High Holy Mass of Contradictions

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I’m going to some shindig on Thursday featuring “microroasted artisanal coffees.” Really? “Microroasted?” I was aware of the home roasting trend (I started to call it a craze, but I think that’s overstating the case) but hadn’t run across the term “microroasted.” I’ve actually largely given up coffee (truly, you wouldn’t believe how much caffeine I’d been consuming and for how many years of my life) but this I just gotta see.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

I’m so lame. I never got around to posting on Blog Action Day. But my excuse is that I’ve had a real roller coaster of a week. I went from, well, managing myself on Monday to having two direct reports on Wednesday, and that’s only part of it. So yeah, I really do think activism is important, I just didn’t take the arbitrarily designated day to talk about it. I wish I could link to my activism category, but I’ve been slow with this whole content import and re-tagging thing, so I’ve only gotten around to tagging one of my old posts with it. Oh well. There’s always next year.

***

On Thursday evening, Karsten and I went to hear Peter Plagens give an art lecture at the Frist with our friends Brad and Jed, and I’m pretty sure we were all creatively inspired. It was awesome. He basically talked about the struggle to embrace the new once you’ve become comfortable and familiar with the not-so-new, but unlike that rather trite-sounding summary, he was articulate and witty and insightful.

***

Speaking of embracing the new, I spent this morning working on updating the top-level honeybowtie.com site. I needed to replace a lot of the clunky tables, image-based text styling, and Dreamweaver-generated Javascript from oh-so-long-ago with a more adaptable CSS-based design. I’m not in love with how it looks yet, but it’s definitely a step in the direction I’m trying to go. The idea is to incorporate the blog and the rest of the site a bit more seamlessly, but I’m obviously not there yet.

***

Karsten is spending the day working (and I’m occasionally collaborating with him) on a project we’ve been trying to get around to finishing for several months now. Between all the chaos of the house renovation, my day job, our flea and rat troubles, sick cats, and vacation, it’s been delayed a bit. So with any luck we’ll have a scratch demo recorded by tomorrow night, even if it’s only a chorus. The artist we’re communicating with about this song has been waiting long enough and we need to get this one wrapped. I’m also trying to round up some other song ideas she might be interested in, so I guess we have next weekend already planned, too.

***

This vodka and tonic is simply perfect. I am a bartending genius, I tell you.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

I just had a lovely lunch with two former co-workers. (Sorta. I worked there for such a short period of time that we barely count as co-workers.) And it got me to thinking.

I think maybe Digital Dog is to the Nashville web industry what Kevin Bacon is to Hollywood.

The analogy only goes so far, because I've never heard that Kevin Bacon drives the people that work with him crazy. But just as when you play a "six degrees" game, you can always join movie people through Kevin Bacon, I doubt there's a web professional in Nashville who's more than a few degrees away from Digital Dog.

In fact, I think it should be a drinking game. Who's in?

I've mentioned it here and there, but I thought I'd put it right here: I'm going to BarCamp today! I'm going to savor the geeky flavor, or if I don't, I'm going to escape to Fiesta Azteca for a Negra Modelo or three. See? There's no risk involved.

But anyway, I'm psyched! It should be great. I'm excited to see several of my brainy friends speak on the primary stage: Jackson Miller, Chris Wage, and Brittney Gilbert.

And then my other brainy friends will be speaking on the secondary stage -- Kat & Ivy & maybe some other folks from Music City Bloggers will talk about "Hyperlocal self-publishing portals." As if they have any experience with that! Ha, I kid.

And then maybe we'll all go out for drinks later. For serious! Why can't that kind of fun be an every-night experience?

I haven't figured out what I'm wearing, but I have, like Jackson, deliberated about what technology I'm bringing with me. And unlike Jackson, I've decided to bring my laptop. I may do a little live-blogging; why not?

Karsten and I went to the Young Professionals / Brian Ritchey / The Katies show at Mercy Lounge with a bunch of my coworkers last night. (This was after we'd been to Lyrix to see our buddy Joe Hendricks play a writers' round, which was after we'd been to Cabana with the coworkers for happy hour.) The show was great. All three acts were great, even if I'm especially partial to the latter two who are friends of ours through day job connections.

Anyway, I saw JD of Gypsy Cab Co. rockin' out with his new haircut and funky vest. Small blogosphere. No pics because it was just too damn dark in there for my Treo.

