December 2005 Archives

i miss the one who makes me smile
who makes me warm
who makes me happy and makes me sad
the one who feels nice with her arms around me
the one who wants my arms around her

i find it funny that -- of all poets -- the one who describes my feelings toward W is none other than Axl Rose:

She's got a smile that it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long
I'd probably break down and cry

yup.

She's got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I hate to look into those eyes
And see an ounce of pain

true dat.

oooooo eeeee oooooh
Sweet child o' mine

ooooh oooh ooh oooooooooooh oooh
Sweet love of mine

that's it. i can try but i doubt i could say it better. and i certainly couldn't say it with a kickass guitar solo.

that's right: dead mildew.

fuck you, mildew.

fermenting and ageing beer is like having kids: i can't let it drop to a comfy 50F in here.

well, after the beer's aged a couple weeks I can.

yet another reason that beer is better than kids.

that's right: deadlifts.

i feels better.

to be honest, though, i now suspect it wasn't a cold after all, but a huge-mongous allergy flare-up. not that that made it any less enjoyable.

in response, i am about to embark upon an embarcation of unthinkable proportions: i shall do the un-doable.

well, i mean, it's not undoable if i do it. it's just unlikely.

right.

the more i tell people about my xmas "plans" the lamer they sound.

sigh.

do you ever get the feeling that people just aren't listening?

i wonder if being ill affects my decision-making process.

i doubt it.

my yearly winter illness.

my head feels... awful.

the good news: maybe this will be it and i wont spend new years, as always, sick.

the bad news: yeah, right.

and thus comes to a close a grand weekendly tradition stretching way back to april, and not with a bang, but a whimper.

oddly enough, that's quite how it began: with a pocketful of cold-eze and a lot of moisture.

i woke up with a sore throat and expecting bad weather. well, the weather was worse than bad: it was raining. ugh.

so i skipped the hike.

i went for a run instead and it sucked. i got to ignore the throat for a while while i appreciated the bodily indignities of a good, cold, wet run.

i figure i've got enough week-day hikes racked up that i can credit them toward weekend hikes and thus consider my chain of hikes unbroken once i begin again.

heh.

indulge me, for a moment, in a thought experiment.

imagine this: imagine you're a guy.

for some of you, this may be the most difficult part. keep trying, you'll get it.

now imagine this: imagine you've got a lot on your mind.

okay, that may be the hard one for the rest of you.

imagine you're thinking hard about earthly matters and you haven't taken a piss in about 4 hours and you've just gotten out of a long meeting with the boss. you owe the urinal a visit.

you take your time getting to the restroom, because... that's right: you've got a lot on your mind. your girlfriend called to say she's not feeling well. you've got a vacation and a weekend and a career to plan. you have parents and coworkers and code and money to coordinate. your car's not working right. your beer's not tasting right. your teeth aren't feeling right. there's a lot going on. you've got a lot on your mind.

you make it to the can, head into the stall, unzip your fly. you don't need to think about it, becase, after all, you're a guy. it's all on autopilot. you take a look southward as you pull out mister happy to get down to business.

and then your heart stops. what's that splotch of red right by the johnston? holy jesus my dick's bleeding!!!

and then.....

and then.....

ohthankgod. false alarm! you remember: i'm wearing my red boxers today. ohthankgod.

followed by: what a fun story this will make on my blog.

i hate winter.

it's official: i hates me the winters.

maybe i'm in a foul mood today on account of the return of the itchy ears. no, strike that: itchy ear. just one. which leads me to believe the problem is topical and not systemic, not that that helps, since i have no clue what causes it. alls i know is that it's now officially recurring. hooray.

could it be plant exposure? sunlight? toxic sweat? reaction to sunscreen? reaction to pet dander? molds? spiders? crickets rickets cats?

i dont know. it sucks.

also, for the first time since i left home, i wont be spending xmas at my ancestral house. the folks wanted to travel so i'm meeting them Somewhere. i was planning to extend my stay at Somewhere because they're only staying 2 nights. i told them this. they went ahead and reserved a room for me for 2 nights. so much for the extended stay.

