Hello! I didn’t spend last night in a hotel. This has become a sufficiently unusual occurrence that I thought I should mention it.

Not that I’m trying to present myself as a cosmopolitan traveler, mind you. My destinations have included Houston and Indianapolis, and next weekend I’ll be in Atlanta. These are places which don’t qualify as America’s armpits, exactly — what are we, Goro? — but they could fairly be called the sweaty small of our great nation’s back.

There’s something to recommend each of them, though, and there was a lot to recommend Houston in particular. First, my sister lives there, and she’s very charming. Beth works for the nonprofit that manages The Orange Show and the Beer Can House (both of which are very cool), and her boyfriend Jeremy is in the business of making deadly, spider-attracting chemicals. The two of them have an extremely pleasant house in the part of Houston near the highway, which is to say I have no idea where they live. It’s right by a taco truck called Elena’s II, though, which is across the street from a taco truck called Elena’s III. I can vouch for Elena’s II — that was some of the best food I’ve had in recent memory. Elena’s III could be a crapshoot for all I know.

That was the first thing that Emily and I realized about Houston: the food’s great. We ate Mexican food at every possible opportunity and I don’t think we were ever disappointed. Real barbacoa was a revelation.

The drinking was good, too. Bought from the supermarket, Shiner and Lone Star are unremarkable beers. But placed into their proper context — say, an ice house yard filled with Sunday sun, kids shooting basketball, dogs stealing food and friendly gentlemen who genially critique visiting Yankees’ horseshoe skills while not-very-discreetly smoking joints at the corner picnic table — they become the best beers you’re ever going to taste.

Oh! We also went to the rodeo. The attached fair and livestock show are pretty much what you’d expect, except with more places selling multi-foot sausages (available with stick or without!). The actual rodeo, though, was unexpectedly great. Perhaps on repeat visits the novelty would wear off — I can imagine that the casual sexism with which the announcers discussed each barrel-riding cowgirl’s beauty might start to rankle — but the actual events were thrilling and proceeded in quick succession. There’s a lot to be said for watching a grown man leap from a horse onto a steer and wrestle it to the ground, and even more to be said for watching it twelve times in a row. Since then I have been surprised to find myself watching professional bullriding on television, and reading with credulous interest accounts of how the sport isn’t actually cruel at all. That’s how quickly this sport (see? I’m calling it a sport) can get its hooks into you.

But none of the proper rodeo events could compete with the Calf Scramble. For the uninitiated, this is an event in which our human society pits its children against those of the cows. Dozens of fresh-faced Future Farmers of America race toward a smaller crowd of confused, slightly bored calves and attempt to cajole them into submission. If you manage to subdue one of the calves you’ll be presented with a certificate good for the future purchase of such an animal, which you’ll then presumably raise. Who knows? With hard work and a little luck, in a few years you might be one of the cowboys over at the Ag Expo applying can after can of hairspray to a bull.

The charming part of the scramble is how simultaneously overmatched and excited the kids are. Emily and I watched a post-game interview with an ecstatic and disheveled young woman who had just won a calf, and no sir, she didn’t mind at all that it had stepped on her head, in fact she didn’t even remember that part!

Here’s some video of the 2005 Houston Rodeo calf scramble. Unfortunately the professional rodeo videographers who shot it seem to have been intent on playing up the desperate athletic conflict of the thing. And who can blame them? They spend most of their time filming flinty cowboys as they casually, mercilessly assert their dominance over the bovine world. But most of the calf scramble is much more hapless than that, and considerably more endearing. If you had to pick a single representative image of the proceedings it would be of a girl holding on to a calf’s tail in the corner of the arena, both of them confused about what should happen next.

From Houston we went to Galveston, then to Austin via Lockhart. We had some great seafood in Galveston and stayed in a fancy hotel — it was nice! — but the town’s clearly still getting itself together from the hurricane’s aftermath. Austin was Austin — you know it’s great. Suspiciously great, in fact, like all college towns. Oh, and everything Kriston has said about barbecue in Lockhart is correct, and perhaps even understated. Kreuz Market is a monastery, and imposes vows of abstinence from sauce and forks upon visitors as soon as they walk through the door. When your server turns and reaches into the fire-flecked pit behind him to retrieve some brisket, it’s easy to imagine that he’s actually reaching into the underworld — and is that really beef? It seems too tender. What sort of barbecue sect is this, anyway? It’s all too delicious to fight, though. Accept your damnation, and be sure to try the sauerkraut.

