up close and Hurt

you might have heard me raving about the band Hurt in the past.. so when we found out they were coming to Harper's Ferry in Boston, the gf and i jumped at the chance! late Monday night concert notwithstanding, it also happened to be St. Paddy's Day, there we were right up in the front. what i love about small club gigs is that the band hangs about the bar there, waiting for their turn to go on stage, hobnobbing with the fans, vis-à-vis with the gf and me!

it turned out to be a fantastic set, nice and loud, and up close and personal. of course we got to talk to all the band members before and after the show. of course we told them how much we loved them. of course we got pictures. heh!

great idea #29

in this era of recycling and all that environment-consciousness, something i see every day really bothers me. why the heck do we waste so much wood, money and other resources on making spanking white envelopes? we're already making greetings cards, place-cards and all sorts of other paperware out of some sort of recycled paper, then why stop at envelopes?

the one place i saw recycled brown paper envelopes turned out to be a bitter disappointment because it was one of them fancy-ass handicraft places that actually charged about a buck per envelope! which brings me to my other point, about how 'the man' never makes it easy for people to recycle and actually give a hoot about the environment. so everyone has to either go an extra step to recycle plastic, cans and glass or worse, actually pay more to get what should be a government and private industry sponsored service! is that hypocritical of me to expect at least that from the big corporations?!

shuffle-o to buffalo

so one day i'm browsing through the bookshelf, and suddenly i realize i cannot find any of my andy mcnab's!! now those of you who don't know me too well probably also don't know how much i love his books, and so it really bothered me to also realize that the books were still in a box back in my old apartment in buffalo! so then i got a-thinking about what the heck else i had left back there! it appeared that there was actually a good chunk of my wardrobe and books and other important documents still back at old 122H..

then i also got thinking, that it would be fantastic to go go check out the Buffalo Sabres play at home, surrounded by raving raging buffalonians rather than in the stodgy confines of boston, in enemy territory! by the miracles of ebay and travelocity, credit card info was transferred and tickets were bought, and before you could say "let's go Sabres" we were headed off to buffalo to watch the Sabres play the Capitals, with the added bonus of watching Ovechkin play - his rugged jawline makes the gf swoon, apparently..



unfortunately the Sabres lost, but the rest of the two-day whirlwind trip was fantastic, despite the snowstorms and biting cold. i retrieved all my missing stuff, had strong sensations of deja vu walking the streets of University heights, past 33H and 122H, eating at Just Pizza, dropping by the library i worked at, peering into classrooms that i rarely sat in and finally meeting up with my thesis advisor and being surprised by how warmly he welcomed me back!


one final note, these small puddle-jumpers for local direct flights make for some rough flying in bad weather, definitely not for the queasy ones!

push my buttons?

Blog buttons are a fascinating thing to play with, especially if you have lots of time and a handy website for a button maker. If you scroll down to my sidebar links, you'll see some I made. However, these nifty little buttons can be made to say anything you want. Yes, anything. Look at these -

(These buttons originally made by Jeremy Zawodny)

I can't claim ownership of these buttons, however awesome they are! Here are a couple of links for making buttons - some of them allow you to make buttons with graphics while the others are plain-text versions: McKnight, Zappa, Kalsey.. enjoy!