Don't do IQ tests late at night...

I hate you, Rosie.

I get home, thinking I'd just check my e-mail and hit the sack...catch up on a couple blogs, yadda yadda. I get to Rosie's blog, and she goes on to say what a fun time she had doing this puzzle, and here's the premise: You're a guy trapped in a room, and you have to find 13 items, put them to use together in a certain manner to get out of this room. So naturally, I can't pass up the chance to prove how smart I am (yeah yeah, I know you actually ahve to be smart to be able to effectively do that, it all sounds so obvious NOW...) Here's the alleged breakdown:

You find:

0-6 items, your IQ is very low
6-8 items, your IQ is low
9-10 items, your IQ is average
11-12 items, your IQ is high
13 items found and get out of the room, there are less than 4000 people in the world can do it.

I totally don't buy the 4000 people schtick. Nor do I particularly think it's an effective measurement, as it seems to me that it's just a lot of random and repetitive clicking around. That being said, I found 11 items in about 5-8 minutes, and got so angry that I couldn't get any further, that I invested even more time on it, finally getting to 12 items before I ahd to IM Rosie and ask her to help. She gave me a couple hints, and I was able to finally get through it. I accept that I'm not a supergenius like she is. I'm perfectly fine with my self-imposed title of subgenius. &%$#@! 'tard pseudo IQ tests. I swear, I don't even know why I do them, they just end up pissing me off...

My head hurts, I'm going to bed...

Obrigado, D...

Good day today, got to spend some quality time with the woman of the hour, my interminably beloved D...The wheels are in motion, groundwork is being laid (teehee), and grand plans are being hatched! It's going to be an amazing summer/year...

(Thanks to Mo for playing along and making tonight possible...love ya baby!)

OK, now to provide some content for all the other readers: ;)

Taxes got exactly no attention today. The pile of associated papers moved from their place of rest to the active workspace, my bed, spent the day there completely undisturbed, then were carefully transported back to their place of rest, perhaps to be neglected all weekend. Made a pot a marinara sauce, which turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. If you're in the greater Charlotte metro area, come on by for a plate/bowl of chinese noodles (beats the pants off western pasta) with yummy marinara. Mmm. Meaty goodness, and tomato-y! Yum!

Lounged on the veranda, marveled at the day and quality of life in general, chatted on IM and the phone, watched a couple episodes of Good Eats with Alton Brown...this guy has the best cooking show on TV today, in my opinion. He gives not only the how-to, but the why, the science behind the cooking, foods, ingredients, and tools/procedures, including visual aids where necessary, so that though you may not want to make what he's making on the show, it's great general cooking knowledge, that when added to your repertoire, makes for better improvisational cooking, and helps us all to be better cooks. Yum.

Watched Season 01, Episode 01 of Scrubs, and I think I'm officially crushing on the dreamily lovely Ms. Chalke. Yum. Hair tied up, wearing scrubs, with those glasses on? Ouch. The writing's pretty good too, even from the pilot...not bad for a sitcom. Pretty much love any dialogue where they properly use the phrase "For the LOVE OF GOD!"

Had a wonderful conversation with L on the state of the union, projections, and the general direction of things to come...planning, preparing, and plotting...conspiring to being smaller groupings of good together to form larger, happier groupings of wonder...again, it's going to be a fabulous summer/year for all I think...big things are afoot. It could be a very good time to be in the Queen City (I hate that moniker). Also chatted briefly with the always lovely J, It's been far far too long since we've had one of our way-too-late-for-a-schoolnight conversations. I do so cherish them.

Supposed to have lunch with some friends tomorrow, but they're saying they want to meet in Concord, which is like 40 miles away...WTF?! Being that it's very nearly 3am, I'm thinking I won't be up in time. We'll see...Why the hell couldn't they have decided on somewhere around here?! Sheesh.

*Yawn* More soon (maybe...it's shaping up to be a busy weekend...)

Obrigado!

Scrubbing in...

Unattributed IM quote of the day, on the topic of my blog:

"Darn, it's too large for me to open/read through my cell."
"Ugh, everything about you is big."

Nice. I think she means that I could stand to lose a few pounds...


A certain someone recommended that I catch last night's episode of Scrubs. Mainly becasue it's an irreverently funny programme, but also because one of the characters reminds of them of another certain someone I know. True to form, the two episodes I downloaded (season 04, episodes 23 and 24) were hilarious. Some aspects of the show are a bit annoying, as any sitcom, but all told, the net result is pretty funny.



Sarah Chalke, yum. (Photo courtesy of/stolen from IMDB)

Two prominent hotties (that I could tell from the two episodes) were featured: Sarah Chalke and Christa Miller from the Drew Carey Show (who, in the few moments I saw her, looked MUCH better than she ever did on the Drew Carey Show.) For some unknown reason, I dig the name Christa, but don't care for it spelled Krista, go figure. I think that Judy Reyes was also cast as a borderline hottie, but she really doesn't do it for me.

They definitely let you know that it's a comedy though, by saying absurd things like "I really like you, Elliott, but I'm an adult, and I want this to be an adult relationship - if you want to be patient and not have sex right away, that's fine." I mean come on, who would say that in real life? What guy? Nigga, PLEASE.

Well, it's now again just before midnight, and all that's happened to my taxes is that the W2s and 1099s have been divided into chronological (then name, then company) order. Of course, that took place yesterday prior to T's arrival. So the net result of a day set aside to do taxes, thus far, is absolutely nil. What I did get done was to download the 1981 BBC miniseries of The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and watch it in it's entirety. Good way to bring myself up to speed on the basic storyline, I'd forgotten some of it. However, it was dated in it's appearance and it's low budgetedness. All in all though, pretty true to what I remember of the books, which in turn were adapted from the BBC radio series. All iterations of this particular story were tweaked and revised by the original author, though, so even the movie, which my rational mind tells me will suck, should be pretty good. (Hopefully.)

Don't panic...

This will just be a quick post on the events of the last day or so. Lots of activity, yet nearly imperceptible productivity. E came up for a very much overdue visit Monday evening, and I'd taken so much time screwing around (instead of getting dressed and heading to the store for much-needed ingredients) that she got here probably 15 or so minutes earlier than I'd have guessed, and ended up having to meet me at the local market, where I was shopping for dinner. Nice. Nothing impresses chicks like ill-preparedness. All in all, a great opportunity to catch up, and she's eager to head back in a couple weekends to meet the gang.

Tuesday finds me up at the relative crack of dawn (in my world, anyway), 9:30am. Ugh. throw together some breakfast (and smell like maple bacon for the rest of the afternoon), start sorting out my tax forms in preparation for the long road ahead. Get an unexpected text from D. As chance would have it, she's working in the neighborhood (and was yesterday as well, without having called me the whole time, curse her!), and did I have a few minutes to meet her for lunch? Duh. 20 minutes later, we're sitting at Vinnie's, an oyster bar not too too far from my domicile. We have very nearly two hours to talk about the state of things, our mutual sheer amazement that one or both of us hasn't shot/killed/maimed the other, as well as making a complete mess of a gigantic plate of all manner of sea critters (SO need to look into finding a bushel of blue crabs...)

Head home, download parts of 5 years worth of tax forms, then decided to call T, as today's pretty much the only chance I'll get to see her this week. Spend the evening with her, take in Made, the hilarious Jon Favreau/Vince Vaughn mob comedy. Good times.

Promise myself that since she's gone home early in order to let me sleep, that I'll go to bed early in order to be productive tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I'ts just before midnight, and I'm nowhere near ready for bed. Grr.

A note on taxes: I've decided that instead of spending all kinds of time trying to figure out/research whether or not not filing one's return for X number of years results in a defaulting of one's refund for any given year in question, I'm just going to go ahead and file for all the years for which I have W2s and/or various flavours of 1099s. I thought I'd come to terms with all the money I'd invariably lost from this alleged restriction that the government's placed on late returns, but it doesn't really make sense that they'd just randomly get to keep it all. I mean if that's really the case, I'ts sickening the amount of money I've lost...I could probably buy a boat (granted, not a nice fancy one or anything, but still) with the money I'd have thus gifted to the uncle. So that being said. we're left with: 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. I've also made the determination that the last actual year I filed my taxes was in 1999, for fiscal/calendar year 1997. So I'm officially seven years and one month behind. This is far and away the absolute worst example of procrastination I've perpetrated in my life. Hrm. OK, on second thought, getting my '67 Cutlass convertible fixed probably languished for longer, and I ended up not even finishing that little endeavour, but just sold the car as-is/as-was (for considerably more than I paid for it many, many years prior, and in significantly worse condition than when I purchased it) without actually having fixed most of the problems. Ah well, a story for another day.

