A Nifty Little Mormon Trick

Celestial set for everyone's favorite all-American prophet

Last Thursday evening, we took the opportunity to experience London's famed theater district...with an American play. An absolutely hilarious American play. From the get-go, it was clear that the Book of Mormon's reputed offensive humor was right up our alley. Almost a week later, we are still singing along to some of the more memorable show tunes (Hello!) and highly recommend checking out this comic genius in the city nearest you and you won't ever think about those guys at your door the same way again. 

You & Me (But Mostly Me)

Memorable Mum's Day

March 31st (oh, sorry... 31 March) was Mum's Day in the UK and I thought I would share this lovely note I received "from" my darling son:

Mummy, 

You are the bee's knees!  Ace in every way and I appreciate all that you do for me each day.  I truly fancy the various schemes and bits & bobs you use to keep me prim and proper and away from all things dodgy. I can see that I often leave you knockered (zonked, really) and driven out on the piss. Me being the full can of beans that I am, its no surprise you have lost all those zeds. And lets not waffle, I become a rather pernickity lil' chap when I get buggered! But although I can be a ripe pain in your arse, you simply must know that I love you and am wonderfully chuffed to bits to have you as me mum!

Dillon

PS- Zambezi says "How are you"

Quite the British lad already, isn't he?

Ghost Face Killer

This past weekend, while celebrating the wedding of Michael "H-bomb" Henderson to Karen Sorenson with our old pals and favorite roomies Conor and Natalie, we encountered a spicy challenge like none the Dos Texpatriates had come across thus far: the Jolokia Ghost pepper. 

Originally found in India, the jolokia (or ghost pepper here in the US), was crowned the hottest chili pepper in the world in 1997 by the Guinness Book of World Records and is 3 times hotter than the spiciest habanero out there.

While contemplating the various menu options at the appetizingly-named Chunky's Burgers, we first noticed their signature menu item, the Four Horseman. This burger, featured on Man v Food, contains habaneros, serranos, jalapenos, and the ghost pepper.  The burger is so spicy, you have to sign a release and be over 18 to participate.  Our helpful waitress advised that pretty much everyone throws up and quite a few have to make a visit to the local ER.  Although we are not ones to back away from a challenge, we had a moment of maturity and remembered the wedding we were scheduled to attend that evening.  Instead, we opted for the Ghost burger, which only had the ghost peppers atop it, and seemed like a more reasonable option.

Jared definitely shouldered most of the challenge, but I was sure to crown my chicken sandwich with a few of the little devils as well.  And, wow!  They aren't joking around with the spiciness claim, although I have to say that the lasting after effects (best analogy: a laser fight in your stomach) were easily worse than the initial spiciness.

This was definitely a case of we Cowboys being seriously outmatched by those Indians.

Movin on up, out, and away!

Sorry faithful readers for our looong absence from the Dos Texpatriates blog.  Not only have we been more than a little bit busy with the transfer from SF to Houston, but the Dos Texpatriates have also been separated for the past two and a half weeks (tear).   As Jared blazes new trails in Houston, setting up our new nest with lovely rented furniture and startling Texans with his continued devotion to public transportation, I have been working non-stop to wrap things up on the Californian end.  And by wrap things up, I don't mean pack (which is what I should be doing right now), I mean try to delicately extract myself from the three roles I am filling in for at KBAS.  You can take a wild guess at how that is going....

So until the Dos Texpatriates are reunited, we ask you, faithful readers to hold tight!  As a gesture of apology for this absence, we offer these gems from the 2011 Galvin family calendar:

The first reader to guess the theme from each picture wins free lodging at the Dos Texpatriates newest abode!

Holiday Gift Guide: the Jared & Lindsay edition

Although the internet is currently flooded with holiday gift guides, we thought this would be the perfect opportuity to provide ideas for the recently married, often migrant, young Bay Area-dwelling couple on your list. Although few would say no to an iPAD and its corresponding designer case,we have created a list that is far more suited to the needs of a young San Franciscan who might just happen to be named Lindsay or Jared:

1. Parking Space- $250/month- the ultimate luxury.

2. Spacious Closet- $3000 for complete redesign- would free up a lot of kitchen cabinet space

3. Teleporter- $ unknown- would considerably reduce Jared's daily commute time

4. Friends- $150 (a few rounds of drinks)- superfluous? possibly, but usually leads to a good time.

5. Dog- $75 (adoption costs)- strictly outlawed by the evil Bernstein property management group

6. House- $MP- probably more out of our reach than the teleporter

So if a certain item tickles your fancy, feel free to package up and send to your favorite Texpatriates this holiday season!

