Thursday, December 30, 2004

If You Want Some, Come Get Some, Cause Where I'm From We Tote Big Butt

Its been a while I know, but I figured I would squeeze in something before the new year. You motherfuckers are all aware that I don't update much when I am at home and even less so when I am at a home I am not always comfortable just sitting in the living room and typing away. Regardless, things have been good. I will mention a couple of the highlights of our weeks in the TC thus far.

I would like to do it chronologically, but I am too excited about one event which jumps out of order to delay it to its temporal ordering. So it will come first.

1) Empress Hippopotameow von Baxter-Kauf--that is the full landed title name of our new kitten. Karly, who rox incredibly hard, got her for us for Christmas. It was among the best Christmas presents I have literally ever received. I had no idea it was coming and I opened this unwrapped box on Christmas eve and she was just sitting there looking up at me. My mouth pretty much fell open and stayed that way for several minutes. Hippo, as we call her, is literally the cutest fucking cat in the entire world. She is pretty much the cutest non human thing in the enitre world. There are picures up on the moblog if you want to check them out. There will be many many many more to come. Besides her just being a kitten, which is awesome alone, she is a persian kitten, with the cutest flattest face you can possibly imagine. She is almost entirely white with a gray tail and a couple gray patches on her face. I could go on and on and on about all the adorable things this cat does, but to be honest with you, every fucking thing she does is adorable, and since she does things virtually all the time, it would be an excruciatingly long list. Rest assured that when she runs around and plays with her cat toys, or when she wakes us up by attacking our feet, I will continue to update.

2) Debate--the actual debates have been meh, I saw some pretty good rounds at Blake and participated in deciding the Central NFL national qualifiers. Edina has a team that is off the hook good as long as they aren't debating the K and I was coting for them pretty regularly until they ran into one of the few teams that is both in their league and runs the K well. I haven't seen the dominant half of this team enough to make alot of comparisons to other debaters, but in terms of raw speed for instance, he's up there with Scotty P. There were a couple times he was, in the 1ar, simply too fast to flow, not unclear, not unorganized, but just too quick. Regardless the actual debating paled in comparison to the surrounding good times. We got a free dinner at Manny's, which fucking rxd, I rolled the single porter again, and they cooked it to perfection. I finished that, most of Katie's 20oz NY Strip, a good amount of potatoes, mushrooms, and asparagus, and led the drive to complete the Manny's brownie sundae. Awesome as always. We also had a couple of good parties, the traditional coaches shindig which got broken up by the cops, a fairly low key Saturday gathering, and a Sunday night hang in the suite. Leading up to that hang I drank a quarter of a bottle of Knob Creek while watching the Pack lose, fell on my way accross Loring Park to Joe's Garage and twisted my ankle, hobbled the rest of the way there, ate a solid dinner (which, thanks to the fucking debaters, was low on mashed taters) and got a ride back. Then Tara, Bietz, Maggie, Dave, Amy, Travis, Natalie, Katie, and I finished that bottle of bourbon (actually, just Dave and I finished the bourbon) and made fun of dumbies. Solid. Solid.

3) Fam and the Holidays--We did Christmas eve at my dad's place, largely because the Pack and the Vikes were showing down hardcore. Paula was (and for that matter still is) in town for the holdiays and she cooked (with a teensy bit of my assistance) a delicious steak dinner with these fabulous italian potatoes (roasted baby reds with olive oil, mint, and a four buttloads of garlic) and a stilton cream sauce that was literally divine. My dad and I were both extremely pleased with the outcome of the afternoon, Bret had a great second half and it was a good early Christmas present. We came back to Katie's rents (where I got Hippo) and we continued the "Beef: its whats for dinner" motif of the break by having a full course fondue (both steak and cheese) and french silk for dessert. It was just awesome. We opened presents and stuff in both cases as well. There was another fantastic beef dinner on Christmas day, this featuring an awe inspiring horseradish sauce and some tasty garlic mased, but I will be sparse on details for now. We got and gave good presents, saw everyone in the fam and really enjoyed the spirit of the holiday.

Alright, time to play with Hippo, she is awake and frisky like an acrobat recently out of a coma. Happy new years to you all. If I don't holla till then, know that I will be drinking as much Ballatore Gran Spumante as my old frail body will allow, and I will tip back a bottle to you.

Peace,

MB-K

Thursday, December 09, 2004

It Just Takes Some Time, Little Girl You're in the Middle of the Butt

I have been somewhat busy recently, seeing as the end of the semester and all is fully upon us. More exactly, Katie and I are leaving Buffalo tomorrow to head back to the Twin Cities. I will mention a couple brief vignettes. I will include the Packers' loss in this intro because it was disgusting and I can't say more about it. On the bright side of Green Bay, I will be attending next Sunday's divisional match-up versus the Lions since my Dad has the tickets.

We went to the UMASS debate tournament and it was alright, but certainly not fabulous. A very small tournament certainly and very tiring and far too far away for my money. It was well run by the student led program at the Uuniversity of Massachussets, though it ended up having only one division, which kinda suxored for the novi who got rolled by the three or so decent open teams in the game. It will be odd returning to high school debate after only seeing CEDA East rounds for the last several months.

We are driving to Chicago tomorrow and crashing with James and Cassie before getting to Roseville to judge at Central NFLs. On a sad note, which will likely explain why I don't think I am going to have a chance to se my bro on the way into town at least, Katie's mom fell and borke her leg this afternoon and had to have surgery. I thought Katie was going to have to fly back this afternoon and I would be driving by myself, but it looks like that won't be necessary. Our thoughts are with her in the Twin Cities and we will follow them in person.

The end of the semester has been pretty interesting and very promising in terms of intellectual development. My plan is to step up my reading a bit over the break so that by the spring semester I am fully rolling. I know I can accomplish this if I actually work on it, I'm just perpetually nervous about my ability to do so.

That was brief and unintersting, so I will add an anecdote from my class tonight. Lacan makes some comment about how the voice grabs you at the perineum, which seems to be a reference to the Aquinian/Freudian/Lacanian discussion of being born/fucking between piss and shit. Anyway, the point was that someone had to explain what exactly the perineum was, which resulted both in one of the more racous periods of laughter I can recall in class when Steven (who talks pretty explicitly with his hands) was trying to explain the area between the genitals and the anus (he jokingly offered to draw a picture) and also resulted in what I believe may be the first instance in recorded history of academic discussion of the word "taint."

See you back in CST. Wish us luck in not forgetting anything.

Peace,

MB-K