April 28th, 2003 09:30 hours CST currently listening to: "I Love My Man" by Bent

Ouch ouch ouch ouch. I hurt my back. Well, not really, it's just strained. It's sore as hell right now. I have to move about seven computers this afternoon too.

Thursday Ben and I went to Club Foot and talked a lot. We'd go back and forth about our relationship status and whatnot. Misa spun some great tunes as always. I got called on my way to pick up Ben that I would have to go in and reboot one of the switches in the office. I was pissed, but I had the option of waiting until the next morning, before anyone got in. So, I woke up at 5:30 Friday morning and was there at 6:30, because there's ONE girl who gets in at 7:00. Ugh.

I certainly earned my pay that day. I was running around with a laptop, running diagnostics on the switches in the far network closet to get the gigabit connection working again. It was fun, but I came down from my tech/geek high pretty quick by, oh, 8:00. I was exhausted the rest of the day. Dave let me go home at 3, and I was in bed by 3:45. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I made diner later and played Zelda the rest of the night. Jeff called about meeting him and Kim and some of Kim's friends at Neo, but I was already in PJ/couch mode.

Saturday wasn't big. I got my hair trimmed. No length taken off, just some thinning. It looks like I got my hair cut yet it's not shorter at all. If my hair was black, I would give John Squire a run for his money. At least when I'm playing my Gibson ES-335 in front of the mirror. Heh. Ben came over and we ordered pizza and watched Ringu. Did a lot of talking.

Sunday was laaaaaazy. Zelda took up my whole day except when I brought up my AC units and cooked dinner. It's so cute! I finished it around 8:00 and started playing it all over again. I have problems. Rachel called and we talked for quite a while. By this point my back was killing me, so I popped some Advil and read on the couch for a couple hours.

12 more days until my trip to Baltimore. I hope the weather stays cool.

April 23rd, 2003 09:25 hours CST currently listening to: "Red Oval" by Closedown

I'm kind of teetering on what things I should write about on here. Ugh. I dunno. I'm glad I got my raise this month. It's gonna make airline flights a breeze. Well, as much as a breeze as can be, I guess. Forgive the pun, if there was one there.

Anyway, I watched Jackass The Movie last night. Catherine lent it to me. I've only watched a few bits of maybe 2 shows. People, I was laughing so hard that I was flailing around on my couch like a complete retard. During the "Son of Jackass" segment at the end, I actually had to pause it several times because my stomach was cramping from laughing. It was great. I loved 85-90% of the whole movie. Thankfully it was on DVD, so I would scan ahead whenever anyone was about to puke. I got all the puke details from Catherine this morning. not sure why, but I was curious. Heh.

That's all. There's not much else going on right now. It's gonna be another boring work day.

April 21st, 2003 09:10 hours CST currently listening to: "Wherever You Are" by Ulrich Schnauss

Smitten, smitten, smitten.

I had a pretty good weekend. Went to Dave N' Busters with Dave, DJ, Jeff, Josh, Sean, and Keith. We played two rounds of Battletech and had a really good time. The guy running the show, Pyrotech as he called himself, was a turbo geek. He's been doing this job for years. Actually refers to himself as a mechwarrior, and only calls people by their call signs. We had some pretty decent food. I forgot how fatty ribs were, but it sounded too good to pass up. Dave went for the same thing I did. Didn't do much else besides drink and play games. I had two beers and a g&t on an empty stomach, so I was on the moon until after we finally ate.

Saturday was laaaaaaaaazy. I can't even remember what I did, though I remember sleeping in really late for once and being semi hung-over. I met up with Ben around 6:30 and we talked for a while before going down to Cafe Iberico. I'm not much of a fan of tapas, and this place didn't sway my opinion at all. The place was a fury of people. They don't take reservations on Fridays and Saturdays. We were initially told that it would take 2 and a half hours for a table for 12, but after we pressed them we only waited about 40 minutes. After dinner a few of us met at Liar's Club, which is a bar/dance club over on Fullerton that I had never been to, but had heard mixed reviews of. It was alright. Nice and dingy with really low level lighting and red walls, the way I like my bars. The dance floor had cool running lights on the floor itself. The music was pretty lackluster, so we relocated to Club Foot. Ben and I were getting stared at by these two girls the whole time. We were discussing relationships and our upcoming trip to London, so I hardly noticed them until Ben pointed them out. I think we left a bit after 1:30 or so. I came home to a super cute voicemail message and went to sleep after making myself drink 3 glasses of water.

