I’m heading off to Texarkana in an hour for the weekend, for 3 days of fun and frolic.
Wait, uh, hmm, um, nevermind that last part, I’m just, uh, I’m going to Texarkana. Ok. For 3 days. To visit family. And friends. And, um, to get out of Austin for a while. Yeah.
GO [HERE]
Um, ok. Praise satan.
Having trouble sleeping lately.
With the warmer weather, I’m going to bed with the window open, which may or may not be a good idea. It’s good in that I get the benefit of ventilation instead of suffocation, but it’s bad in that I get outside noises which, in an apartment complex, means I get neighbors, traffic, and A/C heat exchangers. Sunday night I laid down around 1am and finally got some deep stage-1 sleep around 5:30 am. Would’ve been no problem had I not needed to get up at 8 to go to work.
But sunday night presented me with a lot of problems for getting some sleep done. First off, a desktop fan I’ve had, and nursed back from death, for 10 years has finally given up the ghost. It was rattling, buzzing, grinding, groaning, and making all manner of god-awful noises, with barely a hint of breeze. It’s had a long, long life and has served its use in this world. It’ll now be sent out to pasture and be relegated to occasional spot-chilling of my computer tower.
Add to that the occasional noise from outside, the slapping of the miniblinds on the windowsill as a breeze blows through, some hunger, some stomach cramping, allergies, ear pressure, and BLAH it’s no small wonder that I was able to get 2 1/2 hours of sleep.
*yawn*
Luckily, when I got home from work (after buying a new fan and some over-the-counter Claritin), I poked around online for a short while, then laid down to nap. I slept for what I think was an hour, tossed around a little, then my roomate came home, after which I promptly decided continued sleep was a good idea. Around 2:30am, freezing my ass off, I got up to close the window and turn the fan down and here I am, making a journal entry. Not sure if I’ll stay up or go back to bed. Jury’s still out on that.
Without sleep, nothing else matters.
(post script: I went back to bed. Wow. Slept long and deep enough, in both bouts, to actually have dreams. Was nice, really nice.)
Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard some small rumblings from friends of mine who I’ve known for years, people who I respect for their music preferences. They’ve made mention of a band called [Evanescence]; figured that since there was a small bit of buzz about them, I picked up their CD last night.
Oh. My. God.
I never really would’ve figured it, but these two people from Little Rock (of all places) can really write some seriously good music. It’s thick. Rich. Layered. My friend and college-mate Jeff S. was correct in saying it takes some serious talent to do those arrangements. The album has a few slow, orchestra-based tracks, but the real stars of the show are the tracks “Bring Me to Life”, “Haunted”, “Tourniquet”, and “Whisper”. Wow. This stuff is hard and deep.
It’s about time we had the return of progressive metal. I love the genre. Actually, I like really deep, thick, rich music. Give me hard beats, yes, heart-racing rhythms, yes, crunchy guitars, yes, but also give me melody, counterpoint, harmony, something other than “verse / chorus / verse / bridge / chorus” once in a while. Some bands that come to mind here are Tool and Dream Theater – those bands really get my juices flowing with the music they provide. Evanescence provides, and, hoo-boy, I gladly accept.
As a sidenote, I suspected, with the band originating from Little Rock, that Evanescence was Christian in their leanings. After listening to the lyrics, I can almost confirm. Lyrics are a hard thing to judge sometimes, but my supposition that they’re influenced by the spectre of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention (evil as a whole, but with nice members) is highly probable. Arkansas is a Baptist state, after all. Luckily, this lean in their lyricism doesn’t detract from the band or their music; they’re not ones to flaunt their God in our faces, which is good. The world needs more Christians like that.
So again, wow. They’re in my heavy playlist rotation. Evanescence goes down like sweet milk.
In other news, I’ll be taking a trip to Texarkana next weekend to visit the family and friends for Easter. Taking off a day early to head out of here on Thursday night. Maybe that’ll help alleviate my long-distance-driving-in-traffic anxiety. Man, do I dislike driving that long by myself. At first, it was a pleasure, but it’s now a pain, a hassle, and a bore. Damn, I hate driving through Dallas. ugh.
At least I have some new musics to drag along. Wish me luck.
¡Vaya con Diabolo!
