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May 13th, 2005
02:11 pm - Procrastinating
I kinda like lyrics memes, and since I am (a) procrastinating and (b) answered entirely too many of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) jacquez's items, I'll play too:
- Please don't go crazy if I tell you the truth
I take a breath and pull the air in 'til there's nothing left
- The Postal Service, "Recycled Air" - cheerfulchaotic
Let me say this to you / I'll be steadfast and true
- Nick Cave, "Rock of Gibraltar" - jacquez
- When she walks down the street / she knows there's people watching
- Come out quick and count the corpses / I'm sure we killed a family
- Looking back with perfect symmetry / mistakes were you, mistakes were me
Back in the days when I was a teenager / before I had status, before I had a pager
- A Tribe Called Quest, "Excursions" - miss_holly_g
- Cultivating sounds for all the mothers who come near to find out
- We used to meet every Thursday, Thursday in the afternoon
Cease to resist, giving my goodbyes / drive my car into the ocean
- Pixies, "Wave of Mutilation" - dr4b
Same rules; more or less the first line of the last ten songs in my current iTunes playlist, minus the ones without any lyrics. Websearching is cheating.
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July 14th, 2004
04:19 pm - moving out of the physical plane
I have decided to evolve into a being of pure light, wisdom, and energy.
Surprisingly enough, the first step in that process appears to be switching to a personal weblog instead of using LiveJournal.
I'll be keeping the LJ account around for commenting on other people's posts, but I think I'll be making my remarkably sporadic posts on the weblog instead.
jacquez has kindly created a LiveJournal syndication feed of the weblog called ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif?v=92.2) nlanza_log for me.
Rumors that the switch comes because I can never remember the LJ-specific tags without looking them up each time are only 50% likely to be true.
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May 18th, 2004
01:27 am - Bowie
My ears are still ringing, but I'm okay with that.
Good lord was that a great show.
The opening act (the Stereophonics) was pretty good, and then Bowie played for two hours and change. He did a good mix of older and newer stuff, with the older stuff rearranged and updated a bit so it sounded fresh.
Cactus, Hallo Spaceboy, China Girl, Under Pressure, Heroes, and The Man Who Sold The World were especially good. His encore was an utterly fabulous version of Ziggy Stardust.
Also, seeing concerts at the Benedum is nice. The seats are super-comfortable, the view is good, and the whole place is gorgeous.
Also also, I gotta see if I can find a bootleg of the show somewhere.
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May 7th, 2004
12:09 am - Also.
FIFA Soccer 2004: Remarkably fun.
Captures the feel of a game a lot better than the previous versions I've played. There's a nice amount of tension, and outwitting the defense is a lot of fun.
Also: the players are well-rendered enough that it's actually kind of creepy.
Also also: the way the crowd erupts after an overtime goal is very satisfying.
Also also also: This is the latest version of what is apparently the best-selling game franchise ever. Why was it so damn hard to find in local stores? I ended up buying it from Amazon because none of the three stores I checked actually had a copy.
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May 6th, 2004
10:29 pm - Sure, Jack Chick is crazy, but...
From Jack Chick's message about his freakish new tract:
So with hardly any opposition, the sodomites and their aggressive gay machine became a force to control politicians, judges, the media and finally our school systems.
The man's a lunatic and all, but hot damn do I love saying "aggressive gay machine".
Say it with me.
Aggressive gay machine.
Aggressive gay machine.
AGGRESSIVE GAY MACHINE.
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January 17th, 2004
06:18 pm - cats!
I've wanted a Maine Coon cat for a while, so today jacquez and I went out to the Humane Society of Westmoreland County in Greensburg because Petfinder showed a really cute grey Coon mix.
We came back with him and another one that adopted Laura by crawling up her jeans, burrowing into her jacket, purring madly, and refusing to let go.
They're both amazingly friendly and outgoing, and they're adjusting nicely. Our older cats are still pretty freaked out and hissing/growling about the whole thing, but hopefully they'll get over it soon enough.
Pictures in Laura's journal.
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October 31st, 2003
05:42 pm - halloween
Right now I'm sitting on my front porch watching The Nightmare Before Christmas on Laura's laptop and handing out candy to the hordes of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.
The weather's gorgeous and the streets are filled with happy kids in costumes and parents snapping pictures of them.
It's a lot of fun.
Also, I do so love wireless networking.
Edit: Midway through, a few trends are clear: Kids sure do like kit-kats. Even when we bury the kit-kats at the bottom of the bowl, kids dig and dig until they find one. Also, the little kids are fascinated by our cats staring out through the screen door and the bigger kids tend to be fascinated by the laptop-based movie.
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September 20th, 2003
12:34 am - tonight
Tonight jacquez, basingstoke, and I went out to the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern to see Khafif. American tribal bellydance at a Polish bar named after a bridge. Couldn't really be all that more Pittsburgh-ish, I guess.
It was fun. Cheap beer, good music and dance, etc, etc. There was supposedly also a band, but when we left around midnight they weren't even done setting up. Maybe they're good. I dunno. I do enjoy saying "embraces the sound of shoegaze/dreampop and early alternative pop/rock", though.
