Category: journal

Last night we met K– and N– for dinner at Freddy’s, then they came over and watched three episodes of How I Met Your Mother with us. It was a lot of fun, especially after skipping our regular Wednesday night dinner, this week.

They left around 9:00, and T– and I went back to the office. I made a new character in WoW, and ran around doing not much of anything, and we watched Get Smart while T– worked on scrapbooking.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Friday was my Regular Day Off, and yesterday was Columbus Day (which, for some reason, Federal employees get as a holiday). I was home both days, and I was busy, so here’s a long catch-up post for you.

Thursday night I went down to Norman to hang out with Toby and do some programming. He’d actually called me while I was driving up to Julie’s wedding the weekend before to ask if I was free, and Thursday night was the earliest we could actually manage.

He’s been working on a game all by his lonesome, and he took the opportunity to show me what he’d managed. I was impressed. I may join in, after the family writer’s conference this weekend, if I can find a spare minute here or there. On the other hand, I might just renew my own solo programming project, because it’s been nagging at me lately.

We wrapped up the programming talk around 9:30, and I realized with some surprise that even with the forty-five minute drive home, I was going to be getting in at a reasonable hour. So I suggested we watch an episode of a show he’d recently mentioned (Venture Brothers) and which I had checked out a year earlier but mostly skipped over. It was hilarious, so we watched three. Then we sat in the living room talking for another hour, and it was 11:40 when I finally left the house.

I was exhausted on the drive home, and dreading my early morning on Friday, and honestly not paying a ton of attention. I missed the exit that would have taken me west to Hefner Parkway, but I was able to just stick with Broadway Extension north to Hefner, and take that west to our house.

About a mile away from home, I drifted into the right lane anticipating my turn, then noticed as I did so that a cop had someone pulled over in that lane up ahead, so I drifted back into the left lane — no hurry. A moment later, blue and red lights flashed in my rearview.

I pulled over, desperately hoping this guy wanted to go assist the stop up ahead, but no such luck. This eighteen-year-old walks up to my window and asks if I know why he pulled me over, and I perfectly honestly answered him, “No.” He said I’d changed lanes without signaling (and at that late hour, I know that that had probably said to them, “drunk driver,” especially since I immediately changed lanes back — must have looked exactly like swerving).

So, okay, I caught a bad break. I wasn’t driving drunk — hadn’t had a drink in a week — so no big deal. Nobody’s going to write me an actual ticket for failing to signal. Then I realize this fresh-faced kid has a superior riding along for training, and I realize it’s probably going to happen after all. Second time in as many years I get pulled over by a cop in training. Last time I got stuck with a “10 miles or less over the speed limit” for driving 29 in a 25, and I have strictly observed the posted speed limit (no matter how stupid) ever since.

Anyway, by some strange turn of events I had an expired insurance card (another offense that caught me by surprise), and he generously wrote me a ticket on that instead of the lane change (which would have been a $172 fine). All I had to do for the insurance ticket was show proof of insurance at the court house and it would be dismissed.

So, after a thirty-minute stop, he finally let me go, and I drove extra-careful the half mile left to my house. I dropped my keys and citation on the kitchen table, stumbled to my room, and fell into bed with a mumbled account of the event to T– (who was too asleep to care). It was after 1:30 by then.

Then, just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I hear a thunderous pounding on the front door, enough to send me sitting bolt upright. I said to T–, “Can you think of a single good reason for me to answer that?” I was thinking someone with a broken down car was looking for assistance, and I didn’t want to open my house to a stranger at this time of night. I glanced out the window and saw a glowing tail light.

Then the doorbell rang, and I realized if I didn’t answer the door, the bell would probably keep ringing until AB woke up screaming. Anyone who is willing to ring a doorbell at 1:30 in the morning is willing to do it repeatedly. About the same time, T– was looking out the window and she said, “You know, I think that may be a cop car.”

