the most wonderful time of the year...

the day after tomorrow...it begins. the NBA finished up a while back, so did hockey. it was a World Cup year, so that was cool (if you're into that) and that's over with too. thank goodness baseball is nearing the end of its infernal summer dominance (i honestly tried this year, and although i learned a lot about America's most boring sport -and coincidentally what keeps james in the living room and me upstairs or out in the evenings- i think i like it even less after giving it a shot). sure the tigers are doing great, and i definitely will support them in their run for the pennant...but i'm also the kind of person who is content just looking at the final scores or just the 9th inning (last night againt the yankees was a great one). but i digress...

they don't play 20 games, 82 games, or 162 games...just 12. each game counts more than most other sports, and a single loss can sometimes make or break a team's season, depending on when it happens, and who deals it out. the rivalries are extreme, and attendance higher than all other sports.

the day after tomorrow...college football returns, and the Michigan Wolverines open up their season at The Big House...to the roar of over 107, 501 fans.
the students are returning, central campus is chaotic, and ann arbor regains it's mini-metropolis status...the greatest season in sports (in my opinion...and that of many others) and quite possibly the best time of the year begins. GO BLUE!!! <:><

music:

"Ready Steady Go" - Paul Oakenfold

"Kill Bill theme" - Hotei

pic:

there's nothing like the brand new set of season tickets to the Big House and maize student t-shirt...

E.americanus biting off more than he can chew?

...it's been known to happen. i've seriously lagged behind in updating this blog, but rest assured more regular updates will be coming up in the near future. today was a pretty good example of the subject line of this entry; here we go in bulletted form:

- we decided to do brunch at Northside Grill (great place in A2 for breakfast...if you want to get up that early; or brunch if you are more like me and don't acknowledge the morning hours under any circumstances). this also marked the return of egg's benedict to the list of foods to eat...

- damon and i met up with double and gwen for a fish-store run planned out the previous night (at ashleys...that was fun too, but another story). we dropped off a green sunfish in his 210g tank trying to get it eaten by one of its various & sundry predatory inhabitants, but were somewhat disappointed as the little fish was nailed by an african pike but then released and disappeared. rest assured i realize that only a few of you know what any of that means. that being said, we took off for the fish stores.

-without getting into too much detail, we hit up four fish stores and managed to get fishes from 3 of them. double needed more fishes (although he will deny this), and i did NOT. i was good to a point, resisting the purchase of the following:
--Arapaima gigas (south american primitive fish which reaches around 14' long in the wild); they were also being sold at the outrageous price of $200 each. i've gotten the previous two i owned (which i inadvertently fed to a lungfish) for much less.
--electric eel (these would be dangerous at parties at The Tank as they could just about kill you via shock).
--African tiger fish (i have always wanted one of these, but they are quite expensive, very skittish, and i really don't have room for one right now).
--anaconda (yes, i said anaconda). i found one of these at a new store that we happened upon on this run. do i really need to explain why getting an ANACONDA was not a wise decision? for starters there are several females i know (my mom first and foremost) that don't even like cobra commander, which is the indian wood-carved cobra figurine currently residing at The Tank...i think owning an ANACONDA (or any live snake for that matter) would mark the end of her visits, and therefore my genuine Indian food supply. i think, however, that andrea would be quite fascinated should i decide to take on this animal in the future.

-however, i failed eventually:
--i got to a store where they had an ATF (African tiger fish, Hydrocynus vittatus) for a reasonable price; and with some coercion from double and ignoring of damon, i picked it up. so i guess i could scratch that off from the previous list.
--we found a juvenile African arowana; the juveniles are nearly impossible to keep, but since i would like to get info/pics for a project of mine i went ahead and picked up the little guy as well. we'll see if he's alive by morning.
--i also failed in that i scarfed down a DELICIOUS cinnamon roll from IKEA.

