adrian is rad

At PIT, statues of George Washington and Franco Harris (mid-Immaculate Reception) next to each other.

Tied 0-0.

Update: Final 31-0.

Merry Christmas and whatnot.

Total produce: 822
Organic produce: 91
Locally grown produce: 16
Total organic products: 670

I’m surprised that a big supermarket in North Carolina lists this right up front. Even supermarkets in SF aren’t transparent about it.

Can you tell in figured out how to blog from my phone? Don’t worry, I’ll get tired of it eventually.

Just one week till Boxing Day! I’m so excited

I’d forgotten I came down with a cold last time I went to South Africa.

Also, the cough syrup is in a glass bottle. Who puts medicine in a glass bottle these days?

This is by far my favorite glass.

I left Taiwan and came back to the States a year ago today.

You can see my initial reactions to being back and my stewed thoughts.

Mostly it just seems strange that that was already a year ago. Time passing–you can’t really avoid it, it seems.

Probably the highlight of my day was that I found a home-made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich in the back of the freezer. It was one of a a batch that I made for my birthday party at the end of August.

It was as good or possibly even better than I hoped it’d be. The ice cream had sort of soaked into and saturated the cookies, making them super cookies of sorts.

Animation of a day’s worth of flight patterns in a bit more than a minute. Pretty fascinating:

via core77

A pretty slick bike storage/ locker system in Japan. I’d love to see the mechanism.

via boingboing

Judit and I made gingerbread houses again. I like this part of the year.

Mine:

Judit’s:

had construction worker’s hands, rough and dirty; a dozen microwave dinners and breakfasts, and Sleepytime tea.

xkcd has some nerdy shirts, like the one below.

However, if you really want to turn the nerd up, you have to go over to mental floss:

or

I posted my best of 2008 list yesterday over at the music blog. Executive summary:

1. Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago
2. J Tillman Minor Works
3. the Rural Alberta Advantage Hometowns
4. Horse Feathers House with No Home
5. Two Sheds Two Sheds EP [EP]
6. James Hunter The Hard Way
7. Joe Pug Nation of Heat [EP]
8. Silian Rail And I You, to Pieces
9. Johnny Flynn A Larum
10. the Dodos Visiter
11. Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It

More description and mp3s over at the music blog.

I’ve also posted my best concerts of 2008.

My Blackdrop Portraits series has reached 22 photos of musicians. Here’s one of Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers

Justin of Horse Feathers by Adrian Bischoff

It’s time to go grocery shopping.

This is the culinary equivalent of wearing dress socks because you are out of other clean socks.

I’ve been on a bit of a reading bent recently. Here are a few of the books I’ve finished recently. Here are my okay reviews of them.

Summerland by Michael Chabon
Andy recommended this to me after I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I finally got around to reading it. It’s the sort of book I don’t think I’d normally read; it’s about baseball–which I would read–but it’s also a fantasy story with multiple worlds and many non-human characters.

But it is an engaging story. Once I got a chunk into the book I couldn’t read it fast enough. One thing is that it falls into science fiction trap that has been joked about a little too much.

What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills
Some people will dismiss this just because of the title. That’s fine. While I think this book could have some non-religious audience, it’s written from a religious point of view. Wills is a Catholic and Greek scholar and historian. Part of what he’s doing is quite literal: all the new testament passages in this book are of his own translation, so he’s saying what Jesus literally said. But there’s also some interpretation and contextualization.

The main thrusts of the book are that Jesus was apolitical at every turn (so people talking of Jesus’ politics are wrong) and that in Jesus coming all the old Law was changed or destroyed. There’s a lot more to it that just that. I found it quite interesting and insightful.

Brainiac by Ken Jennings
I’m not even a closet trivia nerd. I just like it. I watch Jeopardy and I was pretty excited during Ken Jennings’ historic run on the show. That I knew he was a good writer via his blog was only added incentive to get the book.

It’s about his run on Jeopardy along with the history, characters and development of trivia as a pastime. It’s a lot nerdy, but it’s pretty well-written and interesting.

If there can be class action lawsuits against the tobacco companies and McDonalds, why not against the Girl Scouts? Those cookies are serious.

Oh boy! I love Christmastime (and Trader Joe’s).

I saw a Shell and a Chevron gas station both on the same side of the same main road (Whipple) across a small street intersection from each other. The Shell’s 87 octane gas was $2.89/ gal while the Chevron’s was $1.99/gal.

With little to differentiate your product and little advantage to the location, you’re going to price your gas 45% more than your competitor? That’s not how you succeed in business.

I went to my 7th wedding of the year on Saturday.

Dates: May 25, June 14, July 5, August 2, August 10, August 31, November 29

Relations: high school friend, college friend (tEp), high school friend, college friend (tEp), college friend (tEp), cousin, college friend

Flights taken (total round trips) for weddings: 16 (5)

States and districts visited for weddings: 8 (PA, DE, CA, MA, MD, DC, VA, NY)

Number of weddings that were in San Francisco: 1

Number of weddings not in San Francisco where I met a singer of a San Francisco band: 1

Number of weddings with photobooths or faux-photobooths: 2

Number of weddings with the ceremonies in a church: 0

Number of weddings with significant religious components: 2 (Christian, Hindu)

Number of weddings with the weddings and reception at the same place: 4

Shortest ceremony: 15 or 20 minutes

Longest ceremony: 50ish minutes

Number of hilarious grandparents loudly asking questions during the ceremony (”How old is she?” “Where’s Danny?”): 1

Number of rented cars: 1

Number of nights in hotel rooms: 5

Percentage of Bischoffs I saw: ~82%

Percentage of friends I saw: I dunno. Lots.

Number of weddings during which I “danced”: 4

Number of weddings in which I wore a tux: 2

Number of weddings in which I wore a suit: 4

Number of weddings in tuxes at which I “danced”: 2

Number of weddings in suits at which I “danced”: 2

Number of speeches I made: 2

Best wedding music: dhol drum to accompany the groom’s procession (Indian wedding)

Holidays weekends (as determined by my company) during the time frame of the wedding dates: 4 (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving)

Holiday weekends that had weddings on them: 4

Projected date of next wedding I’ll attend: May 23, 2009

Some weddings get rough