Posts from — May 2009

As everyone knows, my parents kick ass. They kick ass for various reasons, but the most recent reason for me to remember that fact is that they sent me over to to one of my favorite places in SA last week for an (very early) birthday present (yes, 6 months ahead of time). I got to place an order for another custom guayabera over at Dos Carolinas.

Dos Carolinas made the periwinkle guayavera that I wear on special occassions (and in this ribs video).

If you’re interested in getting a guayavera I’d either get yourself to their shop in San Antonio or contact Ms. Matthews and her crew via their site.

Here are some preview pics of the upcoming shirt. I went with a similar shirt to my previous one: 4 pockets & linen but went with a navy blue color… I also tried to go with a less geometric embroidery pattern than the periwinkle shirt (I’ll try to upload a better pic of that this week) and basically it’s going to rock.

Pulling some blue to see if there’s enough to get around my ample mid-section….

Comparing differing thread colors

The hard part, picking a pattern

A better pic of the thread colors

I know I could have been  a bit more adventurous with my color section but maybe I’ll do that next time- after all, my measurements are on file.

Two notes-

1) although Ms Matthews said she makes mostly men’s clothes- she had some great women’s garments there. There was a great tunic she was finishing for a customer with 3/4-length sleeves with folded-back cuffs and another really cute dress with a similar blue to my upcoming shirt.  So ladies, you should go check out her stuff too.

2) My replacement told me that the word “guayabera” was in the National Spelling Bee the other night. If I were a kid and that was my word to spell, I’d be kind of pissed off. Mainly because it’s not really an English word (but I don’t know the spelling bee rules) and also because I’ve always spelled the word with a “v” or “Be chica” as they say in spanish. I guess I’ve been misspelling the word for years.

I went to lunch with Bart today and there was a girl at the burger place with a stormtrooper patch on her jeans. It was pretty cool (and funny). Of course he took a pic which I put up on flickr….

It led to at least five minutes of Star Wars sexual innuendo jokes…

“I want to put my X-wing in her Death Star…”

“That’s no moon!”

“It’s a TRAP!”

etc…

yeah, I’m basically 13 years old…

Aside from hanging out with my folks in SA (and seeing some of you), you know what I’ve really liked? The occasional thunderstorms.

When it rains here in TX, it rains. Big drops of water, not that “peter dribble” annoying mist and small drops in SF.

And the thunder! I don’t think I’ve heard thunder in years! It’s great. And fortunately for me, the storms haven’t been too long and the sun has come out afterward –just in time for the evening’s activities.

I even stayed up late last night with some of the shades open to watch the lightning and then count until the thunder struck.

Just a quick update-

Well, the machine is breaking. It’s leaking water. To be fair, the company has already started shipping a new machine to my dad. But I wonder if it was a design problem that they knew about already. I need to stop calling it an Illy too, it’s a Francis Francis X8.

I won’t have a full review I guess unless the machine gets here early next week. Let’s just say I still love my Rancilio Silvia and Rocky grinder and it completely demolishes pod machines imho, but there’s some ease of use I like in these pod boxes.

Illy pod & Nespresso pod

• Illy/Francis Francis pros -
  • makes great espresso
  • has a pretty good milk frother
• Illy/Francis Francis cons -
  • can’t leave the machine on all day (how do you heat the cups then?)
  • makes a shitload of refuse (giant plastic pod trash/recycling)
  • machine broke (although to be fair they’re shipping a new one)

• Nespresso pros-
  • really good coffee
  • good variety of styles to order from even thought I use the same 2 over and over again
  • can leave the machine on for a while, gets cups nice and warm
  • bigger water resovoir
  • makes good to great espresso
• Nespresso cons-
  • no milk frother for guest’s cappuccinos
  • machine costs a lot (I think the one I used is an n90)

Here you can see the difference in pod sizes (for those of you concerned w/ the trash/recycling), although, I swear, the illy pods really are much bigger and really pile up quickly. They’re thick plastic too.

edit: I have another update here

(of course it’s the sf chron that picked this story up…) link

A 12 year old girl was censored(!) by her school for trying to give a report on Harvey Milk (zomg!!)…. outrage here and there…

“After the principal sent letters to alert parents about the “sensitive topic,” Natalie was allowed to give her 12-page PowerPoint report during the May 8 lunch recess, but not in class, Blair-Loy said. Eight of the 13 students in her class attended, he said.”

The real outrage for me is in that paragraph- they’re teaching kids, KIDS!, to use powerpoint.

My dad has a new(er) Illy Espresso Pod machine. I’m uhh “testing” it this week.

As I’ve written before, I used  to HATE pod machines but after playing with the Nespresso I changed my mind.

