asimplechord

So this happened. (LOL, "Each sent the Moody Theater audience -- which seemed more local and more fan-heavy than most SXSW crowds -- into howls and even some moshing." Because the pit was composed almost entirely of Green Day fans who guaranteed that if they got tickets, they would show up, else be blacklisted to future events.)

I missed FOB, but I think Green Day was a worthwhile exchange.

( And then this happened. )

I returned home to find that Aaron hadn't suffered a relapse (he was just whining about being left to entertain himself), ( and this happened )

And I posted some fic: Celebration's impossible, genderswap hockey RPF, filling the "celebratory kiss" square on my trope bingo card.

One other good thing? BRMC's new album is out, synced to my iPod for the day's listening.

Now I'm going to go do some lab work, and tonight's the Revival Tour's stop in H-town. And possibly ponder vampire or werewolf fic. (Or porn.) It's Tabby's fault. And she's awesome for it. :)

+ ( live music, A+, with a side of family dysfunction )

+ So, after THAT, we drove back to Houston in time to see The Mountaintop. Appropriate on the day before MLK Jr Day. I enjoyed the set a lot, and I really liked the first half of the play, but when it turned a little surreal, I started to check out. Until the final scene, which was gorgeously done.

+ On the subject of hockey: #mnwild's Granlund scored his first NHL goal, Parise scored (I was the saddest panda, staring at the pic of his stall in the Wild dressing room [I just typed staal, guys, idek] and Wild jersey, you don't even know), the NJ Devils won. And SUCK IT, FLYERS. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that if the Devils are my "husband" team, the "boyfriend" team is going to be the Wild this year. Sad side note: please do not let the Aeros fail to renew the lease for Toyota Center, because I don't want them to move to Des Moines. D:

~ What is going on with Michael Phelps' face? Seriously. (Related, in that the pic I saw of him was in a Deadspin article about the Ravens winning the AFC championship: already so tired of the Harbaugh bros storyline. Thank fuck there's hockey and tennis to distract me.)

OK. Now I'm going to go switch back and forth between the Li Na/Radwanska QF match at AO (and then Daveeeeed's QF match) and the Red Wings/Blue Jackets game. And think about the next square to be filled in my trope_bingo card.

I've been feeling sort off, had a fever last night, so I emailed my boss that I wasn't feeling well, took NyQuil, and meant to go back to bed. But instead I'm trolling the internet.

a. Fuck yeah, Ecuador.

b. Darling husband, please don't make me argue about how the Nike "gold digging" t-shirts are sexist bullshit. Don't tell me that the gold-medal beach volleyball team has diggers on it, so that makes them okay. That's not who this is marketed for.

c. ;__; Rafa.

d. They're everywhere - I'm glad I saw them before they got this big, really - and it's still a creepy song (it's totally on my "this song is not as cheerful as you think" playlist, with Every Breath You Take, Pumped Up Kicks, and Make Damn Sure, but here's fun. doing We Are Young the other night on the Colbert Report. DAMN, JACK. Also, that smirk on Nate's face at the end, when the crowd is singing the lyrics. Like, "Yes, this is how I expect crowds to be: knowing ALLLLL MY LYRICS.



e. LOL, Yardbarker making me all cranky. PK Subban is not a "pretty dirty player", he's not any cockier than any other NHL player, and fuck you for making the unspoken but obvious comparison to Chris Pronger. I didn't realize I hadsuch strong feelings about RL!PK until I read that in my news feed.

Seriously, if one of my other fandoms doesn't start making news soon, I am going to drown in NHL preseason angst. Will they lock out? Will the NHLPA and the owners come to an agreement? Will the Habs come to their senses and make PK Subban a better offer? What are the Pens and the Devils going to do to fill the voids left by their off-season losses and machinations?

+ Last weekend when we went to SATX for the family ~thing, StepMom loaned us the DVDs for all seven seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Time to marathon a season or two?

~ Work is work. Two post-docs are on maternity leave + Student defends his masters thesis next week, so we're experiencing temporary shrinkage. We're hiring a technician to help with some chores and animal care/characterization (b/c the one thing I stipulated when I was hired was no animal care. ever.) and I'll have a summer undergrad, so we'll be full-up again soon.

~ I finally finished the March bookclub book, The Thirteen Tale. Eh. Sort of gothic mystery, Jane Eyre meets... IDK, Rebecca? I was not impressed. It took multiple instances of picking-up and putting-down before I settled into it, and the ideas expressed about twins irked me. Like, REALLY. I don't care if it was supposed to be early 20th century psychology of twins, it was just lame. a) Don't compare non-twinned people to amputees, missing something they need; if they never had a twin to begin with, they don't know they're missing anything, unlike an amputee. (The narrator's ~issues feel sort of inflated, and I know she has them to parallel what the Missus thinks re: twins, but if she hadn't been a sneak and found info as a kid, would she ever have known? I doubt it.) b) Don't act like there's some amount X of empathy that an embryo has in the womb, and if all of it goes to one twin then the other won't get any. Physical =/ emotional. Also, if pyschology DOES have some basis in genetics, identical twins start with identical genes. Someone's got some weird ideas. But I did enjoy the way, in the story within the story, the narrator's pronoun choice signaled shifts and gave clues to the ultimate outcome.

