So somewhere over the last three weeks, my LJ account "came due" and ... I just didn't have the heart to give them another ten bucks or whatever it was. And so they ate my userpics. I have no idea why they kept the ones they did ... so now I'm limited to Kenny Rogers, a LOLcat, a pirate flag, and Jigglypuff. If that's not an eclectic grouping, I don't know what is.

LJ says I haven't posted for three weeks, so let's see what I did, according to www.themeesons.com (cheap plug!) ...

... Oh yeah. My grandfather passed away. It's hard to believe it was actually only three weeks ago today. H and I made a roadtrip out to Cleveland for the funeral. Friday-Sunday in car, Sunday visitation, Monday funeral, Monday-Wednesday back to Colorado.

We usually plan our road trips better.

We fought the time change the entire way there, and I don't think we stopped for a single fun thing the entire way. Could have been the occasion as well. Coming back, we planned a little better, and hit Cincinnati (canned Gold Star! Multiple Gold Star stops! The bookstore at X!), stopped the second night near Kansas City which seems like a nice little town (and H got actual White Castle somewhere along the way), and went to Wamego, KS, the home of the Wizard of Oz museum, which I am only reminded about because I am wearing the T-shirt I bought there.

It was good to see my grandmother. Seeing all my siblings wasn't as bad as I expected -- probably because all their kids were left at home. Should be seeing the other pair of grandparents at the end of next month.

Went to the Annual Chiles and Frijoles Festival in Pueblo last weekend. We bought a BUSHEL of peppers this year. That bag was heavier than H's camera bag. Now all we have to do is get them out of the fridge and into the freezer before they go bad. =]

This weekend I'm playing at the Magical cards, DVRing some soccer, and then I dunno. Relaxing!

I just heard someone in my office, on his cellphone, call the person on the other end of the line "dollface". Evidently I work in a 1920's private investigator's office.

I had a dream last night that I had won fifty million dollars. It was so real that I turned off my alarm when it off. I was like, "I'm rich! I don't NEED to go to work!"

(oops)

It saddens me that there's no HLP tag.

Yet.

Anyways!

Continuing on with the stories that happened in the last nine weeks ... I will tell the story very quickly of how H and I became friendless suddenly (well, at least locally) and how our friends John and Emily (nofunn) ended up in California. If I tell it the long way, it will take all afternoon.

So, in short: John got a call from his boss in California, who said, "Hey, we aren't opening a Colorado office after all. So here are your options. They both suck. FOR YOU! *evil laugh!*" The options were either (a) move to California or (2) be jobless. Oh, and you have the weekend to decide, ready?, GO! They make what I consider to be the smart-but-not-Dave-friendly decision to move to California. The next Thursday, John and Emily are in California house-hunting, and H and I are taking care of Ella. For a week. Yeah, more stories on that later. They got back on the next Wednesday, the movers came the week after that, and they were gone off to Cali in the space of about three weeks.

H and I miss 'em. They are our buddies. They moved with us from Germany to Colorado. I guess now we have to move to Cali too. Which is gonna suck, because I heard real estate is ridiculous out there.

8<--------------------------

Before they left, John asked if I would burn him some CDs for the drive. (Yes, they drove out there.) So I figured, this is the perfect opportunity to finish the Education of Emily CDs! So now, for the two or so people who were actually following this project, here are the final lists.

( Dave's EOE CD )

( Michael's EOE CD )

( The Leftovers EOE CD )

( British Starter Kit v1 CD )

(all of these CDs available through our CD-burning partnership with Dave's Computer In The Boy Room LTD, simply drop a note in the comments if you want one)

I think the short of it was, she hated them all. Suffice to say that Emily's mind is still closed. I bet the copy of "Party Starter Mix: Hip Hop" that I burned for them got the most airplay.

(well, it DOES have "Ice Ice Baby" on it)

I was down in what passes for a cafeteria in my office building today, feeling a little snacky. It's not really a cafeteria so much as a "break room," I guess, with vending machines and tables and a TV. I'm trying to buy something that might pass for "decent for me" and I see THIS in the frozen foods vending machine:



Well, I personally am not tempted, but I wonder how accurate the flavor might be. I mean, White Castles ARE steamed, and I can imagine that a microwave would at least simulate that cooking process. Because I DO know someone who always craves White Castle whenever they are on the East Coast.

