Category Archives: Life

General stuff going on with my life, which may or may not fit into other more specific categories.

Bizarre Dreams

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I’ve had a couple of just downright weird, bizarre dreams lately.  I don’t even know what to try to make of what these things should mean, or what my psyche is trying to tell me, or whatever.  

First off, it’s a little notable that I’m even remembering some of these.  I’ve tended to go in cycles over my life, where I’d go a year or two of being able to remember dreams, and then a couple years of not being able to remember them at all, not even remember that I was dreaming.  Some of the stuff I’ve read about sleep cycles, dreaming, etc., suggests that maybe I’m just remembering some because I’ve happened to wake up out of dream sleep, be it due to alarm or whatever, and actively thinking about it lets me hold on to them.  I don’t know – I think it’s just sheer weird factor that makes them “stick.”

So, first bizzare dream for this entry – a couple nights ago, I dreamt that I was watching a Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins game.  Oddly, it was being played at the Greenwood High School football field.  The stands on the south side of the field, which should be the Home team side, was the Redskins side of the stands for some reason.  I was sitting on the inside upper right portion of the stands (imagine it being split in 3 sections, center with the press box at the top, left and right), something about I couldn’t get seats for the Cowboy side or something.  The quarterback threw (away, I presume) a pass that was going to be incomplete, and it sailed right up over the crowd in the stands, and with me up at the top, I reached up and plucked the ball right out of the air.  This caused a considerable stir, I could hear the announcers (like, full on broadcast TV coverage) talking about it, exclaiming that for the first time in NFL history a pass was caught by a fan in the stands, and I’m holding this ball for a couple of seconds, thinking, “Oh crap, some of those big guys might want this,” and I turned around and peered down and behind the stands, and I saw a cluster of people – coaches, staff, etc., – walking towards the field sort of under/through the stands, and I threw the ball down to Joe Gibbs.  One of the announcers was laughing about it and talking about how, “wow, now he gave the ball to Joe Gibbs!” 

I remember seeing the replays on the jumbotron style monitor, and being annoyed that the camera angle was crappy, a mostly-overhead sort of isometric view, with me really small and not very identifiable.  While I could understand this, as they were surprised to see such a thing and wouldn’t have prepared for more of a zoom, I wished I was easier to see as being me.  I was (somehow) telling people on IRC that it was me that just caught the ball (met with skepticism, and “yeah, sure, whatever” sort of responses), and I twittered that it was me that just set that NFL first on TV just now, and that I needed to write on my blog about this later.

Then I started to get kinda worried and freaked out that there might be retribution from the Redskins fans (even though the announcer had said, “it’s still going to be ruled an incomplete pass”).  I snuck down and out of the Washington side of the field over to the Cowboys side, and was let up on their right side of the stands, which were very sparsely seated, with the front two rows being Jerry Jones and some of his staff and entourage and so forth, and maybe a dozen other people on all the rows above them in that section, including my Mom (who’s been dead for a year).  I sat up next to her, and continued watching the game.  Then a bit later, I went down there and talked to Jerry Jones, and he shook my hand, and said he got a laugh out of what I did, and thanked me for it.  Then went back to watching the game with intense concentration.  After a bit, I went back to him again, and was like, “Uh, Mr. Jones, I really don’t want to bother you more, but I was wondering, could I maybe get some tickets?”  He gave me 2 sets of tickets, one to a Cowboys Championship game (which, uh, doesn’t exist, but in the dream, at the time, it Made Sense), and another to a Dallas/San Diego game . . . in San Diego.  Which didn’t really make a whole lot of sense, but, what ever.  I showed my mom, and said, “Yeah, I’ve got to get there to San Diego myself, but still, these are awesome tickets!”  I was talking about trying to take my friend Ivy, but then voiced the thought, “Unless you want to go?” to my mom, and she was so excited and Of Course she wanted to go.

So, last night’s really bizarre dream . . . I was coming in late (oops, forgot it was supposed to be such and such time) for a Rocky Horror Picture Show performance.  I got up backstage in time to get in costume and go out and perform the final maybe fifth of the play or so . . . as Dr. Frank-N-Furter.  I just almost missed my cue to get out, and my first couple of lines were ragged, but then I started remembering everything and performed quite well.  Which, I guess my subconscious, dream-me knows (or remembers) all of Rocky better than the conscious me does.  I’ve seen it enough and audience-participated enough that I should know the whole thing, but I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable without a couple of weeks of prep and script memorization to get up and try to perform any role in it right now.  Aside from not being comfortable enough with my body yet (working on it, still losing weight on the low-carb diet) to dress in such a costume and get up on stage in it.  But I remember talking later in the dream and saying I was worried, that it’d been probably two years since I’d even watched Rocky, much less DID anything with it, but that once I got out there it started to come back to me.  

