Category: Life As I Know It

By request of Chainsaw…a new entry, albeit not satisfaction guaranteed.
So the Texas heat is starting to creep in as are many a summer plan! First off we’re going to see the new Matrix movie Friday night at 10:35. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend meaning I have a three day weekend, meaning we’re going to Austin! We plan on going to the Natural Bridge Caverns, and a drive through wildlife park, and possibly the zoo. Yes there will be rafs.
The weekend after that we’re going back to Austin for the first of our toobin trips. We’ll either go toobin down the Guadalupe or the Comal, we haven’t decided yet. Whichever one we don’t hit this time we will hit later on in the summer. Floating down the river on an inner-tube with a bunch of friends, and another tube just to hold the cooler of drinks/snacks. Woohoo!
We also plan on going to Schlitterbahn at some point. My friend Dave and I have already each won a pair of tickets off the radio as is our style.
If I’m not around much it’s because I’m in the beta test for Star Wars Galaxies. Due to the confidentiality agreement, I can say no more.

So the weekend in the big “D” was pretty cool. Thursday night we went and saw “A Mighty Wind” which was, as expected, damn good. Friday, we went geocaching, but had really bad luck. We only found one out of four caches we looked for. Saturday we went to downtown Dallas, and walked around the whole JFK area. We were going to go in the Sixth Floor Museum, but they wanted $10 a person, and I had already been there once. I really didn’t think it was anything all that great, and not really worth $10, especially since we were spending money on plenty of other things already. We proceeded to go on to the Dallas World Aquarium which was much cooler than any of us thought it would be. I was baffled by the strange admission prices (something like $11.85 for adults and $8.66 for seniors). I was much surprised that the first thing we saw upon entering the “aquarium” was an enclosed area with monkeys and birds and some other non aquatic animals. We were all enthralled by the adorable manatees. There were also river otters, tons of fish, jellyfish, a Japanese Spider crab, and a HUGE crocodile like something out a monster movie. Very cool time. We then proceeded to the Hard Rock Caf� where we ate and bought tickets to the show that night featuring Zebra. They had a few hits in the 80’s (“Tell Me What You Want”, “Who’s Behind The Door”), but have been quite a favorite band of mine for some time. I saw them once in Houston like 10-15 years ago and was thrilled when my friend Esteban just happened to hear on the radio that they were playing at the Hard Rock Caf� that night. It was very intimate and we were standing right at the stage, literally like 2 feet from Randy, the guitarist/singer. That’s the way to see a show, people. They absolutely rocked. If you ever get a chance to see them, do so. They are amazing. They actually have a new album coming out June 17 too, so go out and get it.
Sunday was Geocaching II: Revenge of the Cachers. We refused to be defeated. We actually found all three that we hadn’t found before. It was incredibly strange because we found out that on Friday my GPS unit had apparently been hundreds of feet off on all three, thus the reason we didn’t find them. Now normally GPS is only accurate to about twenty feet anyway, but I’ve never had it be that bad, much less consistently that bad. The unit would consistently point me to the same spot, it just happened that the spot was like 500 feet off. I’m still baffled. Maybe the government was re-calibrating the satellites that day or something, or perhaps a giant alien mother ship was deflecting the signals. Luckily on Sunday, it actually steered us true. There was much going out to eat (including being served by Groucho Marx at The Magic Time Machine), DVD watching, plus a trip to REI where I got some cool black Merrell Jungle Moccasins (or Comfy Slip-on Shoes� as I call them) and Jess got some cool water shoes in preparation for our tubing/water park trips we’ll be going on in a month or two. Plus it’s always fun just to hang out with friends. We also listened to a couple of Han Solo books on tape to pass the car trip, which was cool. Random fact #1: a married couple going out of town for 4 days will have a lot of luggage. We had 1 suitcase with all our clothes and such, our inflatable bed-in-a-bag, my bag of disc golf frisbees, 2 pillow and a blanket, my backpack, and a cooler bag with lots of water in it. Esteban seems to think this was excessive by his reaction to it, but honestly, we really weren’t excessive!
Random fact #2, inspired by Bettie: A few weeks ago a friend gave me some old clothes that didn’t fit him anymore. Among them was a Really Cool Shirt� which very quickly became my new favorite shirt. I wore it to work the following Friday, and wore it to one of my gigs a week or two later. Then we did laundry. Like a fool I didn’t look at the care instructions, and I washed and dried it, which I shouldn’t have because it was rayon. It shrunk up, a lot. It’s still wearable, but just doesn’t fit the same as it used to, and required much ironing before it was anything resembling wearable. The sleeves are way too short now, but since I wear it with the sleeves rolled up, that’s not too big a deal. It’s also not nearly as long as it was either, thus making it questionable as to whether I could tuck it in if I wanted to (which, again, I generally don’t), but still it just saddened me. My new favorite shirt, and I messed it up. Like I aid, it’s still wearable, but it just doesn’t “hang” on me like it used to. I’m heartbroken. I need to find a place that has cool shirts like this one. Finding cool clothes for men is difficult. Even more sadly I did the exact same thing to another shirt years ago. Same story too. Before the “accident” it just “hung” perfectly. Afterward, it was never quite the same. According to Jess and the rafs, I am a BeeGooBloo*. This entry will only reinforce that opinion I’m sure.
*giraffe language for “Big Girls Blouse**”.

