happy thanksgiving.

good day today, it's late, i'm tired, so i think i'll stop there.

feeling: congested
thinking of: here's your sign
music: "any way you want it" journey

i used to wrestle.

after that sentence, this entry could go in any of about a thousand directions. i could talk about the time that our coach pulled a few of us aside after very unacceptable losses and questioned our possession of male genitalia, or that time i lost eleven pounds in thirty hours, or that time on a road trip one of my teammates was so trashed that he told a convenience store attendant who refused him service because he was barefoot that he was wearing shoes that were simply invisible. i s'pose it's like that when you start to talk about something that was such a big part of your life for so long.

you wish i would talk about all that stuff, cause right now all i'm gonna talk about is my bum knee. sophomore year i didn't play football, i'd had enough by then, what with after playing in seventh, eighth and ninth grades, so i did preseason wrestling instead. i figured it would be helpful, being in wrestling shape was way different than being in football shape and no small fraction of the first few weeks of the season was devoted to the adjustment. it went well enough, i felt like i had a pretty nice head start on the season, so there weren't any complaints as far as that went. but then the night before our first match of the season, i tore up my left knee in practice.

it wasn't anybody's fault really, we were going live, and someone fell into my knee from the left and forced the joint inward, toward the other knee. anyone who is aware of basic anatomy likely knows that the knee joint isn't a mutildirectional joint like that, so when it happened, i heard a loud crack, the sort of crack that makes you wish that maybe you'd just joined the chess club or maybe devoted your time to being a better student instead of doing a sport. it wasn't serious, not as knee injuries go anyway, just a slightly torn ligament, the MCL. i didn't have to have surgery or anything like that, the most intense procedure i had to endure was an MRI.

despite the lack of severity, however, my knee gives me old man powers. you ever talk to an old guy on a cloudy day and hear him tell you that it's gonna rain because he feels it in his bones? besides being creepy, they're like always right. i can do that now too. it's nuts. even on days that are a bit cloudy and cool, my left knee seems a bit more sensitive than on other days. it also creaks and pops a lot, which surprises a lot of people, i guess mostly because i'm not old enough to have stuff that creaks and pops like that.

i figure by the time i'm 26, i'll have a cane.

feeling: gimpy
thinking of: lunch
music: "the chicken cow" wesley willis

sunday i wrote about jfk.

i didn't really want to, and it probably showed. that entry seemed to be thrown together pretty haphazardly, mostly because i really wanted to use the "los homeboys" line and the whole present-day assassination deal seemed like it would be the easiest thing to work it into. in fact, the whole wall-to-wall coverage ordeal nearly drove me to madness last week, and i pride myself on my ability to remain fairly oblivious to what passes for current-events and the commentary lavished upon it (them?)

in any case, november 22, 1963 was big for a reason more significant than the kennedy assassination, i mean seriously, the guy was from boston, i've met one person from boston that didn't generally irritate the hell out of me and even then conversations with her sometimes made me want to chew my leg off. clive staples lewis, however, wasn't from boston and, in fact, shares november 22, 1963 with kennedy as the day they left the building.

some would argue that c.s. lewis' influence on present day culture reaches farther and penetrates deeper than kennedy's. half the population of this county can't answer the question "where were you when kennedy was shot?" i can't even say i was a gleam in my father's eye, my dad was three when it happened, plus i don't really want to think about my dad's gleaming eye. the landscape of pop-culture mythology has changed so much, it's pretty much in a constant state of flux, that, to young people coming of age today, jfk's assassination is just that, a piece of popular mythology.

i'm not unbiased, there's not really any doubt about that, lewis' work has had a bigger influence on me than anything else i've encountered in my education save living, breathing people, many of whom have themselves been influenced by lewis. you don't have to take my word for it though, "the chronicles of narnia," lewis' landmark work ranks #65 out of tens of thousands on amazon's sales list, which is pretty remarkable considering that they're over a half a century old, take that for what it's worth.

dropkick murphys are from boston, and that's almost enough to redeem that entire useless town.

feeling: industrious
thinking of: lgb
music: "forever" dropkick murphys

thankgiving is thursday.