I've also encountered a substantial delay in the writing process tonight, as in my search through old computer files, I've stumbled upon my old old old files from like 5-10 years ago, and rooting through some of that has been quite nostalgic, in all the good/bad senses of the word. More on my findings at a later date (one thing this blogging experience has taught me is to squirrel away anything that might be used as an anecdote and/or constitute otherwise servicable blog fodder, especially if it shapes up to be a complex and/or convoluted account.) The downside, is of course that I've a damn good chance of forgetting the whole thing, and the fodder is than lost forever, never to be duplicated.

In other news, it appears that the latest iteration of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is due out Friday. I absolutely LOVED this book as a kid, and I might have to suspend my moratorium on movie theatre attendance to see this (maybe Tuesday afternoon...anyone?), as the trailer looks decent, I read a couple decent reviews about it, and the cast list looks pretty strong (Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, and John Malkovich, to name a few). It's been ages since I've anticipated a film's arrival enough to go to said project's self-aggrandizing web site, but I REALLY loved this book as a kid. So much so that Douglas Adams was probably responsible for the formation of any semblance of a sense of humour I had as a youth. We'll see how it goes, a review will definitely be posted once I've seen it.

Anniversarial tangent...

In the last few days, I've reconnected with an old friend from last year with whom I'd fallen out-of-touch. I met E last year, and despite what I thought to be decent chemistry and for reasons largely unknown, we never really had the chance to get off the ground, so to speak. Anyway, we've been missing each other on IM, so by default, have gotten into this one-line-of-text-at-a-time pseudo-conversation, trying to reconnect and catch up without the proper medium.

Last we spoke, E (who lives in SC, perhaps an hour or so away) had allowed me to talk her into coming up for a visit around the first of the year. That's the point where we just fell out of touch, and neither has been great about calling the other. Today, we finally were able to chat a bit about what's been going on, and through some random discussion here and there, found that we were both free, and so we're going to make an attempt to catch up. Here's to hoping that we do a better job of keeping with it this time, I'd love to introduce her to the gang.

In what might be seen as a bit of a departure from my normal rants, allow me to take a moment and recognize a bit of a personal accomplishment. My last "serious" relationship lasted for three years, and ended around march of 2000. Since then, I've been what some might term committment-phobic. I would probably not go so far as to say that that assessment is completely unfounded and off-base, but I think it does somewhat miss the mark. What I'd more closely categorize the situation as is possibly a disdain for societal norms, and all the restrictive stipulations that occur and come with conventional relationships. More on that another day. For now, my point in bringing that up is to illustrate that I've basically not seen anyone consistently and for any length of time in the last five or so years.

A year ago today, I met D, and my life (unbeknownst to me then) would forever be changed (don't you just love those grandiose, sweeping and overgeneralizing statements?) Initially, all we really had was a very intense, tangible chemistry. Very little of the usual awkward small talk or personal information was divulged in the first few encounters;

Everyone knows that these things that start out hot, smolder, burn even more brightly, and get even hotter, generally can't last. The intensity is generally short-lived, and the fuel is rapidly consumed, leaving all contributing participants spent and depleted. I stand before you to testify that this connection has defied conventional wisdom, and possibly even the immutable laws of physics (or maybe interpersonal relations...I'm trying to not mix my metaphors here too much) in not only continuing at a sustained rate, but has continued to surpass any and all expectations (it helps to not have any, I guess) as recently as this month.

Granted, we don't have what anyone, by any leap, would term a "conventional" relationship, but over the past year, I've seen my raw attraction for this woman develop into a real and very deep respect and admiration. As I grow to learn who she is, where she's been, and the things that she's seen, how all those factors and more shape the woman she is and is to become, I've come to want her in my life on a consistent and lasting basis, in any capacity she'll have me. This unfortunately flies in the face of standard "playmate" etiquette, and it's exposition could potentially have disastrous results, but in honour of the first anniversary of the occasion of our meeting, I felt it was the right thing to do to make the statement. My hope here is not to rock the boat, as it were, but to make known my intent and desire to continue to move forward, and commit my presence in a way consistent with the development of our relationship.

D, you mean more to me than I can ever hope to express via mere words, this year has been just barely the beginning, the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and especially in light of recent events, we look to have amazing times ahead of us.

I apologize for the disjointedness of the post, but writing under time constraints doesn't make for the best of conditions...typo and stylistic correction(s) to follow.

Please don't fire me...

Well, it's been two and a half days of non-posting goodness, and I'm sure very trying for all three readers who have come to expect quasi-regular updates during the week. I'd like to find a scapegoat in my new friend T, who's invitations to spend the night (while not delivered naked, might as well have been, for all their magnetic appeal...so much so that I found myself saying "of course" before I'd realized what had transpired, damn these women and their feminine wiles!) have kept me a) from my computer and b) from a non-sleepy state of consciousness in which to compose this drivel, but where would that get us? The fact of the matter is that I probably could have pumped _something_ out, even if not anything of lasting importance and/or value. For this, I apologize, loyal readers (I'm really glad to have broken out of that 1-2 reader demographic...it really frees me up to use more grandiose verbiage. And thanks to Ro for being the only one to consistently comment, even when it doesn't make sense! ;) Just kidding babe...)

By way of updates, I'll go at it Cliff's Notes stylee (that's how they say that in Long Beach, and thus, the cool way...not that I've ever purchased/read/used Cliff's Notes, but I'm going to guess it's just a synopsis type retelling...) Hopefully this will bring us all up-to-date so we can move on.

Friday night: Aside from what I already went over, basically, I got drunk, complete with drunk dialing episode...some people were reached, some were left incoherent voicemails, etc. After that, we get back to the hotel, frolic a bit, go to bed, and I whine about sleeping by myself and how no one loves me, in a weak effort to scam my way into the other bed. Fortunately, the variable of how big a a loser I really am is not lost on my roommates-for-the-evening, they take pity on me, and allow me a little comfort. ;) Needless to say, I slept pretty damn well after that. Well, except for a wee-hours exploration into a very dark bathroom. Who could I even have encountered in there? the mind boggles. Did I dream the very hot, very wet tousle that ensued? Wow, let's hope not. Definitely slept like the proverbial [drunk] baby then.

Saturday: Amazing lack of hangover...breakfast at the local waffle shack, a bit of walking around to get some things done (part two of two of the ostensible raison d'etre of the journey in the first place), followed by some shopping on the main drag. Does anything in this town NOT smell of patchouli? CDs are perused, beads are rifled through, vintage clothing browsed, hand carved wooden shoes are tried on, fawned over, denounced, purchased and begrudgingly accepted, and all was right with the world. Head back to civilization/HFZ (hippie-free zone), right after a brief stop on the Blowing Rock main drag, which in all it's quaintness, smacks of tourist trapism. Cool hattery though, got some good blackmail photos.

Return to the resort to pick up my car, where the highly-anticipated introduction of D to the king and queen of the resort takes place (and seems to go swimmingly, at that), and I part company with the beloved D/Mo. *sigh* What a blissful couple of days. Chat with the king/queen for a few, then take my leave to prepare for the evening's events. Call new friend T to verify that we're still on, head home, shower, change, make preparations, then head out over to the club, where T will be making her debutante appearance as my date. [drumroll] All goes well, head home around 6am? Promptly crash in order to be up and ready for Resort gathering at 2PM.

Sunday: Head out to Lowe's Foods to puck up the requisite 6 lbs. Old Bay steamed shrimp for the party, after which, who should I get a call from but HF Kel. Of all things, turns out we're approaching the same intersection from two angles, and she's got pastries for me! Yay! The luck never ends!. We wave at one another (I'm the first car at the light, and she's the second car in the left-turn lane to my left, about to turn into my street.) I get the light first, and pull into the next parking lot, where she follows. I invite her to accompany me to the gathering, but alas, she has other obligations, and not even the famed Old Bay shrimp can tempt her. Pity.

Arrive at the resort about an hour late, where the party has only barely begun. It ends up being quite a blowout, I go on not one, but two alcohol runs, and proceed to et drunk on champagne again. Nice. I pass out at maybe 11pm, only to be awakened by an angelic concerned friend a few hours later. Minor epiphany follows, things may never be the same...

Monday: Relax at the resort, assist with maintenance of the infrastructure, vis-a-vis the reimplementation of the wireless system and remote aural delivery system.