Baby Power

This has nothing to do with anything happening out here, but not everything has to be relevant to us. As an avid photoshopper, this is just an art form that I find to be outrageously hilarious.  Let me know if you agree...

Texas Two Step

I've been lucky to have had not one but two trips to la patria in the past month.  The first trip was strictly a ladies weekend, full of wine drinking, outfit changing, and artistic photos.

The second visit was to celebrate the wedding of two of Jared's MBA pals: Sam Brown and Melissa Sprinkle.  Being an MBA event, the party wouldn't have been complete without a theme and corresponding costumes.

 

The Texas-themed rehearsal dinner had more than a few interpretations of what a "Texan" might wear, but I still feel pretty confident about our choice to go dressed as the "Jean King and Queen."

 

Down yonder in Texas town, we ran into few familiar faces and had a few laughs.

Sometimes Willie just puts it best, so to Texas we say: if you've got the money, honey, we've always got the time...

Crawl to Walk

This weekend, I held down the fort in SF while Jared continued his tour-de-Phish in Colorado and continued onto Dallas for his 10th high school reunion.  Although I am sure that I would have enjoyed the awkward moments that Jared certainly encountered reuniting with the Class of 2000, I had important work to do: drink and dress up in a ridiculous outfit- all for a great cause.  Last Halloween weekend, a friend from high school, Kendell Hall (pictured above, right), was in a terrible car accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down.  Since that time, she has made an amazing and incredibly inspirational recovery that has allowed her to regain full arm movement and progress toward walking again!  Her determination and hard work has led to features on CNN news and Anderson Cooper.  Learn more about Kendell and contribute to her recovery fund at www.help-a-fwend.com .

 

To help cover the costs of Kendell's rehab program, her family organized a pub crawl, "Crawl to Walk" in SF this weekend.  The pub crawl was jazzercise/workout themed as a tribute to her intense daily physical therapy sessions.  High school friends Whitney Ashley and Nicole Zaccanelli traveled up from LA for the weekend, happy to embarrass themselves and practice drinking endurance in support of Kendell. 

I am not sure how much we raised from our cut of the bar tabs, but from the amount of silliness going on, I would guess it was pretty substantial.  So here's a big cheers to Kendell, the Hall family, and to the purple stretchy pants that are now a part of my wardrobe!

Not as Hard to Find in Real Life

Welcome to the 99th annual Bay to Breakers 12k race/festival/costume party. A few weeks back we teamed up with some of our new friends to form a massive gang of everybody's favorite candy striped characters: Waldo and Wenda.

Turns out we weren't the only ones with this genius idea. Flocks of Waldos flowed through the city streets that Sunday and tied  with bananas and jazzercise chicks as the most popular costume. Fortunately the perrenial favorite for most common costume, the old naked dude, was limited by chilly weather.  All in all it was an amazing introduction to the zany culture of our new city.  And just to validate that this is actually a race I figured I would highlight the winner.  No suprises here, but it was won by a Kenyan. Congrats to Sammy Kitwara who ran roughly 7.45 miles in 34 mins (pictured somewhere below).  Not sure how many Five Hour Energys that guy drank, but that is insanely fast!

 

Anyways to close, I'd like to show you some of the more colorful participants and hopefully inspire all you loyal readers to block off your calendar in order to join us next May for the 100th edition of this grand tradition.

 

Blood Traitors

Goodbye tiny spaceship, cactus, and oil rigs.  We will not miss your terrible design, but more what the plate symbolized in this seven-character, vanity plate-obsessed state we now inhabit.  

Sunday Morning Mystery

I am going to prelude this post by saying that this is probably something that my mom wouldn't want me to post about.... saying that it would "embarrass the family" or something like that.  Something similar to the time when I accidentally brushed my teeth with hydrocortisone cream or the time when I sprayed myself with industrial strength bug spray meant for use in an outdoor space 6 hours before human use.  But having little to no pride, I am going to publish anyway.  For you, my reader.  Its all for you.  Because if you can't laugh at the misfortune of others, what can you laugh at?

