Category: Miscellaneous babble

Random mutterings

Posted on

Free Comic Book Day

My comic book days are long past, but I decided to go to Free Comic Book Day at Soundwave Movies and Music up in Summerville and meet up with fellow Trek and Dragon*Con geek Erika. A bit of a drive but hey, just another excuse to procrastinate, right? And there’s Madra Rua just down the block.

Comics have gotten a lot more expensive since I last bought any.

Soundwave is a little store with about half devoted to comics and the other half to DVDs and CDs. Still bigger than the mall kiosk booths that most comic places were when I was collecting. All of the people there seemed like regulars. Friendly place. Might be a place I’d visit more often if I was closer.

Most of the titles were familiar, and seeing Alpha Flight resurrected made it very tempting to get back into comics again.

I may have to see about getting the two boxes of comics I still have stashed at home shipped to me (I think they’re still there anyway).

After, we went off to Madra Rua and met up with Heather and had a great time hanging out. I can proudly say there was hardcore nerd table action going on.

Posted on

Movie marathon epicness

Not since I did the LOTR extended edition DVD marathon a couple years ago has my ass been glued to a seat for so long.

Yesterday’s Marvel/Avengers movie marathon at Cinebarre was pretty awesome. The version of The Incredible Hulk (with Ed Norton) they played and Thor I hadn’t seen before. I liked this version of the Hulk with the tributes it played to the TV series (including a cameo by Lou Ferrigno, who also voiced the Hulk). Thor was pretty cool, and there was much ooo’ing from the women in the theater during shirtless Thor scenes.

The Avengers (in 3D) was, well, pretty freaking awesome, although I might have to go see it again because by then my brain was pretty much on overload and I think I zoned out on a few scenes.

The 30 and 60 minute breaks between movies, comfy seats plus being able to order food made the whole marathon more comfortable than I expected it would be. It was my first time at Cinebarre, and probably won’t be my last now.

Food at Cinebarre was pretty good I thought. Started off with one of their pepperoni pizzas (Italian Job), then snacked on some fried pickles (Big Lebowskies), one of their burgers (Cineburger) and a final snack of potato skins (Body Snatchers). They were all pretty good. Most of the menu items are in the $8-10 range, which makes the appetizers a little on the overpriced side IMO. However, considering you’d spend at least that on just popcorn and a drink in a regular movie theater, dinner and a movie at Cinebarre comes out ahead in that respect.

Posted on

Food project

I’ve had this idea for a food-related project for my blog rolling around in my head for a little while. I’m a little bit hesitant to get into it because it could get scary. Well, no, not really. But it could get something.

Still mulling it over and planning out how I might execute it. I also need to come up with a little more material first

Posted on

Coffee roasting

On my way back after getting the struts replaced yesterday, I happened to see the doors open at Coastal Coffee Roasters, so I thought I’d stop in and say hi.

They’re normally not open Sundays, but Brad was in roasting some beans and having some more work done on the place. Got to see the new additions to the shop too. There’s a new art gallery in the space next door and they’ve added some kitchen space. Office space and restrooms were being worked on when I stopped in.

Brad let me hang out a bit and I got to help out with roasting a few batches of beans (and by “help” I mean I flipped a lever when he told me to). It was pretty cool watching the green coffee beans go in from the bucket and come out dark and roasty and all the stages in between. They don’t immediately have that roasted coffee smell when they come out of the roaster, but there’s a hint of it. I guess the aroma must develop over time.

Had a good time participating in the roasting process and learned a few more things. Thanks to Brad for letting me hang out and aiding my procrastinating.

Posted on

New struts, no more bouncy

Thanks to JJ, there are 4 new struts on the car and now I can drive over bumps without feeling like I’m on a carnival ride or something.

Ordered 4 Gabriel Readymount struts from Autozone. It’s the complete strut including spring, so all we needed to do was take the old ones out and replace them with the new ones.

Installing them wasn’t nearly as difficult as I expected, although we did have to disassemble part of the back seat to get at the bolts for the rear struts.

Ran into problems getting the wheels off because of cross-threaded nuts. Ended up having to break off a bolt on three of the wheels. Going to have to talk to the guys at Treadquarters about that, since they were the last ones to take the tires off when I had it in for an oil change and tire rotation a few weeks ago.

Car rides a lot better now. Need to get the alignment checked now in case anything changed with the new struts.