So I went to the front door, yanked it open, and found that same fresh-faced cop with an idiot grin on his face. He said, all embarrassed, “Y’know, I lied to you when I said your copy of the ticket was in the envelope. I forgot to give it to you.” And he held it out to me, still grinning like this was the funniest thing in the world. At the end of the walk, by the corner of our garage, I saw his superior peeking around the corner, watching everything.

I took the slip, and closed the door. I turned the lock with a loud, “Thunk!” as my only sort of protest, and went back to bed. Ugh.

Then on Friday, even though it was my RDO, I went in for a few hours in the morning because of an irregularity with my timesheet (something to do with my travel hours the week before). Whatever. I got done around 11:00, but before that Toby called to tell me he had my laptop — I had taken it in when I got to his house on Thursday, but never cracked the case, and forgot all about it.

So we met for lunch in Moore, at the Freddy’s by the new Warren theater. We had a good lunch, then I headed home the same way I’d gone the night before, stopping this time at the Byron’s to pick up some liquor for the evening’s festivities.

Then I got home and spent a while negotiating with the State Farm website (and finally exchanging emails with my agent) to get a copy of my proof of insurance, so I could take care of the ticket. Even though it was a “Fix It” ticket, I had to take care of it within 48 hours or I’d have been stuck with $88 in court costs.

So I finally got the forms, printed them out, then drove downtown and found the courthouse, and by the time that was done it was 5-ish, so my day off was over and done. T– was busy for the evening, taking AB to a pumpkin patch for pictures, so I had K– and Jeff over for some Rock Band. We played with the music up loud until T– got home around 9:00, then we turned it down to something reasonable and played on until after midnight.

Saturday morning we headed over to K– and N–‘s place at 11:00 for the OU/Texas game, grabbing some Taco Bell on the way. The game was fantastic. We lost, but the game was an incredible one. If I’d been able to believe the polls would treat OU fairly (which they did, by some miracle), I would have had a great time just watching a fierce contest. As it was, though, I was in a pretty bad mood to see the loss.

Then we spent the afternoon helping K– and N– rearrange the furniture in a couple rooms so they could set up a nursery. We accomplished a lot in a short time, and then N– served us all some delicious chili by way of thanks.

T– and I left right after supper, because AB was ready for bed. I was also expected Toby to come up and try out Rock Band, as we had arranged over lunch on Friday, but he had to cancel. That worked out okay, though, because on the drive home from K– and N–‘s, B– called to ask if I wanted to come over and watch the guys from MST3K riff on 300. I called D– to join me, and we went over to do that.

And, as I so often do at B–‘s place, I drank heavily. The movie was hilarious, and we stayed up way, way too late afterward talking and enjoying each other’s company. Then D– drove me home, and I fell into bed around 3 in the morning. I didn’t make it to church on Sunday.

I slept until noon, then took care of some chores during the early afternoon, and dedicated my later afternoon to watching a heartbreaking Cowboys game with a much more terrible aftermath than the OU loss. Romo is out for four weeks with a broken finger, and we’ve lost our (phenomenal) punter for the rest of the season. Also, our team looked terrible, so even without the injuries, it was a bad day.

We watched some Get Smart to lighten the mood, and played some Rock Band, and it was an okay evening.

Then, as I said, Monday was a holiday, so I had it off. I spent most of the day working on clerical chores in my office. T– and I watched some Get Smart, and I watched some Venture Brothers, and I played Rock Band with T– and tried to teach AB how to drum, and it was a day that kind of just faded past, but pleasantly.

Then in the evening D– brought us some Mazzios for dinner, and we watched Chuck and How I Met Your Mother and Heroes, and then I got to bed early, because I was exhausted.

That’s my long weekend. Apart from the football, it was a good one.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Yesterday was Wednesday, so we met up with K– and N– and D– for dinner, this time at Souper Salad!. I brought a burger from Freddy’s.

