October 28th, 2001

I'm bored out of my mind right now. I've done absolutely nothing today. Yesterday I cleaned my apartment and then went to Christian's place to hang out with him and Linsey. We watched "Hollow Man" and some real sex thing on HBO. It was crazy. People who dress up and act like horses. Awesome shit. So, yeah, the time change over took place. Woo-hoo. With my extra hour that I received today, I watched the "Amityville Horror", some George Carlin stuff, and "Rush Hour." I also watched "Blood: The Last Vampire." That is such a great anime, but disgustingly short. The only thing I really got accomplished today is that I recorded some new airiel material. One of which I'm highly addicted to.

October 25th, 2001

Well let's see. What's going on in my life? I moved desks the other day at work. Exciting shit, let me tell you. I miss Kristen a lot. We still talk on the phone every single day. She's in Tampa right now until the middle of next month. Right now it's still not consistently cold enough for the boiler in my building to kick into full gear. As a result, I'm freezing my booty off. It's that kind of seeping cold. The kind that you just can't shake because even though you six sweaters on, you're only still wearing one pair of jeans. It's my legs that are still cold. I hate that. Work damn you!

Anyway. I went through the rigors of getting my Illinois drivers License, plates, and city sticker for my car. What a chore that was. First off, the website gives addresses for all kinds of offices. I should have just listened to Jeff when he told me to go to the Thompson center. That's where I needed to go. Not 17 North State street, like the damn web site said. The first woman I dealt with at the DMV was actually rather pleasant. The rest were just a bunch of bitter, monotone assholes. The day in, day out detritus of that job is wearing those people down completely. The fella who was taking the pictures for the actual licenses had the voice of a pleasant story teller, but the mannerisms and attitude of a military drill instructor. He never looks at you when he talks to you, so you have no idea that it's you that's supposed to go where his limp finger is pointing to. You end up feeling like a dumbass. The license plate and city sticker office was ok. The people were actually rather upbeat. This was most likely due to the fact that it was 9:00 AM, and the day was just starting. I ended up getting the corniest picture taken for my drivers license. It's funny as hell.

I cannot decide what to do this weekend. There's this huge warehouse thing that atomic imaging puts on, that a bunch of us went to last year. It's like $40, which gets you in an allows you access to the fully open bar of piss beer and badly mixed drinks. I didn't really have all that much fun last year. It's also exposed to the outside air, and it's supposed to be fuckin cold this weekend. Possible snow is not my idea of a good forecast for an outdoor event. So, I think I'll just invite some friends over to my place for horror movies, booze and possibly playing on the roof of my building watching the trick-or-treaters.

October 21st, 2001

I went with Christian and Linsey to see Mullholand Drive today. David Lynch movies are very hit or miss with me. This one I liked. It featured two amazingly attractive women, that were just captivating to watch. While we were waiting for the movie to start, they played the new album by Garbage over the sound system. What the fuck happened to that band? They're fucking horrible now! It was pathetic. We heard at least three songs, and everyone sounded nothing like their old rockish self. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Went to a party last night in my boss's building. He and his very charming girlfriend live in the basement of a two story building in, I think, Ravenswood. I went with Jeff and Kim. We also picked up Matt and Jennifer. Jennifer works with me and Jeff. We went to a bar first and then went over to Dave and Cornelia's for the party. They have a cute little place for a "garden apartment". There's a term I will never understand. They should just say basement. That way it's perfectly clear. Anyway. The whole building was open for the party, including the rooftop. We spent most of our time up there. It was a great night out. We all noticed how lately the planes flying to O'Hare seemed to be lower than usual. Not sure what that's about. Three cop cars pulled up in front of the house to inform us of a noise complaint. I suddenly felt like I was back in Bloomington. Three cop cars. The cops must have been pretty freakin bored to come threatening to bust a VERY low volume party like that. I mean it was as tame as can be. I also noticed the paddy wagon circling the block. Going the wrong way down a one way street, I might add. I'm sure Dave will brag at work tomorrow to the people who didn't show up that his party was so cool that the cops showed up to shut it down.

