Well, it's darn near Christmas again, so I suppose that means I should post an mp3 of me singing a Christmas song, right?

Done!

The TFG Quartet -- Silent Night
http://tfg46.tripod.com/silentnight.mp3
(As is always the case, you have to copy 'n paste the URL into your address bar to circumvent Tripod's anti-remote nonsense.)

Now, of course, this sounds a little better than last year's offering, which you can still download by going back to last December in the archives to your left and looking for the post in which I posted the link. Why does it sound better? Why, because I'm reading off of actual barbershop-quartet sheet music.

We performed this very arrangement of Silent Night during intermission at the SCC Christmas concert a couple of weeks ago. Who is "we", you might ask? Allow me to introduce Biggie & the Smalls: lead Ryan Parks, tenor John Weyant, baritone Clifton Gray, and bass, at the moment, Dr. Steve Meredith. (We were left without a bass when both of the other two basses dropped out of choir in October, and Dr. Meredith, who works alldayeveryday already with various jobs at SCC and in the community-college district, offered to fill in. Naturally, having a professional singer holding down our bottom end helped us out... it was a nice perk.) I'll post the pic when I think to scan it.

Anyhow... no complaints from me. Life's good. I tend to not blog when I don't have stuff to whine and rant about, I guess. Did I mention I'm enrolling full-time at either SCC's Culinary Arts program or the Scottsdale Culinary Institute in the fall of 2006? Yeah, it's a decision I reached a few weeks ago. I'll talk more about it later. I just decided that I needed to have a viable plan for the future, instead of just waiting for whatever to arrive.

First off, the big concerto is at 7:30 PM this coming Saturday night (11/20) at SCC's Performing Arts Center. $5 to get in, I think they said. I'll post more updates on future concerts when I have exact times.

Now, as to the big Jeopardy trip...

For starters, AudioBlog has been down, apparently. I was going to try and post an audio file a couple of times during my trip to kind of give my impressions of what was going on. No could do, though. (Is that the proper past tense for "No can do"?)

Anyhow, rather than force you to skim past a bunch of boring stuff to see what happened, I didn't pass the exam. On the other hand, if you fully intended to read the whole thing and wait with baited breath for the outcome, sorry for being a spoiler.

The trip over seemed to zip by fairly quickly, which is odd... when Zach and I drove to SixFlags last March, it seemed like once we hit L.A. we drove for another 12 hours or so on an infinite loop of freeways. Hell, maybe we did... I went equipped with MapQuest directions, and while they're technically accurate, they have a nasty habit of sending you on the geographically shortest or "fastest" route, while occasionally it would be a LOT easier if you went a little out of your way to stay on main freeways. Um... rant over. Anyway, I was cruising along, and once in California I decided to forego my usual stop in Blythe since I was a little behind on time. I'd seen that "Desert Center" was about 30 miles past Blythe, so I figured I'd stop there instead, and from there it'd be a cinch to make it to Santa Monica, where my hotel was located. Unfortunately... as I neared Desert Center, I was treated to the sad realization that Desert Center consists of one abandoned gas station and a bunch of dead palm trees. It was a good 45 miles to Indio, and my truck was showing a range of 25 miles before it just went to "Low Fuel" and then "Hey Dickweed, You're Gonna Wind Up Standing In The Middle Of The California Desert Trying To Hitchhike Your Way To A Gas Station If You Don't Gas Me Up Now!!!"... or maybe that's what I was envisioning. Luckily, about 12 miles past the remnants of Desert Center, on the horizon shone a beacon... a beacon with "Chevron" printed on it. Chiriaco Summit to the rescue! -- that is, 'til I pulled in and found they charge $2.62 a gallon for plain unleaded ($2.82 for Super). *cough* Apparently, many a weary traveler has crawled into Chiriaco Summit after mistakenly thinking Desert Center was more than just simply the center of the desert. I put in $12 (just over 4 gallons) and rolled on down into Indio to fill up.

Aside from that, 'twas an uneventful journey. Checked in at the beautiful Santa Monica Days Inn around 9:00 their time, ordered some B-list delivery Italian food, and got on up around 7:00 this morning. I snapped a picture of myself all spiffed up for my tryout (look for that on my picture page later) and cruised over to the Sony studios, a pleasant 2 hours early. I was the only one there for a good 45 minutes, and most of the people got there around 9:40ish (tryout was at 10:00). *shrug* I let the computer kick my ass at FiveStones on my phone for a while to pass the time. Anyhow, a coordinator came out and rounded us up, and over to the Jeopardy set we went. We were seated in the audience in every other seat and handed an answer sheet and a pen (and a nice flimsy piece of cardboard to write on), and after a brief video on what we could expect to see on the test, it began.

I thought I did fairly well. Of the 50 questions, I know I had 37 right, with 4 good guesses and 9 lousy guesses and/or blanks. There was one "Words in Quotes" question (ends in "ash": sometimes as brief as a hyphen, sometimes it's 100 yards long... what is a dash?), one "starts with _" question (starts with "M": ... uh, it was so easy as to not be memorable), and one "before and after" question (pure white arctic predator who is gloomy about stock trends: what is a polar bear market? A little confusing, but those always make sense to me anyway). There were a couple current events questions (this Israeli prime minister was assassinated at [some peace summit] in 1995: who is Yitzhak Rabin?), and then about 40 literature and history questions. Oh, great. So, as it turns out, the test is a good deal harder than the show actually is, since on the show there's always the one really hard category that no one wants to touch, and then three decent-strength categories and two absolute softballs (Rhyme Time, anyone?). The ratio was weighted a bit more towards the tough, and I didn't know a few I should have (This author's only novel was "The Picture of Dorian Grey," and all I could think of was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... dumbass), but I knew a fair amount of them (Freud divides the personality into three categories: the ego, the superego, and this subconscious level: what is the id?).

Aaaaaaanyhow, I don't actually know how well I did, since they don't release the scores. The guy came back in, commented that we'd had a full load of 70 trying out, and then said, "Here are the people who passed:" and read off five names. That was it.

So, yeah, I lost. But so did a bunch of other really smart-looking types, too, and they were a LOT more vocal about it than I. "What the hell? THAT was a bunch of shit," commented one balding old guy. *shrug* I did the math... they have three tests per day (10:00, 1:30, and 5:00), and if they invite 70 to each, let's assume they don't always have a "full house", so 200 per day. If they test for a week, that's 1,000 testees (or 500 sacks, assuming no one's one-ballin'... oh, just forget I said that). I heard the coordinator mention that 5 is slightly above average, that usually they get 3 or 4 per group, so that's about 12 a day, so 60 from one week of testing. Makes sense. That's practically a month's worth of contestants from one week's worth of tests, so the ratio is about right. I just didn't make the top cut.

I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed, nor will I say I wouldn't do it differently were I to try again. (I didn't cram for the test, so to speak, fearing I might forget more than I actually learned... though next time I might consider reading a few boxes' worth of Trivial Pursuit cards in the hotel the neight before.) But at least now I know that, in fact, I HAVE tried out for Jeopardy, and I can officially try again after one year has passed. Don't rule it out. There was a guy there who mentioned that this was his fifth attempt at the test, and he said, "You BET I'll be back again next November."

How many times within the last few posts on here did I say, "Gee, I need to post more often?" ... "Need to" and "will" are two different things.

So where were we? Ah, yes, the last time I actually sat down and put fingers to keyboard, it was the doldrums of summer. I had no idea what I'd be doing, just that I had a vague concept of wanting to do something erstwhile with my free time come the autumn season.

Here it is, officially the autumn season, and things have worked out unbelievably well for me, I'd have to say. As I mentioned in an Audioblog post, I'm into vocal performance at Scottsdale Community College, and I'm in the regular choir as well as eMusic, a performance-arts group involving singers, dancers, audio/video, electronic keyboards and the such. Now I'm also in a little barbershop quartet that we've put together from the choir, and I'm on the tech crew of eMusic since they needed someone to run the computer during performances.

Woo! You have NO IDEA how much fun I've been having. Work has been going well, too, made even better by the fact that I've got a productive outlet outside of work to focus on as well. I just won a stake this past Saturday night -- picture forthcoming to my photo page -- but overall, things have just been rolling along. Lazaro's got Wichita humming, and my dad has built Wheeling up into a veritable force. We're preparing to hit 2005 running, and make it our best year ever.

I've got a concert with the choir next Saturday night, the 20th. It's supposed to start at 8:00 in the Performing Arts Center at SCC. Come on down, why don't-cha? eMusic will be performing on Wednesday, December 15... I don't know the time of that one yet. And the choir will be doing a ceremony of ancient Christmas carols a few times throughout December as well. It ought to be fun. NEXT semester, things really get to hopping with both groups. Somewhere in there, there's a week-long trip to Washington DC planned.

Oh, yeah, and then I'm trying out for Jeopardy on Friday morning. Yes, seriously. I applied back in July, kind of on a whim, and I received word this past Friday night that I was invited to try out this coming Friday (the 12th) at 10:00 AM at the Jeopardy set in Sony's studios in Culver City. So I'm driving over Thursday, and I'll stay the night in Santa Monica and then do the tryout the next morning. Needless to say, I'm excited. This is Jeopardy! I've got my studio pass and everything, so I'm all set to go.

Anyhow, that's a brief overview. As I've said, there's no guarantee how soon I'll post again. I'll be around eventually, though.

D'oh! I missed September again. This post is only here to create an "09.2004" in the archive section on the left side of the page. It's actually November 13th, but you can alter the date/time stamp of your posts at will.

I most certainly owe everyone a full, regular blog entry. Plenty has happened since the last full-on post: I blew out a tire on the 51, but managed to get it off the road before the thing shredded. That was exciting... and... um, other stuff. I don't know. I'm about to go to bed, but I wanted to log in to post this link to a Quizilla post I just completed:

Are You Using Performance-Enhancing Supplements?

I lifted this from this week's ESPN The Magazine, with a couple of minor tweaks to the responses and my own results added on. Anyway, so, I've officially crossed to the dark side... I've created my own Quizilla quiz.

