College

Last night I went to the hockey game with my brother-in-law and two of my nephews. They wanted to go into Bucky's Locker Room to check out the merchandise. I followed William around as he poked and gaped at the variety of novelties with a "W" on it. He found two mirrors at an angle to each other, ran up to it, and started making faces in it. Two girls who were there were laughing at his antics.

Then William pulled up his shirt as he often does. I told him that was enough and we should move on. I looked at the two girls and said "Imagine what he'll be like in college."

Will then said "I'm going to go crazy in college!"

He's six.

Wife?

My friends are looking out for me, sort of:

Dude, I have a chick for you. My neighbor was telling me he knows a young woman (23 yrs old) who needs her green card. So, for 2 years you get to have hot monkey sex with a Latina. Want me to set up a meeting? Hell, at least you are getting laid out of this. I hear she is very energetic too.

I have no problem whatsoever of two people marrying just so one can get a green card. More power to her. But I'm not interested in using someone this way.

It was the though that counts, I guess.

Um, no, this is not from a dream.

A Ball and a Puck

Saturday was the big game against the Chicago Dragons. I was pretty excited about the whole thing as this was my first game as a Minotaur, even though I wasn't scheduled to play. I arranged a ride at Thursday's practice, so come Saturday, a teammate and two others piled into my car and headed down bright and early.

The trip was bereft of traffic and full of today's top hits. I really didn't mind the music as mostly we were talking over it anyway. My teammate asked me if I had a boyfriend, so I had to out myself as straight again. After two seconds of long silence, he asked if I had a girlfriend. Sadly, I said, no. The directions were spot on and we made it from doorstep to the pitch in under two and half hours with one stop.

The first thing we noticed was that gay rugby was happening in a park surrounded by a community of what seemed to be orthodox jews. Maybe they weren't orthodox, but it seemed to be an odd juxtaposition. The main game soon went underway and the team slowly filled in to the sidelines. I hadn't planned to play, but I kind of wanted to. Problem was I hadn't signed up the USA Ruby yet, but in today's wired world, that wasn't a problem. The problem was that neither a blackberry nor an iphone could display the webiste. A patient teammate and I tried a Starbucks, but it was part of a grocery store and had no Wi-Fi. So we did the 2003 thing and called my roommate on my cell phone and he signed me up. After the payment of dues and a signing of the waiver, I was officially part of the Madison Minotaurs.

We started warming up, and all was well between the stretching, the tackling drills, and the passing. The problem crept up when we sprinted and I realized that my groin muscle was not going to let me play. I was quite pissed, because I've been nursing the damn thing for a two weeks. (Note to self: yoga on Tuesday.) Instead of being the waterboy, our captain nominated me to be a line judge, or whatever you call it, to mark when the ball goes out of bounds. That turned out to be great as I ran up and down the sidelines the whole game and was able to see it all up close.

The game was meant to be more of a learning one for both the Minotaurs and the newer guys on the Dragons. After an equal start, one on our team took the ball and ran it down to the goal, dodging about five players. He scored the first try in the team's history. The rest of the half went great as our scrum pushed the other's around and we almost scored again except half time hit. The second half didn't go as well as the Dragons switched out almost their whole team while we had limited substitutions. Given that we were playing fresh players, we played them hard, but lost in the end. I am amazed at how much the team has improved between when I first saw them three weeks ago and Saturday. The guys on the field played one hell of a game.

The third half was held at Big Chicks on the north side of Chicago. The bar was absolutely packed with three rugby teams, including all million of the Chicago Dragons. The beer was free, actually already paid for, so it flowed freely. I fucked up at one of the songs. Apparently Jesus can play rugby with VD. Like the one who fucked up before me, I had to drink beer out of a rugger's shoe, which wasn't half bad. Beer is beer, after all.

Anyway, maybe I'll write more.

How Times Have Changed

So these days I cannot drink. The slow decline of my boozing began a handful of years ago as going out was not as fun and drinking more than a couple of beers made me feel groggy. I found that I had a better time if I just didn't drink. I staid awake the whole night out and didn't devolve into the Reverend Jim Ignatowski, and a surly one at that.

The begin of the end began last year as I ticked and jerked. My doctor changed medications on me and the new one didn't go well with alkyhawl. The final nail in the coffin was yet another change in medication and my doctor said "Nyet!" to any more drinking. That was no big deal to me, as I only desired a beer every so often.

