So, I’ve been thinking about this whole issue of Big Boxes based on this post and I have two thoughts. I have to say as ugly and horrible as they are, big boxes do make a lot of sense from an environmental perspective (get everyone shopping in the same place less driving around), at least until we can retrofit every neighborhood in america to have businesses interspersed so that no one needs a car (yeah I expect that to happen soon too) so…

1. We redistribute them. We don’t restrict them, we just start restricting having too many in one place. While Lowes and Home Depot love competing right across the street from each other, is that something customers really need? This would put your PetCo next to your community center, and your Petsmart next to a church. It would be awesome for us pedestrians and bus riders, but it would suck for people who use cars (because ultimately we’d want to go to PetsMart and Target, but the Walmart is right across from the Petsmart and the Target is across from the Petsco).

2. So I started thinking about what really makes all these business as bad as they are. And the answer really is parking lots. You go to Houston and look at their Ikea and you’re struck by the fact that they have a covered walkway going through their parking lot into their store. Revolutionary! Who could have possibly thought of such an innovative safety feature! And yet with US companies we’d never see that. Even though most parking lots don’t even get close to full except during the holidays.
   And that brings up the solution. Why are all the buildings set back from the street, separated by a parking lot. Bus riders like me constantly have to walk across these vast swaths o’ concrete to get anywhere. And why? It doesn’t make any sense. All this corporate branding is hidden from the road. They have to build gigantor signs that generally get hidden by other gigantor signs, and yet you still can often pull into a parking lot next to one of those signs and have no clue how to find the store in question.
   I think that’s the answer then. We require stores to have their storefronts on the road. This would make it easy for pedestrians and public transit. Then they build covered walkways going from the parking lots to the front of the stores. The loading docks would be visible to the average customer which might be a dealbreaker, except that the stores could cover their usually blank back walls with advertising. It’s a win-win for everyone.

So, I realized I need to update on my knee. So I stayed off my knee all day Tuesday. Then on Wednesday everything seemed magically better. Which seemed odd, since pulled muscles seem to generally double in painfullness on the second day (and serious knee disorders don’t just magically disappear). Julie, Stella and I decided to go test out my knee on the Hike and Bike trail, and I did some light jogging. Not a problem at all. On the way home though, we went over a bump and my knee hit the side of the car. Instantly, the same type of pain flooded through my leg. Which put everything into focus. On Monday evening, I had taken the bus home, and it had been pretty crowded. This meant that I took one of the forward facing seats. In this particular type of bus the forward facing seats have about the same amount of room between them as the theater seats at Hyde Park Theater, and the back of the seat in front of you is made of metal. I have to sit up completely straight to fit my legs in, and even still my knees are touching the seat back in front of me. I rode like that for 30 minutes and on the walk home I noticed the pain for the first time. So my theory is that I had bruising on my knees from hitting that metal seat back as the bus bounced (and my evening bus driver is none too subtle on the stops either). So I think that mystery is solved. Thanks to everyone for the kind words, and I’m really glad this wasn’t the start of some sort of knee disorder that would require tons of surgery.

Unfortunately, my speed has been sucking lately with Stella’s 4-6 times a night wake up calls. Ahh, well I’ll get under 9” soon I’m sure.

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Comments

Kate (http://katiekatworld.blogspot.com)

2006-10-17T00:24:17.000Z

So happy it’s nothing serious!

