executives in charge of TV shows to let them know you support a fair settlement with the writers.

Vacation pt. 4: Houston etc.

To finally finish off the story of our travels on our summer vacation; as stated before, we did get a meal at Taquerias Arandas but saw no goats there. Food was alright, however.

During our drive from Austin to Louisiana and then back from Louisiana to Houston, I was amazed at the rock radio we heard in Texas. The playlist was stuff I was familiar with but I hadn't heard in a while: lots of Zeppelin, Hendrix, and the Black Crowes' first album. After a few hundred miles it finally came to me: this sounded just like LA rock radio back when I was in high school.

We took some time to see Houston and I really enjoyed Space Center Houston, if only to see all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules up close as well as the Saturn V rocket. I also learned a lot about SkyLab, the biggest gap in my knowledge of the American space program.

The next day we visited the very cool Art Car Museum which had some great dioramas on the Abu Ghraib scandal as part of the more conventional collection. We followed this with a visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science which was decent and very much what we expected, although lots of oil money obviously went into the huge exhibit on oil extraction. We followed these experiences with a trip to the local Chinatown where we were quite pleased to find a fully vegetarian place that did a lunch buffet, Pine Forest Garden. Usually even the vegetarian Indian places don't do a lunch buffet so this was pretty exciting.

We spent our last couple of days at the Westin Oaks Houston, which is connected to the Houston Galleria, a huge and very beautiful mall near the city center. Lots of nice enclosed spaces to walk around in and finally, after visiting 4 different hotels during our trip, we get one whose room didn't seem to me a smidge too small for the furniture. For the most part, I still like the way the Starwood group does their hotels; Babygoat had no major complaints, either.

We finished off our summer trip with a visit to the the Spoetzl Brewery, the place where they make Shiner Bock. The tour wasn't terribly exciting but the samples of their beers were quite worth the while. Taste the bock!

Bored at work?

If you can't find lots of fun things to read about online you can make your desk jockeying worthwhile. You can help folks out pretty easily with the Breast Cancer click-to-donate program that gives low-income women free breast massages or something. You could also help feed people while improving your vocabulary at FreeRice, tho the computer geek in me wishes it was also being used to make an expert system like 20q. And if you're away from your computer, you can find intelligent life somewhere with Seti@Home, tho they could also use some dough.

A day late...

Imagine Peace; would have been more appropriate yesterday.

Goat report, 12/9/07

'Tis the season to keep an eye on the Gävle goat!

Goodbye, Civic

I had to get rid of my 1995 Honda Civic this week. I've owned it since 1997 when it replaced the aging Hyundai Excel that got me thru high school and beyond. I'm sorry to see it go, I drove it across the US to NJ back in 1998 and then back again (thru Canada) in 2004 and it had served me very well until it got punched in the face a few weeks ago. I drove it in snowstorms, through badlands, during a hurricane, to and from many a bass gig or lesson, and during desert summers with no a/c. Only put 100k miles on it, thanks to my time as a bus-using grad student.

Amongst the things I found inside my glove compartment during the final clean-out:
- a menu from the one of the best Thai restaurant I've eaten at, 'Thailand' (291 Central Ave, Clark NJ). It looks like a diner but is spicy rather than greasy inside. A good place to stop while heading to Trader Joe's.
- an unfinished roll of Garden State Parkway tokens
- Top 10 Bollywood Movies article from Salon, something we kept handy for visiting our local Indian video store on Route 130.