Anyhow, more later... maybe... we'll see if I get in the mood.

Eh, screw it. I was working on a post, and I lost interest If I got bored, you most certainly would have, too.

I paid one of Zach's friends $3.50 to eat one of the same cat treats Zach did, and he chewed and swallowed with no drama. Either Zach's weak, or his friend is exceedingly weird.

I've taken to referring to him as Xach whenever I get on the office computer at home and he's left AOLIM on, and his friends start sending IMs since it goes un-idle. *shrug* I like to make people stop and pause for thought.

I've set here for 5 minutes, staring at the slowly-blinking cursor on my blank New Post window, not sure of how to put into words just how I feel. And that's funny, because that's exactly my problem of late. I don't know how to put into words what I'm feeling.

Before I go all gloom-and-doom, let me say that Dodgeball is one of the funniest new movies I've seen in a long, long time. Shrek 2 was hilarious, yeah, but Dodgeball is a touch better. And it's smart humor, too... not everyone's going to get the gag. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but you'll have to let me know, once you've seen it, if you agree.

So, you know, as depressed as this post is bound to sound, I'm not really in the depths of it. You can tell, because I'm posting. Thursday, now, that was one for the ages. It had just been a crappy week... I was walking around just pissed at the world for no good reason all throughout Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and finally on Thursday, I just crashed. I was at my parents' house, and finally I gave in and let it take me. I sat at the desk in the office and stared at the ceiling for two hours, until finally I needed to use the restroom. The thing is... I know when I should be left alone, lest I do or say something I'll regret when I'm back in my head again. I just have to sit and let it run its course, and then everything'll be fine again, eventually. And usually, once I finally just sit and let go of it, I'll feel better than I've felt for days. By evening's end, I'd emailed the director of the Scottsdale Concert Band to see if they would be holding auditions for the upcoming season anytime soon. (I have yet to hear back.) By the way, if anyone has a friend (or a friend of a friend, or whatever) who knows if a local wind ensemble or concert band or symphony is looking for a tuba player with plenty of free time, let me know. I'd be happy to audition for any opening anyone might have here in the Valley.

What happens when I "go offline", such as it is? I can't really say. It's almost a form of meditation... I tune out everything around me and just do a run-through of everything I'm doing at the moment, and try and figure out what needs retooling. Er sumthin. I don't really pay attention to what's going on, since I'm not consciously involved in the reboot. I just wait it out, patiently, until I'm ready to go again. Then everything's good.

You know, I go back and read sometimes when I bitch and moan on here, and I wonder what gives me the right to feel like I do. I haven't been through a third of the shit most people I know have, and I sit here and whine because, essentially, I'm a nervous geek.

I guess what's weighing on me so much is that the future seems to be knocking on my door an awful lot lately. My dad will be coming home from West Virginia eventually, most likely whenever it gets too cold up there, and I'll have to figure out how I'm going to go back to working with him right there watching over my shoulder again. Hopefully, this whole prospect of our business finally actually being SUCCESSFUL might have helped him to loosen up a bit when it comes to how we handle things in his absence at the kennel. (We've gone into THAT topic before, so I won't dwell on it.)

Eh, that isn't it. That's a thing, but that's not what's got me down.

I need to start looking at more permanent living arrangements. My apartment's fantastic, yeah, but... it's an apartment. Were it a condo, I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat. Or would I? Someday, off in the future, I'd like to have a family, and then what am I going to do with a one-room condo? I know I could sell it, but I don't know if I want to go through all the rigamarole. I'd rather just find a decent house and start paying on that, as long as that's where I'm going to wind up. My lease is up at the end of April, so I've got a little while to weigh my options, perhaps start looking at where/what I'd like to be at/in. (Or is that "at/in where/what I'd like to be"? We're not supposed to end sentences with prepositions, according to that one scene in With Honors where Joe Pesci tells the professor, "Okay: Where's the door at, asshole?")

Eh, that isn't it, either. That's a thing, granted, a more pressing thing, but it's not what's really eating at me.

You see, though? I can't just come out and say it. And that's ever my problem. I sit on my hands, and then a golden opportunity passes me by because my silence is interpreted as indifference or disinterest, I guess.

I'm wondering if I should officially toss in the towel and register as a lifelong bachelor. THAT's what's got me down. Again. As usual. Just like every other time, you can trace it back to something going askew before what I hope is becoming a relationship becomes a relationship. I've got dinner and/or a movie two or three times down to a science, and then... there's "NOW WHAT?". And "NOW WHAT?" is where I reach the place in my brain where it says, "Caution! Synapse out! Road closed." I simply, flat out DON'T KNOW what to do. How do I say, "You know, I sure do like you a whole lot. I'd love to see where a relationship might go," without actually, you know, phrasing it like that? It's got to be almost comical to watch. I'll try and broach the subject, and my tongue will suddenly become paralyzed, and I'll choke on the words... my hands will twitch, and I'll break a sweat... I'll try and kick-start sentences with, "I, um... you know... ah... I... uh..." but nothing productive comes out... and so I finally abort the attempt. And later I'll just sit and stare at my shoes and wonder why. Well, that isn't completely true... I know "why." It involves never leaving the house for anything but school from 7th grade until the Austria trip (the reason for that being not quite making it from Orangedale to Tonalea soon enough for the formation of cliques, which seems to occur at some point in 1st grade, and the hi-jinks that ensued), but that's a reason, not an excuse. I have no excuse for not being able to overcome it... for Pete's sake, I'm 23 now. It's like I described it, though... I get to a certain point, and that piece is just... missing.

I wish I could go back in time to when I was in 8th grade or so and just kick the shit out of myself, and yell, "Get a fucking life already! You avoiding lunch recess by grading tests for the English teacher is not going to help you 10 years down the road!" (Then, after I calmly explain how I traveled back in time, I'd tell me, "Yeah, in the future, you don't have that juvenile aversion to saying 'fuck'. Though you know you wanted to, but you'd say 'What the fudge?' and think you were all bad-ass." Then I'd probably punch me again for future embarrassment at the hands of those who say, "Whooah! Don't swear around Cliffy, he finds it offensive!" Yeah. Surprise! That really hurt.)

I can say, though, that I'm very happy to see my brother is not thus afflicted. While I was housesitting last week, he came in one day and said he was going to ride over to Ricky's house... which was fine, until Ricky called from the hospital and wanted to know if Zach was home. So I called his cell, and it turns out he rode over to another friend's house, a friend who is a girl, whom he often asks me to get off the office computer for (AOLIM is free, compared to him going over on his cell minutes, and AOLIM is private, compared to having to use the office phone since I have yet to get around to buying a $5 cordless phone like he's asked for).

*sigh* The bad thing about my blog is, I want to pour out my soul like this more often, and I hesitate, because EVERYone I know has access to it now. Even my dad; I gave him the link to the photo album, and all he has to do is backtrack to the main page and he'll find the link to here. (Though I doubt he's that curious... though saying that is solely intended to elicit a response from him if he's reading this.) But this is my weak form of living on the edge. Risk-taking for me, in my little insulated environment, is expressing my true feelings. (Which, I'll note, I'm feeling like doing tonight. If I don't ask, I'll never know. So what if it's practically cut-'n-pasted from the paragraph above?)

I look at my possessions, and I feel like I'm holding a golden box in my hands that, when the lid is opened, is revealed to have nothing inside of it. I have no substance in my non-work life. If I could just clip a piece of my swagger from my at-the-track persona and apply it to my at-home life, I might be on to something.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat cherry tomatoes and watch Iron Chef.

Bowling

Got another set of pics of Defense's puppies, so I added a few of them to the Gallery. Click here

(...and, as always, if you haven't seen the new Gallery yet... well, you know.)

Oh, and my brother started his own blog. Well, actually, he started it a year ago, posted one time, and forgot about it, until I brought it up the other day. *shrug* Now he's posting twice a day. He named it... wait for it!... ZandlBlog, which is his usual screen name followed by "Blog." I haven't the faintest idea where he got the idea for that title from. *cough* Oh well. It's better than its old name, "A Day in the Life of Zandl," which for about a year was all it was: a day in the life of Zandl.

Just since I know he's going to read this.... he needs to add a 'Comments' feature. I'm sure he knows how, but just because I feel like giving my fingers more of a workout... on the Dashboard page, click the little blue cog under "Change Settings," then follow the instructions. I mean, you WOULD follow the instructions, if you needed to know how to do it, which he doesn't. (*grin*)

If you're thus inclined, you can go to his site here. You might note that his account of the cat-food-for-profit story sounds a lot like mine, just with reversed pronouns.

Bottled by the Good Guys at Kalil?

Huh. Took a break from Audioblogging for a few days. I guess when you're housesitting for your parents, laying around, with naught to do, interesting things to say don't tend to come to mind.

So I spent some time adding stuff to the Gallery. I think it's at a good level of stuff for the moment, unless the urge strikes me again. Anyhow, I added a bunch of pictures to the Euro Trip gallery, as well as an old trophy presentation to the Trophies pics. Go see already...

Let's see... interesting things... uh, Friday night, Zachary and I went to visit his friend Ricky at the hospital. (He wrecked on his bike and obliterated a wrist. "Two pins and a plate!" he repeated often, assisted in his foggy mood by morphine.) Anyhow, what was interesting was, as Zach and I crossed the emergency-room driveway, I saw someone who might have been Ashley coming out of the ER, looking not too pleased with the world. We were going in opposite directions, though, and I wasn't sure enough to venture a "Hey." Anyhow, tonight I'm sitting here editing my page, and she comes online and asks, "Were you at or near the Scottsdale Osborn ER last night around 7:45?" What do you know? It's a small world after all, I guess...

Oh, oh, I know! I paid Zachary $5 to eat a Pounce soft cat treat. Hah! Something interesting DID happen tonight!

We were wondering if they did, in fact, taste like Tantalizing Tuna. I said, "I will so pay you $5 if you eat one of these." I brandished the cash and laid it on the counter. I picked out a tan-with-turquoise-stripes fish-shaped piece and handed it to him. As he filled a glass of iced tea, I told him, "No popping it in then swallowing it like a pill. I want to see chewage."