Stella and I woke up this morning at 6:24. She had been up and down every two hours last night teething. We took off into the early morning. It was pretty warm, as he we headed through the small greenbelt adjancent to our neighborhood we got a couple of flashes of lightening.  Then as we were about midway down Manchaca we got a nice bit of rain. I think by that point, though, Stella was asleep. There was a toad by the side of the path, but she missed that too. She’s not big into checking things out on our early morning runs. Sort of dreamy.
I stretched this morning because I’d had a few shocks of pain through my right knee on my walk home from the bus stop the night before. It started giving me trouble almost immediately, but I ignored it since I’m often a bit creaky first thing in the morning. It got to the point of being mostly unnoticable for the first 2.5 miles. But then it started kicking in. I have no clue why everything bad happens after the half way point.
So I kept plodding along. I stopped paying attention to my time and just tried to get home in a timely manner without screwing up my knee completely. At 4 miles I had to start walking. The pain had gotten pretty intense. Stella was pretty much passed out. I still managed to average a 10.5 minute mile, so not the worst I’ve done (I would have loved those times a couple of months ago).
I got home and soaked in the shower for about a half hour. Then I took Stella with me and reported in that I wouldn’t be coming to work. I’d missed my bus, and I didn’t relish driving in horrible stop-and-go rain traffic with a knee that was bothering me. Stella and I had quite a lot of fun. We ended up sleeping on the couch and letting Julie sleep until almost 10. Julie, Stella and I had a good day. I got to hold her, and hang out with her a lot while at my laptop and because I didn’t have to commute home, we had time to go the library. So it was a really good day. As long as my knee gets better.

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Comments

Kate (http://katiekatworld.blogspot.com)

2006-10-11T02:47:09.000Z

I’m so sorry! I hope it’s feeling better now. But I am glad you had a good day with your girls. Plus, rain is always good.

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2006-10-11T16:59:17.000Z

If you have health insurance, you should see my guy AJ at Advanced Rehab. www.atxrehab.com They do wonders, they’ll hoook you up to so much crap and do so much therapy, you’ll feel tip-top. And it’s just a co-pay :-) Be sure to tell ‘em I sent you, too, they’ll give you the super special treatment.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2006-10-11T17:06:28.000Z

Things are feeling a lot better today. I’m going to try some walking and light running today with Julie and Stella. I’m hoping it was just a pulled muscle, but if things are still looking grim I’ll definitely check them out.

Jonathon (http://flailingmyarms.blogspot.com)

2006-10-11T18:07:50.000Z

Hope you feel better man. I find small, annoying health concerns like that as irritating as computer trouble. Why won’t the damn.thing.work!

So I managed to get a really big shout out in the Chronicle review for Loaded Gun Theory’s play Bitten! A Zombie Rock Odyssey:

“no designer was listed in the information-free program, which also neglected to mention dates of the show, locations of the show, information about the creative team, or anything about the band/theatre company”

Wohoo! I rock! Apparently I should have put my name in the program so I could have actually gotten a mention by name. It’s impressive when you get mentioned in a review that you just did the publicity for. Ah well, tickets are still coming in. And most people I know love musicals that have awesome music. Most people feel that’s the most important thing in musicals. Whatever… we’ve gotten 10 more reservations since that review went out, so I guess it’s true that no publicity is bad publicity.

And next time if you want Loaded Gun Theory’s full history, how about using our website? We don’t have the money to print a program that includes the entire Oscar G. Brockett chapter devoted to Loaded Gun Theory and their collaboration with the Unbearables.

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Comments

Kate (http://katiekatworld.blogspot.com)

2006-10-05T23:23:06.000Z

Hey, it could be that there wasn’t anything else negative that they could come up with. That’s good. :) And if you’re at the show, perhaps you already know when the shows are. Just a thought.

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2006-10-06T15:17:25.000Z

score

Jonathon (http://flailingmyarms.blogspot.com)

2006-10-06T16:07:07.000Z

You’re totally right dude. No such thing as bad publicity. I also thought it was kinda weird that they picked at your program. Whatever.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2006-10-06T16:16:15.000Z

When is your show at UT opening? I’ve got this lifetime free pass to see their shows from having graduated from their department. Apparently they’re used so frequently that the box office people have heard rumors of them, but never seen them. Tells you a lot about theater people, but I digress. So I’d love to go see a play during the new works festival, especially due to the guilt I feel about being really pissed at David Marc Cohen right before he died but I digress again. So yeah, um what are those dates?

