Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas (and Hannukah)! This year we had an amazing Christmas day, full of mimosas, video games, green bean casserole, stuffing, pictures, and crazy antics.

Here's what Eddie got: MP3 player, liquor decanter, lumbar support pillow, Prince of Persia 3 for the XBox, "Shaolin Soccer" on DVD, a bunch of money, and a box of marzipan :)

Here's what Elaina got: Palm Tungsten E2 (with bluetooth), digital camera (well, for both of us), "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" on DVD, gift certificate for shoes, centerpiece from Crate and Barrel, a bunch of money, and some of Eddie's marzipan :)

Some pictures:


Elaina wearing Eddie's stocking.


Elaina talking to her mom.


Elaina and her Palm Tungsten E2 (with bluetooth).


Eddie posing with his MP3 player.


Eddie and the "Prince of Persia: the Two Thrones"


Our lovely Christmas tree :)

Creepy Moustache Party

This past weekend Elaina and I had the honor of attending Austin's own "Creepy Moustache Party." The theme is simple: if you can grow facial hair, do so for about a month and then shave it all except your moustache. If you can't grow a beautiful moustache, one will be supplied at the door.

A full slideshow of pictures can be found here: http://photos.yahoo.com/eddie_a_howard

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this:

Chronic of Narnia

If you haven't seen it yet, this clip from Saturday Night Live is probably the funniest thing they've done in 20 years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0

Prequalification

Here's a fun story (sorry it's long):

Elaina and I are planning to buy a house in mid-to-late March '06. We met with our realtor, Elle Klein, a couple weeks ago, and she turned out to be one of the coolest, competent people we know. She recommended a good mortgage broker, David Beverly, who happens to work in an office about 20 feet away from her office.

I called David on Tuesday morning and left a message for him to call me back. By Tuesday afternoon, I hadn't heard back from him so I emailed Elle to see if he was out of town. Not 5 minutes later, David called me and apologized for taking so long to get back to me. No big deal. We arranged to meet at 8:00 am (yes, that is early for us) on Thursday. At 8:00 am on Thursday, Elaina and I are standing outside in 30 degree weather in front of David's office door, knocking. I finally pull out his business card and call his cell phone. Here is the conversation:

(EH) Hi David, this is Eddie Howard. We were supposed to meet at 8:00 am this morning.

(DB) Hi Eddie. Yeah, okay. Okay. Listen, I'm on my way there, I'll be there in 3 minutes.
(EH) Umm... okay. Bye.

No less than 10 minutes later David drives into the parking lot, chatting on his cell phone. Probably 3-4 minutes after that, he FINALLY gets out of his car and walks towards Elaina and I. He starts walking up the stairs towards us and TRIPS and almost busts his ass. Way too funny.

Long story short: we answer a ton of questions for him, provide W-2 forms, bank statements, and pay stubs. He leaves the office and makes copies of said items. 20 minutes later, he comes back to his office and says, "Good meeting you two, I'll get in touch with soon." He doesn't shake my hand as I leave.

At this point Elaina and I are dying to know how much we will be pre-approved for. All day I wait for a phone call or email from David Beverly to let us know how the prequalification is going. No response. Finally at 4:30pm on Thursday I email him with a simple, "Hey David, when should we expect to hear back from you about our mortgage loan?" A few minutes later he writes back, "I should get you your approval letter tomorrow."

Today is tomorrow. I have waited all day and nothing. I emailed him at around 2:30 pm to see if we should expect to hear back from him today. Does he respond to me? No.

Lesson learned: people are annoying. How long does it take to pre-approve someone for a mortgage? Fifteen minutes. How long does it take a retarded mortgage broker to respond to a client? More than two days. Our dilemma is if we should tell our realtor, Elle, how horrible David is.

What do you think?

Airports Suck

In a recent trip, Elaina and I decided NOT to check our bags. Waiting at the carousel for your luggage--with the constant fear that your bags may not have made it--was not something we wanted to put up with. So we packed modestly and carried our bags with us everywhere. That is, until our connection flight was "too full" for us to carry our luggage aboard. We were forced to check the bags right before hopping on the plane.

When we got to our destination, we had to wait for our bags at the baggage claim, which was pretty annoying.

The MOST annoying part is that the next day I reached into my bag to pull out our digital camera and noticed it wasn't in the front pocket where I packed it. In fact, neither was my MP3 player that Elaina got me for my birthday. Holy shit I was mad. Our $300 digital camera and $100 MP3 player were STOLEN somewhere between where the bags are thrown into the plane, and when they are taken out.