So in it went, and he chewed it really quickly four or five times... then his face kinda wilted, and he froze. I told him to open his mouth, and there it was, munched up in all its glory. It was more than his taste buds could take, though -- he lurched over to the sink and puked.

And puked.

And gagged some, and puked.

"Nastiest thing I've ever tasted in my life!" he wailed. Best five bucks I ever spent. *grin* I offered him $20 on the spot if he would try a piece of a different flavor and tell me if there was a difference. He passed. Guess it WAS that nasty.

Mike Tyson is Phoenix too!

Well, I redid my page. Again. Again. Actually, I just went through and put on the finishing touches I'd wanted to do in the first place, and added a half-dozen more pictures from the kennel since we figured out how to email them from my sister's phone to my computer. (If all else fails, read the instructions, eh?)

Anyhow, I made smaller thumbnail GIFs of all the pictures, instead of just being lazy and making my thumbnails nothing more than the whole picture displayed in a tiny box. I'm sure those of you on dial-up connection will appreciate the difference.

If you haven't looked at it yet, go see it! I'm awful proud. Though sometimes I'll lose focus and wonder why I spend hours working on a page most people might look at once, when I finally finish I feel good about it. It's THERE, to be SEEN, and *I* did it. Woohoo.

Where the heck does everybody go on the weekends?

My first test post with Audioblogger.

I've found that it won't index right on my blogger profile without any text, so I'll come back through occasionally and add a little title to it.

Oh, I've been busy...

Let's see. First off, I signed up for Audioblogger. Many's the time I'm driving around town or sitting at the track, and a thought strikes me that I think I'd like to blog about. However, by the time I get home, the moment has passed. Problem solved! They made Audioblogger a free service, so I'm giving it a spin. I call a phone number, enter my info, and record a short message, and within 5 minutes (they claim), it'll be saved to my site as a new post containing an MP3 of my phone message. I think this'll work out to be plenty cool. Look for me to save a message here later as a test.

Next... I totally revamped TFGWeb. I went through and deleted all the dead links off of the erstwhile old page, then I moved it to its own new URL, and in its place I put in a photo album of sorts. I've had all these pictures laying around on my server for a while, and I've been wanting for a while to create some sort of directory, or album, or what-have-you, but at the same time I'd all but given up on completely restoring the old page. So, I just sealed it for posterity and replaced it, basically. Anyhow, go over and give the album a spin, tell me what you think... I'd appreciate it. Link here or over there on the lefthand side of this page.

That's been pretty much it. I'm just glad I got all those pictures organized, finally. That's been one of those things I just keep putting off.

Do you ever just sit and read through the blogs of complete strangers? I've wasted an hour of prime nap time this afternoon catching up on some of my randomly linked blogs from my Blurb page. Stevan from the UK is still as spontaneously funny as ever. Here's a couple of samples:

My cup runneth over
They have solved the problem of the coffee maching only dispensing half cups of brown stuff that looks something like coffee. Smaller cups! What an inspired piece of lateral thinking.
Stevan | Thursday, May 29, 2003 | comments(0)

Who's guffed?
So, there I was, minding my own business, buying a new pair of trousers this afternoon when I became aware of the person next to me wandering off. I paid this little or no attention until I was enveloped in a spreading, green, putrid cloud of noxious fumes. The dirty little sod had dropped one and buggered off leaving me to take the blame. Get some medical help mate! The assistant chose that exact same moment to come and offer to assist me, "Can I help you S... Oh my god who's farted?" She didn't stay very long, in fact she took one breath and scarpered, handkerchief clamped over her nose and mouth, eyes a-streaming, the curls dropping out of her hair, towards the ladies department where things, presumably, smell a little sweeter. From now on I shall be known in some parts of Guildford as the man who cleared the mens department in Gap.

Neveratoss is innocent!
Stevan | Tuesday, June 01, 2004 | comments(4)

Way back when, I commented on his page, and he posted me back. That was my first international blog communication. You can see that entry on this page, under the title "Blogsville Arizona", and you can get to the current page here.

I don't know what it is about this blogging thing that draws me in like that. I read about them in Newsweek about three years ago, and they'd correctly pegged it as "the next big thing on the Web." Go figure. I'm not usually one to get swept up in mainstream trends as such. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go reward my curiosity with a Vanilla Coke and listen to some legally-downloaded tunes on my iPod.

Editor's note: I own none of the aforementioned items. Not even, ah, legally-downloaded tunes. *cough*

Watched the last 3 episodes of Joan of Arcadia tonight. *sniffle* Shut up. It's my Tivo; I can cry if I want to. Although I'll admit I was mostly bewildered by the first 3/4 of the season finale... it got all weird and paranormal on me there, but they tied it together really well. My brother was over (more on that later) and I tried to explain to him the various plotlines and such as we watched. I then realized how wildly confusing the show had been throughout its run since last October. Everything would float along for four or five weeks, and then suddenly they'd have an episode where two or three people at once would have major changes in their storylines. Viewed as a whole, the show was actually pretty poorly written from a continuity standpoint. Yet, for some reason... I kept finding myself unable to delete it from my Record list.

Anyhow, I don't want to go too in-depth. Suffice it to say that until the 0:57 mark, I was worried that they weren't going to leave any loose ends untied for next season. Then Luke kissed Grace, which totally opens up a new avenue there. And then at the very, very end, a special someone walks into Joan's hospital room while she's asleep, which in itself reveals that she's not a hallucinating nutjob after all. Whew. Because for all the times I'd thought about getting rid of it, by the last minute of the season, I had decided I was really going to miss it if they didn't bring it back in five months.

(Editor's note: Funny. Reading over that last paragraph, I made the show sound a lot like a two-bit soap opera.)

I'm a The Shield devotee. (Yeah, juxtapose THAT with Joan of Arcadia.) During the show, they run incessant ads for the upcoming Season 2 of Nip/Tuck, of which I'd never even seen an episode of Season 1. Though I usually fast-forward through any commercials, I can still make out what they're advertising in most cases, and they run ads ALL the time for this show, seeing as how the two of them are FX's big guns. I was told that I ought to watch Nip/Tuck and see if I liked it, since I'm a fan of any good TV. Well, great. I'm hooked. I caught one rerun a couple of nights ago, and I was fighting down a lump in my throat by 40 minutes in, when one of the characters' romantic interests commits suicide by pills rather than wait out a death by cancer. I'm not sure exactly where in the season I jumped in, but I don't care. I'm in for the long haul now. There's probably four or five more reruns left before the new season starts, so I'll be readily acquainted with all of the storylines before the new episodes hit. I hereby duly give props...

PROPS: So, anyhow, thanks for getting me turned on to this show. It looks like a winner. (Furthermore, Tommy Boy and Black Sheep are NOT the same movie, in that Tommy Boy rulz and Black Sheep suxs. And that's all there is to say about that. "Speaking of no one's watching... zzzzip!" That's hi-freakin'-larious!)

My brother's asleep on the couch, since he still refuses to sleep on the guest bed THAT I PUT IN MY LIVING ROOM SPECIFICALLY FOR THE TIMES HE STAYS THE NIGHT since he's "afraid he'll roll out the window in his sleep." (If you've ever been in my apartment, you'll know why he fears this.) But, then again, it might actually be because the bed sucks. It's part of a two-bed set, a pair of twin beds I bought when I had a 2nd bedroom in Tucson. I never slept on either of them myself -- never had any reason to, I have my own bed, obviously -- but I never heard any complaints about them being uncomfortable whenever anyone stayed the night. Mark came down one time and spelled me at work for a whole week and never mentioned them being bad. Now, when I moved back up here, I went ahead and put one in that little alcove in my living room for whenever Zach wanted to crash at my place, and left one basically in storage at my parents' house, in what had been my sister's room. My dad took it to West Virginia with him for HIS 2nd bedroom in his trailer manufactured home, since I really had no need for it. Thus, I slept on it for seven or eight nights, and I mean to tell you, I've never been so sore after a night's sleep in my life. Seriously. I'll fall asleep on the couch often, and occasionally sleep there all night, and I'll wake up a little stiff and sore, but nothing that I don't walk out of in a few minutes. This bed was about like sleeping on a slab of marble. I even picked up a body pillow on the way back from Williamsburg after I'd spent one night in Wheeling and THAT didn't help either. Both shoulders, the back of my neck, and especially my hips... they'd be sore until noon every day. I had no idea all of my houseguests in Tucson had been sleeping on such a cursedly uncomfortable mattress.

So, anyhow, there that bed sits. But I may just leave it there after all. See, it's not technically IN my living room, according to the floor plan. As one-bedroom apartments go here in my complex, I could have one like mine, or I could have one with a patio and 50 sq.ft. less floor area. Let me stress indoor floor area... since we all know how much fun it is to sit outside in Phoenix at any point during any day between May 1st and Thanksgiving. *shrug* I guess if I were a smoker, or if I wanted to have a grill, I'd've had reason to consider it. But for me, the extra indoor room made more sense. They call it a "solarium", like I mentioned in the previous paragraph. It's about 12 feet long by 4 feet wide... probably 50 sq.ft. on the dot, if I measured it out. It's slightly offset from my living room, though there's no door or wall or anything, though there is a door to my bedroom. The washer and dryer are in a closet at one end behind the bedroom door, which for some reason has a big glass panel in it. Never been sure why to bother putting in a door if it's got a big window in it, but whatever. There's not a window in the other bedroom door.

Before my first dinner, I bought a king-size black sheet and artfully draped it over the bed, then lined up some pillows around the wall sides of the bed, and presto! It kinda resembled a couch, almost. I refer to it as "the nottabed" when it's dressed up as such. So I'll probably just leave it there, though it'll likely go unused. *shrug* Unless it's just me. I can't get my brother to sleep on it, and I'm leery of it after my bad experience at my dad's trailer house, so I have no idea if it sucks or not, to be honest.