Friday I listened to Bloodflowers on my way to work and came to this conclusion: BLOODFLOWERRS MAY POSSIBLY BE THE WORST CURE ALBUM EVER MADE. I know I'm going to receive mail bombs and flaming dog poo for saying this, but being a big cure fan, I can't help it. The songs are just plain boring. They're too long as well. Watching me fall is a prime example. It's 11 minutes and 13 seconds of the same dame thing over and over again. There's no emotion anywhere. I mean ANYwhere. Robert honestly sounds like he's just going through the motions. Even his lyrics are bad. They are! He now bores me to tears. His vocal parts are also very dead. If you have the video tape called "The Cure Play Out", you'll notice during the small, London show at the beginning, they play very early versions of "Wendy Time" and "Cut". All of the songs on Bloodflowers sound like those two songs. Unfinished. There's just no punch to any of it. Things have just not been the same since they lost long time members Porl Thompson and Boris Williams. Porl was a huge guitar factor and Boris and fantastic sounding drum parts. Now the Cure seem to make a stab at being a guitar oriented band, and they fall way flat. Perry Bamont sucks as a guitar player. He absolutely cannot fill Porl's shoes. Simon's bass parts seems to be completely blended into the mix. Remember how cool the bass lines were for "Love Song", "Fascination Street" and "Hot! Hot! Hot!"? What happened to those? They were great. And now he's just playing the roots of the guitar chords. Even though Roger used to be in the band a while ago, I don't understand what his role is now. His little jazzy piano parts don't fit into the songs. Stick with the strings. They're proven to work. "Out Of This World" and "The Last Day Of Summer" are the only songs on the entire album that I can stomach. Even the ill-fated Wild Mood Swings album had more emotion and diversity than this album does. Even though most will agree that it was just a freakish and disappointing album, "Mint Car" and "Numb" were pretty good songs. I remember getting the mp3's of the Japanese version of Bloodflowers and being so excited to finally hear a new Cure album. I hated it then, and I hate it now. I really listened to it on Friday with an open mind. But this is how I feel. I'm still excited to hear the new album. I need to get a hold of the new single. I know they've been recording new versions of older singles, and that sounds cool. I just don't think this band lineup has what it takes to give Robert enough motivation to write some decent material. Who knows? Maybe this next one will actually be good.

October 19th, 2001

I still can't decide what to be for Halloween.

I watched Nadja the other night. It's this somewhat little know David Lynch film about vampires. It's black and white, has REALLY horrible acting (including lovable Dave himself), and gets all pixilated when the vampire action gets heavy. It's damn cool. It has a FANTASTIC soundtrack. My Bloody Valentine, The Verve, and Portishead are all on there. It's great stuff. It's really fun to watch Peter Fonda try to play a convincing "Uncle Vanhelsing".

I'm going to listen to "Bloodflowers" today on my way to work. Kristen was playing it for me last weekend. I think I may have been a bit too harsh in my initial judgment of that album. I still wish they would drop Perry Bamount and get Porl Thompson back, but hey, what do I know? I'm just pissed because I missed the Wish tour.

October 15th, 2001

Summary of 2nd visit to Atlanta to see Kristen -- My flight was originally supposed to leave Midway around 7 pm on Friday night. I had received a letter from Airtran that I just assumed was my membership information from me now being an online member with them. It was actually a last minute change in my flights. They had canceled all of the evening flights, and I now left at 5:20 instead. No big deal there. It just meant that I got to see Kristen that much sooner. It was a really nasty morning and I had to take my giant umbrella to stay out of the rain. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to take the thing on the plane, but it turned out to be no big deal. Midway was packed when I got there. It was like a shopping mall during the winter holidays. The security checks were the same as last time, with the addition of several armed Military Police Officers. I got there really early and sat my self down to read The Shinning.

Kristen actually got lost on her way to the airport, which just cracked me up. She looked fantastic. We had dinner with three of her friends at this cute little Chinese place that is just up the street from the house were my two brothers live. I had met Jenn and Parks before, but Seth was a new guy. Pearson didn't make it due to a family crisis.

Saturday, Kristen and I woke up kind of early, although I could have stayed in bed for another day or so. We drove up to Rome, Georgia, where her old college is located. Berry University is one of the most gorgeous campuses I've ever seen. Trees and fields as far as the eye could see. The deer were everywhere. pic #1, pic #2. We parked the car and walked past a really beautiful mill. pic #3, pic #4. We walked for I think at least a mile or two to the reservoir. It was funny because we both noticed that we were out of breath at the same time. It felt like were at a high altitude, but I think it was because we were both talking the whole time while we were hiking. pic #5, pic #6, pic #7. On our way back from the reservoir we saw a cute little snake in the road that Kristen was determined to pick up and play with. She didn't manage to grab it though. pic #8, pic #9.