On Sunday morning before heading out to a much-needed breakfast taco brunch, I noticed some discoloration, redness, and broken blood vessels on my chin.  I instantly freaked out.  I don't particularly mind having bruises the size of my hand on my leg, strange growths on my wrist, or random rashes, but I simply do not like when things are wrong with my face. Not cool.  After running through the various options of what might have caused this outbreak with my personal nurse (aka mom), we came up with the following possible triggers: 

1. The water from the mountain spring I drank on the hike the day before.    
                    A) Was there pee in it? Possibly.

                    B) Chemicals? Who knows.

                    C) Bacteria? Probably.

2. The leaf that I blew my nose on while hiking.  Seemed like an eco-friendly option at the time, but then again some leaves cause angry outbreaks...

3. General clumsiness.  Always a possible culprit, but in this case it wasn't really an option as I certainly would have remembered jacking my chin on something hard enough to leave a mark.  Nevertheless, it was not ruled out as my tendency toward clumsiness overruled the reliability of my memory.

Over breakfast tacos, I contemplated possible causes while Jared made sure to keep a safe distance from me in the event of any possible infectious diseases.  When I took a sip of my water, revelation struck!  I knew what caused it!  The night before, Jared had very inconsiderately passed his hiccups on to me.  Not a very gentlemanly thing to do. One of our companions suggested her tried-and-true cure of drinking water out of a glass from the opposite rim while leaning upside down.  Having already tried holding my breath and the whole sugar on the tongue thing, I was game for anything.  I secured my lips on the opposite rim of the glass while leaning over and attempted to drink.  Unfortunately, gravity and the pressure of the drinking motion caused the glass to stick to my face.  Ergo..... popped blood vessels! Discoloration! Redness!  Elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary.

Who Says XXXXL Shirts Are Out of Style?

Not Justin "Guess What Ladies I Now Play Bass" Cohen.  I apologize for tearing open those ever tender scars that Cohen formed when he departed Dallas, but the D.C. celebrity was recently spotted flaunting his vintage J. Hughes "Farewell Tour" tee on the slopes of A-Basin.  Notice the off-center lettering ...

and the über-exact profile logo....

Man that is one badass shirt.

This Just In...

Stephen "Cuddles" Carleton and Justin "Hey Ladies I Can Play the 90's Chicago Bulls Intro Song On My Keyboard All Night Long" Cohen have amazing vertical skills.  Not sure where they got it from but they sure were kickin ass that day.

Me on the other hand would have been lucky to out jump Uwe Blab in my early 90's Pearl Jam attire.

Performance Metric Dashboard

In order to oblige the request of my lovely and results-oriented friend Eva, I have created a dashboard to report on my progress on various activities since my move to San Francisco.  Here are the results for this week:

SUMMARY: Effort levels have been quite varied in all categories other than maintaing contact with old friends.  These trends reflect swings in my motivation levels relating to activities such as job hunting, finding new friends, organizing the apartment, and staying physically fit.  The category of money making/ spending requires additional explaination: my primary income generation method this week has been via the sale of household items on Craigslist.  Monday, I brought in $150 and Wednesday I brought in $175.  Unfortunately, on Monday I also succombed to mall kiosk miracle products, negating the day's earlier sale.

Hopefully this will please our readers that are more interested in performance metrics and proven results than sunset pictures and intoxicated escapades (both regular features on this blog). Any suggestions for forecast goals or future action items can be refered to my accountablility manager, Ms. Eva Gascue.

Moving Pains

Although we have found a place and moved in, I would not say that we have exactly "settled."  For the first time in our lives, we don't have 50 friends and family members within driving distance willing to provide all of the necessary hand-me-down furniture to stock the house and also take any unwanted goods off of our hands.  So, bascially, this has left us with an eclectic mix of furniture.  Some useful, some... not so much.  Let's just say that while two end tables, an unneeded TV stand, an ottoman, a coffee table, a poker table, and a huge chair do completely fill our new, smaller living room, they don't exactly provide the type of lounging experience one normally aspires to.  The good news is that the end tables and the poker table are on Craigslist, we have bought a couch, and pretty much everything else is on the chopping block.  Unfortunately, the couch will not be ready until Friday.  Normally a week wait is actually a pretty quick turnaround for a custom-colored couch (oh yeah), but when you don't have a couch to start off with, it seems like an eternity.  Luckily, Jared and I are not the type to let a lack of seating get in the way of something as important as catching up on LOST, marathon style.  Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain an actual picture while still preserving the actual experince, so I have used the advanced photo editing program, Paint, to recreate the feeling here:

Looks cozy, doesn't it? 