Ah, so much better. Payday. All last week I was kind of sweating things, trying to live on the cheap (and half-way succeeding), trying to make $50 stretch all week. So when I got paid on Friday, yeah, I was much relieved. Nothing quite like trying to float debit-card charges, hoping they stay in electronic limbo until help arrives. Thanks to Johnny Paycheck, rent is paid, food is in my belly (but none in my pantry yet), and I have clean clothes and sheets. It’s a good thing I got paid on Friday: my landlord wasted no time in depositing the rent check I turned in on Thursday. Yikes.
While I was at the laundromat yesterday, I figured that while I was a captive audience, instead of dragging my laptop out and doing a little bit of nothing, I went out to my car, got the hooked needle and nylon thread out, and began stitching up another ripped seam on my passenger seat. Two runs down, about 5 runs to go. I can’t believe I let it go for so long. Believe me, kids, when I say that I now fully understand the true meaning of the saying, “A stitch in time saves nine.” I’m probably looking at 2000 stitches. Ugh. But it’s got to be done.
And can you believe somebody actually suggested I get some of those gawd-awful seat covers for my car? I may have white-trash tendencies, but I’m not that white-trash. Jeez.
I finally got my replacement battery for my laptop from Dell on Thursday. I called them around the beginning of March to get a new battery, seeing that my old battery was subject to a safety recall (something about overcharging, smoking, catching fire — that kind of stuff). They took my information and said I’d get a replacement some time within 5 to 15 business days. That kind of confused me because Dell is based in Austin. Well, I was fine with that, until 20 business days out, when I was like “Um, it should’ve been here by now.” So I call them up again last Tuesday.
The tech on this call told me something went wrong on the first order, so she took my battery serial number again, checked it, and said it wasn’t subject to recall. Huh? I know the first tech said it was, the Dell website said it was, so I went back to the Dell site, completely filled out the form, clicked “submit”, after which it replied with “Please return battery to Dell immediately.” Hmm. Ok. Told the tech what it said. “Huh, ok.” Two days later I come home from work and find a package, shipped by Airborne Express (yes, shipped across town by airborn), sitting on my chair. Yay!
I installed the battery, put the old battery in the cdrom bay, and went out and played for 4 hours without the usage of a power outlet. Was niiiice. I shipped the old battery back the next day. Hopefully they’ll send me the extra battery they promised sometime soon. That was nice, not needing to recharge.
Ok, so how did the time change affect everybody, eh? Me? I slept ’til 4pm today, which we all know is really just 3pm. I stayed up extra extra late last night because, well, that extra non-existent hour made a difference. I was making jokes about going home around 2:30am, which got a giggle out of some of my buddies because, well, that hour didn’t exist. I guess, at the least, that with this time change we’ll have an extra hour of sunlight after we get home from work. That’ll be nice.
With the extra sunlight, though, comes heat. And let me tell you, it is heating up here. Got up to 88F here today, partly cloudy. Wow. To be honest, I welcome the heat (I’m a reptile, y’know). Of course I won’t be too happy about it when I get into my car after work. Nossireebob. Something’s telling me I should’ve worked on my A/C this past winter. :sigh: Ah well. I think I’ll be fine, so long as I can sweat and get some airflow going (heh, yeah, that’s that “440 A/C” we white-trash are so proud of…y’roll down 4 windows and go 40mph down the road). Haven’t quite got my “first sweat” in yet, but once that happens, and my pores are cleared out, I’ll be fine.
Ah, yes. More info than you need to know. :)
Last night was quite interesting.
It all started yesterday morning. As is my usual, when I woke up I turned on the radio to [KLBJ] to start the day. The morning show, [Dudley & Bob], my favorite show on that station, has a tendency to get really, really interesting. Well, lo and behold, porn star [Sydnee Steele] visited the studio, so obviously my ears pricked up. :) As is also my usual, I tuned in to the webcam at the KLBJ studio, and yessir, she was there. Dudley and Bob, and the rest of the on-air cast, sweet-talked her into stripping down nude. Score! It was great.
Also in the studio, just after Sydnee’s really-cool visit, were four girls from the [Canned Film Festival], which features local film shorts that were rejected from our recent [South By South West] festival. Let me tell you, Canned girls are hawties. Wow.