And that was about it for Texas. I spent the past few days in Indianapolis at the Computer Assisted Reporting Conference. The conference was good: it was fun to be told embarrassing stories about my new coworkers, and to observe the extent to which journalists everywhere seem to share the same talents and affectations — many of the same ones that I suffer from and/or aspire to. These were good people, and I felt right at home.

Indianapolis, though… well, I don’t know. They’ve got some creepy, Masonic-looking monuments, which makes me think there may be some pretty good secret conspiracies going on. But the downtown is incredibly free of personality; the closest thing I observed to local color was an installation of the Weber Grill chain restaurant. On the plus side, the tapwater seemed to be extremely soft, so any travelers who are more worried about limestone scale or excessive shampooing times than about access to culinary and cultural options would do well to give Indianapolis a look.

In five days: Atlanta. I’ve been before and it was okay, although it was hard to shake the feeling that Ted Turner was singlehandedly responsible for about 90% of the city. Maybe this time will be different; I’ll report back.

It’s also worth mentioning that we’ve just released a bunch of new features on Subsidyscope — check out the associated news post for specifics. There’s more interesting stuff coming later this week, including what looks to be a pretty exciting scoop — stay tuned.

1. Coughing
2. Listening to this song:
   

   Harlem Shakes – Winter Water

My sincere apologies to all the wonderful people in town for Drupalcon — I realize this is a unique opportunity to see a bunch of great folks who’ve gone missing from DC. I really do want to catch up with all of you. But right now I’m leaning toward staying in tonight and whimpering pathetically from underneath a blanket. Tomorrow, though, I intend to be hale, hearty & ready to be social.

It’s too late for you now, you poor suckers, but you should be sorry if you missed Spencer‘s virtuoso performance at Transformer last night. Iron Man vs. the Imperialists expanded on his Prospect essay of the same name, and managed to not only make me feel self-conscious about my pathetic knowledge of 20th century American history — which is perfectly normal, and something that happens pretty much any time someone mentions a historical event not explicitly depicted in a Simpsons episode — but also made me feel self-conscious about my limited knowledge of comic books, which is not something that usually happens in places that aren’t the internet.

But I didn’t mind, because Spencer was engaging, funny and had an interesting argument to make. And, more importantly, I didn’t mind because it’s inspiring to see a friend deploy an impressive set of skills toward a whimsical end.

On that note: I can’t boast any impressive skills myself other than wide-ranging dilettantism, but my co-presenter on Saturday certainly can (PDF). So come see us tomorrow at Transformer Gallery and learn a thing or two about microcontrollers and why they’re about to escape the realm of geekery and enter into the mainstream hobbiest’s arsenal. 2pm, on the same block as Whole Foods.

Well, as of yesterday I’m twenty-nine. It’s terrible! Or in theory it is, anyway. I actually had an extremely nice weekend: Emily came down from Philly; we ate at Corduroy; cooked a delicious Valentine’s Day meal with Matt and Sara; saw The Wrestler; had Szechuan hot pot with Ezra, Annie, Ethan, Kay, Ben and Amanda, and then went out for drinks with folks on Sunday. Aside from a minor fiasco involving finding a bar that wasn’t so packed as to be unusable — seriously, space in DC drinking establishments is now at such a premium that booking a band has to be considered a hostile act perpetrated against the patrontariat — it was a great way to spend a birthday. Oh! And along the way I got an exciting new electronic fitness gizmo, a book about werewolves and some custom-made oatmeal. Not too shabby.

At the moment I’m sitting at home, preparing for an Arduino-related presentation I’ll be contributing to tomorrow on Wednesday (not the one with Alberto; that’s on the 28th), listening to the new Dan Deacon (which is beautiful) and playing Advance Wars. It’s pretty pleasant! But it also seems like the sort of opportunity I ought to use for writing things here.

I’ve been terrible about this, I realize. I also realize that blogged resolutions to change are stupid. But in my experience it’s only possible to maintain (relative) prolificacy if I force myself into the habit — after that first push things get easier. Besides, it was mostly the process of becoming oriented to my new gig over at Sunlight that’s left me too busy and distracted to do much else. But I’ve got some help now, and things have calmed down a bit, so yeah: blogging!