The funny thing happened today, but I must back up a little. I had the whole (I mean every one plus my uncle) over for dinner for Frank's birthday and to meet my new roommate, Stanley. My father brought over a six pack of beer. I still have a lot left over from when Shari and Michael visited and the last time the family came over for dinner.

Today when I opened the fridge, I realized that I need to rearrange the contents to fit everything so the eggs and orange juice wouldn't fall out upon the opening of the door. I saw the remenants of the six pack and said *scough* "More beer!?!"

The me of five years ago would have bitch slapped the me of today.

Long Overdue Post

I've been quite lazy with this whole blog thing. Twenty years from now, if I read this, I'll wonder what amnesiactic/bender episode I was on. Nothing really, just the following.

My back is better sometimes, worse other times. I want it to get better so I can join a hockey league in October. It's one of those that you can learn everything there, which is good. I can barely skate right now. Soon, I'll make a pest of myself as a defenseman.... along the lines of falling down in front of the net. But hey, if most others are ameteurs, the won't be able to flip it over me.

Come the end of the month, I'm going to Lebowskifest in Louisville. I've even made a design for bowling shirts:



I think we'll get it on a black shirt in a burnt orange color. We should have them in time.

Um... other than that, life is good. I don't have much to say obviously, but I thought I'd get back to posting.

Bedtime, until my drunk roommate calls me for a ride. It's his last day of work.

I Think I Saw George Clooney

So I ended up in ER again. I woke at 1:30 am with the worst back pain I've ever had. I stood up to walk it off, only to find myself standing like an eighty year old man wearing a much-too-large nappy. I figured a good night's sleep may get rid of it, so I climbed back into bed and crawled to the side by the wall.

When that did nothing for me, I had a dilehma: try to sleep through the pain or go wake up Steve and go to the hospital. This may sound easy as Steve is in the next room and a good yell usually wakes up the guy in the next room. But this is Steve and his hearing aids were out. It took me a half an hour to wiggle myself to the edge of the bed, pull my desk chair towards me, get my knees on the floor, lean on the chair, and roll into Steve's room. It took him about ten seconds to realize that this wasn't another strange part of his strange dream. After a further ten minutes of waltzing down the halway, to the elevator, and to the car, we were on our way.

Sitting on the bed, the nurse asked, "On a scale of one to ten, how bad does it hurt? Like I have to ask." I was stationairy except for my face, which went wince to wince. The doctor took his time in coming and just kept saying "yep, yep, yep" quite impatiently as I told him what was going on. In about ten minutes time, I had a hefty shot of dilaudid and fifteen minutes later, the ceiling was swirling and waving. Ten minutes later, I was on my way.

So thanks to Steve, who hauled me there, to Walgreens (the only pharmacy open at 3 am on the east side), and back home again.

In better news, I have an offer in on a condo. I may just get it.

SWM, 32, Seeks Wife

Roommate going on 1 year tour of somewhere, have no roommate. Tired of finding new ones. I will put up with your shit, you must tolerate me being in own world. Marriage can be platonic, wouldn't change my life much. Dogs ok, but alergic to cats. Lizards a plus. No Texans.

SWM, 31, Seeks...

... replacement for roommate for college reunion. Roommate has to work, will miss it. Replacement must be content wearing name tag with "Elizabeth Borden" on it. Perks include free trip to MN, free meal & cocktail night at college, and plenty of opportunity to laugh at investment bankers and save-the-world types. Will tolerate your music for the trip. RSVP on comment section.

Ugh....

Scene: Pulling onto Highway 151, heading into Madison in a blue Pontiac G6. Three passengers.

Me: Yep, you and *sr-girlfriend* sure made a lot of noise last night.
Shaun: Heh-heh-heh. Yeah. That ends in September.
Steve: I didn't hear a thing. *sp-girlfriend* isn't very loud.
Shaun: I did blankity blank this and blankity blank that.
Steve: You know the position where she yada yada this and yada yada that made *sp-girlfriend* do such and such, especially since she did so on and so forth.
Shaun: I haven't tried that. I don't care much for such and such position.
Me: Yeah, but that one is good for intimacy.
Shaun: (peering at me, wondering if I know what I'm talking about) I guess. But doing humana humana this and yakity yakity that works well.
Me: Doing blah blah gets things going.
Shaun: I know that.
Me: Oh.
Steve: Yeah *sp-girlfriend* is bleep bleep and that does this/that.
Shaun: Really? That works.