Gotta head out for now, will try to finish up this entry later...

Utter incoherence...

OK, so where was I? Oh yeah, the lamb from the pseudo Indian place was the nastiest thing I've ever put in my mouth.

After dinner, we walk the main drag in Boone, and take in all the goods marketed towards the hippies. (At least, that's the only reason I could establish that this little podunk college/cow town (I don't really even know if this constitutes a "cow town", but I love the way that sounds so similar to "kowtow") can possibly support not one, but two speciality bead stores. WTF?) Quaint stores abound here, and it's not like I can't get a Phish and/or Grateful Dead bumper sticker anywhere, but there's a certain authenticity/stret cred I'd have knowing it came from Boone, the runner-up (to Asheville) for the title of hippie capital/mecca of the Carolinas.

Once we realized that all the little hippie stores closed at between 5-7PM (it was like 9-ish), we decided to head back to the hotel and get some rest, Saturday was shaping up to be a big day (for them anyway, they made the mistake of giving me the option to sleep in (hah! Suckers...))

By 11:00 or so, we were all a little antsy, figuring that with the rarity of our being free on a Friday night, the fact that none of us really had to be "home" at any particular time, and heck, I'd never drank/partied in Boone, let's go find a party/bar. After a couple botched attempts at locating a sufficiently hip party to crash, we end up at a bar/restaurant "Macados". Damn, if this town isn't chock full of underage college hotties. There's an absolutely stunning blonde at a booth to our right upon entry, several others scattered about, and in a little while, I briefly make eye contact with a cute redhead. D and Mo both swear that she's checking me out, but some time later, she's talking to some guy she seems to have known for years. Order a pitcher of the standard pub fare, D designates herself to drive back, and we decide it's time for Mo's first illicit public beer. It was really cute to see her try to not be conspicuous, but let's just say that I ended up drinking in excess of 75-80% of said pitcher. We also observed them making some gargantuan ice cream/brownie concoction, and ordered one for ourselves. Barely made a dent in it, but it did get us introduced to the hottie sitting at the next table.

Damn, didn't get very far again...falling asleep though, and it's only 2:42am. Ah well, I'll eventually get to the remainder of Friday night, as well as accounts for Saturday/Sunday/Monday, and now Tuesday...ugh, so much to do...so little time in which to do it...I'll never catch up!

(yawn)

zzZZzZzzzZZZzz.

Shocking lack of motivation...

Considering all the events of the past several days, it completely amazes me that I lack the motivation to write. Arrived home a little before 1am on Monday night/Tuesday evening, and the siren song of my 440TC Egyptian cotton Polo sheets and down comforter is a little too strong for me to resist. Here's a brief account of the weekend's events, we'll see if I get a chance tomorrow to flesh it out a bit.

-Friday: up at around 10am, get things together for the trip, take bike over to Kel's, where I'll be meeting her to store the bike and drive me back to my place. Turns out she's forgotten all bout meeting me "right after yoga gets out at 11:00am". 11:30, and still no Kel. I head over to the studio where she is, and wait for her. some time later, she emerges, only to be completely surprised to see me. Apparently, when we arranged to meet, she for whatever reason, completely forgot about it. Ah well, no harm done, we drop the bike off at her place, she drives me home, I offer her soup and a salad, we chat for a few, and I'm late, so I excuse myself and head out to meet D and Mo to head up to Appa. Turns out, they're running a bit behind as well, so it all worked out. Meet up at the LKN resort, where I leave my car, and we head out to the mountainous area of Boone, NC. The drive up is quite pleasant, in terms of weather, company, scenery, and excitement level (on my part, at least.)

We get into Boone just before 4pm, they take care of a couple things, and we check into our accomodations. out for a bite to eat at "The Old Jailhouse". Now, hearing that name, what type of cuisine would you guess they might serve at a place like this? It's a converted building that allegedly dates back to the late 1800s, and has now been converted into a dining establishment. So go ahead, take a guess. OK, that's wrong, guess again. Also nope. One more time? Sorry, wrong again. They're an eastern Indian establishment. WTF?! Not only that, the menus, descriptions containted therein, and pricing, all had the air of false pretentiousness one might expect more from a Manhattan establishment than one in the mountains of NC. Probably the only good thing I can say about them after the fact, was that the garnishing grapes on the cheese plate and appetizer sampler, were very sweet and juicy. The chese plate, while pretty well stocked, had an extra pungent Roquefort blue sample, a nut (walnut? pecan? I forget) encrusted goat cheese ball, and a few wedges of Camembert (of which I'm not too fond to begin with), garnished with some fruit and lettuce leaves. The appetizer plate we ordered had a few Vermont white cheddar slices that weren't too bad, along with some things we had never heard of, and could barely pronounce, like dahl. WTF is a dahl? Saffron was another highly-touted ingredient, being containted in roughly every third item, appetizer, dessert, or entree, sweet or savory, liquid or solid. For our entrees, D went light with a potato soup, Mo had the Chicken Kashmi, and I thought the Lamb Vindaloo sounded like it might be tasty. Wrong, not terribly wrong, and wrong. The lamb had an exceptionally chinese-herb-remedy/medicinal taste, and once you chewed it for a half a minute or so, it would release it's payload of nuclear-grade plutonium, thus hopelessly burning your tongue, mouth, and esophagus. Anyway, not to overly gripe. Needless to say, we didn't ask them to wrap anything.

Ugh, I'm beat...that turned out to not be particularly brief, and having just hit the proverbial brick wall, I'm turning in...possibly more in the morning...ciao...

Bike jockey...

No huge post today, 3am, and I'm already late for bed. Tomorrow's a big day, mini road trip with D and Mo...Got a couple things to do/coordinate before that, so need to be up ungodly early (for me).

Today was not terribly eventful, other than my out of shape ass having to push start the bike a couple times...read on...

Woke up at about 10 am, just prior to a spate of phone calls. T is out sick, still under the weather. Poor thing. Watch some TV over breakfast of warmed-over soupy concoction from yesterday, Watched Boom, a Spike TV programme Mikey recommended. The show itself is pretty much utter crap. However, there does seem to be one redeeming quality: one of the regulars on the show, Kourtney Klein (I know, it doesn't even really work for Krispy Kreme either, and they own my fat ass). Not becasue she's any tremendous beauty (haven't yet gotten a good look at her face), but she wears some super hot punkish skank wear...and my god, the girl has a body on her...ouch. But again, the program itself, uninspired and derivative. Sorry Mikey, it is what it is.

Around 5pm, I finally figure it's gotten pretty nice, I'll head on down to Rock Hill to see if the bike will start after having sat neglected for 5-6 months. Head down there, spend a little time cleaning up a bit, swap out the plate, look it over, pull and charge the battery, doesn't seem to want to hold a charge. Nice. Jump start it, ride it up and down the street a bit, seems fine. I'm falsely emboldened by my seeming luck, get my stuff together to ride it home, then it dies. Grr. Try unsuccessfully to push start it, doesn't seem to want to start. Grr. try some more, thoroughly wear myself out, finally get it started, ride it uneventfully home. Pull the battery again, set it up for a slow 2-amp charge with the voltmeter connected so I can keep an eye on it. Get a ride back to Rock Hill, get the car, come home. Call Kel to arrange a time to meet up and get the bike into her garage. Ugh, finally!

That's pretty much it for the day, losing coherence, turning in...

Yup, I can control women...

...or "Taxes? What taxes? I'm busy." (And no, I don't really think I can control women, it's an allusion to the last link listed in this post...read on, it's amusing...)

Now playing: No Doubt - Just a Girl

Wow, this takes me back...this song was out in what, 1995? Damn...ten years ago...I'm getting old. At the time, I was living in Minneapolis, exclusively dating a girl from Iowa, Mendie, working as a Corporate Trainer (sounds good, no? A recurring theme in many of my positions, these grandiose titles...) for Best Buy Co., which had recently (the year prior, if I'm not mistaken) become the #1 consumer electronics retailer in the nation. At the time, if you got a job in the computer/home office department of any Best Buy store in the country, you trained on materials I wrote, and if you were hired to staff any new store opening that year, you had about a one in twelve or so chance that I would oversee training of your hundred to hundred-fifty co-workers by half a dozen departmental "NSO (New Store Opening) Trainers" flown in from existing stores nationwide. Heady times. And yeah, Minneapolis is way cold. Brr. Had a total crush on Gwen, went to see ND in concert at First Ave. in downtown Minnie, not knowing it'd be about a year and a half before I met and partied with her and the band...[sigh] definitely my best celebrity story to date...breakfast at IHOP with Steve and Gabe, the horn section, the next morning was especially entertaining.