Glamping

Glamping-verb (used without object)\ [glam-ping]

         1. to camp in style

         2. a style of camping popularized in the movie "Troop Beverly Hills"

         3. term invented by Liz Hawthorne to explain the only suitable method of sleeping outdoors

Last weekend, we joined a group of friends in Greyton, a town about 1.5 hours west of Cape Town for a weekend in the great outdoors.  John and Liz had visited this location in the past and offered it up as a possible list-worthy item.  John loved the place so much that he once attempted to romance the cleaning supplies.  His enthusiasm must have caught on because on the first night he, Jared, and I stayed up until about 4:30 singing, dancing, and generally annoying anyone within 5 miles. I even managed to incorporate John's beloved broom into a rousing rendition of "Putting on the Ritz" ("Young Frankenstein" moaning included).

Despite the well-warranted disciplining we received from the management the next day (John to camp manager: "4am? Izzit? Shame, man."), we had an awesome time with our adopted South African family.

(Maya and our new friend "Toro")

White wine extravaganza

Cute picture, huh?  I thought so too. Unfortunately it is the only picture from the Sauvingnon Blanc festival in Costantia last weekend that is acceptable to post. 

We have truly found friends here that fit our style, there is no doubt about that.  Not content to accept the unlimited offers of free tastings from the 30+ wineries on site that day, we decided to make it a competition to see who could con the hapless winery representatives into giving us full bottles instead.  Now we have quite a charming group, so when we stumbled walked away from our area after the sun had set that evening, approximately a dozen empty bottles littered the ground.  Add that to the unlimited tastings, the pre-event cocktails, and the totally necessary after party, and you get one excitable group. 

So, if any of you readers were nervous that it was all work and no play here in Cape Town, think again. 

Cowboys in Cape Town

Despite the elimintation of the Cowboys from the playoffs and the end of football season, we continue to cheer on our home team in style.  Included in a late-arriving Christmas package from my mom, the Cowboys decal probably was meant for the fridge, but we have found it a handy way to distinguish our white VW Polo from the scores of other white Polos in they city.  Although main reason for keeping the decal is practical, it has also served as evidence to other city residents of our foriegn strangeness...

Ringing in 2010

For me, New Year's Eve was truly a celebration as I was given a break from my planning duties and the only thing I had to organize was transportation for our party of 10 to and from John and Liz's house in Camp's Bay.  Our ever-gracious hosts had organized a lovely soiree to bring in the New Year and were happy to include my entourage of 9 in the festivities.  Not wanting to be ungrateful guests, we arrived with no fewer than 9 regular-sized and 3 magnum-sized bottles of champagne.  Tack on a bit of white wine, some vodka, a bottle of bourbon and 10 good-timin' Americans and I think that pretty much any party would have been happy to have us. 

The evening started out pretty normally but later devolved into a strange hybrid of costumes (see Modern George Washington and Kim Jong Il, left) and blooper-filled dance routines.  But then again, I guess that is actually kind of normal for our group....

Happy New Years to all that were not able to join us and if these pictures are not enough to convice you of the fun times that await when visiting us, I am not sure what will.

What Happened?

Everything started out so sophisticated and mature....  Here's Jared, reading from the famous Platter's guide while comparing notes on the lovely offerings at the Thelema vinyard.  Glasses were swirled, subtle notes detected, aftertastes lingered upon...

I would like to recount exactly what happend next, but I am not sure that I can do that very accurately as the details are a bit hazy.  I remember a lovely lunch at Tokara, complimented by two bottles of the finest Thelema Chardonnay, the successful German Wedding cup challenge, and well... sometime after two more wineries and a lot more wine, the ride back to Cape Town ended up looking like this:

Now you might notice that a certain guest from Texas is missing from this lovely photo collage.... and that is because not only was Libby talented enough to hold a camera in one hand and the wine bottle in the other, but also because she was smart enough not to turn the camera on herself!