Curious Notions

Chatting with my Sole mate today…

solemate: i just read an article about that
the guys get better as they age
me: they do
solemate: women lose their edge past 25
solemate: GAD
me: OIGJoaijet OMG
solemate: dfjksaf;glka
me: im turnign 25
solemate: I AM 25

Then Nev. My dear friend, Nev out of the blue signs my facebook wall today as well.

Nev aka Ass :) (Texas) wrote
at 2:18pm
Enjoy this next month, cause soon you’re gonna be OLD. I mean like, WAY old.

SO OLD the car rental companies won’t charge you extra because they know your reflexes are way slower than all us young people.

Plates have been packed for about a week now. Been eating out but no where new. Yesterday Nino had a craving for pho and took us to one of his many pho haunts. Seriously, I have one I always go to (Pho Danh), that boy has about 6 he cycles through. He took us to one a couple of weeks ago near his apartment but I forgot to record that down. This one is called Pho Hoang. I liked the service. We were shooting order numbers at our waiter like it was a game of bingo.

“I’ll have the 36, no wait the 52″

“72 with a coconut smoothie.”

On and on. Number after number. The cute man kept up too with only one follow up question.

The noodles were a little more al dente than I’m used to but I liked the difference. Cute, clean place. I forgot to take pictures with my phone but remembered right when we were leaving and when it was too late. Here’s the restaurant. Nino insisted on treating again. He’s alright. I don’t care what they say about him.

Nino and Nisreen then took us to Short and Sweet. A new tea house in the “china town” of Austin. I’m usually a coco’s girl but I really like Short and Sweet. The decor is adorable in that cutesy Asian way. I had the red bean drink with “rainbow” jelly. Delicious. I wish I wasn’t so full from the pho. I’d really appreciate it. The man who made my drink wanted me to try it in front of him since I basically gave him all liberties in choosing my order. The tea house also has an Asian candy selection. Jars and jars with Asian treats. I wish I read Vietnamese so I could tell what most of them were. I want to go back and be brave and just grab random stuff. Pictures of Short and Sweet follow.

They used HEB stickers on some of their jars. Hee.

While I’m blogging.

McDonalds has been giving Starbucks a run of their money with first the iced coffee and now a bigger selection of specialty caffeinated beverages. I went yesterday to get a 6 piece nugget (I’ve pretty much dropped from 4 times a week McD trips to 2 times a week to now 4 times a month. Beam with pride for me!) and they were giving out free iced mochas. Good! I like it better than Starbucks because it’s much stronger.

Finally, saw midnight showing of Wanted yesterday. Silly but I enjoyed it. Loved the music. Angelina won me over again. She’s just so.. sexy it’s hard to resist. I miss her meatier body though. Her face aged some with her weight loss.

Yesterday I had a pleasant day with the roommate which kind of also made me sad since we’re splitting ways at the end of the week. I move out Saturday. Didn’t expect to be so spoiled this year with roommate luck.

We saw Kung Fu Panda, a movie I wasn’t originally interested in but kept hearing great things about it and it’s currently the only movie out I want to see. I laughed it up during the movie. Movie was light and awesome. The fight scenes were actually pretty good and the panda, adorably flawed. I related to his aversion to stairs and working out. I recommend the movie.

We saw the matinee showing with plans of eating pho at Pho Danh right after. Little did we know that Po the panda works in a family owned noodle house. My mouth was watering at the sight of animated noodles.

I was at work today thinking about Kung Fu Panda which lead me to think about pho which lead me to think about another hardcore Vietnamese soup called Bun Rieu, a tomato crab tofu noodle soup. It’s by far my favorite vietnamese soup that I’ve never ordered in a restaurant, only had my mom’s. In fact, I had it for about 3 meals the last weekend I spent in Houston with my parents. I love it that much. So I started googling images of Bun Rieu at work to torture myself. I found a nice photo that looks exactly like what my mom’s Bun Rieu at a photographer’s website. http://www.toanthai.com.

God. So good. There’s not that many Vietnamese restaurants in Austin but I guess I could try to find a pale contender to my mom’s Bun Rieu while in Austin.

