March 29th, 2002 08:26 hours CST currently listening to: "Sweet Briar" by Orange.

This sucks. As of 5 PM CST I'm uninstalling my aol instant messenger software. Why do I feel so sad about this? Maybe it's because it's finally Friday and it's a poopy, rainy day outside. But at least it's not accompanied by that Chicago cold. Speaking of cold, my throat is really killing me. I've been fighting off a cold taking root all week long. Last night before I went to take care of Rachel's cats it was really starting to get swollen. It was alright when I woke up, but by the time I got to the L it was back to where it was last night. Crap.

In other news, Chris just told me that he got his schedule for work. Get this. He works from 2 pm to 10 pm, Wednesdays through Sundays. So, our band practice schedule is now totally fucked. And in order for him to come to San Francisco with me, he's going to have to take a Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday off to do it. Looks like I may be back to square one in the bass player saga.

Not much else has happened this week. Well, something unbelievable happened, but I don't tell you guys everything now, do I? Heh. I'm almost finished with Final Fantasy X. Thank god. That game is rad, but there are some things that I'm tired of. The whole blitzball thing is pure bullshit. Wakka, you're a great and invaluable character, but there's no way in hell I'm getting your final weapon, buddy. Deal with it. That was my geek rant for the day.

In 9 days I will be 25 years old. I'm not going to get all pissy about it. These things happen. So, in an effort to remain "damn cirtusy" as Andy Partridge once said, let's see some birthday presents people!!! There's a link to my Amazon.com wish list right here. So, let's get crackin.

March 26th, 2002 08:26 hours CST currently listening to: "Crush Me" by The House Of Love.

Forgot to put up a new mp3 yesterday. Sorry folks. I was too distracted by the online sex position quiz. That one was a beauty. I think it nailed my personality towards sex pretty well (pun intended). I'm soooooo sleepy today. Walking through snow does that to me. It's like being in your first two periods of class back in school and you just know deep down that there's no way in hell you're gonna remember anything your teachers are force-feeding you.

I haven't seen Alex in over a week now, and for that, I feel retarded. Rachel is coming over tonight so we can work on the e-zine for Madradhair.com. Maybe this time we'll actually get some real work done. Hah. Last time we just watched Delicatessen and ordered a pizza. Then Kristen and Moe came over and it was just more of the same, plus drinking. We watched Zoolander, and as much as I sort of wanted to see that in the theaters, I'm glad I didn't. That was a stink bomb, I'm sorry to say. The rest of the weekend I did virtually nothing. I didn't shower. I didn't shave. I managed to cook one meal on Sunday night that didn't involve the word "Kellogg's" anywhere in it. Sometimes you just need one of those weekend where you just vedge. This weekend however, I need to get out and shake a tail feather or two. Alex's band, The Red Lights is playing on Saturday, and I super psyched to go. I've been wanting to see her play a show since I first started talking to her.

I got the artwork for the new airiel 7", and it looks like we're still on for a June/July release. Can't wait.

March 25th, 2002 08:22 hours CST currently listening to: "Blue" by Elastica.

Take the What Sex Position Are You? test by Ley Ley

March 22nd, 2002 08:53 hours CST currently listening to: "Never There" by Elastica.

Somehow I screwed up my left shoulder again. It hurts when I raise it. It was doing this a week ago and then went away after a day or so. How on earth do I screw up myself without even knowing how I did it? I mean, sure I'm the kind of guy who can pull a muscle in his butt by simply getting out a of a chair. And that's not to suggest that I'm not in shape, I just don't ever stretch. I've never in my life been able to bend over and touch my toes. I must have the tightest tendons ever in my legs.

There's a new site out there folks. It's called MAD RAD HAIR. The guy who runs it is a total sweetie, and it's filling up fast. My buddy Deb sent me the link over a week ago, and since then it's already doubled in member count. My pal Rachel is going to be heading up the e-zine and I'm gonna assist on the web side of it. It's gonna be nice to have a new project again. Sonicbaby.com is in a nice stable place right now and I'm in no hurry to change the layout. I get too many compliments on it anyway. It will be nice to be doing so new web work for a change.

