Written on Sunday, the 18th of September, 2005 at 4:43 am and was filed under:
Music,
Food
And I’m sorry if I dissed you
I was a bit down Friday, so after taking a late nap I went for a drive into the black pools of night collecting in the streets. It’s hard to say where I went, but it wasn’t like riding a bike. The road glides effortlessly beneath you in a car. The air rushes past but leaves you untouched. The trip kept my head above water.
So today I woke up from pleasant dreams to the sound of the phone. I missed the call, but the answering machine revealed the caller to have been Cake Woman with a business proposition: if I were to replace the serpentine belt on her car she would provide me with delicious Maibock. For those of you who don’t know, I don’t need to be bribed to help my friends, and I don’t keep track of “debt” of favors unless it seems like someone expects me to owe them something, so really, if you need something done and you need help you should just ask and not worry about bribing me with beer. I do appreciate gifts of beer, though, even if, like in this case, I bought the beer in the first place.
Since I hadn’t eaten anything but Cheetos and a fudgie brownie since noon the previous day, Cake Woman and I moseyed up to Ready Meats, the local butcher shop. It was almost five at that point, so the store was packed with last minute shoppers.
I gave your mom the five o’clock meat rush last night!
Cake Woman is pretty goddamn funny. We proceeded to make every possible meat, sausage, and bacon joke while inside the store and walked out with a brat and two apple sausages. The butcher called Cake Woman “kitten,” which had the same effect on her as when a waitress calls me “sugar,” “darlin’,” or “get the fuck out, shithead.” Our meat was cooked, the beer was consumed, and I changed Cake Woman’s belt in less time than it took to get my tools out of the car. I didn’t even need the tools. We watched cartoons for a few hours after that, and almost watched Closer before she revealed that she had to work at seven in the morning.
As Cake Woman made her graceful exit I remembered the Dallas Orbiter show that I was almost missing. Despite the scarcity of parking on the West Bank I still managed to park for free. Mark Edwards was cool, with the layered on-site sampling of his own beat boxing, guitar, and singing. I heard the Ryan Lee Music band thing compared to Dave Matthews, which was not entirely inappropriate, except that I didn’t want to gouge out my own eyes so much. Well, whenever their awful synths played those hell spawn preset pads, yes, but the rest of the time it was all right. The old dude with the huge beard who was riding a scamp and then dancing while leaning against the bar liked it just fine, and said so loudly.
I had Beamish Irish Stout and Lodahl bought me a shot of Patron. I also drank four pints of water and had a gyro from the shop next door. I think that the Nomad might be my Wednesday night West Bank dinner spot, what with the gyros and stout and all. The one thing that I wonder about (and this will roll through my head all night) is if that cute waitress brushed past me three times in close succession to get my attention, or if I am justing building sand castles in my imaginary beach. Lisa said that doesn’t happen by accident. Melody agreed (hooray for late night AIMing). I may go back for the Beamish and a gyro on Wednesday just to scope out the situation, especially since I can make it my pre-art class meal. Or, if I were really crazed I could show up for that Roshambo business.
Oh, what am I saying? Cute dreadlocked waitresses aren’t into dorky computer science sophomores. She probably just had schmutz on her boob that she wanted to wipe off on an unsuspecting patron.
It was the other bartender who played Modest Mouse, anyway. I think. Never mind! GOD! I’m going to bed. Also, I’m gonna start calling women “kitten.”
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Written on Saturday, the 17th of September, 2005 at 7:51 pm and was filed under:
Diversions
Cake Woman brought me her serpentine belt and some beer so I could change the former and drink the latter. Being productive makes me feel better about life, if you were worried.
Lisa and Stan were gone last night to a rehearsal for the wedding today. I think that they are at the reception now.
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Written on Friday, the 16th of September, 2005 at 11:27 pm and was filed under:
Wallowing,
school,
Bikes
The other day Melody asked me over AIM (yahoo? I dunno which instant messaging protocol, it doesn’t matter, I say AIM like Kleenex now) if I was okay. She said that I seemed down.
Okay, now, after the lot of you stop laughing because she had to ask if I was down, here’s the weird part: I wasn’t. I was busy working or looking on ebay for stuff that I don’t bid on because I don’t need it but isn’t it nice to know that I could buy a ceramic monkey statue if I wanted one and whew I just killed an hour without making my brain do any heavy lifting. So, what is important about someone asking me if I’m okay? I dunno, she’s one of the few people to have asked it right. When I am actually feeling like crap (which, believe it or not, happens) I always want someone to ask in the pointed, tenacious way that she did. Good luck trying to get that exact phrasing and attitude correct. The wrong approach will likely just annoy the shit out of me.
