Photo essay part two

And here we are with more visuals of Kansas. I had to visit my old stomping grounds in Lawrence and actually made it to my old Stammkneipe, the Red Lyon, which totally rocked. A good part of college was spent here. The only thing that's changed is that you can't smoke inside anymore, which sucks. If I were going to college in Lawrence today, that might just cause me to drink less. Might.


Same trip, different bar, pretty blue and red cocktails. Mmmm, cocktails.


And look, the Guitar Hero ate a catfish. One of the few fish I find absolutely inedible. Catfish tastes like lake. Gross.


Finally, c'est moi sitting on the banks of the Missouri. From which the above catfish possibly came. Gross.

It's a photo essay

I've finally looked at some more of the gajillions of photos we took in Kansas and thought I would share some as I really have nothing interesting to write about, other than I'm sick of wearing boots every goddamn day (could no one make cute winter SHOES?!) and I'm sick of getting my period (seriously, 22 years of this shit is enough). On that pretty note, away to Kansas...

This one's of the bridge crossing the Missouri River into my hometown of Atchison. From a distance, it looks very pretty. When you're driving over it, however, you're praying for your life. It needs some drastic work. Drastic as in being torn down and rebuilt.


Taken from the same place, down by the river, this is what downtown Atchison looks like at sunset. When we took the picture, it was a bit eery. Everything was closed, even though it was only 5:30 pm. It was like a ghost town.


Luckily, we found some signs of life the next evening when we went out for drinks with my brother E. and his girlfriend T. This is possibly the only bar in Atchison where you will not get a communicable disease from the toilets. In Atchison, that makes it a classy joint.


To get a taste of big town life, we headed to Kansas City to meet up with Skaterbol and friends. Here's a picture of us having breakfast at a really cool cafe at the City Market. Our table's in an old elevator shelf. The guy with the towel over his head is a friend of Skaterbol's. Don't ask.


To keep with the theme of eating, here's the Guitar Hero enjoying a burrito, the likes of which one cannot find in Hamburg. Why oh why must Hamburg hate me so?


More photos coming up, I couldn't get any more uploaded with this post!

I'm, like, so much smarter

I am happy to say I just finished a wonderful book which actually made me smarter. Or at least made me feel smarter. For my birthday, my co-workers gave me Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which treats how the universe, the earth and life came to be. It's a subject that I find incredibly interesting (hey, one of my electives in college was a geo-bio course on the history of the earth), but most books on it are incredibly intimidating to a physics idiot such as myself. Bryson, mostly known for his humourous travel books (The Lost Continent is a favorite of mine), brings the subject down to a true layperson's (i.e., my) level. Read it to understand how our whole existence came to be and how it works.

Funny anecdote: When I was telling the Guitar Hero how fascinating I found the concept of space curving to be (that is, if you shoot an arrow far out into space, it will eventually curve back), his response was "You didn't know that? We learned that in school." Guess a few hours of physics back in high school wouldn't have been so off the wall.

Funniest visual I got from the book: guinea pigs the size of rhinos. That totally rocks.

What I wore

The innernets guided me to Dilly's great what to wear site, and I think it rocks. Even cooler, in my humble opinion, is her daily site on what she's wearing. Probably because she has great fashion sense (or maybe it's because her style is similar to mine - which is the same thing).

As a tribute to how cool I think her site is, I'll tell you what I wore yesterday (would've posted yesterday, but laziness got in the way).


I had to go to a brunch so my usual Sunday attire of what I slept in just wouldn't do. I chose my new yet old (it's secondhand) denim mini, a long black cardigan from H&M over a ribbed white wife-beater from Old Navy, black tights and my kick-ass red leather boots from Berlin. Yes, I've mentioned their awesomeness elsewhere on this site. Jewelry: silver hoops and my silver Esprit bracelet watch.

Hair & make-up: Laura Mercier Vanilla Nuts and a bit of Laura Mercier Sable on the ole peepers, Laura Mercier Black Orchid Gloss on the mouth, drugstore hairspray.

And it's the mirror that makes me look that hippy. Seriously.

Happy birthday GH!

It's the Guitar Hero's birthday today, woo hoo, so happy thirtysomething to everyone's favorite Guitar Hero playing, Buffy watching, the Last X-Men reading, over BoingBoing laughing, latte drinking Hamburger!

Happy 2007!

Happy New Year punks!

We're celebrating New Year's at Skaterbol's, which means I have dsl access, so I can finally update.

The trip is going well - as I predicted, lots of eatin' & shoppin' - photos coming soon. Thank god I can still fit into my pants.

New Year's brings the Guitar Hero, Skaterbol and the Doctor hanging out at Skaterbol's house having drinks, petting her three cats, playing trivial pursuit (and sucking at it) and watching The Aristocrats. Might sound lame to some assholes, but it's actually been lots of fun.

Here's a toast out to all of you for a great 2007 with lots of laughs, love and fun.

ETA: I've finally transferred all my Kansas photos from the camera to the computer. Here's a few first looks at all the fun we had...

This is a photo of Skaterbol and the Doctor at a family get-together between the holidays. Lots of alcohol. Lots.


Skaterbol and the Doctor are having some music lessons here. It's very scary how little I can read music, even after 8 years of piano lessons as a child. As in, I can't play worth a shit. Please excuse the lime green sweater; it was cold and Skaterbol tried to pawn it off on me. I recognized, however, the Faded Glory tag for what it was.


And this one's of our New Year's Eve trivial pursuit game. Let's just say the anniversary edition sucks, and the combined 5 college degrees at the table were of absolutely no fucking help. TV Guide helped me out more, for Christ's sake.