Raving Amicks

To celebrate the end of my 30th rotation around the sun, I invited some friends to Crawfish King in the International District last Saturday. I’d never been there before, but a friend from work whose culinary taste and skill I admire recommended it. I’ve been to Crab Pot and had a good time, but this place makes Crab Pot look like Sizzler. Anyway, we got crawfish and sauce all over ourselves and it was fantastic.

Even before we ordered food, my friends had perched a cardboard box of unusual size upon the table. After navigating (with assistance) the styrofoam puzzle within, an incredible form emerged: two chicks at the same time.

The statue was purchased from a strange store in Leavenworth that appears to specialize almost exclusively in naughty statues. Our favorite is a busty pirate named “Trixie”, but she is also life-sized and requires some creative engineering to fit on a coffee table. My drinking buddies understandably opted for the table-top version.

I’m sure Mindy is reevaluating our relationship accordingly. ^^

So I finally got a bike that does exactly what I want it to. I kinda put off ordering it, because picking the right frame is really hard. Furthermore, since I’m getting it with components installed, choosing all the little pieces can basically go on forever if you let it. Everything in the picture came installed on the bike, except the pump and the pedals. I got my shit together and ordered the bike in mid-November and the bike arrived just shy of a month later.

Things I wanted to change from my old bike: cantilever brakes, stronger rack with longer support structure (so loaded panniers don’t swing back and hit the tire), more clearance between wheel and frame (for fenders and bigger wheels), stronger and long-lasting all-steel frame, bar-end shifters, Brooks seat, and wheels that support cassettes rather than failure-prone freewheels.

I’ve almost got the seat and handlebars adjusted to where I want them, but it takes a while to find that perfect position. Every time I ride, I readjust things a bit. I’m also starting to wonder if I like bar-end shifters more than downtube shifters or not (unfortunately, I didn’t realize my new bike doesn’t have downtube shifter bosses — argh!). Still, everything I didn’t like about my old bike is gone now, and I’ve yet to hate anything about the new bike. Even the Brooks seat, which is supposedly really hard until you break it in, feels just fine to me.

A couple months ago we had some thieves come through the apartment complex and steal a bunch of bikes from the community bike racks. The bikes are hung by bike mounts and a cable hangs down from them with which you can use a lock to tether the bike. Unfortunately, the cable is very thin, so it was trivial for the thieves to snip ‘em and toss the bikes in a truck. Fortunately, my old bike looks like shit (awesome shit), so it was passed over while several other bikes next to it were disappeared. But knowing that my new bike is not likely to get passed over, I decided to invest in some precautionary measures. I got the thickest U-Lock available and a very thick chain to tie around the wooden boards supporting the community bike rack. At least now the bike rack is the weak point and not a crappy cable.

I’m happy with the bike so far. While I was getting groceries today, I even had a hot hipster chick tell me I had a “beautiful bike” and compliment the double-toptube. Yay, bikes!

From Munich, we flew in to the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, where Vlad’s uncle kindly picked us up. The next day, we wandered out to see Kiev’s Golden Gate, which was a lot of fun to climb inside. Nearby was the kitty statue pictured here with me.

To get to the Golden Gate and just about everywhere else that we visited in Kiev, we went by subway. Subways in Ukraine tend to be highly stylized, with mosaics and marble and granite used to beautiful effect. This seems to be fairly common in eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the trip. A few subways were also very deep, presumably for protection against nuclear warfare, with high-speed escalators just to get people in and out in a reasonable amount of time.

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Hey y’all. Mindy posted some pictures of our new wine glasses a while ago and it’s high time I ‘splained ‘em.

These wine glasses are the sequel to our fantastic beer glasses and they use the same serious-business, full-body tempering (apparently using heat and not chemicals). The tempering requires an increase in glass thickness, but results in strong and stable, long-lasting glassware. They’re extra short for stackability, which also adds a bit of stability. I like ‘em, and Mindy’s even warmed up to them.

I conned Mom and Dad into getting a set of 12, cuz I had to order ‘em by boxes of 48 for $200. I found the best deal at ReStockIt.com with free shipping and some sort of discount (they have sales a lot). I’m going to give the 6 of them I have left over to Dieter. Hopefully these will hold up to the harsh realities of Dieter’s roommates. I’ll be bringing them down the next time we come to visit, hopefully in the next week or two.

I can’t believe I made the train today. My bus came a couple minutes early and I was pretty sure I was screwed. The only other bus I could possibly take was ten minutes up the hill and even then I doubted it could get me to the train on time.

So then I whooped out my tubephone and discovered that the ten-minutes-away bus was leaving in less than five. And since I had nothing to lose at this point, I huffed it up the hill with my overfilled backpack and suitcase.

Wouldn’t you know it? I just barely made it. Which is good too, cuz the train also left early (though, with me on it). Hooray for creative bussing!

And now, if you’ll direct your attention to the eastern sidebar… and assuming you have logged into your Raving Amicks account, you will notice that I have updated our stalker page for Mason. Please peruse it at your leisure.

I have a big pile of media equipment under my TV, so when Dieter suggested that someone try out the Belkin Conserve, I got all excited and started running around the house plugging random things into holes. The Conserve is designed to force electronic devices – which usually continue to slurp and gargle power even when they’re off – to truly dislodge and leave the power in the wall where it belongs. We have one 26” Samsung flat-screen TV, as well as an Apple TV, an electric sheep, and five video game consoles (Wii, PS2, N64, Super NES and NES), which means we have ample equipment with which to test out the Conserve. (more…)