Comments (17)

Restlessly I searched for her thousands, hundreds of ways.
Suddenly I turned, and there she was in the receding light.

There was a time in my life at which I gave up on love. Up until that point I had engaged in what I felt to be a normal love life– I had dated lots of girls, crushed on lots more, and had a handful of full-fledged girlfriends, but I had never fallen in love with anyone. Now, I do not mean to say that I ever made a conscious decision to “give up;” I did not leap to my feet one day and declare, “I give up on love!” or do anything dramatic of the sort. It was more as if I gradually resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never capture that elusive feeling called love. Without making an active decision to do so, and without even really realizing it at the time, I didn’t date anyone for nearly a year. I turned my focus instead to my own needs, friendships, and business concerns, and had a pretty successful, if celibate, time of things. Then I stepped into an elevator and met the girl with whom I would fall in love.

Somehow, more than six years have passed since I met Sue. Our relationship has been something of a storybook one, but we are about to face our first big challenge. For the next year, she is going to be living in Los Angeles. For my geographically-challenged readers, that is about 400 miles from where we currently live, and where I will remain. I have never been a part of a long-distance relationship before, and I don’t know what to expect. Our plan is to take things as they come, whatever that means.

In the meantime, here at last is a picture of the happy couple. For whatever reason, I have not shared many pictures of myself in this blog (and, before today, none of Sue) but this seems like the right time to finally acquiesce to the requests of more than a few readers.

PICTURE DELETED

That was taken on Christmas Eve of last year. Regular readers will recall that as the date of a most exciting knife fight, chronicled here.

Also– no I do not wear a zoot suit on a daily basis. It is pure coincidence that in one of the only other pictures I have ever shared of myself here I am wearing the same ridiculous outfit. I swear.

Comments (31)

Today in the car, my Mother and I were discussing that famous question: “If you could have dinner with any three individuals, living or dead, who would you choose?” I began to wonder if one picks say, Julius Caesar or Hammurabi, if a second seat has to be reserved for a translator. I also worried that if I picked too clever a bunch, I’d be left out of the conversation altogether. What do I even have to say that Einstein, Aristotle, or Mozart could give a damn about?

I finally settled on Thomas Jefferson, whom I’d ask to give his opinions of modern day politics through the eyes of a framer of the Constitution, Douglas Macarthur, as he would definitely have some exciting war stories, and Takeru Kobayashi, just to see how much he would eat.

You probably think that answering today’s question is going to require you to compile your own list of three diners, which you are welcome to do, but the real question is yet to come

You see, later on we were listening to the radio and, utterly coincidentally, the host suggested that audience members draft a list of the 20 guests, living or dead, they’d invite to a cocktail party. Suddenly he was talking my language; and though he didn’t specify it, I think that it is assumed that the dead invitees would be somehow plucked from their former lives and placed in the room ready to party. A room full of cadavers does not make for a swanky soiree, and zombies don’t drink cocktails, they are cocktails.

Currently Playing: Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party

I suppose now the question I am about to ask has become a bit more obvious, but here goes: Today’s Question: You can invite 20 historical figures to your cocktail party. Whom do you invite?

I am hard at work on my list, and will post it soon.

—

How soon is now? Here are my guests. I hope they can all make it! I have alphabetized them so nobody feels bad about being at or near the bottom of the list. Also, I’ve selected ten men and ten women, to balance things out.

Musical entertainment will be provided by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians.

Comments (2)

People have been asking about the remodeling job, so I shot a quick video of Tim and I at work on my office.

Comments (5)

I am currently remodeling the room in my apartment which I use for an office. One of the upgrades I have planned is to replace the carpeted floor with a hardwood floor. The first step in the process was to remove the carpet. Upon doing so, I discovered that beneath the carpet, some prior tenant had laid down faux hardwood linoleum tiles. I found that to be amusing, and began to chuckle at his feeble attempt to have hardwood, but I was stopped in mid-chuckle when I peeled away the linoleum.