The funny thing about my blog (aside from my lack of markers to let you know when I'm changing subjects) is that neither of the two things I've discussed so far were really what was on my mind. One of the big things is that my dad is in town for the next week-and-a-half. (*cough* Which is why Zach's over here tonight... and that's all I'll say about that.) Since he got here around noon today, that means he'll make a cameo appearance at the kennel in the morning, and I've oftentimes told of his propensity to come in there and find fault in everything we do, even if we tried extra-hard to make sure it was super-ship-shape before he got there. Last time he came, we thought we had our bases covered, but he deemed the compound "filthy" and set everyone to cleaning it in some aspect or another. That was when I'd finally had enough of his guff and confronted him the next morning about his management style, about how he NEVER praises us for things we do well and how we're forced to assume "no news is good news", in that if he's not bitching, everything must be all right. The only time we ever hear from him is if he finds something he doesn't like, and it seemed like the last time he came, despite our best efforts, he was on a mission to find something to holler at us about and flex his authority over us just to make himself feel better. (And yes, I actually worded it much like that. I've gotten better at expressing what I'm really feeling, consequences be damned.) For once, he seemed taken aback at what I was telling him. I'd complained before about his rough management style, how he only kept order by having everyone on constant fuck-up-and-get-fired notice, but he always dismissed me by saying, "You can't be their friend. You have to let them know who's in charge."

I finally managed to get him to understand my view on it: True, you can't be bosom buddies with them, but you can certainly try to work with them instead of lording over them with an iron fist. If somebody makes a first-time mistake, the proper response should be, "Okay, here's why we don't do this like that, and why we do it like this instead," rather than, "If that happens again, your ass is out the door!" I'm quite proud that we've gone since a year ago March since someone quit (and he couldn't handle the hours more than anything else, but didn't want to work for the paltry paycheck he received when I implemented the hours he asked for -- go figure), and since a year ago last February since I've had to fire someone, my sister's 15 minutes of unemployment six months ago notwithstanding. Even at that, the guy I terminated was back with the corporation in August in Wichita and has turned that franchise from red ink to black ink in 10 months. I never doubted his ability to manage a kennel; it was just that he wanted to be at the top of the corporate food chain here in Phoenix, and I wasn't planning on moving back to Tucson anytime soon. It got ugly, and public: He looked for a job with other kennels here in town for a little while and felt free to share the intimate details of our clashes. Thus, whenever people ask me, "Who's training for y'all in Wichita?" and I tell them, there's usually a blink, a blank stare, and then, "Ain't he the guy you run off back last year sometime?" and I affirm this, and my explanation is simple: "He's a good trainer, so long as we're 1,500 miles apart." :-)

So I got off topic a little. The boss'll undoubtedly be at the kennel tomorrow, and I just worry about what he's going to be looking to find. It's not like the place falls apart while he's gone -- it's just that if he's in a lousy mood, he will find something, ANYthing, to chide us about. Hopefully, however, he'll remember our (heated) discussion from two months ago, and try to focus on the larger picture at hand. Okay, sorry, we didn't sweep all the sand off of the cement slab where we park the truck. (That was his find-and-bitch last time.) But is there anything wrong with the dogs, how we're managing things, the consistency of our output? No. So instead of spouting off for 15 minutes about the dirty cement slab, using phrases like "This is terrible" and "This place would absolutely go to shit if I didn't pop in occasionally" (yes... quotes), perhaps he could say, "The place is in good shape overall. You guys are doing a find job. But could someone please sweep off the parking slab? I'd prefer it to be clean."

'Course, then I'll fly off the handle and ask him, "Why the hell does the place where we park the truck have to be swept clean of sand, which by the way is tracked onto the slab from, oh, I don't know, OUR DIRT DRIVEWAY?!" .... Actually, no, I wouldn't. But that's certainly what I was thinking two months ago.

So, you see, a little prodding, and it all tumbles out. I've just got things on my mind, but this is different from the Tucson-era "Everything Sucks" type of things on my mind. I'm approaching territory which I don't know my way around in, and it makes me nervous to no end that I'll end up making an inexcusable error and fall back to square one again. It's one of those things that makes me wish that when I'd turned 18, or 21, or wherever you want to place the road sign that says, "Welcome to Adulthood -- All trucks must exit at scales, 1/2 mile", somebody would've given me a manual entitled "The Rest Of Your Life: A Guide." Just something organized for quick reference, so I could have it on hand to say, "Oh, I'm at this point in this situation. Let's see... pages 37 and 62." To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I've been 23. Were I to wake up one day and find myself suddenly 18 or 20, I could say, "Well, heck, we tried to handle that this way and it didn't work, so this time let's try this." Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon. One could make the argument that I could use those past experiences to influence how I should handle similar situations now, but some things just don't relate. I've got options open to me now that weren't available just two years ago, and I mean that in every aspect of my life, whether it be at work, or dating, or family responsibilities, or anything under "4) Other". Though back in school it seemed like there would be no end to the first-time-for-everythings, you thought once you passed that magical golden mile marker into Adulthood, you'd have it all figured out. And yet, here I am, nervous as I was when I was about to take my first scooter ride or bike ride or look-out-I'm-driving ride, or when I set foot at Supai or Coronado or ASU for the first time, or whatever else have you. I'm driving along the road of life slowly, trying to make sure I don't miss an off-ramp I was supposed to take, but I fear if I go too slowly, I'll get to the off-ramp and find it closed 5 minutes ago, much like 50% of the times I've tried to get on the 51.

Oh, man. It's 2:30 in the morning. You can tell when I'm starting to get groggy because my metaphors start flowing like water. I'd say "like a fine wine," but I don't want to give the impression that I'm drunk. I'm just locked into the zone. When I get a good flow going, it's hard to stop. I'll just go until I'm otherwise distracted or until I start dozing off in my chair. Like now.

Now that it's been over a month ago, the "Sweet 'n Sour" story seems a lot less compelling. But I said I'd tell it, so here goes.

So I was at Bamboo Club, the super-trendy Asian-cuisine experience. Not the nice-enough one at Pima and the 101, but the two-story beast at Tatum and the 101 up north. There's rave music blaring from the speakers, and barely enough light to see your way around in. I mean, I don't like bright light too much, but I had to huddle close to the candle on the table just to read the menu. Anyhow, with our appetizer, the waitress brings a little two-sided serving thingy with what is obviously soy sauce and a second condiment which I took to be, after a precursory visual inspection, sweet and sour sauce. I even opened the lid and took a sniff... nothing seemed out of place, although the serving spoon was about as big as one of those sample spoons you get at Cold Stone Creamery.

Pleased that we had gotten sweet and sour sauce to go with our coconut shrimp, I loaded four miniature spoonfuls upon my tasty crustacean. I popped it into my mouth in one shot, and then came to the cold realization that it wasn't sweet and sour sauce, but rather Thai chili paste.

In the brief moments that my tongue was numb before the shock wore off, I managed to swallow the shrimp whole and quietly say, "That's not sweet and sour sauce." That was the last complete sentence I put together for five minutes. After I drank my water and my soda, I tried anything and everything to stop the burning. I even ate a piece of the cucumber garnish from the shrimp plate. Our waitress happened by and I begged in poor sign language for some more water, and pointed at the tub of Thai chili paste. "Oh, yeah, that happens a lot," she said, trying to be reassuring. Naturally, being an Asian-food place, they didn't keep milk on hand, which would have been the obvious answer. So I sipped ice water for 10 or 15 minutes until my mouth finally returned to normal.

So, anyway... yeah... now I know. Although I still can't figure out why they'd bring by 2 cups' worth of Thai chili paste when you're really only going to need no more than a half-teaspoons' worth for ANYthing. Gehh.

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There, so now that wasn't so difficult to do. I dunno. I just have to be in the right frame of mind to bang out a blog entry. I had also told someone that I was going to do a list of movies I liked, which I'll get to in the next paragraph, since this paragraph isn't about that. What I WILL tell you in this paragraph is that I plan to -- gasp!-- partially revamp my main page. I know! I haven't honestly updated there in a year and a half, the pre-blog pseudoblogging at the top of the page notwithstanding, and even THAT hasn't seen any action since this blog really got off and running a year ago. Anyway, I'm going to leave the old page intact, save for going through and fixing those ugly X'es where the old GeoCities code is still in. AT the top, though, I'm going to use it as a picture-gallery companion to this blog. I want to put in all of my trophy pictures, a few of just myself my mom took to run out the film in her camera a few weeks ago (one of which turned out really neat, so I scanned it), and also finish that gallery of receipts from the CHS Jazz Band's Europe trip seven years ago. I'm actually looking forward to doing that; there's a certain zone I get in when I get down 'n dirty with HTML work. It's akin to the zone I get in when I'm painting pottery at As You Wish.
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Okay, so I went to see Van Helsing last week, and the person I went with thought it was "great!!!", but I was more nonchalant about its greatness.

"It was okay," says I. "Not as bad as some I've seen, but not fantastic."

"Oh, come on! You sound like my brother! 'It was okay, it was all right...' Did you like it, or didn't you?"

"Well, I'm just saying I wasn't blown away, is all. It was no Lord of the Rings, if you want me to compare it to something I really liked. I just tend to save my superlatives, so that when I say 'Wow!!', you'll know it's something special." We progressed into a discussion about what movies we've really enjoyed, and I said I'd compile a list of movies which I used my precious superlatives on, so, here it be.

At the top of the list: The Matrix, or, more properly, Matrix I. Just the first one. The trilogy, on a whole, would probably be somewhere on the list, as is the case with #2 on the list, but the original Matrix is my favorite movie of all time until further notice. Just everything that went on within the film, all the subplots, all the concepts which made my brain hurt just trying to wrap my mind around them... it was phenomenal. Let's not even get into how the camera techniques changed the way action films were done. See the rest of the list for more on the rest of the trilogy.

#2: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, or, more conveniently, LOTR III. This is the only film I've ever gone to see three times in the theater. Normally, to be honest, if I'm not super-excited to go see it, I'll wait for the DVD. (I didn't see the first two in the theater, for example, though I did watch them before #3.) While I was stupefied by the Matrix, I was transfixed by LOTR3. The first time I went to see it, I cried like a baby for at least the last 30 minutes. The second time, I still shed some tears, and the THIRD time I still had a sizeable lump in my throat -- even though by then I could practically recite the dialogue. I haven't been affected by a movie like that since Rudy.