So, uh… I guess that still leaves this post a little low on content, huh? Hmm. Has everyone already seen that I’m on a Boat (ft. T-Pain) video?

What can I say? I’m a sucker for profanity and pashmina jokes. And, totally coincidentally, I’ve recently been aspiring to boat-ridership myself. It’s the perfect YouTube storm.

Oh! Also funny: Eugene Mirman. There, that’s enough other-people’s-content, right? See, I told you I’d be able to get back into the blogging swing of things.

I was pretty happy to wake up and see snowflakes falling. I’d already decided to take the day off — a tight deadline had forced me to work an extra week’s worth of evenings, plus Saturday and Sunday — so I was committed to sloth irrespective of the weather. Having snow on the ground somehow made the experience of playing hooky seem more legitimate, though, and consequently more restful.

Washingtonians famously tend to freak out about snow. In truth, I think we only do so to the extent necessary to support a more important (and collectively beloved) winter weather meta-activity: complaining about how much everyone else freaks out about snow. I remember Don & Mike doing bits about residents stockpiling bread, milk and toiletpaper as early as their WAVA days, back when the station focused on engendering affection for C&C Music Factory rather than for Jesus. Sure, I believe that area residents don’t really know how to drive in winter conditions. But for me and for most other folks around here that belief is much less dearly-held than the broader sentiment that, once flakes start falling, everyone else becomes an idiot.

Whatever the underlying motivation, I’m glad that we overreact to snow, sleet, slush, hail, wintry mix and of course the dread black ice. This city works too hard. It would be nice if we’d drop the rationalizations and simply acknowledge our snow-induced delays as acquiescences to the pagan meteorological gods. Divine injunctions to take it easy are too few and far between. I say that for anything over two inches we officially take the day off. Not because it’s hard to get around, but just because. If any tourists look at you askance just mumble something about averting wrath.

Hey! The City Veins got nominated for a Wammie! That’s kind of awesome. Nice work, fellas.

Non-surprise!: dental insurance remains a complete and utter scam. I’m still waiting on the follow-up phone call, but some mail I got over the weekend has made me think that, for the second time in six months, my dental insurer has decided they aren’t responsible for paying for more than a thousand dollars’ worth of work that, before the procedure, my dentist assured me they would.

Last time it was because they only pay for dental technologies that are no longer in use — trepanning, internally-administered quicksilver, that sort of thing. This time the procedure was safely archaic — no joke, my molar is now filled with a tree sap discovered in 1842 — so I suspect that instead they’ll say they’re off the hook because I was switching jobs. In fact I was doubly covered for much of the period in question, with two — two! — separate insurance providers supposedly responsible for the care and upkeep of my mouth. There was no point at which I did not have dental coverage. I was awash in dental coverage! And yet…

It turns out that while an individual dental procedure occupies an infinite amount of time when viewed through the lens of subjective experience, when the perspective is shifted to the realm of paperwork even vast swaths of appointments suddenly collapse into single instantaneous points, which are located such that entropy/out-of-pocket-expenses are maximized.

Anyway it’s all quite fascinating in a mathematical and ontological sense, but at the same time it’s also really goddamn irritating.

Hi there! Christmas obligations have ceased, and we’re on to the “lying around” phase of the holidays (my favorite part). The Christmas celebrations themselves… well, they went pretty well. I got a tent! Also a Nintendo DS, and a ton of candy, and who knows what delights from Emily (we’re still slowly exchanging presents, but I’ve already gotten a copy of Dune from her, which is pretty awesome).

Exchanging presents with my family was awfully pleasant, too, as was the Grays’ Christmas party (now with heated tent!) and having a chance to see old friends. Really, there’s only one constituency that inexplicably dropped the ball in its Christmas celebrations: the Jews.

Well, alright, they didn’t fall so far short. Black Cat Christmas Eve was unacceptably cheerful, but that’s hardly their fault. It was the Christmas movie-watching where the true outrage occurred. Yes, Spencer and Matt joined me to watch The Spirit. But was there subsequent Chinese food to be had? No! They were too full from their preceding visit to a Christmas party to get noodles. For shame, gentlemen. That is not what Jewish Christmas is all about.