Sunday was another lazy day. Poor Hilary has a cold. I spent the bulk of the day playing Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I'm finally giving that game the attention it deserves. I'm not fully getting into the side quests. I'm gonna save that, and the Tingle Tuner stuff for round 2. I figured that since the gym was closed and I was in fat ass, lazy mode anyway, that I'd do it up right and order a pizza. Thin crust from Leona's, sausage, tomatoes, green peppers and garlic. It was nirvana. But I'm totally paying for it this morning. Heheheheh. I think these boots I bought are finally breaking in. I wore them on Saturday with no blisters afterwards and I have them on today. granted, I drove to work because I had to move my car (street cleaning) and I'm going to the grocery after going to the gym tonight. Blah. This is all boring. Toodles.

April 18th, 2003 09:08 hours CST currently listening to: "A House Full of Time" by Guitar

Well, not much has been going on lately, I guess. I've met with some prospective bass players. I actually still have three or four still to meet. I didn't think I'd get this large a response to that ad. Dave has been letting me go home a bit early the last couple of days. The office has been dead for us lately, but it still makes me feel bad when he suggests I go home. There's something about it that makes me feel like I should be finding work to do. He never really seems to say it in a cheery way and it's a bit weird every time it happens. I dunno.

I got 2 kickass pairs of shoes at Fluevogs on Wednesday. One pairs of black gibson's with silver eyes holes and one pair of half sized boots that are black with burgundy swirls in them. I wore the latter pair yesterday and now I have blisters the size of dinner plates. I know I still need to break them in..... I've never actually worn boots before, with exception to the hicking boots I have for when the snow gets really bad here. It felt like I was wearing my hockey skates. Walking up and down steps is a bitch in those things. I'm wearing the gibson's today and the look all nice and shiny and new. Finally I have some shoes worthy of polishing.

DJ and Dave are taking me to Dave 'n Buster's tonight for burgers, beers and bots. Heheheheh. We're gonna do the new, upgraded Battletech pods. I can't wait. I haven't played those since maybe '98? That was when I worked at that video store in Bloomington and my boss (also named Dave) would spend his bonuses on us and take us up to Circle Center in Indianapolis. Tomorrow is Hope's 24th birthday. We're (there's a ton of people apparently) all going to some new restaurant downtown that I've never been to. Afterwards, we're going to the Liar's Club, which I've also never been to. Thankfully I get paid either tonight or tomorrow. This is gonna be an expensive weekend. However, if enough people show up tonight, I won't have to pay for my own alcohol. Here's hoping.

April 16th, 2003 09:55 hours CST currently listening to: "A Starting Point" by Dif Juz

*yawn* super sleepy this morning. Ahhh, but I'm oh so smitten.

I've been all over the city in the evenings trying to sell these cd's, videos and records I'm getting rid of. I've now visited both Reckless's and still have a ton left. It's all gonna go to the Salvation Army this evening. I'm gonna do laundry at Spin Cycle as well. I'm also bound and determined to buy a rad pair of shoes. The place I wanted to go to was closed after I got through selling my stuff the other day. Last night I got to meet Rachel's new Chuhauha puppy. Cutest little thing, he is. Ugh, I can't stop yawning. I wanna go back to bed.

Ok, now onto the cool stuff. I recently stumbled upon some printouts from National Game Review, which was a site run by some friends of mine back at IU. It was essentially The Onion, but for gamers. It's ridiculously low brow, but really pretty funny. I had to type all these things out, so I just got them finished yesterday. Go check them out and have a laugh.

April 14th, 2003 11:20 hours CST currently listening to: "Precious One" by Chapterhouse

I love this song so much. Wow. And it' wonderful outside! The weather was sunny and brisk all weekend. Just my kind of weather right now. Makes me happy. I'm working on something really cool for you guys. I have to type a whole ton of shit to do it though. Luckily Dave is out today, so in case some dumbass coworker breaks their mouse or something, I should have time to finish it all by the end of the day.

The weekend was cool. I'm anticipating a skyrocketting phone bill for a long while now. heheheheheh. Saturday I began the cleaning cycle. I seriously don't think my place has ever looked this clean. I went fuckin ape shit all over the place. I threw out so much stuff. There's a lot in the back of my car. I need to drop things off at goodwill and sell stuff at Reckless Records and Myopic Books. I have so many old PC games that I want to get rid of. I may do some Ebay auctions for them. I know they're not worth much, but I also have the original manuals and even the strategy guides for some of them. I'm talking well over 2 dozen games, here.