i have to work this week, at least through wednesday. thursday's the holiday, friday i get off as well, it's a paid holiday, which is nice, since i get jobbed out of days off/holidays later this year. my regular day off is thursday, i've probably mentioned that before, and this year both christmas and new years fall on thursday, i'm not sure it'll be a huge deal though, i don't think i'll use up any more than three or four vacation days going home anyway.

it's mildly irritating, having to think about vacation days and stuff like that. when i was in college, we'd only get wednesday-friday off for thanksgiving, and i heard that until a couple years before i showed up there, they only gave thursday and friday, which struck me as odd, since it was a private school that had students from all over the country, as opposed to a state school that drew regionally where it wasn't such a hassle for kids to get home.

in any case, i never stuck around for those two days of class the week of thanksgiving, i'd always go home the weekend before and take the whole week. being able to do that was cool, i was usually pretty disciplined about not missing class to that point and figured that taking those two days off would be my reward for not cutting any class up to that point in the semester.

being at home on the monday before thanksgiving watching the price is right beat the smack out of listening to a social theory lecture, hearing about the theoretical implications of george mead's or thorstein veblen's research.

feeling: inadequate circulation
thinking of: turkey, i guess
music: "southbound" MxPx

yesterday was big.

at least as far as historical significance goes, that's what i hear anyway. so it was forty years ago that kennedy got offed in downtown dallas. i remember being a lil kid and reading all kinds of stuff about him, i guess it was sort of a big deal given that i spent my formative years in dallas and it's sort of a big deal there, my grandmother and an uncle of mine were actually there that morning. elementary school classes take field trips to the sixth floor museum, i never went actually, they didn't construct the museum until i was in high school. by the time i developed any sort of an interest in it, it'd been twenty five years since the whole thing had happened. not being alive at the time, i have no idea who would have done it, i hear a guy named lee harvey oswald did it.

suffice it to say that if a president was killed in downtown dallas today, nobody would be talking about all these CIA, FBI, mob and Castro conspiracies, they'd be looking for los homeboys or something like that.

feeling: uncertain
thinking of: rocks
music: "bales of cocaine" reverend horton heat

wheaton college can dance now.

well, they're no longer forbidden from it anyway, whether they actually have the ability to do it or not is likely another thing altogether. in any case, last weekend wheaton had their first school sponsored non square dance in 143 years. i'm a wheaton alum, and i look back on my days as a thunder (a thunder??, but then who wants to be a crusader i guess, hassling muslims and whatnot??) pretty fondly, but one thing i never really understood was how much people complained about not being allowed to dance. seriously, it started at freshman orientation, you'd think that if people would piss and moan about anything it'd be something like not being allowed to drink or have sex, the dancing thing would fall right into line at that point.

now i'm the kind of person who'll go to a club if someone i'm with suggests it, it's definitely not the kind of thing i'd ever suggest myself, could be because me and dunx almost got arrested at a club once, but that's another entry altogether. so anyways, it seemed like people wanted to dance if only because they weren't allowed to, like this one time i had a friend whose brother was graduating from baylor during our christmas break. it being christmas break, the rules didn't apply, something about not being currently enrolled in school, so heading to a club wasn't forbidden.

so i was in dallas, my friend was at baylor, an hour and a half or so south, and called wanting to go out that night, something about her not having a car or being able to go anywhwere and if i didn't show up she'd be stranded and miserable. i show up, she's there with a friend of ours and we end up going to the club, what i guess is the one club in waco, texas. now these girls were nuts, so enthusiastic about getting to go dancing, i was pretty indifferent about the whole thing. when we got there, we walked in, looked at the dance floor, and they looked at each other, then looked at me, then looked at each other again as if to say "what are we s'posed to DO here??"

it was dumb.

feeling: old
thinking of: graham's in waco, if i never end up there again, it'll be too soon
music: "judas' kiss" petra