Oh, and yeah, this was all in the freaking Greenwood High School auditorium/theater.  With Mrs. Guess out there in the audience as director.  Yet another dream taking something funky and placing it in something to do with Greenwood.  That aspect really has me wondering a bit.

Eventful, Good Times of Late

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Didn’t make any posts this weekend – not even Daily Stuff.  This has been, overall, a busy, eventful, unexpected, and altogether excellent weekend.

Last week, I pretty much decided that with my upcoming paycheck on the 6th, along with my income tax return, with what I had in checking/savings, it was finally time (Again – the near $1200 of car repairs delayed me by a bit more than a month on my plans) to move on the whole Apartment/Getting-my-own-place-again goal.  Having already done a lot of the initial work of investigating, evaluating, eliminating apartment complexes here in Midland in January, this time it was a briefer process, starting with a short list of candidates.  Four complexes that were any real serious consideration, and another I called just to check on it as an option, and because it’s literally throwing distance from our office.  They were the most expensive, so that was pretty much an easy elimination.  

Of the other 4, I went and looked at all of them – 1 of the 4 I’d seen a 1BR Townhome before, which I liked a lot.  Really liked.  I just know Baby, my cat, would love the stairs there, and I liked the layout, but it was a little bit beyond what I would be comfortable with based on my projective budgeting.  Rent in Midland is stupidly costly right now – prices are still high from rapid rising over a few years of oilfield prosperity.  The oilfield prosperity is starting to show some real, true (worrisome to oilfield/oil company employees) signs of decline, but any drop in the inflated rent prices will take several more months, if not a year, before they start to happen.  In Huntsville, I had a 2BR, 1.5Bath 1100 square foot townhome for less than I’m (going to be) paying for a 710 square foot 1BR/1BA flat here in Midland.

So, anyway, after checking out all of the other 3 options, with some drama and surprises involved there, I decided on going for what’s supposedly the nicest/best rated of the complexes, Windscape.  Current schedule is to move in on the 13th.  Friday the 13th . . . I can’t help but feel that with everything that happened last week and weekend, it’s something that’s meant to be, and any luck I experience on that day will be Good.  It’s just going to be a tight week for me financially until my payday+ this Friday.

Friday night was looking to be pretty uneventful – I tried to get hold of a couple of people to see about doing something interesting:  seeing a movie with a friend, or going out for whatever workable (she’d mentioned wanting to go to a karaoke bar) with another, female, friend – but it seemed that stuff just wasn’t going to be happening that night.  So, without someone to make going out (and thus spending money) a worthwhile excuse, stay home and . . . apparently watch Seabiscuit with my dad.  During which I find out about some bad medical news about a friend of mine.  Not horrible stuff, but still unfortunate and unpleasant, kind of a bummer, which had (and still has) me worried for her.

Then at 10:15 that night, I get a text from Ms. Fire, commanding me to head down to the hotel lounge she’s in and ask her to dance.  I hop up, change shirts, brush my teeth, and head off to the lounge.  She seemed surprised I “actually came.”  To my surprise (though only a little bit) it was Tejano Night at this club.  I haven’t danced in like 9 years, and I haven’t danced to something other than techno/trance in a good dozen.  I wasn’t very good, but it didn’t seem to matter – the intent and effort, and quite possibly the fact she was a bit inebriated, seemed to matter more.

I’ll not go into further details on the rest of that night . . . but it was wonderful, and surprising.  

Saturday, despite lack of sleep, I got out to see that movie (The Street Fighter Chun-Li one) with my friend Ivy.  It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t great either, but it was entertaining (even though I think Kristen Kreuk is just wrong for the role).  It had some very nice cinematography of Bangkok in it too.  

Sunday, I had a date to try to see Les Miserables at  MCT.  I type “try” because when I attempted to buy tickets Monday of last week, they were nearly entirely sold out – they only had 3 seats left, none of them anywhere near each other.  The nice old lady at the box office suggested I show up an hour before the show to try to get no-show seat tickets.  After discussing this concept with J, my supposed date, she said we should go ahead and try for it, and plans were made for her to meet me at the theater, see Les Mis, and then who knows?