Now, those first two, I don't figure I could do justice to how I feel about them by just going on and on about how good they are. It's that deep. The rest of these, I could probably convey it if I typed long enough, but I don't want to bore. So, I'll keep it brief. The following are not in any particular order, nor do I offer any guarantees that I remembered each and every movie I spent a superlative on.

• Matrix, M. Reloaded, & M. Revolutions: aka: Matrix I, II, & III, or just the Matrix trilogy: As aforementioned, Matrix I is my #1 to date. Reloaded is probably somewhere between 10 and 15, partially on the strength that it was such an anticipated sequel that they could have tried to convince me that the Matrix was actually run by a super-race of Spanish-speaking poodles from Chile, and I might've bought it. It was better than most, but it started to unravel just a hair towards the end, when he met the Architect (whom I kept expecting to tell Neo exactly what blend of secret herbs & spices went into his Original Recipe). Then, when Revolutions stumbled into theatres six months later, everything kinda fell apart. We were introduced to all these new characters, most of whom were killed just after introductions. "Hi, I'm Niobe." "Hi, I'm Dave. *slice!* Gakk! Agh, machines!" Now, a disclaimer: I understood the ending. Since Neo was plugged into the Source, when Smith replicated himself into Neo, Smith thereby returned himself to the Source, and the Source terminated him and removed all of his replicates from the Matrix. Since Neo helped the Source eliminate this dire threat to its existence, the Source promised Neo they'd stop trying to eradicate Zion. So, there it is. I get it; I just don't necessarily like it. Don't ask what I'd suggest, since I don't know. It just doesn't sit too well with me.
• Lord of the Rings: etc., etc., and etc.: aka: LOTR I, II, and III, for the sake of time and space conservation: Now, this film followed a trajectory inverse to that of Matrices I, II, and III, in that it started kinda weak and obviously finished tremendously well. "Fellowship of the Ring" was good, yeah, but on its own, probably not even in my top 20. But it was good enough to warrant my rental of "Two Towers", which was considerably better, but still probably between, oh, 12 and 17 or so. And then... "Return of the King" came, and it was good. Good enough to bring the trilogy as a whole onto my Tops list. If the three films were all one 9-hour movie (that's about as long as it'd be, right?), you'd walk out of the theater thinking... well, first, "I can't feel my ass!", but secondly, "That was a great movie." I think they kinda had to sacrifice some continuity in #1 and a little of #2 to get us fully introduced to all the factions and characters who would make #3 such a stunning success. Good piece of work.
• Rudy: Football and father-son issues. How could this NOT tug on any guy's heartstrings? I've always said this is one movie which a guy will never be ashamed to admit he cried at. (Another of which, according to my dad, is Old Yeller, which I've never seen, though I know what happens, and I'm inclined to agree.)
• Blazing Saddles: My favorite comedy ever. You've probably heard of it, at least, if you haven't seen it: A Mel Brooks film, so you have to bring an open sense of humor. But if you weren't offended by it, you were probably laughing all the way through. I'd have to say it's got the most wordplay and puns per minute of any movie I've seen.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: You know, that might be "and the QUEST FOR the Holy Grail", but I can't remember specifically. You just have to put aside your concerns of anything making sense and enjoy. I'll spare you a cavalcade of quotes.
• Brassed Off!: I don't tend to go for movies that don't involve some strong aspect of comedy, fantasy, or sci-fi, but this is one of a handful of exceptions. (Another of which is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I highly recommend, unless you got up and walked out of Being John Malkovich like my dad did, in which case I'll tell you "don't bother.") Anyhow, Brassed Off centers around a coal mine in England and their brass band, and follows several of the members through their personal lives as they face the impending closure of their mine. I've seen it several times and I'm still fairly moved by it each time. It's got probably my favorite movie line to date in it, as well: Girl: "You want to come up for some coffee?" Guy: "I don't drink coffee." Girl: "I haven't got any."

So, that covers what of my top movies I can think of off the top of my head.

I mentioned that my dad left Being John Malkovich. He didn't, really: I'd rented it and he was at my apartment in Tucson, and he watched half an hour and decided it was "stupid" and went to bed. I thought it was all right, honestly. He and my mom DID get up and walk out of The 5th Element at the theater, though, several years ago, and on his advice I never bothered to watch it until last year, when I happened to catch it on Cinemax and wound up thinking it was a good movie. Again, not superlative-worthy, but I certainly wouldn't've walked out of the theater on it. To be frank, I probably wouldn't walk out on ANY movie, since, hey, I've already paid, so why bother? I mean, I was pretty tired of The Punisher by the time it blissfully ended, but I stuck it out. My dad, though... different story. And like I alluded to, he WOULD get up and walk out of Endless Sunshine. It's that kind of a movie. There's been one movie that I rented and didn't finish watching: Stuck On You. Geesh, I figured that was going to be a can't-miss laugh riot, and about 2/3 of the way through, I gave up hope and shut it off. And this was while I was at my dad's place in West Virginia, so it's not like I had a whole lot else to do with my evening, either. (True to form, he'd gone to bed 20 minutes into the movie, citing its "lack of humor." He's, ah, hard to impress.)
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So, anyhow... that's a month's worth of blogging jam-packed into one post. *shrug* What can I say? I just have to get into the right frame of mind.

*sigh*

I'm letting my public down. I'll try and get this done later. It's just one of those things that keeps getting shuffled to the bottom of my To Do list.

I know, I know. I still owe everyone a story about sweet and sour sauce. I'll post it tomorrow. Just wanted to tell anyone who's interested that I have Randy Johnson's perfect game on Tivo (I caught the re-broadcast today on Fox Sports Net). If you want a copy, let me know and I'd be happy to make one.

(By the way... looks like my blog is indexing correctly again. Blogger tends to post new site interfaces without working out all the bugs first, I've found. *shrug* Overall, it's a decent site, though.)

Well, I'm fixing to fly out of here in the morning. I'm still at my dad's place in West Virginia. Technically, he's somewhere between Beech Bottom and Wheeling. His physical address is within Wheeling's city limits by default since it's not within any of the other small towns in the mountains around here (my cell phone bill registers "West Liberty, WV" when I call his house, for example), but his post-office box, which is not far down the road, is in Beech Bottom. I dunno. There's lots of little townships floating around in the hills up here.

Let me start describing things for you. My mind is so full of all sorts of things I want to talk about, and this is probably going to get pretty wordy. I've been all over the map during this trip, and I've seen all sorts of countryside the likes of which I've yet to see before. So I'll start from where I started the trip... Monday morning, April 26th.

Sky Harbor is not a fun place to be at 7:30 AM on a Monday morning. It's got to be the busiest time for the airport, what with everyone starting business trips or heading home from a weekend's vacation. Our guy driving the shuttle from the travel agency just stopped in the right-hand lane of traffic and told us this was our stop; it would have been futile for him to try and pull in closer to the curb. So, traffic backed up behind us as we fumbled all of our luggage off of the shuttle bus (my dad had been in town for three weeks and we were flying to Kansas together). Then, we got to the ticket counter... and found that Dad had been placed on a flight four hours later than mine by his inept travel agent. Great. The Skycap got him a standby ticket, since the flight was oversold already, and sent all of our luggage through. We got to take the express lane through security since we were so late getting into the terminal after waiting for a new ticket, which was cool... there had to have been 1,000 people in line, and we blew right past. Shoes off, everything into a plastic tub, ooo-kay. I got that little nervous rush that I get every time I walk through those little checkers at the door at Fry's. I mean, I know I didn't steal anything, but what if they go off because of something else I'm carrying, and then I have to empty my pockets, and... so on.

We got to our gate with 10 minutes left in boarding. The attendant at the counter told us we basically had no chance of Dad getting on the flight, but she'd see what she could do. We made a quick contingency plan as to where I'd meet him at KCI when he finally got there, after I picked up the luggage for both of us that was already on the plane. Just as the lady was preparing to close the door, the attendant told us, "You're on. Here." -stamp, stamp- "Get in there. They're about to close up." We came to find later from the attendants on the flight that they had offered anyone willing to take one of the two later flights a $500 airline voucher, and one person in first class had accepted. They promoted someone from coach up there for free, but that was the only seat that had opened up. They gave it to Dad because he was the only single passenger looking to get on; there was a group of 3 and a group of 4 in standby as well, but we got the nod. Good for us.

The flight was uneventful, as were our first couple of days in Kansas. We drove around, rubbed elbows and shook hands, watched a few of the races at the National meet, which was our purpose of spending those first 6 days in Abilene. Then I got walloped with the flu. Wednesday night, we had driven to Wichita to watch a few races there. We've got a kennel there, which I may have mentioned before, and I'd never seen the facility. It's about 100 miles south of Abilene, and I felt fine all the way home from there. Then I wake up Thursday morning and I can't breathe. Well, I *could*... it just felt like I was holding a wadded-up towel in front of my face, and I was struggling to get air in. It got progressively worse throughout the day, and I suffered through the Hall of Fame presentations that night. Friday morning, I was in lousy shape... shivering, sweating, couldn't eat, couldn't drink. I got what medicine down I could, and thankfully by Saturday around noonish, I was starting to move a little again. My dad dragged me out of bed Saturday morning and made me go with him to McDonald's -- "It'll be good for you to get up and move around", and though I couldn't stand up straight without bracing myself against a wall, I ordered an extra-large Powerade, which suddenly looked very refreshing. I think that burst of electrolytes got me moving again, and by Saturday night I was feeling peachy. We flew out of there Sunday morning on a brand-new airplane. It was from a new Brazilian company called Embraer, and they said this particular jet had only been in service two weeks. Whoo. The pretzels were still fairly nasty. We landed in a glum, rainy Pittsburgh and drove over to Wheeling in his truck, which had been parked in long-term for so long they didn't have it listed in their computer.