MIKE isworking: have you found anyone worth pursuing yet?
ricv56: no
MIKE isworking: I'm sorry
ricv56: there's no need to be sorry really
MIKE isworking: ok if you say so
ricv56: well it's not the sort of thing that's really worth spending much time or energy being sorry about
MIKE isworking: good point
MIKE isworking: but I wasn't really going to feel bad for you about that it was just something to say...because what else is there to say?
ricv56: i getcha
ricv56: it just sounds so weird
ricv56: "so have you found anyone worth pursuing"
ricv56: "no"
ricv56: "dude, i'm sorry"
ricv56: it's like someone died
ricv56: funny shite
MIKE isworking: lol now I follow you that does...sound quite goofy
ricv56: now i'm gonna wear black all day
ricv56: weirdo
MIKE isworking: lol

funny question, "have you found anyone worth pursuing yet?" the question was asked a little less than a month ago (many thanks to DeadAIM for the archive). in any case, the answer to that question may or may not have changed, and i'm not sure really what difference that makes, but i don't really have much else to write about right this second. pursue, i don't think, is really an adequate word anyway, not for me, i've never really thought of myself as a pursuer, at least as far as stuff like this goes.

in fact, i don't think i really like pursuing, part of the trouble of being here, in the social environment that i'm in, is that i don't see girls that interest me consistently, that's to say i see them once, and unless i remember to hit on them or ask for a number i don't see them again, which i guess is unfortunate, because that's never really been someting i've done, i've always had the luxury of being at school or something, seeing a girl and being able to talk to her a few times before i'd figure out if i was interested. that seems to be the best way to avoid embarrasment anyways.

it would have at least prevented me from calling that girl from baker's square last spring and finding out she was in high school.

feeling: slightly itchy
thinking of: inadvertent humor
music: "dear penis" rodney carrington

ever wonder how the world will end?

yah, me either.

feeling: useless
thinking of: pancho's tex-mex buffet
music: "stone eyes" phil keaggy

i have a pair of yellow shorts.

it's (they're??) the only piece of yellow clothing that i have, which sometimes i think is sort of odd since in high school our colors were navy and yellow, gold ostensibly, but it was always bright yellow. but then it's not really odd, because navy is such a good dominant color and bright yellow is best served as a trim. since i've got quite a few articles of clothing emblazoned with my school's name on it, call me nostalgic, i've got tons of navy stuff with yellow letters, trim, whatever.

so anyways, these yellow shorts i've had since twelfth grade. they were sort of part of the school-issued football uniform. on days we didn't practice in pads we'd all have to wear the same t-shirts and shorts, which i always found curious, i think it was a racket the coaches had going with some supplier of some sort because we all had to pay like thirty bucks for two t-shirts and a pair of shorts. in any case, the shorts seem to have reached the end of their life span which is a shame, because they were mesh, and they were comfortable, so comfortable, in fact, that i wore them to bed.

so now i'm faced with the task of finding a replacement, because i will not, not sleep naked, i had a roommate who did that once and it was gross, grosser than gross, in fact. it's a bigger deal than one might think, because dressing for sleep is way different than dressing for anything else. i've never gotten into the whole pj thing, at least not for sleep, i got some flannel pj bottoms i'll wear around the house if it's chilly, but other than that, i'm not really a fan.

and as much as i liked the yellow shorts, i won't contribute to the racket again.

feeling: sneezy
thinking of: wayne palmer and williams chicken
music: "billy's bones" the pogues

i live about fifteen hundred miles from home.

by home, i mean the place that i grew up, the place my family still lives. i'm not certain that i'll ever be back there, at least permanently, so in the sense that i'm not sure i'll ever be there again, it's not really home. some days, most days, in fact, i'm thankful for the distance, not that i'm glad to be away from everyone there or anything like that. it's funny because, in being gone, sometimes i think that going back would solve whatever minute problems i perceive arise in being away from there.

people say you can never go home again, and they're right, because if you do go back, you find that it's not really home anymore. i remember the first time i came home from school, at thanksgiving freshman year, and remember feeling like nothing had changed at all, but then subsequently realizing that three months of life had gone on, and gone on just fine without me. here lately, i've sort of been sobered by the knowledge that nothing there will ever be the same, which i guess is ok.

i'd probly be worried if nothing changed, so i s'pose it cuts both ways.

feeling: drained
thinking of: 24
music: "story of my life" social distortion

so it's monday.