The Nespresso is now his office machine and the Illy is the new home one. I’ll write more about it later but my first thoughts are: wow, that’s a lot of waste product (huge plastic pod trash) & DAMN that’s good Illy espresso & why aren’t my cups hot?

more later

When I was a kid, my dad and his running group would occassionaly take a vacation together to fly to SF and run the Bay to Breakers (b2b) as a group- or as they called it then, a mini-centipede. It’s a difficult run but its fun when you do the whole thing with friends. There’s nothing like that last little bit when you come out of the park and you get to the beach.

After I moved to SF and got in a bit of shape, I decided to run it too. I’ve only done it three times but each time it was great. But the last time I ran it I went back through the park to meet friends and saw a mess.

Since I was jogging with other joggers, I didn’t know about the throngs of walking drinkers and revelers behind us. I mean, I did, but I didn’t know how big a group they were and how much of a mess there was behind us. BTW, I’m talking about years ago… not last year.

Then about three years ago I remember talking to some youngins who had moved here and were planning on going to the event. To them, they knew it mostly as a drinking party that had “a race at the start” but they didn’t know anyone running it.

One of the times I ran it when I lived in that house with the Afrikaans. They pushed a shopping cart with a keg in it for the event. When all of us were back at the house one of their girlfriends who was in town wondered why I was sober (and why I had jogged the event). I explained it to her.

I thought to myself after both of those times that maybe the race and jogging tradition was in trouble. Not trouble maybe, but I thought it was curious at the time.

Then last year, there was “the big mess”. The event was almost cancelled because of the amount of refuse and complaints of people urinating on houses in the Panhandle. But as people do in SF, they got their shit together finally and had the race. Obviously, I wasn’t in town today, but from the news sites in SF and blogs and twitter I thought it went okay.

But this year for the first time I heard some of those damn millenials talking (and Laura had a similar experience before I did) who had *no idea* there was a fun run. They had never heard of that part of it. They only know of it as a drinking event.

I’m not saying that’s bad .. but I think it’s weird- or at least notable. Although part of me thinks that’s a bit sad.

Maybe I’m being reflective as I’ve been in SF for a while now (just passed my 10 year anniv. there) and I’m dwelling on the passage of time. Or maybe I think it’s odd how SF keeps changing over time.

SF culture is like a dry erase board. New people keep moving in all the time. If it weren’t for KQED showing old documentaries about SF history (and the crappy Chronicle pining for the old days when people read their articles) as a constant reminder of how things were or how SF’s supposed to be I wonder if anyone would notice or care that much. (And maybe KQED and the old SF crew are the odd holdouts and they would look at me as the way I’m looking at the millenials?)

I’m just glad it was nice out in SF today and that those of you who went had fun. Now go back to Dolores Park and groom your sideburns.

What do y’all think about all this?

via Bryan

It’s kind of odd how my mind works sometimes… I was watching a movie recently that starred Ralph Fiennes and Natasha Richardson (The White Countess) and I thought – that’s odd, did I put this in my queue when the sad news of Richardson’s accident came up? I had to think about it for a while and realized the movie that I had just sent back to Netflix had similar themes… or settings rather.

I had watched The Painted Veil (w/ Edward Norton,  Naomi Watts & Liev Schreiber) just the week before- so months back, I must have had 1930s China on my mind and put both in my queue. I just wish I remembered what I had been reading back then that triggered the rentals. That’s the downside of having a netflix queue that’s so long.

I’ll save the reviews for later- but let’s just say both movies are good, but very different. I liked the cinematography in The Painted Veil  more- but then again, it’s hard to film that locale and wind up with a bad shot. But I liked the story and acting of The White Countess more (even though some montages bugged the crap out of me)…

But that’s not my point today… I wanted to talk about Ralph Fiennes’ tuxedo jackets in the movie- yeah, nerdy I know. But check them out though- I took some screencaps.

I want to get jackets like these made and wear them to Angie & Mike’s wedding or some other event… (they’re *just* a bit  classier than my standard guayaveras no?)

Ralph Fiennes’ character owns a swanky nightclub in Shanghai and if he’s not wearing the standard black dinner jacket, he has on this green plaid number:

And then later in the movie when he’s entertaining Red Chinese, Japanese Navy, and European Ex-pats he has on this fancy chinese-brocade(?)/embroidered jacket:

(check out the back too)

I want one of those just to wear to Cory’s or Marc & Jen’s for bbqs and cigars! Granted, I’m not sure I can pull off that look as smoothly as the suave Fiennes, but I’ll try…

Of course in the movie, the jackets and Ralph are all upstaged whenever Natasha’s on screen

Maybe this will be my “adam savage dodo bird/maltese falcon” project.