I had a really nice conversation with Betsy Rockett for the first time. She has the cutest fucking Wisconsin accent I have ever heard in my life. Actually, her accent reminded me a lot of mine, when I actually hear my speaking voice. I've been told my singing voice has no accent, but my speaking voice is rather different from it. Anyway. Hopefully she's gonna make it down here for Siouxsie and the Banshees next month.

I brought my web cam home last night to take apartment pics for Andrea, but I simply didn't have the time. Between doing laundry, meeting up with Rachel at a diner, and rushing home to get on the phone with Lil' Ms. Rockett, there just wasn't time. Perhaps this weekend. IF I get things cleaned up. Heh.

March 21st, 2002 08:53 hours CST currently listening to: "Ordinary Angels" by Frente.

Last night I went to bed at 8:30. It was fantastic. This entire week I've become addicted to the snooze button on my alarm. Those of you who know me, know that I get up really early before I go to work. I've never been able to just get up and rush out the door. I have to have time to collect myself. And no, I'm not working on my hair the entire time. Obviously. But yesterday Dave and I were going over some WINS and DNS changes to one of the servers and I couldn't concentrate at all!!! It was just like being in class, where your eyes keep closing and your head bobs up and down because you're falling asleep. It was terrible. Luckily when I got home I remembered most of everything we went over.

I got my webcam up and running again. I have to take a laptop home from work these days, and I've got it running on there. So I finally have a machine with decent USB support again so I can now upload stuff from my apartment.

I got a great email from my old friend Brian this morning. He sent me two really cute pics of his baby. I miss him. He pretty much single- handedly got me into dreampop music back in college. I owe him a lot. He mentioned that he's postponing his graduation for grad school for another year. Don't know they're gonna move then or what. He wrote me this: I am happy to say that I have converted Michele, who was previously vegetarian, to the beauty of BBQ chicken pizza.  It may be my finest moment yet."

**updated at 10:22 AM**

I love the fact that Brian mentioned BBQ chicken pizza. That's one of my favorites. He and I used to get a Big 10 Special from Pizza Express back in Bloomington all the time. One large specialty pizza, 2 cokes, a bag of breadsticks and sauce for $10. Now that I've been in Chicago for over a year now, that pizza is pure shit. But is till has great sentimental value for me. Or something?

So Dave came in this morning and I apologized for being so asleep. I said unless you had a cattle prod up my ass, there was just no way I was going to stay awake. Dave replied: "Maybe you can put a P.O. for one of those this afternoon." I love that guy.

March 20th, 2002 08:53 hours CST currently listening to: "Can't Trust The Waves" by The Kitchens Of Distinction.

Went to see Resident Evil last night. I hadn't been to a movie by myself in a long time, and this one was perfect. If you're not a fan of the game series, then I don't suspect a lot of people will dig the movie. Visually, it's pretty good. Some of the CGI was a little shaky. I was really impressed with how much they actually took from the games. They actually called the town Raccoon City. I thought that was shocking. There were little nuances everywhere, like the Train that takes them to "The Hive" had Alexi 5000 written on the front, just like the train in RE2. The licker was pretty damn cool at first, but then it mutated into something you really couldn't identify. The dogs looked fantastic. The scene where the infected dog first shows up was taken directly from the game and looked wonderful. Michelle Rodriguez has the bulk of the one liners in the entire flick and she's just covered in bad-ass. Mila Jovavich is damn near naked several times in the film. I mean, you can tell she uses NAIR. That's what I'm talkin about. There was this one character who they modeled after Chris Redfield, who I swear didn't get his name said until the end of the damn movie. His character name was Matt, as it turns out. He would have been a perfect Chris Redfield though. The movie is sort of a prequel, I suppose. Kind of blending the first three games into one. Sort of. But for the most part, it's like RE1 and RE2 kind of smooshed together. There were some definite scares in there too. There's a great scene where the team discovers that some chem labs have been sealed and flooded due to the sprinkler system, and the technicians are floating inside. It reminded me a lot of the cloning tanks in Alien Resurrection. This blonde scientist floats to the glass, and then opens her eyes. It's the same scene you see in the trailers, but it seems to happen faster in the movie.

Let's see. What else? Heather said she put the CD in the mail that has the files of the artwork for the new airiel 7". We're still on track for a June/July release.