i don't see the big deal about mondays. they can be a minor annoyance mostly because i have to leave the house earlier than normal because of the parking deal at work, but i'm pretty sure that i've mentioned that before. it probably has to do with the fact that mondays are generally a very light day for me, the busiest days of the week are without doubt, tuesday and wednesday.

even then, despite the comparative dearth of activity on mondays, it seems as though office space, and i hate, hate, hate that movie, got it right. remember them talking about having a "case of the mondays?" i'm not sure i've heard anything stupider in my entire life, and i've heard jello biafra's spoken word stuff, and celine dion's titanic song.

maybe i'd have a "case of the mondays" monday morning if i had a case of the budweiser sunday night.

feelng: travelicious
thinking of: not sure just yet
music: "we're at the top of the world" the juliana theory

i used to be a cheerleader.

maybe i've mentioned that before. it was for two years in college, the first two. i look back on that time of my life quite fondly, i mean it was cheerleading that afforded me the opportunity to visit such exotic locales as rock island and decatur, illinois, charged with the task and privilege of cheering the wheaton crusaders, later to become the thunder, to victory. and on top of all that who can forget the white polyester shorts?

so anyways, i'm reminded about cheerleading because i guess they must have people there who now more adequately spur the mighty thunder to victory. in neither of the years i spent on the cheer squad did the football team make the playoffs. in fact one year, i actually hoped and prayed that they wouldn't, because if they had, i would have been forced to spend thanksgiving in illinois, which i was definitely not about. it looked pretty grim for a while because they were rolling towards an undefeated season but ended up losing to the last place team in the conference.

but like i said, they must have better cheerleaders now because yesterday they beat augustana 28-27 to secure their second consecutive conference title and as such their second consecutive playoff bid. on top of that, the win extended their conference winning streak to seventeen games. the most logical and obvious conclusion here is that out of all the things i've done in life, the only thing i was a total failure at was being a cheerleader.

it's not a total loss, i don't guess, i did get a nifty sweatshirt.

feeling: replaced
thinking of: the mighty thunder
music: "california uber alles" dead kennedys

feels a bit more like home around here.

i grew up in dallas, about ten minutes from downtown, in a lil neighborhood called oak cliff. maybe you're familiar with it. we moved into a house there when i was four, my family still lives there actually. so anyways, the neighborhood is definitely what would be considered working class, the more sheltered among those i know would likely consider it "ghetto." it wasn't as bad as that really, not a crime ridden neighborhood by any stretch, although my dad says when we first moved there, it was way shadier. like i said though, it wasn't a war zone or anything like that, but every once in a while something would happen that would make the papers or the news.

so anyways last night, around half past midnight, i heard some gunshots, there were five or six of them, real close to here too. there was quite a commotion right after that, i could hear some people running around, yelling and stuff, and saw some shadowy figures moving as i peered out the kitchen window. it was the first time in over a year of living here that i'm aware anything like that has happened. the next morning, i heard a bit more about it, there was a fight, police cruisers went up and down the block, searching the parking lot and stuff and it made me think of those times growing up when something like that would happen close to home.

i guess it's not totally like home, i never did see it in the paper or on the news.

feeling: vigilant
thinking of: buying a gun
music: "natural born killas" ice cube and dr. dre

i don't complain much.

i try not to anyway, don't really see the point in it. i s'pose at this point i should qualify that complaining is different than ranting or going off on something in a fit of rage. essential to complaining is that sort of whiny tone, you know the one, it seems to lend itself to passive agressiveness. so to the point, last night, while i was in the middle of a pretty involved IM conversation, my internet goes out. i know it wasn't because of a delinquent account, my bill is set up to autopay and calling comcast to see what was up was right out, mostly because they do my phone as well as my internet, and my phone and cable went out too.

it wasn't a huge deal, everything seemed to be back up and running within an hour or so and i was irritated not because it went out, that's happened before, but mostly because, like i said, i was in the middle of a conversation. in any case, it wasn't anything on my end, which meant that someone at comcast messed up, and like i said before, it's not the first time it's happened. so anyways, i got to thinking about what people did on a weeknight before anybody had cable, or the internet, or even the phone and i was sort of stunned because being a person who doesn't consider himself one who watches much tv, i didn't realize how much of my leisure time i spend being idly entertained. people didn't do that way back when, they worked hard all day and came home ate dinner, hung out with the family and went to bed not too long after sunset, they had to, mostly because they had to get up before sunrise in the morning.