**Someone flamboyant, camp, or glam, or exhibiting signs of these traits.

So the wife and I are off to Dallas for a four day weekend. We’ll be staying with our friend, Esteban, and testing out our new self inflating air mattress thingy. Tonight we’re going to see “A Mighty Wind“, which somehow I have managed to NOT hear about until Soupy mentioned it in her blog. How this managed to elude me is a mystery and quite disturbing to me. I’m usually quite “in the know” and on top of all entertainment type news. Being that I’m a huge Spinal Tap fan, and a Christopher Guest fan I’m really quite baffled by my lack of knowledge! We also plan on playing some disc golf and finding some geocaches, and much more! Should be a good fun weekend. Being that we’re all immense geeks, we will of course have plenty of computers and net access at our disposal, so we won’t be totally out of touch or anything. 😉
Also, in case anyone didn’t already know, you can now enter your email in the box above to be notified by email when I post something new here!

So I’m quite losing the battle to get fit. Food just tempts me so, while exercise seems to have disappeared. I really want to get in shape and yet I refuse to make myself miserable while doing it so I try to at least strike a happy balance, and try to eat healthy at least half the time but yet not deny my cravings. I’m seriously considering trying to workout at lunch or when I get home from work. While it’s not as effective as working out in the mornings, it’s still an improvement. Ahh, food, why can I not resist your luscious temptation. What sucks is that I cant resist the cravings, but then I feel guilty about it afterward because I REALLY want to get in good shape. It’s a never ending battle.
This entry is extremely boring, but I’m making a concerted effort to try and write something every day. Sometimes that obviously doesn’t happen. Sometimes you get boring stuff like this.

Delle left me a comment, and therefore her request for a new entry shall be granted. Now you must realize that I hardly ever get any comments at all and therefore assume that there is very little stalking going on, which then leads to lack of updates because the enthusiasm to update wanes greatly when you think no one is reading your drivel anyway. So for Delle, a haiku:
Everyone loves Delle
Blue fluffy inner children
She loves a giraffe
We’re off for a weekend in Austin filled with gigs, studio recording (both of which are detailed in a previous entry), gamecubing, and a movie at The Alamo Drafthouse, that cool movie house where you can order food and drinks. It rules. If the weather is right we might try and fly our cool new kite that I bought. It’s a big dragon with a 6 foot wingspan and the wind goes in his mouth and inflates his body so it’s a full 3D kite. We may also watch my limited edition “Memento” DVD with commentary, or the option where you can watch the movie in chronological order. All in all, looks to be a fun weekend!

I realize that I am extremely erratic at blogging, and that because of this the tiny group of people who may occasionally grace me with their presence here, probably get tired of not having new content, and thus quit coming here at all. This entry probably won’t help because it’s just random ramblings. Well, hey, look at the title of this page. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. 😉
I feel like I am naturally a very distant person, I have decided. With this whole, WD, internet friends/community thing, etc., I feel very much like a distant observer. Take my wife for instance (well don’t TAKE her, but you know…), I feel like people genuinely like her, miss her, want to see her, be friends with her, etc. I always feel like I’m kind of a fringe or periphery entity. Most people generally like me, or think I’m ok, or when I’m mentioned they think “Yeah, he’s pretty cool”, but I don’t feel like most people have or desire a connection of any real depth with me. People don’t generally “wish I was there” when I’m not. I basically feel like I’m slightly on the positive side of “neither here nor there” for the vast majority of people who are aware of my existence. Although I am very self conscious and worried that people think I’m creepy or make them uncomfortable sometimes, even though I’m usually pretty sure that’s just my own mind being goofy.
I think part of this distance is self perpetuating, because since I always generally doubt that someone likes me (in all instances not just internet related ones), I kind of create my own distance too because I really don’t want to bother people. I realized today that I’m much more comfortable with e-mail than with chat IM programs because when you send an e-mail, that person can reply at their leisure or not as they choose, while when I IM someone I always feel like I’ve put them on the spot.
This brings to me to a related tangent. I can’t remember if I’ve bitched about it before in this medium, but never the less I’m going to bitch about it anyway. Many times throughout the years I have made many efforts to find old friends or people who used to be a part of my life in some way. Old high school friends and such. I get in touch with them, and there’s the usual exchange of “Oh wow!”s and greetings, and then almost without fail that person makes no real effort to stay in touch. They’ll respond to my emails (usually) but never really make any effort of their own, thus contributing to the ongoing neurosis my life, the “I always like people much more than they like me” syndrome. It’s such a let down because I’m always so absolutely thrilled to be back in touch with these people. I’m someone who values my friendships dearly, and while I never really have tons of close friends (usually I have tons of acquaintances, with a handful of really close friends), I treasure my relationships dearly. Everyone I’ve ever met or known is at least partially responsible for shaping me into who I am today, and I’m always so thrilled to rekindle old friendships, but then it always leads to that inevitable crestfallen moment when you realize that apparently the other party must not have been nearly as thrilled as you were. Perhaps I’m just a nostalgic romantic dreamer at heart, (ok, well not perhaps, pretty definitely), but it never fails to leave me with that feeling that a little bit of the starry eyed magic of my youth has died. Like I’ve lost some of my kindred to the listless zombie like template of “growing up”, while I remain one of the last champions of the child-at-heart, anything’s-possible, keep-hope-alive, fairytale-dreamers faction. If anyone needs me I’ll be staring off into the sky, soaking up the energy to combat the weariness and continue fighting for the cause and fending off the weight of the world. Hmm, reminds me of a song… “You can’t take the sky from me…” heh heh. 😉