i have no gifts for anyone and the clock is ticking. i have no plans for the holiday, i'm busy at work for a change, i'm itchy, and it's too fargen cold out for me to enjoy my outdoors activities. for the first time in a long time i've got urges to move back to the desert.

but i'm not that far gone, yet; i can control those urges quite easily.

i was supposed to make plans with a friend for the xmas break. i was supposed to make plans with the folks for the xmas break. i need to make plans with W for the xmas break. everyone wants to call me to discuss these plans while i'm at home and at home is the only place that my phone doesn't work.

in the winter i play video games. i have only one video game and my computer is still -- even after all the upgrades -- too wimpy to play it. so this winter i don't play video games.

i have a great new coffee table that i like, but i feel like a jerk sitting around. i'm not a "lounger". i don't "lounge". i've "lounged" the past 2 evenings and it sucks. but it's too cold and dark to play outside and my earitch distracts me from more cerebral pursuits.

ooh, i remembered something good: i had a couple sips of sazerac 18 and somehow, miraculously, they were amazingly good. i think it's because i'm hopped up on multiple antihistamines (on account of the ear) so perhaps my sinuses opened up and i could finally taste it (the sazerac) properly. yum.

my favorite video game ever has been rewritten into the public domain but during the rewrite the bastards fixed the bug that made the game playable. i may have to unfix it myself but i don't have the time either to fix the bug or play the game.

barg!

first, a little history:

waaay back in the summer of nine nine, i moved from my furnished college-town shithole studio to a nice, bay area, unfunrnished 1.5 bedroom "luxury" apartment. during the several years that i lived there, i bought:

a bed
a dresser
a dining-room table and chair set
the booth
a comfy couch
some book cases
a nice, cheap, simple entryway piece with shelves.

a teevee stand was the only piece of furniture that i had brought with me from college.

i never bought an ottoman or coffee table. i searched and searched but didn't find one that i liked.

over the years, i developed the ghetto habit of using empty crystal-geyser boxes in place of a coffee table. i moved to a new place and looked a couple times for a coffee table, but never found anything i liked or could convince myself to pay for.

finally, after more than 6 years, two weeks ago, something snapped and i resolved to get a coffee table within a week. i searched the usual suspects, and found that in my absence, some had even closed (brueners-since-1998, where'd you go?).

i made my goal, and within a week, found 3 that i liked . i was all set to get the one from levitz but decided to show W the "other one": the one that was the wrong color and "outside my budget". guess which one I ended up getting?

(clickety click for bigger image.)

it's got a configurable top with (re)moveable cushions and trays. it's mahogany to go with my black leather couch, black tv, black speakers and chairs, black dvd racks, black torchiere, and rusty grey power booth.

W says she enjoys polishing furniture. good.

did you ever write something and then realize that it really didn't come out right?

no?

well, i have.

to the extent that blogging is narcisstic whingeing, i abhor it.

i'd like to think that i treat this thingus as external memory.

a chapter of my life comes to an end tonight. this metaphor was made real for me at the closing of another of my life's chapters, when i lost another of many dear friends to destiny and distance. on the last day of his employment, he stood in the lot and held in his hands an imaginary book. he faced all directions to soak up the surroundings on this page in the book of his life, and then he closed it.

that was the end of his chapter, and, unknown to me, the end of our chapter together.

what began as a chance encounter turned into a great friendship. there was a reason i quoted douglas adams in that post. i don't make friends easily, but the ones i make are... important.

when my other friends departed i took their absence well. each of them (well, not this one but every rule has outliers) had set me on a trajectory toward a better life. for me, it is a small tragedy to be separated from a close friend, but at the same time, it is difficult to be too sad when faced with the amazing futures they helped position before me.

and so, as always, as another chapter in my life comes to a close, i eagerly await the wonders of the next page, and i cry only a little that the past has already revealed its mysteries.

i was right, i'm not crippled.

i switched to sumo-style deadlift, since it seems to let me keep my back more upright and protected, and proceeded to do multiple sets, topping off at 255. 255 seemed rather hard but i'm hoping that's just a combination of thanksgiving and my 6 month-ish deadlifting layoff.

still, i did do something to the back: i think i exacerbated the old injury. time will tell.