it's nuts to think about because you can see the progression of advances in technology and the triviality of the stuff that inconveniences people. i remember how big of a deal it was when we got our first tv with a remote control and how cool it was to not have to get up to change the channel. as time continues to go by, i wonder how much sillier the stuff we get irritated about will get.

at least i didn't lose the remote.

feeling: mostly adequate
thinking of: coming home early today
music: "memoir" audio adrenaline

i had a smoothie for lunch yesterday.

pineapple and coconut at the lakewood mall, it was really good and last night i made a point to tell pretty much everybody i talked to about it, some people i told two or three times. i was with marissa and sarah, which was nice, marissa and i usually go to the mall for lunch on wednesdays, i think the smoothies were her idea, and that was definitely the move, i think that made her yesterday's hero of the day.

so going to the mall sort of reminded me of christmas and shopping and stuff like that (i've been writing about stuff like that a lot here lately, we'll speculate why another time perhaps). i'm not sure what to get anyone this year, i've done best buy gift cards the last couple years i think, so i'm pretty sure i don't want to go that route again, freakin variety, i tell you. last year, i didn't do the bulk of my shopping til i'd gotten to dallas, so i guess i'm hoping for a stroke of creative genius to strike me by then.

i talked to laura today, and i was sort of structuring my trip home in december around her, i really wanted to be sure that i didn't miss her, so that was helpful. i was planning to be there the weekend before, and it looks like that'll be the plan that shakes out. she gets sunday, which i'm excited about, because by the time i see her, it'll have been a whole year. so now i guess, you can look forward to updates on me making travel plans again like the ones i gave whenever i was trying to get my tickets to north carolina to see katie.

it could be worse, i could tell you what i had for lunch yesterday.

feeling: full of anticipation
thinking of: nicole
music: "el rey" vicente fernandez

i don't have time today to do the kind of entry i want to do.

which basically means that i don't have much, if anything, of value to say today, at least not right here just this second. i'm wondering, however, if that should stop me from writing, i mean one of the aspects of my personality that i've picked up and learned to appreciate about myself is the ability to show restraint. meaning that if i don't have anything to say, then i won't say anything, mostly because i've noticed how irritating it is when someone who doesn't have anything to say won't shut up, it's a situation that's reached epidemic proportions.

so i'll shut up.

feeling: conflicted and increasingly surly
thinking of: home
music: "shut the **** up" cake

i woke up late yesterday.

well, got up more than woke up. i actually woke up around half past six, which is about a half hour before i usually wake up. so like i said, it was about half past six when i woke up yesterday, but not long after that, i rolled over and went back to sleep and didn't wake up again for another 45 minutes or so.

if there's one thing in life that i hate it's waking up and having to get out of bed right away. that probably comes from the part of my personality that hates being rushed. yesterday was no exception, i got up about twenty mins after i normally wake up and it wrecked my morning, well maybe wrecked is an exaggeration, in any case, it threw the morning sufficiently off kilter.

i'm thinking though, it's nice to not be in school anymore, i got up at half past six every morning back then, that was brutal.

feeling: domestically derelict
thinking of: pickup trucks
music: "little things" bush

hank hill is everyman.

i don't think i've ever come to the defense of a cartoon character. today i feel compelled to defend hank hill, mostly because of a conversation me and bone had yesterday. bone said that hank was a sack of crap and said that his son bobby was well-adjusted despite hank's oppressive regime of self-denial and propane fetishism. personally, i don't necessarily think that hank's a healthy or necessarily even a good guy, my response to bone when he went off on hank was that hank is indeed everyman. but you know how i am, ask me where i stand on something and generally my response is "anyplace you're not."

in any case, hank's not perfect, that's for sure, he's uptight, stubborn, old-fashioned, narrow-minded, rage-prone and in some ways blissfuly and maddeningly ignorant. he's also got an insecure streak a mile wide, i think i would too, though, if cotton was my dad, but that's neither here nor there. the fears he has of his shortcomings and inadequacies seem to lead him to force himself to conform to this very narrow and specifically defined ideal of masculinity. those features of his personality, however, are the ones that are most easily noticed, mostly because he's a tv dad. think of homer simpson's blatant idiocy or al bundy's savage oafishness.