On an odd, unrelated note, I love the fact that I can put the word "cum" in an email, and the spell checker ignores it. That's awesome.

March 19th, 2002 08:30 hours CST currently listening to: "Car Song" by Elastica.

Well, there's some good news and some bad news. The good news is that as of April 1st, I will finally officially be the Systems Administrator for my office. I've been doing the job pretty much since Jonas left at the end of November. I'll finally get my pay increase and the official title change-over. I'll be salaried now instead of hourly, so I will be kissing my overtime goodbye. That pretty much sucks. Other good news: I've got several extra tickets to see Siouxsie and the Banshees on April 21st at the Vic theater. I think I've got one person (hopefully) coming down from Wisconsin for one of the tickets. She might be bringing her boyfriend too, I don't know. So, I have at least 2 left over. If anybody wants them, it's first come, first served. This is only 1 of 4 US show dates, people. You need to jump on this.

On to the bad news. In an attempt to be more proactive and efficient at my job, and in thanks for my new promotion, as of April 1st, I will be uninstalling AOL instant messenger from my workstations. Let me repeat that for you:

I WON'T BE ABLE TO CHAT ANYMORE DURING THE DAY AFTER APRIL 1ST.

I know, I know. I don't know what I'm going to do either. It's an addiction that needs to be quieted. I told Dave that I wasn't proactive enough, simply that I'm slacking due to the distraction of talking to 8 billion people all day. Ok, so maybe it's just 8, but whatever. I'll still be on at night, and those of you who know my work email can still bombard that as much as you want. Please do, actually. Keep me sane.

March 18th, 2002 08:30 hours CST currently listening to: "City Moon" by Love Spirals Downwards.

Interesting weekend. Spent some time with Alex on Friday night. Had a fantastic breakfast Saturday morning. Clarks makes some bad-ass chocolate chip pancakes. And bacon. Oh, the bacon. Alex and I went to Chicago comix and I bought more crap that I don't need right now. Then we went to the Chicago Music Exchange and drooled over everything, pretty much. I really like some of the new paint finishes on the 2002 Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters if only I could get my hands on Lake Placid Blue Jag. I would most likely have an accident right then and there.

Saturday night was a much needed pub crawl. Jeff called me around 7 or so and they were already onto their second bar. I was miffed, but I let it slide. Then while trying to find parking, I got miffed again. A vodka tonic cleared that right up. The crawl was in Lincoln Park, which was of course not my first choice, but then I wasn't leading this group, so whatever. I don't remember the name of the 2nd bar we went to, but I had some cool conversations with just about everybody there in our group. Jeff was getting "happy drunk" and Kim asked out loud "Why am I with him????" I laughed a lot. He responded by more air guitar gestures while Tool or some shit was playing on the actually well stocked jukebox. I saw Psycho Candy on there, so I let the Tool continue unabated. As long as I got my Jesus and Mary Chain fix, I was fine. Kim and I had a much needed lengthy discussion about my personal life, which actually manifested again the next morning when the person in question called me. But that phone conversation was very much needed and made me feel a LOT better, although still strange and not 100% resolved. Anyway, there was some crazy-ass Chinese ninja movie on the TV that nobody seemed to be able to take there eyes off of. It rocked. We eventually moved to the back room where some guy who used to work for my work was playing bass in a Rockabilly band. It was really damn loud, and luckily I had my earplugs already on me. Kim, Jeff, and Josh were the only ones still there at this point. I took off after a couple of songs.

So yeah, phone call Sunday morning made me feel a bit better, and also brought up a lot of emotion that I was trying to bury, for several reasons. I wasted most of my day playing Final Fantasy X. Chris came over around 2 and I had my first actual band practice in about 2 fucking years. It was cool. We fiddled around for a good 30 minutes just getting a feel for each others musical habits. He knows the genre about as well as I do and that helps a ton. He was very complimentary of me. I think things will work out.

