July 27th, 2001

Fucking weird night. I went to the Lakeview area to visit Kate at her new job at Fuel, which is a neat looking bar right next to The Metro. We got to hang out for a bit but she was running around working. At least This Is Spinal Tap was playing on the monitor system, so I was enchanted with lip reading that and seeing all of the cool looking people coming out of the metro from whatever band was playing. I left around 11:30, and was on my merry way down Clark when the freakiest two girls came up to me. One was 14 and the other, wearing rollerblades, was 15. The rollerblade wearing one took my picture as I exited Fuel. I didn't mind. I just did my Vincent Price eyebrow thing and kept on walking. And then they were right next to me starting conversation. I don't remember there names at all. The 14 year old had braces on. It was fucking strange. I felt like I was a camp counselor during girls session. It was just wrong. There was NO flirtation going on, mind you. It's just not everyday that I walk down the street talking to girls 10 years younger than me. Gross. The bulk of the conversation topics from them started with "Hey, guess what?" and then it just went on from there. By the time I got to my car I had them convinced that they weren't going to hang with me anymore, so we said our goodbye's and that was that. It was just weird.

July 25th, 2001

Well I just finished first "trial day" at Reckless Records. For those of you who don't know, Reckless is a bad-ass record store in Chicago. There are two actually. I was in the Wicker Park one. If you've seen the movie High Fidelity, that record store was just two stores down from Reckless. Kind of funny like that, but then John Cusack is a big fan of Chicago. I got along with everybody really well. Almost everyone that works there happened to be there that day, if only for a few hours. My feet are killing me. I forgot what it was like to work a job like that. I hope I get the job, if only for social reasons. The pay is going to suck ass, but since I'd only be working 4 days out of the week (10 hour days) that gives me time to still do web design from home. It's not the greatest situation, but it may have to do.

July 23rd, 2001

I just woke up from the craziest dream. I also slept in by 2 hours. I was very tired for some reason. But here we go. The dream started out with me on a beautiful spring day. It was sunny and there was the perfect amount of puffy clouds in the sky. This must have been because I'm longing for weather like that. Yesterday in Chicago it was 103 degrees on my side of town. Anyway I met this girl, who's real name I don't even know. She's just Spida. And we both recognized each other, probably from our web sites. I don't know how often she visits mine, but she has signed my guest book, so I know she's been here. When we met it was like we had known each other for years. We just talked about everything as if we both knew these things equally. She split an orange with me and offered me a ride home. I think we were on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington where I grew up. I think she drove me back to my parents house, which is where I had just visited in real life about a week or two ago. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses in the car and I remember that she was playing Slowdive's second album, which I also have in my own car at the moment. I remember being rather worried that she wasn't ever going to contact me because my handwriting was so bad. Naturally I couldn't see it, because you usually can't read text in a dream. It must have been some anxiety dream about me needing a companion or girlfriend right now. It was very strange. I emailed her this and I'm sure she thinks I'm a turbo freak now that has some internet crush on her. Granted, she's very VERY cute, but I'm not that psycho. At least not right now anyway.

The rest of the dream involved me being in that commando group that Alec Baldwin was leading in the movie Final Fantasy. We were all running to get to this ship because something was chasing us. I made it to the ship first and started turning things on and starting it up. I could here Steve Buschemi's character yelling something about having an idea and that we had to set off some explosion in order to get away. We all got into the ship and flew out of some weird hanger that launched us out at an angle, and the explosion went off as we were flying away. But now get this.... somehow I was hanging on to the outside of the ship and we were flying down the street where my parents house is located. It was at night and I remember getting smacked in the face several times by tree limbs and yelling at Steve to pull up. Fucking strange. I have this huge kink in the right side of my neck now too.

Now on to reality. I went to the house of Chris's last night for the WWF Invasion pay per view. Jones' friend Emma was there (shown here holding a camera), as was Amanda, who was eventually drunk off her ass. Despite the drunken behavior she was a complete sweetie. Really damn cute too. She's friends with my friend Kate, and they are definitely sharing a sense of fashion, shown here by the crazy ass striped stockings she's wearing that I fucking love. Nobody wears those anymore! Why is that? Anyway, Dlitz was around, but he was too busy working to watch any of the wrestling. Although I will say that he was digging all of my color commentary and the fact that I appear to be some die hard fan because I know what's going on with all of the wrestlers with their actual injuries and such. Anyway. Jones was being cool and made some "cookies". They were a bit on the flat side as you can see, but still damn good. I got to talk to Lucy last night. I haven't heard from her in a while and it was good to hear her voice. I woke her up because I forgot about the time change between us. Oops. She didn't seem to mind though. I also talked to Kate, who now has a slick bar tending job at Fuel. I'm gonna go check that out on Tuesday night I think.