everybody's got issues, hank's no different and i think that simply because the issues he deals with make him a more subjectively unpalatable character to some is no reason to say that he's a sack of crap. however, it would be all to easy too say that hank is a good guy simply because there are people worse than him or that he's not really worse than anybody else. no, hank hill is a man of exemplary character.

hank, despite all his shortcomings, self-perceived and otherwise, is a person characterized by loyalty, humility, authenticity, and integrity. he showed his loyalty and humility the time that bill developed dissociative disorder and thought he was his ex-wife by putting on a dress in front of the entire strickland propane christmas party at significant risk to his own reputation and telling bill that she was never coming back. he further shows his humility when his truck dies and he cries over it, exposing himself to ridicule from the superfically more likeable yet nearly completely morally bankrupt dale gribble. he's authentic in that he knows who he is and won't pretend to be someone he's not, like that time that the guy from boston, i think his name was holloway, and totally wanted hank to be JR (jaay aaaaahh in his own words) from dallas, in the interest of disclosure, hank did go along with it for a bit, but wised up and told holloway that he could do business with competitor m.f. thatherton. authenticity, however, goes only so far without integrity, which hank has in spades. the time that the quarry was set to be drained and hank, dale, and bill figure out that boomhauer will find out that they're responsible for the loss of his beloved mustang, sally, dale and bill try and pin the blame entirely on hank. boomhauer, aware of the quality of hank's character, sniffs them out right away and on the way home assures bobby that his father is indeed a good man.

sombody call brookhaven, i'm an addict.

feeling: slightly overwhelmed
thinking of: furniture
music: "teddy bear" red sovine

wheaton 61, north park 12
texas 55, oklahoma state 16
dallas 10, buffalo 6

it was a good weekend.

feeling: light-headed
thinking of: sleep
music: "down together" the refreshments

i wish i was in portland today.

mostly because tonite is dunx's birthday party. a couple weeks ago, i got the following missive from him via the email:

you are all cordially invited to my 23rd (prime) birthday party, to be held the
evening of the 8th of November.
the formal parlance of this email is intended to make up for the horrid
debauchery, criminal activity, and sinfulness that is to occur.
i realize that you are all far away and have school/jobs, and therefore probably
can't even ponder making it, but i wanted to mention it anyway. at the very
least, I'll send pictures.
love,
dunx

i thought about going, i really did, and it would have kicked ass if i had been able to, but you know how it is, the job and stuff sort of makes it impossible. it's been two years since i was at an honest to goodness party with dunx, three if you don't count new years which is really just s'posed to be a party anyway. based on past experience, horrid debauchery, criminal activity, and sinfulness are all pretty accurate assessments. in fact, i think he left out random acts of general violence, like the time we were at that party at rachel's house the day before she was s'posed to move out and those guys across the street wanted to fight us because dunx punched one of them in the face.

now that was a night of horrid debauchery, criminal activity, and sinfulness, that was the night of the now legendary naked party, and anybody you can party with like that is a true friend. i've talked about dunx before, he's the friend from way back that i get to see most often, mostly because he stops here on his way between dallas and portland. he's a badass, he really is, we grew up together, on the wrestling team and stuff, and then working like mexicans when we did maintenance at SM.

so anyways, he's 23 now, just like me, which is a bit nuts to think about since i've known him since i was about 14, and he's one of those guys i really can't say enough about, more or less just someone you know you were born to be friends with.

anybody that can nurse you through everclear chased with jack, jack and more jack and laugh at you for sleeping underneath a coffee table is definitely a true friend.

feeling: like i'm missing out
thinking of: dallas
music: "night on earth" bouncing souls

dear God,

you know me, i'm a simple guy. happy driving a ten year old japanese car with a hundred fifty thousand miles on it. happy wearing jeans i've had since eleventh grade. happy living in a quaint, but totally nice, lil one bedroom apartment. there's a lot that i'm happy living without, some things i'd really like, but i'm more or less ok not having. basically i'm not the kind of person that's really driven by material or temporal desires.

