A good reason to be crabby

Imagine you're sitting on the beach, or maybe in the water, enjoying a nice chicken meal. Suddenly someone swoops down, throws you into some uncomfortable container, and drags you into the kitchen to become their dinner. Kind of a morbid thought, eh? Well, that's precisely what we did to a dozen or so Maryland blue crabs this weekend.

I spent the weekend in Maryland with assorted family members. We were on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, staying in a house designed by (and formerly inhabited by) famous architect Arthur Cotton Moore. Hmmm... why do I always want to add "Sir" before his name? Anyway, he is known for his "industrial baroque" style. He was the brains behind renovations of such Washington D.C. buildings as the Old Post Office Building and the Library of Congress. His house, described in 2005 by the Washington Post as a "stainless steel mansion," is a very distinctive waterfront property. Here are some pictures:

It's supposed to be hurricane-proof due to the shape of the roof. It is not, however, flood-proof.
This is the view from inside the main house:

I stayed in this building, which used to be the studio. Think of it as something more like the "servants' quarters" now.

Lots of wildlife in the area. Good sunset views as well. Examples:

Yes, deer.


Duck, duck, goose.

Very patriotic.

Check out those eyes.

Column of geese.

Just before the sun sets.

Just after the sun sets.

And then there was the blue crab experience. Maryland blue crabs like to eat chicken necks. Ultra fresh blue crabs taste great. Here is the complete traumatizing experience:












All she wanted to do was smash the crabs with her mallet:

Lesson learned: despite the fact that it made for a good meal, I still prefer living in a world of denial, in which I eat meat that doesn't look like the animal it came from...

In other news, I bought an orchid at the farmers market in St. Michaels. I keep wanting to refer to it as a fern. Hmm... perhaps I should name my orchid Fern to reduce future confusion. Do people name their plants? Whatever. This is Fern, the Orchid:

Vegemite. Or vegemite not.

Five pictorial reasons Australia is worth the long flights down under:

Reason #5: The landscape

Is it a forest fire? No, it's an amazing sunset!


Misty scene from a moving car. Grr, stupid power lines through the picture! Can you believe we drove from Canberra to Sydney?!


The man-made landscape isn't bad either!


Reason #4: The jumping marsupials

Kangaroos are delicious.


Reason #3: The opportunity to visit my niece and nephew on the way

Aren't they cute?

Plus I got this interesting picture just before the plane landed in LA:


Reason #2: The food

I do all my breakfast cereal shopping in Australia now. You can buy Weet-Bix in the US, but not Fruity Weet-Bix.


Australian snack foods are better than American snack foods. Hooray for hazelnuts and blackcurrants! Um, not necessarily together... Though I must say, I don't know why Australians have such strong opinions on Starburst candies!


Australian candies are very different than Swedish candies, which tell you what ISN'T inside. For instance, this is apparently not chocolate.


Reason #1: The birds

This kookaburra seemed totally uninterested in us.


I love sulphur-crested cockatoos.


Have I mentioned that I like sulphur-crested cockatoos?


Sulphur-crested cockatoos... they have such personality. I'd get one if they weren't so darn loud!


This is not an ugly duckling.

Things around town

Apparently the Kennedy Center is attempting to attract a different sort of subscriber: Young nerds. Fascinating. Even more fascinating that I really want to attend both of these events. See here:

- Event #1: The Tiny Ninja Theater performs Shakespeare, on the Millenium Stage. Today and tomorrow it's Macbeth, and Wednesday and Thursday it's Romeo and Juliet. Looks like I'm going tomorrow. What is Tiny Ninja Theater? Oh, just check the hyperlink. You can't expect me to waste my time retyping it all!

- Event #2: National Symphony Orchestra: Video Games Live. That's right -- they're performing theme songs from famous video games!! I really have to go to this. Why is it so hard to find someone who wants to go with me?? Oh, yeah... high nerd factor.

BTW, a note to those people who call themselves my friends and family. Why didn't anyone tell me there was a pirate reality tv show?? SOMEONE must have come across it. Thanks a lot. Good thing my DVR and I happened upon it. Imagine the sorrow if I had missed the entire season. That reminds me... I still haven't seen Pirates of the Caribbean III. My sad life...

A word of advice

Don't schedule travel that takes you across the International Date Line on your birthday. It makes for a long and very boring day (20+ hours of air travel!).

What was I thinking?? I could easily have spent one more day in beautiful Australia!

More later... :)

Rudolph the Red Nosed Main Dish

In my job, I have learned the importance of addressing key points and main themes right at the beginning of whatever I'm writing. For that reason, I have decided to bury my explanation of the title of this blog deep within the text.

