Dubs

The University of Washington introduced a new mascot. The Huskies have their 11th Malamute (um...). You know you want to follow that link...there's video of a puppy!

The Road to Ft. Awesome

It's hard to believe that it's been a year since our big move. At this time last year, we were driving like crazy heading from Santa Fe to Carrboro in record time. Perhaps this is somewhat cheap, but I really enjoyed reading these posts again and thought I'd share them with any who didn't seen them the first time or just want to take a second look.

Crossing the Border

Backtracking
Grand Vegas
The Hoover Dam

High Desert

What's so great about the plains, anyway?

Hoosiers Again

Cat Out of the Bag

While I am not itching for another cross country trip, I must admit that reading these posts is making me antsy for some outdoors to explore. Our weather has improved (the high today is 55!), but we're not yet to hiking weather.

74-47

I know that it's not nice to gloat about team's losses, but when Duke scores fewer than 50 points in a 27-point loss, I can't help but be gleeful. Did I mention that Duke lost? By a lot? They did. Last night. So did Wake Forest. By a lot.

But wait, there's more. Indiana won!! Their first Big Ten win of the year. There is a lot of hope surrounding Indiana basketball. We went to a game a couple of weeks ago, and the crowd was fantastic. Though it was fairly annoying that the middle-aged lady sitting next to me kept yelling "Miss it!" when Minnesota had the ball and "c'mon Tom!" (referring to Pritchard in this case), I definitely appreciated her enthusiasm. IU is on the way back up. We are through with the nonsense of the last few years, and we can move forward. This win, while not important in terms of IU's record, was needed for the pyche of Indiana fans. Also, Duke lost!

New Website

I stumbled across this website that seems like it could turn into something amusing:

indydouchebags.com

I don't really care for the automatically playing music on most pages, but the general concept is pretty awesome.

The Best of 2008

As advertised, here are my top ten songs of 2008.

10. "Cherry Tulips" The Headlights
9. "In the New Year" The Walkmen
8. "You Don't Know Me" Ben Folds (feat. Regina Spektor)
7. "Dig, Lazarus, Dig" Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
6. "Always a Friend" Alejandro Escovedo
5. "Walcott" Vampire Weekend
4. "Drive On, Driver" The Magnetic Fields
3. "Punches" Colin Herring
2. "Buildings & Mountains" The Republic Tigers
1. "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" She & Him

Looking over this list makes me realize that working so much in the second half of the year has severely cut back on the attention paid to my music collection. Three of the songs in the top ten are from artist I have only heard that one song from (The Headlights, Nick Cave, and The Republic Tigers). I guess I've heard other Nick Cave, but not from this album, and we saw The Republic Tigers open for Nada Surf, but I haven't investigated them further.

Also, since Josh requested, I'll talk about one more new band. The band that I am into most right now (though I just found out about them about 6 weeks ago, so they didn't make the list) is called Titus Andronicus. It's kind of like a cross between the Thermals & Bright Eyes. And that's a winning combo. Check them out!

*As I'm posting this, I see that Titus Andronicus is playing in Bloomington on Monday, Feb. 9th. That will be tough, but I may try to go...

Commercial From 1981

One of my students directed me to this unfortunately named diet product from the early 80s.