allow me, for a brief moment, to diverge, if a bit radically, from the standard condition of my personality. so anyways, while i was out running errands yesterday i was at a red light and saw this woman, she was probably at least a couple years older than me, but in any case, she was beautiful, and driving a mercedes. i thought to myself that at that moment, that's what's missing in my life, a really beautiful woman who drives a really expensive car. so what i'd like right now is an unbelievably gorgeous girl who drives a really hot car, not necessarily a mercedes, maybe a bimmer, or a lexus, something like that.

i don't think that it's just a whole lot to ask for, i mean it's not like i'm asking her to pay off my student loans or anything like that, i just want her to drive me around in her car and stuff.

feeling: smart-ass
thinking of: beth, she's awesome
music: "bullion" millencolin

i don't feel too good.

i don't really feel bad either, just noticeably less than tip-top. i'm not even really sure why that is, but it's been like that for a few days. i s'pose things could be worse, i could have raging B.O., that'd be a drag. but i digress, and do so mightily sometimes, this seems to be one of those times.

so anyways, i got some frames today. assorted ones, i was looking for some plain black ones, but it seems as though every retalier around here is out on basic black. i was able to find a couple or three at big lots, they look good. the frames are for the postcards i got off of ebay in the last couple weeks or so. here lately i've decided that my living room's looking a bit bare, so i got some lil stuff to put around on the walls add a bit more character to the place. linen postcards, mostly of old buildings and scenes in dallas, but one really cool one of downtown chicago. i figure most of them are from the fifties and sixties.

alls i gotta figure out now is where to put em.

feeling: less than tip-top, weren't you paying attention?
thinking of: so, so much
music: "TNT" AC/DC

screw the atm.

you know the one, you go, put your card in and get money. well the sucky thing about that is that the money always comes from your own account, but i don't guess that that's either here or there. my beef is that i wasn't able to withdraw money at all over the weekend, i even had issues trying to deposit my check. it wasn't a balance issue, i was trying to get $40, which balance-wise is not, and should never be a problem, the frankin thing had run out of money.

what was really irritating about the whole thing is that the machine led me through all the prompts and keystrokes and crap like that, and only when i got to the very last step did it tell me that it was out of money. it happened on sunday evening, that's when i was trying to deposit my check. there are three machines at the bank i was at, the first one wouldn't take my deposit, the second one would take my deposit, but didn't have any cash, and the third one didn't have any cash. i was surprised and a bit irritated, but not shocked really, i figured they probably loaded up the machine on friday afternoon and the weekend rush had done its work in decimating the supply. so i come back the next day around one in the afternoon, thinking that it wouldn't be an issue, you know with people coming back to work on monday and everything, but once again i left empty handed.

it's one of those things that wasn't really a big inconvenience, when you think about it, it wasn't really an inconvenience at all, i didn't need cash, i could use my card for pretty much everything i'd want to buy anyway, i guess it was just frustration that the universe wasn't working the way it'd been advertised to.

i'm over it.

feeling: action packed
thinking of: my room
music: "caress me down" sublime

so christmas is coming.

i don't remember most of what i got last year, i got some cologne from my grandmother, but i get that from her every year. it's quite a deal actually because i usually end up going through a bottle every year anyway and it's the kind of thing that i'd rather not spend my own money on if i don't have to, so it all works out rather nicely. back to the point, i don't even remember really wanting anything. i did get to go home and that pretty much encompassed everything i wanted. it'd been about four months since i'd been back, which is about as long as i'd ever gone between trips to dallas

this year seems to be a bit different, because lately i'm seeing all kinds of stuff that i'd like to get for christmas, definitely more than i remember wanting to get last year. there's that jacket i was talking about sometime last week, the other stuff that's stuck out are the tony lama full-quill ostrich boots that i saw, and then some of the dvd box sets that i've seen, M*A*S*H, king of the hill, the simpsons, stuff like that. i know i can scratch the boots off the list, those are like $300 and nobody likes me enough to spend that kind of money on me, at least not for boots, the jacket i could probably swing, but it'd likely be an either/or thing with that and the dvds.

