One night in 1989 while I was watching my favorite show (America’s Funniest Home Videos), my Dad explained to me that before Bob Saget was on TV, he had an unsuccessful musical career and in an effort to escape his past he had changed his name from “Bob Seger” to “Bob Saget”.
7 or 8 years later, I’m 15 and flipping through a box of records at my friend’s house when I come across a Bob Seger album. Wouldn’t ya know it, I had a super fun trivia fact about Bob Seger! So I proudly shared it with the room.
My friend’s dad laughed until he cried. At me, not with me.
asdfAmazon Prime started putting surprise advertising jump scares into movies that used to be completely free with a membership. This is the last thing I watched, and Prime just dropped to the last place I’ll check for movies.
This may surprise you, but electricity is a pretty clutch utility, and not having it for three days in February during record below-freezing weather is a real challenge to say the least.
I had been reading about how stressed the grid was getting during the cold snap, and at 2am when the power went out I got up and hung up blankets over the windows to try and keep in the heat in case the power didn’t come back on for a while. Sealing them with plastic like people used to do in drafty houses would’ve been better, but cling wrap wasn’t gonna do it.
Power didn’t come back on for three days. By the end of the power saga it was dipping below 40º in my house… and that is too cold.
At first, it was kinda fun. I’ve been in Austin for thirteen years and I like the heat less and less each year (not to mention each year it seems to be getting worse), so any time we get any sort of inclement weather and the locals flip out I’m usually loving it. So getting a real winter in this town? What a freakin’ dream.
Losing power for days, though? No so much a dream. At the 48 hour mark we lost our damn minds, and just at the right moment my brother’s neighbor lent us a generator which powered a tiny heater, which was just enough heat to thaw out our patience.
gfycat embed “shadywarpedafghanhound” — service shut down, needs replacing
This crew made the best of it, for sure
A rare item in this part of the world, we thought we could help out some neighbors with an ice scraper
This beer never tasted so good as it did when it was chilled outside in texas
Macbook air with incredible battery life playing Wonder Boys from my ancient DVD collection.
Power finally came on almost exactly 72 hours after it went off, and it stayed on for daaaayys. And then it went off for hours, on for days, off for hours, on for days, off for hours, etc. What a blast.
I attended a zoom conference with my out-of-patience neighbors, our nearly useless district city council rep, and Austin Energy where the situation was managed. Austin Energy took no responsibility for it and claimed that all the power outages were due to circumstances out of their control—historic weather events, trees crowding the power lines, and the best one: three different different occassions of someone crashing into a utility pole, in our neighborhood. I find that really hard to believe.
But anyway, let’s see what happens next year come winter.
Spin Doctors shorts, designer unknown. Birkies and Shaka to complete the look.
A friend gave these shorts to me in 2002 or so, and I have no idea where he got them from. Despite their appearance, they’re not made for water activities and I never wear them because they’re so heinous. But I’ve kept them all these years because they they feel like a precious artifact from another time and the mystery of how they got here is intriguing.
Who green-lit this project? Did the designer intentionally make the pockets comically tiny as a tip of their hat to the album we all know? When I came down the stairs in these shorts was my girlfriend laughing at me or with me?
This is in the same vein as Sincerely, Linda Wilson, but owning a wolf didn’t fit into Linda’s character. Nonetheless, this was fun to write and I can’t quite believe the legitimate responses. (I do not own a wolf)
You have no idea how deep I had to search to find a photo that was basically not reverse-image searchable. That’s putting a lot of faith in the tech-savvyness of people who want to wolf sit—I know—but better safe than sorry.
Seeing the total solar eclipse was the most amazing natural wonder I’ve ever laid my eyes upon. I understand why people travel around the world watching eclipses, and I’m pretty tempted to take a trip to Chile for the next one.
30 years ago today, my parents decided to take a gamble and pull the ejector seat on our lives in South Africa for a better future in the USA 🇺🇲(and it worked out). Here’s Roger and me in 1987, seamlessly fitting into the culture: instant Twins fans and about to eat at our second favorite American restaurant, Burger King.
And also, as was pointed out to me on Facebook: I’m wearing very American sandals.
This is real
Our most favorite restaurant was McDonalds, which wasn’t in SA during apartheid, so it was extra novel. The South African McDonald’s knockoff, “MacMunch”, was not an acceptable substitute.
Lamar Smith is a real douche canoe, it turns out. I was a little checked out of local/regional politics before this year, but now I’m on the case.
Who knew that it was so easy to get a hold of Lamar Smith’s office on the phone? Who knew I was living in a crazy gerrymandered district with this evil douche supposedly representing me?
Climate change denier, sponsor of big anti-privacy bills, in the pocket of Trump & Co, and the dude won’t even show up to a townhall because he knows his constituents have some things to say. This guy has to go.
