A Very Special Day

Saturday was a Very Special Day (TM) in Carrotland. There are four things that made it special. The first is that a bud was in town for the weekend (let's call him... Ben) and a big group went out in celebration of this miraculous event. The second is that I had the worst beer of all time. The third is that M and I sang karaoke, which again all the yunguns was talking about but we hadn't done before. Fourth, yesterday was the official kick-off of me saving the world! Hooray.

Important stuff first. So, we went to Dad Watson's in Fremont for dinner and beers. I will take you on a pictorial journey.

A variety of vegetables:

More vegetables:

Ben has been away for some time, and I wanted to make sure that this "Ben" that showed up was not in fact an androidal space alien spy sent through time to capture and probe us. So I asked him to show me the essence of Ben, January 2007, summed up in a photo. (Ben is on the left; unfortunately, results of the test were inconclusive.)

Yes, and the worst beer in the world was at Dad Watson's. Most of their selection is great, but I tried a Pickleweasel Pale (name should have tipped me off), one of their limited-batch offerings. It tasted like a skunk blended with basil. (To be fair, others thought it tasted like basil blended with a skunk.)

Later we went to the Steel Pig on Aurora. Hey Seattle, since you haven't noticed yet, the Steel Pig is excellent place, if you have a large group of friends, because it is never crowded, and they have karaoke, pool, South Park pinball, and shuffleboard (though the shuffleboard table is sticky in places, making it an "advanced" difficulty).

Some singing vegetables (Karaoke Master Joe is in the middle):

All the ladies of the group got onstage for song. The shimmer from the heat blurred my photo. Yow!

Then we did an aerobics class, apparently. I don't remember this part.

These dudes were part of another group at the Steel Pig. They're doing a rap-core version of Mariah Carey (?), the shoop-shoop-a-doop song. It was suh-weet.

When Karaoke Master Joe was nailing Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2... quite an impressive singing performance, I must say, hence the Karaoke Master title), the dude on the left in the previous photo busted some break dancing moves. This is probably something nobody has seen yet, or ever will see again.

Finally: rewinding time a bit, during the day Saturday I began researching how to save the world. It is a big task. The first step of the plan is to identify which aspects of the world economy (human consumption patterns) are drawing down natural resources most severely. Then, I will identify what combination of technology development and conservation could result in reducing resource use to a sustainable level, for each class of resources. If I am successful in this initial stage, I'll publish essays on my website.

Try searching [environment sustainable technology] on Google Scholar, if you're interested in this type of stuff.

Thanks for tuning in!