Had dinner with Rachel last night. We went to the Cheesecake Factory. Oh dear sweet fucking god their food is amazing. We split an order of the tex mex egg rolls, which are my favorite. They were gone in about 10 seconds. We were starving. Rachel does this thing when she samples food that's new to her where she's expressionless for almost a minute before she comments on it. She damn near freaked as soon as she bit into these. It was hilarious. She had some chicken stuffed tortillas and I had an amazing apple glazed pork loin. We each took a different desert home but I managed to leave mine in her fridge. I had come over to see her kitties. They rock. Ultra friendly and super cute. I must get some of my own and soon. Came home to find that Alex had one of the worst days I could have imagined. I don't know how she's still sane after this one. Good grief.

March 15th, 2002 08:40 hours CST currently listening to: "Wuub" by Woob

Hmmmmmmmmm, yeah, she's right. The action on my Rick 330 is too high. Heh.

March 14th, 2002 09:20 hours CST currently listening to: "Desert" by Auburn Lull

I'm really tired today. Stayed up very late last night burning cd's for people. I came up with an idea for a makeout cd while I was on vacation. I know that's cheesy, but I haven't made a mix disc in a long time. It's a nice, relaxing blend of dreamy music. Not all dreampop either. There's some electronica, some ambient techno, it's all very nice. Made a pretty good sleeve for it as well. Black and white with lots of faded eyes and lips blended into the background. About a dozen people already want me to send them copies. I ran out of sleeves last night so I only made three. I'll do the others this weekend.

Speaking of.... I'm getting together with Chris for the first time to play. I'm all excited and nervous. I hope it goes well.

I got some really horrible news last night. A friend of mine was just diagnosed with Crones Disease. So now for the rest of her life, she's going to have to take medications around the clock and suffer random debilitating sick spells. I cried. I didn't tell her I was at the time, but there you have it. It just broke my heart. I shared some of my lactose intolerant tales with her in an act of sympathy. Life is certainly unfair to some.

Rachel and I went to the American Science And Surplus Store the other night. Good freaking lord, that place was wild. I'd first heard about it from my friend Jeff, and then Matt from X-Entertainment.com met up with some folks from different cam sites and had their own little adventure. That's what convinced me to go. The article he did has a really good description of what it's like in there. I should take pictures of my loot, but oh well. I managed to snag this fantastic Futurama set for a measly $10, and this thing is loaded!!! It has three 6-8" poseable figures of Leela, Fry, and Bender. They have their own stands with different backgrounds, and there's tons of other little things that come with it as well. I bought some superballs, a few weird pens, and some crazy orange glass bubbles that I'm going to somehow put on the windows in my living room. I have no idea how I'm gonna pull that off. They're pretty heavy.

March 13th, 2002 9:00 hours CST currently listening to: "Left of Mother" by Curve

Ok, the pictures from the trip are now up. To those of you with high resolutions, some of these are gonna be kind of small. Only 320x240, but you can deal with it.
No 1. - me trying to look good in a mirror
No 2. - 2nd verse, same as the first
No 3. - david and rusty
No 4. - view from lunch at the chibi chibi restaurant
No 5. - jenny and jeremy
No 6. - ditto
No 7. - me trying to look good in a mirror, yet again
No 8. - yes, I'm actually nekkid. sheesh.
No 9. - mom and rusty, fending off the mosquitoes
No 10. - the boys on the boat
No 11. - I don't actually have a shoe attached to me. dad threw it when dave took the picture
No 12. - rain is on it's way
No 13. - jeremy trying to look slick
No 14. - the dutch have arrived. and they are drinking (read below).
No 15. - "hellooooooo sailor!!!" rusty stops to dream a little. heh.
No 16. - good shot of the parents
No 17. - me and me mum

March 12th, 2002 08:10 hours CST currently listening to: "I Am the Resurrection" by The Stone Roses

Ok then. This one is a doozy, so sit back with bag of cheese doodles and be prepared for a long read. Well, it might not turn out to be that long, but whatever. I had actually made an outline on my iPaq while on the plane back to Chicago, just to keep myself up on all that had transpired.

