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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Photo booth fun

Friends rented a photo booth for their wedding reception last weekend. Needless to say, we had some fun with it.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Heaven in a cone

Ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper pie, I've been in love with JC's ice cream on route 53 in Hanover, Massachusetts. Actually, more accurately, I've been in love with their pistachio soft serve. It's the only thing I've ever had there. I could have two Thanksgiving dinners in a row and still make room for their pistachio.

You'd think that pistachio soft serve might not be very good, or at the very least, an odd choice for soft serve. But this stuff is beyond fantastic. It kinda tastes like pistachios but not really. It's not overly sweet. Its flavor is pretty mild but there's just something magical about it. Growing up, it was my real-life version of Willy Wonka's snozzberries. It was so good, it just had a fictional quality about it.

If you're ever in Hanover, I can't recommend JC's enough. Get yourself a pistachio soft serve in a cone, eat it while sitting in your car, and then go back for more.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

It's good to be a Flickr-er

One of my photos of Portland, Oregon was lucky enough to be chosen in a very nice online guide of the city. A photo I took in the Pearl District is now part of the third edition of the Schmap Portland Guide. They even have a handy little widget to drop onto your site if you'd like. Now I just have to wait until there's an online guide to king cobras and I'll have oodles of submissions.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Lots of cobras, no G.I. Joes

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd get better photos from India up here. I just got a nice batch from my colleague who was there one of the weeks I was there. Lots of office photos of our team of developers, but there are also some fun ones of Mahabalipuram (1 hour south of Chennai) and snakes, snakes, snakes! Click on Mr. King Cobra to get to the full set.

Saturday, July 07, 2007

So His Holiness goes to bed at 7:30...

On September 21, 2003, Tom Waits hung out with the Dalai Lama at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall in New York City. What would that conversation be like?



They were there for a benefit concert which also included Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet. The CD of the show, Healing the Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation, is coming out next week and proceeds will go to the non-profit "Healing the Divide." When you buy a copy, you provide one year of health insurance for an impoverished monk or nun in a refugee settlement.

Tom Waits "Healing The Divide - Diamond In Your Mind" (mp3)

Friday, July 06, 2007

Monkey prays. (Glue monkey’s hands together.) Show monkey walking along later. (Be sure to unglue hands first.)

I knew there was a reason I've kept up my New Yorker subscription all these years. Every so often, you get a gem like Jack Handey's "My Nature Documentary."

Thursday, July 05, 2007

389 miles shy

I was so incredibly close to busting the 100,000 mile mark on my Corolla. I was about a half work-week away from doing so. That would've felt like some kind of accomplishment. But, alas, my Corolla and I were together for a mere 73,167 miles. At the beginning of the week, I traded him in and bought a new 2007 Hyundai Sonata.

Black was not my first choice. However, given the scarcity of the most popular colors this time of year, they let me drive away in my 2nd choice color but with the "premium" package at no extra charge. So I'm now sporting power seats, some steering wheel stereo controls, nicer trim, automatic lights, lumbar support, a trip computer, and 3 free months of XM radio. So far I'm really enjoying XM. I might opt for the $12.99 a month at the end of the summer to keep it going. There's this one channel called "Lucy" where I feel like I've traveled back to my late high school/early college days of alternative rock. That's fun to revisit every once in a while.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

I missed good coffee

I'm terribly jet-lagged but I'm happy to be home. I've been away for three weeks, first to Switzerland and then two weeks in Chennai, India. There are many more (better) photos to appear soon. But for now, I have just a few I snapped with my phone while away. More should be uploaded soon from my phone and then a really nice batch from a colleague's camera hopefully later this week. I saw tons of king cobras, gorgeous stone temples, and curious bulls wandering into the road.