We eventually made it back to the car and she drove me around to show me some other sites. She left a little "hello/miss you" note on the office door of one of her former profs. We went into town to Schroeder's for some food. We both bounced happily while we played some songs in the juke box. All of them were Smiths songs. Enough said. We went next door to this fantastic goth store called Riky Moon's. Riky himself was there, chilling with his two kitties on the counter. Kristen tried on some clothes, but only ended up buying a kick ass pair of black 6 inch heels. Riky got me into an awesome pair of pinstripe paints that I bought. Well, Kristen bought them, since I'm so low on cash until this Friday. I hate that. On our way home we stopped at this fantastic cemetery. It's up high on a hill, and has an incredible view. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. pic #10, pic #11, pic #12, pic #13, pic #14, pic #15, pic #16, pic #17, pic #18.

She also got me hooked on a game that I haven't played since elementary school, that we used to just call "slug bug". I was when you saw a Volkswagen Beetle and called it out, along with the color, and you slugged your nearest friend in the shoulder. She just sad "bug" and then the color. I hadn't played it in so long, that I really wasn't looking out for them well enough. I'd be in the middle of a story and she'd yell out "bug! green!" and slug me in the leg. We were driving by this huge shopping center on our way home, while she was telling a story. I kept looking out the window and she stopped and said "stop looking for beetles!", which was EXACTLY WHAT I WAS DOING. It was a little creepy, we both thought.

We met up with my parents, the boys, and a cute boy couple that was staying at David and Rusty's that weekend. My brother is a race instructor for BMW, for those of you who didn't already know. My Dad was taking the beginner classes at the track and Dave even took mom around once. Only at about 70 mph, though. Kristen held up really well, considering this was our second weekend together and she's already meeting 90% of my immediate family. After dinner we went to Kim and Julie's birthday party. Kim is my best friend, and Julie....... isn't. Julie is the sister of my ex-girlfriend from Bloomington. Julie lives down in Atlanta with her boyfriend Eric. The party had been going on since 3 that afternoon. I could tell things were getting stale when we arrived because Jeff was in the living room by himself about to sit down to relax. There were tons of people I know from San Francisco. Kristen was well received by everybody. As if there was ever a doubt in my mind that they wouldn't just love her. Kim looked fabulous as always. She was wearing her little tiara and her hair was going wild in the wind. We opted to pass on the "let's go clubbing" crusade. We were just too broke this weekend.

Sunday was fantastic. We got up around 10 am. I had a bowl of frosted Cheerios. We went to Blockbuster to rent "Best In Show". We came back and I completely pigged out on the Krispie Kreme donuts that we had bought the night before, specifically for this purpose. After the movie, we took a nap and then played around for quite sometime. She kicks so much ass at Crazy Taxi and Crazy Taxi 2. I mean, donuts, PJ's, movie, games, and girl. I was in heaven. The weirdest thing happened when we got back from the video store, though. I went into her bedroom and heard this loud popping noise. I realized that it was her red, plastic I-zone Polaroid camera on the window ledge. It was shooting sparks periodically from around where the batteries were. We just put it outside on the front steps to watch it. It was amazingly loud. We got to the airport with some time to kill, so we waited around the main terminal on a couch, feeling sad. She has to go to Tampa, Florida tomorrow for a month. I'm debating getting tickets to see her, but with my funds and her crazy schedule, I don't think it's going to happen. Hope springs eternal, however.

October 7th, 2001

A lot happened this week. I think. Wednesday was a "happy hour" for my office. We all met at this bar a few blocks away called Mondays. It was fun to see some of my coworkers out of the office. Especially with alcohol. On the way back, I was talking to Kristen on my cell phone. There was some homeless guy standing sort of under the steps to an L stop and he was pissing on the street! Just watching people walk down the stairs, and whizzing on the pavement. Ah Chicago.