OK, obviously I missed posting yesterday, due mostly to the evil influence of women (what else?) Apologies to those who checked in hoping for amusement, hopefully this entry will be twice as entertaining/funny to make up for it. With that, let's begin:

Finally got to bed around 5:30 am Monday night/Tuesday morning, after composing blog post/IMing with Laura, expecting delivery of her parcel. Roused from sleep at approximately 10:00 am (3:00 pm GMT), Laura's finally received her package, and all is well in the greater London metro area. Spend about an hour on the phone with her going over various facets of new toy operation/interface, and viewing photos of my Dec '03 (has it really been that long?!) visit to the EU and reminiscing about some of the fabulous times we had. Ahh. I'm so overdue to get back there, it's sickening.

Spend the better part of the afternoon with a knot in my stomach, as it appears that I've double-booked my evening. Made plans with new-best-friend T on Monday night, completely unaware that it was already the 12th of April. What's the 12th of April, you ask? Well, several weeks ago, I'd made plans to spend some quality time with D, who was scheduled to be out this way on business. In the almost-a-year I've had the privilege of being in her acquaintance, we've only had a handful of these opportunities, and I think it's not overstating the point to claim that we both absolutely jump at the chance to indulge. Naturally, I'm torn; on the one hand, here's an all-too-rare chance to have the undivided attention of my favorite playmate for almost a longer period of time than I can physically bear, versus doubling the amount of time I've had to get to know the most compelling case of electric-chemistry-with-object-of-newfound-flirtation in recent memory. The hours drag on and on. I'm thinking that my best course of action is to honour my prior engagement, for the keeping-one's-word attributes, scarcity of opportunity with plan A, and general right-thing-to-do factor. I even went so far as to let T know about the situation and warn her that I was, in all likelihood, going to have to cancel/reschedule our plans for the evening. To her credit, she was exceedingly gracious about the whole thing, despite it really being the only night this week she'd have the opportunity to get out. The only reason I didn't cancel outright was that D had said in an earlier conversation, that there was a small chance that plans might fall through, and the whole thing could be scrubbed. D was to call me at 3, then 3:30; when she did, the news was not good; we're off. Pity, as it's been a while since D and I have had a relaxed visit, and we're nearing our 1-year "anniversary", maybe we'll be able to do something special in the next couple weeks...D, any ideas? I think I owe you from a couple (or ten) other missteps over the course of the last 354 or so days, so stew on that, we'll talk about it over the weekend. ;)

By 4:00 plans are gelled, downside is that I have less time to prepare...gotta meet T at the local brass-and-fern in under an hour...shower, dress, run out the door, crap...torrential downpour. Lovely. People around here drive like absolute morons in the slightest bit of moisture (I love that word and it's derivatives...moist...note to self, get more hotties to say "moist".) We get a table at the pub, order drinks, chat on various fascinating topics I'll not go into here, but suffice it to say that T and I seem to have a lot in common, and I think (hope) we'll be seeing quite a bit of one another. "Small world" syndrome hits both of us while we're there, first, she says "this guy's staring at me, what's his problem?" Turns out it's a friend of mine, a former baseball player (AAA? Majors?)...trying to figure out if it's me or not...he comes over, I introduce them, he introduces his son, we make a little small talk, he moves on, then later on, we meet someone she knows, but would rather not have run into, so that kills the mood a little, and we make our exit. Back to my place for a little while, but she's ultimately got to get to bed and try to recover a bit from being out too late the night before. (Again, sorry about that T...) ;)

I crash unusually early myself, around 11:00 pm (I know, unheard of) thus the lack of blog entry. Unfortunately, this does not translate into much of an early start Wednesday...finally start flopping around probably just before noon. Slept like a baby, though...good dreams and all. Get a call from Lin, with news:the waiting's over...Freaky D has resurfaced, and she needs to make herself scarce for a little while this evening, what was I doing? Nothing that the IRS might need in the next few days or anything, so definitely, come on by, we'll crochet or do needlepoint or something.

I get up, get dressed, start some laundry, plan on finally starting on the soup/stew I've been planning for the last couple days, when I get a call from hottie T...poor baby is feeling under the weather, but would I like some company for lunch? She stops by, we chat for a bit, she heads back to work...too bad it was so cold and rainy out, lunch on the veranda would have been nice. This physical proximity thing could work out well...I'll have to start getting up earlier...

Soup turns out decent, get a call later on from Kel to try and figure out plans for tomorrow, need to get the bike and a few other things over to her place, it was supposed to rain tomorrow, then changed to partly sunny, then changed to "AM rain". WTF?! Get your story straight, weatherpeople!

This is probably as good a time as any to make public a favorite site of mine, Hedonistica. They post amusing/interesting/disgusting photos/videos/games, and today is chock full of good stuff:

-First up, we have this semi-disturbing video of a weightlifting screw-up. Not much to say about that one, eh?

-Next up is this clip of Tiger Woods (who, coincidentally, T likened facial features of mine to) sinking an amazing shot at the Masters. I'm not even into golf, and this got ME excited about it. Incredible. Now if only he meant to do that...

-I may give the first person I see wearing one of these a wedgie just on principle.

-I can't tell whether or not this is a joke (it's _well_ after april 1st, isn't it?), it took me a good several minutes to realize what it was and how it worked, and I have to say, it seems a solid idea on paper, but how could someone not inadvertently hurt themselves on something like that?!

-This is an interesting way to make your customers aware of the nuts-and-bolts behind new technology, but a) most people don't need to know this level of detail, b) it's too long, and c) was Schoolhouse Rock ever this annoying (but catchy)?

-Oh, those crazy-ass Jap kids...

-Finally, I leave you with this...I missed out on the first iteration of this mindless T&A type distraction, but if you didn't (or once you exhaust yourself on the other one, double your fun.

Apparently, there are entire websites dedicated to discovering commands for this crap, or as I like to call it, mankind's finest invention. Google it to get more ideas, but here are a few suggestions. (Besides "don't try these at work")

Ones I figured out on my own before I got bored:

Beer
Dance
Banana
Strip
Shorts
Flash
Touch
Catfight/Spank (both get the same response)
...and my personal favourite, Kiss

After screwing around for a few minutes with the hit-or-miss guessing, I got impatient, cheated and looked it up, here are some more: (some only work on VB1)

airguitar, angry, ass, blow, bottle, bow, box, bra, bras, can, cap, cock, cowboy, grab, gun, gymnastics, hair, handstand, headbang, hoolahoop, hummer, jedi, jump, karate, knee, lap dance, laugh, lick, light, lollipop, macarena, magazine, magic, math, message, muscle, naked, number, orgasm, pat head, pillow, pitcher, pour beer, pour beer on self, pushup, pussy, rap, remove clothes, riverdance, robot, shake, show breast, shower, sleep, spin, splits, switch, sunshine, supermodel, tap dance, tattoo, tickle, toes, tongue, wave, yoga.

God, I could watch that crap all day...I'm officially in love with the blonde in the second one...

Enjoy, and good day.

Luckiest bastard on the planet...

...or how the most amazing and unbelieveable things just seem to keep falling in my lap...

Now Playing: Jay-Z vs. Linkin Park - 99 problems (Linkin Park remix)

First heard this tune this afternoon, but it's proven oddly appropriate for the events of the day... (that is, if I'm interpreting the lyrics correctly...) I think I like the Rick Rubin mix better though.

So the day starts out innocuously enough, I'm snoozing, not necessarily from a late night, but I was thoroughly beat when I got in last night. If anything, I went to bed early by my standards, around 2:30am. Slept in, figuring it was supposed to be (at least as far as I recall) cold and rainy, or perfect bed weather. Starting at around 5:30am, my phone started doing things, ringing, buzzing, vibrating on the desk, and all manner of non-sleep-condusive things. First, at 5:30, or 10:30GMT, it seems as though Laura's package has run into a little trouble at the London Stansted Customs bureau. Apparently, they're not exactly what I'd call thrilled about my valuation of $1 for her Titanium Powerbook, extra battery, external CD burner, dual position battery charger, and iPod Mini. so we're trying to figure out a way for her to get it out of/past customs without having to pay the 17.5% VAT, or "Value-Added Tax", added to stuff I guess brought into the country. We go back and forth on how to avoid this most unjust fate, even though on further reflection it was probably (ironically) precipitated by my putting the unrealistic dollar amount of $1 for valuation, with the exact intent of avoiding this very scenario. Ultimately, the expertise of a coworker or two of hers, combined with the assistance of an accomodating FedEx rep on her end got her the right verbiage to insert into a letter to customs, and as of 8:05am GMT, 3:05am EDT, her babies are released from their quarantine, ready to go home. ("On FedEx vehicle for delivery", in FedEx parlance.) By all accounts, she'll have the package in-hand within a couple hours of my writing this, and I'll be getting another call, this one celebratory (hopefully). Thank god, it's only taken me about ten months or so to find her a suitable computer...sheesh.