We pull into the gas station and get out of the car.

Steve: I'm never going that long without sex again.
Shaun: Yeah.
Me: *sigh*

What assholes.

Death of the Party

My friend stopped by with his new Honda motorcycle. He was pretty excited about it. He asked if I wanted to come tonight to a pharmacy school party (his wife is finishing pharmacy school). I asked if there would be any cute girls there. He had one in mind, so I signed on the dotted line.

I showed up and found them sulking at least five feet from the nearest group. We moved to a more out of the way place to get acutal seats. I asked if --- was there and they said she was in La Crosse. Pisser. They said they felt out of place and wouldn't mingle. After finishing my Spotted Cow, I reached for the free beer on the table: Miller Light. I don't know if that transformed me or if I thought that if I was going to sit around, I wasn't going to let everyone else boogie down. That's when I dove into the world that has sustained me ever since I requested "Love Stinks" at a wedding reception: Music.

Strange thing was, these mid-twenty and younger people were not aware when the music they were playing was on the radio..... in sincerity. White Snake. Skid Row. Motely Crue. Bon Jovi. I couldn't let these little white girls shake their asses and these Ambercrombie guys swallow barley water while I had to sit in a corner.

I threw $5 into the mp3 juke box to kill the party.

I was still thumbing through the list to fill my 13 credits when my first came on: Kenny Roger's "The Gambler". I had used two credits to play it immediately. It was still playing when I made it back to my friends and I found that these kids who had been born AFTER this tv movie was huge knew the song. They sang along. Still, the ass shaking and beer swilling was down a little. My next immediate play scored big. "Touch of Grey" mired these twits in a daze. They didn't know it and couldn't automatically dance to it.

Another song, requested before I took over, played, but I was delighted to know that my next 9 songs were next. First on the list was "Mrs. Robinson", which probably wasn't the wise choice as they all knew it. Still, it chilled the crowed some. Then "Cicelia" popped up and got some excited, but it didn't match the hard beat of "Girls Girls Girls". The next one scored big: "Three Times a Lady". None of them knew what to make of it. The roar turned into a million murmurs and I could actually hear my friends talking. That song was followed by the organizer of the party thanking everyone for coming out. By then, I had people leaving.

Next up: "Optimistic". While a great song, it's not a great dance/bar song. Again, these kids seemed a little lost. Masterfully, I followed that with "Time" from Dark Side of the Moon. The din quieted more. My friend ended up interrupting my set with a Ramones song. Considering a lot of Ramones songs sound alike and the bar was still a bit noisy, I didn't know what he had played. You think the up tempo of the song would get asses shaking, given the swtich from Lionel Ritchie to CBGB's finest, but I don't think Tyler and Taylor quite understand the Ramones.

"Man of Constant Sorrow" was the next song and I'll give credit to two girls who tried to dance to it. Then came "Love Hurts" as recorded by Nazareth. My pharmacy friend told me not to let anyone know it was her friend doing this. Evidently, the pharmacy world in this town is a small one and can be a bit spitefull. By the time a Toby Keith song (bad misjudgement on my part; mia culpa) rang out, my friends were grabbing their keys and walking to the door. The bar that had been full when I kicked out "The Gambler" was now 2/3 empty.

Mission accomplished.

Haywire

So yesterday, I wake up and my left leg is shaking. This in addition to my head and left arm twitches. This is a bit strange. I would usually just shrug it off and wait for my next doctor's appointment but thankfully I have a roommate who has been kicking me in the butt to go to the ER. So Sunday morning I walked out of my room and told my other roommate that I may need to go to the ER. That's when I noticed that I said, "ah-ah-ah-I mmmay need t-t-t-t-to g-g-g-go to the ha-ha-ha-hostpi-pi-pital." That pretty much sealed it.

I took a shower, packed a bag (with clean underwear!), and got a ride from Steve to Meriter. I tried calling my parents, couldn't get through, and called my sister. She said she'd be right there, which I didn't expect. Then my parents called me back and next thing I know, they were on their way. So after a half an hour, I had a whole cheering section in the waiting room including my other sister, which was a good feeling. Nothing much happened there other than a doctor telling me that my CT scan was clear and receiving from him a prescription for an MRI that should be scheduled for the next day.