I dress up as I thought reasonably appropriate for going to the Theater (to discover there later that several folks just went in whatever – but I still felt good about my clothing choice, I think dressing decently for the Theater is still respectful), and show up there a couple of minutes before 1:00.  I’m 4th on the list for no-show seats, with the box office manager informing me that she has no doubt I’ll get tickets.  I wait, seeing tons of people stream in, mingling, talking to friends . . . and then run into a good friend of my Mammaw.  People take their normal, had their tickets in advance, seats, being ushered and hurried into the theater by staff, and at 2:00, the box office manager starts calling out names for the no-show seat tickets.  J still hasn’t shown up (I’d been looking for her, for the entire hour).  I let the box office manager know my date didn’t show, someone else should get the other ticket, and she snatches back the pair she handed me, hunts around frantically, and then gives me a single ticket.  It was a decent seat.

Les Mis was excellent.  One of the best Community Theater productions I’ve ever seen (and most of my comparisons are from MCT shows, so that’s good comparisons, as MCT has been one of the best Community Theaters in the nation for a long time).  Not only was David Odom, who was a friend of mine in High School, on the debate team with me, in the play (as I knew beforehand and expected), but Robert Reed, another High School friend was in the cast as well.  I graduated with both of those guys.   There were other people who I knew from when I was involved in the theater back in the 90s.  I’m considering volunteering for a few shows, maybe auditioning for a part or two.  If not, I’ll at least get a membership, and make MCT a regular part of my entertainment options.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with J the last two 2 days, with no luck thus far.  I don’t know what the deal is, what happened – if there’s a good reason she wasn’t there, a bad reason, if I was just stood up, or what.  If I was stood up, oh well, her loss.  My weekend overall was so good, it doesn’t really upset me.

Semi-random Thought

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The health care and the clothing industries need to get together, and introduce a stealth fat-tax.  

Why?  Because presently (with the exceptions of grossly larger food bills for whale-class folks), it’s more expensive to be healthy and slender and fit, than it is to be out of shape and overweight.  This is fundamentally fucked up.

Huge money industries are passing a stupid tax on to us as a whole because they’re going for shorter-term profits instead of more financially responsible and beneficial long-term ones.  It’d be cheaper for them, in the long run, and in turn, cheaper for us as a people, if they fiscally encouraged being healther and fitter.  I’m saying these things with absolutely no active research, no cited facts,  no specific figures to back them up. See if my chain of thought makes sense to someone other than myself:

Eating healthier costs more than eating cheaply and less healthily/unhealthily.  Yet being less healthy makes a person a higher health risk, be more expensive to care for medically.  

Bigger clothes, for the most part, cost the same as smaller clothes.  This one really makes no sense to me.  A Small shirt costs the same as an Extra Large shirt, but there’s significantly more physical material involved (which, at some point, equates to more time or labor involved as well – more stitches to sew, longer to cut, etc.  It may be a small amount per garment, but with thousands as a multiplier, it’ll add up).  Sometimes that same-cost-as thing extends up beyond Extra-Large.  Kohls, one of my more tempting places to look for clothes at, have no price differences between Small and XXL.  The only place that I can remember, offhand (I’m sure there are more), that differentiates a little here, is Walmart, where for “extended sized” it’s $2 more for some things.  This one really makes almost no sense to me.  Sure, I’m sure some folks in our quick-to-offend, self-absorbed, hypocritical, prudish society would be quick to bitch and moan about “size discrimination” or some such idiocy – but it’s a basic fact, there’s physically more (or less, depending from which side you approach it) actual, real, phsyical goods there.  Where else do you see people buying  different amounts of things for the same price?  Certainly not food – 9 chicken nuggets costs you more than 6 chicken nuggets.  Not gas – 3 gallons costs more than 2 gallons.  A queen-size mattress will certainly cost more than a full-size mattress.  

This concept is almost as if garments are being treated like intellectual property or entertainment.  You’ll pay the same ticket price for that 86 minute mediocre brainless comedy as you will for the 140 minute thought-provoking, emotion-rending drama.  280 page mass-market paperbacks may cost the same as 560 page mass-market paperbacks (not always, but it can and does happen).