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August 3rd, 2003
11:53 pm - vacation, sunday
Wandered around Harvard Square some more, lunch at Pho Pasteur (good pho with beef and tripe, okay fresh rolls), spent the afternoon at the aquarium, dinner at Legal Sea Food (approximately a million people at the table, decent food, drinks), a side trip to a dive goth bar, and then back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we head down to the Vineyard and spend the rest of the week sleeping and swimming. Mmm.
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August 2nd, 2003
03:12 pm - vacation part 2: the brevity edition
Wandering around in Cambridge. Bought ~$200 of CDs in Newbury Comics. Wish there were more good CD stores back home. Weather's gorgeous. Heading out to a barbecue later. Still glad I'm not at work.
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August 1st, 2003
10:09 pm - vacation
Today I'm in scenic Cambridge, MA. Monday I'll be on Martha's Vineyard visiting my mom. Sometime later I'll go home.
Sweet flaming christ am I glad to not have to go to work for a while.
That is all.
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July 7th, 2003
10:14 pm
The cover story in yesterday's New York Times magazine, In the Face of Death, is worth reading.
It's about the penalty phase of a capital murder trial and how the jurors' feelings about the death penalty changed over the course of the trial.
It's also one of the most upsetting things I've read in a while, for a variety of reasons.
I'm interested in hearing what people think about it.
Note that the story does describe the murder in some detail, so if you're sensitive to that sort of thing you may not want to read it.
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June 27th, 2003
09:07 pm - spackle season
Early indications are that I like owning a house.
I'd forgotten how much I like doing home repairs. Today after the closing we went to Lowe's and spent a ton of money, and then went over to the house to start fixing it up. Wallpaper borders came down, nails came out of the walls, spackle went into the holes in the walls, and ugly carpet came up off the floors.
Now I'm tired and sore and my hands are all banged up, but I'm happy and the place looks better. Also it turns out that the floor under the ugly carpet is beautiful hardwood in good enough condition that it won't need any refinishing at all, just a little polish.
So. Cake, iced coffee, Metroid Fusion, and some deep sleep, and tomorrow it's back to home repair.
It's nice to have a distraction from work that doesn't require a lot of brainpower.
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June 24th, 2003
11:51 pm
Also also: I'm fiddling with the Windows LJ client on the theory that maybe it'd encourage me to post more, but pretty much I hate it. It's kinda clumsy and doesn't behave like I'd expect it to.
Are the alternate Windows clients less clunky? What do you verbose people use? Or am I the only one who doesn't like the standard client?
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11:44 pm - Now We Are Twenty-Six
So it was my birthday today.
It's kind of weird. I've been so busy at work that I didn't even notice my birthday was coming up until maybe last week. Didn't do a party or anything; I've just been too tired to deal.
Instead, jacquez and I went to Vendetta Dolci for a nice quiet dinner.
Also, she gave me a Game Boy Advance SP, which is absurdly neat. I'd forgotten how much I loved 2-d scrolling games. Zelda! Metroid! Shiny little platinum thing! Maybe I'm too amused by toys.
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April 13th, 2003
02:02 am - Hmm.
I appear to be developing a Carnival trend where I show up at restaurants drunk.
I'm not really sure what this means, but it has to mean something.
Anyway, it's fun so far.
Also, rapier1 throws pretty great parties. I'm all happy and relaxed and still kinda drunk hours later.
I love Carnival.
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January 19th, 2003
02:09 am
So I gave in and bought an Xbox today.
Panzer Dragoon Orta is amazingly pretty and I completely adore it. Explosions! Hordes of enemies! Nonsensical plot elements! I've kinda missed having a straightforward shooter to play, and PDO is the best one I've played in a long time.
Splinter Cell is also pretty slick, as is Jet Set Radio Future.
I pretty much blame peter_b for all of it, 'cause he showed me PDO on Wednesday and finally convinced me to buy one of the damn things.
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August 2nd, 2002
11:03 pm - Also.
I finished reading J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace the other day. Best thing I've read in a long time; beautifully written, elegantly constructed, soul-crushingly depressing.
Go read it.
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11:02 pm - Vacation!
Work's been busy. Need a break. Conveniently, I'm taking one.
Gonna go visit my mom on lovely and scenic Martha's Vineyard for a week or so. Sun, beach, ocean, seafood. Mmm.
Also, it's apparently not quite so hellishly hot there as it is in Pittsburgh.
Flying out tomorrow morning at early-o'-clock. But that's okay, 'cause I like flying. Lots of people hate it; I think it's kinda fun.
Lookin' forward to the whole thing. Yep.
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March 12th, 2002
12:16 am - pots de creme
I was craving chocolate, so I made this. It's basically a rich and creamy chocolate espresso pudding. It's very tasty.
( chocolate and coffee pots de creme )
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March 10th, 2002
02:34 am - Hmm.
LogJam seems neat. Maybe I'd post more if I started using it.
Or, maybe not.
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December 17th, 2001
12:40 am - Yep.
I blame Laura.
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