Home is Where the Terrible Accent Is

The Record

2009-12-11T11:29:56Z

Current Record: 37
New Start Date: 09 DEC 2009

A Fix for the HDMI Audio Bug??? Really?

2009-09-28T20:59:51Z

At this point I'm only using my blog to make personal notes to myself about fixing problems in Ubuntu. Though, I'm hoping to crank up a new one for my trip to Afghanistan.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=255422&page=19

Video Fails on Ubuntu Upgrade

2009-09-23T13:35:22Z

This happens every time you upgrade Ubuntu. Just reinstall the ATI Catalyst Drivers, they're sitting on the desktop.

Installing FC10 on my MythTV

2008-12-15T21:32:51Z

This is a process I've had to go through an inordinate number of times, so I'm just going to post on here the steps I go through to accomplish it.

1. Installation
Because the DVD-ROM is busted and only seems to read CDs, burn the first installation CD while storing the DVD media on an NFS share. When the screen pops up asking if you'd like to install, edit the options (using the TAB key) and add "askmethod asknetwork" to enable installation from network media.

2. Upgrading
Just get this done and don't try to get fancy.

3. Video card drivers for ATI HD 3200
Without going through the correct procedures for this, you end up with some pretty funky video output with the desktop stretched beyond the edge of the screen, mouse pointers not rendering correctly, etc.

The secret for this comes from a post on FedoraForum and walks through how to install for FC10 down through maybe FC6. Worked like a charm the first time.

However, when I did it the first time, I did it before upgrading and that worked ok. The second time I did it after an upgrade which left me with a buggy version of dbus and didn't allow me to use system-config-display. This wasn't a total disaster or anything, but certainly ticks me off.

4. Soundcard
Still haven't cracked the code on this one just yet.
A clue? Check it out....

I Figured It Out!

2008-02-21T04:02:33Z

How dumb have I been. You know what I've been asking myself this whole time? The last two years? "Why I can't I get serious about someone?" But I know, and it was right there the whole time.

When I enter into a relationship, I do so with the knowledge that it will not work out, and it's just for fun. I tell myself I'm afraid of getting hurt, or I think I love someone else, or I've forgotten how to love, or whatever. But the secret is in the knowledge-- the KNOWLEDGE! It's a purely rational process! That's the secret! If I tell myself there's hope, then there's hope!

When it came to me, I called her to see if we could go for a walk. We bundled up, coat + gloves + hat and braved the winter wind to walk and talk and be together. When we got back home, I asked her if we could start over, but with hope, with a chance, with less DOOM...

And she said "yes."

So we're starting over, and I'm allowing my mind and my heart to do what it wants to do anyway. There are no guarantees in this life, there just aren't. But to go through life without risk is pointless...

I wish I could be more eloquent about all of this, but I'm just feeling so good about.

Hope... The last terror to jump out of Pandora's box... I knew it was there, I just had to find it. Wish us luck. :)

Not Working Like I Thought

2008-02-17T05:13:54Z

I thought I was so clever. I thought I could insulate my heart from everyone I met, I thought I could keep them at emotional arm's length and protect myself. Jesus, I must be doing it wrong.

I really haven't felt this bad since that horrible debacle of moving up here.

God, I've got musings enough for pages and pages in here but I just can't bring myself to write them down.

I've got to figure my problems out here, I've either got to swear off human interaction (fat chance) or let my heart go where it wants to go. Well, step 1 there is figuring out where it wants to go which is easier said than done.

I second guess my feelings a lot too...

Wouldn't I have to have been in love to hurt this much? Is it the pain of loss and humiliation, or is it the more general realization that this has become a pattern and I'm just slowly killing myself?

Worthy questions... For another time. I've got more sad music to listen to...

Eulogy

2007-12-26T23:15:59Z

I'm standing in the remains of Wildwood Cinemas, the place where I saw Jurassic Park, among other things. I had my first ever movie date here in 7th grade with a girl I liked from my volunteer job at the Red Mountain Museum. I remember vivid fantasies involving this girl that couldn't quite be called sexual fantasies, as I didn't know enough then about sex to really flesh them out... Maybe they were makeout fantasies. Anyway, one movie date, and I didn't even try to kiss her.

Dallas worked here in high school, the coolest job of all my friends. He was a projectionist through high school and lest us see the occasional free movie. He also introduced me to Mamoun, the friendly middle eastern manager who would occasionally hook me up with popcorn. He drove an old State Trooper car with the spotlight still attached--I'm sure he only got it because it was cheap, but it sure seemed like a cool car to me.

There used to be an aquarium in the front with a shot glass at the bottom--if you could get a quarter into the glass, it meant a free ticket. I discovered (or Dallas told me, I don't remember) that if you put two quarters together, and drop them from underneath the surface of the water, they will glide straight down into the glass. This netted me a host of free tickets, until they witnessed my technique and posted some new rules on the glass.

Next door to the empty husk of the theater is the former Subway sandwiches, home of the Subway-Tran, the first honest-to-god transsexual I had ever met. This former gentleman had long hair and makeup to distract you from her muscular arms, and the tanned and manly hands plying apart your sandwich roll with painted nails. I never really got used to the sight.

So here I am, in this monumnet to my adolescence, standing in a gravel pit where once stood the DTS sound system which scared the hell out of me in 1994. In a last solute to its past as a part of my coming of age, my mom is on her way to pick me up here. Goodbye Wildwood.

Hunger Strikes Like a Viper

2007-09-30T06:06:21Z

If you ever find yourself in Buda (pronounced B-yoo-duh), Texas hankerin' for a slice of pizza, be forewarned: everybody closes at 11. Thank goodness Emily and Eric had already made the most delicious lasagna I'd ever reheated. Just amazing.

Time for sleep.

The Briefcase

2007-09-28T19:56:59Z

I just ran across this Snopes article on the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Now they cover the most popular answer I'd heard, which was Marsellus Wallace's soul. It's certainly a pretty cool idea, but it's strange that everyone recognizes it. I like what Roger Avery said, though, about the viewer filling the briefcase with his own ultimate swag.

My ultimate swag was pretty lame. After watching the movie for the first time, at the dollar theater in the summer of 1994 with Matt and Robin, I was convinced of what it was. From the looks on everyone's faces, the Jules and Vincent exchange, "we cool?" "yeah, we're cool," to Pumpkin saying "is that what I think it is?" I was totally convinced that it was the US Constitution.

I'm not kidding, that's really what I thought it was. It just came to me, like a flash of truth. "Why was it glowing?" you might ask. I have no idea. The holy light of democracy, maybe? I have no idea, but it's a weird idea.

