Last night, Welsh Girl and I went out for dinner at this fairly new place in Austin called Cannoli Joe's.  It's basically a really nice Italian buffet.  It's also owned by the same people who own The County Line barbecue joints.  It looks like a chain, but it's really a one of a kind place.  Maybe it's the template for a chain.  Either way, the food is really good, the prices are pretty decent, the ambiance is palpable and the selection is wide.  I thought the actual cannolis were a little small, but since you can get as many as you want, that's not a real issue.  On another note, we may have a location for our rehearsal dinner, but we shall see…

After that, we went and saw my friend's new band, "Conv-OI!".  They specialize, though are in no way limited to, country versions of punk songs.  Some of them work amazingly well.  In my opinion though, the jewel of the show was the soulful, semi-Stax Records rendition of MC5's Kick Out The Jams.  It was their first show, but they're actually well practiced.  I've seen a lot of bands and they put on one of the better first shows I've ever seen.  All in all, they didn't completely suck.

We went looking for wedding invitations last night too.  We may end up getting a little boned on them.  The big chain stores (Michaels, Office Despot, etc.) have good sets they sell, but none of them are in a style we like.  We'd like silver embossed ones with a simple outline or something similar.  What we keep finding are ones with weird patterns or cutesy heart shit or nicely embossed but in crappy colors.  And Welsh Girl is totally fixated on finding sets with both inner AND outer envelopes for the invites.  I keep telling her that in a world of easily acquired office stationary, outer envelopes will be easy to find, but she seems to think that if we go that route, we'll end up buying invites then spend months trying to find envelopes that fit around them.  So it looks like we're going to have to find a specialty stationary store.  Strangely enough, there don't seem to be that many in Austin.  On a lark, I looked at prices for having invites printed.  F-U-C-K T-H-A-T.  $400 for 25 invitations?  What?!?  Hell, if all our invitations end up costing $200, I think I'll be a little pissed off.  Shit like this is why the average American wedding costs $25K.  If I wasn't committed enough against the Wedding-Industrial Complex, I sure as hell am now.  I expect that I'll be driving around Saturday looking for invites to demonstrate to Welsh Girl.  Wish me luck.

Last night, before I went to bed, I finished painting a mini.  I very much like the look of it but I know that as good as it may be compared to many, it's not great by any means.  And yet it’s so much better than many people I've played against.  I’m a very lazy painter.  I’ve milked out a series of techniques that allow me to paint a lot of models consistently in a short period or one model in a few hours and look good on the field, but not great as in Golden Demon quality or anything like that.  I think I might write an article on how I do it.  On my game club's website, we have a few people who read us and a greater need for content.  Maybe some people would be interested in techniques to get their armies painted faster and with less effort so they can get fielded faster in a prettier way.  Something to mull over…

I'm reminded of a strange anecdote.  Napoleon had many Marshals.  Not all of them got along outside of their work and when they would come to words, as long as it didn't interfere with the work or the mission, Napoleon would leave them to their bickering.  As far as I (or any one else for that matter) is aware, he figured that since they were the most capable men in Europe as far as he was concerned, let them have the personal idiosyncrasies.  It was not uncommon for two Marshals to start arguing personally during a strategic planning session and Napoleon would study some pages or examine the drapes or even doodle as the words flew.  He'd do this for the 5 or 10 minutes that voices were raised and then, when the bile subsided, he and they would continue on with their work.  At one point, Marshal Lannes challenged Marshal Soult to a duel.  Lannes showed up to the duel but Soult did not.  So the next morning, Lannes rode up to a hill top over looking Austerlitz and, being the last to arrive, announced to Napoleon and his assemblage that Soult, on horseback besides all the other Marshals, was a cowardly son of a whore.  Marshal Bernadot, slightly more senior, replied that they had more important things to concern themselves with at the moment.  Lannes grudgingly agreed, fell in line with the others and they all proceeded to tear the Austrians and Russians a new hole and change the face of European politics.  What does this have to do with anything?  Not a clue.  It's just funny the things you think about out of nowhere.  Well, alright, maybe it's just funny the things I think of out of nowhere…

That is all.