After the show was over and everyone had had their fill of after-hours dorky dancing to cheesy '80s pop, my colleagues and I sought drunk-dining options at Hermitage Cafe south of downtown. Wow. I'd never even heard of it, but apparently it has quite a following. Wow. That place was... um... an experience. Wow. You know the kind of dive where the cook is flipping hash browns with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth? Where the waitress looks about 80 even though she's probably only 40, and she says "hon" a lot? This was even divier than that. When I asked for decaf coffee, the waitress answered that it was Sanka, apparently giving me a chance to back out of the deal. I said, "well, ok" and she cautioned me again, this time more clearly: "It's not very good, hon." I reassured her that I would face the consequences bravely and she moved on to someone else's drink order. My shoes were sticking to the so-called "carpet" which was so worn it looked as if it had become a single trodden-down layer of matted grime and grease. I've never seen anything quite like it.

Naturally, the place was overrun with drunk songwriters. (Including several of us.) Heh.

I'd say more about it but I got so little sleep I think I've overstretched my ability to articulate. Off to make dinner and then go see the WJ Cunningham opening at the Estel Gallery. I think it'll be an early night tonight, though. I can't imagine staying awake much past 9 PM at this point.

Hope everyone else is having a great weekend.

For me: a simple Framboise Lambic. One of my favorites.

Karsten wanted something involving Silk Nog, since we have so much of it in the fridge (we overstocked for last week's party). So I dusted off my mixologist hat and made him up a drink, and I'm calling it the Noggy Irish Russian. Unless someone comes up with something better. It's basically a White Russian, but with Bailey's instead of Kahlua and Silk Nog instead of milk or cream. Mix well, and enjoy!

Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t mentioned it here, but I stopped drinking any alcohol for the month of November. I overdid it really badly on our company offsite retreat in Alabama, and I couldn’t stand the smell, sight, or thought of alcohol for days. And then I had a series of night sweats that I thought might have been detoxification. And so I thought I should probably dry out for a while, so I decided to give it the whole month.

And I really don’t miss it. Much. Well, sometimes when I get home from work after a particularly stressful day I think about pouring a vodka and tonic, but the thought actually stops there. With mixing the drink. I think I get just as much enjoyment out of preparing my drinks as I do from drinking them.

I don’t know, though. It’s getting close to the end of the month, and I’m kind of looking forward to my first drink in December as a test to see if I’ll still have the taste for it.

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I haven't mentioned it here, but I stopped drinking any alcohol for the month of November. I overdid it really badly on our company offsite retreat in Alabama, and I couldn't stand the smell, sight, or thought of alcohol for days. And then I had a series of night sweats that I thought might have been detoxification. And so I thought I should probably dry out for a while, so I decided to give it the whole month.

And I really don't miss it. Much. Well, sometimes when I get home from work after a particularly stressful day I think about pouring a vodka and tonic, but the thought actually stops there. With mixing the drink. I think I get just as much enjoyment out of preparing my drinks as I do from drinking them.

I don't know, though. It's getting close to the end of the month, and I'm kind of looking forward to my first drink in December as a test to see if I'll still have the taste for it.

So if you love me, you noticed I was offline for about a week. Lie and tell me you love me, dammit.

On Thursday, my employer took us on an overnight retreat to a cabin on a lake in Alabama. We did some “strategizing” and then got really, really drunk.

On Friday, one of my coworkers and I decided to stay an extra night at the cabin and get our respective spouses to come down and stay with us. It was great fun for all five of us: Karsten, me, the other couple, and their parrot. Their parrot, in fact, may have had more fun than anyone. He even developed a crush on me, I’m afraid.

Good thing he didn’t see me on Saturday night in my cat costume.

Oh yeah, so we got back on Saturday just in time for several Halloween parties, which we graced with our costumed presence. You already know my costume — here was Karsten’s:

He was a hillbilly hockey player, or something like that. The ballcap he’s wearing says “Country Western Hockey Tournament” and he found it at a thrift store. It’s real! You can’t make shit like that up. His hockey stick is homemade, and it says “Puckfucker 1000″ down the handle. The mullet wig, however, makes the costume, in my opinion.

