A simple question for you:
Why are middle aged, slightly over weight men with think glasses and greasy mustaches who wear sweat gear and read mass market Star Trek (next generation) novels so ... unsettling?
I'll leave you to ponder that.
Got a new computer today. This is both exciting and stressful. Have boasted about the office that I would install Linux all by myself. Guess who's eatin crow? crap. As if the installation part was not hard enough, I have to do most of the downloading and re-installation of the programs I now use (like fucking xemacs which I have not yet complained about to you, but just wait). That will teach me not to save those RPMs. (Don't let my geek talkin fool you. I don't know what the fuck I am talking about. It's all would-be geek speak) Anyhoo, wish me luck. Ah, if any of you are big Unix nerds (god love ya) and you have an IM screen name, you should pass it along to me cause I have a feeling that I am gonna need some help... wanna help me? Wanna let me bother you while you are at work? yeah.ok. I didn't think so.
Perl is going along nicely. I guess. We just got into loops and "or" and "and" and it all verges way too much on the logic side of things and I am beginning to get nervous, but I'll live. I'm a big girl.
In other noncomputer related news:
Dexter has rabies!
Well we don't actually know if dexter has rabies, but he is confined to the house for six months! We'll just wait and see.
Had to bring the beast inside last night. It's gotten too cold for him on the porch. So from now until, oh I don't know, May or June I will share my space with this unruly serpent. Its partially my fault, I can't bring myself to put him in a cage. The fucker is four and a half feet long after all. I don't have a cage large enough. The porch was his cage, but alas, the seasons have changed. ok and so, here's the part that gets me- the only place he likes to sleep is in my bed, just above my head. I have sorta mentioned this before: what he wants is what he gets. There is no deterring him from his singular path. So I give him heat and light and I leave him to his own devices. And I guess aside form a scratch or two and some lizard skin beneath my pillows (you learn to live with this) its generally not too much of a big deal. I must admit there sure is a certain novelty to it, but I don't know, the guy is getting bigger and it seems I don't care all so much for sharing my bed with cold, clawed creatures. It makes me a little nervous. Sigh. I guess this is my lot. Some people sleep with unfeeling spouses that they wish wouldn't kick so much, I sleep with a surly dragon who I simply wish would find another place to rest his mighty green head.
The Bowl of Fire was perfect. I once termed these guys as "the four most handsome, talented and possibly unassuming gentlemen ever to be filed under pop/rock" (not that they are "pop/rock", just that that's where I found them at HMV) They are still that, only now they are also "the gents with the swankest shoes in show biz". Finally met Kevin O'Donnell and that's nice cause he has got to be the sweetest thing ever.
Speaking of fine shoes and kind men, since there's no such thing as too much of a good thing, I stuck around in NY for the 16 horsepower show on saturday night and yet again they showed me one fantastic time. I may still be "in love" with David Eugene Ewards, but I have few nice things to say about Jean Yves Tola as well and ok so some of those things are kinda indecent, but most of them are about what charming friend he would make. honest. Anyway, god bless those boys.
shit. Last night was really unbelievably good. Really. Slim Cessna's Auto Club was downright righteous and as I so often do, I mean that in both a figurative and literal sense. And then um... Sixteen Horsepower played and I am sure that I became ecstatic. It was such a wonderful show. When they played "haw"... when they played "haw"... I felt breath upon my back.
The performance went beyond my wildest expectations and so did David Eugene Edwards. Um, so when I mentioned tempting him the other day, I was speaking foolishly. I don't think I could tempt him for a second. Though he did a pretty good number on me. He's charming. He's kind. He is beyond sexy. He shared his whiskey with me. I think I am in love.
Hows that for a fine night?
Tonight. New York. The Bowl of Fire.
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9/19/00 There has been much talk and excitement over the impending Sixteen Horsepower show here in Philly. Philadelphians love their Horsepower. Half my house is going as well as more friends then I can count. In honor of this occasion I have been thinking about lifting my long time moratorium on liquor drinking. I mean, I drink beer, yeah and I have been known to sneak a sip of the hooch from time to time, but truly I cant think of a single occasion in the past 6 or 7 years where I have had more then one shot and even those instances are few and far between. I can count them on one hand. Anyway, I have mused with my brother (also not a liquor drinker) that this would be the perfect time to let loose and kick back as much as we can stomach. Why? Well, its 16 Horsepower. It just seems crazy apropos. Besides my brother is quick to point out, how else am I gonna get drunk enough to tempt a god fearin man? |
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oh yeah, I found these the other day... MONKEYS TORTURING OTHER MONKEYS: an object lesson 
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I had the day off.