So, the healthy, fit guy buying a large shirt for $20 is paying more for his clothing – per ounce, or square inch of fabric, or whatever metric you wish – than the guy who’s less healthy and bigger (we’ll presume same height for each and similar bone structure) buying the XXL shirt for $20.  

This just all seems stupid to me.  By not financially incentivizing being in better shape, healther, etc. – which tends to cost less, overall, medically –  it’s a sort of tacit encouragement for people to be lazy unhealthy drones, who have higher risk of health problems, higher cost of treatment, and thus, by aggregate, drive up the costs of health care for everyone.

But no, let’s continue overcharging the people who need less physical clothing for the same degree of decency and protection, and let’s continue profiting on cheap, processed, refined flour based and other cheapo carbohydrate laden foods.  Drive that carb addiction for short-sighted profit!

There’s This Nifty Thing, it’s Called a Turn Signal

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I hadn’t planned on going anywhere for lunch today.  However, due to my not reading the cooking directions Tuesday when I bought the pre-cooked, frozen, nuke’n’heat lemon-pepper chicken breasts, I lacked freaking plastic wrap.  Ok, so I’ll take the back road, run to Walmart real fast (hah!) and grab some plastic wrap . . . and maybe some pepperoni for home . . . oh, and a bigger tub of whipped cream for home . . . 

Anyway . . . leaving the megalith of wage-slavery, I was behind this guy in a big black truck.  I signal and start changing over to the leftmost lane (we both turned out into the center lane) of our side of the 7-lane road.  Big Black Truck Twerp also begins to change lanes – no turn signal – and sees me, swerves crazily (covering about 2 lanes of total width taken from all 3 lanes) and straightens out, slows down, and then changes lanes behind me, this time using his turn signal.  For the first lane change, anyway – not for the change into the turn lane, or his left turn into the Town and Country.  Oy, frigging idiots.

Random and Various Updates: Windy Dusty Edition

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So, yeah, life and stuff.  Things have been going ‘OK’ for me.  Not great.  But, overall, not crappy.  This post may be a little disjointed, I’m pretty much more or less randomly spewing thought onto the keyboard.

Work is going well.  I like this job. It’s kept me really pretty busy the last couple of weeks solid.  I’ve not really had that much time to take for myself (also known as: goofing off), and when I have had some time for that, I’ve mostly spent it trying to amuse, inform, or educate myself online (Reddit is my friend here.  I barely even LOOK at Digg anymore).  Thus, I’ve not dedicated much time lately to trying to sit down and write anything.  Hell, I wanted to just sit down and fire off a quick post this morning to vent and feel better about almost getting killed (as well as having my time wasted) this morning on the way to work.  Then I did something silly and tried to “upgrade” WordPress, and it trashed things, and wasted half an hour of my time, and about 2o minutes of James’ time, fixing it.  Hell, I should really honestly know better, backups before upgrades are, ya know, a good idea for a reason.

I’m making an actual, conscious effort to try to use tags on this post.  That’s probably why there are so many.  I’ve been really bad, sucking, really, about using tags.  It’s a Web 2.0 thing that I’ve just so very rarely found useful; in counterpoint, though, the few places I’ve found them useful they were VERY useful.

I started on a low-carb diet yesterday.  Not quite exactly Atkins, though very heavily influenced by Atkins.  It got hard for a bit last night, but I got past it.  I expect to have a few more days where I’ll have periods of intense carb-craving.  I’m determined to stay strong and will my way through it.  There’s a lot of things I want to do, and pretty much everything in my life I think will be easier if I can get down closer to my ideal weight.  The whole feeling better about my body and self-image thing will certainly be nice (and should give me more confidence, of course), but having less weight on my body to lug around will make things like trying to do pull-ups on the Iron Gym I bought and haven’t gotten anywhere near my $30 worth out of yet.  Less weight to power around trying to walk/run/jog should make it easier for me to do those things too.  I’ve basically just bitten the bullet on the expense thing . . . it’s going to cost more, period, but my health and attitude are worth more to me than maybe another two week delay before I move into my own apartment.