We went to the Delta office and told the lady behind the counter what had happened. She said they are not responsible for any stolen goods under any circumstances, and that we were completely out of luck. NO WONDER some sketchy asshole stole our equipment--there are no rules in place to reprimand him if he does.

Lesson learned: don't check your luggage. If you do, carry your expensive items on you at all times. Oh yeah, and don't fly Delta.

Superhero

I scored Lara Croft. Does that make me gay?

Elaina scored Captain Jack Sparrow. Does that make her gay?

Anyway, I wanna switch.

Cutest Animals Ever!

Elaina and I have come across a collection of the cutest animals in the world. Let us know what you think of them!
















PS. If any of these animals (or pictures) belong to you, let me know so I can give you proper credit ;)

I am a dork

So now that I've finished applying for the UT MBA program, I have plenty of time to sit around and do nothing. Luckily, my brothers have asked me to join them in a weekly online gaming program. I agreed, seeing no harm in this.

That is, until Elaina took these photos:

What has happened to me??

A History of Violence

David Cronenberg's A History of Violence is probably one of the worst movies I've seen the past 5 years. Don't worry, I'm not going to give away anything about the movie, but it's not because I don't want to--there's NOTHING to give away. This movie is horrible!

Okay, okay, I'm being too hard. The movie almost has a great plot, and the first hour of the movie--although terribly weak in many areas--plays up the plot's strong points. I'd be lying if I said the movie started to suck after that first hour... that's because it started sucking about 10 minutes into it. The weirdest thing is that Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 90% rating, which is the whole reason we went to watch it.

Pros: a strange, if awkward tone about the movie. We always felt like something bad was going to happen, which was probably the most successful thing to come out of this movie.

Cons: horrible acting by 95% of the cast, a plot that goes nowhere and leaves everything unresolved, gruesome bloody close-ups that add nothing to the movie, two pointless and gratuitous sex scenes that each last about three minutes too long, William Hurt, seeing Viggo's somehow flabby asscheeks, and a screenplay written by an eight-year-old.

E-squared rating: I wish we'd spent our money doing anything else.

Hurricane? What hurricane?

Can anyone say false alarm? Hurricane Rita brought Austin some of the BEST weather we've seen since the past year. Austin City Limits (the annual music festival) went off this weekend without a hitch, and we didn't receive even one drop of rain or gust of wind.

Hey, at least our pantry is stocked for a month :)

Hurricane Rita!

We are going to be staying in Austin as Hurricane Rita comes for a visit. Just so you know, Austin is a good area to be in: it's in the Texas "Hill Country" and our area does not get tornadoes very often. We have stocked up on all sorts of food and water, but we're not expecting anything drastic. Thanks for all the phone calls and emails!

Can't Wait to Get a House, Part 1

The past few months Elaina and I have been looking for a good area to buy a home. Since our lease is up in March, we have plenty of time to find a good neighborhood, and in light of recent blogs, we are taking our time to make sure it's not ghetto. However, as each day goes by, our apartment complex becomes increasingly more annoying. In the next few months, we will be posting why we can't wait to get a house.

A few months ago our apartment complex had a hail storm. Some six months later, the apartment decided to refurbish each building. What does this mean for us? That's right, dirty people working on our building all hours of the day, including weekends. The past few Saturday mornings Elaina and I were rudely awoken by the clanking and clammering of ladders, Mexicans, and big power tools.

I almost shit myself when I opened my blinds to see this:

I mean, they were right outside our window. I was standing there, butt naked and these guys were painting the side of our building, which, by the way, was never even touched by the hail.

Unfortunately, we did not get pictures of the sketchy guys staring at Elaina every morning when we left for work. Maybe we'll get some of those soon.

Needless to say, we're very excited about getting a house so we won't have to deal with this.

Movie Reviews

This weekend Elaina and I saw two movies: Red Eye and The 40 Year Old Virgin. They were both great, but in very, very different ways. Here are our thoughts on the two (without giving anything away).

Red Eye
It's a short movie, only 80 minutes long...but it feels even shorter. If you like a psychological thriller riddled with plot holes then this movie is for you. Actually, Elaina and I really liked it, but as Elaina said, "I feel like a 14 year old who just finished a hundred page fiction novel over summer break." The problem is this: Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams are too pretty to be in this movie. His pretty blue eyes do not make for a bad guy, and her curly bangs do not make for... well... her character in the movie. All that aside, they both did a great job. Cillian comes across as a sweet, witty young chap until he lets her in on his little secret. Rachel probably could have been played by any actress in the world, but someone that darn cute demands attention.
E-Squared rating: 4 hugs and a pat on the back for trying.

