This weekend is the Contemporary Mexican Film Week at the Museum of Fine Arts. Now, although 99.99999% of us would equate “week” with “7 days”, the Museum of Fine Arts defines “week” as “Friday, Saturday and Sunday.” Nevertheless, I’ve seen Amores Perros (gritty, excellent) and Santitos (humorous, great). Amores Perros is probably one of the better movies I’ve seen in quite a while.

Speaking of movies, saw Brothers - a Danish film about a soldier surviving a POW camp in Afghanistan, and how his return home changes his family and himself. Pretty good. The acting was excellent, and the wife was played by Connie Nielson, who also played the sister in Gladiator. I also got to play a new game during the movie called “Spot the IKEA Products.” For example, during a scene where the father was going beserk, screaming and breaking all the kitchenware, I recognized my drinking glasses and soup bowls. Those drinking glasses are awesome - and just .79, yo.

And tonight, I’m seeing Layer Cake….a new Brit gangsta movie, by the producer of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Loved Snatch.

Last Saturday, The Sis and I ran the Houston Astro’s 3rd Annual Race for the Pennant 5K Run/Walk. I haven’t been running nearly as often as I should be, so my times were rather horrible.

The course for the Race for the Pennant started just outside Minute Maid Park, wound through a portion of downtown, and ended up on the field inside the stadium. Excellent. Even though it was on the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, a pretty good sized crowd showed up.

• The race started at 7:45am. Skokie woke me up at 7:20am. After yelling “MOTHERFUCKER” a few times, I hauled ass onto the freeway. Luckily, I had slept in my race clothes. Amazingly, I made it downtown, found parking, and met up with The Sis at 7:40am….with even enough time to put on a timing chip. I even passed two cops while driving 2039475 mph up 59.
• Free stuff: water bottles, Minute Maid apple juice (of course), Powerade, Capri Sun drinks, oranges, pears, bananas, Krispy Kreme, Kolaches, and grilled chicken wraps from Pei Wei…yuck. As The Sis commented, who wants to eat greasy Chinese food at 8:30am? For lunch and dinner, tho, Pei Wei is da bomb.
• As part of our race packets, we received two vouchers for free Astros tickets. Too bad the Astros suck.

So, my race results:

• Overall place: 900 out of 1168.
• Chip time: 34:07
• Pace per mile: 11:00/M

bleh.

If you ask me, the 80’s were the golden age of music, commercials, television shows and general pop culture.

Just sayin.

had a wonderful evening with wonderful company at a great new wine bar in midtown. yes, Midtown is the epitome of gentrification hell, but hey…..they gots the BEST pizza, bread pudding and now, wine bar.

plus, the bartender looks exactly like Trinity from the Matrix. I tried my best not to stare, but I dunno if I did a good job. none of my happy hour buddies had seen any of the Matrix movies, nor Momento (the horror!), so I was alone in my “gee she really looks like Carrie Anne Moss” moment.

we started off with a Shiraz, ate pizza with a Zinfandel blend and finished off with a Pinot. I wrote down the exact names of the wines, but I’m too tired (read: drunk) to get up and find the piece of paper I wrote them down on. I topped the night off with a Negra Moldeo, my new favorite beer. mmmm….Mexican beer.

SAB was kind enough to drive my car over to his apartment, out of the prying eyes of the Midtown patrol cops. as he sat with me in my car with the radio turned on, he discovered an embarassing secret…….i am a classical music fan. there’s no denying it.

so, what did we learn tonite?:

- farrago’s makes some fuckin good pizza.
- zinfandel can actually be a good tasting wine.
- wine before beer, never fear.
- the next world cup will be held in Germany, according to the Spanish guy sitting with us at the bar, wearing the SCOTLAND t-shirt.
- the crowd at the Midtown wine bar is younger than the crowd at the Uptown Park location.

losing steam. going to bed.

does anyone know how to embed a video file into a blog post?

whew. It’s been a crazy busy week. Work, life, etc. Finally have a breather, so some [hopefully] quick updates:

• Went to a wedding last Saturday in a little town 1.5hrs north of Houston. Supposedly. It took me ony 45 minutes, which really scared me. I think I might drive too fast. Anyways, the chapel was cute, the wedding was sweet and the town was small. The drive was beautiful, though. 
• Bought a new desktop computer to replace my sad little P2 333MHz. yay.
  Dell Dimension 8400 Desktop; Pentium 4 Processor 540 with HT Technology (3.20GHz, 800 FSB, 1MB); 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz (2 DIMMs); 160 GB EIDE SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM); 128MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X300 SE; Integrated Gigabit Ethernet. I’m especially excited about the 3.2G processor, the HT and the PCI-express slots. whee. The PC comes with a bunch of apps, but they’re all getting deleted when I reformat the HD to install XP Pro. I’m also installing a Lite-On DVD drive. Dual layer, baby. rawk. 
• Li’l Bro is graduating this weekend from the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas in Austin. Relatives from the East Coast are flying in, and we’re spending the weekend in beautiful Austin. In August, Li’l Bro’s moving to Galveston, TX to start med school at UTMB. *sigh* They grow up so quickly.
• Kirby the cat is coming back to stay with Skokie and me for the summer. Skokie will be estatic. Kirby will be less than pleased.
• mmmm…..yogurt.
• Huge report due next week. ack.
• I really, really, really want to go to the beach over Memorial Day weekend.
• I’m replacing the sunk faucet in one of my bathrooms and it’s driving me crazy. But the faucet looks super nice, and the project is almost done. oooh, I should have taken before/after pictures.
• It’s 5:20pm. I’m outtie.

Laters.

love,
Skokie