Roommate Search - Day 742

2007-07-08T04:36:34Z

Well maybe it hasn't been that long...

So yeah, I've been remiss in my blogging, haven't I?

I was just talking with Big Whiskey and he mentioned this site, and I realized I hadn't posted to it in months.

So, remember the roommate search? It's over at last. I got discouraged there for a while after getting nothing but strange girls, old guys and anti-social post docs. The worst was the disappointment of finding a really cool roommate that I clicked with and having the rug pulled out from under me when she didn't move to the ROC.

After that, I decided to lay off for awhile, and wait.

Eventually I convinced myself that it was time to post something about it at work, so I put together a poster listing all of its wonderful ammenities and conveniences of modern life. Such as, free WiFi, onsite laundry, heat! All the modern conveniences we take for granted. Not to mention close proximity to the bumping nightlife of downtown Rochester!

I figured that would be a huge splash with the new hire and co-op crowd!

What did I get? A middle-aged married guy named Ted who needed a place to crash during the week as his home and family was still back in Utica and he went there on the weekends. I was on the verge of taking him up on it, too, despite his old-guy status, and possible allergies, but he just stopped responding to my emails. It was like getting broken up with by a girl you only went out with for pity's sake in the first place--humiliating.

Again, more weeks of questioning myself, my performance as a roommate, my worth as a home owner. Finally I summoned the strength to post to Craigslist again, this time thinking more carefully about my audience. Who do I want to move in with me? Grad students, young professionals whose college days are still fresh in their minds, movie watchers! So I made sure to mention the house's proximity to the U of R and (sort of, not really) RIT. I through in stuff about the bike trails by the river, and some charming pictures of the outside and my dining room (I bought furniture, that makes me a grownup, right?).

The timing was just right, spring was in the air, their was a spirit of renewal in the earth and the populace, and new students were exploring their options at U of R. I ended up with two MDs coming to Rochester for residince, and a couple of undergrads. So, I didn't get to hear from that coveted graduate student, but these folks were all right.

MD number 1 was Indian, originally from the area and coming back fresh from NYC where he went to med school. I didn't actually meet the guy, but he sent a friend over to have a look at the place and make sure I wasn't a dullard or an asshole or something. What I gathered: he's very responsible, he's very neat, he owns a BMW.

It was that last bit that really put the X by his name. I mean, look at me, am I the type of guy who understands someone that buys a BMW he can barely afford right out of med school? No, no I'm not. You know how I know that? 'Cause I can't understand what makes a guy do that and then go share a room in some stranger's house. Priorities are all wrong.

The next MD actually had a wife and kids in Buffalo and would not be spending much time in the house. That's cool for a lot of reasons, it means I get a lot of time with the place to myself, it means-- okay, maybe that's only cool for that one reason. But after talking to him, surely his kids are gonna come by from time to time, and I'm damnably nervous about kids. Plus, all of these doctors are gonna keep residency schedules which means 12 hour shifts sometimes days and sometimes nights; what I really want is someone on my same, vanilla, 9-5 schedule.

So on to the undergrads. The first was an Indian fellow (from India, this time), who was actually pretty damn cool. To be precise, he was neither undergrad nor student, he had a BS in something sciency and was about to start a job as a lab assistant at U of R. He walked over from international student housing where he was crashing (notice no car) to check the place out. So he was funny, laid back, liked to cook Indian food--something I've been wanting to learn--the only thing was he was looking for something furnished. Seeing as he didn't have a car, buying furniture was going to be a big pain in the ass, so he found another spot.

Dejected, I continued to answer inquiries, getting one from a lady physics student/distance bicycle racer, and another from--get this--a high school girl coming to Rochester to go to the charter school in town. I tell you, there's enough weird about a single guy living with 3 cats, through in an unrelated 17 year-old and I might have to turn into a serial killer, or at least get a false sex-crime allegation.

The last one is a 21 year-old psych/art-history co-ed at U of R about to start her senior year. She came to take a look at the place and seemed down to earth, funny and responsible. Plus after looking at 6 other places, she decided mine was the most promising. I should mention here that she's 5 feet tall and adorable. Was I responding to what I thought was approval when I offered her the place? Was I starstruck by an attractive girl who only met me twice when I was covered with sweat from riding my bike home from work and still thought I'd make a good roommate? Probably.

Sad, right?

Well yeah. But-- she's not going to be here until late August, though she's already paid through then because she went ahead and moved her stuff in. I should say, her dad paid. So no worries about bouncing checks or anything, in fact I think I can convince her to pay me through Paypal so it'll just drop right into my savings account without me having to do anything.

So until she gets here, I've got her rent which I'm already pouring back into the house. It's actually just pathetic when you think about the amount of money I've "lost" not having a roommate. It's really 400 a month for something that's really no skin off my back. Maybe a little wait-time for the bathroom, but she's splitting utilities and will probably cook from time to time! It's just incredible.

OK, 'nuff for now. Next I'll be talking about fixing my soffitts with B. Are you ready for that 'Merica?

My Cats Are Trying to Kill Me

2007-05-25T13:47:01Z

My suspicions were first aroused on the stairs. Whenever I move upstairs or downstairs, at least one of them (usually Chewie) gets tangled up in my feet. At first I mistook this for affection, but as it happens more and more often, I sense a more malevolent nature to it. The point, however, was really driven home yesterday morning.

I awoke from a particularly hot night (I hate waking up sweaty, which is why I finally installed a window A/C unit in my bedroom) to hear a popping sound coming from somewhere. I thought it might have been construction noise from outside, or somehow related to the garbage trucks which were already loading up on my street. But time passed and the sound didn't stop or even change at all, just a very rhythmic pop-pop-pop.

As I was going downstairs to investigate, once again a cat got between my legs on the turn down the stairs, but I kicked him away and kept creeping down. The sound was coming from the kitchen. I had it in my head that it might be some giant beetle, so I went through the dining room in an effort to outflank whatever it was. As I turned the corner to the kitchen, the source was finally revealed to me:

The front burner on my stove.

The cats had managed to turn the knob on the front of the stove and just by luck it got stuck at Light. I mean, if it hadn't lit, the house could've just filled up with gas all night long! I could've either not woken up, or been blowed up by the gas that had filled up the several thousand cubic feet of my house.

So. It's obvious now... They're trying to kill me.

Nevermind

2007-04-19T15:00:41Z

It didn't take.

The Breakup

2007-04-19T03:15:17Z

Broke up with Katrina tonight.

It wasn't easy, and I really hope it was the right thing to do. It's a shame I never got to show her Birmingham, it's a shame we never went to the beach. That would've been fun.