My dad's trailer had been locked up tight since April 9th when we got here on May 2nd. The air reeked of stale cigarette smoke that had leeched out of everything in the trailer in his absence, and all Sunday night I couldn't breathe. Cigarette smoke gets to me anyway, but with the extenuating factors of my recent flu and the concentrated nastiness of it, it really knocked me out. That, and I was fighting the Sasser worm. My dad never set his virus program to update its definitions, and also never applied any of the Microsoft patches the computer downloaded. Then, he left it connected when he left, so there it sat. The worm just walked right in and set up shop. It took a few hours, but once I finally figured out what to do, I obliterated it. (When you connect to the Internet, the worm multiplies itself 128 times and each instance creates a random IP address to try and send itself to. Once they're all done, the worm shuts the system down, sooo... what little you could get done with those other programs sucking up your bandwidth would be terminated anyhow. So, I called my brother and had him print out and fax me the Symantec pages on it, and I got to work.)

Monday morning I set out on my grand journey to Williamsburg, Virginia. Our trainer up here lent my dad his pickup, and I thus took my dad's pickup on the trip. I'd printed out the map before I left, made reservations at the Patrick Henry Inn, had everything set up. Looked to be about a six-and-a-half-hour trip on paper. Well, come to find out that Mapquest sent me down the route between the Pennsylvania border and Richmond, Va., that approximately 78% of the population of the Eastern Seaboard drives on during the weekday. Goody. So, the trip took 10 hours. It was a heckuva beautiful drive, though. I've always liked driving places I've never seen before, and this trip was flush with gorgeous countryside. Above all else, I was struck with the loud greenness of everything. You just don't SEE that in Arizona. So, it was all right, even though it took a while. I had my CDs and plenty of refreshments. Finally got to Williamsburg around 7:30, gave Lindsay a call, drove over to her place. She'd told me her address, but when I tried to Mapquest it, it wouldn't come up. She said the development was too new to register yet. She wasn't kidding. The first two streets were nothing but foundations and frames. When I did get to Burgundy Road, the street sign was posterboard stapled to a 2x4. Nice neighborhood, though... at least it looks like it'll be when they finish it. It was cold and drizzly, so she gave me the driving tour of William & Mary, which was really neat, seeing all those austere historical buildings. Back at her place, we played a game which I can't remember the name of, but involved these little cardboard tiles, and you tried to build cities out of them, and... ahhh... I can't remember the name. Kind of a cross between Risk and Scrabble. Sort of. But it was a blast. Rolled out of there at 11:30 and... the whole city was pitch black. I mean, when she said stuff closed early there, she was serious. I thought for a minute there'd been a power outage the minute I walked out of her front door, until finally I saw a distant glow... a 7-Eleven. THAT was a relief, because I needed a soda. They're apparently truly all open 24 hours, even in a roll-up-the-streets-at-dark town like Williamsburg. Went back to the hotel room, got engrossed in the Wings-Flames game, which proceeded to head to overtime scoreless. Calgary finally scored with less than a minute left. Woohoo! Go underdogs!

I had figured to get up around 9:30, catch Lindsay for breakfast, and sightsee some on my own around the town. Faced with the daunting prospect of another 10-hour drive, though, I decided to skip the tourism. Besides, someone had awoken me at 6:30 AM pounding on my door. BLAM BLAM BLAM! I stumbled over and I could hear someone quietly shouting (if such a thing is possible) in the hallway. "Amy!!" BLAM BLAM! "The key won't work! Let me in!" BLAM BLAM!! I peeped out of the peephole (can you "look" out of a peephole? I think they'd've called it a "lookhole" if you could), and there was a guy holding an ice bucket out there. I took a deep breath, and in my best basso, I rumbled, "Wrong... Door." *grin* He jerked his hand back, kinda looked around, then realized that, yeah, he was one door too far over. He went one to my left, and I heard the lock click as he put his electro-key in. *shrug* Don't know if he forgot his glasses, was drunk, or what. The doors WERE fairly close together, though.

Anyhow, so I met Lindsay at Mama Steve's Pancake House, and I had creamed chipped beef over biscuits. That was quite tasty, and it seemed somewhat indigenous, too. I'd wanted to try something local. The biscuits were fresh, and the sauce was thick and hearty. Got on the road afterwards at about 11:00. Managed to hotfoot it through the DC area just before rush hour hit, which saved me some time. Rolled back into my dad's driveway at 8:30. It was great fun, though, just being out on the open road. I went through this massive tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike... the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel. Just a whole lot of grand, sweeping countryside, a lot of places I'd never seen before.

My dad's address is 118 Callie Drive. The guy who owns the land subdivided it into two houses -- his own, and a trailer he rents out. When he tried to get electrical service for the trailer, the city told him it needed its own physical address, so the ruts in the ground that lead to what is now my dad's driveway became Callie Drive, named for his mother. It's literally two ruts in the ground -- not even a gravel or dirt road. Right through the grass behind Russ's house. Dandelions grow thick in between the two tire tracks, why, I don't know. North Fork Short Creek runs by in front of my dad's yard, about 50 yards from his front door. He's got a great spread up here -- I call it "trailer", because it resembles one, but in reality it's a manufactured house. It's about as big as a good-quality two-bedroom apartment, if all the rooms were strung end-to-end instead of being in a cluster. He's quite up in the hills; no cell phones up here. It's 10 miles from anything retail -- save for the Domino's Pizza down at the eastern end of NFSC Road. Yeah. Weirdest damn thing. It's literally 15 minutes from any other sort of retail thing, halfway up this mountain, and then... there's a Domino's Pizza. And they deliver. Dad had it once and said it was terrible, so we didn't try it while I was here. He has a tendency to not give anything a second chance. Heh... don't mention Boston Market in his presence. Eleven years ago, he gorged himself on food from there and got sick, and blamed it on the "rotten" food. That's been one of the nicest things about living on my own these past five years -- eating at Boston Market whenever I damn well please. I love their creamed spinach.

The area up here is really in decline, in general. The major industry up here was steel manufacturing, and when the steel mills started to close down a few decades ago, no new industries really popped up to pick up the outflow of workers. There's scores of deserted buildings around here, especially downtown near the racetrack in Wheeling. The racetrack itself is actually on Wheeling Island, in the middle of the Ohio River between West Virginia and Ohio. To get there you can either come across on the big interstate bridge and wind your way through a bunch of surface streets, or you can disregard the 2-ton limit on the 1850's-era suspension bridge and come across on that. (Literally. It was rebuilt in 1856 after being destroyed in a fierce storm and has stood ever since.) The island is only about a mile wide by three miles long or so. The racetrack is in the very southern tip of it. The big casino, which has made Wheeling into the best track in the country, is on the inner-island side of the track. They're connected, but worlds apart. The track has been here a while, but when you step into the casino, you're transported to Vegas. On a whim, while touring the facility with my dad before dinner on Wednesday night, I plopped down at a dollar slot machine and fed in $20. Gradually, I went up and down until I was at $28. "How far should I go?" I asked my dad. I hit "Bet 2 Credits" one more time, and it spun and spun and... Bar, Bar, Bar. Just single bars, but still, a look up said "Pays 10 to 1." So I was at $26, and I won $20, and up came "Credits: $46." I almost pulled a bicep hitting the Cash Out button. I know when my lucky number comes up, THAT's how far I should go.

Anyhow, the week has floated on by. Just a lot of sleeping and laying around on my part. It's been really nice not having to use my brain for much of anything. I think that's the point of "vacation", though... to vacate. But I'm looking forward to being home. I've had my fill of small towns. This has been a nice change of pace, staying in Abilene and Wheeling for a couple of weeks, but neither is a place I'd like to move. They're nice enough now, but give me that Phoenix winter any year.

I'm at my dad's place in West Virginia. My head is just SO full of stuff to write about... but I don't think I'll get to it tonight. Maybe tomorrow when I've naught else to do. But I haven't forgotten the blog. It's 1:40 AM here, already... I've just been chitchatting, and the time's slipped away.

Hmm... well, that story's a-gonna hafta wait. I haven't even packed yet, and I leave on my 2-week-long vacation in 8 hours. I'm sure I'll post from various stops along the trip, since I won't have a vehicle on this trip. At some point I'll tell the embarrassing story of the sweet and sour sauce, though, trust me.

"That's not Sweet & Sour sauce!"

I was going to write this tonight, but it sure got late fast. I'll pound it out tomorrow (Sunday); if that topic doesn't have you interested, well, then, you don't have to check back.

Okay, everyone who's attending... so, the dinner is this coming Saturday at 7:00 pm at my place. If you need directions, just email me or comment to me or whatever, and I'll supply.

Just a refresher: the gate code at my apartments is #9999 (as in, pound-9-9-9-9). You'll need to know that to get in if you don't remember it from the last time. Not like it's a big secret or anything, though...

I think I've figured out how to get my mail while I'm on my trip. However, if it fails to work, I've secured a new Hotmail address just in case. It's xlvi46@hotmail.com, and kudos to the first person who figures out what it means.

Anyway, hopefully I'll see a bunch of you Saturday...

It's rarely as dark as I make it out to be. I guess I just needed some communication with friends. I've been talking with several people tonight, and I feel better just for catching up with people I haven't talked to in weeks.

I'm still at my parents' house. I'm fixing to head home. Sonic's been closed for half an hour, so I guess I'll swing by Chez Jacque dans la Boîte there on 48th and McDowell and grub up. They're open 24 hours, you know.

It's times like this that I wonder if all my previous efforts are worth anything. I have no direction, no future. I'm tired and worn out, and for what end? What do I do that a hundred other people can't? I don't know. Uselessness is a very empty feeling.

I figured since I was making the rounds and officially posting invitations to my next dinner (Saturday, April 17th), I probably ought to slap this blog up here at the top, and tell you to scan down about 6 posts to see the menu. I'll say again that if anyone has any special requests, let me know. I like a challenge. I pulled off fried okra last time; ANYTHING's possible.

