ninjas, dragonflies, robots, swedish fish, and cars

Just a few of my favorite things.

But none of them even come remotely close to Tracy. She's my favorite thing ever. And soon she'll be my wife.

I can't wait.

stockings, socks, and wedding presents

Tracy's favorite part of Christmas is the stocking. She loves it. Lots of small gifts all individually wrapped and shoved in the bottom of a giant sock. She talks about her Christmas stocking for approximately half the year. So I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that she wants us to exchange wedding stockings.

Yup, that's right: Tracy wants me to fill her normal Christmas stocking with presents for the wedding. I'm not sure if we open them on the morning of the wedding, the night before, or the day after. No matter how you slice it, though, Tracy's getting a bunch of prizes crammed in a sock.

to beard or not to beard, that is the question

Tracy likes me better with a beard. Honestly, she likes me in all mountain-manned up with flannel, boots, and a big bushy beard. I don't mind the beard in colder months. In fact, I often prefer it. But from May - October, it's warm in Maine and a beard is the last thing I want. As such, I shaved my winter beard off about a month ago.

But now the wedding is fast approaching (10 days away!) and Tracy wants me to have a beard. I tried growing one back, but got frustrated with it after about 5 days of growth, and shaved it off this past Sunday. Now, if I don't shave again, I'll have a decent beard by the wedding day, but it's not really the right season for bearding. Plus, there's a lot of skin irritation when it's growing in, and there's a potential for breakouts, which is the last thing I need before the big day.

We've settled on a compromise: I'm going to be stubbly. Just how stubbly is the right amount of stubble has yet to be determined, but I've been doing tests. We figure it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 days. Four days might be too much, but three may not be enough, so we may have to get as specific as shaving in the evening three days before the wedding so we can see how the growth looks for a 1PM wedding.

Tonight I shave again. I should have two more opportunities to grow the beard back out to an appropriate stubbly length for the wedding. You know, for science. Then I just have to figure out if I shave the neck, or let the stubble go uninterrupted.

See, wedding planning is hard.

the colonel wants you to eat your vegetables

So...herbivores. Funny lot, they. In the absence of meat, they eat a lot of really unhealthy shit to get their proteins. They also tend to eat a lot of salad. That's just sad.

Salad isn't even food. Salad is what FOOD EATS.

As I'm sure you can imagine, I feel awfully bad for my vegetarian friends and the harm they're doing their bodies by denying them the proper proteins that millions of years of evolution demanded.

Fear not, vegematarians! I think I found a loophole in all of this meat-is-murder bollocks: KFC. That's right, KFC. As the urban legend goes, KFC no longer serves chicken. What they actually serve is an abomination of science - a throbbing bit of muscle with no brain that's kept alive through a heavy dose of hormones. (Side note: etymologically, "cock" is suddenly much more descriptive.)

Cool, right? I mean the bit about KFC not actually serving you a real animal. It's just a lab experiment, a happy, happy lab experiment. Sure, it's not any closer to a healthy diet than being an herbivore, but it's certainly better tasting that the other fake chicken products you probably have in the fridge at home.

So there you go,vegetarians. Get out your flags and stick em in the lawn of your nearest KFC. Claim that space for your kingdom. Enjoy your Kentucky fried awesome.

happy belated drunken day

So we had our wine tasting today instead of last week. We had a plan to a work out some big last minute wedding plans. But it didnt work oit that way. Instead, we jus drank too much and ate some good food, I made pierna fritas coconut rice, and mesclun salad. It roughly approximates the meal we intend to have at the wedding, so we ate, heartily. While drinking,

(heartily)

This is a bad post. I thin I'm drunk. Yeah, I'm drunk. So...success!!!

We picked our wines.

something wedded this way comes

Well the wedding is now less than four weeks out and there's still much to be done. Tomorrow night Tracy and I are doing a wine tasting to help us decide what wines to serve. Should be a good old fashioned drunk fest. Just what the doctor ordered on a thursday night. Yeehaw.

errors with our gift registry

I just went back through our gift registry for the wedding. There are no angle grinders, welders, engine hoists or car parts on it anywhere. Something is amiss.

honeymoonlighting

The honeymoon is officially booked!