(and who likes to use the buns as a pillow)

I made up for the lack of White Lion on the Hair Band Relapse by playing it all weekend. I had ... I wanted to say, "I had forgotten how bad hair band lyrics were," but in retrospect, I don't really think I comprehended it back in high school. Seriously, though, everyone of those songs is as cliche-ridden as an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

I give White Lion a pass, since they're Norwegian or something.

This weekend I was a lump. It was actually quite nice. Friday night H and I got pizza and mostly just chilled. Saturday I watched soccer all morning (Arsenal won, but weren't on TV) and then we drove down in the rain to Pueblo to go to the new-and-improved Angelo's Pizza (their website appears to be undergoing its own new-and-improvement) to get some chili-pepper pizza. Sunday was the joy of watching ManU draw their opening game of the season (bwa ha) and making chili, the perfect thing to make on a cold, dreary, rainy day.

8<-----------------------------

So that list in my last post was a bit misleading, so let me tell the story of the one that seems to be causing some concern. About three weeks ago, I received a phone call from my sister -- not unusual in itself, but a little odd. She was relaying a message from my folks that my grandfather had been taken in to the hospital because he had been coughing up blood.

Not a good thing for a 90-year-old guy who's in (at least) the initial stages of Alzheimer's.

Well, they got him into the hospital and did some routine checks and couldn't find out what was causing the internal bleeding. On top of THAT, they started giving him insulin shots (and he's not diabetic). The Alzheimer's made it worse because my grandfather would get confused and frustrated, and was too weak for the stress level.

Well, they finally got him on the right medication, gave him one of those camera-down-the-throat procedures to make sure there was no more bleeding, but he's had to go into a rehabilitation center / nursing home and ... it's tough. My grandmother moved in with my parents, and I'm sure it's tough on all of them.

I feel kinda bad because I haven't been to see my grandparents in about four years. I'm going to make an effort to go out there sooner rather than later.

8<-----------------------------

Tonight: more lumping, I hope. There's leftover chili ...

"Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been, according to my LJ home page, nine weeks since my last confession."

Nine weeks? A feller shure can get into a bunch of trouble in nine weeks. Go ahead, my son.

"Well, let's see, I had impure thoughts forty-seven times, coveted my neighbor's goods twenty-six times, and used profanity -- some."

Yes, that's about how my confessions went back in school. Although "nine weeks" was usually "three months" and "47" was usually a made-up number that in no way actually approached the number of impure thoughts I had had in three months. I was a teenager, for crying out loud. I was expected to be a ball of raging hormones.

So what the heck has been going on in the past nine weeks? A lot. I should probably space it over numerous posts over the next week or so (assuming I'm going to remember to post more regularly), but here's the short version (in no particular order): Europe, California, a week of Ella, internal bleeding, Vegas, then NOT Vegas, a Jeep named Rupert, website hosting providers, working for Oracle, then NOT working for Oracle, and a Grand Prix. That, apparently, is a lot.

So maybe you can understand why I haven't posted recently? *halo*

What made me remember about LJ was that The Black iPod had a Hair Metal Relapse on the way to lunch, and I thought, "I should post that to LJ!" (It was, for the record, G-n-R » Cinderella » Great White, and almost made me put on White Lion just to complete what little Hair Metal I actually have on the iPod.) And I have a little 'pocket of time' at work that's given me an opportunity to post it up.

So, uh, what's up with you?

Sooooo tired today. H had some problems getting around in Rome and I ended up staying up late to make sure she made it to where they needed to be. They had a 9:15 appointment to meet someone to go into the Vatican Museum. I got a text message about 8:30 their time saying "we're in traffic" and then one at about 9am saying "we're lost" -- Yikes. They eventually found it, she dropped her girlfriend off and parked the car, and they made it in to the Vatican Museum, so all appears to be good on that front.

I think I'm going to watch the finale of Top Chef and go to bed, though. =]

Heck, I may even take a nap at lunch.

Seems like I've been doing SO much writing lately that Livejournal was like the last place I wanted to go. Because, you know, it would require me to write. More. I just can't express myself creatively any more.

So let's see, what's been going on? H is in Europe with one of her girlfriends for two weeks. I've been a "geographical bachelor" for five days and I've put on five pounds, AT LEAST. I eat junk when H is gone. It's because I want all the stupid stuff that I would NEVER make anyone eat, Hamburger Helper and other box junk. It's not GOOD but it's like sugar cereals when I was a kid ... my mom would only let us eat them on Saturday (for whatever reason) and so when I got to college, I was like, "I'm going to eat sugar cereal EVERY DAY if I want to ... because I CAN!" and then I gained my freshman 25 and never looked back. It's like that. I know it's not good for me but you can certainly expect there will be cans of Spaghetti-O's in my near future.