i'm such a kid.

feeling: brown sweater
thinking of: frames
music: "emily" michael w. smith

today is bone's birthday.

i feel a little bit bad because i didn't get him anything, but i don't feel real bad because i did get him the first season of 24 on dvd a couple months ago. so anyways he's 23 today and among the friends that i have currently, one way or another, he's the one that i've known the longest. i say one way or another because before we ever remember meeting, we allegedly met as toddlers, before long term memories were developed. turned out that my great-grandmother was tight with his grandmother and i guess whenever they got together for pan dulce and cafe con leche they brought us along a time or two.

i remember meeting bone in eighth grade at the vaunted st. mark's school of texas, he was in seventh grade. there was a bit we had in common then, we were both on the wrestling team that year and we were both from the hood. if you know anything about SM, you know that kids from the hood have to stick together. i don't remember being like best friends with him right away or anything like that, but over the years he was one of those guys who was always there, and not one of those guys who was always there that you wish would go away. most of what i remember from high school about him was wrestling weekends, unbelivably long saturdays spent in gyms laughing at guys in jumpsuits, the roadtrips, seeing teammates and parents drunk in hotels around the southwest, and then just hanging around campus talking about how he hoodwinked ruff into getting him illicit reading material.

so anyways, you know how it is when graduation comes around, i finished, he had a year left, i went to chicago and a year later he went down to austin, and even since then we've somehow managed to cram as much into the limited times we've been able to hang out as we seemed to when we were at school and saw each other every day. mostly trips to cici's, some movies, christmas shopping at the rich folk malls, fajitas, calling for the head of erstwhile longhorn quarterback chris simms, accusing each other of being various and sundry unsavory characters we both know, and troglodyte ogling in grapevine and assorted other places.

you're a good man bone, a good man and a true friend.

feeling: good
thinking of: banging ____________________ i'll let bone fill in the blank, it's his day
music: "green, green grass of home" merle haggard

so yesterday i worked.

that's not par for the course, usually i get thursdays and saturdays every week, and i didn't really plan to work yesterday, but sometime in september i got a phone call asking if i would be a member of some commitee whose meeting was yesterday. i sort of feel like a sucker, not really because i said yes, because i don't mind doing it at all, but when i was recruited for this whole thing, they told me the meeting started at ten, but neglected to tell me that the whole thing would last til sometime near four. if i'd known that i'd be there that long, i likely wouldn't have gone in on friday.

it's all good though, i got to drive to pasadena, which is a place i'd never been before and i met some neat people which is always cool. i try to avoid driving on the freeways around here, which is generally the way to go because the traffic is, nearly without exception, atrocious, but yesterday wasn't so bad. in the fourteen months or so that i've been here, i can count the number of times i've driven on the freeways on both hands, it's nice. the route wasn't especially scenic, i mean unless you like the view of railyards from overpasses, then you'd probably think it's rather picturesque, just not my cup of tea though.

on an unrelated note, i need a beanie.

feeling: hoodwinked
thinking of: what i want for christmas
music: "career opportunities" the clash

i had a cup of coffee today.

i've definitely not acquired a taste for it and that being the case, having had some yesterday is most definitely unlike me. it'd very likely take only the fingers on one hand to count the number of cups of coffee i've had in my life to this point. i did have to load it up with cream and sugar, so much so that a purist might suggest that what i drank wasn't actually coffee at all. i probably wouldn't have had it were it not for the fact that it was the only beverage i saw at the meeting i had this morning. you know how it is, beggars can't be choosers.

but then i really don't think it was much a coincidence or if it was, it was a symbolic and timely one. today is annie's birthday and she's a total coffee fiend. i got to talk to her in the morning before i left, wish her a happy birthday stuff like that, she told me it made her day, which made my day. back in march whenever i was last in chicago, we got to spend a whole day together, which was mostly unplanned but only like the best day ever, the road trip from hinsdale to lisle and lunch on the patio at houlihan's, it was great. it was one of those days that seems forever ago, but you remember it like it was yesterday.

i still kinda wish it was just yesterday.

feeling: responsible
thinking of: horns-huskers today
music: "radio havana" rancid