Back from Texas, but not without my hotel spoils...

Ahh... the spoils of any long hotel stay. I know, I'm a weirdo, but I love to horde hotel toiletries. There are worse habits, right?

As for a last interesting Texas thing... I originally rented a car in Fort Worth, Texas, and then drove it down to the Houston area where I spent the rest of my time. So I wasn't sure exactly where I was supposed to drop it off in Houston since there are all kinds of rules and potential fees associated with "one-way" rentals. So as I'm combing my rental agreement, I notice some fine print on the very bottom...

"For rentals originating in the City of Arlington: The City of Arlington
requires that an additional tax of 5% be imposed on each motor vehicle rental for the purpose of financing a portion of the Dallas Cowboys complex development project approved by the voters of the city on November 2, 2004."

While different, creative public funding methods are not uncommon for stadiums and such, it still made me laugh a little bit. I'll have to ask my friend from Arlington if she remembers voting on the issue.

Of note, I went to a Rangers game while I was briefly in Fort Worth and it's right by the new Cowboys stadium under construction and that thing is looking pretty schnazzy (and expensive looking).

At least in Tampa when they got the voters to approve sales tax increase to support the new stadium (Raymond James), they included money for schools and etc., too... since when they previously put just the school tax to a vote without the attached stadium tax, the vote failed... which is kind of sad, right?

So they practically had to trick the citizens into supporting education by sneaking it into a vote on a new football stadium. That way the folks who wanted a new stadium, but hated children voted yes and the people who didn't want a stadium but knew it was the only way to get the education money also voted yes.

And folks wonder why other countries may be giving us a run for our money in the global economy in a lot of ways, hmmm...

Anywho... so my cable was out when I got home... an I'm still not sure why. It has just solidified my decision to just stop paying for cable, since I don't watch enough TV to warrant it.

I had read on the Houston Chronicle's site while in Texas that CBS was going to start putting full episodes of classic shows on YouTube, and for some reason I was thinking I had read that included Knight Rider. I was mistaken. It was in fact MacGyver I was thinking of... so when I looked for some full Knight Rider episodes, this is what I found instead...



I remember people saying something about a burlesque dancer being on the "America's Got Talent" show, but I didn't remember the Knight Rider strip. Classy.

Heck, in all honesty, the clip was probably better than watching a whole episode anyway... it had the awesome music, KITT, the Hoff and a stripper all packed into under two minutes.

So while there were no full Knight Rider episodes... I eventually found the MacGyver episodes but they didn't have the one where he ends up in medieval times and hangs with Merlin (which I swear was always the one on TV when I was home sick from school), so I decided to skip on watching one of MacGyver's ingenious escapes and looked to see what other shows they had... and they totally have original Star Trek episodes, which is kind of neat.

I watched the one where they end up in the 1930's. A classic of course.

I think on of my favorite parts has to be where Kirk explains Spock's appearance to a cop by saying he is Chinese and his ears are pointy because they got caught in a mechanical ricepicker when he was a child. The political correctness was overwhelming.

Libraries, jogging and the Olympics are all free

Another day, zero cents spent. Heck, I'm making money. I found a dime on the ground on the way home from the library.

It was an interesting little library. About a quarter of the books were in Spanish, which makes sense I suppose. There was also a little section of Russian-language books... there was an old lady checking it out, so I guess it sees use.

Come to think of it, we must have some Ruskies around here. There is a little Russian grocery store a few blocks down the street... as a bonus, they have a rack with their potatoes for sale out on the sidewalk... 49 cents a pound, word?

If only Ivan Drago could read, maybe I'd bump into him in my library. He was too busy getting served to learn how to read though I guess.

The selection at the library was pretty random... they actually didn't have Pride and Prejudice, but it may have been checked out and I couldn't use their electronic card catalogue so I couldn't check.

I did see Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, which is actually a good read. I thought about picking it up and reading it again.

One of the interesting parts in that one is when they tell about Lee's failed attempt to pitch his sex-themed comic strip to Playboy... it was deemed to weird and creepy. Believe me, it was. And no, that's not something I randomly made up either... and yes, it was weird.

I ended up getting The Gangs of New York, as in the book that inspired the movie. Apparently it was written in the 1920's... who knew?

I haven't seen the movie, so it will all be new to me.

So far it is just giving a history of the area where the book is set, which is really cool... since it is giving a history of basically where my office building is. My work subway stop is like a block from what it describes as "Negroes' burying ground....on the outskirts of town."

That probably made for a gross time when putting in the subway routes...

He also makes reference to the when "the present Times Square theatrical district was a howling wilderness where the savage Indian prowled." I'll have to picture next time I'm there and surrounded by the sea of neon commercialism.