Later that night, Amanda and I went to Hi Rikki for dinner. They played the first Stone Roses album! I couldn't believe it. I even thanked the waiter. We went to Webster Place to see House of 1,000 Corpses. Written and directed by Rob Zombie. Folks, I'm only gonna say this once: Best movie of 2003 thus far! I want to go see this again and very soon. After the movie, I dropped Amanda off and then met Mark at Club Foot. I got to meet Misa, who spins all the britpop tunes that light up my life. I'm going to make a serious effort at hitting Heavy Stereo nights more often. I feel like such a loser for not going more. A girl named Kim recognized me from when airiel played at the Hungry Brain. She was really sweet and asked all about what was going on with the band. I gave her the "airiel loves me" button that was on my p-coat. Mark and I hung out at the bar and just drank and talked. The place was so busy. Misa came by every so often and chatted with us and took my requests. Good times.

I was surprisingly hung over the next morning. Too much beer before bed. I finished Metroid Prime yet again. Now that it's out of my system, I can give Zelda the attention it so richly deserves. I cleaned a bit more. This time doing various odds and ends. I even cleaned out my tool bag and organized al the nails, screws and hangers that had fallen around in there. Exciting shit, I know. I ran a wicked buzz off of the lemon scented soft scrub. Holy crap.

April 8th, 2003 08:45 hours CST currently listening to: "Regret" by New Order

Wow oh wow oh wow oh wow. Where do I even begin? Talk about doing a 180. Yesterday was complete crap. Like, we're talking Strongbad crap here. "Today's weather is total craaaap" kinda thing. It was slushy, cold, windy. It just sucked all over. I was in a bad mood the entire time I was at work, really. I had a poopy diaper, as Dave would say. Dave actually had the day off, so I couldn't throw said diaper at him. I didn't really want to take the day off because it was my birthday, but just because the weather has finally gotten under my skin, and I'm tired of winter now. I know, I know, you'll all hear (read) me bitching to the sky about how much I hate summer in like, a few weeks, but still. When your birthday is on a Monday, and it sucks this hard, you'll bitch too. Plus, nobody rented me an Asian hooker, either. It's just as well I suppose, but maybe I should start cozying up to some friends with a bit more capital who can support such an odd request. Or did I just dream that I asked for one? Hell, I don't know.

Ok, moving on. I got flowers from my brother and his husband. It was so sweet. Not the kind of thing I expected, but the card was signed in dialog reminiscent of Shirley Q Liquor, so I knew it had to be them. Still, my day was "total crap" and I was just killing time by playing Metroid Fusion under my desk and reading back articles from X-Entertainment, who as it turns out, had it's 3rd year anniversary on the 5th of April. Go Matt, you fucking rule. I managed to con a ride home out of DJ, who cheered me up from the get go. He's good at doing that. He dropped me off at my car by my apartment and I went to Target. I managed to pick up all the remaining Q-Bit units I wanted for the dresser I'm now in the middle of putting together. When I got home, my day completely turned around. I got a birthday package that pretty much eclipses anything I could have imagined getting in the mail. Hilray, I can't even begin to describe how amazing you are. I won't go into the details, because the would cheapen the experience, but I've been smiling ever since. I had no idea that I was THIS easy to shop for. I mean seriously, this is nuts. Ok, I think the cinnamon tea I just drank has caffeine in it. It certainly didn't say it had or did not have caffeine on the box, so who knows. Maybe I'm still high from my birthday presents.

In other news, I'm setting up times to meet with potential bassists. I'm meeting with one woman today. In fact, I'm making copies of the Winks & Kisses EP's as I type this. On that subject, I got word from Dan at Clairecords that he's cool with releasing both Frosted and Dizzy back to back, which would get us back to our original time-line. Well, sort of. So anyway, wish me luck with the hopefuls. I have about 8-bajilion cd's to listen to today. Heheheheheheheheheh.

April 7th, 2003 08:55 hours CST currently listening to: "Your Imagination" by All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors

Happy birthday to me! Today I am 26 years old. It's snowing outside. What the fuck.

Helen Stellar played a great show on Thursday night. Ben, Jenna and I went to the back room of aLiveOne to see them do a free, 2 hour set. They were so fucking loud. Small rooms like that don't dissipate sound. They covered a very early Verve song that I still can't remember the title of. It has that line "it was wind in her sails....." Anyway, I got to meet Cliff, the drummer and Brian, their manager. Really super nice guys. Especially Cliff. He appreciated to no end that we even recognized the Verve cover at all. We bonded instantly. I gave him copies of the first two Winks & Kisses EP's and he seemed excited to give them a listen.

I debated a lot on Friday whether or not to even drive to Bloomington. I was deaf, tired and it was raining cats and dogs all day. I decided to just go. The drive home sucked beyond belief. Worst driving conditions I've ever been in, I can honestly say. The rain kicked in after being on the road for about 40 minutes. Folks, I was driving through tornado warnings the whole way until I past Indianapolis. Horizontal rain, zero visibility for stretches of up to 5 miles. There were points where we were driving less than 30 mph because you simply couldn't see the lines on the road. I almost stopped under an overpass a few times to wait it out, but I decided that I'd rather just get the drive over with. Naturally, it had only been raining in Bloomington for about 30 minutes before I got there. Weirdness.