My sister had another baby, so I now have a total of FOUR nephews.

I played in Denver's Regionals for MTG, finished 26th out of 200. I don't think that's bad.

We went to Santa Fe and Roswell over Memorial Day. Have I written since then? I honestly have no idea.

Well, let me post this up and then I'll get back into the swing of things.

Holy crap I haven't posted since my birthday! Bizarro.

I'm trying to remember what all has happened since then but ... I got nothing. So I went to the spankingly-new-ish www.themeesons.com to see what photo albums had been uploaded since then ... very few. nofunn's birthday. Seattle. H's mom. That's it.

We went to Seattle for a long weekend. That was not this weekend that just happened, but the weekend before it. What a cool town. Level 2 now, but still, much cooler than Colorado. Ocean and green and ... just cool. Lots of cool pics on the website. We got back on Monday and H's mom arrived on Tuesday for a visit. She just got on a plane this morning. That's what's been occupying my time recently.

Me and the HLP and a third friend, Q, went out for Boys' Night Out on Friday. Went to the Release Party, then out to a few bars around COS before ending the night with a cigar at 15C. I think that may have been the latest I have been out in a long time (we got back to the house after 3am), which would have been fine if we hadn't then gotten up and driven to Littleton the next morning for a Paris Street Market AND I hadn't gotten sunburnt.

So yeah. My life. Condensed like mushroom soup. I'll try and be better.

Wow. LiveJournal is telling me that it's been four weeks since my last post. Yikes!

What a four weeks it's been though. Hrm, I should go see when my last post actually WAS before I talk too much about what's happened since, maybe? Ah well. I'll start from now and work backwards.

Today, Heather's mom went home.

OK, working backwards is dumb.

I'll brb.

Happy Birthday maerson!

(I win here! But everyone beat BOTH of us over on MTGN. =])

I am having a junk food mini-binge. Cheddar-cheese-pretzel Combos, chocolate Zingers, and a big Diet Pepsi.

So, I stopped to pick up my dry cleaning last night on my way home from work. There was only one parking spot in front of the dry cleaners, and it was at an awkward angle. I evidently misjudged how acute the angle was, because I rubbed the front bumper of the VUE into the back bumper of another car.

The twenty-something girl who owned the car came out, we looked at the damage, and when she said "This is good, I needed a new bumper anyways" I started taking pictures with my cellphone. Red flag number one -- I mean, my car is a SATURN. There's no paint -- it's all tinted plastic. And after I took the pictures, I started smudging away what "scraping" there was to see what exactly the damage was.

I also noticed that she did in fact already have damage to her bumper -- a big puncture on the OPPOSITE side from where I rubbed into her.

She took my insurance information, and then asked me if I wanted to just "give her money" and not involve the insurance companies. Red flag number two. Not wanting to pay for her new bumper, I said No, that she should feel free to call my insurance company and get it all sorted through them. (I mean, that's why I PAY for insurance, n'est-ce pas?)

Then I went in and got my dry cleaning. By the time I came back out, she had left, despite obviously waiting in some store (nail salon?) for something.

I stopped by my insurance company on the way home, let them know what had happened (including the things the girl said and the previous damage), and by the time I was getting off the highway to go home, the girl had already called the insurance company to file a claim.

Today, the adjudicator called from the insurance company. He noted that the claim said that the car already had damage, and said that they'd get an estimate to fix ONLY the damage I had done -- not to replace the entire bumper. AND that I wouldn't have to pay any co-pay or deductible.

So ... I've used up some of my karma. I guess I'm on the lookout for opportunities to refuel. =]

Well, it's been a looooong two weeks since I last posted, and I kept MEANING to post, but something better would come along. But since all of my online message board games are stalled and I haven't been to unforums in three weeks and I've read everything (EVERYTHING!) on the Internetz ... I guess I'll FINALLY make time to post to LJ.

So what's happened recently? What day is today? Wednesday? Hrm.