For fun, track it here. (Though it'll probably have been delivered by the time anyone reads this.)

After that, I get a few text messages here and there, then the phone rings with an unfamilair Charlotte number, and I almost don't pick it up...but who should it be, but the object of my pathetic flirtations two nights ago, and by some act of god nothing short of miraculous, she would like to see me, possibly for dinner tomorrow night? Uh, how's "Hail yes!" (we're in the south, remember, and when in Rome...at least that's my excuse for picking up certain dialectical idiosyncracies) for a response? Then I drift back off to sleep for a little bit, hoping desperately not to forget that a) I have an appointment not written down, and b) it's for 5:15 at the Fox and Hound. I finally rise from the dead at around 1:30 or so, positively euphoric over my good fortune. (As it turns out, I don't know the half of it, more below.)

I head out for a little bit to enjoy the weather (sunny and 80+ degrees) and get some groceries. In the midst of roaming Sam's club munching on breaded chicken and burger/french fry samples, I receive a call from T, tomorrow's date, noting that it's absolutely gorgeous out, and would I have time and the inclination to meet tonight on a patio or deck somewhere? How quickly could I say "yes"? Damnation, so much for not seeming too eager...(Allow me to take a moment and paint a picture of this magnificent creature. As petite as they come, standing just under five feet tall, shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes, and the most perfect proportions you could ever hope for, with an utterly sparkling persona, and she's got the hotness of a brain to boot...but I'm getting ahead of myself, read on.)

Perhaps twenty minutes later, Lin phones to catch me up on the gang's weekend concert (a Mr. Lenny Kravitz, the funky bad-ass jew) event, sounds like a fabulous time, sorry I missed it. Mention to her the prospective date for the evening, and how surprisingly hesitant and nervous I am about the whole thing; it's been forever and a day since I've been on anything even resembling an honest-to-god "date", and damned if I can remember how one is supposed to behave/act. I once had my high school journalism teacher and school newspaper advisor (so she arguably knew me better than most teachers, and yes, I was a school paper geek back then...it wasn't pretty, I assure you, let's not talk about it, yeah?) tell me that I and pretty much the whole crowd I ran with were "social retards". Yep, I've not come terribly far in the fifteen years since. Lin, amazing individual that she is, gave me her supportive perspective on the matter, imparting select nuggets of wisdom and clarity, but one of which was to not focus on the outcome, but to just go, be myself and hope for nothing but an enjoyable time. Prophetic words, indeed.

Upon return home, get a call from ham, turns out news travels fast, and he's calling to express regards, and more importantly, the necessity of my obtaining and switching to a Charlotte local number.

Call T to see where she'd like to meet, and suggest ilios noche, a reputed hotspot for italian-greek fusion cuisine. She agrees, and we arrange to meet there at 6:30. Jump in the shower, pick out some random clothes (my lucky burgundy/grayish Armani dress shirt and likewise lucky gap jeans), splash on a bit of the Hugo, and haul ass to get over there in time. Sure enough, for what is very possibly the very first time in history I'm actually five minutes early for a first date, I arrive to her smiling visage on the outdoor seating area of the aforementioned dining establishment. Coincidentally, we're waited on by none other than hottie fitness Kel, whom I had just parted company with not seventeen hours earlier. We chat and chat and chat, having a marvelous time. So much so that I absolutely fail to gauge the passage of time, and closing the place down. We decide to head over to Hickory Tavern a few doors down, where we're able to continue on their patio, also outdoors. Invite Kel to join us when she's done, and sure enough she does, we all talk and drink for a while, the girls seem to hit it off, Kel heads home, and T and I lounge about for a while longer. Unfortunately, despite every intention on my part to not keep her out overly late on a school night, I didn't get home until 1:30, I'd imagine she was 10 or 15 minutes later than that. Sorry T, hope you'll allow me to make it up to you.

Yet another amazing aspect of how all this has come together is that T claims to have been in a bit of an alcohol-induced haze Saturday night, and apparently has very little recollection of the events of the wee hours. Apparently, she didn't realize that I gave her my number, or having kissed me, and subsequently went to some lengths to try and divine my number (calling people, web searches and such) before she "discovered" my card. Any number of variables could have hopelessly shifted the chain of events that led to this evening. Mindboggling.

To summarize, easily the best first date I've ever had to date. Yum. This is definitely the start of a beautiful friendship; great things will come from this, I have a good feeling. What a find. Skippy, there must be something to that whole faith thing you talked about, after all. In my case it's an absolutely blind, yet unwavering faith in this increasingly charmed life I seem to have, here's to hoping that there's enough good fortune to go around/rub off on those around me. Doo, doo, doo, doo doo doo, doo, indeed.

The downside to all this is that taxes are still no closer than being done than they were three days (or three years, for that matter) ago. Unfortunately, the rest of the week is shaping up to not be any more productive in that arena. I should just look at the W2 for the year that drops off as of the 15th, and cry myself to sleep as to how much it's going to cost me, and not worry about getting them done in time, 'cause it's just not going to happen. Alas, it is what it is.

Oh, and for the record and posterity, the "perceived chemistry" spoken of a few nights ago, turns out to be attributable to BOTH the alcohol and a preponderance of that elusive "electric chemistry". You start with nonverbal communication, and come full circle right back to the nonverbal. The thrill of the chase is an addictive rush, even if it is distressingly abbreviated. For you Swingers fans, the quote of the day is:

"So two days?"
"Definitely, two days is like industry standard."

Truer words have nary been spoken, my friends. Off to bed, it's going to be a busy week.

Taxes ALWAYS lose to hotties...

Ugh, this weekend posting thing is just too much...

So I'd very diligently and sincerely planned to start my taxes tonight. The plan was just to swing by the Lowe's Foods to pick up some Old Bay shrimp with which to reward myself for finally getting started on these taxes. So I'm at the store, on the phone with Mikey, talking macs and a whole lot of general shit, when who should I run into but hottie fitness Kel and roomie Elsa. Weirdness of weirdnesses! They're headed over to T&D's, the Possum Hollow resort, for an impromptu grill shindig. The asked me to go, and between my innate need to glom onto hottie plans and their not taking "no" for an answer (here's me in full bum gear, completely resembling ass, totally unprepared to go out and socialize), I had no choice but to follow them over. Turns out the Possum Hollow gang is tenuously linked to the LKN gang, through some mutual friend? Need to do some asking around on that one, that's far too weird.

Needless to say, it was a fabulous time, Kel said she'd totally have gone with to the Lenny Kravitz show, damned if I wasn't thinking about asking her anyway...crap! And I was totally going to see if she wanted to go! What the hell was I thinking?

Looks as though Laura's parcel has run into a bit of a snag, an exception has been noted in the FedEx tracking info, indicating a holdup in a "regulatory agency delay", whatever that means...

Unfortunately, the taxman will have to stop back by tomorrow...we'll see what we have for him then. For right now, I'm far too buzzy and the eyelids are far to heavy to go on...more during the day tomorrow...possibly...for now, I'm going to crash, and crash hard...

Life is simply grand...

Another Saturday night has come and gone, and I, for one can not sufficiently express how amazing the power of women is. Having direct knowledge and/or seeing/knowing that you're loved and cherished and desired, in varying degrees from women (or men, as the case may be) is so very comforting. All the more so when it's people for whom you actually care, those you have a deeper connection with.