July 21st, 2001

This is going to be a bitch and moan session. I figure I rarely do that, so here goes. I think I'm PMSing or something. Boys actually do that. Well, something like it. About every two months I get kind of down, and just depressed about things that normally don't bother me. This morning I woke up to find that I was overdrawn at the bank. I need a paycheck badly. I went to the bank to deposit some dough from my savings account. I've been doing that a lot lately. All four of the drive up ATM machines were completely out of deposit envelopes. This just pissed me off. Three of the machines even have a reserve bucket for these things and they were empty too. So I parked, and walked inside and the place was a fucking dump. There was paper everywhere. I picked up a deposit envelope and headed back outside to use the drive up machines. I figured if I had walked inside to use a real live teller I would have complained. And I wasn't in the mood to ruin an employees morning/shift by being the 9AM asshole. But seriously, that was lame.

I didn't go to the gym today, and I needed to. I have a major kink in the left side of my neck. Those things usually take 2 to 3 days to go away. Wonderful. Anyway, a friend of mine in New York is really getting depressed a lot. She's only 18, and stunningly beautiful. It just makes me sad that she's sad. It's weird. I guess it's empathy. I'm not sure. I need a fucking girlfriend or something. I'm usually OK with being alone. I'm used to it. It doesn't freak me out to not constantly have a significant other in my life at all times. And I think that's why I don't last long in relationships. Or that relationships don't last long with me. I'm too used to being alone. And I hate that. I hate that I cut myself off from a person because I suddenly feel like I need to be sitting at home reading by myself or geeking or whatever. I'm not going to dwell on that anymore tonight.

So anyway, I talked to DJ about this when I arrived at his place. He completely understands where I'm coming from. This city can seem at times to be filled by nothing but rude people, who do not have the first clue about or intend to drive well at all. It's amazing to see a person in a car, sometimes with children (that are never in seat belts) just drive out into traffic without looking or seeing who has the right of way. And then when someone honks or something to get them to wake up, they flip the other person off! It's just so fucking rude. You fucked up. Someone called you out on it. And now you tell them to go fuck themselves? Why can't anyone own up to their own faults anymore? Am I the only fucking person behind the wheel of a car anymore who actually stops at stop signs. Or apologizes for fucking up? I guess I was just raised better than these people. It's called respect for your fellow human being, people. If you all lose this, then we are gonna destroy ourselves faster than aids will.

I'm an atheist. I do not believe in deities or spiritual forces of any kind. When people ask me what I believe in (before they've read my bumper stickers), I sometimes tell them that I simply believed in the good will of humankind. That we take care of each other. There are days like today where I don't really believe that, but I really still do. The overall good will of human kind. Not some invisible man that lives in the fucking clouds. The more I think about that, the more I think that people who believe in god are actually insane. I mean think about it. An invisible man that lives in the sky that will punish you and send you to a firery afterlife if you break some rules that were written down by men about 2,000 years ago. I know I may be quoting George Carlin a lot here, but the man has a firm grasp on what I believe in. God is not perfect. It shows in his work. I am not impressed by these religions. And how is it that if we are all children of god, that there are these huge groups all devoted to worshiping this imaginary fellow, yet they hate each other? Wouldn't it seem to make sense that we would all be united by this thing and worship it in the same way because it said so? The bible was written by men. Men have proven themselves time and time again to be greedy, bigoted, brutal, entities that will forge a document to spread their own propaganda. Ok, I'm trailing off here, because I'm really getting tired. I'm not one to tell anyone else how to live their life, but if you believe that there is some sort of whimsical parent figure up in the clouds, you need to have your fucking head examined.

Here endeth the lesson.

