journal.melendez.org

We acquiesce to the visit with Santa Originally uploaded by Edward Melendez

Hugaday! Originally uploaded by jonbolden A fun, ad hoc troupe that just had its run at Salvage.

This is a test

Curious George Visits a Horse Farm by Santiago M. Melendez Curious George runs behind a horse. Curious George gets hit by a horse. Curious George sees a Mom horse. "It is actually a Dad horse," his friend says. Curious George sees a Dad horse. "It is actually a Mom horse," his friend says. Curious George sees a tin of Altoids. "It is actually a horse shoe," his friend says. "A horse must have dropped it." Curious George leaves the horse farm and goes to a cow farm. Curious George climbs over a fence. Curious George runs behind the cow who chases him. It is actually his friend who is eating a peach. Curious George goes to the Johnson Space Center. Curious George sees everything for one day and then goes to the Kennedy Space Center. Also, Curious George goes to an owl farm. Curious George sees an owl. He tries to wake one up but it is still fast asleep. His friend does that too. They go back to their apartment and go to bed. And th...

And does his best NASA Mission Control imitation.

I Wonder From May 2009 This weekend has been one of many experiences. The first is house hunting. Again, we're looking seriously at buying a house, emboldened by the lower interest rates and some hard to define sense that the economy is bottoming out for the year. Of course, the unemployment rate is reaching levels we haven't seen since the recession of 1983. But despite the risks, I do think that unless something really interesting happens, the Austin real estate market is pretty much bottomed out , unless you want to buy a condo. Those things are in free fall right now. We are looking for something affordable in the 78704 zip code, which is about as far South as I am comfortable with. We found a pretty cool little house in the Galindo neighborhood, which has a East Austin vibe to it (read: gentrifying, albeit at a slower pace than its counterpart). View Larger Map Big questions: the proximity to some very well kept but very large tracts of public housing, general sens...

My Twelve Favorite Cities in the World Buenos Aires New Orleans Havana Paris New York, NY  Las Vegas, NM (NOT Nevada) Santa Fe, NM Corrales, NM Madrid, NM   Washington, DC Chicago, IL  San Francisco, CA

The question with this guy is what's the best choice for an education that equips him effectively for a complex world? Went to Austin Waldorf. Maybe it's the one?

Santiago and I Collaborate on Haiku Plenty of french fries We need some catchup as well They are delicious A monkey tub toy It is stuck in the plumbing My toilet over flows

Work E-mail This is a a report from Xobni that shows the average amount of e-mail I send and receive every day since August of last year at work only. I filtered out auto generated, mailing list and of course, spam email and show only that which is sent to me by a human. That's on average 100 pieces of mail a day during the work week. I find that to be a pretty significant volume, and I'd say at least half involves me taking some sort of action. How does that compare to other people's volume? I'd love to hear your comments.

Picture by Santiago. Not the most glamorous, but I'm happy to be with these two folks.

I'm really proud to be associated with this school. They have great stuff going on here.

Nice Weekend So, pretty fun weekend. I got to spend a lot of time with the wife and The Boy, which is always a delight. Everything after that is just gravy. I did get to see, and more importantly, play in, some sweet improv. On Thursday night, I was able to see the new Pgraph show, Grimm , which is improvised fairy tales. This show was intriguing to me for a number of reasons. I'm always a sucker for Pgraph. They're easily one of my favorite troupes because of their mix of funny, smart and highly theatrical improv. Besides being technically superior performers who clearly delight in each other's company, they always seem to come up with great concepts, and the whole improvised fairy tale is a pretty good shtick. In fact, one of my classmates had suggested that as a genre for my class' performance work, but since it was already in play, we decided to go to a different direction. Class was another one of my pleasures, even though it was hard hard work. This w...

FIVE PEOPLE WHO I THINK WOULD BE GOOD AT IMPROV 1. My boss. 2. The owner of the cool coffee shop.  I don't know her name (pictured). 3. Dana. 4. Dave. 5. Brook.

12/29/2008 Originally uploaded by Edward Melendez We're back in town. The Boy is on the mend, but like his folks is definitely tired from the NM trip.

I do recommend the train ride from Santa Fe to Lamy, NM. The food is an ad hoc affair, but very good New Mexican fare like green chile stew can be had from a vendor set up outside the Lamy depot. Beautiful countryside in the winter and the hippest train engineer ever.

It looks like the antibiotics kicked in. Santiago is in a much better mood. Even up for some shenanigans in the snow at the grandparent's house. We've still spent most of the day recuperating, but we're planning dinner out and hopefully a trip downtown to see the luminarias.

So, yes indeed, Santiago has an ear infection, but the MD suspects pneumonia, so we got to experience chest x-rays and life's rich pagaent at the only 24hr Walgreen's in the area. Ever wonder who hangs out at a drugstore on Christmas Day? Seriously odd folks, like the guy in the picture with the holiday themed wheelchair. Another patron overheard at the pick up counter: "who denied her valium? The doctor? The insurance company?"  Ah, the humanity!