So first off, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was nice. My uncle and cousin came up for Thanksgiving day (and getting my cousin to actually come visit is a miracle itself), and since no one really wanted to make a big fuss and spend eons preparing stuff, we ordered food from The Black-Eyed Pea. Much easier, and still good. Then on Friday, my cousin, my wife and I all piled in my little truck (very cramped indeed) and headed to Austin for Thanksgiving 2.0 with my aunt who couldn’t come up with my uncle because my other cousin had just had her wisdom teeth out and was having a really hard time. We decided that since none of us were all that crazy about “traditional” Thanksgiving food, that next year we wanted to have a totally non-traditional Thanksgiving with pasta or something like that. On a random note, we also went to the Alamo Draft House, this kick ass movie theatre that has every other row of seats replaced with a long table, and you can order food and drinks and such while you watch the movie. Very cool idea.
As I was laying with Jess on our makeshift bed on the floor of my cousin’s guest room, I suddenly had a strange thought. Now first you must understand that my cousin and I are like brothers. We grew up spending most of our school holidays, and summer breaks, etc. together. Whenever we get together, it’s always just pure fun and decadence. Junk food, all night video game sessions, and generally just hanging out and laughing and being incredibly silly. All my life, even into our adulthood, whenever I would visit I would make a little sleeping area on the floor of my cousin’s room, and whenever we did finally go to bed at some extremely late hour, we would usually lie in our respective beds and continue talking and being silly for a bit until we started to fall asleep. I realized that this will rarely if ever happen again. Now don’t get me wrong, as I told Jess, it’s not regret or longing that I feel. I’m much happier going to sleep with my arms around my wife, but never the less, there is a sort of wistfulness when you realize that something has forever changed. This isn’t the first time this has happened of course since things are constantly changing and most people will encounter these little episodes many times throughout life. Like “sleepovers” with your best friends. My friend Andy used to spend the night at my house as often as we could get away with when we were kids, and we would stay up all night playing games, walking to the convenience store to buy soft drinks and candy and such. At some point that just naturally changed (most likely when we could actually drive ourselves and therefore would just go home at the end of a night’s fun).
And so a new era has begun. An exciting, happy new era with my wife. A wife who happily takes part in silliness, and video games, and hanging out with my cousin. It’s even more fun with the three of us now. I suppose more than anything, I hope that my cousin doesn’t wax nostalgic like I do, because he has the raw end of the deal. I get to go to bed with my beautiful wife, while he just loses those times when he and I would lay there in the dark being silly until sleep took us. Who knows, maybe he’s celebrating that he now has that much less time that he has to put up with me. I guess the whole point is that even when things change for the better, you sometimes still get a bit wistful as you look behind you and watch memories fade into the sunset of your mind.

I now have a wife. Cool, eh? We got married at 11:40 am on November 9 2002 at Texas Renaissance Festival. It was quite wonderful, and I don’t really know what to say about it. It was a long, but great day. There were so many people there which was fantastic, and yet I wanted to spend time with them all which proved impossible. Being that this was the first nice weekend in about a month, the festival was PACKED! We quickly found it was nearly impossible to try and keep more than about 5-7 people together at any one time. After the wedding we immediately bought Jess some comfortable shoes since hers were rubbing blisters on her feet. We spent the rest of the day mostly looking for people or resting because we were so damn tired. We wanted to peruse shops and such but were just too tired. We’ll have to go back some other day when we’re NOT getting married. There were tons of people taking pics of us. We felt like stars posing for the paparazzi. As the pics roll I will update the “Photos” link above with links to all the pics. It all seemed to happen very quickly and the whole day is quite a blur. We are happy to be married and yet a bit shocked that we really don’t feel any different at all. Jess is now off to spend the week with her family seeing some sights around Texas, and unfortunately, I can’t go because I have no vacation time left, and work won’t let me use my sick days, plus a few other stupid work things that piss me off. Oh well, we plan on going somewhere together for the 4 day thanksgiving holiday. the biggest thing is getting used to calling her my wife…heheeeeeeeeeeeee
I have a wife.