I guess it just got too complicated (read emotionally involved). I think I'm trying to save myself from pain that I'm sure is lurking around the corner. Well, save the both of us.

I think I left her with the distinct impression that I just don't care about her at all, which is by no means true. But maybe it's better that she think that.

Ugh.

There's a bottle of Captain Morgan's with my name on it downstairs.

I used to write in this every day...

2007-04-12T18:35:39Z

Sam has joined the Army and ships out next week. This means 9 weeks of boot camp, a year of nursing school, and then another 3 years in her contract and God knows how much more if she enjoys it. So our few times a year rendezvous will basically be on hold for years--we had to have one last hurrah.

We planned it first as just her visiting me in Rochester, meeting my friends, seeing my new house and relaxing. She got a flight up on Friday night, and one out on Tuesday morning. But, she's not one to relax on a vacation, and she'd never been to New York City before (just a scant 400 miles from my house). Despite JetBlue's recent bad press, they still have an unbelievable rate for flying from ROC to JFK, just $110 round trip. So I snagged us a couple of tickets to The Big Apple Saturday night and Monday night.

Originally on Friday I had some plans worked out with all my friends to meet up at Lux Lounge on 666 South Avenue, just a half mile from my house. It's a nice place, fun and pretentious people, wraithish, tattooed, belly-dancing bartenders, and a fire pit outside. However, we met with some unexpected delays: my furnace broke. We got back from the Buffalo airport to find that my furnace was not working. Of course it's 20 degrees in April, which means my pipes are at risk if I chose to ignore it.

Luckily, the company that serviced the previous owner had a nice big sticker on the side of the furnace, and I was able to get a guy over that night to fix it (for the low-low price of $425). This took a few hours and put us way behind. By the time the furnace was functioning and we were fed and ready to go out, it was 11:00. I called up the Shoots' to see if they would be meeting us at Lux, but by this time they were already playing flipcup over at Ryan's, which basically meant they were too drunk to go anywhere. And we weren't really in the mood to spend the evening playing drinking games in a smoky apartment.

So instead we went out and drank all by our lonesome at Lux and then Caverly's. We were finally making our way home at about 1 am with the declared intention of watching American Graffiti. Have you seen it? I hadn't, the George Lucas classic with Richard Dreyfus, Ron Howard and a completely unknown Harrison Ford. Somehow I managed to stay awake through it, but Sammy was not so lucky. We eventually got to sleep some time after 4.

The next day was a nearly full day in Rochester. What to do?! Breakfast was a first. We got down to Charlie's Frog Pond on Park by 11:30 and had a delicious breakfast. Then we hit up Stever's Candy across the street for some locally made chocolates (not a good idea the day before Easter). I made it out with an orange-chocolate bunny in a race car and a chocolate cigar for Katrina, and Sam got her usual disgusting candy fare: licorice. Little licorice scotty dogs, to be precise.

We also swung by my office, which is a pretty boring stop and (according to her) smells like boys and dorritos--I'd never noticed before!

The real adventure was to begin Saturday night when we flew to NYC! Keeping with their unblemished tradition, our JetBlue flight was delayed by a half hour or so. And once we got on the ground, it took 45 minutes for our luggage to arrive. However, surely our troubles and inefficiencies were over there as we were about to enter the NYC MTA! Yeah right. Like babes lost in the woods, we got on the wrong train at the airport (the one going to Jamaica station instead of Howard Beach) and I thought we might have just gone another hour out of our way, but Sam noticed another shared stop on the line where we could get off and wait for the right one.

After this little flub, we waited another half hour for the A train to arrive which would take us to Manhattan, uptown to Times Square where we were staying. I was hoping our stop on the subway was in one of those impressive places, where you walk out and are immediately awed and floored by the immensity of this great metropolis... Not quite. I prepared Sam for the moment, hold tight to your bag, keep your feet on the ground and VOILA! A 5 story building! Of course we were just a few blocks from Times Square and our hostel, so she got to see the wonders of Gotham soon enough.

After checking in at our hostel, I got ahold of Andrew who would be our guide to the nightlife in the city. He was at a punk bar on the lower east side called Manitoba's (what's with that name?). I should say at this point that I have forgotten my Not For Tourists Guide to the city, along with its pocket subway map and index of every store you'll ever need to find. So we were working off a big folding tourist map we procured from the hostel. Despite Andrew's advice to take a cab, we braved the subway along with the mile-long walk from the station to the bar. It was only by sheer luck that we started walking the right way when we got off the train.

"This is north, absolutely," I said as I led us confidently down the street. "This is the way we should be going."

It turned out to be east. But, luckily, also a direction we needed to go in. This was a really hit to my confidence, so the rest of the weekend I said things like: "this is west, absolutely. We need to go this way... Maybe."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Updates, Updates, Updates!

2007-03-05T04:54:09Z

Boy, I'm a terrible diarist.

There's a lot to talk about here, and the battery on my laptop is dangerously close to dead.

The Roommate Search
So I met with my second PhD concerning the room in my house, and this one is pretty cool. She likes strange movies I've never heard of, she listens to NPR, she has no need of cable and she's highly, highly educated. Her research had something to do with migartory river birds in California--field biology. This is pretty cool, though a nearly opposite branch of science to my own expertise.

What else... Oh, she can slaughter, clean and butcher animals! So in the event of the appocolypse, we could eat little cat steaks! Which reminds me about the dog. She has a 9 year-old dog named Queenie that would be moving in with her. When she asked me about it, I thought immediately of the cats bedviling this dog and said, "well, we could just see how that works out." But she's lived with other animals before, and would certainly have the patience to deal with some irritating felines (more than I have, anyway).

So that looks very promising, we've agreed to her moving in, but the whole thing is contingent on her getting a job in Rochester. Last week she had her second interview with Nature Conservancy, something about preserving the mot biodiverse region in the northeast--apparently, said region is just a few miles out of the city. She's supposed to hear back about it this week--my fingers are crossed.

You know, the odds were not in my favor that by posting an ad on Craigslist I would find anyone I'm compatible with, but we really had a good meeting. I met Jessie on Craigslist and that worked out great, so maybe it's not so rare.

Speaking of Jessie

Jessie is now well on her way to California. She started talking about it back around Thanksgiving, but she actually went out and made it a reality. She quit her job, she packed up her apartment, she divested herself of her worldly possessions (I ended up with two lamps, a potted plant, a toaster and some margharita mix), and she took off for the coast. The last I heard from her she was in Kentucky visiting a friend she knew in Australia.

Before she left we had a little party for her at my house. Bee went crazy with the camera and managed to take 116 pictures in under 3 hours--nice.