I must be getting desperate, because I caught myself looking at gastric-bypass surgery websites today. Obviously, that would make sense if I were filthy rich, but I don't have that kind of money to spend. So I guess I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. I'm going to do my best to limit myself to eating out 5 times a week. That's one for Sunday afternoon when I'm at Apache, two for the 2 nights I do Phoenix, and two for some other times during the week. That may still sound like a lot, but it's better than the 9-10 times I'm averaging right now. And while, yes, there's ways to eat out and still eat healthy, unfortunately it's farr too easy to just go to Sonic and eat the food I love instead. So this will be the starting point.

Five times is a cutback. It's not tremendously drastic, but it's not cold turkey, either. I've got so much low-fat food in my pantry just waiting to be cooked, yet I can't resist the urge to pull into Del Taco on the way home instead of eating intelligently at home. I can have two cups of Insta-Ramen for about 70 cents and be just as full as I'd be if I dropped $10 at Sonic. It's the truth.

I need to do this. I need some direction in my life. I'm not depressed, really, but I don't have ANYthing to keep me moving forward right now. I need something to do, so I might as well make an attempt to get healthy while I'm at it. And I'm posting it on the blog so I'll have some reason to keep to it, too, since if I just try and tell myself I'll do it, I can cheat and the onl;y person I have to answer to is myself, and I can ignore myself rather easily.

What got me going on this? I don't know. I've gained weight again... I'm back up to around 288 instead of 280, so obviously I'm not doing something right. I want to someday be below 200, but we'll see. I don't expect that to happen anytime within the next year or so, but that's a goal I'd love to achieve before I turn 26.

*sigh*

I dunno.

My brother wanted to go see Dawn of the Dead, so I offered to take him Saturday night. Tonight, he told me, "Uhh, some of us are going to the movies Sunday," so he doesn't want to go Saturday, too.

I guess he's growing up. He's got friends, and they go out and do stuff now... He used to jump at the chance I might take him to see a movie, let alone an R-rated one my mom didn't know we were going to see (Matrix Reloaded, for one).

I'm proud of him, that he's getting out and devloping social skills I never bothered to develop until it was too late. Yet at the same time I feel a Depressed coming on. I guess I didn't think I'd be something-suddenly-came-upped by my baby brother this soon. I'm afraid to blink, because I fear if I do, he'll be asking me to score a keg for a party for him and his buddies on Senior Ditch Day.

The air is replete with orange blossoms right now. I don't want to make it seem unpleasant, but I'm literally assaulted with odor every time I get out of my truck or my apartment. It's even stronger at my parents' house, since a lot of the houses over in that area have citrus trees. (Though, naturally, we were stuck with a grapefruit tree, that every year produces enough fruit to feed Liechtenstein for a month... which would be groovy, if I liked grapefruit. Why couldn't we have bought a house with a Fruitomic Punch Fruit Gushers tree?) Anyhow, it's a nice smell. It'll wear thin by its end, but for right now it's a pleasant change from smog.

Oh, man, Gushers... I hoard them every time they go on sale at Fry's. About twice a year, they'll go for 4/$5.00 instead of $2.29, and I'll stock up. It's not like they're going to go bad or anything. Then I'll eat a bunch, get tired of them, then a few months down the road I'll be reorganizing my cabinet and I'll find them, and I'll start all over.

I never intended for this to be solely a rant blog, so I'm glad I've been having an OK go at it. I may not come in here and blabber as much, but I'm sure it's much more pleasant for my readers. The dogs are doing okay, nothing spectacular, but pleasantly consistent. Things are just bobbing along.

I bought another body pillow tonight. These things are awesome. See, when I sleep, I'm usually splayed out all over my bed, and I've always had a hard time getting comfortable. Well, since I started accumulating pillows, I've never been more comfortable. The count is now 13 pillows to go along with my 2 comforters.

I have:

• 5 square pillows (about 1' by 1')
  
• 4 rectangular pillows (the "regular kind", about 2' by 1')
  
• one big "reading" pillow, the kind with little arm rests attached to it
  
• two 3' body pillows
  
• and the pièce de résistance, the new one I bought tonight, a 4'-long body pillow.

I'm quite pleased. I don't have a bed; I have a nest. I don't even sleep under both comforters... one is usually wadded up and used as a makeshift pillow.

Know what's ironic? When I don't have to be up in the morning, I almost always fall asleep on the couch anyway.

You know why The Daily Show is the best show on television? Because it makes me laugh out loud at 12:45 in the morning in my empty apartment.

They had mentioned on last night's (Wednesday night's, basically) show that Bishop Desmond Tutu had been scheduled to appear next week, but that MSNBC had told Tutu that if he made the appearance on The Daily Show, he wouldn't be allowed to appear on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. (For anyone who watches the show with any regularity, you'll know that MSNBC is one of The Daily Show's favorite targets... not that they're not an EASY target, mind you.)

Tonight (Thursday night... by the time you read this, it'll be Friday), Jon Stewart led the show with the news that MSNBC had told the Bishop that it would indeed be okay for him to appear on The Daily Show. Stewart asked if that was any proper way to start a feud, then he said:

"I'd wanted to record the episode of Hardball where Chris Matthews said it was okay, but my Tivo didn't record the program. It wouldn't record it, not because of technical difficulties, but rather it wouldn't record MSNBC due to moral reasons. Yes... my DVR drew a line in the sand."

It's great. Two or three times a show, I'll bust out laughing before I can catch myself. If you're not watching it, you're missing a lot of great political and media satire.

I may start posting more often. I know I always claim I'm going to, but this time I'm serious. I may do more posts like the one immediately below (the Chet Anekwe quote) and less of the pouring-out-my-soul novellas. And if you haven't read about the next dinner, see two posts below.

"The most important component of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made."
-- Chet Anekwe

This is to be a quick blog, as I'm just waiting for tomorrow morning's workout sheets to print. I had gone to bed without preparing them, so it's a fortunate thing I happened to spring awake here ten minutes ago realizing I'd forgotten them.

Anyhow, I'm planning my next dinner for Saturday, April 17. I'm extending a blanket invitation to anyone who's interested. Let me know if you're coming via whatever contact medium suits you best... email, text msg, post in the Forum, call, fax, carrier pigeon... I'm not choosy.

So far, the fledgling menu is as follows:

• Pasta Salad of some sort
  
• Brookville Corn - a nifty homemade cream-and-corn dish
  
• Broocoli Cheese Soup, since it kinda sucked last time
  
• Brown Sugar Butternut Squash
  
• yeah, the Creole shrimp & sausage linguini thing
  
• Raisins & Rice Pudding
  
• and Roasted Applesauce for dessert.
  
• Oh yeah, and a couple loaves of my bread.
  

That's obviously not nearly enough food, so if anyone has any suggestions, PLEASE let me know. I'd love to make a chicken dish of some sort.

I'll put the alert out (I texted a few people earlier) as soon as I've settled on a more definite menu. But I'm already getting excited about it all. I LOVE putting these things on, and it's been far too long since my last one.

Well, since a few people told me how snazzy I looked, I finally scanned in the two pictures from August and September of last year. During the great blog drought, I won two trophies. Same drill: manually enter the URL in your browser bar.

http://tfg46.tripod.com/440-03.jpg
The August Stake was the Quarter Mile Challenge, wherein 1/4 mile equals 440 yards. JR's Georgia won it, though around the kennel she's better known as Georgia McPeach-Mee, the Haaaaard-Workin' Li'l Dog. No, we're not sure why either. She's our little kennel midget, and when she's on her game, she breaks like a rocket, which is necessary in the 440, since the box is placed right on the finish line and opens directly into the turn. Right after the break, they have to jack the box up and roll it off the track. (It, like the 770 below, isn't offered on a regular basis.) Anyhow, in the final, Jawwjuh-Peach drew the 8-box (you can just see the stripes peeking out from behind the victory satin that's draped over her tiny frame like a curtain), which is the furthest hole to the outside. She squirted right out and skated around trouble in the turn to win easily.

http://tfg46.tripod.com/770-03.jpg
The September Stake was the Marathon Challenge, over the 770-yard course, the longest distance currently run at Phoenix, and even at that they only run it during the Challenge anyway. So it's kind of a crapshoot, because you don't know how your dog's going to do until you enter them in the stake. Monk Rocks (pictured) only had one career win when I entered him on a hunch, and lo and behold, he snatched up a trophy. His performance in the Challenge was good enough to get him promoted to Wheeling when my dad opened up. They run 770's pretty regularly up there, usually one a day. Monky's doing all right for himself at the best track in the country.

So I'm gonna go back to my place and put those pictures back on the wall (I don't have a scanner at my apartment). In the meantime, I'll give you another photolink to look at:
http://tfg46.tripod.com/focacciaposter.jpg
That's from when I was in Austria with the CHS Jazz Band in the summer of '96. I found that poster when I was moving in to my apartment last April, and I scanned it in along with some ticket stubs and receipts from the trip. Maybe I'll delve into those more in a future post.

As advertised: the picture from the trophy presentation Friday night.

http://tfg46.tripod.com/tridist04.jpg

Ehh... Tripod. You have to enter that URL in your browser to see the pic; you can't simply click on the link, let alone I try and post the pic on here. They get touchy about remote access to image files on their servers. I know there's a way I can sign up to post pictures on here, since this is really the only site I use anymore.

It's been a... week. I won a trophy last night. More on that, and a pic from the trophy presentation, sometime within the week, or whenever I get the picture, whichever doesn't come first.

I also finally put a recent picture up in my Bookflap (link over there on the left), though that's not such a big deal since everyone pretty much knows what I look like anyway.

Okay, that's it. I haven't been moved to write too much.

Ping!

Things are looking up, all. Tonight, all of a sudden, my dogs decided they were tired of giving a lackluster effort, and we had four wins. Go figure. That's the way this business goes. I've been tearing my hair out for a week, trying everything I could think of to get them to fire up, and apparently all it took was me taking a day off.

Anyhow, I've been making a few efforts to get myself rolling again. I gave a call to my doctor's office, only to find that my doctor moved to Vermont last September. So, I got hooked up with a new doctor, and we had a lengthy getting-to-know-me chat today. And I feel like a weight has been lifted from my brain. That's honestly what it's felt like; like there was a grocery bag full of oranges hanging off of my brain stem, pulling down on my skull all the time. So I'm going back in a couple of weeks, and we'll chat some more. But I'm on the road out.