Luckily for me, luckily for us, I saved all the [cam images]. That was a real treat, after just waking up. Was nice, really nice. But the day’s just getting started.
Ok. So I’m off to work. Got to work by myself, which was a joy. No listening to coworker F coughing incessantly. No dealing with coworker N’s music. No dealing with BossMan pulling me from one job to another. It was a pleasure to see that little treasure Coworker M. She was dressed really cute. Oy. What I would do for her… *Ahem!* So, anyway, had a quick chat with Coworker S about that morning’s show on KLBJ, which he’s a fan of. Told him I saved the images. He got a guffaw and hinted that he wished he’d have seen that. Told him Sydnee’s here in town for an in-store appearance at the Adult Video Megaplexxx, told him I was thinking about going, at least for something to do. He was like, “Hey, that’s tonight?!” Hehe.
Day of work done, I head home. Did some tooling around with my site, wrote a script that generates an html index for images in a directory, and uploaded that morning’s cam images onto my site. Then I got itchy. Decided to go to the in-store appearance, but I wasn’t goin’ alone. You bet. I grabbed my roomate, we headed to Mojo’s in an effort to grab more people. Oddly enough, everyone I asked in my scattered groups of friends declined. Hmph. Prudes. So, just the two of us, we headed off to the store.
Let me tell you about the Megaplexxx. That place is clean. Well-maintained. Like the Blockbuster of adult video. Only here the staff was friendly, professional, and helpful. Very cool. So, we walk in and sure enough, there’s Sydnee Steele in all her porn-star glory. She’s wearing a torquoise stretch-tube dress, standing behind a table with all kinds of merch with her bodyguards keeping watch. There was a short line, so I walked around and looked at a few titles and rentals. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her flashing a polaroid camera with some guy standing next to her with the goofiest grin on his face.
I walk around a little more. My roomate’s already bee-lined to the gay section. I got a kick out of that. Next thing I know, I’m right at her table, without really thinking about it. Figure, eh, why not, eh? Found out a topless polaroid was $20 (full-nude was $40). I pony up a twenty to her bodyguard, Sydnee and I exchange greetings and some small banter, she pulls her dress down to expose her enormous, enhanced breasts, and leads me behind the table to join her for a photo. I was surprised that, with heels, she was actually a little shorter than I am. Thin, tanned, nice body. She holds out her right hand, I take it with my right, lock fingers, she folds our arms over her waist, and I put my left arm around her waist to lock hands, and *flash* we have our money shot. (Har har)
Wow. Ok, so not only did I see a porn star, not only did I meet a porn star, not only did I take a picture with a porn star, but I got to touch a porn star! Man, that was truly cool. I’m such a fanboy. To say she wasn’t charming would be a lie. She was very sweet, very friendly. We had a short chat afterwards. Found out she was into finance before she got into the industry, so she’s not really doing it for the money or fame; says she just loves what she does. Heh. Gettin’ paid to have orgasms, yeah, I can see how someone would love that kind of work.
She signed the polaroid, signed a free poster, and after more chatting, I got her to recommend one of the dvd’s which she had the most fun in doing. Picked up “The Shocking Truth” (available from [Wicked Pictures]). Not a bad flick. I’m thinking it was inspired by the Mel Gibson movie “What Women Want.” Tongue-in-cheek, but, hell, at least the plot holds up. It’s interesting to note that on the dvd, the “Chapters” menu goes straight to the sex scenes. Now that’s forward thinking. Ah, finally some producers know “What Men Want.”
So, we leave the shop and head back to Mojo’s. My friends are still there, and we show our spoils. It’s funny the mixed reactions we got. Some were like “Dude, that fuckin’ rawks!” Others were like “Um, oooh-kaaay.” Hey, for months they’ve been admonishing me to get out more; well, dammit, I believe I just did! Fehehe.
I hung out for several more hours, and the group at-large was talking about almost anything and everything, including the making of a sex-map, trying to see just who has slept with whom, and which people are “eskimo cousins”. That was entertaining. Almost the ultimate cock-block for everyone. Funny how that happens. Yawning, I head home around 5am and reflect on the day. Yep, for once it was time well-spent.
And the dvd is nice too, by the way. :)
Later!
