PurpAnd

Woah, did I just say that? I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true. Well maybe not love love, but like love. I listen to it in the car, at work, at home… I fear it’s an obsession. That’s ok though cuz you know how when you find something new (new car, new food, new love interest) you just want to be with it all the time? Right, well that’s how I feel about country music (still can’t believe this is happening).

Until recently, whenever I was asked what music I liked to listen to I would respond with, “anything but country.” As if it was a disease, a bubonic plague of aural origin. I hated country music so much that I would rather listen to oldies on my car radio that only received AM and the local country radio station.

I had (and still have) good friends who love country music… I remained friends with them against my better musical judgment. I have step-siblings who are country fans, one of whom epitomizes Country. I live in an area where country music is likely the most popular genre and I’ve fought it for 20 years. Not anymore, I have succumb.

It happened when I bought my truck after moving back to Sacramento. The previous owner had a few stations on the presets - 98 Rock, cool. NPR, good. And KNCI, the local country station. The particular radio in my truck is an after-market component and I have no clue (still don’t) how to change the presets. I listen to 98 Rock quite a bit, but when commercials come on I go searching for my 4-minute replacement tunes. The country station is the next one up the dial.

While out for work one day, 98 Rock went to commercial and I switched the radio up one notch. Carrie Underwood’s ‘Cowboy Casanova’ was on and it was jammin’ (have you guys heard that tune? Solid.) Well I left the radio on that station for the rest of the song and kept it there until I got home an hour later. I listened to some Gary Allan, Keith Urban, Eric Church… all good stuff.

I’ve created a country music station in Pandora that competes for play time with my Weezer and Owl City stations. I’m even beginning to be able to identify some of the country artists by voice. I never would have thought this day would come, but in life you have to expect surprises. So, I guess you can count me a country music fan. Oh, and count me a Carrie Underwood fan too… she’s purty.

If you live in Vegas, you are probably sick of hearing that phrase and if someone utters it in your vicinity you probably want to punch them in the throat. I don’t blame you. The story of my most recent Vegas trip, thankfully, is not an obnoxious one and it can be shared.

A couple weeks ago I went down to Vegas with four friends for what we called a ‘Wallets Only’ trip. No luggage, no hotel room, just the clothes on our backs and the money in our pockets. We flew down on Friday in time for a late dinner, gambled the night away, and then hopped (or in our case, slithered) ourselves back onto an airplane the following morning.

A nice surprise came at the Las Vegas airport as we were leaving the terminal to catch a cab. One of my buddies said, ‘hold on guys, I’ve arranged a ride.’ We strode through the baggage claim area and spotted our driver holding a sign for ‘The Fiends’ (the long-time name of our group of guy friends). We giddily took the escalator downstairs to the VIP parking area where our driver showed us to our silver limousine. Pimp. (Aside: anyone see the episode of The Office last week where Michael, Dwight, Andy, and Oscar rode in the limo? Cracked me up.) Knowing that we had only a short while until our dinner reservation, my limo-ordering friend casually said, ‘the Palazzo please.’

The Palazzo is the new addition to the Venetian and our reservation was at Cut, Wolfgang Puck’s steakhouse restaurant off the casino. Arriving a tad early, we waited in the cocktail lounge for our 9pm seating and for our fifth to show up. He had been taking in the sights all afternoon since he flew in at 3:30pm. After ordering our fancy drinks, our friend walked in carrying a 48 ounce plastic jug filled with alcoholic slurpee. Mmmm.

We were seated and then treated to the best service I have ever experienced at a restaurant. We had an army of waiters/servers. There must have been 10 of them in total. The head waitress came over and explained the specials, and the types of meat they were serving, and tried to sell us on every conceivable extra.

The menu was impressive with a variety of Kobe beef cuts and Wagyu beef, which I had never heard of before. Apparently, Wagyu is a hybrid between traditional Angus beef in the U.S. and Kobe beef from Japan. Most of us ordered the Wagyu and we were happy we did.

The meal was incredible. We split a lobster for the table, shared some sweet potato medley side dish, as well as two macaroni and cheese dishes and a bottle of Cabernet. One of the meat dishes (pictured), not mine, was $145! The damage I did was a little more reasonable, but this meal still ranks up there in the top 3 most expensive in my life.