It's sad to see her go, she really was my best friend up here. I could always count on her to get a beer, to chat about nothing in particular, and to stare at the boob tube. I'm sure if we'd spent another spring together, I could've counted on her to ride bikes too. But, now I've got a reason to visit California and a place to stay, and she can count on seeing me later.

Home Repair!! I Don't Make Mistakes, I Have Learning Experiences
I'm doing a little wiring on my house right now, and learning as I go. Here's what I want to do:

1. Upgrade the service from 100 amps to 200 amps.
 a. Install 200 amp box next to old service entrance.
 b. Install new meter box, wire and weatherhead outside
 c. Marry a and b.
 d. Run cable from 100 amp service to 100 amp breaker in the new box.

2. Run wire up to my attic for a 50 amp subpanel which will serve power to my upstairs bedrooms
 (fish down through the walls) and power my future home theater system.
 a. Run new cable from basement to second floor
 b. Run new cable from second floor to attic
 c. Install 50 amp box in attic
 d. Hook up the cable in the attic
 e. Hook up the cable in the basement to the new service entrance

I have a ways to go on that. Plus, I've managed to drill a hole from my upstairs bathroom through my downstairs hall. And, I also managed to sever a cable by drilling through it (though I replaced that whole circuit without incident.

NOTE
Sitting on Airtran flight 142 to Tampa in the second to last row in the window seat. It's better than the last row (where I spent my last flight) in that it has a window. However, the only thing you can see is one of the engines. Ah well, it's only an hour and a half.

Updates on the Renter Search

2007-02-19T21:43:57Z

Since my last entry, I've interviewed three more candidates, all of them different kinds of odd.

Chris
Chris is a smart cookie. He's sort of a New York intellectual. Brought up in NYC, he's very well-educated, very well-read, fluent on a host of topics, a fan of public radio, good taste in movies, etc., etc... The list goes on and on. He moved to Rochester to join the Rochester Zen Center (yeah, I didn't know we had one of those either) TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO!!! That's right, in the year of my birth. So Chris' first big drawback is that he's pushing 50. Also, because of the money he made as a technical writer, his inheritance and good money management, he doesn't have to work anymore. That means he'd be home all day, so would my house become his house since he spends more time in it? Also this begs the question: why is he looking to share housing at this point in his life?

Those little details aside, he seemed like a really cool guy. However, he called me later to say that because he's not 100% sure what he's going to in the near term, and would rather not make any drastic changes right now, and moving is certainly a drastic change. So, he took himself out of contention.

Joe (guy on the left, Thanks Google!)
Joe is working on a postdoc in immunology. He got his PhD from University of Vermont, worked in industry for a while in San Diego and then in Ithaca, but was disappointed with these jobs (all about the money, not the research). So he's going back to academia and starting a job at U of R in the near future.

Joe talked about his last three jobs for an hour and a half straight. He didn't ask one question about me, the house, the chalk pentagrams surrounding the red-stained concrete in the basement. Nope, he just talked and talked about how his friend Rene from the Army got him involved in his last job, but all the grant money for his program was taken and used on a product that was supposed to sterilize tissue but wasn't working as well as they'd hoped... ... Zzzzzz .... Zzzzzz ....

So Joe is out.

Lynne
Lynne came by just as Joe was leaving. She's a sweet southern girl from Texas who moved up to the Adirondacks when she was 19 after spending two years at a small Christian college down south. The next several years are a wild haze due to coming out of a sheltered past and rebelling against the norms of her former community. However, she has settled down and is now a medical professional of some sort (something to do with contact lenses) and has put her past behind her. Oh, and her last boyfriend cheated on her and in retribution she made off with his laptop (he probably deserved it). I found all of this out in our first phone conversation.

So we talked for a while, and got to know one another a little bit. She's sweet, she likes to cook good southern food, she looks like she'd be neat as a pin and she gets along fine with the cats. In fact as soon as she sat down, both cats jumped in her lap and went to sleep. However, there are a couple of little things that got me.

First, I have an application I make people fill out now. When asked about nearest living relative (emergency contact, that sort of thing) she didn't put anyone, and when I asked her how often she goes home she said she hadn't been back in 10 years... Like, since she moved here. Hmm...

Second, folks are certainly entailed to their wild years, especially after being repressed by a church background or some other community pressure: have fun. But folks that can make a wild swing like that once, can make it again. I got the impression that she was a ticking time bomb. Maybe I'd go to work one day and come home to find a smoldering pile of ashes, or maybe all the stuff would be gone, including my father's prized glass football trophy like in Risky Business.

So, as nice as she is, I just have this sinking suspicion that something else is at work there.

Next!
Stacy is the newest person to respond to the ad, and I just got off the phone with her a few minutes ago. She has a PhD in Biology from the University of Missouri and is heavily involved in nature conservancy (which is pretty cool). Also, she programs the music on an Internet radio station, loves public radio, and is impressed with the cultural offerings of Rochester. Also, during grad school she renovated a house with a bunch of friends so she could be a great source of info for the kind of work I'm doing to the house.

To be honest, she sounds really cool, and I thought we clicked pretty well on the phone. My fingers are crossed that she doesn't want to grow 'shrooms in the basement, or have a condition where she stabs people in her sleep, or that she's a firestarter.

So I'll meet her on Thursday when she comes up for her second interview with the Nature Conservancy here in Rochester.

This has been a really interesting process so far. I don't know if any of you have ever just tried to find a roommate outside of your circle of friends, but I have to say: it ain't easy. You just never know who you're going to get, especially if your pool is Craigslist users...

Renting a Room

2007-02-15T21:11:01Z

Hey folks.

So I'm trying to rent a room in my house. After paying the mortgage and the heat on my own for two months running, I realize I need to get a housemate if I'm going to live here and maintain my level of (in)sobriety-- not to mention having money to fix the place up. To that end, I posted the following ad on Craigslist:

Hi! I'm 27, a software engineer and pretty new to the area (I moved up from Alabama at the end of 2005). Anyway, I bought this house in November and right now it's just me in there. I'd very much like to add a roommate to the mix.

So it's a 4 bedroom house:
1 - Mine
2 - Office
3 - Guest Bedroom
4 - VACANT!

Let's see, what else... It's 1.5 bathrooms, so that means sharing a bathroom. Laundry is in the basement and works just fine. The kitchen has a dishwasher and garbage disposal. Secure wireless Internet access is enabled that works everywhere from the basement to the attic and even in the yard.

Utilities:
Water, trash, and high speed wireless Internet are included. I'll take care of 2/3 of the RG&E bill because I'm taking up so much space, and if you'd like to get cable or a telephone, that can be split 50/50.