I’ve been happy with the whole school thing this semester. My classes are filling the usual pattern:
- CSci 2021: super easy
- CSci 4041: interesting
- Math: I don’t really know what is going on and I’m having a hard time caring
- Art: the biggest challenge is staying awake through four hours of soothing oration
I’ve even been enjoying the torment of exercise in bicycle form. My Surly is comfortable and fast. I can pick it up with one hand without even a grunt. It hurts like hell to ride up Johnson and my ass hurts when I get on the bike in the morning.
Goddamnit, I like my boss’s blog better than mine: The domain of Xopl. This should not come to a surprise to those persons who regularly visit my junk drawer of a web site. I could have gone for booze with him tonight, but I don’t want to worry about not being able to catch a bus back from the useful parts of Minneapolis at bar close.
I wonder if anyone is home. I need a drink. Maybe I should bike to Grumpys.
billa-billa-billa, pretty eyes.
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Written on Thursday, the 15th of September, 2005 at 8:20 pm and was filed under:
Nerdity,
Speaking in Tongues
Whenever there’s an encoding issue or a question about Unicode, people tend to knock on my door.
Sound familar? If you’ve been on #gallery with me at three in the morning, you’ve probably heard me cursing character set conversions. This guy has apparently done even more cursing than I.
(this link is for people as nerdy as me)
Proposal for Implementing Unicode in PHP - Acko.net - Steven Wittens
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Written on Thursday, the 15th of September, 2005 at 1:24 am and was filed under:
Bikes
I threw my chain three times today. Two of those times were during my inaugural night run home, at ten, after my art class on the west bank. If you know of good cheap food on the west bank, or would just like to eat with me on Wednesdays between five and six or after ten, you should let me know.
The second time the chain jumped I got off to fix stuff and spent some time staring at the lighting and thinking about where I could put a reflector on the back to supplement the flashing red LED. A dude pulled up and asked if I needed help. When I said no, he made a u-turn and drove away. Wait, what? A u-turn? Weird. Anyway, I’ll be looking into a reflector for my rack. Heh heh, I said rack.
Oh yeah, I’m holding 200#, even with the Chipotle burrito that I had today. I predict that I will have my first sub 200# weigh in this week, unless I eat a small child, which might happen. I’m super hungry right now. Unfortunately, if I eat Noah I will never be able to use him to pick up chicks.
No! I will never do that!
I bet he’d be a big hit at the Entry. He likes music. Hmm…
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Written on Tuesday, the 13th of September, 2005 at 6:45 pm and was filed under:
Music
9/17 Nomad World Pub
Dallas Orbiter w/ Ryan Lee Music and The Original Mark Edwards
I guess I do. Do you?
P.S.: Time to eat and vote, possibly simultaneously, since time may be running out.
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Written on Tuesday, the 13th of September, 2005 at 2:42 pm and was filed under:
Bikes
The bike to school/work was a lot better today, what with the cool weather and all. On the other hand, I am not really looking forward to riding home in the rain. Jeremy said that he would probably be willing to trade cranks straight across, and I think that in another month or so I will be very interested in such a thing. Even today I was going flat out on the downhill of Johnson and keeping a car at bay. In another month I will probably have outgrown my top gear and I’ll be ready for the 39/53 action. Hooray!
Maybe not. Like I told Jeremy, I want to ride more to make sure that what I think that I want is what I want for real.
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Written on Monday, the 12th of September, 2005 at 5:29 am and was filed under:
Diversions
You might ask me “hey, Jesse, how did it go last night? Did you hook up?”
The answer to that would be a sad “no.”
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Written on Saturday, the 10th of September, 2005 at 9:29 pm and was filed under:
Diversions
Fat Kid Wednesday plus a happy hour that starts at eleven. Lisa and Cake Woman will be flying wing for me. If only there were a way for me to have even more women celebrating my virtues in public. Hmm.
P.S.: Dead Like Me is awesome. It shares a handful of directors and producers with Wonderwalls, if that gives you any idea. If it doesn’t, then that’s two tv shows you could sample via Netflix.
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Written on Friday, the 9th of September, 2005 at 6:56 pm and was filed under:
Bikes
Today it was me who forgot the key to the garage — I left it clipped to my pants while I sailed to work. While I parked my bike, a cute woman pulled up nearby on her bike and smiled at me. I smiled and futzed with my lock a bit, then looked up and smiled again. At that point she looked at me funny, then said “sorry, I thought that you were someone else” and booked out of there. For the love of Pete, just bike away, leaving a smile behind for those of us who don’t get a lot of random smiles! After that I climbed into the bell tower and rang my bells for several hours while sobbing uncontrollably.
If I weren’t so terribly ugly, I’d smile at random people just to make them feel better about life and themselves.
Oh yeah, I almost got hit by a car on the way home because I was feeling all cocky and blew through a stop sign. Oops, I’m a dumbass.
Eventually I hope to truly conquer the Johnson street hill — ride up it in a surge of power and stamina. Right now I ride up in the granniest of my gears and feel like I’m going to die every fifteen feet. Awesome! I haven’t been this drenched in sweat since I walked home that one day. ¡Que feo!
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