July 17th, 2001

I've been back home for about three hours now. I was in my home town of Bloomington, Indiana this weekend as of Thursday. It was fun to be back in town. I forgot how dead that place is during the summer. I got to hang out with my best friend, Kim and also hang out with Flip as well. We watched his new DVD of Unbreakable, which was having a serious fit with his DVD player. The change angle icon was constantly on during the beginning of the movie, and then it disappeared after a while. Then at the ending sequence it kicked on again and it was like having max hedrom editing the film. Every word repeated. It was funny. He was pissed.

On Friday night I went over to Nashville, Indiana to visit my old summer camp. It's called Palawopec, and despite the silly name, it's the most kick ass summer camp in existence. I spent 10 summers there. I could go on and on about that place. It was good to see that some of the people that I knew when I was still a camper are still working there now. I was a camper for 5 years, and staff for 5 years. Crazy, crazy stuff.

On Saturday night, I went with my Uncle Phil to my grandparents place in Meadow Wood. My Great Aunt Ruth was there. She turned 89. I can't imagine what that must be like. She's as sharp as a nail too. She's an amazing woman. My grandparents aren't doing so hot. They're healthy, but they're just not being very active. And it's making them lethargic and complacent. It was really cool to hear Ruth refer to my grandfather as "little brother". That was really neat.

I'm really tired. I'd turned the A/C off during my my visit to B-ton and my place was boiling when I got home. I also had to unload my car in that heat. It's really muggy in Chicago right now. When I came across the bridge, the haze was so thick that you couldn't see any of the skyscrapers.

July 11th, 2001

I just saw Final Fantasy tonight. Oh my fucking god, did that movie kick ass.

July 10th, 2001

I have a job interview today for a level 2 support position at manpower.com. The interview is in Gurnee, Il. I have never been there in my life, but I guess I've passed it going to Wisconsin or something. I really need a haircut. I'm going to look like shit today. At least I have clean and ironed shirts to wear. It's about 82 degrees outside and it's only 9 in the morning. It's highly likely that I'll arrive a sweaty mess. YAY me! I'll fill you in on how the interview goes. I really need a steady job right now, but if it's all the way up in Gurnee, then there's no way I can take it. That's just too much of a commute.

July 8th, 2001

My sister was in town this weekend. She was staying at this swanky hotel downtown called Hotel Morocco. Really cool place. She's "seeing" this guy named Phil, who just turned 31 on Friday. He's a millionaire. He sold his .com's to Cisco last year and made a fortune. He's a really nice guy. I met up with them at Blues, a blues bar over on Halstead. Not my scene, but it was nice to hang out with Jenny for a while and meet her new guy. I ended up leaving to meet Emily, Vincent, Drew, and Michael over at the Rainbow Room. They have a photo booth there, and I took some really funny pictures. I have to get them scanned and then I'll put them up. I have to remember to mail them to Carrie as well.

Last night I finally went to Red no. 5. It's this club on the south end of north Hallstead. It was fantabulous. I'm so damn sore. My neck is killing me. I made the mistake of wearing my leather pants. Bad maneuver. I'm not ever wearing those again in the summer. There was little or no air conditioning apparent in that place. We had a lot of fun. Vincent is really great. He danced with me more than anyone else. There were NO CUTE GIRLS AT ALL. I was a little bummed, but at least I got to dance. Most of the time it was with Vincent too. Ha ha. Emily has her eye on him, but I may start batting for the other team and steal him away. You never know. I certainly don't have any girls interested in me right now.

July 5th, 2001

Well Independence Day has come and gone. Had an interesting day. I've been helping Emily move into her place since Sunday. Her parents are super nice. Anyway, I went to DJ's place for some BBQ, beer drinking goodness. And as always, DJ can't let his geeky, childlike side stay hidden. As soon as I arrived he had Decent: Freespace 2 going on his windows machine in the back. I love that game. Once I'm done with the Aegis web site, I'm going to reinstall that. Anyway, he got Eric to play it and he was playing it in style! pic #1, pic #2, pic #3.

During the day I'd received a call from Carrie, from Mopedarmy.com. She and fellow moped girl, Sarah, were in town for the taste of Chicago. After I got home from DJ's around 11 that night, they called and came over with two other girls. It was a fantastic leisurely evening of lounging on the couches and drinking. I had to get a picture. It's not every day that I have 4 gorgeous girls show up at my door. Especially with alcohol! I'm totally smitten with Carrie and Sarah. They were too cute for words. We're all gonna get goth-d up and go to Neo whenever Carrie is back in town. I can't wait. I've been pleasantly sighing all morning.