A short time prior to calling it a night, ended up seeing for the second time, a girl I'd met new year's weekend...acquaintances were reaffirmed, banter volleyed, and all the usual acoutrements of your standard boy/girl flirtations. We've all heard the random statistic thrown around that XX percentage of all human communication is nonverbal, and it's situations like these where this point is truly and unobstructedly illustrated. The tragic ending to these types of stories, at least in my experience, is the dreaded days/weeks/months (OK, "months" is probably a bad sign, if it should come to that) waiting for that first call and/or email, wondering how much of the perceived chemistry is attributable to alcohol, whether numbers/e-mail addresses were written clearly, deciphered correctly, body language misinterpreted, or any number of standard pratfalls of this type of situation. For now, things seem to have started out well, here's to hoping that one of us gets a call soon (best of luck, Jen) ;), and will be magnanimous enough to share the spoils of good fortune. (I'm not above the "I'd have done it for you, you know!" plan of action if things start to not look promising for me. ;)

Upon return home, was still pretty wired, so made a timely call to the UK to chat with the happily expectant new "mom"...talked and caught up for a good hour or so, always a joy to talk to Laura.

OK, ugh...more tomorrow...9am...I really neeed to get to bed...

Epic battles with the Asian 'fro...

Big news of the day is twofold: I finally got my hair cut (it was probably two or three weeks overdue) and finally got Laura's package sent out (it was probably two or three weeks overdue). And oh yeah, a neighbor asked me to help her and her hottie (possibly underage, in retrospect, but my memory's kinda shitty, so more research is called for) daughter, Zoey, to move a table this afternoon.

I have a classic dysfunctional love/hate relationship with my hair. It can be anything from a trouble-free joy to coexist with, to an almost hypnotic must-touch conversation piece for white girls, to an absolute maddening tool of the devil, to something I'd gladly take a match and lighter fluid to if I wasn't such a wuss for pain and permanent disfigurement. I tend to get many more compliments on it when it's a shortish, somewhat modified crewish cut with the added Asian gel twist thrown in, but when it starts to get longer, I unfailingly get this notion that "hey, we live in a technologically wonderous time, and CERTAINLY they make a gel or other fixative product that will tangle with (no pun) the 'fro and make me irresistible to women (and be safe for the environment and not give anyone who comes into even the remotest contact with it cancer or diabetes or something), at the same time, mustn't they? With over a billion potential customers moving from the third-world to the second-world, and needing a healthy dose of style and urban chic, surely the collective braintrusts of Vidal Sassoon, Paul Mitchell, that one hair guy in the AmEx commercial, and all those other hair professionals should be learning Chinese and putting their heads together to create the green-tea-infused holy grail of the Asian hairdresser's wet dream? I mean for chrissakes, here's a quarter of the world's population, the male half of whom so desperately long for hair styling options that the men go out and get perms. For whose of you who don't know of the horrors of the Asian male perm, let me tell you, perhaps the only thing stylistically more frightening than the mullet on anyone, the stereotypical bull dyke blunt cuts, and even corn rows and/or dredlocks on white guys, is Asian guys with permed hair. Observe:

OK, my cursory search for any photos of Asian guys with perms on google yields no results, but suffice it to say that it's scary. I'll try to find some later...

All that being said, I came to the realization a couple weeks ago that I was overdue for a haircut. Calling the salon where my stylist "A" works, I was mortified to learn that she'd left the salon. Knowing full well that asking where a former employee had moved on to was a question that would only get you a quicker and more favorable response as compared to, say, a bomb threat, and faced with the possibility of having my hair systematically butchered by who knows how many well-meaning stylists, over untold months, possibly years, my only choice was to ask anyway. Much to my surprise, there were forthright with the information, and I called over there, where I happily found her, but unfortunately, she couldn't take me that Friday. Part of what drew me to getting my hair cut by A in the first place, and facilitating my return month after month, in addition to the least-possible-damage factor, was that that invariably, while I was there either waiting to have my hair cut, or actually getting my hair cut, we'd end up chatting with this friend of hers who occupied the next booth over. Now here's a girl who's apparently from here (I say "apparently", but I have no idea or indications of this other than that it's convenient for me to think it of her), probably a year or two older/younger than me, plus/minus a few, not drop-dead gorgeous by any measure, but very pretty, great demeanor, just a hint of an endearing southern accent and accompanying mannerisms, great figure, and oh yeah, I've never seen her working on a customer (that might appeal to my inner slacker) in all the times I've been there. Yet something about this woman just compels me to think terrible, terrible filthy thoughts, things that would ensure me a horrific afterlife in any, even the most forgiving and/or lax religions. Let's call her "B" (mainly because if I said her name was "BJ", I'd get comments saying things like "you're not writing to Penthouse Forum here, you know, pig!" And invariably, it'd just be thought that I lacked imagination (all except for ham of course, who would just say that I'm "full of creative shit" (still need to get to the bottom of that, there's got to be a dig buried in there somewhere)). Anyway, for a brief moment, I considered going in anyway and having B cut my hair, damn the torpedoes, I don't care how bad it turns out, I can stare at her in the mirror and pretend I'm concentrating on how my hair's being cut. Fortunately, better judgement won out, once I thought about how much my insufferably vain (yet shy) self would hate life if I had a butchered head for the next six months or whatever. Anyway, I made my peace with never being able to ogle B again, and went on about my life.

My procrastinative nature being what it is, my next opportunity to call A was today, and lo and behold, she was able to work me in. Upon arrival, I immediately notice that the place is a bit nicer than the last place, and the guy on the machine sounded gay, so you know they don't mess around with the hair. Anyway, imagine my surprise when after A gets started, who should walk by but B, on her way outside for a smoke break. And she looked fabulous! I have to ask A if that was B who just walked by, I barely even recognized her. She replied that yes, and that they were both dressed down because it was "Casual Friday", but both had makeup on, and this was a much nicer place with a dress code and better clientele, yadda yadda yadda. Once she came back in and I'd gotten my hair cut, the three of us got to talking, where the subject of my brother came up (she's been cutting his whole family's hair, and was originally recommended to me by him), and both expressed extreme shock that not only was I not the younger brother as they'd thought, but they both thought that I was in my early-to-mid twenties, WTF? Now I get the "you-look-younger-than-your-years" talk a lot from random people, but very very rarely from any kind of Asian people/person. Both seemed shocked by how irresponsible I am for an Asian eldest brother, how different my brother and I are (except, I'm told, for our shared "midwestern accent" in terms of where we are in our lives, emotionally, mentally, financially, socially, spiritually, and/or any number of factors out there.) We got to talking about the Asian 'fro phenomenon, (when B chimed in that I still looked great when I came in despite my overlong hair,) how glad I was and how cute it was that they'd both switched salons together (conspicuously omitting the part where I still get to fantasize about her while I get my monthly hair cut.) Anyway, to make a long story slightly less long, I got to get my flirt on a little today, and I have to say, it felt damnably refreshing...[sigh] (AND I didn't even get decked!) Life is good!

Wow, that got to be quite an extensive account. I'll wrap it up here, as it's coming up on 4:30, and my bed is calling. Other than that, like I said, got Laura's stuff shipped, and I'm just a little perturbed at them possibly screwing me on the bill. How can a two pound box of about 22 or so lineal inches, going from Charlotte to Irvine, California, cost over a quarter of what a twelve pound box of about 46 lineal inches, going from Charlotte to London, England?! There's something very wrong the system.

Anyway I think it's time for bed, have a fabulous weekend to those partying, I'll need to run a couple dozen typos here out in the morning, I'm sure. My complete lack of coherence now is leading to weirder and weirder interpretations of even my own words.

That'll do it for now, possible revision tomorrw if I get up at a decent hour.

Ciao and goodnight to the beautiful beautiful babies...

~!@#$%& tree pollen...

It's everywhere! There's an approximately 2.375 inch layer on my car (OK, maybe it's not *quite* that thick, but I swear, my car is now green instead of black), and since I've had my windows and patio door open to enjoy the balmy weather, every single last thing I own...grr! I'm lucky it doesn't trigger any allergic reaction in my else I'd be more than a bit miffed.

Speaking of weather, I really liked it outside today...it's overcast, but absolutely temperate...65 degrees, on the highish side of comfortably humid, and just idyllic to be out in, provided it doesn't cross over into rain.

So to fill in what I missed on yesterday's post, it was a glorious day...weather was almost just the tiniest bit too hot, but sunny, sunny, sunny...a friend even got a little mystery sunburn action when all was said and done. Got a couple things done in the earlier part of the day, shipped off Mikey's iBook, ran to the store, mailed out some stuff, got in on a SD card deal (hopefully), started thinking about doing taxes. Stopped off at AutoZone (possibly the crappiest one on the planet, over on South Blvd.), where I attempted to purchase a couple spark plugs, but instead got pissed off at stupid sales bots and spotted a white trashy Betty Page wannabe. Fun. Spent the afternoon taking a de facto crash course in jet ski de-winterizing, after which the thing started right up (that is, once Skip showed me what I was doing wrong) and ran great. Hope to get to try it out soon, the lake is calling! Off then to the evening's date, had an exceptionally good time, after which I was home and in bed by 6. Ahhh.