Pictures:
Here are some pictures from before I moved in.

Home Repair:
The place is in really good shape as it is, but I'm doing little projects as they come up, and I'm learning about all kinds of things from carpentry, to electrical. So if you'd like a chance to learn that kind of stuff along with me, this is a good opportunity.

I'm really looking for a roommate, not a tenant here. I like movies a lot, so I've got a bunch of (I think) good DVDs.

To be honest I'd like for a girl to move in, 'cause I find that there really is a nice balance of energy in a mixed-gender house (promise I'm not a creep), but I'm open to anybody.

All of the shared spaces are already furnished, but there's basement storage space for extra stuff.

******ADDENDUM******
I have two cats...
******ADDENDUM******

I've gotten two responces so far, the first from Rachel, a D&D-type nerd who doesn't own a car and is in a less-than-perfect housing situation all the way out in Greece (a two hour bus commute from her work, apparently). She came over with a friend to look at the place a couple of days ago. Apparently, her best friend lives on the far end of my street, a little over a mile away, so that's good.

She's nice, employed, and goes through 5 NetFlix movies a week. One thing, she'd be in her room for at least four hours a night playing a text-based role-playing online game called GemStone. While that can be nice, leaving the house to me most of the time, it's certainly seems slightly strange--I think I'd prefer someone I could comfortably spend some more time with.

The second response is from a fellow named Chris who's going to come over and check it out tonight:

Hi,

I'm Chris (male), do technical writing, am looking into getting a masters in
psychology, and am both responsible and easy going. The section of Linden you
live on is nice. I live about two blocks from you at Oakland and Linden in a
one bedroom apartment, have been here four years. The big advantage of my place
is that I have an attic all to myself which is convenient because I have stored
books and household items in boxes up there. (I have too many books!). I love
cats (having grown up with them) and also have good DVD's. Zip me an e-mail if
you're still looking for a room mate or call me at 256-xxxx. I guess the basic
space question for me is if I can put what is in my living and bedroom area here
into a bedroom area.

Thanks for listing your place !

Chris

So, student is good, having books is good, no problem with cats is good. So he'll come by tonight and look around and we'll just see. Maybe he'll stick around for spaghetti and Battlestar Galactica!

I guess that deserves an explanation, tonight is BSG night for Bee, John and myself. I got them hooked on the show a couple of months ago and we've been watching several episodes at a sitting to get them caught up to 'today.' In fact, after tonight we should be done with season 2 and ready for the current season! That's good, 'cause I've been denying myself new episodes while we catch up.

Okay, back to my job...

"It's Saturday, in the mall, I think it's the fourth of July.."

2007-02-03T20:09:22Z

So yeah, I'm in the mall. I'm actually in the Apple store, waiting for a customer rep to talk to about fixing my powerbook (something's amiss with the optical drive).

When my folks were here last weekend, my mom made Shoots' wife, Sarah, promise to make me get a haircut and make me vacuum my house--she has a reputation for getting things done. Later on she said "you mom must think I run your life!"

To which John replied, "she's got no problem runnin' mine!"

ZING!!

Sarah's officially halfway off the hook, as I just go a haircut. I like it, it's simple, I won't have to do anything to it, though my 'stylist' informed me that I could "gel" it if I wanted to. I suggested I could also pop my collars...

OK, back to work...

Birthday Fun!

2007-01-30T18:27:41Z

For those that obviously aren't my true friends, yesterday was my 27th birthday! And what did I do on my birthday? Well, this is incredible: both my parents and MK came up! It all fell into place last week, my dad had talked about it for a while, my mom wanted to visit me but was afraid to fly without my sister, and my sister was able to get two days off of work!

They were here Friday through this morning and got to experience with me the most snow I've seen since I moved up here. It got to be about 12" deep in places 'cause it just snowed for days. They couldn't believe the city could still function with that much snow on the ground.

It was so much fun (and incredibly frustrating and embarassing, as most family events are). My mom and my sister went buck wild with my dad's credit card at Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier One and Target and made my house a home. It's so much more comfortable in there now, better lighting, some pretty things on the wall. Meanwhile my dad and I raided Home Depot and bought the $400 worth of equipment it will take for me to upgrade my electrical from the existing 100 amp service to 200 amps so I can do a little rewiring and modernizing in there. That's really quite a savings, considering an electrician quoted me $1400 for the same job. So if I can get out of it without an emergency room visit, I'll really be ahead!

The first 12 hours were pretty eventful. My mom had to pop two Xanex just to get on the plane, and my sister probably had to hold her hand the whole way up. When they landed, my dad and my sister went for the rental car while my mom and I waited on the luggage. So our first disaster is that my parents' bag is gone. They both packed all their clothes (and my mother's assorted beauty, skin and hair-care products) in a single bag which managed not to make it--the only bag on the plane not to make it, mind you.

So this is going to be bad. It's already midnight when we get to the hotel and my mom has complained about every individual item in the bag:

"Oh, my cetaphil! I can't wash my face without my cetaphil. Daddy, what am I gonna do?"
"My appliances! I'll grind my teeth without my appliances, I might crack one off and I just had a root canal and a crown put on. Oh Dada, I can't go through that again."
"My makeup! Well, since i can't wash my face, I guess I'll just be wearing this makeup tomorrow."
"Dada, do you have a wife beater I could wear to bed?" -- "Only the one I'm wearing right now." -- "Ew, nevermind..."

So MK and I are preparing for the worst.

In the morning, we get a lackluster breakfast at the hotel and then went to my house so they could see it (albeit in the same clothes they'd worn the day before). Thankfully, I got a call on the way there that the suitcase had finally arrived from Atlanta. They were thrilled, and relieved and it took a lot of the pressure off of us--we were going to have to go to the mall and buy one of everything they didn't have, which would've taken all day. With this pressure off, everything seemed possible.

So we get to my house and I take my mom and my sister on a tour since my dad ate too much sausage at breakfast and feels sick. Everybody oohs and ahs (apparently the pictures don't do it justice) while the old man sits in my La-Z-Boy and looks sicker and sicker. He's gotten in a bad habit of throwing up in the sink at home when he's feeling bad, so I say to him: "do not throw up in the my downstairs sink, it's too shallow and will just make a horrible mess. At this point, I leave them at the house while I go to the airport to retrieve the bag.

I get the bag, and ask why it didn't show up, and apparently ATL just left it off the flight. Whatever.

I get home and as I set foot in the door, my dad says "Will, do you have any Drano?"

Oh no.

"No, what happened?" I asked.

"I did what everyone told me not to do..."