+ Apparently we are brewing beer this weekend? There's still imperial stout on tap, but the double IPA didn't age well. Whatever, as long as I don't have to be the person organized and alert at 8am on my day off, I don't care.

+ New music! AAR's album, Empires' EP, and The Used album all dropped on Tuesday! Anyone else I'm missing? I'm sure there is. I feel like my twitter feed was pretty chatty about this topic earlier in the week.

~ I feel like there was something else I was going to say... maybe about tennis? Rafa + Daveed both made it to the QFs at Miami. The Williams sisters lost, but I was super impressed that Venus made it as far as she did, and have high hopes for the rest of her season. And I'm hoping that Sharapova delivers a smackdown to Wozniacki today. Even as I type. Or... IDK, maybe that Electric Touch is at HOB tomorrow, and I haven't decided if I'm going to go see them or not? Memory, the first thing to go!

1. Last week when I stopped at Sbux for coffee (for the first time in ages, because taking the commuter bus changes my proximity to caffeinated temptation) the barista gave me a receipt with info to take a survey in return for a free drink. Took the survey. On Sunday, when I came to work (uninterrupted time with the workstation in the imaging facility; I spent a half-day doing image deconvolution, which actually was a productive use of time) I stopped in for a tall black-eye. The barista waiting on me saw the free drink note and asked why I didn't get a large or a fancier drink, since it was free. Because I won't drink a venti black-eye before it gets cold, and I don't generally like the fancier drinks unless I'm looking for dessert. But she didn't understand that. "But you could get a large." "Yes, but it'd be a waste." "But..." "No, really. Thanks for the tall." Is it that hard to understand that I don't NEED a large, just because it's available? I blame McDonald's and super-sizing.

2. There was not enough flailing on my part or LJ's part (possibly there was on tumblr, but I have to avoid it b/c it's rage-inducing) about Patrick Stump on Leno. The keyboardist with the hair (Studz? I can't remember his name.) was back! Matt had the mega-bass! Mike Day looked dapper! And Patrick in the blue tuxedo!!!! Sometimes bands (*cough* Cobra Starship *cough*) don't sound particularly good when they do a tv show - it's a difficult thing to balance sound so that it's good for the studio audience and the tv audience - but I thought they sounded decent. It is possible that I will make jmc_bks watch the last five minutes of the recording over and over when she visits later this week for birthday and turkey-day shenanigans. (She will be here in one-and-a-half days. :D)

3. In addition, it is quite likely that we will watch the London ATP finals. Roger and Rafa get their tennis on against each other today. :D :D Daveeed won yesterday, I understand, although I have not yet had a chance to watch the match.

4. If you care enough about a fic idea to write 80k words, why don't you care enough to make sure it's not sloppily punctuated, missing words, or that a historical figure's name is not mis-spelled (multiple times/ways)?

5. Book club. D: We discussed Room the other night. I suggested The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but was vetoed because it's non-fiction. The group wants to read a romance or erotica. Which is fine, but I asked that it at least be well-written. So instead of the people who want to read a romance choosing a book, they asked me to.

Yeah. I've got nothing against the idea, but that's not really the genre of books I follow in any consistent way. Most of the romance or porn I read is on the internet.

Why don't the people who DO read regularly in that category suggest a book? IDK. But I've got a list of author suggestions, and the request that the books be contemporary (urban fantasy is okay) but not m/m romance. And with lots of sex. Just... SRSLY? If you've got a specific request you pick the damn book, and I'll pick something I want to read for my turn.

6. Work. This manuscript is going out in the next 48 hours. Other than final edits, I AM DONE WITH IT.

7. There were hangtimes with eckerlilas and her adorable boys. I missed shutyourface b/c I had to leave early, but hopefully we'll all get together again some time sooooon. We need to get on this fangirl commune thing, because only seeing each other when it's tour-time isn't cool.

I am sure there's other stuff I was going to say, but I should probably post this before it hits the two-week mark in my drafts folder. ♥

♥ A++++, Brian Fallon. I have had Elsie on repeat all day.

:( Fail, USTA. FAIL. The last two days have been nothing but fail.


Rafa was not amused.


Nor was Daveeed.

Rafa overcame his annoyance to trounce Gilles Muller today, but Daveeed, not so much.

♥ Did I mention I started taking the bus when Houston Metro opened a new park & ride about a mile from my house? I LOVE IT. Someone else can worry about traffic while I sit and read or check my f-list. And the extra bonus: I cannot stay late, working extra hours, because of the limited schedule. Which I would do if/when I drove to work, even though overtime does not exist for my position.

