April
23, 2006
We have a new addition to our
family! For the past month or so, a stray cat has been
hanging around outside my hotel. She was super friendly, but
pretty dirty and hardly ever left the grill area. Last
Thursday I noticed that one of its paws was bloody, so we called a
vet and made an appointment for the next day and brought it home
(being sure to quarantining it in the office until we could test
it for feline leukemia and HIV.
The next day she went to the vet
where she got a muchly needed bath (and made no noise or
fuss...the vet said she was very agreeable), nails clipped
(starting to sound like a day at the
 kitty spa), shots, poked,
prodded, etc. We brought her home and boy, she seems super
duper happy now.
We spent a couple of days trying
to think of a name. We finally came up with one over a big
beer sampler at the
Big River Grille and finally settled on: NewCat (The
Cat) Kittenface The Agreeable. Or simply NewCat for short.
We thought she was only a year or two old by her size, but the vet
said she's actually eight or nine years old.
She and Zoe aren't liking each
other too much at the moment. Like right now, they're lying
down on opposite ends of the hallway just staring at each other.
They've only had one fight since we introduced them, but the
crappy thing was that it took place on my lap. NewCat was
sitting there growling at Zoe, who was across the room. Zoe
then got pissed, charged over, leapt up, and started hitting
NewCat. I was like "AAAAHHHH!!" as the cats turned into
battling blurs on top of me.
The funny thing is we were
thinking of adopting a new pet, but not a cat. One of our
neighbors has a
blue
dapple mini-dachshund, which we fell in love with, so we had
made an appointment to see the breeder up near Chattanooga for
this past Saturday. Since we dropped a crazy amount of
hamiltons getting NewCat fixed up and looking pretty, we didn't
have the money for a dog, but still went to check it out.
Here's one little guy...
And another picture when he
actually stood still for a second...
The breeder was located on the
top of a very high mountain ridge in the northwestern portion of
Georgia, right on the Tennessee line. As we left, we went
past a place to go hang gliding.
A glider about to launch.
There it goes...
Above the Tennessee-Georgia
border.
Looks like a lot of fun.
Sometime we'll have to come back and do this.
 Then we headed up to Chattanooga,
had dinner, walked around for a long while, enjoying the coolness
of the early evening, and went home. We then finished our
week-long run of watching the
Firefly series on Netflix with the movie,
Serenity.
A friend of mine said I had had
had had to see Firefly. It was a pretty darn good show, and
I wicked wish they had more episodes because I'm wanting more.
What I'm listening to right now:
Yo La Tengo
- Too Late
April
22, 2006
I've always heard of huge music
festivals like
Coachella, Bumbershoot,
and
Bonnaroo, and been insanely jealous of the awesome band
lineups and annoyed by the fact that I've never lived anywhere
near them. Well, today I was poking around on
Mike Doughty's blog
and saw that he played a show in Mobile, so I clicked on his tour
page where I noticed that he was playing at Bonnaroo...which is in
Manchester, Tennessee...which is only 70 miles away. Geez,
check out the list of
bands. I must go to this.
What I'm listening to right now:
Kanye West -
Gold Digger
April
16, 2006
On Friday night we went for a drive to
Athens, Alabama. While there and on our way back I took a
bunch of pictures of Alabamian scenery which you will find below
for your perusement...(note, all of the pictures were taken as
Kari drove, hence the blurriness; also some pictures have clicky
goodness for a larger size)
A tractor trailer cart full of
gourds.
A farmer's market. Probably
closed because of the giant
frickin' bees that were flying around this place. Seriously.
As big as birds. Yup.
A water cooler at the above
farmer's bee's market.
Didn't aim when I took this one.
A flea market with a dancing flea
on the sign.
A tree in the spring and
(click) the autumn.
Just begging for a tornado.
The Saturn V as seen from I-565.
A truck playing in our
Martian-like dirt.
What I'm listening to right now:
Snow Patrol -
Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking
April
13, 2006
Some may wonder how the SUPER
SECRET PROJECT is going. Some may even wonder what the SUPER
SECRET PROJECT even is (duh, it's a secret...shhhh!).
Wonder no more on the first question, it's going just fine
(and please continue wondering on that second one). In fact,
it's going so well that all other projects Kari and I have been
working on have been postponed so we can give it our full and
undivided attention. What is so important that I put aside
writing the greatest book ever? (well, the greatest since
this one at least)
Somethin' pretty
darn cool, that's what.
Heh. Check out
this video.
What I'm listening to right now:
Ryan Adams -
1974
April
12, 2006
Wow. It's been over a year
and a half (576 days) since I've last seen
They Might Be Giants
in concert. That's a big deal for me. The previous
longest I've gone without seeing them was about a year, way back
in the late 90's, and that was awful.
The first time I ever saw them
live was in October of 1994 at
Smith College.
A bunch of my friends at UMass were buying tickets to see TMBG and
they were trying very hard to convince me to go. I kept
saying no, that I've tried to listen to their music a bunch of
times but found their stuff to be just too weird (this, coming
from me who was a hard-core
Dead Milkmen fan in the mid to late 80's). Eventually
they convinced me with the words a poor college student living off
of $35 a week needed to hear: "If you don't like the show, we'll
refund the money for your ticket." Sold.