Lo and behold, beneath the faux wood tile was a hardwood floor! In a positively Baudrillardian substitution, someone chose to cover an actual hardwood floor with a pretend hardwood floor. My feeling of superiority over the prior tenant rapidly shifted to one of inadequacy. He actually had hardwood, and purposely chose to hide it beneath a layer of faux hardwood linoleum. That takes confidence, and a steadfast commitment to one’s ideals and decorating philosophies. It is the interior decorating equivalent to sewing a Lacoste alligator onto a Prada shirt. Truly, this former tenant was a stalwart hero in the decorating realm.

Or maybe he was just a lunatic.

Comments (6)

I played Trivial Pursuit the other day. Stymied on my first two turns, on my third turn I went around the board and collected all six colored triangles, made it to the center square, and correctly identified the Glenn Miller Orchestra as the band in question. I won the game in about five minutes. I wish I were always that smart.

I drove my van on Saturday, but the brakes weren’t working well. I kept having to slam it into the curb or into large objects to stop it. That would be an example of one of the times I ain’t so smart.

Comments (10)

Something amusing I heard in an episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer:

(Talking about Jonathan)
Andrew: That boy is our last hope.
Warren: No, there is another.
Andrew: Wait, really? Who’s our last hope?
Warren: No, I was just going with it. It was a thing. I… No, he’s our last hope.

Additionally, I’ve another internet quiz result to share with you:

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief’s abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell – Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Test

I was really hoping I’d be on the glutton level. I don’t get what I did wrong.

Finally, while I’m at it, let me inform everyone that I am worth $2,771,706.00 on HumanForSale.com.

Comments (13)

I recently shared my living room with you, my gentle readers. Today I would like to invite you into a little place I like to call “Undersea Paradise.” A less fanciful name for it is “the bathroom,” but for the sake of not being weird and hitting up the bathroom together, let’s stick with my chosen moniker.

When I moved into my current apartment, the bathroom was just awful. I wish I’d taken more pictures to prove it, but I only have a few. Here is one of my wonderful sink. Nothing says dark ages better than separate taps for hot and cold water. Burn your hand, freeze your hand, burn your hand, freeze your hand. (I won’t even discuss the nastiness festering in the bottom of that sink, but you can see it in the picture.)

The brush, pink thing and jar came with the apartment.

The “decor” consisted entirely of this fixture below. The prior resident didn’t even leave me any paper on the roll.

Here’s another “before” shot:

The first thing I did was bust out a crowbar and yank out the old sink. I swapped in a nice, lovely, new one. You will also notice that I put a mirror over the sink. Oddly, there was no mirror above the sink before. Just a plain white wall. I felt like a vampire in the mornings. Where am I?

Much better– my hands are no longer simultaneously blistered and frostbitten– but I didn’t stop there. I decided to create an Undersea Paradise. Naturally, that attracted fish, so I had to put up some netting. Oh, look! It attracts crustaceans too:

Here we see the catch of the day. He’ll be mighty yummy once he’s been basted with something spicy and grilled to perfection:

This little fellow insists he belongs; he claims he is a sea monkey:

When I moved in, the bathroom lighting consisted of a bare light bulb jutting from the ceiling at an odd angle, so I installed a new light fixture:

But that wasn’t bright enough, especially for a pretty little Peasprout like me. I must make sure I am appropriately coiffed each day, so I added some vanity lighting:

Believe it or not, there was no electrical outlet in the bathroom, so I had to put one in. And yes, I put the main fixture on a dimmer, so I can set that romantic mood. Actually it’s so I can go in there at night and not blind myself once my eyes have grown accustomed to the dark, but it does make for nice bubble baths as well:

The room still wasn’t quite jazzy enough, but some pretty fishy lights around the door frame solved that in a hurry. Thanks Fizzy! You can get a glimpse of the jungle-themed foyer in the background; perhaps I’ll detail that in a future post.

You can’t really tell in any of these pictures, but I also tore down the shower and rebuilt it with new tiles, plaster and grout.