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2006-10-12T22:09:24.000Z

Zombie rocked! Super, super cool stuff man. I loved the costumes, too. And there was a mexican chick who’s got some moves!! three thumbs-up.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2006-10-12T22:32:30.000Z

Glad you enjoyed it! Although, I had almost nothing to do with it, but I’ll take credit anyway!

The zombie hords have invaded. Be sure to make your reservations now!

CNN is reporting that a GM exec said:

“Hummer needs some more products. It needs two or three more products to give it sufficient market coverage,” General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told reporters at the opening of a Hummer dealership in Paris.”

While GM obviously knows how to make investors happy for the next month or two, they obviously have no real long term plan. My guess about those two other products? Let’s see they’ll take a Chevy Avalance and put a Hummer logo on it. Then they’ll take a Chevy Tahoe and put some ugly plastic on it to make it look tough, and call it their nimble sports Hummer or some such. So they’ll have a Chevy Tahoe, Avalanche, and Suburban with different labels on them. Of course I guess if you’ve made a business of of selling the same car with 8 different labels on it, why change? It’s more effecient to compete against yourself than to compete against another company.
I’m just hopeful that the government will not take over their pension, and that they’ll have to keep funding it until they finally go out of business. Then I hope that a new American car company will be able to take their place. That would be nice. A new company. One that made cars people wanted to buy.

The fact that Stella loves when I sing. That no matter how crappy she’s feeling. No matter how badly I forget the lyrics, she just looks up at me adoringly. Imploring me to keep singing. And then she grabs my jugular if I stop. But until that point I just feel like the luckiest, most talented person alive.

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Comments

holmes (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2006-09-27T14:58:34.000Z

Oh man, that does rock. And it seems that the sillier and wackier ya get, the more fun they have watching you. It’s funny to think we were all something like that towards our parents at one point, and then we grew up, just like our kids will do. These years are a gift.

So I know, I come off to people as though I think I’m some sort of Emril or Jamie Oliver. I love cooking, I cook all the time, blah, blah, blah… but let me recount last night’s dinner so you can point and laugh. The recipie in question was pretty simple. It’s just a sauteed chicken breast with a spice rub, covered with a green olive tapenade. I’ve made this recipie 4 or 5 times. It’s quick. It’s easy. It does not generally lead to respiratory failure. Ah, but last night…

I was pre-mixing the spices into a little dish, and I was being very careful, because last time I put on a little too much spice. So I’m actually measuring and I actually cut the recipe properly so that I would only have enough spice rub to cover the two chicken breasts I was making, rather than the 4 the recipe calls for.

Now a bit of background on my spices for some reason the last time I bought the two spices in question, cumin and cayenne pepper, I could only find cumin in a smallish bottle, and the cayenne in a gigantor one. This is kind of goofy, since I have enough pepper now to last me for years (even the most spicy food I make never calls for more than half a teaspoon), and the cumin is often used in recipes to the tune of 2 tablespoons. So you can probably see where this is going. Apparently I put in 3/4 of a tablespoon of cayenne pepper and 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin, because I just assumed the bigger bottle was the cumin (have I mentioned that I’d already fed Stella, given her a bath and put her to bed… I was tired).

I didn’t notice that anything was off until I started choking while trying to flip the chicken. It was like fire. I was coughing and could barely breath. The spice was being lifted into the air by the heat. I thought maybe this was because I’d used less olive oil than usual. Wrong.  Somehow I got the food plated and Julie and I sat down to eat. She took one bite and immediately started gulping milk and eating bread. I took one bite and knew it was time for fast food. Julie was very hungry, and ended up taking another bite. The fire was horrible. It was like there was a sludge of pain going down the back of your throat. And the worst part was that it didn’t even taste good, so there was no reason to go on eating.

Man, what a horrible, simple mistake…

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Comments

Jeff

2006-09-26T18:00:23.000Z

Dude… Central Market has a bulk foods section for a reason. You can buy your spices in little baggies a few tablespoons worth at a time. Definitely keeps things fresher if you’re buying pre-ground spices, that giant jar of cayenne will be so stale by the time work your way through it that you’ll need 2 tablespoons to get any heat out of it. Besides, I like my giant test tube spice rack. Helps keep the mad scientist vibe going in the kitchen.