Before you go thinking that I have some cushy job which allows for the wanton over use of vacation time (which i do), you should know that I had today off because after arriving home from CA at 5:30 last Sunday morning I slept for about 5 hours, somehow managed to rouse myself, and got to work. I worked the better part of the day though not because there was all that much to do. I was simply half dead at the keyboard and every 5 line email took me about 10 minutes. I had off today cause I suffered on Sunday.
So, its was a beautiful Friday.
Shortly after noon today I found myself at Sam's (the corner store in the middle of the street!). I am not entirely sure how to describe Sam's except to say that sitting down outside with your coffee or your juice is like stepping into some fairy realm where time passes differently. Often people will while away entire days there. Its virtually impossible to be there for more the 30 seconds without someone engaging you in conversation. Its a black hole of sorts, it will suck you in. Also at any given time most of the people there, myself included, can generally be fit into one of three categories: charming/eccentric, lunatic, or hung over. And as a final note, I have found that I will forgive the store itself just about any indiscretion. They are often out of cigarettes, milk, aspirin or bread or whatever and I somehow never find it odd or altogether annoying. They may even run out of coins so you can't even hope for your proper change.
Its just the way things are.
There are never any guarantees.
You must learn to accept.
You must have a forgiving heart.
Ok so, the main reason I bring up Sam's is that today I had the pleasure of spending my morning and afternoon with 5 friends who also had the day off. I sat there through 3 and half hours of sun, smoke, conversation and coffee and I enjoyed every second of it.
The other reason I bring up Sam's is cause today I witnessed a highlight of what could be considered an on going saga of the passage of time, of change, and of coffee drinking.
At the beginning of the summer Sam's must have received their only coffee stirrer shipment of the season. For two good months there was an unending supply of those useful, happy, wooden sticks or so it seemed. By early or mid August we, the coffee drinkers of Sam's, were all proved wrong. They ran out. In desperation and our desire for normality and the continuation of life as we knew it, we turned to the paper wrapped straws for our coffee stirring necessities. They lasted about a month.
Last Sunday right before assuming my slouching position for work I stumbled to Sam's for my 16oz house blend. I was shocked but somehow pleased to find that now after the depletion of what had seemed to be two bountiful resources that we had turned in the direction of responsibility and community: Now for coffee stirring there was a single metal spoon. This is well and good I thought to myself realizing that this was a solution that would offer both permanency and the alleviation of guilt induced by the grievous wastefulness and naivety of our past. So after quickly stifling any immediate fears concerning cleanliness and communicable disease, I used the spoon. I found, not surprisingly, that the parctice of this almost forgoten art, that of stirring one's hot beverage with a spoon (rather the a tiny stirrer of plastic or wood), actually makes for a more pleasant and more finely homogenized cup of joe. Its the little things.
Well to get to the point, I am preparing my coffee this morning, establishing the right visual proportions of cream to coffee and using my fool proof one-mississippi-two-mississippi sugar technique, and I reach for the Sam's communal stirring spoon. It was then in horror and amusement that I realized that the spoon too had been yet another fragile and fleeting moment in our history. The memory is to precious for words. The reality to dim... This morning I stirred my coffee with a fork.
I guess the moral of this story is thats nothing is forever and that at Sam's you just sort have to go with it.
good night.
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9/14/00 hi, I'm home. Below is an abridged list of things I liked and disliked about the bay area. Above is my favorite picture from the trip. Its me and Clare at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was taken by Renee. I think its pretty sexy. You should go check out the rest of the photos. Though sadly, most of them are not very sexy. what are you gonna do? |
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Bay area pluses: BART! palm trees the Pacific coast highway earthquakes! fine cheese boys |
Bay area minuses: MUNI! hills shin splints earthquakes! the absence of yuengling |
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9/7/00: what more can I say? |
bye bye children. I am off to the west coast.
If I can update from there, I most certainly will, but otherwise rest assured that I am relaxing amongst friends, eating fine food, seeing the sites, and spending all my money at the choice shops.
Talk to you on the 10th.