♥ In my possession:
- airfare to BWI for Halloween week
- tickets for the DC show on the Tour Of Glee & Flailing
- possibly tickets for Philadelphia and Sayreville
- notice that I am taking leave for the TX/NOLA/East Coast shenanigans


Internet. If you could pick any single song that Patrick Stump and BUrie would perform together, ANY SONG AT ALL, what would it be?

+ J is going to visit in October. \o/

+ I've flailed about Rise Against before. There are no heart-eyes big enough to express my love for this band. Seriously. Tim McIlrath was on HLN's Showbiz News the other night before the MTV premiere, and he's blogged about this song and its video, which was a collaborative effort with the It Gets Better project.

+ I had something to say about songs that are popular right now (including some of Rise Against's and Lady Gaga's Born This Way) vis a vis 33 Revolutions Per Minute, but my brain is fried.

+ Also had some thoughts about Emily's Army's debut album, but haven't really collected them. Except that I am pretty amused by Asslete.

+ Wimbledon! I haven't been able to watch much (just the first few games of Serena and Venus Williams the past couple of days - they were up and down but triumphed), but the Radio Wimbledon app is working pretty well. Far better than Radio Roland Garros did, actually. Rafa made it through with no problems today, as did Deliciano, but Fernando lost to Haase in the second round. Daveeeed plays Ryan Harrison tomorrow. \o/

- Work. I'm so tired of my lab mates. ( As I explained to the email chain, this happened today. )

+ White Collar. This week's ep? Diana is a badass, y/y/mfy?

+ St. Arnold's Pub Crawl, Saturday. Downtown. I know where I will be!

+ A entered a couple of his beers in a local competition. Their names? Glory Hole Golden Ale and Cock-eyed Porridge (oatmeal stout). I laughed until I cried when he told me what he named them.

+ Jeremy Scahill and Josh Foust on Democracy Now this morning, in the wake of JScahill's piece on Yemen. IDK, as someone who'd sort of forgotten about Yemen's place in military/foreign policy strategy after the USS Cole until the Wikileaks revelation that Petraeus had verbalized a deal with Saleh, I found it educational.

+ The Sony Ericsson Open has a Roger/Rafa match-up in the semi-finals in the offing, if they each win their quarterfinal matches today. In any case, my plan for this evening is to watch Rafa's match against Tomas Berdych, which ESPN2 is scheduled to broadcast.

+ Work. \o/ /o\ I spent yesterday going through a bunch of old data, for the project that was mine before the Chief decided that we really needed to get the Idiot's abandoned project consolidated and shipped out for publication. A year and a half later... yeah. I'd completely forgotten some of the experiments I'd done. I did a metric fuck-ton of work on this, and it links to the Idiot's stuff, so that time was not wasted, but I'm still angry that I had to stop working on the biochemistry that interested me to finish his shit. Beyond that, we've sifted through a ton of mass spec data, and I feel like there's SO MUCH that could be done, if only there were more hours in the day. Or I could clone myself.

+ Trying to decide if I feel up to dealing with the crowds at the Discovery Green two days in a row. I don't care so much about tomorrow's headliners, but The Hold Steady are playing a set at 7pm. Ditto for Saturday: I've seen Kings of Leon, but I'm totally willing to get there early enough for a good spot to see Panic! At The Disco.

+ CHRIS CORNELL. Saturday. (Really, I don't think that requires any more commentary.)

+ A's birthday Monday. He can't decide what sort of birthday cake he wants, or where he'd like to go for his birthday supper. Suggestions for a restaurant that will not require travel anywhere near Reliant Park during the NCAA Final?

a. LJ is still not sending comment notifications. This sorta sucks.

b. The manuscript is OUT. \o/ \o/ \o/ \o/ (We'll ignore how angry I was that the Chief waited until last night to ask me to re-analyze every data point from four replicates of an experiment, which involved requantifying pixel intensities for at least ten cells for each of the four conditions tested.)

c. J is the awesomest. (That is totally a word. If you look it up in a dictionary, I'm fairly certain her photo - or one of a woman ducking away from a camera - will be in the entry.) She sent me photos of the practice courts at Indian Wells today. Nole! Rafa! :D :D :D

d. I am going to go have the world's biggest margarita, and then I am going to sit upstairs in the balcony at the House of Blues and laugh at whatever jokes John Oliver tells, because it has been that kind of day.

e. It is entirely possible that there are two tickets for the final show of American Idiot in my name. :)

f. I'm assuming there's going to be a help_japan set up, if there isn't already? In any case, I hope everyone's heard from any loved ones they might have in the vicinity, and my thoughts and good wishes are with them/you/everyone in Japan.

I'm sure there's stuff I'm supposed to be doing, but my sofa and a few more episodes of The West Wing are calling my name. (Ugh, I didn't think I drank that much last night, but wow, sluggish and slow to move this morning.)

And, uh, okay, even though the idea of Rafa doing sexy underwear ads seems sort of mottsy, and I'm not going to run out and buy any Armani briefs for A, I really want to thank AX for ( the behind the scenes photos )