2011 - year of firsts

First time flying a plane.
First time traveling to Asia.
First time snorkeling.
Finished first half marathon.
First promotion. While I think it was mostly to keep me around after the buyout, I'm happy with it.
First time seeing dolphins in the wild.
First time turning 30.
First time kegging beer.
First time completing a master's degree.
First time buying a house... in Minnesota.
First time surviving a brutal Minnesota winter.

I thought there were more, but oh well.

In 2012... first kid?

KC trip

I just took a quick 1-day trip to KC. Friends were getting married and had their reception at Boulevard. It was really great to catch up with people, but the trip was far too short. I did manage to work in trips to Cancun Fiesta Fresh, Glace, and Chez Elle, and drove around most of the old haunts (Westport notwithstanding, due to the art fest). I flew in, and, for traveling alone, the MSP->KC direct flight is totally worth it. I probably would have spent as much in gas driving.

The really odd thing is that, this time, it doesn't feel like home anymore. The last visit, we had moved away more recently, and it felt like we were going home. This time, it definitively felt like I was visiting, and not that it was home. It was weird. I didn't expect that change to happen so quickly. It took years before Ames didn't feel like home anymore. KC felt like a strange place where I somehow knew how to get around. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but yeah. Very odd feeling.

Still, great visit.

Being alone is weird. Really weird. But I am managing so far. At least it's only for 10 weeks. 10 weeks kind of seems like a long time though, eh? At least I have had lots of distractions so far... but that may be drying up in a few weeks.

Home

There's food in the food fridge and beer in the beer fridge. The desk is assembled (though I always seem to end up with a couple extra pieces whenever I do that). The TV and DVD player and internet are set up. The dishes are put away. The bookshelves are full of books. There's laundry in the laundry room, toiletries in the bathrooms, beds in the bedrooms (one of them is even made). China in the china cabinet. Dirty dishes in the sink. Most of our stuff has been dispositioned, if not put away yet. Tools in the garage. Couches in the basement. The bar is set up. We've had a board game night and a movie night. It's starting to feel like home.

Not too bad for our fifth day in the house.

We're near pretty much everything in the city, and that rocks. A short list:
-bus stop on our block
-Yeti Records 2 blocks away
-Bakery 2 blocks away
-Bookstore 2 blocks away
-vintage clothing store 2 blocks away
-neighborhood farmer's market 1 mile away
-community gardens in our neighborhood
-~1 mile from a coffee shop, Anodyne Coffee
-~1 mile from The Lowbrow, a great scratch kitchen restaurant
-~1 mile from Sun Street Breads, an amazing scratch bakery
-~1 mile to lake calhoun and the others in that system
-~1.5 miles from a grocery store, Lunds
-3 blocks to I-35W
-~1 mile to the lyn-lake area, a little further to Uptown
-~3 miles to downtown
-and still only about 20 minutes to work for me

All things are appearing to be awesome so far. I never would have thought it was possible when first moving here, but Minneapolis... I love you so hard.

Minneapolitan

Well, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong (always a dicey proposition whenever I bring it up), we are buying a house. We still have inspection, post inspection negotiations, etc to go, but our offer has been accepted. After hunting for a while, we found a house that was the right combination of price, condition, location, and amenities, and it has a lot of gorgeous old woodwork that is in remarkable good shape. It has a two car attached garage that opens into a street, not an alleyway. Most houses in our price range have a detached one car garage without an automatic opener, so this was a good find. It is on a main street, which is a turn off for some people, but here it means that our street will *always* be plowed promptly, which is a big plus. It has a completely fenced in back yard with a nice, relatively new fence, also a rarity at our price point. It has a kind of 70s basement, but it's large and finished. It is close to Lyn-Lake, Uptown, and the lakes, which is pretty much perfect location wise. It's about a 20 minute drive to work for me, less than half of my KC commute, and there is a bus stop *on our block* for Rikki to grab a bus to work. Northern Brewer is opening its Minneapolis store roughly 2 miles to the south this fall. It has a smallish driveway and sidewalk (less shoveling), and a smallish but decent back yard (less mowing, enough space to have a small garden). Walk score of 77 is totally respectable. It's in a safe neighborhood. Inspection is next Friday. We asked for a long close because we need to run out our lease, but the sellers accepted. I am more than a little excited. It's all looking good so far.

Master! Master! Master of Engineering

I finished grad school! I am now allegedly a Master of Engineering in Computer Engineering. It felt rather anticlimactic to finish as a distance student given that I didn't attend the graduation ceremony, but it's good to be done at any rate. Hopefully I can parlay this into a raise or promotion or something. Now if only my diploma would arrive...