-yes, we went to IKEA. i had previously vowed not to visit this store since i was annoyed with all the hype...but since damon wanted to check out coffee table options for the tank, we all made a visit. i must say it was quite entertaining...maybe it was my extremely low blood sugar (hence the cinnamon roll consumption) but i was very fascinated with just about everything there. pics to come soon. i picked out a future kitchen, bar, bedroom, and living room...you know, should i ever become fortunate enough to MAKE money instead of spend it on school and associated ridiculousness. the money i would save by going straight IKEA with everything (provided i was making a reasonable amount...hahaha) would be spent on fish. yeah, i don't see any of that happening realistically either. they had an awesome bar though, and those things (kind of like a wooden bar) that go across the bed and roll from midway to the foot of the bed -quite possibly the worst description of this object possible- were VERY fascinating to me...and seem to propagate extreme laziness. i want one).
again, bloodsugar was low. upon being asked (by double i think) where a certain type of pillow was located, i specifically remember responding with:
"i don't know, i don't speak swedish"
right.
speaking of swedish, does anyone remember that (seriously old-school) swedish chef (from the muppets you fools who don't know!) cereal? it was awesome! i think it was just miniature cinnamon-roll star puffs..which i'm sure were very healthy and didn't contribute to my hyperactivity, loudness, or volatile sugar-levels at all.

- all this time at IKEA we had the fishes in the plastic bags (with water) in the car...i was worried about them making it, but luckily they all made the trip.

-we hit up PF Chang's restaurant (got the lettuce wraps for an appetizer of course...and this is the ONLY time i purposely order ANYTHING with lettuce) afterwards. we were all seriously hungry, and once again i was taunted by all in attendance by the fact that the livonia PANCHEROS was right down the street.

-even after all this i managed to get the fishes settled and also made a successful airport pick-up run (rashmi has now been warned about the upcoming onslaught from double...which should prove quite entertaining to yours truly...especially since i kind of instigated it).

-all of this and i didnt even mention the rest of the weekend: seeing the movie Beerfest (which any broken lizard comedy fan should definitely check out. or just anyone with a relatively immature or beer-centric sense of humor/preference), 2 of the worst mojitos i have ever had, a pseudo-trip to the d-school party, moving sarah into her new place in ypsi (along with the rest of the family...including constructing a computer desk. -don't worry sarah, there will be payback-)...

-which brings me to now. 3:13am. i wanted to go into work early tomorrow, but who knows if that will happen. guess it's going to be a late day at the office! good night and good luck <:><

music:

"Good" - Better Than Ezra

"A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More 'Touch Me'" - Fall Out Boy

pic:

this pic was taken this morning...so yes, E.americanus can bite off more than it can chew...in this case, a mottled sculpin (C. bairdi).

but the overall winner is...

...the praying mantis. i know sometime back i mentioned that the luna moth was my favorite moth (you know, because A LOT of people have a favorite moth), but overall, my favorite insect is the praying mantis (Mantis religiosa). this has been the case since i first read about them, which was at an embarrassingly young age. ah well. here's a shot of one that was crawling on a pillar at the Field Museum in Chicago over this past weekend...but more on the David's Family Vacation 2006 in another entry. gotta sleep now; work, then bollywood party at the tank tomorrow! peace out kids <:><

music:

"For Pete's Sake" - Yellowcard

"Tumhe Jo Maine Dekha" - Main Hoon Na soundtrack

"to boldly go..."

...where no david has gone...for about 6 years: on a family vacation. you read it correctly, the traveling family of the david clan (none of our other relatives travel as much -at least as a family- or at least this was the case back in the day) will be embarking on what is sure to be an entertaining journey to the windy city. in just about an hour or so, my family will be arriving in A2, where we'll get some food and then i will take the helm of our blue mini-van (my gosh i hate those things...i think my civic has a bigger engine then ours) and take us to chi-town. it's a good thing i was just there a month ago, so hopefully i can navigate better and prevent the usual confusion that ensues over said vacations.

anyway, i'm sure this should be quite the eventful mini-vacation, and i think our whole family has been looking forward to it. on tap for the weekend:
-a trip to devon street. should be quite amusing to the sibs; we'll see if the rents try to find me a wife out there too. i'm also looking foward to getting some of that sugarcane drink!
-potential trips to the shedd aquarium (does my family really want to be around me in a public aquarium...or was that 'in public' in general?), and probably to the field museum (Sue, the t-rex; and the new king tut exhibit)
-shopping... which i am sure will be THRILLING
-and various and sundry randomness.
-rest assured, there will be pictures.

ok they just hit the cabela's landmark, so i gotta go pick up some food for the fam. hope you all have a great weekend! peace out <:><

music:

"Marching Bands of Manhattan" - Death Cab for Cutie

"Mujhse Dosti Karoge" - Mujhse Dosti Karoge! soundtrack

dhoom machale...

looks like november 24 is already going to be booked with a trip to the indian movie theater in novi. the sequel to the 2004 hit 'dhoom' is only a few months away. thanks to rashmi for sending the e-poster (we saw the poster a couple months ago at the novi theater, after which i ended up renting the original/buying the soundtrack/showing it at a bollywood party...you know, the usual movie-obsessive stuff). lots of big names (from bollywood) in this upcoming flick...including aishwarya rai...


you can check out the trailer here:

Dhoom 2

this movie is going to be HOT.

speaking of which, it's going to be a busy afternoon/evening in novi tomorrow...gotta turn in early. peace out kids <:><

launching the IFC...

ok so i have been called out by kara for commenting but not posting...i find it amusing how our blogger circle acts as somewhat of a motivational unit as well. or maybe we just like to harass each other until updating takes place. whatever works i suppose. that being said, i think thanks to blog-comment communication via janine's latest post, we'll be set to plan something of a 'dominick's reunion' for the fall. good times. and we all know i just hate organizing events getting people together...or even need a really good excuse to go to dom's.

so the IFC. i'm going to cut straight to the chase since i have to actually get to bed before 3am. going into work around noon and getting out at 8pm may SOUND like fun, but it's kind of a waste of a day...but i digress.

somewhat secretly (or just on my own non-existent time -or was that highly abundant time-wasting periods-) i've developed a...(gasp!) second blog. not exactly a blog like e-blogger, but still a blog per se. ...a live journal account...yes, eblogger's punk (and somewhat less streamlined) sibling. why would i do something like this you may ask? well it started just so i could have an identity when posting comments on live journal accounts. i don't like the 'anonymous' label, and figured what the heck, i'll sign up for one and see what happens.

somewhat fitting, since my two major influences to venture into the blog world were sarah and kara, the former using LJ, the latter eblogger. now i can exist and waste peoples time in both realms. sweet.

so there you have it, i'll try to keep things interesting with the IFC, and we'll see how things go. you'll notice virtually no pics over there, so you'll just have to get used to my incessant babbling about random topics. so basically like this blog, only without the pics to break up the textual entropy. and as with any new series, i wasn't going to launch it without having a few entries to get it started. have fun, waste time, don't work. peace out kids <:><

oh yeah, here's the link: The IFC

music:

"Where The Streets Have No Name" - U2

"Future Love Paradise" - Seal

random pic:

double D and me with the fish tank at 'the leg room' in chicago...good times.

archnemeses...

the USGS Research Vessel Grayling, the boat i went out on for my recent research cruise. no, i haven't been out on the boat all this time (although that would have been a good excuse for neglecting the blog updates for quite a while).


no, this blog is not dead like gwen stated this evening ("oh, you mean your blog that died?") things have just been a little crazy and random as of late and as usual (as with several other blogs floating around) the updating suffers. ah well, i know you all probably did something really productive with the time that would have been spent reading this anyway.

so there are three archnemeses i would like to bring up this time around:

the first, and longest running is me and rakhi...it's been an ongoing thing since she was a student in the 2003 biology of fishes lab...who else would dare to PURPOSELY mis-ID a longnose gar, even after i said it was my favorite fish??? who would possibly start asking me questions during a field trip on the ride back, such as "so what do you do besides study fish?" or even THINK of suggesting that the entire class go to Ashley's for hot chocolate (and/or drinks) after the mid-term and final. yes, absolute villainy.
anyway, things have calmed down a bit since our jerry vs. newman exchanges, but we still have conversations like last night covering topics such as 'what is the thickest type of indian bread? naan, roti, chipati?' 'why north indians are fake indians' 'who has seen the better indian movies' ' who knows more about priyanka chopra' who knows more about saif ali khan' and 'is what i do really cooking?'...and so forth. good times.