After the library, I went jogging... to New Jersey.

I walked to the George Washington Bridge and jogged across the Hudson River (to where it becomes the the Jersey Turnpike) and back... about a two-mile trip total.

They have a little walking/biking trail set up, and if you look to the south, you can see the city's skyline... which is a pretty cool sight as your jogging along. It kind of reminded me of the jogging scene in Punch-Out!!...


Technically though, I guess Little Mac is actually jogging in either
Brooklyn or New Jersey in order to have that awesome view.
Side note:Some of the best video game music, ever.

Not surprisingly, once I got on solid ground in Jersey, there was actually a noticeable, not too pleasant, smell. Go figure.

I spent most of the rest of the day watching the Olympics and cooking with my gas stove... and gas oven. I was quite surprised to look under the oven where I stored my baking trays to see a ginormous blue flame right on top of them... I think I'll move those to somewhere less like a fireplace.

As for the Olympics, we totally dominated fencing.

That's right, gold, silver and bronze. Word.
I also watched, like, the most ridiculous pommel horse routine ever. All the other Americans basically took it easy on the horse and just tried not to mess up, but not Alexander Artemev. I couldn't get a clip of him in Beijing, but here's what looks like the same routine at a different recent competition.

You say Czech Republic and I say Czechoslovakia (which makes me wrong)

So I decided to hit the town after work yesterday... which ended up being a lot of fun, but made work not nearly as much fun today.

Originally I was going to catch a concert at this bar right near where I work.

As I got closer I noticed this big line of people waiting outside the club, and as I got closer, I realized it was like 95 percent girls... which is not a minus to say the least. But, as I got even closer, I realized the club did not have an age limit and they ranged from tweens (some with their humorously unexcited looking fathers) on up to mid-twenties... I figured that probably wouldn't be the best place to go so I wandered to the Village and kept exploring.

Eventually I ended up at a bar with some friends from USF, which was fun. I spent a good part of the evening talking to this girl who was in town from the Czech Republic.

I pulled a John McCain and mistakenly referred to her as being from the now defunct Czechoslovakia. She quickly reminded me that country no longer exists.

Still? I thought for sure by now they'd have hooked up and had some crazy makeup sex by now, oh well...

I also mentioned something about European geography and was way off, and I got called out on that too. I explained to her that we don't need to learn European geography here on this side of the Atlantic and asked her if she knew the geography of our states. Luckily she laughed at most of the crazy jingotastic jokes I made rather than smack me in the face... I probably get away with a lot more than I should sometimes, but I digress...

I wish I had thought to ask her if she was a fan of Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team - Worker and Parasite! ...



The night, which ended up costing a bit, also got me to thinking about finances. I'm definitely doing fine at the moment money-wise, but the more I go out drinking, the more cash I'm hemorrhaging and at some point that might cause some trouble. I really need to reign in the spending, whether it's from drinking, eating out, or just buying things for the apartment - it all keeps adding up.

So I've decided to try something out. Until next weekend (except Wednesday, my birthday!), I'm not going to spend another damn cent. I'm going to prepare every meal at home, not go out drinking, no Chinatown for lunch... heck, not even pick up a 50 cent New York Post on the way to work in the morning. Nothing!

I was totally rocking out to Candy Girl in one of the bars I went to yesterday...



I was just thinking, maybe I'll pick it up for 99 cents on iTunes, what's 99 cents, right? Nope, that's 99 cents too many. I guess my need for a New Edition fix came at a bad time. Oh well, somehow I think I'll survive... even though it really is a fun little ditty...

I'm still debating whether I'll skip doing laundry this Saturday morning too... we'll see.

I'm already planning some thrifty tactics to make this work. Like I'm going to go to get a library card Saturday morning and get a new (free) book to read on my commute instead of the Post. Hopefully it will be better than With a Tangled Skein, a chill just went down my spine thinking of that "book"...

That reminds me, maybe if I can find some sort of abridged children's version with tons of pictures I might pick up Pride and Prejudice. The poll showed that six people had read the book and five had only seen a film version. Either way, in my drunkenness I forgot that the debate was actually over whether all girls had read the book... and the poll didn't specify anything about that, so it was kind of useless I suppose. Oh well.

If I limited it to just women, it probably would have gotten confusing anyway, having to do the math to calculate the results of all those partial votes... I'll just consider that bullet dodged.

Side note: I passed by an epic dominoes match walking home today. These two old guys had a table set up on the sidewalk and they actually had a fairly loud (for dominoes I suppose) crowd watching intently. It was a little odd. It also reminded me that I can't remember the last time I played dominoes and I'm not even sure I even remember how to play.