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2006-10-02T22:23:49.000Z

of this time an ex-girlfriend made some chicken enchiladas. She’d made them a dozen times, and they were so incredibly delicious. This time, I think she was in a hurry at the grocery store or something. Anyways, she pulled them out of the oven and took a bite of one while I was in the restroom and all I heard was crazy panting, then screaming… turns out she accidentally put like 6 little cans of jalapenos in the recipe instead of green peppers or something like that! I thought they were GREAT. And I took some to work, and a coworker said they were so good, he’d pay her to make him some more! Crazy how that works out sometimes.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2006-10-03T16:29:05.000Z

The problem in this case was that the Cumin was supposed to give the chicken the taste. So rather than using a really hot pepper in place of a not so hot pepper, I basically eliminated all the taste of the chicken with my mistake also. A lot of cayenne pepper just tastes basically like you’re eating really hot dirt. Trust me, when Julie and I are hungry enough we’ll go through a gallon of milk with too-spicy food. This was not only spicy, but also tasted like ass.

First we start with a cute picture of Stella. We had one of our parent’s dinners this weekend, and we attempted to put a barrette in Stella’s hair. I really like barrettes and I think it looks great. It’s velcro though, and has the staying power, of, well… putting velcro in your hair. Very good if you want something hanging oddly off of your head, as though you had fallen asleep on some children’s toys and not looked in a mirror when you awoke. Not so good if you want it to look nice. But hey, Julie got a great picture.

Yesterday Julie suggested we take Stella out to the Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve. I brought the jogging stroller along, not really knowing what to expect. Turns out they don’t allow bikes, so I figured that would include jogging strollers. I put Stella in her Baby Bjoern and we were off. Seeing as how this is me, we ended up not taking a map. The scale of the map we did look at seemed way off. The park is pretty small. Only 2.5 miles of trails total. We ended up heading down to the waterfall (that didn’t really exist due to our current drought conditions), then hiked up the other side of the basin. At this point I think Julie was sensing that she was in for one of my death marches. The steps were really steep. I don’t know if they were put in by very tall people, or what.

We wandered around a more rough trail, and then ended back up in the basin, where we saw a wild rabbit. Super cute. We spent about 5 minutes trying to very, very, very quietly point it out to Stella. She eventually saw it, and made one of her shrieking sounds. Which oddly enough did not scare off the rabbit. Although it may have thought she was a bird of prey and was staying very still to stay invisible. We headed back up the other side of the basin, for some incredible views. It’s a pretty amazing panorama from up there. We headed up even further back onto the easy access path and back to the car. All in all, less than a 1 hour walk, but really nice an relaxing. I highly recommend it, especially this time of year when it’s nice to be outside.

So Coker started out a discussion about how nasty fast food joints are to run past while exercising (or even walking to the bus stop). This brought up the fact that Fast Food restaurants pollute like nobody’s business:

From TreeHugger.com:
Cooking four normal sized hamburgers in a fast food joint emits the same amount of VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) as driving a current model car for 1,000 miles.

So that’s a pretty decent reason not to eat fast food. We’ve gotten to the point where I’m cooking pretty much every night of the week. It’s crazy that after feeding Stella, giving her a bath (every other night), and putting her to bed I still have the energy to make dinner. Although, once dinner’s made I pretty much crash.

But the other week Julie and I were commenting on how much we jones for fast food. It’s kind of freightening. We go by fast food places, and you think that you’re saying, “Screw dinner, I’m tired.” But in reality now that we’re eating it so much less we realize we’re craving it. It’s a freightening primal urge. We must want some goofball chemical they put in that mutated food, because I cook with plenty of salt and fat at home. Ok, looking at the McDonalds menu I think I’d probably have to be using about half a cup of salt and an entire carton of heavy cream per-person per-meal to hit those salt and fat numbers. I’m kicking their ass with protien though. *Sigh*, now I really want some McDonalds fries.