March 2nd: Well, actually the day before, but whatever. Rachel and I hung out and got some food, comics and I picked up a new wetsuit. Dinner at Lula was kind of weird, but entertaining, nonetheless. Good waiter. I decided to just stay awake until I had to leave, because my flight was at 6:30 AM, and I would have to leave around 3:30 AM. I stayed up and packed in shifts. Tried on the wetsuit and damn near had a heart attack getting it on and off. That thing was tight as hell. Plus, I was naked, and not wet at all, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. I was listening to tons of random stuff while packing; Tears for Fears, Peter Murphy, Sweverediver, and I think at one point I had Carter, The Unstoppable Sex Machine in there somewhere. Before I knew it, it was 3:00 and I jumped into the shower. I called a cab when I got out. It was my first cab phone call. I know. I'm such a virgin to city life still. The guy picked me up around 3:40 and I walked out to about 6 inches of snow!!! I love snow, and we've had fuck-all this winter, and the day I leave for a vacation, we get a truckload. Feh.

Take a seat, sucker: There was a huge line at the Air Jamaica desk and we all quickly discovered that our flight wasn't leaving at 6:30. It was now leaving at 10:10!!!! Ok. About 4 hours behind schedule, and I haven't slept yet. I was supposed to connect with my sister, her boyfriend, my brother, and his boyfriend in Jamaica at 3:30, and we were all to fly to Bonaire together. Well, it looked like that wasn't going to happen now. They gave me a voucher for food in the airport for 7 bucks, and I cashed it all in at McDonalds. Haven't eaten that sludge in a while, and baby, I was due for it. Fuck, it was good stuff. Luckily, I had the phone number for the dive resort where we were staying, and my parents were already there. There are no phones in the rooms, so I had to leave a message. While deliriously attempting to sleep on some very uncomfortable airport bench, my dad called my cell phone and I told him what was up. We of course had no way of reaching the other kids, so we had to sort of ride it out and I was going to give him updates as they came.

Take another seat, sucker: Now here's the bitch of it: the pilot for our original 6:30 AM flight was sick, so Air Jamaica had a pilot flying up from Florida, but this put him over his flight limit. I guess an airline can only force a pilot to fly so many hours within a 24 hour period, and they forced him to sleep for 4 hours while we waited. I call this a necessary evil. Rather him be fresh and alert than strung out on coffee and caffeine suppositories. But the major catch was this: not only would I not make my connecting flight with my other siblings, but they might not even be flying us to Bonaire that day at all, and there are no flights to Bonaire from Jamaica on Sunday. This would mean that I, and 50 others, would be stuck in Jamaica for two days, and not be allowed to go through customs either, pretty much isolating us to a hotel and nothing more. I could only sit and wait til I heard any updates. Luckily, after 20 minutes of nightmarish sleep on that bench, they started calling us back to the desk to give us new boarding passes. They had made and extra flight for us to take us to Bonaire. I mean, Air Jamaica did NOT want to deal with giving 50+ pissed off divers two days room and board because of this fuckup. So woo hoo!! Everything is working out. Just later than planned.

Call the fashion police!!!!: Ok, I'm already getting too wordy, so I'll start with my rants. When I arrived in Jamaica, I quickly became aware of something that I had intentionally forced out of my mind. Cornrows on girls. Who the fuck ever decided that this was attractive?!?!?!?! Jesus fucking christ. Girls, trust me on this, you do not look better with your hair all fucked up like this. Believe me. The drunken boys that you're with are only drinking more now that you've done this. The other funny thing is, that usually the girls that have these aren't all that tan, and now we can all see how white your skin is around your skull. ((shudder)). It's just gross. Plus, it's going to look like pure shit when you take those fucking things out as well. Knock that shit off. Just flash your tits or something.

Someone shoot this asshole, please: Jimmie Buffet. What is the appeal of this dickhead? He's whiter than white, wears fucking sweatbands, has man tits, and plays the most boring- ass music I've ever heard. This must explain why everyone around him is drunk 24 hours a day. That's got to be the only way people can tolerate this complete shit that he's writing. There's this bar/restaurant in the Montego Bay airport called "Margaritavile". It's theme restaurant, that has really bad, overpriced food named after this cocksucker's songs. Seriously, if somebody shot this putz, you'd single-handedly eliminate the figure head of an obnoxious, white, drunken culture of socially vapid duchebags.

Arrival: Dad picked me up at the airport in Bonaire around 8:30, and we went to the Chibi Chibi, which is the restaurant at the resort. Everybody was there and Jeremy, my sisters very sweet boyfriend, immediately got me a beer. That hit the spot. So did the other three that I drank in the course of an hour. So, I was finally here and all was looking up.

