A (non-baseball) recap of Flenkerfest from the depths of the mess

I must give credit to Marin for coming up with the title for this post. Although her room is not exactly a mess. I've seen messes before, I've lived in them. This is more of a "cluttered" room than a "messy" one. But I digress.

Thursday I arrived after an uneventful afternoon of flying, getting into town around 6. Marin picked me up and headed off for dinner, an ill-advised meal at IHOP. Some pretty terrible service, and a poor meal choice on my part didn't get the trip started on the right notes. The iced tea was pretty good, though. I tried to talk her into going over to Best Buy so I could see if they had a Wii, but probably for the best, Marin wouldn't take me. Had I bought one, I think that's all I would've done over the weekend. Not that it's a bad thing.

The rest of Thursday was pretty much spent relaxing at her lovely house.

Friday had a lazy start, with breakfast at a little place called "Bagels and Baguettes," then a trip to the grocery store. (We planned for many meals, 3 or 4, and ended up actually making one. But, we did make Scotcheroos! They turned out delicious, something I'm very proud of.) After the store, we met up with a couple of our friends, AJ and Matt, and had an early dinner at Bread & Chocolate, home of what I remember as one of the best glasses of iced tea I've ever had. This time the tea wasn't quite as good as I remembered it, still good, but not enough to classify it as "best ever." I probably would've been better off not going and having the mental image of the best glass stay with me. Oh well.

We hurried off to the game after the dinner, eating a hot dog while we were there, of course. After the game we went home, made the Scotcheroos, then headed to bed.

Saturday morning brought some amazingly delicious pancakes, courtesy of Marin. Very very tasty! Most of the rest of the day into the afternoon was spent at the National American Indian Museum, probably my favorite museum, architecture-wise. The exhibits themselves are incredible, too. As is the food. They had an eating area where you can choose foods based on the cultures of many different areas in the US and South America, we went with the buffalo chili with some fried flatbread. Very delicious!

That evening we made our one meal that we planned, tacos! They ended up being more like over-stuffed burritos, but everything was so good, I had to put it all on my tortilla at once.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast of omelets and cinnamon rolls before we headed out to our second game of the weekend. And second hot dog at the ballpark for the weekend. AJ went with us, I'm pretty sure mostly due to the Family Pack that was being offered at the game: $10 got a ticket, a Pepsi, a hot dog, and a bag of chips. Heckuva deal!

Later that night, we went to La Loma for a wonderful Mexican meal, then spent another relaxing night in.

Today I went Thaiphoon, one of my favorite area restaurants. If anyone makes it out to DC, I would strongly recommend a visit here, and get the "drunken noodle" dish. It's amazing. And the iced tea was delicious.

Of course the weather was pretty hot today, and of course I walked about 6 blocks in the wrong direction heading to lunch. But I needed the exercise, because I found a Krispy Kreme with the hot light on. I ordered 3 glazed. Unfortunately, they didn't have any hot ones ready, but I was told if I wanted to wait a minute or two, there would be some right up. Since I was in no hurry and had just purchased a new book (Why We are Hungry by Dave Eggers), I told the lady I could wait for some warm deliciousness. After waiting for about 8-10 minutes, I decided to see what the hold up was. Apparently I was forgotten about, and the machine was turned back off. The lady at the counter felt bad and wanted to know if I wanted her to fire it up again to get some hot donuts since the others had cooled, but I didn't really want her to go through the trouble, I just took what they had. And she gave me 6 donuts! O glorious day! I headed home on the Metro with donuts and book in tow, feeling great.

Now I'm all packed up and ready to head back home, even though there are so many more things I want to do while out here. 4+ days is not enough time anywhere, let alone a place with as much going on as DC. This is my 3rd trip out here, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface.

Anyways, the next post will be from Iowa, and the very special post that I promised last week will be here soon. . . What could it be. . . ?

You Shall Know Our Velocity!

I finished You Shall Know Our Velocity! today. This book may find its way into my top 5 books I've read, as long as I can use one pick for J.D. Salinger books, I was that impressed. Plus, it was a quick read. I started the book on Thursday, and finished the 350 pages in only a few days. Granted, I can read quickly (I'm nothing if not humble!), but the writing flowed well, and was just generally hard for me to put down. I've decided that I really enjoy Dave Eggers' style, and wish he had more novels published. I'm seriously thinking about subscribing to his magazine The Believer, after reading about it and knowing that Nick Hornby makes writing contributions.