we made sure to get the gar (Atractosteus spatula in case anyone was wondering) on the wall in the pic with rakhi and me

second, myself and ly. we were recently able to pick up our newly established 'weekly' chess battle...this started back in june and was on a hiatus for most of july given she was in peru...and did NOT bring me back any fishes (there were some stories about dolphins and iguanas which were somewhat amusing, but not the same as fish stories...). anyway, given our mutual interest in x-men (and the release of the movie somewhat soon before our first game) we have developed the alter-egos of prof X and magneto. i'll let you guess who is who. needless to say, the bad guys have not been doing so hot in this ongoing struggle. that and it's been entertaining since our games have lasted upwards of 2 hours each, but always prove to be entertaining...petrified scones, caffeinated beverages, hyper-paced conversations and hard-to-open & close chess boxes have all added to this.

the latest twist was switching the venue...from the usual coffee shop (beaner's near state street, which is actually a pretty nice place) to ashley's (see previous entry about my love/hate relationship with this establishment). so yes, we actually played chess at a bar. surprisingly we didnt get a lot of strange looks, but then again i wasn't paying much attention to that. instead i was taking my rook on a tour de force of slaying pawns...which of course proved fruitless in the end. i HATE to lose. ah well, there are other competitions coming up in the near future which i'm sure i'll be able to win, so i can accept losses in this one for the time being.

can you get kicked out of a bar for playing board games? i mean, this wasn't leopold's or anything...

and lastly, the weather. more specifically the temperature, and most recently the heat. temp fluctuations and i definitely do NOT get along. i don't think we ever have, but it's been quite noticeable in the past several years. i seriously hate when the temp drops below 70F, and find it too hot when it gets over 75F or so. i can take +/- 5 degrees around this range from time to time, but anything more and i'll start complaining...or overheating. perhaps it stems from some of my best friends, the fishes...they can be sensitive to outside temperatures since they (generally) don't regulate their own temps (keep in mind tuna and great white sharks can, but i don't want to get too technical with you kids here), and my sharing metabolisms with hummingbirds, pocket mice, and dwarf puffers. once food and/or temp start to fluctuate i seriously start to burn up. freakish i know.

anyway, today this last nemesis was beaten as we were FINALLY able to make a trip out to one of my favorite venues in ann arbor...you guessed it, Dominick's. it's been about a month since i have been there, and it's not without trying. the last time i was there was for rashmi's going away (to india) party...yeah, going away on vacation party...damon and i discussed this the other day and have decided we are going to have parties whenever we take off for vacations too. nice try rashmi. ah well, you're back in the states as of today so you can defend this later.
anyway, as gwen put it, it seems like everyone was going away and having parties at dominick's so she lost track (i didn't since i am cursed with being able to remember all dates and details for events).

either way, it was a 'crisp' 73F outside, and we got to dom's around 730pm. the infamously long and infinitecimally paced line moved along much faster than normal, we got our sangria, the place was not terribly crowded and there were no 'reserved' sections. pretty much a perfect dominick's evening. no particular event scheduled or reason to go other than we had been wanting to visit for a loooong time, and the weather was finally perfect.
the danger here? some of you may remember, and some of you may have only heard. the year is cyclical my friends, and if last year (and the year before that) were any indication of pattern, this is the beginning of the fall outings. the rapid pace of dom's to brown jug to charley's with a mobile entourage of friends happened far too often at the beginning of the school year/end of the summer last year. i believe ron, julia, AJ, hal, kara, and damon can all remember that. good times for sure, just absolute craziness in most cases in retrospect. we'll see how things go, since this month and next will surely be a little different than last year around the same time...

and now some pics from various dominick's outings over the years...definitely one of my top spots in ann arbor:


ok well that's all for now, i've gotten into the habit of working 7-8 hours at my job each day, just not at consistent start/finish times. monday i went in at 8am, and that was far too strange to me, so i tried 11am today. i'm thinking 10am may be just right. stay tuned, and i'll try to keep this beast a little better updated. on tap for the upcoming weekend/weeks ahead: the third outing to the indian movie theater in novi (more on that movie soon too), another bollywood movie night at The Tank, the david family mini-vacation to Chicago (sure to be a classic exercise in insanity), and all the randomness in between. good night and good luck <:><

music:

"Take It Or Leave It" - Jet

"The One That Got Away" - Natasha Bedingfield

random pic:

quite possibly the greatest cover band ever (very successfully pulling off selections from Queen, Bon Jovi, Journey, Earth Wind & Fire, and others)...from last friday night out at Live.