OK, on to the important stuff: highlights of this latest trip to Denmark and Sweden. Complete with pictures. My hotel was just around the corner from Nyhavn, which is this lovely area:

We visited Tivoli Gardens a few times. It's mostly an amusement park, but the "Gardens" part is an accurate descriptor. Here are some flower samples.

I've never seen tulips like this before:


More tulips:


And for some reason I kinda like the perspective on this one:


I opted not to ride on the crazy "world's tallest carousel":


On this trip, I learned that Danes have unusual pets. For instance, this woman appeared to be walking a mouse. Whatever it was, it was about an inch tall. Oops, forgot to use the metric system. Whatever it was, it was about 2.5 cm tall.


I got a good pastry shop recommendation. If you want excellent danishes, try Lagkagehuset:


This part is the explanation of the subject line. You will find that Santa won't be bringing me any gifts this year. I can forget about even getting coal or other less attractive gifts with possible market resale value; after this, I think he may have put a hit out on me. Why? Well, we ended up having dinner one night at a restaurant that served grilled reindeer. I ordered it, and it was REALLY GOOD. Who knew!! I don't know why Santa bothers to keep the reindeer around anyway. He should be serving them for dinner, not flying with them!

Moving on, I spent part of one of my days in Sweden, where I visited Lund (a university city) and Malmö. Through postcards in those fine cities I learned psychically that my sister Emily is destined to marry the Prince of Sweden. I mean, really, how could she refuse?

The Cathedral in Lund had this amazing 14th century astronomic clock:


I squandered most of my time in Lund because I had this craving for Swedish meatballs. Seriously, how can you visit Sweden without having Swedish meatballs? The restaurant menus were all in Swedish, and I was feeling introverted, so I ended up ordering my fine meal in a local 7-11. The guy behind the counter heated my fine Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes in the microwave, then added what turned out to be a delicious lingonberry sauce. I couldn't find a place to sit to eat my gourmet meal, and it had started raining. I wandered over to the main square, where some sort of peaceful protest in honor of the Palestinian/Serbian/Tibetan/other misc separatist movements was taking place. I ended up on a bench that turned out to be right by the very animated speakers, and there I sat, shoveling down the food so I'd have sufficient time to catch the bus.

In Malmö I did a whole bunch of walking. I also made a stop at the local H&M. It's a Swedish chain, so how could I not do my shopping there? If I had seen an Ikea, I would have purchased a souvenir lamp or bed or something. Good thing I didn't come across any. Malmö also has a number of odd statues, such as:

or:


Eventually we crossed the Øresund Bridge, and the trip (and depressing stories about bloody conflicts between Swedes and Danes) ended. This is the bridge:


When we got back, I contemplated having a little bit of (nerd warning) Foo-cacia, but ultimately returned to the hotel.


On my last day in Denmark I spent the day collecting photographs. For instance...

...the great dragon statue thingie on a building:



...a better picture of my beloved "Students Swapping Signs" drawing:



...a picture of the former engagement ring that Søren Kierkegaard had given to Regine Olsen.


I didn't get any good pictures of the ring last time I was there. I do have to correct the record, though. Here's the "correct" story of the ring:


In closing, I just want to say that I love lilacs. There were lots and lots of lilacs in Denmark and Sweden. Lovely...


The end.

A Tribute to Innovation

Way back when (aka April 2006) a few family members and I visited my brother during his semester abroad in Spain--his extremely trying last semester of law school. One important discovery we made there was a fast food chain that sold "pizza cones." What a fantastic idea! I am always impressed with people who are able to take what is ordinarily not finger food and turn it into something transportable. Pizza you can eat with your hands. Who would have thought.

Anyway, I was not the only one whose creative juices began flowing. This caused my sister's innovative side to emerge. She still talks about starting a rival chain here in the US. She would stick with the Italian theme, and create the world's first Lasagna Cone! Genius. Pure genius.

Shoot, I gave her secret away. Sorry, Emily!!

Stand alone and greet the coming night

Here I am, back from another trip. I returned this afternoon from Denmark (plus a side trip to Sweden this time -- where, sadly, no one sounded like this). More on that trip later.

Not long before this trip I brought a new toy -- my Microsoft-produced Zune (competition to the ipod). What, you might ask, possessed me to purchase such a device? Well, I wanted a music player, but my new car apparently is not compatible with the ipod. Plus, just about everyone I know curses their ipod regularly. The device came in handy... I ended up watching all of Season 1 of The IT Crowd while I was stuck for six hours in Frankfurt, Germany. I've vented enough about that unexpected layover, and will refrain from boring you with that story...