I was discharged and we went to Doty’s where I consumed good food and better beer. It's been a while since my family, just the five of us, hung out together. I hung out at my parents that afternoon, playing this TV plug-in game of "Wheel of Fortune". My sisters were definitely into it, because after the spin, one would yell very loudly "I WANT A "P"! A "P"!" Both my roommates showed up, one still in scrubs from work. We all ate cheese and they drank wine, I had more beer. By then, my stuttering and shaking were gone.

Today I awoke with the shaking and stuttering plus numbness on the left side of my face. Shaun already planned to take me to the UW Hospital's ER. He even called in to find out the consulting neurologist on duty, (he works in the neurology ward). This time, I was hooked up to machines, got an IV to get blood work, and had an MRI scheduled right away. Then I waited. I'll tell you, waiting in hospitals is even more boring than waiting in a clothing store. Thankfully Shaun waited with me.

I was transferred to another room in ER to make way for more patients. The neurologist showed up after a half hour, poked, prodded, and told me that he thinks I'm organically (physically) ok. He thinks it's either medication complications or anxiety. I'm not sure what I'm anxious about, but I am hard wired a little funny. That comes from my maternal grandmother.

I had to ride in a wheel chair to Radiology, which drove my nuts since I like walking on my own two feet. The MRI was strange in that it sounded like the old Atari games, with digital gong noises, clicks, buzzes, and beeps. I felt like I was playing Combat again. After each set of buzzes and clicks, I heard of voice say "The next scan will take 1 minute" followed by more buzzes, clicks, and, sometimes, beeps.

After the MRI, I had to wait in another ER room with my parents for the next hour and a half. I looked at my father and thanked him for not giving me his even-keel genes. My mother got me a sub and piece of pie and I watched most of "The Incredibles" while waiting for the results. Finally, the ER doctor returned and told me that everything looked fine, much to the relief of my mother. That kind of leaves me at square one. Well, not exactly. It puts it back into the medication or anxiety camp. My sisters and I have low blood pressure, strong hearts, working innards, and the like but our brains were wired by Romanian electricians using Swahili instructions.

Despite the misfortune of my brain, I'm very fortunate to have the friends and family that I do. I definitely have not felt alone in the last two days. And the brain deal just may need a simple beta-blocker and everything will be normal. Else you may see and guy walking around with a weak left leg while stuttering out wise cracks. That's me.

A Drink or Two

When I got home last night, neither Steve nor I wanted to sit around. We started thinking about where we wanted to be. Trocadero sounded perfect, but the hour car ride did not. Since Steve hadn't been there since Bush the Elder was president, we went to the Essen house, gorged, and drank. Jeremy and Shaun caught up with us later and we headed to Nachtspiel.

Now here's the annoying part. We ordered a round of mojitos and the bartender rolled his eyes in annoyance. After he made them, he proceded to ignore us for the next half an hour, even thought he bar is about fifteen feet long. When I paid for the drinks ($24), the change came to three fives and and a one. Now most bartenders know to break one five into singles so the tip will be better. Considering the service, I wasn't about to leave a 20%+ tip. I would have left closer to 15% had I had some singles in my wallet. So I left the single I did have. As we left, he sent the waitress out to return the single.

What a bastard. I generally have much sympathy for wait staff and bartenders (I was one for a little bit), but that was just annoying. Anyway, I tipped very well at the other places.

Dave posted the Sports Illustrated cover when he was born, so I'm doing the same. Unforturnately, I have a race car driver.

Holy Shit

I really wish that I had a recording attachment for my iPod. You really need to hear their conversation. Well, it's not so much a conversation so much as Fucknut #1 talking about how a boat caught on fire and he sang "Smoke on the Water" and he was with a girl named Cindy and how all the girls at the Union come with guys, to Fucknut #2.

Two Twits

I'm at the coffeshop trying to write the Kiosk scripts for tomorrow, and these two fucknuts are annoying the shit out of me. Fucknut #1 quickly became bored when Fucknut #2 decided to get some more coffee and tried to start up a conversation in a lobotomized, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" sort of way. If you know me, that's a bad idea. He pointed to my powerbook and chatted about that, then tried to pass off some business card with the #1 or #2 site in the world. Whether he sells Amway or Peace and Enlightenment, I don't care. He then latched on to the conversation of the two women sitting to the other side of me.