Moving into a place of my own again is certainly something I very much want to do.  Just the feelings of independence, of not having my cat relegated to a small travel trailer, where she only gets attention from me one visit a day, where she can run and play and be happier (of course, needing to pay freaking $450 or so for pet fees/deposit is ludicrous), where I don’t have to drive anywhere near as far everyday, where I could, if I so desired/needed, bring a woman home . . . all good and needed things.  But I’m trying to be smarter about things, listen to my dad, save up extra money, Just In Case, before I jump into a lease and a large chunk of monthly expenses that will leave me with very little discretionary income.  Being able to game again on my own schedule, with regularity, have a constant cable modem connection, etc., all very appealing.  But, my dad and I are getting along ‘OK’ right now, though I still handle a lot of things as if walking on eggshells so as not to piss him off and upset that.  

I’ve really gotten into Twitter lately.  Been trying a couple of different clients for it, TweetDeck and blu, and neither does quite just what I want, but if I they could be combined, with another little feature or two added, they’d rock as the ultimate Windows Twitter client.  Corey suggested I write it myself.  Hah!  That’s not quite what I’m going to tackle as my first project getting back into programming.  I like TweetDeck more, but it crashes all the damn time.  blu is stable, but lacking.  I’ll be adding some kind of WordPress Twitter plugin to the site here when I find one I like well enough.

Well, that’s probably enough time wasted for now.  I need to get back to work, wrestling with Advanced Installer’s inadequate documentation and the limitations of .msi files until I can get them to submit to my will.

Midland Drivers are Idiots

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The title of this post is something I’ve said all too many times.  I’ve said it (or paraphrased it, anyway) in other cities I’ve lived in, mostly as a comparison, “Yeah, ok, but they’re not as bad as Midland drivers.”  I thought that Fort Wayne drivers were bad; I thought that Huntsville drivers were bad.  Returning to Midland, however, and driving here after driving in several other cities and states, has reinforced for me, just how terrible and stupid Midland drivers can be.

I don’t know, maybe Midland drivers have gotten worse over the last several years.  Maybe there are just MORE bad drivers in Midland.  Maybe I’ve just gotten spoiled by a better class of idiot drivers from other cities.  But it’s definitely worse here than I remember before.  I continually see more and more amazing displays of vehicular stupidity the longer I’m here.  The day and a half of icy roads a couple of weeks ago, I thought, were going to be some of the worst displays I could expect.  Alas, I was so wrong.  Give Midland a little dust storm – a weather phenomenon anyone who’s lived here more than 6 months should be familiar with – and people amaze me even more with how fucking stupid they can be.

I came up with an idea several years back, which I’m even more in favor of now: All Midland drivers should be forced to spend like 3 months or so driving a regular work commute schedule in a big car-oriented city, like DFW, Phoenix, Indianapolis, or so forth.  Someplace that HAS more than lip service to public transportation, but where individually owned cars are still the primary mode of getting where you need to be.  Then, maybe, the ones who don’t get themselves killed might come back to Midland as slightly less of a fucking idiot behind the wheel.

Car Woes

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So, last year, I purchased a used 2003 Saab 9-5 Linear sedan.  I bought it out-right, with money I got from my mom’s life insurance, for $8200 (that was with splitting the cost of a brand-spanking-new Bosch OEM alternator with the Macedonian man who owned the European Import-specialist used car lot).  I thought that was a pretty good buy, and I’d tried to do as much homework on it as I could (my car-buying process was a several week long affair, with a LOT of time spent online reading and researching, and a few days dedicated to going to dealerships and driving representative sample cars of all of the makes I was considering).  The maintenance records looked excellent, CarFax report was good, and I even tried to have a professional inspection done on it (with less than satisfactory results, but that’s another story of woe and frustration altogether).

I like my car.  It’s pretty, it’s comfortable, it’s reasonably quick, and it gets pretty decent gas mileage (22-24ish city, 33-34 highway).  It’s definitely the nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned, and I like some of the Swedish Saab quirks it has.  It’s no Mercedes-Benz, but still a nice car.

Less than two weeks after buying it, I had it in the shop at the Saab (/Cadillac/Hummer) dealership in Fort Wayne.  Two trips in there to fix various issues – expensive labor for rewiring work in the rear to get all the lights back there working properly, a new Direct Ignition Cassette, new battery, new spark plugs, a couple of other minor things I don’t remember now.  $1100 more sunk into the car.  Irritating, but I still had money left from the insurance.  It was supposed to be in “great shape” other than those issues I had fixed.

Everyone who’s looked at the car in any professional mechanical capacity has said the same things about it, more or less: “It’s in great shape.”