In preparation for my trip I decided to get a few new songs. I found out about an eMusic "download 35 songs free" offer and decided to test it out. Unfortunately, they didn't have many of the songs I was seeking. I ended up rather arbitrarily picking out songs in the alternative, math rock, and goth genres.

Anyway, here are the songs I listened to most during the trip--some of which were new eMusic acquisitions, and others were not:

- Juliet, by Emilie Autumn. Goth/industrial/electronica. I like. I like much.



- Imitosis, by Andrew Bird. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I picked his album for the cover, of course. My goodness, I'm predictable. Anyway, I like this song despite its use of the word "machinations," which is one of my least favorite words ever. Whenever I read a paper containing that word, it undercuts the author's credibility by approximately 64.3%. And that's on a good day. Despite that, the song is excellent. You can listen to the song on his myspace page. Grr, I apparently just missed his 9:30 Club concert! Oh, also, the singer appears to be a thinner version of Dr. Who.

- Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T's. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I actually heard this song on on the radio (it seems to get some late night "new music" play, at least), and decided to follow up. This song, as well as Hate (which I think is an amazingly entertaining song!!), is on their myspace page.

- Tired of Being Sorry, by Ringside. I wish they'd play more concerts. This is such a great song. And it doesn't hurt that the singer is HOT. Though I still don't understand why the video is about him getting beat up by a girl.



- Caramel, by Suzanne Vega - Good song. I can't find it now, but I swear I first heard this song in a trailer for the movie Closer. Not that I ever saw the movie... but I always have that association.

- The Mating Game, by Bitter:Sweet - Interestingly, this is one of the default songs on the factory-fresh Zune device. But if you like it, you have to download it later, 'cuz MS deletes it when they upgrade your firmware. This one is also available on the group's myspace page.

- The Last Remaining Light, by Audioslave. I've had this song (and album) forever, but for whatever reason, it regained my attention during my trip.



Last, but not least:

- The System is Down, by Homestarrunner. I have no idea why I have this, nor why it kept coming up. But it's kind of amusing...

Say what?

To demonstrate what a fun and exciting person I am, I'm going to give you a list of my favorite words, complete with hyperlinks to random and totally unrelated tidbits.

Words:

Archipelago
Reticent
Indigenous
Vestige
Haberdashery

Best. Headline. Ever.

Here it is:

Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo

Whoever came up with that headline deserves some sort of prize. Do they award prizes for amazing headlines?

Penguin Thievery

Despite the fact that this story has been proved to be a myth, I still find it amusing (indeed, fiction is allowed to be funny). Penguin thievery. But stories like these have their impacts: people apparently are calling a zoo in Utah and accusing them of harboring the stowaway penguin from the story. Stories that sound too good to be true (and that are full of plot holes and improbabilities) probably aren't true. Ah, well, you can still look at pictures of penguins on this penguin blog. Penguins are all the rage.

And here is xkcd.com's view of Snopes (the urban legend and myth debunking site):

People who have way more time than me

Wow. It must take a lot of time to do things like this:

Your looks rock!

This almost makes me want to sign up for a Facebook account! Or play the recorder. I can't decide.



These guys iz funny! Check out the Encyclopedia Rap. Or Pimp My Stroller.

Emily insists that I have to relate the full tale of the blog title. It all started many days ago. No, wait, it was Thursday. Emily's birthday. We went to Carrabba's for dinner. We had the same waiter that we had last time we ate there. Note, of course, that last time he gave us free ice cream for no apparent reason. No such luck this time around... he rushed us through our meal, and took my dinner away to box it up when I was pretty much still eating. It was fun. I suggested that perhaps the rush and lack of free sugar was because Emily was less attractive this time than the last visit. For some reason, she didn't like that possibility. To console her, I said, "your looks rock!" And now it's the title.

Rejoice, and show mirth, for behold, ye are now in on the inside joke.

Caving under the peer pressure

My brother-in-law, Rob, is currently working on the movie The Golden Compass (scheduled for release in December). Apparently everyone has their daemons. And mine is an osprey. I am now going to do exactly what my other blogging family members have done--except Melissa, but she'll cave soon--and let you check whether I correctly assessed my daemon, or whether you see me differently.




This one is nice, and does convince me that the movie is worth checking out (and not just to see Rob's name in lights). Even so, my favorite personality identifying site is still kingdomality.com. According to that, my medieval career would have been as the evil prime minister. Mwahahaha.