Following our gluttonous performance at Cut, we headed out to the casinos. The first stop was Casino Royale, a staple in all of our Vegas visits. We managed to survive the blackjack tables, but the craps tables weren’t so nice and a few of my friends left with disdain for the place. The next stop was Bellagio where the craps table kept us entertained for a couple hours. I’m not much of a dice man, so I stayed out of it and wandered a bit, bought a severely overpriced Jack n Coke, and watched people walk by. Following the Bellagio, we made stops at Planet Hollywood and Paris which is where the luck began to run out for me. Since my buddies shared similar bad luck, we looked at our watches and realized it was almost 6am - time for breakfast.

Breakfast was entertaining, I’m sure, to any outsider. We were dead tired, looked ragged, and none of us had made any money at the tables. The orders ranged from soup to burritos to a milkshake (me) and we sure took our time getting that food down. I could barely finish the milkshake, but felt like I had enough so we sat for a few more minutes, watched America’s Funniest Home Videos on the restaurant TVs (is that show always on?) and then went back out to the floor.

Finally my luck changed. I was sitting at a $10 blackjack table and I started to get hot cards. I won a few hands in a row and was pressing my bet with the progressive betting style (increasing the bet one chip every time I won). My initial $10 bet grew to a $45 hand. I had won seven hands in a row and then finally lost when the dealer hit to 21 and beat my 20. Ugh. I played one more hand at $10, lost it, then colored up and left the table. In under an hour I had taken the casino for $175.

We left Paris a little bit after 8am and slowly made our way back to the Palazzo so our friend could get his sportsbook tickets. (The Palazzo has a heckofa sportsbook by the way, I’ll be going back there). Following the brief stop at the sportsbook, we found some chairs near the lobby payphones and rested for a while until we finally decided to catch a cab and go back to the airport (but not until after we went looking for a frozen yogurt or ice cream shop that could not be found).

Upon returning home, I showered and then turned the TV on to watch some college football. I passed out and slept from 2:30 until 9:30! I woke up, ate some mac and cheese, then went back to sleep from 11 until 6:30 the next morning. Perfect!

Overall, it was a pretty fun trip. I won some cash, had some great food, and a lot of laughs. And, it was pretty awesome to walk through the airports with no bags. If the guys are up for it, I’ll do it again.

I’ve had some relatively serious posts over the past several weeks. So for relief I submit to you the following:

My eyes are too close together.

I came to this conclusion when picking out a new pair of eyeglasses. Every pair I tried on seemed to make me look cross-eyed and my head look small. Not what you want necessarily. I remember commenting about a girl I knew whose eyes were too close together (I was much younger when making this comment). I’d thought it was creepy and odd, but maybe it was just a reflection of what I didn’t like about myself.

I learned in art class how to draw a face with relative ease. You’re supposed to draw two ovals of equal size, with the same width of blank space between them. So if you were to measure from the outside corner of the left eye to the outside corner of the right eye, (we’ll call this the total distance, or TD) there is the equivalent of three eyes’ width, or EW. Apparently, this is how you draw ‘normal’ looking people. In Algebra, the equation would look something like this:

TD = 3 EW

For me, there is less than an eye width between the eyes. So I probably rock an eye equation of TD = 2.75 EW, or somewhere around there. I got to thinking what this could mean… I realized that (now I don’t really like to stereotype, but I am doing it here for comedic purposes) my Asian friends have slightly wider-set eyes. Something like TD = 3.25 EW. And then I noted that my Asian friends are all pretty dang smart and I thought, “BINGO! Wider-set eyes means bigger brains!” So I tested my theory with other animals and came to the deer. They probably have eye equations of something like TD = 5 EW, but they have a tendency to run into the street in front of cars… not so smart. So maybe that theory doesn’t really work.

Anyway, I’ve decided that the ‘normal’ equation is really just a simple rule of thumb to draw faces that resemble humans. I’m ok with this ,but I am still tight-eyed. (Not to be confused with tye died, tight wad, or tight-assed).

For fair warning while out in the world, here are some things to know about tight-eyed people.