I'm going to write a word here that I have checked on to make sure it doesn't exist in Google.
sqzernhgjdkln46eljkfnwuiofkergfrg
I'd just like to see how quickly Google "spiders" my blog archives. I'm in there, but there's a decent-sized delay as to how quickly my page is updated. That word will give me something to reference it to.

Anyway... I think LOTR III is one of the best movies ever. Rare is the movie I can watch *3* times and still be on the edge of my seat for every action sequence, and have a lump in my throat for every emotional scene. Rudy is on there (geez... 8 times? 9?), along with Matrix I (four or five) and Brassed Off! (three). And LOTR III checks in at a butt-numbing (or, as in my case, coccyx-dislocating) three hours plus, too. Great movie. Great movie.

Admit it... you cried at Rudy. It's one of the only (if not THE only) movie guys will admit to crying at while in mixed company. Oh, wait... Old Yeller is on there, too.

'Course, I wellled up with tears when Joan and Adam Rove finally hooked up on Joan of Arcadia. Shut up. Don't knock it 'til you've watched it.

Hey, all. I'm at the helm of my new computer. I got my dad to front me some money so I could pay for it upfront, and we'll take it out of my check over the next few weeks.

I bought the basic model at Gateway. It's honestly all I need. I don't do anything tremendously fancy on here; just some browsing, some emailing, some occasional AIMing, and viewing the races at Phoenix via the streaming webfeed if I don't feel like going to the track.

Anyhow, one of the main reasons I bought it at Gateway was, they offered to "slave" my hard drive over to the new one if I purchased a new system there. I figured that would be cool; the thing was completely shut down, and I couldn't get it back on to access what files I wanted to save. Besides, I never had any complaints about the operation of my previous system, so I purchased the 310S without a monitor (my old one is working fine, thank you $150 much) or printer (ditto). And let's hear it for me remembering to save my cable modem driver CD and the Cox High-Speed Connection CD. That saved me a couple weeks of downtime.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. The guys in the service center took my list of what I wanted copied, and told me it'd be a few hours. After a while, I'd thought of a couple more things I wanted to save, so I gave them a call. The guy who answered said, "Oh, hey, Mr. Gray. I was just about to call you. We're all done." I asked him if they could still pull a few more things off of it for me, and he said, "Um, well, there's a problem."

Turns out my hard drive was DEAD dead. Or, as the receipt put it: "HD is clicking but not registering on BIOS. Slave of HD not possible."

SO, basically, I've spent most of the evening being pissed at myself. Doubly. Now, if I'd taken the old one in to get it fixed when I first started having problems last September or so, it would have been free. But I didn't get off my duff and find out when my warranty expired (as I mentioned previously, turns out I had a 3-year warranty, which expired just before this past Christmas). THEN, if I'd taken it in this year to buy a new one, like I was thinking about doing, SOMEtime before last Tuesday, they would have been able to pull my files off the old system, since it hadn't died yet.

I didn't have anything on there I can't live without; anything to do with the business, I do on my parents' computer at the office anyway. I had a few charts and such that I did here at home, but I had partial foresight in taking copies of those over to the office a few weeks ago when my computer got finicky about when it was going to print. Honestly, what I'm most upset about losing are my email address book, my Favorites folder (which I'm slowly replenishing as stuff comes to me), and my gargantuan spam filter list. Over the course of those 3 years, I'd accumulated a bucketful of phrases, words, and other things to watch for in spam that routed messages off into a separate folder I'd check once a week or so and delete the 176 messages in there. Coupled with my whitelist that saved messages from usual places like Top5 and stuff, it was a nearly flawless system (I'd get maybe one or two spams in my regular Inbox a week). Now I get to start from scratch.

Oh well. I was looking for a little excitement, something for a change of pace. Got my wish, I suppose.

It's a nice system. When I took the keyboard out, I noted it was smaller than my old one -- for starters, it lacks those stupid "Internet Dashboard" buttons all over the top of it. But for some reason, I'm flying over this thing. I don't know if it's the dimensions of it or what, if it's angled a little differently so as to promote aerodynamic movement of my fingers, but I'm typing like Tank at the controls of the Nebuchadnezzar.

Anyway, this has reshuffled my priorities a little bit. I'm going to have to put that new computer chair on hold and stick with my folding chair, back-paining as it may be. And another thing... if you're reading this, email me a message, so I can start to rebuild my Address Book. I'd appreciate it.

We're addressing my mad mood swings next week, too. Stay tuned for a week from today or so. Perhaps I'll post before then, perhaps not. Depends on how I'm feeling.

As I texted a few people earlier, "My computer's history like Crystal Pepsi." I'm back once again at the controls of my parents' computer, but this time out of necessity rather than just not wanting to be at my apartment. I've been having more and more trouble with it over the past few months, getting progressively more serious. Well, finally last night it just decided it was going to stop working. Outlook Express crashed, then Explorer crashed, and then Explorer crashed again. It went to a black screen and froze, so I tried to restart it, but it wouldn't turn back on.

I spent an hour and a half on the phone with the tech center, and I went through every possible checklist they could think of. I had the cover off of the tower, and I was moving little pegs back and forth... still nothing. As it turns out, my fan hasn't been working since I unpacked the computer last April from storage, and I didn't know it. Apparently, things have been overheating and malfunctioning, and since my warranty expired at the end of 2003 (of course!), I'd be on the hook for all repair costs. So I'm just going to buy a new one.

I can still check my email here off my parents' computer, since they have Cox too. And I can write to the website, if I feel up to it. However, I find myself increasingly suffering from severe bouts of doing-nothingness, so we'll see.

So much for tomorrow.

There's times when I feel like I'm in control of everything in my domain, when I feel like I'm where I want to be. I've got everything a young bachelor could want. And yet, there's times when I feel like I'm going to implode under the weight of everything out there. And the problem is, I find myself increasingly unable to reconcile the two.

I'm better off than I was in Tucson. I don't know how I survived without going nuts down there. Oh, wait... that's right... I DID go nuts. But anyway, where I'm at now is better than that, and I still feel like I've got nothing. I can't put my finger on it, but increasingly more often, I find myself zoning out, lost deep in thought over where I went wrong. Should I have stayed in school? Would I have met the girl of my dreams there? Would I have found some career path that would have given me years of exciting work days to look forward to?

No, strike that last one. I still love my job. I hate my home, is what the problem is. I stay at work longer than I ought to, just to avoid coming home to the cold, empty cavern that is my apartment. I find myself spending more and more time at my parents' house, finding excuses to come over... doing a load of laundry here and there, doing bookwork that doesn't need to be done, even (today) wanting to touch up what the car wash didn't catch on my truck, so I came over to borrow the Windex, justifying it by thinking I'd feel weird standing out in the parking lot of my apartments cleaning my windows. But I've got my own damn bottle of Windex, just the same as I've got my own damn washer and dryer, and 2/3 of the bookwork I do, I could just as easily do on my own computer. As we speak, I'm sitting at my parents' house doing this blog.

Why?

Why?

I don't know. My apartment just represents the abject failures of my life, even though it represents the successes I've had, too. But being there just reminds me how insignificant I really am in the grand scheme of the world.

Can you tell my dogs are running poorly? Am I ever this depressed when I'm having a good week? I need a vacation, but I don't have anywhere to go. Sure, going to SixFlags again would be fun, but it's awful expensive, and besides, given my luck, it'll be raining the whole time I'm there... again. I managed to make Tucson livable by living off credit cards, just buying whatever I wanted to make myself feel better for that small amount of time. Now I'm paying for it, literally. By my projections, I ought to have them paid off in four years, if I make no other major purchases during that time and my rent and utilities don't go up. I'm not behind on any of them, and I haven't used a credit card to buy anything in months, and even then it was some gourmet chocolates online but I refuse to use my debit card online for security reasons.

So I'm doing all right. Like I said, I'm so much better off than I was two years ago... why then, sometimes, do I still feel like I haven't gotten anywhere?

And just as there's times when I wonder if it's all worth it, there's times when I wonder why I could ever feel like that. I look at the kennel I'm in charge of, and I beam with pride. I can out-train anyone in the state, I feel, with maybe the exception of the two-headed monster that is my aunt and grandfather. (My dad also doesn't count, since he's not in the state, see.) I've finally been given the controls of a kennel with potential, unlike in Tucson, where I made the most of what I had, which wasn't much. The possibilities are limitless with this fleet I have now.

And though on an overall look, they're doing better than most other kennels we've ever had here, when they hit a cold spell like they're on now, I can hear the voices warming up in my head, asking me why they're running badly, why I can't seem to get them to snap out of it. I guess that's a bad description... I don't actually hear voices, no, but I think about it. My mind overreacts like that. But when it's at its worst, I feel a pressure descending upon me, such that I feel like my ears are going to explode. It only goes away if I hit a stretch of good luck.

It's on me now. Not bad, but I can feel it, almost like my brain's too heavy. I had a chance to go to Tucson tonight with Jeff and go to one of his wild middle-of-the-desert parties, but I told him I couldn't because I had to be at work at 6:00. Is it any wonder I feel like I do? How am I ever going to have fun if I can't give myself permission to cut loose and enjoy myself every so often? But, then again, cutting loose and enjoying myself usually means spending money, and we already discussed why I can't go out and drop a wad of $20's at Christie's every weekend. And then I reach another conflict point, because in spite of my desire to just blow the world off and lose myself in a weekend, I can't. I press up against the Plexiglas wall that is my morals, and just on the other side, I can see myself having a good time. But I can't get through that wall, though I've tried several times to drink just to fit in, and it still makes me cringe. Even when someone gives me something and says, "Here, you can't even taste it." The fact of the matter is, it's in there, and thus I can't drink it.

Why not? I don't know! I want to! But I can't. I'm too weak.

I'm not as crazy as I was before I went and hashed things out with a psychiatrist last year. I don't view my problems and my internal conflicts as two distinct people fighting for control over my mind anymore. But just the same, all the same conflicts are still there. And I don't want to deal with it anymore.