It was a fun dinner, though, and afterward D– and I went back to the house to play Rock Band while the rest went to church. They all came over afterward, too, and I showed off my changes to the office, then K– joined us in some rocking. D– went home around 9:30 and the other two went home around 10:00, I think, and then T– wanted to watch something on TV so I put away the instruments.

Then I set to work ripping some old songs Brad and I had made off of an ancient cassette tape. The quality is terrible, but it’s enough for D– and me to remember how they went, because we sat through hours of playing and perfecting them.

I ripped the whole tape into a single WAV file, and now I’ve got the task of breaking it up into songs and doing what I can (with some relatively low-end software, and no technical expertise at all) to clean them up. The originals were never that strong, in terms of mixing, and the decade since has not been kind to my magnetic media.

Still, I spent some of this morning listening to the tracks I got, and the nostalgia aspect is near overwhelming. Those were some good times.

I also got to have lunch with K– and N– today. They met me at Buffalo Wild Wings for my regular Thursday lunch. It was awesome.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Yesterday after work, T– and I ran up to Wal-Mart to grab some stuff for the office. We got a small bookcase to go under the window, a new curtain (because I’d been using a bedsheet thrown over a curtain rod), and a power strip for her desk. Then I built the bookcase while T– made dinner. After that, we just played with AB until her bedtime.

Then T– and I went back to finish setting up the office. I got my old XBox hooked up so we could watch Get Smart while we worked. I scanned old documents and T– set up her desk with all her crafting supplies. It was a pretty productive evening — quiet, but pleasant.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Yesterday was wildly productive. I woke up early and painted (as I think I already mentioned), then went out to lunch with T– and AB, and then when AB went down for a nap, instead of breaking out the game I went back to the office with T– and started clearing books off shelves.

We’re rearranging. Yesterday we moved two bookshelves into the bedroom, and threw away another one that had long been falling apart. Because of that, we also had to consolidate two bookshelves down into one, so the five remaining are all a lot more densely packed than they were before. The new setup leaves all the fiction in my office, basically, and everything else in our bedroom.

It also opened up room for T– to move her crafting table back there, and for me to set up the Rock Band drums and hook them up to my computer with a drum kit program, so I can practice the drumming exercises in my book with realistic sound effects. Pretty cool.

Anyway, rearranging furniture took up most of the day. In the evening T– picked up a pizza from Mazzio’s and D– came over to watch Heroes and How I Met Your Mother with us. Afterward he took the game home with him, because he’s got plans with other friends tomorrow night. That’s okay, I’ll need another evening to finish setting up my office.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

So, I normally don’t post on my days off, but none of you knew today was going to be a day off for me, so I decided out of merciful kindheartedness to update after all.

Friday was my last day of classes in Chicago. There was one afternoon flight out of O’Hare to get me back to OKC on before Saturday, but it was so early in the day that class would have had to end ridiculously early for me to make the flight. I mean, hours and hours early. Classes usually end early on the last day, particularly when the last day is a Friday, but still — it was extremely unlikely, so I booked my return flight for Saturday. Then I spent all day Friday hoping the class would end early enough for me to make it out, absurd or not.

Class ended exactly half an hour too late for me to make it out. Ugh.

While I was waiting to find that out, though, I checked out Digg at some point and found an article about the top 13 barbecue joints in the country. I clicked through them all, and one happened to be in Chicago. Not only that, but it happened to be within about ten miles of my hotel, so reasonable, even. I decided to check it out.

So about six o’clock I headed east. Went about a mile down, got on the interstate, and stopped. During rush hour, on a Friday, I was headed into Chicago proper. I hadn’t really thought about it like that. So it took me a solid hour to go ten miles or so. Maybe fifteen. I also knew from the article about the place that it was takeout only, so I was pretty sure my food was going to be totally cold and inedible if I had to make an hour drive back to my hotel room to eat it.

Luckily that wasn’t the case. I was able to find a parking spot not far from the restaurant, walked down to buy the food, walked back to my car and then made it back to my hotel room in less than fifteen minutes. Part of the difference was that rush hour had ended, but most of it was that I was heading out of town instead of into it.