Summary of Bonaire and the diving: Bonaire is a tiny island right off the northern coast of South America. It's in an area called the Netherland Antiliies. It's owned by the Dutch, and that's about all you're gonna get out of me for a history lesson. The scuba diving there is fantastic and my family has been going there for years. I got all of my certifications there; regular, advanced, and rescue diver. Jeremy was getting certified while we were down there, so he didn't start diving with us until Wednesday or so. We always look out for unique stuff. I mean, sure the fish are real pretty and all, but we've been coming here for over 6 years, and that gets kinda tedious after a while. We found 1 frogfish, 2 eagle rays, 3 seahorse, 5 sea turtles, and a total of 15 barracudas. I found one of the seahorses and it was my first. I was thrilled. On the same dive, Dave (my brother) found the frogfish and it was his first as well. He's been looking for 10 damn years and finally found one on his own. I saw him as he found it. He did an underwater happy dance. It was fantastic. We did one night dive, that was rather lackluster. One dive on Thursday was so boring that I made my brother laugh because I offered to play him in Tic-tac-toe on my underwater slate. When you laugh with a dive mask on, it fills up with water. Score.

Chief Big Hair, and pukefest 2002: There is a reason why Europeans regard Americans as the worst tourists in the entire universe. For the most part I've noticed that the typical American tourist is fat, rude, unintelligent to the point of embarrassment, and completely unaware of the volume of their own voice. We all went to a fantastic Italian restaurant run by a Greek couple called Capricio's. We sat in this room with two couples at a table nearby who could be heard from outside the restaurant a block away. Two typical fat, greasy haired, middle aged men, and the women.... oh I even question calling them that. One (who we dubbed Chief Big Hair), had about a gallon of eye liner on, and had Farah Faucet hair to an extreme of it being bulletproof. The other (dubbed Talks Loud With Hat) had a matching gold baseball hat and FANNY PACK. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?! This was just disgusting. Every single person in that restaurant was shooting laser beams out of their eyes at these people. And they never even noticed. The great thing was that they were all served faster than the rest of us. The restaurant staff was making an honest attempt to shut them up by letting them eat. Didn't work at all. They just took longer to eat, and therefore drew out their meal. Earlier that day, a Dutch navy destroyer parked at the pier downtown and the sailors were everywhere. So was the contents of their stomachs. These guys cannot hold their liquor. There was puking all over the place. On our way to the restaurant we saw two guys dragging a third down the street and he was drooling. Then when we left we saw at least three different guys bending over bushes and puking up straight alcohol. One thing is for sure, our navy could kick their navy's ass any day of the week. In fact, they make me nervous.

Sugar Ray.... Who the fuck are these guys?: We all got to the airport with time to kill so we consumed a few Amstel's. You can get the real thing there. The light version that we get in the states tastes the same. We're not missing out, really. The rest of our little group had to run to their gate at Montego Bay to get to their flight to Atlanta. I said goodbye to everyone and they hustled off. I had to wait around for a few hours before my 8:00 flight, so I read a magazine and listened to music and did sit-ups and stuff. Suddenly I hear this cascading sound of high heels, and I look up to see at least 30-40 models trying to run to their plane. And here I am trying to look all macho while sitting there with an issue of Maxim in my hands, while sitting next to a fat ass American in a Harley t-shirt, denim shorts and white Keds. It was sorta surreal. That group Sugar Ray was on the plane. Nobody noticed. I thought that was funny as hell. These guys dress like a bunch of assholes. The lead singer guy thought he was in RUNDMC. At one point on the flight home I sneezed and blew snot all over the window. No joke. And I was in the isle seat. HAHAHAHAHA. Just kidding. I was in the windows seat. Luckily they just served us our complimentary mayonnaise and cheese sandwich and I happened to have a napkin. Got into Chicago around 10:15 and grabbed a cab. Fuck walking back to my place from the L. It was too damn cold. I tried calling everyone I knew who would be awake. I wanted to go get a beer really bad. No luck. Took some pictures of myself since I wanted to capture some of the sun that I got before it faded/peeled away is the usual 2 hours that it takes for me to revert to my pale self. Rachel ended up calling me back around 3:30 in the morning, which I didn't mind at all. My sleeping habits were already screwed up anyway.