A few weeks before I allowed my life to fully implode in Huntsville, my car developed an irritating and inconvenient problem: the battery wouldn’t hold a charge.  I thought something was draining it that shouldn’t be when it was turned off.  The battery was less than a year old, it COULDN’T be the problem.  After getting jump-starts twice (once from a friend who drove from the other side of town, once from my next door neighbor with whom I’d never even spoken before), I paid what was, at the time, very precious money for a low-end “jump box” from Wal-mart.  It got entirely too much usage.

A little more than halfway back on the drive from Huntsville to Midland, a new concern popped up: the Engine Malfunction light switched on, and stayed on.  Then over the next couple of weeks, it’d go on and off relatively randomly.  Great.  So, I needed to find somewhere I could get my Saab worked on.  I thought it should be no problem, my dad has a friend (for whom he does bookkeeping and tax preparation) who is a mechanic who specializes in Imports.  His shop is even named “World Class Automotive.”  As it turned out, he does pretty much just Japanese imports, and domestic makes.  No European stuff, and definitely not Swedish.  No Saab dealer anywhere in West Texas, short of El Paso.  DFW or maybe Austin are the closest Saab dealers.  Bloody Wonderful.

It turns out, it’s pretty damn hard to find someone to work on a Saab in West Texas.  When I bought the car, never for a second was, “I wonder how hard it will to get it worked on in Midland, Texas,” an item of thought or consideration.  After some calling around and chasing down referrals, we found one company that said they could scan the Saab’s computer and who worked on Saabs: Littlefield Automotive.  We took the car in, they took entirely too long to figure out what the deal with it was (bad thermostat and temperature sensor) and then informed us they’d have to order the parts, and that it would take “a couple of days” to get them in.  I got my car back (paid for by my Dad, who, I am certain, is keeping a penny-accurate tally somewhere), and we were going to come back in after they got the parts in – presumably the next week.

A week and a half later, we finally get a call informing us the parts are in.  This is the week before Christmas week. Well, trying to get it worked on with the shortened week before the Thursday Christmas just seemed impractical.  The next week, with a similar situation with New Year’s Eve/Day, also seemed impractical.  Now, I’d started to notice a concerning sort of grinding noise coming from the front wheels when braking, or at low speeds even when not braking sometimes shortly before Christmas.  I didn’t think too much of it, but wanted to have them see what was wrong when I took it in.  The next week after New Year’s week?  Nope, my dad had a trip to Corpus Christi that week, which he left for on Thursday, so I needed the car that weekend too.  Finally, Wednesday the next week after that, I get the car in to Littlefield’s.  Like, 3 1/2 weeks or so, closeish to a month, after the parts finally arrived.

That concerning grinding noise?  Oh, that was my front brakes being almost entirely gone.  Know what it costs to replace the parts of a Saab’s front disc brakes?  I had no idea.  I know now with a painful clarity.  $134 for a break pad set.  $119 each, x2, for Discs (aka rotors). $144 each, x2, for front calipers.  $12 for brake fluid.  $672 in parts alone.  Tack on $391 for labor (including labor for putting on the parts from before that were on order that we’d already paid for), EPA fees, and tax . . . and there’s an $1131 front brake job.  3 weeks pay for me, with what I’m currently making.  That effectively delays me a month or thereabouts on any hopes of getting my own apartment.  That’s pushing me into March (possibly late March) to move with a reasonable buffer established, maybe longer if more expenses mount up to surprise me. *le sigh*

In addition, I know that my rear brakes (which were essentially working overtime with my front brakes gone) will need attention fairly soon.  I’m hoping I can put off having to buy new tires (and possibly new wheels with them – 2 of my alloy wheels have bends in them which I don’t know if they’re reparable with any cost-effectiveness vs. replacing them) until next year, or at least late this year.

Next time, I’m buying Japanese.

Restaurant Review: Murray’s Deli

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So, after finally getting my car back (more on that later), today was the first day in a week I’ve been able to enjoy simple things like, “driving myself to work in my own car.”  Another benefit was being able to go somewhere for lunch without having to beg a ride from a co-worker.  

Sure, I could have gone with a quick, cheap ($2-3) microwave meal, and just picked up something from Albertson’s or Wal-mart.  But being able to go someplace after a week of not, I wanted to go eat somewhere.  Ahh, but where?  That’s the vexing question.  I mulled things over for probably an hour and a half, and still didn’t know exactly where I was going when Ifinally left for lunch about 1:30 this afternoon.  

