Austin

I don't have any pictures of my trip yet, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what Austin looks like-- a sea of people wearing Longhorns apparel. It's not surprising given that there are over 50,000 students at the University of Texas, not to mention all the faculty, staff, and alumni, and the fact that Austin residents who have no ties to the school (if that's possible) root for the Longhorns anyway like Bostonians root for the Red Sox. In addition to an abundance of UT pride, Austin also has a high concentration of cars with "Well behaved women rarely make history" bumper stickers. It's like hippie city meets Texas. Good times.

Last Thursday

ATM fee to take out cash to pay cab: $2.00

Cab fare: $26.25 + tip

Getting to the airport on time to make your 7:25 AM flight despite the fact that you woke up at 6 AM, five minutes after the train that you were going to take to the airport had left, because while you set your alarm the night before you forgot to turn it on: Guess it comes at a price

But . . .

Net net (at the end of the day): Totally worth it

My Morning (as a McSweeney's list)

If I were to actually order beer for my horses like the heroes in Toby Keith's catchy song about vigilante justice:

• Definitely pitchers. Cheap pitchers. Watery. Maybe PBR.

First song I heard this morning that could be made into a bad animal pun:

• "You Oughta Know" by Alanis

A short playlist of songs that always get stuck in my head because they accurately describe the 3 emotional states I go through during an average workday:

• "I Should Get Up" Teddy Thompson
• "Hunger" Nicolai Dunger
• "Worn Me Down" Rachael Yamagata

When I Grow Up . . .

. . . I want to be a recapper.

Check out my dream job. Too bad it's in NYC.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Oh, and I can. It looked a little messy to have two very short posts right next to each other and I thought to myself, "If only I could go back in tiiii-ome, perhaps by using the reversible clock that I am getting Meg for her birthday (ssshhhh, don't tell). Then I could write a longer post, one of length not less than six lines, to better balance the chi of the blog." I clicked my heels together three times, clicked on "Post and Comment Options," and here we are, back at 9:40 AM Mar 21 2006. I could stay here forever. (Or I could even go all the way back to 1990. Although that would be suspicious and you might guess that I couldn't really be writing this blog in the early 90's, a period of time when my computer time was limited to an hour per week of playing Oregon Trail on floppy disks. And the dead giveaway would be that the deep insights contained on these pages definitely could not have been written by an 8-year-old.) But if I stayed right here, in this artificially constructed moment in time, I'd miss seeing my little Speedster grow up. I'll see you in the future.

I forget what my philosophy on humor is (I know I have one, though, because I remember using a stapler to try to explain it to Sophie), but I think that last paragraph violates any principles I might hold; namely, it's not at all funny but it looks like it's trying so very hard to be in a way that is pretty painful, which can only mean one thing: I actually have succeeded in turning back time to circa 6th grade when I wrote a script called "Tire of Fortune" starring Matt Wajack and Vanna Orange. It's also possible that I've actually gone insane. It happened.

Blogging

I'm not in it for the money. I do it for the comments.

St. Patrick's Day

I wanted to make the whole blog green. Because that's how you celebrate St. Patrick's Day-- by making random un-green things temporarily green. When we were little it was the mashed potatoes in the cafeteria at lunch and now it's the beer in the keg at happy hour. But it turned out to be much more of a pain than I anticipated to change the color of the whole thing so you will just have to imagine that when you loaded my blog today-- SURPRISE! It's GREEN! HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! Anyway, my cubicle neighbor just commented on my lack of St. Patrick's Day spirit as evidenced by my blue-and-white plaid shirt and jeans, but I pointed out that his olive cargo pants, while they are technically a shade of green, are not exactly a GREEN "HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY" green. I figure if you're not wearing something that is obviously green for the sake of being green then what's the point? For example, I still am not completely sure whether aforementioned co-worker was attempting to be festive or whether those pants were next in the rotation.

I always feel kind of lame when halfway through the day I realize that I just happen to be wearing an article of clothing that nominally fits the holiday color scheme because then it doesn't look like you forgot or didn't care-- it looks like that's the best you could do. That hasn't happened to me in a while, but interestingly enough I had an exactly opposite experience just the other day when I got to work and realized that to the objective observer it looked like I was all decked out to celebrate Carrot Day (yeah, I don't know either, but for what holiday would you wear lots of orange and a bright green vest?).

It's a lovely day for a Guinness.

From Our Readers

For all of you who were wondering about the half 897 in the header, here are some words from our Google champion (some call her carol'):

here's some 897 info... it's the name of that blog "skin" (format) . . . http://www.stopdesign.com/portfolio/web_interface/blogger_temp

897 is also the year that some stuff happened . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/897

but it's not an area code . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_area_codes

Whole Foods, Half Brain

I was going to write about finding a rotting pepper in my backpack the other day because it seemed like the type of anecdote one would blog about. Then I thought that if I were going to tell a story about finding produce in unexpected places, it would be better to write about the time when I found the orange in the freezer. Unlike the story about the pepper, which has a predictable ending, the orange in the freezer remains a mystery.

Day Two

It's only day two and I have run out of material. Not a good sign.

The Beginning

Apparently the journalism school at NYU has already taken the name "This Is Not a Blog," but theirs appears actually to not be a blog.

But about the pipe, I thought it would be appropriate to start off the blog with a pseudo-semi-pretentious reference that tips its hat (a top hat, probably, given the look of the pipe; or perhaps it's a beret given the "ceci n'est pas") to the idea of questioning representation. What is a blog? What does it mean to blog? How does one become a blogger? These are the questions we will ask as we problematize the notion of blogging as a modern day medium for informing the general public how fascinating you are by posting your unique and insightful thoughts, revealing your innermost feelings to complete strangers, and commenting on whether or not your roommates take a vacuum to the dog-hair-covered couch regularly enough for your liking.