Spencer made amends a few days later, though (Matt had left for New York), as we discussed Valkyrie and my flailing bok choy accidentally sent broth spattering all over the restaurant. So I don’t think I’ll have to report anybody to their childhood rabbi just yet.

Actually, it turns out that I’ve seen a ton of movies over this break:

• The Spirit: Pretty bad, and not in a good way.
• Valkyrie: Not bad! But (SPOILER ALERT) it turns out the good guys lose in the end.
• No Country For Old Men: Remains awesome.
• Gilda: Sommer tells me that this is Rita Hayworth’s most famous role, and I guess it’s the one featured in The Shawshank Redemption. The plot concerns the titular character, who’s kind of cruel sociopath, but less so than the two men who form the other points of the movie’s love triangle, one of whom owns a cane-sword. Everybody is constantly smoking and being mean and answering questions with questions, which conveys an air of sophistication, apparently. And it all happens against the exotic backdrop of an illegal casino in Buenos Aires, possibly, and the intrigue and excitement that necessarily surround an illicit tungsten cartel. Frankly, that was my biggest complain with the movie: there wasn’t nearly enough in it about tungsten. It’s a fascinating element! Anyway, I’m not sure that this was a good movie, exactly, but it was fun to watch, and available to stream from Netflix. Drink every time someone says “Johnny”.
• Die Hard 2: A perennially-underrated (by me) entry in the Die Hard franchise. It’s actually pretty good! But it’s also now bittersweet, thanks to the failed Fred Thompson candidacy. He’s an even better pretend airport administrator than he is a pretend district attorney! It’s hard to watch it and avoid thinking about what a fine pretend commander in chief he would’ve made.

Only one other disjointed Christmas occurrence to share: the cleaning of my dad’s basement, which comprised his major Christmas gift from his children. A quarter-century of water-damaged crap lay in wait. There were childhood treasures to rescue, dead rats to locate, and huge amounts of toxic dust to inhale. It took some professional help, but we did it. Here’s the truck — it isn’t yet full in this picture, but it was brimming by the time we called it a day.

Tonight: new year’s! If you’re still looking for a place to celebrate, you ought to come on by.

It has to be said: Black Cat Christmas Eve has fallen off in a pretty serious way. I just got back from it, and yeah, I had a nice time. My friends were there, and beer was there, and unexpected friendly acquaintances were there, and it was pretty good. But the atmosphere was terrible. This was, I think, the fourth installment of this tradition, but right now I’m worried that we may have to find a new venue for the fifth.

Here’s what Black Cat Christmas Eve is supposed to be. First: the only open bar in town. Second: filled with put-upon Jews and self-pitying Christians. Third: silent, except for paid-for instances of “Fairytale of New York” played via the jukebox. Fourth: characterized by furtive smoking — or, if legislation precludes smoking, plenty of uncomfortable introspective pauses.

STRONGLY CONTRAINDICATED: DJs, crowds, and merriment — yet all were in abundance tonight. Extraneous DJ aside, it was like any other night in the Red Room. This probably sounds like it shouldn’t be a problem — after all, I like the Red Room! But it felt wrong. I enjoy this tradition because of the atmosphere and the carefully-cultivated and variably-meta sense of self-pity that it fosters. Having a bunch of drunk Irish guys making boisterous toasts undercuts that decisively.

But I suppose I can’t really complain. Having a good time while being surrounded by people enjoying themselves is a strange thing to bitch about. It’s just that this is the one night every year that I have set aside specifically for the romanticization of lonesomeness. I feel like that’s not too much to ask.

Of course, it always comes back to that goddamn Pogues song — that’s the whole premise. And if you want an illustration of what the Red Room Christmas Eve is supposed to be versus what it presently is, all you have to do is listen to the original version back-to-back with Stars’ horrible cover:

The Pogues – Fairytale of New York

Stars – Fairytale of New York

A BIT TANGENTIAL: Having just listened to it (after being forced to listen to uptempo non-Pogues songs at the Cat), I feel compelled to point out that by far the most (and arguably only) devastating couplet in “Fairytale of New York” is “I could have been someone / well so could anyone”. The rest is mostly melodrama, to be honest. Still, that’s a hell of a sentiment.

ALSO: Make fun all you want, but Sufjan really brings it when it comes to Christmas music. “What Child Is This Anyway” may be irony-free, but it’s also pretty awesome.