And finally, here is a nice overview of the Underwater Paradise:

Comments (2)

If you have never met my family, it will be understandable if you think this post is an exaggeration, if not a downright fabrication, but I promise it is all true. I’ll spare you the mundane details, but our Christmas Eve dinner, which we chose to spend at a local restaurant, turned into a semi-brawl that pitted me, my mother, and my older brother against the restaurant owner, the chef, and the kitchen staff. It began with the owner making a snide comment to my sister-in-low, which we ignored, but later he insulted me, at which point we decided to have a merry old time and cause a good old-fashioned “scene.” Even still, it wasn’t until the owner began shouting into the face of my dear, old mother that the fisticuffs began. At that point, one of the sous-chefs came at me with a knife. I disarmed him, and held him at bay which unsettled the owner to the point where he gave in and endured a stern talking-to from my brother.

Christmas dinner was much calmer. (How could it have been otherwise?) Fizzy and I spent 7 hours in the kitchen preparing what was hopefully a grand feast for the family. I stuffed and roasted a goose, I did. All my life I’d wanted to eat a roasted goose on Christmas, and by golly 2005 was the year for it.

Today’s Question: What did Santa Bring You?

I got many neat toys under the tree. One was a juicer. Now I can have freshly squeezed grapefruit juice all the time.

Comments (22)

Huzzah! The final casino party of 2004 has come and gone. No more loading and unloading, setting up and breaking down, sorting chips, and most importantly no more staffing. I do have a few more DJ gigs, but those are significantly less work.

Speaking of which, here I am, hard at work. It’s a tough job, but I guess it beats digging a ditch.

Today’s event was a nice, early one; it was over by 7:00 PM. It was fun to watch the Sun Microsystems engineers dancing to the surf rock band. They had loadsafun, those techies did.

After Saturday I am free for the rest of the year. I can hardly wait!

Comments (16)

I’ll show that Yale just who has an ugly apartment. Prepare yourselves for a virtual tour of my humble home. Today I give you, my readers, the opportunity to decide if an ugly blanket belongs in my pad.

I think the perfect place to begin is with my couch. Doesn’t it make you want to curl up with a nice book, or a martini? Or me?

Here we see what was once a plain, simple bookshelf. A nice coating of faux leopard fur jazzed it up nicely, don’t you think? Couple that with the faux giraffe drapery hanging from a bamboo pole and you have yourself a swanky soiree waiting to happen.

Here is a close-up of my bar. Cocktails, anyone?

Below the bar you can see my collection of lounge records and vintage board games. I’m always up for a game of Risk. You should totally come by some time and play me.

Let’s move along to the corner of the room now. Very lovely, isn’t it? Since this picture was taken the CD case has been moved across the room, but it looks lovely here, no?

Here are some DVDs.

This next little beauty I built myself, from scratch. Just wood, screws, hinges and so forth. And of course, faux fur. Is there *anything* that doesn’t look better when draped in fur???

Did I mention that I hot-glued faux zebra to the television? Well, actually Fizzy did. Turns out she is far more adept with a glue gun than am I. She is responsible for most of the actual attachment of fur to the various items. You go, Fizzy!

The furry TV stand opens up to reveal the stereo, as well as many vintage Tiki coasters, matchbooks, menus, and ads.

This is the other side:

I am very proud of this next part. I was able to build a sliding tray to hold a turntable! It pulls out so I can put on a record, then slides back in real good like. I done good.

The speakers, too, are covered in leopard fur. Oh, do you see the lovely blue palm frond serving dish? That dates back to the 1950s. I have no idea where those handcuffs came from. Who put those there?

Overseeing everything is the great god Tiki.

We had some leftover leopard fur, and that lamp was practically *begging* to join in the fun.

And now a nice shot that gives an overview of the entire living room. It’s that rug that really ties it all together. In the background you can sort of peek into my ’50s diner themed kitchen, but that is a post for another day.