When the date of the show finally
rolled around, I was a little annoyed to find out they were
playing a free show and
signing autographs at Main Street Records in Northampton (now
closed) before their main show at Smith. Dammit! I
could have saved $15.50 by just going to the free show.
My friends and I got there to
find the place absolutely jam-packed and lots of people outside
trying to get in. We eventually smooshed our way in and had
a good view of the band who had set up on the riser at the back of
the store where the poster racks were. It was supposed to be
them playing for 20 minutes and signing autographs for 40, but
they said heck with the autographs and played for a full hour.
It was such a good time I got super excited about seeing them
again in two hours.
When we got to John M. Greene
Hall, we sat up in the balcony and I was all about TMBG.
Frank Black
opened which I wasn't crazy about (I had never listened to the
Pixies back then
so I didn't know who he was or know any of his music). Then,
They Might Be Giants hit the stage with their full band (complete
with horn section). It was the best concert experience I'd
ever had up to that point.
The next day I ran out and spent
every dollar I had and bought three of their cds and vowed to see
them in concert as often as possible. Happiness is a They
Might Be Giants show.
So yeah. I've seen them 30
times since that night, which brings us up to now. The other
day we giddily went online and bought
tickets
to see them at the City Hall in Nashville on May 5. Only 23
more days until then (ending my TMBG drought of 599 days).
My goodness, I can't wait.
What I'm listening to right now:
The Police -
Message In A Bottle
April 8,
2006
Do you have any idea how hard it
is to take pictures of lightning? Last night we had a line
of storms that went
through the area, and I surprised myself by spending four
hours out on the
 balcony
watching it all and trying to get good pictures of lightning.
Out of the 300+ pictures I took, I only got one actual bolt on
film (can you still say "film" when referring to digital
cameras?). It was frustrating because the quarter second
after I lowered my camera, or happened to pop inside to see where
the tornados were, a huge bolt of lightning would flash. We
were pretty lucky since four tornados rolled through the
Huntsville area and none of them did any serious damage.
The 1989 tornado is still fresh in the minds of locals, so
there's still an air of skittishness when it comes to this kind of
thing. Anyways, here's a few pics...
 It's
hard to see it from this picture, but the rain is coming down in
frickin' buckets. It ended up flooding most of the grassy
area around the building. It's times like this I'm glad we
live on the second floor.
While Kari watched (and slept
through) the local weather reports where they were tracking
the multiple tornados in the area, Zoe hung out with me on the
balcony. She actually seemed pretty interested in watching
the lightning, but didn't like it when the wind would blow the
rain on her.
For some reason, I took a picture
of the metal bars on the balcony, but moved the camera and ended
up getting the parking lot lights all blurred and in the action as
well. The original picture has wavy orange lines, but I
changed the hue to green (because I can).
What I'm listening to right now:
Small
Factory -
Versus Tape
April 5,
2006
The company Kari works for has a
partnership with
Jones Soda.
Right now they're doing a contest for employees to submit pictures
and the top 32 of them will be featured on the labels of their
soda. Last night we submitted a few and we were very
surprised when two of them (this
one and
this
one too) were chosen as a Jones Soda "Staff Pick"! Now I
know what they're looking for, we're going to upload a few more,
and hopefully the next time you go and buy a Jones Soda, it'll
have one of our pictures on it.
 Speaking
of photography, here's a picture of my photographs hanging in the
Willis Gray Gallery.
I think I might have offended the
weather with my comment the other day because ever since then it's
been perfect outside. 50's at night and low 70's and super
bright and sunny during the day.
Hmmm, maybe this is all a clever
ruse on the part of the weather in Alabama to lull me into a false
sense of security. Just watch, it'll drop a
tornado
on my head when I'm least suspecting it.
Happy
belated birthday to
Karie in Chicago!
What I'm listening to right now:
Pete Yorn - Strange
Condition
April 2,
2006
First off, a wicked big ol' "happy
birthday" to
my brother!
Man, it's like as soon as the
calendar hit "April" the Deep South decided to break out the
humidity. Ugh. I vote for six more months of winter.
In my mind I'm concocting
elaborate schemes on how to make up for the lack of good
music/concerts in the area by attending as many of the upcoming
They Might Be Giants
concerts in the South as possible. In the meantime,
here's a TMBG
video made by the fine folks at
HomestarRunner.
 I
walked into the living room and Zoe was sitting there in the chair
and said "Hello, Eric. Can you please take pictures of the
exceptional cuteness that is me?" It was kinda sorta hard to
say no, so Zoe had herself a little photo shoot today.
Normally she's a prissy so-and-so and has her eyes half closed all
the time, so, with the help of a nearby ribbon from her toy pile
(everything she thinks is "hers" she puts into a big pile by her
doublewide scratching box - she's very materialistic like that), I
was able to get her rapt, wide-eyed attention long enough to take
70-something pictures.
She's looking at you...and she
wants tuna. Bring her some.
What I'm listening to right now:
The Doors -
Not
To Touch The Earth
© 2006 Eric Nixon. All rights reserved.
|