The peace didn't last long since Fucknut #2 came back and Fucknut #1 decided to go to the head. Fucknut #2 evidently never had those manners film strips in elementary school, since he loudly slurped his coffee and chomped his cookie. Over and over and over and over. Just when Fucknut #2 finished his slobbering, Fucknut #1 came back. Now they're jibber-jabbing about where to go next. Gomeroke at the High Noon? Some kind of night at the Inferno? A band somewhere with no cover? Anyway, it won't be here and it won't be at my apartment. Then again, Jeremy's coming over soon and we'll probably end up where these goobers are.

At least I can flame them to my audience of 3! (or 4?)

P.S. Now Fucknut #1 is complaining about the girls at the Union who just want to walk around, drink beer, and act retarded. I'm not sure who his ultimate woman is... Dame Edna?

Wallet Shopping

After successfully completing my iPod exchange, burning my extended warranty, I thought last night would be an appropriate time to finish my Christmas shopping. My mother told me to get a new wallet for my father. These days, we kids collectively buy crap for our parents, but I made an exception. My mother informed me that his wallet has been falling apart for quite a while. Whenever she suggests he pick up a new one, he says that I bought him the wallet for Christmas. I remember that I did buy a wallet for him for Christmas one year, but I think I was in college, back when you only used text commands to send email and when our VAX servers would routinely crash on Friday nights, leaving us without any newsgroup fix for the weekend. I'm guessing his wallet is pretty ratty, though I haven't regularly seen it since high school, when I would take $2 for lunch.

After completing my surrogate shopping mission at Target, picking up headphones for my nephew, I drove over to the Mall, yes the Mall where I spent many hours of my childhood in tow to my mother. I figured Sears would have a wallet section, so I started there. I walked into the pick-up section, triggering Gabby, the automated TV voice, letting me know how to pick up my order. I, as usual, made a bee line to where I thought the wallets were. Times have changed, and so has the Sears layout. After completely blitzkrieging the 40,000 square foot store in about three minutes, I found the purses. I figured the wallets would be nearby, but had no luck.

Next I headed to Boston Store, which used to be Prange's before that closed and Boston Store jumped across the way, from the site that was once Gimbles. Again, I started blitzkrieging and immediately found the purses. My kindergarten-learned apples and oranges analogy is useless in the Men's/Women's shopping arrangement as I found no wallets by the isles and isles of purses. Note: these isles were filled with many Midwestern-teddy-bear-sweatshirt-frumpy women. I carried on blitzkrieging, past the mannequins with which I conversed when my mother was taking too much time shopping, right into the Men's area and found a little turn shelf thing with wallets on them. It took me 1.578 seconds to know that these wallets sucked and that I was out of luck there. I completed my loop of the store, noting that the Men's jacket section must be where Midwestern-wolf-pack-shirt-frumpy men made their rounds, as the space dedicated to jackets was in 1:1 proportion with the purse section, unlike the puny wallet section.

I carried on, passing all the calendar, game, and painting kiosks in the general area and found Wilson's Leather Somethingorother. I figured they may have wallets and was right. Again, it was just and turning shelf thing, but after 3 minutes, I found one that didn't suck and didn't include any plastic picture holders. If my father still had my freshman year picture, I'd just assume he throw it. It then took me about four minutes to hike my ass through the general area, through Sears, past Gabby, and out to my car.

Anyway, this is how I shop. Since I rarely buy DVDs and prefer to hold my music as mp3's, I really no longer browse while shopping. Sometimes I wander at Best Buy or somewhere, given my obsession with gadgets, but I have my fill of those. I guess this helps me avoid the 95% of humanity that I do not like.

Anyway, Merry Christmas or whatever! I'm done with my shopping!

Guantanamera!

Saturday turned out to be the day three of us got tired of being in Madison and ventured our way to Milwaukee. We piled in my car and away we went. The first five minutes were filled with banter, as I haven't seen Tom in a while and not much of Jeremy, either. As the conversation died down, I put on some XM dance channel and passed the Marshal exit. (Please note that Marshal is entirely populated by a Romanian Bucovina Cult or something. They are weird people.) I was fast becoming sleepy listening to the repetative electronic music and told Jeremy to change it. He fished around, stopping at the NASCAR channel to collective groans, ESPN for the Penn State Score for Tom, and finally at the 80's channel.