While I was hungrily image googling food at work, I tried to tie myself over with 2 cupcakes (A patient thought it was my birthday and brought me cupcakes. Someone told her I was having a hard time turning 25, which I totally am. One more month.), 2 chocolate chip cookies, 1 brownie, 1 scone. What the? All before lunch too! I’m glad I have a work out date with Nisreen tonight.

I love this video. Courtesy of Thomas. Watch it ALL the way through. My favorite was India and the first Korean one.

I need to travel more. :(

Wouldn’t it be fun if this video was used during a UN meeting about world peace? I’d sit in.

SATC: (MEF, STOP READING) Saw it the Monday after it came out. Went with a boy. The lady beside me asked me how I managed that. No joke there were maybe 6 guys. Movie was great. I cried when Carrie beat Big with the flowers. Tears tears tears. Thought it was well done and was a good length. Makes me want a little more romance in my life. I like that it wasn’t a fairy tale. Doesn’t set us up for false hope, you know?

The Strangers: Scary. I screamed. In the end, stupid. You never find out why they’re doing what they’re doing and they do indeed remain strangers. Creepy as hell though.

The Hulk: Saw this Thursday at midnight. Caused me to be sleepy during work the next day. Nice effects, kept me entertained and awake. In the end, it wasn’t enough for me. Lots of running. Lots of “OH MY, DON’T MAKE ME ANGRY!!!” Lots of “AW SHIT, NOW YOU’VE MADE ME ANGRY!!” Not enough other stuff.

http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2008/05/2008-best-city-houston.html

We collect a lot of urine samples at work. There’s a marker in there for the patients to label their cups. One patient decided to leave us artwork on his pee cup every time he comes in.

That’s my mommy on our way to my brother’s graduation almost a full month ago. She’s perdy.

This picture was taken today at my alma mater. This is the building I had genetics lab, introduction to biology, and microbiology…. oh and a handful of office hours.

With my little at a luncheon last weekend.

Work has been sucking the life and joy out of my life. I find having week night plans helps with the decompressing. I forgot what I did Monday night, but Tuesday I worked out, Wednesday I went to a talk about high cholesterol at Eddie V’s (free Eddie V’s!), enjoyed my first game of putt putt in years, and yesterday (Thursday), I went to Chuck Palahniuk’s book signing for his new book, Snuff.

I only read one of his books prior and Fight Club is one of my favorite movies but I knew his book signing is something I’d definitely want to go to. To be able to flesh out the most banal situations and not be known criminal fascinates me. I was a little bummed spending 45 dollars on a book signing for tickets when usually they’re free but he really was worth every penny.

I’ve been sharing the anecdotes he revealed at the signing all day today. I am quite taken with him. A lot more after the signing.

All three of us forgot our cameras so we made due with Stephen’s cell phone camera.

Snuff: A porn star tries to break the world record by sleeping with 600 men in one movie. While waiting in line 2 hours before the event started (the first 200 get their signed books personalized), anal beads were passed out as bookmarks.

The last time he was in Austin was at Barnes and Noble. (The sold out audience boo’ed. It’s Austin, we like to keep our city weird which means the more independent/local businesses the better.) He had 32 written complaints from customers after his reading. So this time, he threw out ear plugs.

He threw out blow up dolls before his reading of a forever unpublished piece of his and had a blowing contest. Winner gets copies of one of his favorite books.

Tall Stephen caught a girl blow up doll and participated.

There was an interview after the reading. One of my favorite parts of the signing was two stories of two people he met at book signings. Here’s one of the stories:

Guy shows Chuck a heavy trash bag full of Polaroids. It’s his artwork. Single people in various levels of undress, slumped to one side, asleep. Chuck learns through bizarre dialogue that these people are dead. The guy worked? works? in a sex club for years now and sometimes people die of heart attacks or drug overdoses. His job is to check for dead people. He takes pictures of each one before he calls them in.

Then it was blow up doll time again. Tall Stephen caught me one and we both participated.

Afterwards, we waited another 2 hours to get our book personalized. We were there from 5pm to 11:30pm. The two hour wait made us cranky. It was cold.

But then we got our prize! He signed my Snuff with, “Smile for the cameras!”

Get it?