The 40 Year Old Virgin
I've never heard the word "fuck" so many times in my life, and I don't think we've ever laughed out loud so hard either. Steve Carell is a comic genius; paired up with Paul Rudd and a couple other funny-ass people, this movie couldn't be bad if it tried. Con: it's a long movie, over 120 minutes. Pros: funny as hell, over the top jokes, physical humor, Jane Lynch (from Best in Show), Steve Carell's nose, the quote "You need to keep your bitch on a leash."
E-Squared rating: 5 and a half knee-slaps and two spit-takes.

Napoleon Dynamite Party

Once a month Elaina's lab gets together to have a Dinner and a Movie night. Each month a different person hosts the event, comes up with the theme, and provides all the food. This month it was Elaina's turn.

In a stroke of genius (which happens quite a lot to these neuroscientists) Elaina decided our theme should be Napoleon Dynamite. We made steaks, ham, green bean casserole, and of course tater tots; but first, everyone had to take a "Glamour Shot" in front of a wonderful work of art. Click here for pictures.

Christopher Walken for President

I've never crapped my pants over somebody running for President before, but that's because Christopher Walken has never run for President. And if I just implied that I crapped my pants, good, because I totally did. I don't know if you know this, but Christopher Walken is one of the greatest humans on the planet. Besides killing terrorists with his bare hands and curing life-threatening diseases, he's also kicked Hitler in the face twice. I want to live in a world where the President of the United States is Christopher Walken. It might end civilization as we know it, but imagine the President saying to the British Prime Minister, "I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell." You can't put a price on that. Even if you tried.*

Don't know if any of this is true, but damn, that would rock.

*courtesy of The Superficial

New Couch!!

Elaina and I just moved into a new level of maturity: we bought a sofa! It's decent quality, a style called "Tahoe" from Sofa Mart (part of the Furniture Row company), and came with cute pillows.

It replaced our futon, which was the biggest eye sore in our apartment. We sold the futon today to a creepy guy with "child molester glasses" who (and I'm not kidding) has some sort of futon fetish.

Let me know what you all think of our new sofa!

The Aristocrats

There's a lot of hype about the new movie coming out called "The Aristocrats." This movie is the taping of a collection of comedians telling one joke over and over. The genius is the comedian's take on the joke.

Apparently there is an underground joke known to the best-of-the-best comedians, the beginning and ending of the joke is a constant, but the middle changes based on comedian.

But that's not it.

The gist of the joke, perhaps is only purpose, is to be as vile, crude, disgusting and perveted as humanly possible. The beginning is that a family (father, mother, son, daughter and dog) goes to a talent agency to show the agent their family act. He lets them perform--the performance is the bulk of the joke--and the joke ends by the agent asking what the act is called.

Click here for the South Park interpretation of "The Aristocrats"


Read more variations of The Aristocrats here.

Says Jim Lewis of Slate, "The joke is perfect because the joke sucks—in fact, it's nonexistent. You get to the end, and it proves to be nothing, nothing at all, but an excuse after the fact for comedians to get as stupid and as clever, simultaneously, as they possibly can."

In Memoriam: Arty the Retarded Mouse

We finally got a pet Wednesday. A mouse was born in Elaina's lab and it was different from the rest: his head was shaped like a cone, he had a buffalo hunchback, and unlike the other mice in her lab, he didn't bite you when you picked him up. That's right, he was retarded.

Instead of sacking him like the rest of her lab suggested, Elaina thought he was cute and wanted to make him happy, so she brought him home. Hence, our first pet. We named him Arty Retardy, or Arty for short.

Arty didn't eat much, so we decided to give him treats. All rodents like treats. We tried Froot Loops, Corn Pops, and cooked chicken, none of which made him happy. Finally, Elaina gave him a piece of cheese, which he leapt onto and started eating in giant chunks. Who would have thought that mice actually like cheese?

Now, Arty was developmentally mis-shaped, his little body wasn't made to last very long. Elaina wanted to give him things he couldn't have as a lab mouse. She made him a house, gave him a tube to play in, bought a toy mouse for him to cuddle, and got a plastic ball for him to roll around the apartment in.

Arty passed away this morning. We love you and miss you, Arty.

Yes, we've hopped on the bandwagon

So this morning Elaina and I were talking. We were talking about blogs... and how we're jealous everyone has one except us.

Maybe we're not the first to be hip, but whatever.

Enjoy the postings!