New new new new new new music

Yeah! I am making music again. I'm going for an EP-length running mix this time. Enjoy this crappy video I made using the iTunes visualizer for the first track I finished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y71DybgWTWc

In happier news

We are looking for houses in the proximity of Lyn-Lake. Holy moly are houses more expensive here than in KC. But we will try to make it work. It's hard to resist houses like this: http://www.edinarealty.com/MN/Minneapolis/55405/homes-for-sale/2536-Harriet-Avenue-S-59729408/popup

Anyone want to rent a room?

I mean holy wow that house is gorgeous. Hopefully it's in better shape than our KC house (it appears to be), otherwise no deal. It's in Whittier, near all the stuff, and I mean ALL the stuff, worth doing around here.

But yeah, it looks like $250 is about what you're paying for a house in decent shape up here, so... ouch.

And apparently central air is not a thing here, because it just doesn't get that hot. Weirrrrrd.

Also, we might be getting a Corgi puppy soon if things work out, and OMG it's the cutest thing in the world And I never use OMG, ever.

The weeks of awesome

Ok, school's out forever on May 6. The twin cities have blessed me with a ton of great shows over the couple of weeks following that, which I will dub the weeks of awesome.

5/8 tUnE-YarDs / Buke & Gass
5/13 Fiery Furnaces
5/16 James Blake
5/17 Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings / Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears
5/18 Zoe Keating
5/19 Sleigh Bells / CSS
5/21 Death Cab for Cutie
5/23 Man Man
5/26 Adele

Man! I knew this town was going to make me broke.

I love you, Kurt Vonnegut.

"They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and this is a good argument against atheism. I think it's a better argument against foxholes." - Kurt Vonnegut

In like a lion, out like... a lion?

It's still 20 out and there's still snow on the ground. Please make it stop. Kthx.

I do have the most fabulous friends up here, though. We'll get through it.

Then, the glorious (I'm told) spring and summer, and the return of farmers' markets.

Inner Circle

I've finished my 2011 RPM Challenge album. I still need to mail in the disc, but it's done. You can download or stream it here: http://datadamage.bandcamp.com/album/inner-circle

It was fun, as always. But I think I'm running out of useful Garageband loops. Next time, a drum machine / sampler/ synth will probably be involved.

RPM Challenge

The RPM Challenge starts Tuesday. I'm excited and ready to go. And I've got draft cover art done. If anyone out there reading this is better at photoshop than I am, let me know. I know my work is a little ghetto.

Ignorance vs. Indifference

So, I recently read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

No, wait, hold up. This isn't going to be your average privileged middle class rant about how everyone should be vegetarian, I promise.

It was an interesting read, and spent ample time discussing the horrors of factory farming. Foer is seemingly a snapshot of the guilty meat-eater who goes back and forth between being a vegetarian, and, well, not. He's vegetarian as of the writing of the book.

He makes a Swiftian case for eating dogs using the same logic most people use to justify eating other animals, which is revealing. He loves his dog. What he doesn't discuss is what he feeds his dog - vegetarian diet there, too? It's pretty hard to find a dog food without animal byproducts like chicken fat and other terrible stuff. I suppose you could always make your own dog food.

Foer emphasizes the notion that free-range, as a term, is bullshit, because all it requires is access to the outdoors. A huge chicken coop of the regular type of cruelty is allowed as long as there's a door that's open sometimes. So, yeah, bullshit, generally speaking. He does being up an existing true free-range, minimum cruelty, happy pigs and cows and chickens type of farm as a shining example of what farming should be like. He neglects to mention that (on my own research) a package of four eight ounce pork chops from said farm runs about $60. Not exactly within reach of the average person. So, the thinking person says, either I have to pay through the nose to avoid cruelly-rasied animal products, or just get out.

A key point late in the book is pleading ignorance vs. just being indifferent. I've read more than a couple of books on food and the industrial food system. Knowing what I do, I can't plead ignorance as a reason for eating meat, I can only claim indifference to the cruelty built into the system. Yet, here I am, still eating meat. It's a source of cognitive dissonance for sure. I still eat meat knowing the chicken I am enjoying probably had its beak sliced off by a laser while it was still alive, conscious, and feeling. It probably spent its life in a cage with the square footage of a piece of printer paper. But I'm not going to rail on this stuff, because if you have a pulse and have heard of the name PETA, you probably know at least some of this stuff. I am emphasizing eating less meat, chosing vegetarian options when available (most of the time, eating out in the twin cities), and phasing shrimp out of my diet, shrimp trawling being one of the more awful and destructive processes out there for gathering animal products (shrimp trawling yields about 2% shrimp and 98% other marine life - which is then killed and thrown back overboard). But I don't cry myself to sleep over having bacon with Sunday brunch or enjoying the occasional burger. So what am I supposed to do with that?