Things remain kind of quiet until Tom started singing the backup singer portion of some 80's song that I don't remember. It could of been on by Foreigner. This was followed by Bananarama's only self-penned U.S. hit, "Cruel Summer", and others until "Pour Some Sugar On Me" came on. I then changed it, passing the 60's channel when Jeremy heard a bit of a familiar song. He changed it back and behold it was "Guantanamera", a song I didn't know, but he knew from high-school Spanish class. This made Jeremy's whole night and we could have turned back home. Unfortunately, the music digressed from there and we were forced to turn it off at the intersection of Hawley & West Lincoln Avenue.

We picked up Steve and decided on Tres Hermanos. Steve informed us of a recent homicide in the neighborhood and told the story of how he saw some guy getting his head kicked into the pavement outside the restaurant some time. We were no longer in cushy, wimpy Madison anymore. Jeremy was excited at the mariachi band standing by the bar. By the time we sat down and ordered our drinks, the band was going from table to table, performing requests. Jeremy no sooner said "I hope they don't stop here" when I heard "Good Evening, Gentlemen!" He knew not of our reputation. The lead hombre asked for a request and Jeremy yelled out "Guantanamero!" The band responded and Jeremy would have died happy at that moment.

Not much else interesting happened after that. We went to a bar that kept blaring hair metal, another bar that was cool, but had the worst juke box, and another before we called it a night. I did manage to make a wrong turn at Albuquerque, circled Miller Park, drop off Steve, get lost again, then head back home. It's good to get away from this town sometimes.

Tales of Ramadan

I didn't finalize my Halloween plans (at least the Saturday bit) until the day of the event. As usual, I skipped the riots on State Street and instead went to the wonderful suburb of Waukesha to raid the party of my roommate's brother, Mark.

Again, as usual, I put no effort into my costume and donned my Blackhawks jersey, grabbed my street hockey stick, and headed out the door. Shaun and I stopped by Giganto Halloween Warehouse to round off our outfits. He found nothing, but I found an old-time goalie mask or, as most people know it, a Jason mask. Outside of the Land Shark, we were the first to arrive.

An important note to the evening's festivities is Shaun's solidarity deal with workmate Fathi to not drink alcohol for Ramadan. Shaun had been doing this for about five weeks. Also important to note is that the keg wasn't Barley Water Lite, but Strongbow. Another important note, which he told me later, was his diet that day of five pieces of toast with peanut butter.

It didn't take us long to get a buzz going. In that time, a fruity-looking pirate, two wizards, a jailbird, and tasty French maid arrived. Shaun and I take great pleasure in making Mark squirm and were throwing out one-liners and other assorted jokes, much to the pleasure of the Land Shark, including one about the pirate's poop deck.

When the party headed inside, I found a comfortable chair, which, given my old fogie tendencies, was a mistake. As the party kicked into high gear, I dozed off. Noise is no problem for me; I even fell asleep at the butt-numbing Metallica concert of 1991. Eventually, I took refuge in the spare bedroom after repeated yells of "Chris, wake up!" rang out (I was wearing my Chris Chelios jersey). Shaun continued to hang out with the crowd and pound cider in his five week virgin belly.

At about 1 am, a very drunk Shaun barged in and dropped to the floor to snooze. Not more than five minutes after that, Mark's girlfriend came in to restart the Halloween noises that were turned up to 11. The sound waves found Shaun's button and he leaned up yelling "Oh God" and "I'm never drinking again!" in between the witches' cackles and his dry heaving into a plastic bag. Evidently, his end of Ramadan culminated in his conversion back to Christianity. As more "Oh My God!", "I can't believe this!", and "Oh no!" chants rang out, I started cackling louder than the 11-amped witches. I turned off the music and Mark's girlfriend suggested sleeping in the other room. I didn't mind Shaun's discomfort, since I was tired and selfish, but there was no sofa in the other room. Shaun had enough and told me to drive him home.