“I’m going . . . somewhere,” I said to James and Corey as I headed for the stairs.

Where I ended up, was someplace I’d been considering about, and more or less opted for simply because I’d given it a little more consideration than anywhere else:  Murray’s Deli.  James had done a mini-review of Murray’s a couple of weeks back on his blog , and he mentioned he liked getting burgers there.  So . . . what the hell.

It was a good choice.  I had a Murray’s Best Burger, with lettuce, bacon, and swiss cheese, curly fries (oy, greasy, but pretty good) and . . . a pint of Shiner Bock – on draft.  Yes, that’s right – Murray’s has Shiner on draft.  I was sold right there when I saw that.  I will be returning many times to their establishment.

4th of July and New Things

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Friday, the 4th of July; Indepdenence Day.  What did I do for it?  Nothing like what I’d have really preferred to . . . but altogether, it wasn’t a bad day anyway.  I had a stressful phone call with Maria . . . that whole situation is complex and I’m still not sure how to deal with it, what to do.  I’m just sort of starting to get used to getting along without her, and then talking to her again on the phone really sort of stressed me out.

So, after ending the conversation with her, paying my rent (well, dropping a check which I hope is for the right amount into the dropbox at the apartment complex office), I decided I really just needed to get out.  I wasn’t sure for what, exactly, but maybe a movie.  Kung Fu Panda looked good . . . I could go see it at the Rave . . . or I could wait until 5 and see it on IMAX at the Space & Rocket Center . . . or at the same time as the showing at the Rave, I could catch it at the Monaco.  Well, I hadn’t managed to see anything at the Monaco yet, and I hadn’t been to Bridge Street yet either, so I headed off in that general direction.  I was still a bit stressed, and just wanted to get out, enjoy things, even if I was perhaps a bit reckless.  So, my car’s a nice car, it’s got some nice features I don’t use much.  Like Sport mode.  I popped on Sport mode and just drove, not really knowing precisely what the best way to get there was.  Let’s say I had a rather roundabout route, and if there’d been more cops around, I’d possibly have been busted for breaking the speed laws a lot.

So, I eventually make it to Bridge Street, and get an “ok” but not great parking spot (though being the 4th of July, as I later really realized, I really should have been happy to get any parking spot even semi-close).  I walk up to the Monaco, gazing around a little bit to see just a bit of the shopping center, and head on in.

Damn, but the Monaco is nice.  I’ve judged pretty much all movie theaters on the Harkins Standard.  In the Phoenix area, there’s a (well, there used to be, I don’t know if there is still now or not.  I’ve not consulted the Guru Google to find out, either.) family-owned theater chain called the Harkins Theaters.  They were nice, all their employees dress in black pants and shoes and tuxedo shirts with cummerbunds, and they have a gourmet concession bar.  Great picture, great sound, great seats.  Well, the Monaco either ties or beats the Harkins theaters on every front except the concession bar.  Just pretty much standard theater concessions – Pepsi products, slushies, hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, candies, bottled water, energy drinks.  But man, the rest of the place is damned impressive.  Employees are in all black (not tuxedo wear, but still slick), the place is -very- nice . . . oh, and they have both the Prive’ VIP theaters, and The Scene, their own full-blown small club/bar.

So, I saw Kung Fu Panda.  Not a bad film.  Enjoyable.  I kinda wish I’d looked up the voice actors before seeing it, I think it would have added to my appreciation of the movie.

After seeing Kung Fu Panda, I wandered out into Bridge Street (and into rain of varying degrees).  I didn’t really have any particular aim.  Just wandering around, checking out shops, watching people, admiring beautiful women and girls (always on the lookout for that just barely possible chance hot girl by herself that looked like she might be the gamer/goth/alternative type).  I saw a few of the hot alt girl sorts, but they were invariably with some guy (or guys).  Some interesting ink on the backs of some girls.  A huge variety of dress styles.  My friend Shaw (Kelemvor in Warfare) said that Bridge Street had the hottest girls working there . . . and now I see what he means.  The Fossil shop, for example, had a huge number of very pretty skinny blonde girls working there.  Pretty much all of the female employees in the entire shopping center, and at the Monaco, and in The Scene . . . gorgeous.