I do disagree with some of Foer's points - I think that eating less meat is better than emphasizing meat in the diet, but he makes no such distinction, indicating it's an all or nothing thing - and, as these types of books tend to do, weasel words and phrases do sneak in there (he emphasizes the point that the CEO of a large factory farming operation's surname, Luter, is pronounced "Looter"). I find it interesting that Foer is vegetarian and not vegan, because the logical conclusion of most of his arguments would lead to being vegan (where does one think eggs and milk come from, some kind of magical cruelty free realm, just because it's not animal flesh?). Generally, though, it's a good read that, generally speaking, avoid the pitfalls of such literature, e.g. michael pollan's class blindness (the solution to factory farming is to just spend more on food, silly!). It's a worthy read if it's a topic that interests you, but as always, maintaining a skeptical point of view will yield richer rewards.

Big, dumb, fun music

I have a soft spot in my heart for big, dumb, fun music. Currently occupying that space are:

Sleigh Bells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhYYd5adVY4&feature=fvst
Wavves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjdfEvzBPz0
Best Coast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sj5_WITMpA

Step 1 in my pursuit to be inked seems to be coming together.

Other than that: working, class, reading. Tonight is the current's birthday party show, which will be great.

This one goes up to '11

Ok, so it's time for my annual laughable goals in review and goals for the next year. So, here's 2010 in review. Some things turned out not to apply due to... life changes? It's a hard sell taking the bus when work is less than 5 miles away. <>

-Finish the bathroom remodel.

Done.

-Release Stress Test. Give 100% of sales to United Way of Kansas City.

Done. No one bought it, though. It's the thought that counts...?

-Volunteer 10 times in 2010

1. KCUR spring funding drive

2. Pilgrim Chapel easter egg hunt

3. Pilgrim Chapel children's film festival

Fail!

-Paint the porch and deck

Fail

-Get involved in the KC Fringe Fest
Fail

-Read at least 25 books
1. Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

2. Chuck Klosterman - Fargo Rock City

3. Benjamin Wallace - The Billionaire's Vinegar

4. Chuck Palahniuk - Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk In Portland, OR

5. Sarah Vowell - The Wordy Shipmates

6. Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen

7. Jake Adelstein - Tokyo Vice

8. Guy P. Harrison - 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

9. Michael Largo - Genius and Heroin

10. Bret Easton Ellis - The Rules of Attraction

11. Lydia Peelle - Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

12. Stig Saeterbakken - Siamese

13. Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs - And The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

14. Sam Tanenhaus - The Death of Conservatism

15. James Howard Kunstler - The Geography of Nowhere

16. Brian Epstein - Good Without God: What A Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe

17. Tom Robbins - B is for Beer

18. Chuck Palahniuk - Tell-All

19. Matthew Latimer - Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor

20. Michael Muhammed Knight - Osama Van Halen

21. Miranda July - No One Belongs Here More Than You

22. Sherry Lamb Shirmer - A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960

23. Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes

23. Melissa Febos - Whip Smart: A Memoir

24. Hans Keilson - Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel

25. …fail!

-Run at least 7 races

1. 3/14 St. Patrick's Day Run

2. 4/11 Brew to Brew

Fail!

-Build a linen closet at the end of the second floor hallway

Done!

-Either substantially complete my thesis or switch to a non-thesis degree for the sake of getting it done.

Switched to Master of Engineering. My last class is this spring. Assuming I can pass Cryptography, I'm actually finally going to finish my Master's!

-Take the bus or carpool for at least 50% of my commutes

Fail, and also N/A now. My commute is so short that I don't feel bad for driving it. Though I want to try biking when the weather is nice.

-Pay of Rikki's low student loan and substantially pay off my student loan

Rikki's is paid off. We paid off our second mortgage instead of my student loan.

-Expand my musical tastes beyond what Pitchfork sells me. Listen to more Jazz, Neoclassical, and Soul music.

I would say The Current has helped me along those lines.

And for silly things I would like to do in 2011:

Get a tattoo.

Read 25 books.

Make gravlax.

Make cheese.

Make more beer.

Make ice cream.

Make sorbet.

Go to a firing range.

Run 5 races.

Volunteer 10 times.

Give 1% of my income to charity.

Do an album for RPM Challenge.

Do a novel for NaNoWriMo.

Finish grad school.

Pay off one outstanding line of credit (e.g. student loan).

Travel somewhere new.

Buy a pass to SXSW for 2012 for my 30th birthday.

Cook 10 challenging new dishes.