So I go down to the corner store for some Drano (and much needed toilet paper, I had let it dwindle to a single roll for both bathrooms). I get back and he dumps the whole thing in the sink, but it won't drain. Eventually he asks me for some channel locks or a monkey wrench 'cause he's going to remove the trap and see if he can fix it that way. This request evolves into a request for a hack saw, so he can cut the P-trap right out of the sink (apparently it was already weakened when 20 ounces of highly corrosive drano was poured in and when he was trying to remove it, his FINGER poked a hole in the trap.

This necessitated our first trip to Home Depot.

We come back from the Depot with a single part, the turn in the trap, figuring we can just replace the broken one, hook it all up and things will work fine again. This was not the case.

First off, the drain pipe where the water ultimately drains into the basement is mounted at an angle. So, try as we might, we can't get our parts to fit together. When we'd finally forced it and screwed all the nuts down as tightly as we good, it started to drip when we put water down it. Sigh...

This got some more Drano to leak through my floor into my basement and was the end of my dad's patience. We called Roto-Rooter, who promised to show up the next day and take care of us.

Of course they were a few hours late (it being Sunday and all), but he finally arrived. He showed me the error of our ways the day before, we were trying to fit two different style parts together so they couldn't make a good seal. He told me that he could replace this $10 part for the low, low price of $135. Apparently it's all flat (and expensive) rates, nothing hourly anymore.

At last, he's got the drain pipe hooked up correctly, but low and behold, it won't drain. There's a clog somewhere down the line that he's going to have to snake to relieve for teh low, low price of $239.

Jesus.

So, ultimately, the sink is back in one piece, the drain is functioning and he's swiped the old man's credit card for $402 all because he didn't want to reach for a trash can or hug the bowl like the rest of us. And that's just the first day. :)

Believe it or not, there are other plumbing stories...

Wintry Mix

2007-01-16T13:21:53Z

Winter has at last arrived in the ROC. It's been curiously warm for a couple of months, and we've so far only had about an inch of snow on about a single day--this is not the norm. However, with low pressure systems coming in from the blah blah blah, combined with moist air from the yada yada, we've got a full-on winter storm on our hands.

The last two days I experienced a lovely thing called "Wintry Mix," which is basically rain and sleet coming down to form a lovely layer of ice over everything. In fact, yesterday morning I was late to work as my car was completely covered with a hard candy shell that I had to break up and scrape off. Of course, it hasn't risen above freezing yet, so the parts of my car that aren't either on top of the engine or a window are still frozen.

Last night the wintry mix turned into snow, and this morning I awoke to several inches on the ground, and my neighbor's trees full of ice and leaning down into my driveway, nearly blocking in my car. However, my car fared better since I garaged it last night. Hurray!

So have I mentioned my new cat? I don't think so. A couple of weeks ago, I went to our local Humane Society, where they've learned the value of branding to market your product. Instead of calling themselves the Humane Society, or an animal shelter, they're Lollypop Farm. And, I must say, it's a hell of a fun place. There are cats and dogs to peruse, along with a curiously healthy selection of goats, sheep, chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys. Plus, I think they get frogs, salamanders, fish, and basically anything else.

I went with John and Sarah because I decided my neurotic cat needed a playmate so he wouldn't go nuts during the day--I was basically getting him his own cat. They seemed to have a glut of black cats which, according to the signs, have a lower adoption rate than other types of cats (something to do with witchcraft). So I figured I'd give one of them a shot. We picked out Amelia, Bob and Bear to meet in one of their little cat meeting rooms.

Amelia was a bit of a long-hair (Chewie already leaves enough hair around the house that I could construct a spare cat from the tufts), and kind of tiny and shy. I figured she wouldn't make it in my house.

Bob was very friendly, and even had a crooked tail which was kind of a cute feature. However, he started using my knee for a scratching post, and sadly scratched himself right off the list.

Bear really had it all going for him. He was charming, affectionate, playful, basically everything you might want in a cat. And he was the one! So $70 and a bunch of paperwork later and I'm riding home with a new cat who was itching for a new name.

There were a lot of suggestions for names, Dwight among them, but ultimately I settled on Mr. Tibbs after Sydney Poitier's character in In the Heat of the Night and it's much less good sequel They Call Me MISTER Tibbs. This is a line from the first movie, and the reason I call Mr. Tibbs MISTER Tibbs. Basically 'cause he's a black cat, and who's more black on film than Sydney Poitier?

Is that racist? I think it's an homage.

Anyway, he's adjusting well and has become a member of the family... at last a member of the family that Chewie can bedevil and wrestle from time to time, creating more tufts of hair flying through my house.

Home sweet full-of-cats home.

Parts of My Christmas Vacation

2007-01-08T03:36:25Z

I'm flying from Baltimore to Buffalo right now, the penultimate leg on my journey back from Birmingham. I didn't know whether to word that as "my trip home" or "my trip back from home," so I chose something neutral.

I received a little flack last night for updating this site so infrequently, and I suppose I deserve it. I can't check this second, but I'm sure it's been over a month since I added anything to my running autobiography.

My trip home was great (uh-oh, I guess I chose a side there). I had to come down a few days early because I was getting a gum graft done. For anyone else that has to go through a procedure like this, I highly recommed Dr. Duckett ot 18?? 14th Ave South: really nice guy, Auburn grad, and prescriber of Vicodin--with refill!

So I spent the first couple of days recovering from that, which made my mother exstatic. Any time she can trap me in the house on prescription painkillers, she takes full advantage of it. So I watched The View, Regis an Kelly, and The Price is Right with her and my dad, not to mention a bunch of recorded Law & Order episodes.

When I finally weaned myself off the pain meds, I started making the rounds. I've got a couple pictures available online. The smoking-hot blonde that's next to me while I'm wearing the hat is one of the 50 Most Beautiful People on Capitol Hill. Now there's a resume builder! That represents my brush with regional fame over the holidays.

Oh yeah, I suppose hanging out with someone I've only ever interacted with on the Internet should count as a brush with fame also. So a hardy hello to booshrules who left without saying goodbye, which is probably justified in that I didn't remotely recognize you and was then frozen trying to come up with a conversation topic... :( Next time I'll do better, I promise.

Gosh, there's a lot I'd like to fit into one entry, I wonder how I can do that... Ooh, an outline!

Christmas Presents
This was a red-letter Christmas for my sister and brother-in-law, mostly 'cause my dad went absolutely nuts and bought them each an HP laptop, his and hers. Holy crap. That, plus an XM radio and the promise to pay the monthly subscription on it. He offered me the same deal on my XM, but I've been able to cover $9.99 a month since grad school, and I've got my pride to consider.