Dreams: One of the things that was weird is that my sleep schedule got all messed up. I would wake up around 5 and lie there until 6 and then barely go back to sleep. Took lots of naps in the afternoon, so I'm sure that wasn't helping. One of the things I love about going down there is that I have very vivid dreams. On Saturday morning I had three separate ones. One was at my parents house and I had to collect three weird spider/crab things and I had a cardboard box to do it. And the box was missing a side. One of the others involved me being in a Japanese bike punk gang, that was very similar to Akira. I was the one white guy, and I pretty much looked as I do now, but anime style. My girlfriend was a combination of a Xiang Jiyi and my friend Rachel. Jet black bobbed hair and an outfit that was reminiscent of a poodle skirt and a leather jacket. With a scarf of course. We weren't a bad gang either. We were beating up annoying American tourist kids in a mall. I did some crazy gymnastic move where I was supporting myself on the back of a bench with my hands and I had pinned this kid to the wall via my boots to his neck. It all happened in this very slow motion, John Woo kind of way. While I was doing this, my girlfriend pulled out this gun from who knows where and had it at his temple right as I pinned him. Then from behind us sat our gang leader, who was this perfectly cool looking guy who had a great Japanese anime voice to match. He sat hunched over looking at the floor through his sunglasses and told the kids in Japanese to fuck off. There were even subtitles. It was great. There was a lot of running and jumping and pulsing techno music. At one point we were running from guys in suits and we jumped off a monorail. Very cool.

Notes, aftermath, coda: Well, the trip was great. it was very very relaxing, which is exactly what I needed. I was 2 seconds away from having a 4 alarm breakdown the week prior. In fact, I think it was Wednesday night, I actually lied down on my living room floor and cried my eyes out for a good hour. I don't think I've ever done that before. I think it was my body responding to all the stress. Work, getting ready for the vacation, and a girl. All mixed up into one big ache in my shoulder. Shoulder didn't hurt at all when I was there. Rooming with David and Rusty was as fun as ever. Those two just crack me up. I love them to death. I get along with my brother better each time I see him. I don't feel afraid that I'll say anything stupid anymore. Jenny's boyfriend Jeremy is a super nice guy. Everyone was very impressed with how much better I looked physically and mentally since I'd been going to the gym. It made me feel good to be noticed like that. I was down to 182 when I left and came back at 185. Hah! I had french toast and bacon every single morning. It was heaven.

Moving on to present day: Sunday felt weird. Rachel had called so late and I ended up getting out of bed around 8:30. Plopped down on the couch with a bowl of froot loops and played Final Fantasy X. Because, you have to get acclimated to your normal life and all. I ran some errands and tried to get Rachel on the phone. She slept the entire day (lucky duck) and had the phone off the hook. Bu low and behold Alex calls me up. She and I have been wanting to hang out forever now, and we finally did. I picked her up at her place and we drove to a diner. We blabbed about tons of stuff; music gear, people, and the normal things that two newly acquainted kids talk about. I had a lovely time. We drove around to get me some Siouxsie and The Banshees tickets with no luck. Everything was closed. Stupid Sunday. So we just drove around and talked. It was a very pleasant experience to say the very very least. Got to bed around 10:30. Work sucked. I had forgotten so much about my daily routines that I was a total wreck. I managed to get Siouxsie tickets, but I have too many. I was to pick up 4 for a friend and her friends but she already got tickets. Anybody want to go? Had three separate and fantastic conversations with Alex last night. It's nice to have another new person in my life. Especially one that can talk shit about equipment and can throw down if she has to. I'm just guessing about that last part, but still, I could see it. So, now, I'm all in a freak show mood since I got back to Chicago. Not sure why. I have this bizarre nervous energy that goes away only when I'm able to deal with it in the appropriate manner. I'm going to end up sore pretty soon if this doesn't stop.

March 11th, 2002 15:10 hours CST currently listening to: "Breezing Up" by The Ocean Blue

Hey folks, I'm back. Miss me? Looks like...... 4 of you did. Great. The vacation stories will be coming soon. As well as the pictures.