Last night we spent rebuilding H's iTunes. We own a metric ton of CDs, but for some reason, she hasn't kept up with putting new stuff onto her iPod. Didn't help that the old white one was stolen, but her new 8G Touch should still have at least SOME of the newer stuff we've bought. So, coupled with the desire to put new stuff on her iPod, I also busted out the box of "CDs From the 90's" that I discovered in the basement a few weeks ago to see what was in there that deserved airplay. Did it contain: (a) a lot of Disney CDs, (b) a number of CDs we replaced through the 98-cent bin (including our original copy of the X-Files Soundtrack), (c) a number of CDs that we would both blame the other for buying (and probably neither of us were right -- Joe Diffie Christmas anyone?), or (d) White Lion's Pride, the one hair-band CD I was unable to find during my last hair band binge?

If you guessed (e) all of the above, score three points.

Now all I have to do is get on the ball about putting some of the old stuff onto MY iPod. Like, every Duran Duran record ever made. (Not EVERY, mind you, but there sure were a lot of 'em.) OH! That reminds me! So ... we were watching "Private Sessions" on A&EHD the other day because it was Duran Duran, and I think the LAST big-name band H and I saw in concert together was probably ALSO Duran Duran (back in '93?), so at the conclusion of the show, we said, "We should see if they're coming near us!" And they are -- Denver. And so now we have tickets to see Duran Duran. Sweet! The arena will be filled with 30-somethings, I bet.

We're also planning on seeing The Bravery at a local place called The Black Sheep. H is afraid. It looks a little sketchy from the outside, and they do play to a younger, more malicious-looking crowd, but it couldn't be UNSAFE. Or so I believe. If you don't see any more posts from me after the 10th, be afraid for me.

8<----------------------------

Man, it's been long enough since I posted that we bought a laptop AND it had time to be built and delivered since my last post. It came this morning. H sent me an SMS that said, "IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE!" I guess she is excited. =] Our old laptop definitely is OLD ... most of the letters on the keyboard have worn off and we have to type without looking at the letters ... luckily we both can actually type. It's early-thousands technology, our old laptop, so it was due for an update. Pre-dual-core, if you weel.

So we bought a new Dell laptop. This one will be for H to take on travel, which she will hopefully be doing more of as she tries to get photo work. I'll take the old one as "my" laptop, and probably delete 3/4ths of the stuff on it.

Oh, the new one is pink. With a matching wireless mouse and portable hard drive!

I just got an email from H that said "I'm going to shower and then clean off my table and OPEN THE LAPTOP!" How she resisted opening the laptop for well over an hour now is beyond me -- I figured she met the DHL guy at the door with a knife in her hand.

8<----------------------------

I don't think I'm going to post about stuff from TOO far back in life. I was sick for part of the downtime; took a couple days off of work. Some of the time I was busy working at my actual job. Some of the time I was busy working on our sweet website, themeesons.com, putting up the new front end and the message board. Some of it I was just lazy. But now I'm back.

For another couple of hours, anyways. Arsenal's on the telly in a couple hours so I will be home for lunch to watch the game. =]

H has a song on her iPod called "Jesus Was a Crossmaker", which is now stuck in my head ...

... unfortunately, my mind keeps singing it as "Jesus Was a Crossdresser."

(I had this post titled "'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" but the overtones were even too much for me.)

My commute this morning put me in a good mood. It's hard not to be happy when your iPod plays "Mmmbop" and the Scissor Sisters.

OMG! Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Shiek vs. Mike Rotunda and Barry Windham is ON MY TV! It's not 1984 .. IT'S LIVE! Hilarious!

Well, Saturday night, LATE, I finally broke H down into going into Independent Records for the dollar-bin shopping that she promised me for ... Christmas? Valentine's Day? One of those holidays. She had finally remembered to take her new iPod Touch out with us driving, and so she had been listening to HER music all day (rather than The Black iPod, which has to have a selective "Heather Approves" playlist), which I guess meant she was interested in finding new/old music to add to it.

We bought, I think, about 40 CDs.

Luckily, a lot of them came out of the 98-cent bin, or were in the half-price bin, or were used, so we only ended up spending about $150, but man, the treasures we mined ...

( Here are my purchases - or CDs that we both decided we wanted. Please reserve judgement until the end. )

Sunday we worked around the house. H's hobby room needed desperate help, so we organized and cleaned. I say "we" because I was a participant only in the localization sense, although I did drive us out to Target three times for organizational tools. We had dinner at Chili's with EEJ, then watched a little of the Brits when we got home.

A very musical weekend by all accounts. Worthy of the Vanilla Ice icon!

Evidently someone is expecting a big delivery today ...