Oh, and that’s my coworker Jim grabbing Karsten to keep him from escaping the camera. Jim was a futuristic gay spaceman from the 1950s, or something like that. (Not that Jim is gay, really — only the tight silver gym-queen shirt he wore under his spaceman suit was gay.) He wore a suit covered in duct tape; pretty classic.

Some other costumes seen: witch, devil, zombie vampire, cheerleader, French maid, King Kong & blonde, pirate… oh, and Japanese anime characters. LOVEd that.

Hope everyone’s been doing well… and missing me. Lie and tell me you missed me, dammit!

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

Oktoberfest looks to have been a big success for the Historic Germantown neighborhood, and our party was a blast. Thanks to everyone who came and partied with us, and my apologies to anyone I may have offended by suggesting they patronize the beer vendors while the festival was still running. We bought plenty of beer from the beer vendors ourselves. Yessir, plenty of beer. Yowch.

We probably had 80 people come through our house on Saturday. Bunches of people from the neighborhood, scads of coworkers and some former coworkers, quite a few songwriters and musicians, and some random good friends from who-knows-where. And 2 dogs. (Luckily, the cats were locked up in the office/studio/cat room for most of the day.)

We had drunk people climbing the scaffolding, but no falls. We had people from across the political spectrum, but no brawls. We had over a dozen people on our front stairs, and they didn’t collapse. All in all, a good day.

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Originally published at The Bee Hive. You can comment here or there.

I am completely hung over after a wonderful dinner party last night hosted by some wonderful friends in the Werthan Lofts building. Karsten and I stumbled the three blocks back home around 1 AM, fed the cats, fell into bed, and are now waking up hurting this morning.

Ooof. Even the typing is a little too loud.

Karsten's quote of the day lifetime:

"She's having a happy fit in my pants!"

***

Got a massage today at Nashville Sports Massage on Church St. I went there to see if the guy could help me with my lingering hip troubles. He really dug in, and tonight my hip hurts, but maybe in a good way. I'm going to try running again mid-next week, so we'll see.

***

Met with another lender today who offered a great deal, so we completed the application and other paperwork. We're approved for more money with less down at a lower interest rate. So now we just have to find a new realtor and a new house.

***

Karsten is experimenting with bourbon. (Thanks a lot, qe2 and nightfly. ;-) ) The other day, he bought 1-ounce bottles of Woodford Reserve and Bulleit, and tasted each one tonight. According to him, the Woodford Reserve has a "harsher mouthfeel" (I taught him that word, thank you very much) than the Bulleit. The latter, however, is emphatically wonderful, apparently.

***

Oh, and my masseur? Also a songwriter. Welcome to Nashvegas, baby.

What's your favorite before-dinner drink, alcoholic or otherwise?

What's your favorite with-dinner drink, alcoholic or otherwise?

What's your favorite after-dinner drink, alcoholic or otherwise?

It was a most pleasant weekend! toastytuft and I house-sat for my boss' boss, who made it clear that we were welcome to any of the food or wine in the house. And there happened to be a new case of Frontera Chardonnay, as well as a lot of Halloween candy.

Soooo, we did a little backsliding. OK, we did a lot of backsliding. We ate non-vegan Halloween candy (by the way, I think I like Butterfinger best, but Milky Way is not a bad contender), drank several glasses of wine (the aforementioned Chardonnay as well as a lovely bottle of Fat Bastard Shiraz -- it needed a lot of time to breathe, but it was perfectly drinkable afterwards), nibbled some cheese (Swiss! it'd been so long since I'd had Swiss cheese)... in short, we really let ourselves go. ;-)

But we also ran 5 somewhat hilly miles on Sunday morning (nothing next to Charlottesville, red_frog -- my perspective is forever skewed as a result of your town's hills), so we did make up for it all. A little bit.

Oh, and we got to watch a few more episodes of The West Wing! (Courtesy of tapes made by therealjae.) We have one more on the first tape, and the entire second tape left to watch. That should get us through the long Thanksgiving weekend -- when we're housesitting again. :-)

Originally published at The Bee Hive. Please leave any comments there.

Karsten and I huddled and decided to skip the bar and the street party. We’re going to have a private pizza-and-movie party instead, possibly with alcoholic beverages purchased for far less money than would be required in a bar. After further evaluation, we both decided that said bar was seeming less and less like a place where we’d actually have a fun Halloween, and if we weren’t particularly going to be having fun, we’d rather be home with a pizza and a movie.

If you can follow that logic.

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