Anyway, I spent most of the rest of the night eating the basket of ribs. It was phenomenal, and way too much food. Just damn delicious, though.

I chatted with D– and Jeff, and watched most of Michael Clayton (which is basically this: imagine someone decided to do a remake of Pelican Brief except they wanted three incredibly awkward five-minute scenes, scattered throughout, where George Clooney drives around in a car making serious faces and not saying anything (or having anything said to him) — that’s Michael Clayton), and also got packed for my trip home.

Saturday morning I woke up at 6:00 so I could be at the car rental place two hours before my flight. That’s what they requested, which seemed a little overboard to me, but I was at the mercy of their shuttle and I had no idea how often it ran, so I was there two hours early.

Turns out the shuttle runs every ten minutes, so I was at the airport an hour and forty-eight minutes early, which is a little more than the thirty minutes they recommend. So I got to spend some time reading. Between that time and the flight home I finally finished my French book (which I’ll write more about in a separate post). The flight home was uneventful. Once again I got a row all to myself, so it was pretty comfortable, and I still adore direct flights.

D– was waiting for me curbside, so I threw my bags in his trunk, and we headed straight to Wichita. We stopped at Pops for lunch, because D– had never been and it was early enough in the day that we thought we could get seated quickly, so he thought it might be a good time to check it out. His analysis was the same as mine: not worth the hassle. I had a decent chili burger, he got an orange soda with a picture of an Indian chief on it, and then we headed north again.

I got to T–‘s parents’ place around 1:30, and selfishly roused AB from her nap because I’d missed her for a week, and then played with her and talked with the in-laws for a couple hours before we had to head to Topeka.

Julie’s wedding was amazing. The setting was beautiful and elegantly decorated, the poetry reading in the middle of the ceremony was resplendent and transcendent at the same time, and two folks got hitched. Then the reception took place at an old train station that had been converted into a fancy hall for exactly that sort of purpose. They had a literary theme for everything (we were seated at the Neil Gaiman table, and went home with a couple books from the Topeka library as keepsakes). Instead of a groom’s cake they had huge jars full of candy — colorful and whimsical as decorations, but with little plastic baggies a la the candy story in the mall, for guests to take home. Awesome. Hot tamales and jelly bellies are so much better than cake (although apparently there was also a cake). Also: open bar. First wedding I’ve been to with one of those, and they were using Grey Goose for the vodka coctails. Hell yes.

So T– drove us home.

We didn’t get back to Wichita until after 1:00, and I absolutely crashed. Sunday morning I slept through church, then we had lunch at her parents house, and shortly after that we got our stuff packed up and headed home in time to catch the Cowboys game. We were about an hour late for kickoff, but thanks to the magic of TiVo, that wasn’t a problem.

Except our TiVo apparently had reruns of Law and Order and King of the Hill set to higher priority than Cowboys games, so I did miss the first hour. Lame. Still, D– got into town around 4:00 and he came over and we watched the last three quarters. It was an intense game, mostly in a bad way. Still, glad I got to see most of it. I’ve seen way too little football this year.

T– grilled up some bacon-wrapped fillets for dinner, and after the game we played Rock Band until the wee hours (by which I mean 11-ish). I was exhausted, though, so I finally sent D– home and went to bed.

Today I got to take off work on comp time for the hours I spent traveling to and fro. I slept in, then got up and finished the paint job on the garage. It looks good, but mostly it’s just nice to have it done.

I don’t have much planned for the rest of the day. Going to relax and enjoy being back with my family. Tomorrow, it’s back to the old grind, but I’m really glad I got to take today off. I’m glad to be home, too. It’s amazing how long one week can be.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

I tried to post this last night, because it was such a thing, but Blogger suddenly won’t work on my laptop for some reason, so I’m just adding it to my journal entry, during class.

