June 23rd, 2003 08:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Drunk on Beauty" by Butterfly Child

Well, Mossimo picked up my scooter yesterday afternoon. I put cardboard underneath her Monday night and sure enough, there is a gas leak. I was really impressed that he would come out here and tow it himself. That's pretty cool. Hopefully I can get it after work on Friday.

I rented a bunch of movies on Sunday. Watched Die Another Day last night as well as Road to Perdition. Die Another Day, I have to say, was pretty lame. I dunno. There's just no surprises anymore with James Bond, it seems. I think they needed to use R (John Cleese) a lot more. Road to Perdition was very good. Not exactly the feel good movie of the year, but I was glued to it. The sequences where Michael is picking up Sullivan in the car are just hilarious.

Also watched the first Tomb Raider movie which I didn't think was all that bad. Watching Angelina in this one reminded me so much of her part in Hackers. I also watched Excalibur for the first time. Weird fucking movie. Campy yet serious. Medieval, yet sci-fi. Angelica Houston looked pretty good back then too. Seeing Gabriel Burne having sex with a woman wearing underwear while he's wearing a full suit of armor is pretty damn funny.

June 23rd, 2003 13:45 hours CST currently listening to: "Bad Start" by The Assassins

Crazy weekend. Ben and I went out to Danny's for a few much needed drinks. Talked about all kinds of stuff, including the fact that we have no idea how to design the box for the Winks & Kisses box set. Heh. Saturday morning I met up with Rachel and we went to Scooterworks to get my Vespa. We rode all over the damn place. We made it back to Logan Square and did lunch at Lula. Then we made it over to Nick's bike shop over in Lakeview. We made it down to Wicker Park as well. I probably killed the thing less than a dozen times throughout the course of the day. The more I rode, the easier it got. Passed out for several hours when I got home and then rented a bunch of flicks. Afterwards I picked up Hope and her boyfriend Josh and we went to Club Foot for a while. I was spacing out the entire time and we didn't do a whole besides watch people play pool.

Sunday was a fucking headache. I got laundry done later than I wanted because some guy came in a threw a dryer load in and it messed up my schedule. I managed to somehow order 6 tickets for The Hulk instead of 2, and that totally pissed me off because Fandango doesn't do refunds for online orders and I couldn't get anyone to answer the phone at the theatre. My Rally was sounding a bit funny when I started her up and she died three times on my way to Evanston. I managed to get back to Belmont and Western before it died the third time and from there I had to push her back. I was sweating my ass off too, but then got in the car and met Mischa to see The Hulk. It's pretty much crap, folks. My expectations were very low and it sort of flatlined with me the whole time. I gotta look into my scooter when I get back. Forest seems to think it's just the throttle cable, but I dunno.

June 19th, 2003 08:20 hours CST currently listening to: "Firefly" by airiel

Had a weird night last night. I was feeling very techno, so I watched Pi and then Hackers. I forgot what a fantastic, yet silly movie Hackers is. I also wonder when Angelina Jolie got her boob job. Jonny Lee Miller is such a cutie. Too bad they got divorced and she ended up marrying a middle aged, mediocre wanna be country rock star. Anyway, what else? Got some scooter practice in with Rachel the other night. Also watched a drug deal go down 20 feet away from us as we were trying to get her Primi to start. She, Carolynn and I went down to Whirlaway for a few drinks. The owner of that place, Maria, is a total sweetheart. Loves to meet new people. She cooks dinner for her patrons on Tuesdays, but we arrived too late and it was all consumed, with exception to a few baby carrots.

I finally got the new demo recorded for Firefly. I gotta get that to Stella today so she can practice with it. The release date for the new airiel EP, "Frosted" is now July 15th. Mark that date down on your calendars boys and girls and then head over to Tonevendor to place an order. I'm currently working on organizing a listening party. I wonder it Misa would be down with plugging it at the next Heavy Stereo night at Club Foot? That would be perfect. BRMC is playing here the night before the release, so that would be a perfect time to hand out flyers.

I've got a weird headache right now. Just over my eyes. I've had it since last night. I ate like a pig yesterday. I think I'm actually having a growth spurt. Weird, huh?

June 16th, 2003 09:24 hours CST currently listening to: "Violaine" by The Cocteau Twins

I feel like the scum of the fucking earth right now. Never in my life have I felt so conflicted about how I feel about a person. That in itself is a problem; that I was conflicted at all. I could easily say that it could be blamed on the fact that we were still getting to know each other, or that my sense of optimism had dried up from all the passive negativity. Either way, I feel like shit and I've handled this situation very poorly. I've permanently lost someone from my life forever, and while I feel that it's my fault, I still feel an odd sense of relief. That relief however, is usually quickly followed by a sense of guilt and regret. And then it all goes back and forth in this seemingly never ending loop.

What is it about a person that makes them so scared to be judged, yet they turn around and do the judging themselves? It's a mystery of human behavior that I wonder if I'll ever figure out. Even though I do realize that I was being judged ever second of our time together. And I did the same thing. It's so weird and scary.

June 10th, 2003 09:24 hours CST currently listening to: "PDA" by Interpol

There's no new MP3 of the week since my hard drive died last week and I had to reformat it, losing over 10 gigs of MP3's. I was pissed beyond words. Last week was super stressful and I'm glad it's over with. The process of making new mp3's is under way.