- they have sub-par peripheral vision and can be snuck up on very easily
- they tend to be nearsighted
- they look cross-eyed with glasses on, please don’t make fun. They are still human and they have real feelings
- some may have such a severe case of tighteyedness that they lack depth perception and often run into things
- and lastly, although it may look like they are staring, they are really just trying to focus on what is in front of them

Final Note:
I thought it would be fun to try and derive the eye equation for Sloth from the Goonies.

Thanks rachelmaude.com for the image

I’d say TD = -0.3y * 3.5EW, where y equals the angle of inclination.

By the way, remember how Sloth could wiggle his ears? Hilarious.

(somewhat inspired by The Little Cat)

I’ve seen six Giants home games and I have tickets to see 3 more. The team started the season horribly, quickly sliding to a 3-8 record, but they’ve turned it around and are very much in the hunt for a wild card berth. I’ll admit I haven’t been a huge fan of baseball over the past few years. I am not exactly sure why that is, perhaps ‘ve been too busy or maybe it’s fair weather related, but I’m into it now. What was once my favorite sport to watch and play as a kid, has resumed its post near the top of my list (golf is still king).

I really like AT&T Park. It’s gorgeous, offers incredible views, and is super easy to get to. I love walking along the concourse and watching the people scoot around grabbing their draft beers and garlic fries. I like watching the sail boats in the Bay perform moves that seem to defy physics. And I especially love sitting in my seat, anxiously anticipating the next big Giants hit, blowing the game wide open.

I’ve seen more games started by Tim Lincecum this season than I have any other pitcher. Tim is a genious on the mound. And in an era where pitchers are encouraged to minimize their body movement within their windup, Tim’s windup and delivery are considered slightly unorthodox but entertaining. The dude is 26 (I think) and hails from Seattle so he is used to (and loves) pitching in the cold. His ERA is hovering in the low 2s, which is nearly unheard of these days. He is the defending Cy Young Award winner and it could be very close for him to win a second one this year (that is unless Matt Cain, another stellar Giants starter, beats him to it).

Another interesting aspect about the Giants is the changing starting lineup. The starting 8, excluding the pitcher, are rarely the same from night to night, which either shows Bruce Bochy (the manager) isn’t quite sure who he likes best, or he knows who will perform best in certain situations. For example, Travis Ishikawa didn’t play on Friday night against the Reds, but started last night against the Dodgers and hit a home run.

If the Giants don’t make the playoffs this year I’ll be disappointed, but I’ll certainly look forward to next year. I think they are building a solid team around some good and improving young players and it will be fun to watch them mature. I just want to say thanks to the Giants and the rest of the baseball world for getting me back into the game.

- One thing I would like to complain about though… where have the stirrups gone? What is this with the baseball pant legs dropped all the way to the shoes? I don’t like it and I want it to change. On any given team there are less than a handful of players who still wear the stirrups like the old baseballers used to. I think it looks slick and it’s what makes baseball players look like players and not the neighborhood riff-raff. Grr. (Man, I’m getting old.)

Today was looking like it was going to be Sunday Suckday since I had to go to work this morning and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I dragged myself up early and managed to get my work done before lunch. This was a very pleasant surprise and it freed me up for playtime the rest of the day.

I’ve wanted to visit the Marin Headlands for a long time, probably as long as I’ve lived in San Francisco (just over two years). Today was the day. My roommate and I hopped in the car and made a quick trip up there. Arriving on the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge was like crossing into another world. While it had been sunny in San Francisco, a mere two miles away, Marin was being smothered by low clouds and a healthy wind. There is a famous/popular overlook on the hillside just above the water that I have always wanted to see. It is a bit of a walk from the parking area, but as we got closer to the edge of the cliff, the view didn’t improve… the clouds were just too dense. Once there, I snapped this photo:

You can barely make out the lower portions of the suspension cables.

Thinking the sun would eventually come out, we left for a hike on the ocean side of the Headlands where I snapped this photo from atop one of the peaks:

After trekking around the sandy hillside and pretending to bomb passing ships from inside the old gun bunkers, we left to head back to the Golden Gate Bridge overlook and were excited to see the clouds had moved away. That’s when I shot this photo:

So it looks like all we needed was a little time. The view was incredible and I’ve checked something off my list of things to do in San Francisco. This Sunday Suckday actually turned out to be a Sunday Fun Day!