Oh man, I got some great things for both my masculine and feminine sides! Specifically, a toolbelt for home electrical work, and a recipe box filled with the secret family delicacies of the Fishers, the Fletchers and the Harwells. However, I also got a Cuisinart food processor, which may shove me right over the edge to the feminine.

The most common presents from me this Christmas were pictures. With a bevy of digital photos going back a couple of years now, it's pretty easy for me to find something that someone might want, print it out and frame it. My parents (who helped out on my down payment tremendously) and my aunt (who did my mortgage for me) each got a picture of me in front of the house. It's not what you'd call a "good" picture, 'cause it's out of focus, and Rochester-cloudy, but it's a good place-holder until things look better up there.

Sam's parents got a great picture of her in front of the Washington monument from our trip to our nation's capitol this fall. I also framed a copy of this for myself, but it managed to go missing as I was switching rooms around with MK and Robbie coming and going.

I framed a nice picture of my sister and I in front of Niagara Falls for my mother.

Oh, this was ironic. There was a great picture of the whole family--my folks, MK and Robbie and myself--in front of the turkey at Thanksgiving. It looked so good that I framed copies both for my folks and for MK and Robbie, not knowing that my dad had done the exact same thing for everyone (though in a much better frame). Thankfully, I'd printed out a bunch of pictures, so I was able to switch out MK's for another shot of she and I at Niagara, and my mom's for a shot of MK from her trip to Rochester.

Lunch with Sally
That's right, I had lunch with Sally. It was something she asked me about last month, and that I was hesitant to do. I mean, I'm doing great in my life now, but I'm still for some reason more than a little bitter about that whole thing, and I really didn't trust myself to stay polite and keep my stinging remarks to myself. Sometimes, I'm really not a nice person.

Plus, one must ask what the point is, right? I mean, we were once in love, what hope of a normalized friendship do we have after something like that?

Uh oh, time to turn off the laptop for landing... Hold that thought!

Well jeez, it took me two weeks to get back to this. And there's been a party in the mean time! I'm a terrible diarist...

Home Electrical!

2006-11-29T17:04:34Z

All right, I knew moving in that the electrical in my house was not nearly up to the task of running all of my computers and what have you, "there's serious metal fatigue in all the load-bearing members, the wiring is substandard, it's completely inadequate for our power needs, and the neighborhood is like a demilitarized zone."

However, I had no idea how substandard until last night. I went to Lowe's and picked up a handful of replacement outlets with three prongs and a ground to go through and ground a few key places. This is entirely possible with just a 2 wire system, you just have to connect the neutral wire to ground as well--even in standard 3 wire, they're hooked to the same ground bus down at the breaker box.

The first one I did was in the kitchen by my microwave stand (for to plug in my microwave). This was a pretty simple affair, I popped the cover off, unscrewed the outlet, took all the wires off and hooked them to my new outlet (being sure to run the neutral wire through the ground first), and put it all back together. After I flipped the switch back on, I used my socket tester and determined that everything was hooked up right and plugged the microwave in.

The second one was a little different.

I decided to put on in my bedroom so I could plug in my laptop charger. Through this experience, I found out a few of things. There was already a grounded outlet up there, but not only was it not grounded, it was actually hooked up backwards, hot to neutral and neutral to hot. You really can't blame whoever hooked it up either, the color coding of the wires was backward (usually black=hot=death, white=ground=ok). The big problem, though, was that the entire upstairs--lights, outlets and attic--is all on a single circuit. This basically means if I plug in two computers, I'll burn the house down. It also means, I can't do anything up there with the lights out so I decided to wait until this morning.

So this morning I opened it up, pulled the old socket out, stripped a little extra insulation off the neutral wire, and wired the whole thing up correctly. That's all well and good, but if I plugged anything big in there, I might melt the jack. :)

So I started calling electricians today. I'm getting some estimates this week to see what it would cost to do just one or two rooms. I think their best bet is to bring a bunch of wire up to the attic and then drop them down through the walls to the second floor as needed.

PLUS! I just got back from letting the plumbers into the house, they're starting to dig the waterline even as we speak. Though, I learned that instead of the 3/4" pipe that would be preferable inside the house, when whoever did it got the pipes inside replaced, they used 1/2". So I'll have 3/4" from the street, and only 1/2" inside… :( So I won't get the full benefit of the better flow from the street.

Will Fletcher: Homeowner

2006-11-16T15:28:59Z

Chapter 1: First Night

So last night after wandering around the house for awhile--turning lights on and off, using the bathroom (marking my territory)--I decided I should just start moving. So I went home and started to pack up all of my stereo equipment, you can't move without tunes, right? Plus, maybe I should stay over there. I mean, of course I should stay over there! I got my inflatable bed out of the closet, a pillow and my full-sized sheets and put them in my car. I got all my speakers packed up, my stereo, my DVD player, my Xbox, assorted cables and finally my TV.

Jessie showed up just as I was about to bring the TV down. She brought over a bag full of housewarming gifts, two bottles of wine, a box of chocolates, toilet paper, paper towels and hand soap. I asked her how she thought of all that, and apparently it was mostly fueled by self-interest. She bought the wine, and figuring she would have to go to the bathroom and I wouldn’t have any TP, she bought some. Then of course she'd need to wash her hands so she picked up the soap. And of course, washed hands need drying, hence the paper towels. The chocolate, apparently, was just really close to the register.

We carry the TV downstairs on a "borrowed" hand truck, along with my three folding wooden chairs. I'm trying mightily to fit the TV into my already stuffed car, but no matter what, it still won't fit in my passenger seat. Jessie pulled her car around and I was able to stuff it into her back seat. Thus loaded down, we hit the road and headed for mi casa nueva. My plan was to just unload the TV from her car, leave all the stereo stuff in my car and head for Beale Street Café, a barbecue place in my neighborhood, and unload the rest of it later.

That's basically what happened. I had a Cajun meatloaf sandwich, red beans and rice and a side salad. Ooh, not to mention an extremely hoppy IPA from a Brewery I don't remember.

I called Katrina as we were headed back to the house and she got there as Jessie and I were plugging in the speakers to the stereo. I hooked up my iPod, put it on random and we spent the next several hours walking around, drinking, taking down valances and marveling at the fact that I'm a homeowner.

Jessie made an impromptu survey of the heat registers in the house and found that the one in the kitchen has the most oomph, and will go straight up your pant leg if you stand on it right.