Today was somewhat productive, finally finished up with Laura's notebook and iPod, got everything boxed up and ready to go, will stop by the FedEx station and try to wrestle the international airbill. Yay.

Discovery of the week...wait, did I have one of these already? OK, we'll call it band/DJ of the week, goes to Team 9. Mashups are a relatively recent phenomenon, what with the proliferation ond ubiquity of industrial-grade computers and music editing software. I first became aware of them through this article in Wired magazine. Interesting, but I hadn't actually heard any until recently. Then I read about these guys (this guy)? on a blog somewhere and decided to check it out. Good stuff! Of the selections, I recommend the Killers/Corey Hart "Somebody Told Me", Electronic/Ciara "Stepping away with it", Primal Scream/Tweet "Oops, I'm Loaded", to start with, but actually, this list could get pretty extensive...just check them out, most are pretty good. Many of the lyrics are lended credence in my book with having their sometimes questionable original musical backing replaced by better songs. Interesting concept...much potential for crap though.

Mmmmm...Jessica Biel. Yum.

Wow, is it the weekend already? Wherever HAS the week gone?

Lazy man's...uh...laziness...

Whoa, 5am is a rough time to get in on a Wednesday night, especially on top of very little sleep the night before...suffice it to say that I won't be writing much (anything) tonight, will try to make it up during the day tomorrow, if I ever wake up. It's been forever since I had one of these drives where, once you get to your destination, you don't remember any aspect of the trip...and I haven't even been drinking! It was, however, a glorious day.

More soon...

Trouble in Googleland...

Now Playing: moe. - In a Big Country

Pretty good cover of a classic tune from my high school days.

Well, it seems as though Google's having some technical difficulties today...I couldn't get my post uploaded and the blog "republished" properly last night/this morning, had to do it when I got up, around 2pm ish...through the process of figuring out where the problem was, I learned of this page, which shows the status of Blogger's servers and such...helpful for those of you running blogger pages. Also potentially helpful might be this related page, a listing of known issues with blogger and it's interface.

Have also been having intermittent problems with Gmail not working quite right. In related news, they announced on their one-year anniversary Friday, that everyone's e-mail storage on that sytem has been bumped up to a fluid and increasing 2GB/2000MB. Good news, and it should keep the other e-mail servies scrambling to keep up, which is, of course, beneficial to almost everyone. If you go to GMail's main page, the second bullet point shows a neat little rolling counter indicating the rate of increase. I think it works out just over 10MB a day or thereabouts.

GMail, is of course still technically in "beta" status, so it's still invitation-only. This is just a technicality, though, as invites have become as ubiquitous as discarded cigarette butts. However, that being said, if anyone reading wants or needs (or knows of anyone who wants or needs) a Gmail account, I have literally hundreds extra, just drop me an email where you'd like the invite sent.

It's funny though, just a few short months ago (just before I got onboard), these same invites were going for exorbitant prices ($50-100) on ebay. I don't know what it's like now, but when I got on, things were just on the cusp of the ground floor, many "good"/desirable usernames were still available. Moral of the story is that you should get one while your preferred vanity address might still be available.

Web discovery of the week is the newish Google mapping system (maps.google.com). I've used Mapquest for years, but they will now (at least where I'm concerned) unceremoniously be unseated by Google. The biggest convenience features for me are draggable maps and faster zooming, but little things like bigger map views, the ability to get directions directly from the map screens, to being able to type in basically anythng you're looking for directly into the search bar at the top, from specific addresses to general terms like "pizza" or "gas" and have potential targets flagged on the map appropriately.

Now, as if all that weren't enough, how's this for "cool" factor? You can just click on the little "satellite" button and the map converts to a similarly draggable/scalable satellite view. Granted, these maps don't seem to be zoomable to the detail/resolution of the old Mapquest maps (wonder why they discontinued them), but the integration and ease-of-use makes it all worthwhile. I could literally play with this for hours. I looked up maps of my former residences (odd that Hartford's high-resolution maps are unavilable), those of friends and family (whose homes I've been to and could reasonably navigate the sat route to their home), and former places of employ (Best Buy Corporate HQ, the theater in Skokie, etc.) Satellite photos are nothing new, I've seen them on and about the web for several years...but Google's really taken a tremendous step toward making them useful and accessible.

Speaking of navigational aids and traffic tools, one of my most oft-consulted internet tools while living in Chicago was the real-time GCM map. They've improved and tweak it to a truly useful level, probably even more so over the years. This is the most current iteration. Every town needs one of these, Charlotte especially. This and this seem to be the closest things I can find here. Good information, to be sure, but nowhere near as useful as the GCM maps.

I want a Jimmy John's (or here for the non-flash site) sub, an Illinois (Champaign, to be exact) original. I miss them. Wah. Hrm, apparently, they're in Columbia (2), Greensboro, and Chapel Hill/Durham (one each)...I'll have to remember that if I ever find myself in one of those locales. Hrm, maybe I should open one here in Charlotte...

Parting shot: an amusing video that's a sobering reminder of what I need to do, and how little time I've got to do it in. [sigh.]

Ah well, off to bed, tomorrow's shaping up to be a busy day.

Narcoleptic for a day...

First off, damn blogger and Google for not working, being broken, and eating my posts. Crap, this entry will clearly be delayed until I get up, at least...

Sure enough, almost 12h til it actually showed up...grr...

Now playing: Ferry Corsten - Holding On (Chillout mix)

This is a great song, recently discovered by way of ASOT tracklist. It's absolutely haunting and mellow at the same time...

Stayed up last night watching Sopranos again, I'm now caught up through Season 3. Downside is that I was up until about 2:00pm or so. Nodded off only to get a call maybe an hour or so later, had a long and mentally involved enough conversation to prevent me from going back to sleep, so I tried to get a couple minor things done. Whipped up some steak and eggs for breakfast, enjoyed it on the sun-bathed veranda, and just reveled in the goodness of life. Fellt naggingly sleep throughout the course of the day, on the verge of dozing off a couple times after midnight. Writing this, then turning in early, here's to hoping for a productive day tomorrow.

There's got to be some truth to the theory that there's some kind of cosmic interconnectedness in this blog drought lately...most of the personal blogs I follow have been just dead for days and days and days...even me...though I'm here writing, I've got nothing of any import to say...maybe it's tied in with phases of the moon?

Club Saturday night had a palpable (at least for me) "off" feel to it...can't quite put my finger on it, but it was pretty busy, good time as usual, but the vibes were all screwy. Relaxed Sunday/Monday, lounged around the house, enjoying the weather where/when possible, caught up on some phone calls and e-mail, IMed a bit, continued prepping Laura and Mikey's notebooks. Should have washed the car, it's really getting to be eyesore dirty.

Chatted with Amy for a bit, haven't had much opportunity of late, she seems to have been pretty busy looking for a new apartment...this one sounds nice, but Chicago rent seems to be getting even more astronomical. It was a good conversation, really talked about a few things constructively. Also chatted with Asian hottie Kelly from NYC, she's having boy troubles again...ah, but a pup...

Automobile magazine wins the prize for fastest subscription/address change turnaround; I received the April issue today. When I called all the subscription management companies at the same time a few weeks ago, all but PC Magazine said that it'd be at least two months before I'd see my beloved but neglected magazines arriving at my new (five months ago) abode. At the time, in fact, I didn't think I could get any of my Automobile magazines before my subscription lapsed in June. With that in mind, I re-ordered that and Wired for three years apiece...Wired stopped a couple months ago, so I checked "new subscription" for both...hope they can figure all that crap out...

I have a bit of a craving for pho, (correctly pronounced "fuh", but I like saying it [wrong], "foe",) Vietnamese noodle soup...wonder if there's an authentic place in town to get some...the last Vietnamese guy (he was only half) I met and asked, said they had it at home and didn't go out for it, great.

Charlotte gang: Let's do the Perch this Thursday...hrm...supposed to be rainy...maybe not. Soon though.

The poop factor makes it funny...

A select few of the better things I've been called in the preceding 24 hours:

-Shithead (this was by far the most popular)
-Manipulative
-Craptacular
-Sphincterboy
-Asshole
-Unoriginal
-Fuckwit moron (my personal favourite)
-Just plain moron

Ahh, things may just get back to normal yet...

