The weekend in Dallas, and a random shirt related tidbit
So the weekend in the big “D” was pretty cool. Thursday night we went and saw “A Mighty Wind” which was, as expected, damn good. Friday, we went geocaching, but had really bad luck. We only found one out of four caches we looked for. Saturday we went to downtown Dallas, and walked around the whole JFK area. We were going to go in the Sixth Floor Museum, but they wanted $10 a person, and I had already been there once. I really didn’t think it was anything all that great, and not really worth $10, especially since we were spending money on plenty of other things already. We proceeded to go on to the Dallas World Aquarium which was much cooler than any of us thought it would be. I was baffled by the strange admission prices (something like $11.85 for adults and $8.66 for seniors). I was much surprised that the first thing we saw upon entering the “aquarium” was an enclosed area with monkeys and birds and some other non aquatic animals. We were all enthralled by the adorable manatees. There were also river otters, tons of fish, jellyfish, a Japanese Spider crab, and a HUGE crocodile like something out a monster movie. Very cool time. We then proceeded to the Hard Rock Caf� where we ate and bought tickets to the show that night featuring Zebra. They had a few hits in the 80’s (“Tell Me What You Want”, “Who’s Behind The Door”), but have been quite a favorite band of mine for some time. I saw them once in Houston like 10-15 years ago and was thrilled when my friend Esteban just happened to hear on the radio that they were playing at the Hard Rock Caf� that night. It was very intimate and we were standing right at the stage, literally like 2 feet from Randy, the guitarist/singer. That’s the way to see a show, people. They absolutely rocked. If you ever get a chance to see them, do so. They are amazing. They actually have a new album coming out June 17 too, so go out and get it.
Sunday was Geocaching II: Revenge of the Cachers. We refused to be defeated. We actually found all three that we hadn’t found before. It was incredibly strange because we found out that on Friday my GPS unit had apparently been hundreds of feet off on all three, thus the reason we didn’t find them. Now normally GPS is only accurate to about twenty feet anyway, but I’ve never had it be that bad, much less consistently that bad. The unit would consistently point me to the same spot, it just happened that the spot was like 500 feet off. I’m still baffled. Maybe the government was re-calibrating the satellites that day or something, or perhaps a giant alien mother ship was deflecting the signals. Luckily on Sunday, it actually steered us true. There was much going out to eat (including being served by Groucho Marx at The Magic Time Machine), DVD watching, plus a trip to REI where I got some cool black Merrell Jungle Moccasins (or Comfy Slip-on Shoes� as I call them) and Jess got some cool water shoes in preparation for our tubing/water park trips we’ll be going on in a month or two. Plus it’s always fun just to hang out with friends. We also listened to a couple of Han Solo books on tape to pass the car trip, which was cool. Random fact #1: a married couple going out of town for 4 days will have a lot of luggage. We had 1 suitcase with all our clothes and such, our inflatable bed-in-a-bag, my bag of disc golf frisbees, 2 pillow and a blanket, my backpack, and a cooler bag with lots of water in it. Esteban seems to think this was excessive by his reaction to it, but honestly, we really weren’t excessive!
Random fact #2, inspired by Bettie: A few weeks ago a friend gave me some old clothes that didn’t fit him anymore. Among them was a Really Cool Shirt� which very quickly became my new favorite shirt. I wore it to work the following Friday, and wore it to one of my gigs a week or two later. Then we did laundry. Like a fool I didn’t look at the care instructions, and I washed and dried it, which I shouldn’t have because it was rayon. It shrunk up, a lot. It’s still wearable, but just doesn’t fit the same as it used to, and required much ironing before it was anything resembling wearable. The sleeves are way too short now, but since I wear it with the sleeves rolled up, that’s not too big a deal. It’s also not nearly as long as it was either, thus making it questionable as to whether I could tuck it in if I wanted to (which, again, I generally don’t), but still it just saddened me. My new favorite shirt, and I messed it up. Like I aid, it’s still wearable, but it just doesn’t “hang” on me like it used to. I’m heartbroken. I need to find a place that has cool shirts like this one. Finding cool clothes for men is difficult. Even more sadly I did the exact same thing to another shirt years ago. Same story too. Before the “accident” it just “hung” perfectly. Afterward, it was never quite the same. According to Jess and the rafs, I am a BeeGooBloo*. This entry will only reinforce that opinion I’m sure.
*giraffe language for “Big Girls Blouse**”.
**Someone flamboyant, camp, or glam, or exhibiting signs of these traits.