I proceeded through the house, announcing Shaun's coming with imitations of the hwwwaaaahhh's, "Oh My God!"s and "Oh No!"s; again with much laughter. He slept most of the way home while my vision blurred in and out. I did managed to make it home, but the last ten minutes were again punctuated by Shaun's groaning as mention above. When I got to my room, I hastily threw my laundry off my new bed, put sheets on the bed, and fell asleep.

Moral of the Story: Always be happy to fall asleep in a comfortable chair.

Greetings From The Mid-Atlantic!

I'm currently vacationing in the mid-Atlantic, now parking my ass in Wilmington, NC. It's been a relaxing vacation marked with nights of sleep stretching 9 hours, beer, food, and general lazing. A day-by-day recap of my vacation thus far would make boring blogging and reading, so I'll list some observations and such:

1. Old people at airports are well worth watching. An old couple occupied the seats across from me in land-of-the-dead terminal in Madison. The old guy, stereotypically, couldn't hear for shit and his wife kept trying to talk to (at?) him. She would yammer away with periodical bursts of "Did you hear me?" to which the old guy would respond "enh?" At one point, when she was mentioning the grandkids or some plot of Matlock, he loudly proclaimed that he wanted some chocolate. He also managed to clear his throat three times per second. As I said, old people at airports are worth watching.

2. I -heart- mass transit, especially the train kind. Adam and Susan live just off of the Orange Line that made my stay convenient. I used it to get from the airport (with Adam's guidance and company) to his place and to downtown Washington. The mix of people was interesting given the Madison is 83% white. Being the capitol of the free(???) world, many kinds of people live there and fill the subway. This helps my main goal of blending into the background much easier, because I'm just another white guy instead of a rather German-looking guy who dresses like he livess on the east side of Madison. The less identifying adjectives that bounce around people's heads when seeing me, the better.

3. North Carolina people can't drive. They suck! They ride your ass for ten miles while the left lane is wide open, run read lights not out of a rush, but from pure stupidity, don't understand simple principles (like move to the middle of the intersection while waiting to turn left) and generally are obstacles.

4. Eastern North Caroline looks like central Wisconsin. I saw a lot of trailer.. uh, mobile homes, pine trees, winding highways, and random towns featuring an old gas station/repair shop and three houses in various states of disrepair. Oh, and an ice cream shop. The only difference is most homes, except the mobile variety, are made of brick and there's cotton instead of soybeans.

5. Like Wisconsin, when you get to the end of the road, you find exaggerated accents. I went the wrong way on Carolina Beach Road and ended up in... Carolina Beach! When I asked for directions, I had to dust off inner reaches of my brain that decipher heavy accents. That part of my brain expanded quite a lot when I worked in a noisy pub in Scotland. I half expected a banjo to play in the background, but before you worry about my safety, they were squeaky clean and quite accommodating.

I'm sure the next three days will provide more intrigue. We'll see.

Windows 95

My nephew, Ben, is autistic and autistic children's minds work differently from ours. They have certain obsessions and have delayed social development. One of Ben's obsessions is what version of Windows everone is running and he'll remember six months down the line. He also knows what stuff is in each version and that Windows 95 sucks, since he has an old computer with it for his games.

On the social development side, he'll say things at inappropriate times. My sister decided to prohibit Ben from using bad words, so he won't use them at the wrong time. He can't say someone is stupid, mean, or anything like it. So the yesterday, he was pissed off at my sister and he said "You're Windows 95!" He also called her a banana.

You wouldn't like him when he's angry.

About 9:30 last night, my roommate and I went for a bike ride around the isthmus. Nothing of note happened for a while. I saw that State Street was continuing its decline with more overture center crap and Muffy and Buffy types who have trouble looking both ways before crossing.

Things got interesting at the end. Shaun and I got separated, but I caught up to him on King Street. I shouted at him, but he ignored me. Then I caught up and heard him swearing. His rear tire was flat and his front brake was really squealing. To let out aggression, he was jumping over every curb, landing on that flat tire.

We made it to the bike path. I had to bite my cheeks to keep from laughing. Here's a guy riding the ghetto thumper complete with squeaky brakes and the "thumpata-thumpata" of the flat tire, cursing in a manor that would make the Barbary Pirates blush. Whenever he'd come up on unsuspecting pedestrians, swearing up a storm and jumping his bike over everything, they would slowly turn their heads and look at him in a that-boy-ain't-right manor.

I think he's going to get another bike.