My weekend in Baltimore was nice. Super lazy and super relaxing. I got in around 10:30 or so. Hilary and I made her amazing carrot ginger cake. We didn't do a whole lot this weekend. Seriously. Lots of lounging around and movie watching. Watched the 2nd Harry Potter flick as well as Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. Not back to back, mind you. Porn Star was excellent. We got into the 2nd part of Children of Dune, but since I had to be up at 5 on Monday morning to fly home, we forced ourselves to go to bed. We rescued a bird on Sunday night. The little guy (or girl) had been hit by a car windshield, I was thinking. We drove it to a 24 hour animal hospital close to Hilary's place. Not the average night out, eh? Monday (yesterday) was a drag. Not only did I go straight to work from the airport, but I'm fucking sick again! This is the third week in a row. The people that I know that have had this thing have all had it come back in different forms. First it was a head cold, then a sinus infection and now it's a head cold that's gonna get into my chest. Pisses me the hell off. Anywho. I gots work ta do. Later.

June 6th, 2003 09:24 hours CST currently listening to: absolutely nothing

Well, yesterday completely sucked. My main workstation died thanks to fucking Windows Update™. I installed the new security patch and then after rebooting, I couldn't get back into windows no matter what option I tried. I'm now reformatting the hard drive and kissing over 10 gigs of MP3's goodbye. It's been a looooong fucking time since I backed up my MP3's to my laptop, so I'm gonna lose a lot of great albums. Mostly stuff I borrowed from Ben and never actually copied the CD itself. Speaking of my laptop.... in an amazing stroke of luck, I brought it in yesterday and had copied my entire My Documents directory over to it earlier that morning. That's a fucking relief and a half. I even got the huge PST file that has all the email from my friends that has been sent to my work account. All my emails from Hilary, Ben, Clairecords, the works. I'm thanking my lucky stars, believe me. I'm just fucking pissed that this happened though. I put the hard drive into two different machines, and neither of them would recognize the disk as being formatted. Pisses me the hell off. Plus, either I have a filling that's lose, or I have a cavity developing.

You have no idea how much more I'm looking forward to going to Baltimore tonight because of all this. I want to get far away from my office. Far, far away.

June 5th, 2003 09:24 hours CST currently listening to: "How Beautiful You Are" by The Cure.

My updates are becoming less frequent, I know. Work has been insane lately. Nothing like trying to roll out Active Directory migrations on your own when your boss is out, and then getting a call from Seattle saying that three of our switches just went offline. Joy!

Anyway, things are good. I feel soooooo much better. This damn cold really sucks. I really think that Hilary and I combined our colds in to some sort of über cold or something. An unholy abomination of nose blowing, coughing and groaning. I think I'm gonna stay on the antibiotics through the weekend though, since her roommate Nate has bronchitis. I can't wait to see her new kitten. From all the baby talk going on, this thing might actually kill me with cuteness. Not much else going on right now. I finally got the other parts to "Firefly" written. Now I just have to program the drum patterns and arrange it all. Then I can send Stella a demo. I can't wait to get my scooter. I'm freaking out about that. Since it's over 150 CC's, I'll have to go in and get an M class license. Wonder how hellish that's gonna be.

June 2nd, 2003 09:06 hours CST currently listening to: "Breather" by Chapterhouse.

My head is killing me. This cold has almost lasted 2 weeks. I'm getting impatient and bitter about it. The sinus pressure on the left side of my face could stop a charging elephant. I've been having trouble sleeping too. My body for some reason, wants to wake me up insanely early. I haven't been able to sleep in for the past three days and it's driving me batty. Not sure what that's about.

The parents showed up on Friday around 11:00. They had some really bad weather coming up and they drive slowly anyway. I pretty much hung around the house and watched MST3K episodes. I need more. I had had a really crazy day at work and these next few weeks are going to be pretty serious. Active Directory is some crazy shit. Anyway, Saturday morning, Dad picked me up and took me back to their hotel. We crammed down some food and then went north to Scooterworks. I ended up buying that Rally. Silver, 1976 Vespa Rally 200. I'm so excited. They have to rebuild the engine and other vitals, so it's gonna be about 2 weeks before I get it. I have that weekend free also, so that rules.

We went down to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the Imax movie "Coral Reef Adventure". It was alright. My whole family scuba dives, as you know, so we were looking for some more exciting footage. All of these films have a conservation angle to them and come off a little depressing. It was still fun though. We made it up to Flattop Grill for dinner and they loved it. Then we went up to Evanston and watched Finding Nemo. Pixar does it again, folks. They have yet to make a bad movie. Helen Degenerous does a great job. I could recognize a few voices here and there. Albert Brooks, William Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush, etc. There's a part at the end that just makes you cry the way Monsters Inc. also made you cry. It's a good flick. The credits are fun too. No outtakes though.

Sunday was a bit of a bust. We went to Wishbone for breakfast and then made it down to the Planetarium, but due to all the construction going on at Soldier Field, there was no place to park. We all had headaches so we just went back to my place. Dad helped me drag that huge oak dresser downstairs so they could take it home. Nice to have somebody around for a little manual labor. They left around 2 and I camped out on the couch for a while.

Went to the Belmont/Sheffield street fair last night. Met up with Mark and Shannon and we watched Enon. Ben showed up in the middle of their set. Their cute little Asian bass player pretty much maxed out the cute-o-meter. Somebody said "awwww I want a cute Asian bass player", to which I replied "I'm speaking from experience here, they're fucking overrated." Not that I'm bitter, no no no. Interpol played an OK set. Two new songs were played that we all liked. The sounds was pure crap. The guitars sounded shitty, the bass and vocals were too loud and the drums were too quiet. But they liked the crowd a lot. I couldn't get over the aging, yuppies that were holding their beers up in the air (swaying in the breeze), playing air guitar, pantomiming stabbing themselves in the neck, and singing to each other faces. I hope I'm never like those people. Sure, I'm glad they were into the music and all, but what the fuck?