This book was extremely funny at times, with laugh-out-loud moments, but it also had some darker, serious scenes. There was one section near the end when I almost felt like crying. (I also really enjoyed how Eggers tied in the book's title, but it comes near the end, so I won't spoil it for you.) The story follows the two main characters, Will and Hand, as they make plans to travel around the world in one week while giving away money to whomever they deem deserving. Will came into the money, but isn't comfortable having it, so he comes up with this scheme. It is told from his point of view, including conversations he has in his head with people who are on a different continent, his meandering thoughts, and his internal dialogue. It's kind of reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, if Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty had $30,000 to blow through, and traveled the world instead of hitching across the country. But it has a similar feel, both in the story and narrator. I strongly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

I think the next book that I'll tackle will be The Infinite Book, by John D. Barrow. I'm kind of intrigued by it. Basically, this book is about the idea of infinity, different aspects of it, and how it fits into the universe. And since I'm basically a nerd, this sounds interesting. I'll keep you updated on how it goes!

Book reviews and other news

I finished reading John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces today. A good read, but I never really felt "into" it until the final 50 or so pages. The ending was good, though, and it definitely had some laugh-out-loud parts. I think the main reason why I could never get into was that I didn't feel for any of the characters, I couldn't relate to them. Again, it wasn't a bad book, I'm not upset with reading it, I'm not even disappointed. I just feel I didn't really appreciate it as much as I should have, so I'm partially disappointed in myself.

Here's a quick rundown of the book. Ignatius Riley is the main character, a portly, no, fat, 30 year-old man living with his mother in New Orleans, I believe sometime in the 60's. Due to an unfortunate series of events, Ignatius has to get a job to help his mother pay off damage she had caused in an auto accident. The working life doesn't really suit Ignatius, and the book is about his ordeals as a "Working Boy," while he's conspiring to find a way to one-up his one-time "girlfriend," Myrna Minkoff.

I know I'm not really giving it the best endorsement, but I would recommend it to anyone who was looking for a humorous book. It seems many people have really, really enjoyed it, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. So give it a shot.

Next on my reading list is David Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity! I'm a fan of his, after reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and McSweeny's and The Believer on occasion, so I was excited to find this book at the closing Atlantic Books store with a 40% off sale. I just started this book today, and I'm already 115 pages deep. It's a fairly quick read, about a pair of friends who are attempting to travel around the world in a week, while giving away over $30,000. The main character, Will, came inot this money rather unexpectedly, and is uncomfortable having it in his account. So far the book has very funny moments, juxtaposed (you like that word? I do!) with tragedy from Will's recent past. This is one author I would recommend to everyone, Eggers has a unique approach to writing and uses some effective techniques to grab the reader's attention and keep it for the duration of the book. (In A Staggering Work. . ., a mostly autobiographical book, there's a good chunk in the middle where Eggers has a conversation with his 5 year-old self, except his 5 year-old self has the vocabulary of his current self.)

Since the meal review post yesterday went over alright, I'll continue doing it, but only when there's something interesting to write. As Jad had commented, my meal last night was vegan, but it mostly just happened that way. Sorry Jad, I like to eat meat. But, I live with two vegetarians (almost vegans, but they'll occasionally eat dairy products and eggs), so I am sympathetic towards the lifestyle. I just like hamburgers and hot dogs way too much. However, today I ate no meat, my lunch was an Indian buffet with Daren, and my dinner some of my left over hummus on toast. Now I'm thinking about making some popcorn and watching the latest episode of "Heroes." That show's been kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. I don't really know if I should feel guilty about liking it or not, but it makes me feel like a kid again, watching stories about superheroes and whatnot. Anyways, I think they're in the middle of another 5-week hiatus, and I've been waiting to watch this episode for a little while.

One last quick thing; I wanted to put an update about the Iowa basketball coach search. Bruce Pearl is out, as is Billy Gillispie, and I've heard absolutely nothing about Tony Bennett coming here. So for me, right now, it's a toss-up between Chris Lowery and Reggie Theus as my number one choice. Both can get a large raise by coming to Iowa, and both would be welcome. I've also heard a rumor about Rick Majerus coaching with BJ Armstrong as an assistant, but that seems a little far-fetched to me (alhtough I'd be all for that). Dana Altman's always in the conversation, but it seems like he doesn't want to put up with the "search committee" that Barta has assembled, and has stated that he's at home in Omaha, coaching Creighton. I wouldn't count him out, though, I think he's definitely in the running. I don't know if Gary Barta is going to announce anything tomorrow, like I had originally predicted, but he better do something soon if he wants to get/keep recruits. He's supposedly meeting with Altman this weekend in Atlanta during the Final Four weekend, maybe he's waiting to make an announcement on Monday, before the championship game.

Also, congratulations to West Virginia for winning the NIT. I had predicted them to make it into the NCAA tournament (Jim will vouch for me on this one), maybe this shows they should have been selected. . . And congrats to Coach John Beilien, you'll be getting a nice pay raise, and maybe a new office in the Midwest. Michigan's gotta be salivating over this win.