I blew a couple of hours wandering around, checking things out, and finally getting hungry.  People were starting to pile into Bridge Street in large numbers, sitting down anywhere they could, many of them bringing folding chairs, collapsible camp chairs, etc.  They were staking out their viewing spots for the fireworks show to come that night.  Oh yeah . . . July 4th.  I’d given some thoughts to going to some lake that Rocket 95.1 had been talking about for the last week or two, that was supposed to have the largest fireworks show in northern Alabama allowed by law.  I had no idea where this place was, or how to get there, how long it would take, etc.  So hey, maybe I’ll catch the fireworks here, but first I’d like to get something to eat.  Ok, it was going to be sort of expensive.  I can deal with that, I guess.  It’s a special occasion of sorts.  Well, the steak and seafood place I tried was going to have an hour and a half to two hour wait.  Right, fuck that.  Johnny Rocket?  Big line, people lined up outside waiting for their parties to be called, with menus in hand to decide what they wanted before they even had a table.  Ketchup?  Similar wait.  Ohhhhkay, so, let’s try The Scene.  The whole “movie theater lounge” thing sort of appealed to me anyway.

I got seated in The Scene promptly.  They were busy, but not packed.  They charge too much for pretty much everything, in my opinion.  I had a $6 bottle of Kirin Ichiban, paid $11 for a chicken florentine pesto sauce sandwich and cumin fries that I didn’t even eat half of.  I should have just gotten an appetizer or gone with the chicken ceasar salad one instead.  Hot hostesses, hot waitresses (of course, I got like the one male waiter working the floor), and a really super-hot asian manager sort.  I felt a little dejected about spending as much as I did there, but enh, I’ll get over it.

I head back out, wander some more, and then eventually go park myself a little after 8 to get a decent spot to watch the fireworks.  They were supposed to start at 8:45.  I waited from like . . . 8:15 or so, and they didn’t start until 9:20.  Still, I got a pretty darn close seat, and was able to watch something that was pretty interesting to me (especially since I’m down here in Alabama missing Firefest), I was able to see (from about a 150 yard or better distance, but still) the pyrotechnicians at work (not nearly as interesting as when Mike Rowe did it on Dirty Jobs, these guys used all electronic ignitiion), and see the mortars and cakes and so forth as they launched their payload upward.  I got the see the pile of cakes on the crane they had raised up catch fire, and them run to lower it down – ever so slowly – and then knock the potentially volatile bundles of explosion and pretty and doom off the crane.

After the fireworks, I wondered back to the Monaco again, and bought a ticket for The Love Guru.  Decent, but not great movie.  Definitely one of Mike Meyers’ weaker offerings, but still an enjoyable flick.  I think it came out with really bad timing against much stronger films, and got crushed and panned for it.  If it’d been released in a much softer period, I think it would have done far bettter.

After the movie, I walk outside, to see it pouring down rain.  I talked to a black girl outside (I wish I’d said more, talked to her more, found out something about her, was she here with anyone, waiting on someone, what?  If she’d been there by herself, alone . . . yet another possibility, another opportunity to regret.) and she said it’d not only been going for quite a while, it’d been raining much harder too.  I waited around for a bit . . . I dunno, maybe 5 minutes, maybe 10, then just decided “Oh what the hell” and walked out right into it, headed to my car (which was a pretty good distance away).  I tried to make a point of just striding into it like it didn’t matter, keeping my head up, not running, not hunching or trying to shield any part of myself from the elements.  I got soaked by the time I made it to my car, of course; I think it started raining harder when I was about halfway there.

I drove home in the rain, kind of enjoying it, feeling my car just plowing through everything, and came back home to a cat that was very happy to see me (I’m sure she’d been hiding and quite frightened from both the weather and lots of fireworks being set off and making booming and cracking noises).

Altogether, not a bad day . . . though it has, once again, really driven home to me a few things.  I need to make regular exercise, even if just walking for a while, something that I DO.  I also really, really want to find a girlfriend.  The lonely hurts sometimes.  I think that perhaps having been with someone for a while, even though it was very unintentional, makes being alone again now harder than it was when I’d been used to being alone for years.

Actually, there is one person I’d really like as a candidate for the whole girlfriend ideal . . . or maybe friend with occasional benefits, or something.  Someone intelligent, attractive, interesting; only slightly geographically inconvenient.  I just have so much second-guessing, self-doubt, etc.  Bah, this is a sucky way to end this entry.