Tracy and I are headed to the Riviera Maya, about an hour south of Cancun. We went the all-inclusive resort direction hoping we'd be able to relax and enjoy each other's company rather than fretting about where we're off to next. We've planned a few small day excursions...Scuba Diving (didn't think Tracy'd be up for that one), a trip to the ruins, and a visit to a wildlife park.

We're pretty excited. Tracy, for the most part, is interested in the swim-up bar.

It's pretty obvious why I love her.

the end of being a fatty

I've got my wedding coming up in 3 months, and I need to lose weight. I've put on 20lbs since college, and I'm going to lose all of it before my wedding. More details tomorrow, but for now, just now that I've officially signed my letter of intent.

classified

I'm in Greece. Somewhere on the island of Crete. Shooting a documentary for National Geographic on a US Navy submarine. I wish I could say more, but it's classified.

Expect big stories upon my return to the states next week...

on clutch pedals

I can't help but think that if more people bought manual transmission cars, we wouldn't have unintended acceleration problems.

dell mini 10v

A big thanks to Dad for sending me his seldom-used Dell mini 10v Netbook. I had it for less than an hour before I started the hackintosh procedure. The 10.6 snow leopard install worked well, but I lost audio and some other functions when I upgraded to 10.6.2. Fortunately, there's a fix for that, and the creators of this excellent hack had it built right in. After searching the web for an hour looking for answers (I found many, but few were helpful), I came to the realization that all I needed to do was run Netbook Installer, which was conveniently added to my applications folder when the OS was installed.

Now everything's back up and running, and I've got a teeny tiny little Mac Snow Leopard netbook that's about half the size and a third the weight of my first generation 15" MBP. I got the netbook for free from Dad (who got it free from Dell when he bought a desktop unit last fall), but if you were going to buy this, it's available from dell for $249. It's another $30 to buy OSX Snow Leopard at the local apple store, and after that it's just time and patience.

So if you want an ultraportable mac laptop for less than $300, and you're not afraid to tinker, I highly recommend scooping up a Dell mini 10v. The only thing I'd add is the bigger battery option, which I think adds about $35.

hackintosh instructions here: http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v-into-the-ultimate-snow-leopard-netbook

on brussels sprouts and steam

Has anyone else noticed that brussels sprouts farts smell exactly like steamed brussels sprouts? It's quite uncanny. I bet if I blindfolded you and put you in a confined space, you'd have a hard time distinguishing the smell of actual steamed brussels from brussels steamers.

Ruminate on that for a bit.

lunch with jon stewart

Dear Daily Show and Hulu,

Thanks for giving me something to do every day while I'm eating lunch.

oh christmas tree

Tracy and I put up our Christmas tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving. That was November 29th. I took it down last night because the holiday is waaay over, but not because the tree needed to come down. I don't know what sort of crazy hybrid tree we got this year, but it was awesome. It had broad, soft needles, a very vibrant green color, but only a very slight pine smell. It continued to drink water for the full six weeks, and only stopped drinking because I stopped giving it water. Even then, when I pulled it out of the stand, the and took it outside, it dropped only a handful of needles across the floor.

I don't know what kind of creepy genetic mutant it is. Possibly one of its parents was an artificial tree. Regardless, it was the best Christmas tree I've ever owned, and I'm sad to see it go. Mostly because it added great ambiance to our living room, filling an otherwise blank, empty space. I don't really know what to put there now, but the room looks sad and empty without it.

on chuck, elliptical laments, and why i need a new gym

In recent weeks, my gym has been completely overrun by a fresh mob of doughy, rosy cheeked sweatsacks. The place is so mobbed as of late that it's nearly impossible to work out. I've been going later and later in the evenings in an attempt to find some open machinery, but it hasn't helped.

Take Monday night, for instance. I timed my visit to the gym to coincide with my favorite television show, Chuck. It's such a brilliant parade of never-ending references to great films, music, and all that was right with the 1980s, and it's the only show I'm so excited to see that I don't like to wait for the next day's Hulu broadcast (I don't have TV reception at home). As such, I like to go to the gym and run on the treadmill for an hour while I watch the show.