I'm sore as hell right now. I moved both of the air conditioners out of my windows and put them in a storage locker in the basement of my building. I threw my snow tires and snow shovel down there as well. I had to buy a locking hasp as well as a lock, but that's no big deal. Then I helped Kim and Jeff move Kim's stuff into their new apartment in Ravenswood. It's a great place. 2 bedrooms, and a lot of space. A great back yard, and they even have a garage. That's going to be Jeff's workspace. Kim has so much shit!!! They had a fully loaded 26 foot truck from U-Haul. Kim's parents came up as well. They're great people. We started moving stuff around 8:30 last night. We finished around 11, I think. Her stuff was everywhere. That apartment ahs a lot of space, and it's now filled with Kim's stuff.

(much later in the evening) Silent Hill 2 is SCARING THE PISS OUT OF ME.

October 3rd, 2001

Words cannot describe the time I had in Atlanta. I've just met one of the most amazing people of my life. Kristen is quite easily the girl version of me. It's frightening how much we have in common. I'm talking about everything from our fantastic tastes in music, to the fact that we prefer fat free Miracle Whip to real mayonnaise. It's just weird. But it's weird in a way that is very, very comfortable and good. I arrived in Atlanta right on time. The security measures at the airports were not that bad. I actually arrived at Midway 2 and 1/2 hours early for my flight, and that was 2 hours too early. Anyway, I took the Marta, which is Atlanta's remarkably quiet public train, all the way north to the Perimeter Mall stop. I got on the phone with Kristen and she pulled up to meet me in front of Nordstrom's. We hooked around at lightening speed back to her restaurant so she could finish her paper work and we could get out of there.

We went to a really cool bar called Trinity. It's in the East Atlanta area. It reminded me a lot of some bars here in Chicago. The kind that look amazing on the inside, but are filled with hollow, yuppie, ex-fraternity/sorority types. But this place had a nice mix of people. We went next door to an art venue called Eye Drum. We saw a really cool techno-pop band, who's name I can't recall. I met Kristen's friend Pearson, who I've heard tons about. Then we walked back over to Trinity with him to meet up with two other of Kristen's' friends. She has a good crowd. Really likeable people. After a few more gin & tonics for me, and a few more jack and cokes for her, we went back over to Eye Drum again to see Lanterna. I had only heard the name Lanterna before, and it was a band that has been recommended to me in the past. It's made up of one guy, named Henry, who is very, VERY much like me in guitar style. I mean, if airiel had been just me on my own without Shawn, it would have been a lot like Lanterna. His set was wonderful. He's very shy, and gets surprised when people really like his stuff. I was on a cloud the whole time. For lots of reasons. Henry came back over to Trinity with us and had some drinks. He lives in Champaign Illinois, which is only about 2 hours from here. He and I REALLY need to get together to play. Wow.

I slept in the next morning because Kristen still had to work until 2 or so. I sat around reading a book on the couch and watching The Natural on TV. We went to a fantastic Japanese restaurant called Kobei. I think that's how it's spelled. It's one of those places where they cook the food right in front of you for everyone at the enormous tables. Great food. She had a fillet that was incredible. We went to a bar called Gravity Pub. She had told me a lot about this place. She gets all excited because they serve a lot of fried food, among them tater-tots. Which apparently she loves. But we forgot to order them. Oh well. Next stop was a venue called Echo Lounge, which is one of Atlanta's best live venues. It had a good layout with really good interior design. A cool place. The first band was some local Atlanta group. Cute guys. Very charismatic. Good rock and roll. That's all there is to say. The second band was...... interesting. Picture your long haired, metal loving janitor from high school, playing drums, along with his parents. I'm not kidding. The mom played bass, and the dad played guitar. Both of them sang. They rocked out, sure, but they really pretty much sucked ass. They also had major 2nd band syndrome. They played for way too long and overstayed their welcome. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club was the headliner. They had also been recommended to me by my friend Lucy. It was good stuff. Kind of like a gothy Jesus and Mary Chain.

Sunday around 1:30 we met up with Rusty, husband to my brother David. I missed him so much. It's impossible not to like Rusty. He's just a little teddy bear. We went to some crazy place with a ton of bird cages. I had some really great french toast. Kristen has this really cool 5 CD, 5 minidisc stereo. I'm thinking about getting a portable mindisc player. Since you can do mp3's, cram a lot of music, and record live right onto the things. And the colored discs are sooooooo cute. The flight home was sad, but uneventful. It's too bad we live so far apart. She's someone that I need to be around a lot. She's too much fun.