Saturday I did nothing. Flipped channels for hours (I only do this at my parents house), and then went to an auto parts store with my dad to get new wiper blades and wheel covers. My car looks like some military vehicle when the wheel covers are missing. Mon, Dad and I went to the Scholar's Inn for dinner. This place was beautiful and had a menu to match. I was honestly impressed with the whole setup. We stopped by the video store and rented the Bourne Identity and Signs. Mom and I watched the Bourne Identity together while dad worked on office stuff.

Sunday was more boring crap. Flipped channels. Went downtown to look for shoes but nobody had anything that I liked. I might hit up City Soles tonight after work. Mom and I went to Target and I got 4 of those dark Q-Bits cube things that I used to make my entertainment center. This time though, I'm making a dresser. I just need a lot more cubes. Target is on my agenda today too. I met up with Cathy and Heather with some of her friends at Basbeaux's for pizza. That stuff isn't as good as I remember. Company was mostly good though. Cathy and I have a lot of catching up to do, but we never seem to have any one on one time. Talked to Hilary for I think maybe an hour as I got into the city. That was oh so nice.

Thanks to those of you who have sent me birthday stuff. I'm working on thank you cards throughout the day. Today's MP3 of the week is appropriately called "Age" by Chapterhouse. It's an outstanding track that I got from Ben. Turn it up loud and dance.

April 3rd, 2003 14:25 hours CST currently listening to: "You Could Fell The Sky" by Boards of Canada

For fuck sake. DJ was walking by my desk and threw this foam rubber ball at me. Meant to hit the monitor, he missed and it collided into 7 empty diet coke cans, sending them flying. Ok, they weren't all completely empty. I sort of sat there in this state of pause with this look of "ummmmmm.........what the hell just happened?" on my face and made him clean up the mess. It was actually really fucking funny but I played it off like I was somewhat pissed. It also made me realize that I need to clean up my desk and throw away these stupid cans.

April 3rd, 2003 10:00 hours CST currently listening to: "Fear of Flying" by Bowery Electric

GRrrrrrrrrr. I really need to start stretching in the morning. Years of wearing shoulder bags is starting to take it's toll on me. I was in Walgreen's this morning, buying envelopes to mail out airiel stuff, and the whole right side of my back just suddenly tied in a knot. Pisses me off. The Tylenol is helping, but I'm trying to sit correctly in my chair and not lean over the keyboard so much.

I got the Dizzy EP mastered at Colossal yesterday morning. It sounds outstanding. Dan and I spent a little more time with each track this time around. I'm just so amazed at how dynamic these recordings turn out after he's played with them. There's a tremolo track on Stratosphere that somehow got off tempo, and David and I fixed it the night before, but I hadn't heard it all the way through yet. So I was on pins and needles while Dan played it back at the mastering studio hoping to no end that it stayed on tempo the whole time! It did. It sounds incredible. I walked out of the house in near 70 degree weather, wearing just jeans and a white undershirt. It was beautiful out. When I left the studio around noon, it had dropped nearly 20 degrees! I put on the little brown jacket I had stashed in my bag, but it didn't help much. I maid several copies of the new disc. I'm mailing a few out at lunch.

Let's see....... what else. My Gameboy Advance SP is lighting up my life. Although playing it while on the train leaves me a bit queasy. But that's also because I have yet another ear infection. Why they reoccur and why always in my right ear is beyond me. This time I'm going to see an ENT about it. This is just too weird. And on the topic of trains, is it me or am I the only one not witness to weird acts of humanity while on the trains? Hope just told me this morning that while she was on the Metra last night, the guy sitting behind her got kicked off the train because he was jacking off. I laughed when she told me. That stuff cracks me up. It's like what Hilary was telling me about the guy in the alley a few weeks ago doing the very same thing. Life is fun that way.

I'm gonna go see Helen Stellar tonight at AliveOne. Ben's taking a friend this time whom I haven't met. I can't wait to meet these guys. They're really fucking good. I opted for this and to pass on Katie's birthday fun tonight. Much as that greaves me. She's being taken to a strip club. I would love to see this, but I'm driving to Bloomington after work tomorrow and I would just be too tired if I was out with them all night. Plus, I don't have enough money to buy her lap dances right now. *sigh*

Ohhhhhh I wanna go lie in bed. My back hurts. Pity me, damnit!

4 more days and then I'm 26.