In other news, Google's annual April first gag was somewhat clever. Compgeeks (geeks.com) also sent out this e-mail, which was nicely done visually, but too obvious. Those were pretty much the only April first scams I was aware of. Apparently not a great year for them.

Now Playing: New Order - 1963 ('95 mix)

Sounds like Rusty's getting his wings...it would be cool to go flying with him...it's been probably ten years since I've been in one of those little deathtrap-feeling little single-engine planes.

Got a call from the Apple store this morning, somehow, they managed to ship my computer to Texas, fix it, and ship it back, all in the span of three days. Incredible. Now if only the rest of the goddamned service industry world could get behind these kinds of turnaround times! The new screen looks dreamy, I'm thrilled to death with the serivce. All except for one miniscule anal little thing. It appears that along with the screen, they replaced the inner bezel. Which would be absolutely fine, except for the fact the the "new" bezel they slapped on seems to have the older "PowerBook G4" script along the bottom of the screen. Minor and cosmetic, to be sure, but goddamnit, now it looks like an older model than it is. Crap. Guess I'll have to call Applecare and see if I can play the "squeaky wheel" role and get that corrected. Grr, one more thing to do.

Did the Friday night club thing, gave a few tours, met some new people, no one noteworthy other than V, someone I knew of through a mutual (albeit crazy) friend, apparently she and I have been going to the club for a while, both had heard of of one another through this mutual acquaintance, and just never met. Well, we finally did tonight, and seem to have made mutually favorable impressions. She seems fun, we'll see how that works out in the future.

I can't decide whether or not these are fake. (Warning, potentially icky.)

My GOD, what the HELL has former hottie Keira Knightley done to her hair?! "Bi" is good, "dyke" is bad! Tell me she doesn't look a billion times better with her old hair?! OK< I guess those are bad examples, since it's tied up, but you know what I mean...look at those abs!

Need to finish up the last couple little things with Laura's shipment, get it packed and properly boxed up, and get it shipped out to her. Really need to give blood and buckle down and do taxes this week too. Oh well, maybe on Tuesday...

I'm a tremendous ass...

It's been brought to my attention that of all the ways to celebrate the heathen tradition of the first-of-April hoaxes, this was easily the most ill-conceived (no pun) possible manner in which to do it, and deservedly, I'm going to spend a good deal of time making reparations for this one. So that there's no confusion going forward, it's all a fabrication. absolutely nothing's happened here other than a gargantuan lapse in common sense, and the associated potential damage to relationships and mental health of those closest to me.

I've tried to make abundantly clear to all who know me (and the longer you have known me, the more evidence you likely have of this) that good judgement is not something that I'm blessed with an abundance of.

There's not much excuse for what I've done, but here's a glimpse at the thinking that went into it late last night: Normally, I'm the last person to remember that it's April first, until someone "gets me" later in the day, and it dawns on me that I've missed yet another opportunity to play havoc in my own small, insignificant way. In the course of my normal nightly web activity, I happened across Google's annual gag, and thought, "hey, here's my chance to do something". Further, since I already knew that is was all fake, in concocting the prank, I felt like it was all very obvious and transparent, so I needed to make it all that much more convincing, and pepperd vague yet colorful details liberally throughout the account. I have a firm belief that people shouldn't ever joke about or make light of health issues or the death of loved ones (like calling in sick with a family emergency of that nature) 'cause it's bad karma, so I thought I was writing with that in mind. At the time, what I did come up with seemed like a much better and less offensive option, but even to say that I should have combined the two posts so people wouldn't get the wrong idea wouldn't have been enough. The original plan was to carry this farce on until after midnight, but clearly, some semblance of sense has been talked into me, and the plug's been pulled. In retrospect, saying something like "I got a job, and will be starting work nights and weekends within the week" might have been more appropriate for the occasion.

It speaks volumes on the calibre of people I've surrounded myself with to have had so many warm and caring e-mails, IMs, and phone calls from my dear friends, some who had already gone to great lengths and suffered tremendous personal turmoil at my hands. Ironically, and perhaps most tragically, the ones closest to me have been the ones to be most heavily affected, and it is this collateral damage that I regret the most.

So in closing, until I'm able to properly make amends to each of you individually and in person, accept my most heartfelt and sincere apologies; my hope is try to make things right with all of you as necessary, and am expecting this to take quite some time. Bear with me, and once again, (you're going to hear this a lot) "I'm sorry."

Feel free to call and yell at me, email me, comment separately or collectively about what an insensitive jerk I am, or throttle me in person.

A pregnant pause...

This is the second post of the day, if you haven't read anything here in a little while, I'd highly recommend you read the next entry first, it sets up and prefaces this one.

In a nutshell, the kernel at the heart of the "big news" is that it appears that my years of philandering have finally caught up with me. All those years of dodged bullets and near misses, I was due...I should have known, really. On my last visit to Chicago late November of last year, I had a dalliance with a girl I met through a friend of a friend, and I'm told that said woman is in a gravid state, or "with child", as they say. It further appears that she's waited until now to make me aware of this situation because she herself wasn't completely certain of my paternity. I was just the least likely (or the least promising,) so the other (s) was(were) told/confronted/eliminated first, thus leaving me as the sole remaining would-be "winner".

The plus side is that this isn't all unfolding on an episode of Springer or Maury with the entirety of the nation's unemployed laughing at me, causing them to feel better about themselves at my expense. Also on the upside, I think she said it's a girl; can't say I'd recovered enough from the initial shock by then to recall with a hundred percent certainty though.

Immediate plans will be to converse with said girl, possibly in-depth, and in a life-altering way, explore our options, but I'm afraid that "doing the right thing" will be a heavily favoured lead candidate. On the plus side, maybe she'll be like-minded, and we'll be able to visit Charlotte on the weekends.

The irony of my past penchant for dismissing and even making light of so-called "shotgun weddings" is all too apparent, so y'all will likely be invited to the sentencing ceremony, but easy with the jokes, yeah?

More soon...

Calling it quits...

Well, it's been a somewhat eventful day, not quite sure where to begin. Got a call pretty late, with some information on the order of magnitude of what one might call "groundbreaking". Made a couple calls to select family members, and some things (well, really just one in particular) have (has) come up which unfortunately necessitate(s) my near-immediate return and in the slightly longer term, relocation to Chicago.

I'm loathe to leave my new adored life here behind, with it's social opportunities, dear, dear friends, better-than-I'm-used-to barbeque, Charlotte's urban growth potential, and fantastic weather, but one does what one's got to do, eh? I'll no doubt be unable to pull this off without help from some of you, but we'll get to all that in due time.

Since rent is paid through the month, I'll most likely be leaving Saturday afternoon, with a very slight possibility that I'll be able to delay departure until Sunday evening/Monday morning. Once I take care of a few immediate things in Chi, I'd hopefully be back down for a week(end) or so, possibly around the 20th or so) to actually move back the following week or thereabouts.

Unfortunately, due to related demands on my time, as well as the high likelihood (and newly minted need) of my returning to the employ of a former business associate, this blog is in all probability going to fall into a sparser and sparser update cycle, and in time, you may even see the proverbial tumbleweeds blowing through here. There have been a couple good posts, it's been a great excercise, I've received great feedback from you guys via the comments, and overall, I think we've had a good run...I surprised even myself with the motivation y'all have provided me in the past three and a half months, and for that, I thank you. I plan to leave it up mainly so that I can reflect back on a happier and more carefree time, perhaps even do the very occasional update, but these will be the exception rather than the rule.

I'll try to make a few calls to some of you over the course of the day, and I want to apologize to those who I don't reach in time and as a result, have to find out via this medium, but I thought it would be the quickest way to get the information out effectively, and to the greatest number of people. I'll naturally have loose ends to tie up here, and this way, the wheels are in motion. It also kills me that I won't be able to properly say "goodbye" to most of you, as dear as you've become to me in the past year. To the LKN gang, especially...who'd have thought it possible to get so close to such a great bunch over such a short period of time? Y'all have taught me so much so quickly, and become so important to me, that words alone cannot convey the void that will be left with your collective absence from my daily life. My existence is forever changed for having met each of you. I may have a few more details tomorrow, didn't get the news until fairly late, and I need to follow up on/verify a few things, and determine what's appropriate to post here. An eventual return to the area may be possible, but to say that that's premature at this juncture would be the understatement of the decade.

Thanks for everything guys, I never thought I'd grow to love Charlotte, but it's even harder for me to leave here than it was to move from Chicago.

Developments/details soon...