I didn't get to sleep until pretty late, what with all of the adventure, but at last I did and I woke up at 7:30 so I could drive home, shower, and make it to work at a reasonable hour. My first night was definitely a lot of fun, and not unproductive--the stereo is hooked up, and the TV is there. That's some heave stuff! Despite all those creature comforts, I doubt I'll sleep in there again until I get my bed moved in. Those inflatable beds don't exactly hold heat in for you and I woke up absolutely freezing. It was kind of like camping, though.

Weekend in the City

2006-10-16T19:58:41Z

This weekend was one hell of a time. Two months ago, Juan Pablo moved to NYC to work as an unpaid intern at some financial company. In that time, I havent' gone to visit him because the city is so f'ing far away from me. But, our friend Andres came up last week for a conference, and I figured it was just too convenient to go and hang out with both of them. So after work on Friday, Jessie and I saddled up my aging Honda and headed down the New York State Throughway.

First of all, this is a very long drive. My first estimat was 5.5 hours, but that ended up stretching to something more like 7. The reason it took so long is that I was afraid my car was just going to croak. For the last few months it's been burning oil at an alarming rate, but because I barely drive while I'm at home I don't really notice it. Well this weekend I dropped 5 quarts of oil into it over about 800 miles--the thing only holds 5 quarts of oil. On top of that, after about 5 hours of driving it began to sputter a little bit at high speeds, it felt like one of the cylinders just wouldn't fire. Is it the spark plug? The plug wire? The fuel injection? Hoping for spark plugs.

Anyway, after making our way to the city, we then had to find our way to Andres' hotel in midtown. This would have been easier if we had printed out some directions and not relied solely on my dead-reckoning abilities. The first thing that I screwed up was somehow getting us in Queens instead of Manhattan. And then comes the question of "how the hell do I get out of Queens?" This turned out to be pretty easy, as we got on the BQE and after a few miles saw a sign for a tunnel to Midtown, how convenient!

Eventually we find the hotel, park our car and meet Juan P., Andres and Juan's friend Annie from Auburn. They had plans to take us out salsa dancing, which of course means I need to drink a lot of alcohol first. We stopped off at some place in the West Village for a drink, a dance club packed so tight that it was nearly impossible to get to the bar. Juan made it up there and got 4 shots of tequila for Jessie, Andres, me and himself. Unfortunately Andres didn't feel like drinking so that meant two for me--off to an early lead.

We finally convinced Juan to leave and made our way to a latin bar a few blocks away where I started drinking gin and tonics, and ultimately dancing. After watching Annie (who is a really good dancer and doesn't drink at all--strange for one of Juan's friends) dance for awhile, I asked for a lesson. This must have been after 5 or 6 drinks, 'cause otherwise it would never have happened. I got the basics down and let her go have some more fun with people who knew what they were doing, but now I had a direction to shuffle my feet while boozing.

We left there and Juan got some pizza at a [ITALIAN NAME HERE]'s Famous Pizza and we drank some water and attempted to sober up a little bit. We made it back to the hotel and I was wrapped up in my palette on the floor by around 5 am.

Saturday poor Andres had to participate in his conference so he was up at 8 am, Jessie and I were still drunk. We were both up and showered by 11, though, when Andres got back. We went to an Indian place a few blocks away for lunch, and I had a beer to try to sate the hangover demons who were roiling in my head. Strangely it worked.

After dropping Andres off at the hotel so he could get some more sleep, Jessie and I headed uptown to wander aimlessly through Harlem. Why, you ask? I'm not sure. I think it's 'cause Matt suggested it to me the last time I was in the city. Just like it says in the song, we took the A Train to Harlem. When we got off at 125th street, we looked north, south, east and west, and realized we had no idea which way to go. So we just started walking.

We saw The Apollo Theater, and lots of street vendors selling lots of wares. We headed south and looked at some really neat houses and apartments along those wide boulevards uptown. I got on the horn with Matt looking for suggestions, and he mentioned that the Royal Tenenbaums house is up there. So, one more subway stop up the A train to 145th street. We only had to go two blocks and there it was, plain as day. Neat. However, I was too tired to think about taking a picture, so next time I guess.

In fact, there are hardly any pictures of this weekend--like 3.

So Saturday night was also very, very cool. The NYC Chapter of the Auburn Alumni Association gets together at a bar every Saturday to watch the games. This weekend being the match up between No. 2, undefeated Florida Gators and the then No. 11 Auburn Tigers, it was set to be quite a get together. Of course we went.

By the time kickoff happened, there were over 200 cheering, screaming, singing Auburn fans living and dying with everything that happened on the big screens. I have to say, it was like coming home.

The game, if you didn't see it, was awesome. We were trailing 11-17 at the half but came back with a vengance scoring a touchdown off a blocked punt 5 minutes into the 3rd quarter. We kept the 1 point lead all the way into the 4th quarter when we got another field goal, and in the final seconds of the game scored a touchdown off a fumbled Florida lateral.

F'ing awesome game.

So after screaming, cheering and singing, the bar cleared out leaving me to drink G&Ts and play Erotic Photo Hunt with everyone. This last a good hour before one of hte other girls decided that we had to go dancing. So my drunk ass gets in a cab and we're headed downtown to some place called Tonic on 33rd and 3rd. Again, I'm drunk enough for my groove thang to start shaking, so I cut a rug to several dance hits of the 80s and 90s including Marky Mark, Vanilla Ice, and Bel Biv Devoe, among others.

The drinking continues, with me buying booze for everyone I know there and some people I don't. I'm afraid to look at my checking statement, but I suppose I have to if I'm gonna know whether I can afford to eat this week. Thank God Friday is payday.

We get back to the hotel around 4:00 and crash immediately, I was dead to the world.

In the morning, it's breakfast and the drive home!

So, hell of a weekend.

kernelklink @ 2006-10-09T23:33:00

2006-10-09T23:39:08Z

I had a very nice date on Saturday. I'm not sure if it started out as a date, but it ended up as one. I attempted to employ Dex's rules from The Tao of Steve:
1. Be without desire.
2. Be Excellent in her presence.
3. Retreat. We pursue that which retreats from us.

I think I pulled off desireless ok. Excellence is difficult, I can do funny and charming, but so can a lot of people. So I probably missed the mark on Excellent. And retreat, well I just fucked that up.

But it doesn't matter. It was a great night, she's smart, she's interesting, she not only knows but likes Joes Versus the Volcano.

So I just got off the phone with her, a short and not especially comfortable conversation. I'll probably meet her out tonight to make some plans for this week.

Also, going to New York this weekend to visit Juan Pablo and Andres! Jessie is coming along, should be a blast! We're not sure whose car we're taking, but we're driving. It's cheaper than flying and faster than taking the train.