Anyway, Sunday when I first got in, as I mentioned, I drove up to a Target really close to my hotel, and found that it was closed. I didn’t mention (because it didn’t seem relevant, since I’m not a basketball fan) that right next to the Target was big-ass wedding cake-looking building that I first mistook for a huge mall, then for a double-huge movie theater (because it only had one entrance and no storefronts), and then finally discovered was the Chicago Allstate Arena.

It’s about a five minute walk from my hotel, on my way to class, so I’ve passed it nearly every time I’ve left my hotel. Anyway, last night I ran out to grab some chicken for dinner, having decided not to do anything with my evening, and I got around the corner and ran into a huge traffic backup. I thought it must be an accident or something–

Okay, I’ll cut to the chase because you guys are all too smart to sit through my narrative without guessing. It was the Weezer concert. The Weezer concert was a five minute walk from my hotel. DAMMIT! And I would have gone, then and there, to see if there were still tickets left (my guess is yes), but I’d just spent all my allowance money on a jacket that I’m only using for one more day.

So, yeah, took me forever to pick up my chicken.

I also skipped the gym last night, because my calves were really sore. I could have gone down just to do my shoulders, but I’ll just do shoulders and biceps tonight before I run.

Anyway, journalwise, after class (which let out early, because we were way ahead of schedule), I ran up to the nearest Wal-Mart to grab a cheap jacket because it’s been freezing up here (and, after all, I do need a new jacket). The nearest Wal-Mart is about a forty-minute drive from my hotel, but only about ten from my class, so I went straight there from class. I’d intended to do some comparative shopping, driving all the way back to the Target by my hotel and really hoping they had a better deal than I’d found at Wal-Mart, but I discovered a mall right by the Wal-Mart that consisted of Kohl’s, Sears, and a Target (and one furniture store). That’s pretty much my ideal setup for comparative shopping, so I looked around and picked up a $50 fleece jacket that ended up being $35. Coolio. I also got T– a memento, because I hadn’t yet.

I found a $12 hoodie that looked good enough, as soon as I walked into Target, but it was only midafternoon and my whole plan had been to kill some time, so I went ahead and did the shopping thing. Apart from blowing my Weezer money on a jacket I won’t wear again between tomorrow and December, I’m happy with what I ended up getting.

Anyway. After that my little sister called and we talked for my whole drive back to the hotel (which probably wasn’t wise, considering the near-miss with the train, but I made it back alive). Then I read for about an hour, ran out for the chicken, and came back to the hotel to watch School of Rock and play a video game. That was my whole night. Probably one of the best yet, mainly because School of Rock repeating is a lot better than Sex and the City coming on after Family Guy when you don’t have the time to go searching for the remote.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

Yesterday was the last day of our Intro class, so we got out a little early. I went back to the hotel, spent 40 minutes in the gym (where I worked biceps and added a minute to my running time), and then stayed in my hotel room for the whole night. I had leftover pizza for dinner (still not stunning, but already paid for), watched some King of the Hill and A Knight’s Tale (twice in a row, because that’s how TNT rolls), and tried to play some single player Civ.

It was supposed to be multiplayer, but D– recently rebuilt his computer and forgot to reinstall, so it was just me. Not so much fun (and, by extension, it only killed an hour), so I switched back to Spore and, as I said, sat through two airings of the same movie.

I brought a lot of work to do while I’m here — some business, some personal — and I’m doing the business part as soon as I get done with class every day, incorporating what I learned into the project I’m doing on deadline. As soon as I finish that, though, I veg for the rest of the night. I have no motivation at all to do anything useful with my evenings (apart from the gym, and that’s a horrific battle in my mind every time I make myself go). It’s a shame, because I have more time available to be productive than I could normally find in a month, but I’m just not doing anything.

And that’s that. I did talk with T– and D– last night, and on Tuesday I talked with B– for ten minutes or so, too. Anyway, it’s weird living alone out of a hotel room for a week at a time. I’ve tried my hardest to arrange a Friday flight out (and tried to get to Wichita, to save me a drive), but it’s just not an option. Bah.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.