This Monday night, however, there weren't any open treadmills. The gym has something like 65 treadmills, but they were all taken. Every last one of them. It's been like that for the past two weeks, and I've had a hard time running as a result. Normally, I'd just go upstairs and lift instead (the weight area is also mobbed, but you can usually find an open bench somewhere, though it often means doing a military press when you want to be doing squats), but the whole point of being at the gym that night was to watch Chuck. I needed to be at a stationary exercise machine, each of which is equipped with its own TV and headphone jack. A quick scan of the gym's 200+ pieces of cardio equipment showed 1 open stair stepper, 3 elliptical machines, and a handful of bikes. I let Tracy have the stair stepper, I don't get a good workout on the bikes, so I saddled up on one of the elliptical machines.

Now, you need to understand something: I hate elliptical machines. Hate them. With a passion. I don't know if I'm not tall enough to use them properly, or if I just lack some vital posture requirement that makes these things usable (why do my feet always go numb?), or maybe I just don't get it. Regardless, watching me work out on an elliptical can't be far removed from watching a monkey fuck a football: humorous and hard to look away from, but sad and embarrassing at the same time. Which is why I hate them. Hate hate hate. I typically do my best to avoid them like the plague, but I had about 60 seconds to find an open piece of cardio equipment with a TV or I was going to miss my favorite show. That couldn't happen. Yes, I'm a raving, rabid fanboy. No, I don't care. Sacrifices had to be made. Elliptical machines had to be used. What other choice was there?

Undoubtedly, this new influx of fitness-minded nocturnes are the result of holiday overindulgence or everyone's favorite New Years cliché, the "I'll get fit this year" resolution. They must know that they're getting in the way of my own clichéd New Years weight loss resolution. My hope is that everyone will lose their handful of holiday pounds and quickly go back to their previous sedentary evening routines. They need to go. They're getting in the way of my wedding weight loss plan. More importantly, they're getting in the way of my Chuck watching.

trouble sleeping

Went to bed tonight at 10:30, but set the alarm for midnight. There was homemade pizza dough rising in the kitchen for tomorrow's dinner. It needed to stop rising and start refrigerating at midnight. So I got up, split the dough in half, and put it in the fridge.

I was up for about four minutes before I got back in bed. That was enough, though, cause now I'm wide awake.

Shit.

speaking car

Have you seen the new Ford Fusion commercial where Ford says "We Speak Car?" The commercial goes on to mention that Ford speaks car because they know about "RPMs" and "MGPs". People who actually speak car don't say that. RPM and MPG are already plural.

Yes, I know I'm being pedantic. No, I don't care. Ford, figure your shit out, man.

you're the only one reading, so what the hell...

hi molly!

iphone blogging: take 3

The email works okay, but I feel like there is a more elegant free solution. Is this it? Maybe.

That's right, I made that pizza. Home made crust courtesy of Tracy.

iphone blogging: take 2

This is just done via email. From my phone. With a picture of Tracy and Stefi at the Hoffbrau House as a test.

iphone blogging: take 1

I need a better mobile blogging program. One where I can type in landscape.

new beginnings

I've really given up on blogging in the past half-decade as it hasn't comfortably fit into my internet usage pattern. The problem is this: I have three domains with limited content: www.projectrally.com, www.adamcosta.com, and www.noscurvy.com. I also still have my old blog, noscurvy.livejournal.com. The three websites I manage from my home computer and use a traditional FTP setup to upload all of my content. Adding new content isn't quite cumbersome, but it's not quick. That negates the whole function of blogging, which is essentially just an opportunity for your brain to vomit up whatever arbitrary and banal musings your consciousness is having a hard time digesting.

In order for a blog to function properly, new content needs to be added quickly and easily at a moment's notice. I could still use my livejournal account for that, but it just doesn't seem elegant to have 3 websites and still require a blog hosted elsewhere. I hate twitter and facebook (though I have accounts to both!), so no blogging there. I've toyed with incorporating wordpress into one of the dreamweaver website builds, but I've just never been all that excited about messing with it. I'm just not that interested in designing websites. I know that I need to change that outlook, because I don't want to pay someone else to build them for me, but since it's never been pressing, I haven't bothered. The easiest solution was just to stop blogging.

Until now, hopefully. I just crammed google's blogger into my own site, and hopefully I can put adamcosta.com to good use. Next up...posting from my iphone...