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Weekend: February 03, 2008 - Glad You Asked I didn't really watch the Super Bowl but I was able to manage to see the first quarter and it looked pretty competitive. I also caught from about 0:40 - 0:20 of the 4th quarter but I had to go before seeing if Tom Brady could pull it out (he couldn't). Go Giants.







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Tuesday: February 05, 2008 - RIP Al Capone Back in the good ol' days, before I knew anything about blogging or programming, I talked about my fish pretty regularly. The first fish I got was an Convict Cichlid that I cleverly named Al Capone. He got that name because I'd wake up in the morning and find his tankmates dead. Sadly, over the weekend, Al Capone finally got his own concrete shoes and put my official fish count at 0. RIP Al; you lived for four+ years and outlasted everyone else. [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 06, 2008 - Happy Birthday Steve! Happy Birthday!












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Thursday: February 07, 2008 - Small Victories: 2008 Edition It's been almost two years since the last small victories entry. A lot has changed since then--including the fact that I'm not really as caught up with people's small victories as I used to be. Because of this, today's list isn't as comprehensive as it probably should be so feel free to post your own victory as a comment.

First--to Chris and me in arguably the smallest of the small victories for finally beating Guitar Hero 3 on Co-Op last night. After playing Metallica's One about ten billion times Chris finally carried us through the wheedelies and into the promised land of Expert/Hard GH3 Co-Op Fame. You scoff but let's see you do it.

To Chris E., for turning in a completed draft of his dissertation yesterday to JPC.

To Jamie, for fending off elitest lawyers-to-be from across the country and getting a slot at the ultra-competitive US Attorney's Office for the summer.

To Kathy, for having GW create a tenure-track position just for her (if she wants it).

Old News: To Chris G., who was accepted into the Ph.D Linguistics program at IU (like there was any doubt)

To me and Matt, for having our first movie score finally put into the film and getting another gig from that success.

In other news I'm moving in about a month. I know nothing is official until it's been blogged so let this serve as my notice.

Finally, how are they writing those LOST episodes? With a dart board? I don't understand Ben at all. Sawyer/Locke are about to kill him. He said they need him but when they ask for answers he only gives the most basic one-worders? Come on, if your life were on the line you'd be much more inclined to spill more beans that just saying "They're looking for...me". Whatever, I don't plan on missing an episode anytime soon. [Comments: 11]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: February 10, 2008 - Moving Over the weekend I spent most of my time taking care of moving preparations. I got a plane ticket for Steve, who was hastily recruited to lug stuff, rented a truck for the first week of March, and bought a bunch of containers. More importantly though, I started ridding myself of the crap that accumulates anytime you live somewhere more than a year. I sent a good dozen bags of trash out and filled another six slated for donation at RH. I worked on a bunch of other miscellaneous projects that were not moving related but really only one of them done. I'm very happy to be leaving Tallahassee and getting on with my life but to say I was a little nervous about moving would be a lie. When you move for school or a job you know that you're going to settle into a new routine and make new friends and all that fun stuff. Since I plan to work from home and only know a handful of people there I'm not sure how quickly this new routine is going to come. For each ounce of anxiety there's an equal part of excitement and that in and of itself is exciting. Three weeks from today I'll be there and I'll let you know how it all works out. [Comments: 4]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 11, 2008 - Aching...Everything After work last night I played tennis for a little over an hour with a new friend from Starbucks (Mike), his girlfriend and one of their other friends. Despite playing doubles I was still painfully sore when I got home--I don't even want to think about how bad it would have been had he been running me around the court by myself. I was by far the worst player although I wouldn't say that the three of them were "good" but rather you could tell they played a lot and were comfortable doing long rallies. Because I didn't know them very well I avoided my favorite (and most despicable move): charging the net after every shot. Although we lost the only match we played it still felt (kind of) good to run around for a while but then...

...I got home and started packing. The lofty goal was to have my office done but all I managed to get through was a couple shelves of my closet and the two bookcases by my door. I ordered a set of drum set cases online to protect the drums-formerly-owned-by-P-Chris so those are still sitting in my closet. Although I felt like I didn't make much progress, looking back I actually do have almost everything in there packed that's coming with me except Abby's cage and my computer. I have enough stuff going to RH to keep their thrift store going until 2030 but because it's all sitting in piles the progress looks less significant than it really is. Like I told Chris last night, if I can do 1/3 of each room each night (and factoring in procrastination) I should be good to go by the end of the month. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 12, 2008 - Belated 12 of 12
7:30am: I'm not drunk but ever since Food Guy ran out of friends I get a lot more petting.


7:50am: Brrberry. Thankfully the Taurus cranks up to 90 in the mornings.


8:30: You see a cluttered office. I see moving boxes in-waiting.


11:00am: Wow, I just put myself to sleep.


12:30pm: Another gloomy day.


5:30am: "Dinner". I couldn't even finish my non-pig meal.


9:00pm: Matt and I about to get down to business...


9:30pm: ...off petting Chompy.


9:45pm: Hi, I'm the lens inspector.


10:00pm: You'd think being 18 days away from DC would motivate me a little more to at least get my office closet cleaned out all the way.


10:30pm: Pack...Guitar Hero...Pack...Guitar Hero...Trying to cram the games in while I still have someone to play Expert Co-Op with me.


1:30am: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were keeping your clean clothes in my sleeping spot.

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Thursday: February 14, 2008 - V-Day Happy Valentine's Day for those of you in love and happy some-random-day for those of you who aren't. Five years ago today was Jamie and my "kissaversary" on our first steel drum trip to Nowhere, Florida. This year was spent building boxes for the pending move (16 days) and, thanks to a fortunately-timed text from Jamie, watching Lost. How I forgot to turn of Lost at 9pm somehow escaped me between doing laundry and taping together dozens of computer boxes from work. On the whole I didn't think the episode was that great and seeing Ben fixing up Sayid at the end came as no surprise at all. I'm not sure how much seasons of Lost are left but I'd appreciate it if they started answering a few questions instead of just bringing up new ones. I'm not entirely sure how Hurley became the spy since his argument with Locke seemed genuine but apparently they're all just liars and traitors now. What I really want to know is what Locke showed them that converted them all from dissenters into believers--was it the talking cabin? And if it was that powerful of an experience why did they need to keep Ben locked up? And are all those passports his? You would think, since this clearly happened after 9/11, it would be impossible to forge valid passports so were those the passports of all the Others and Sayid just happened to pick up Ben's? And if Ben can do medical treatments, why did they need Juliette on the island? Questions abound. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: February 17, 2008 - Last Hoorah Weekend Yesterday was the last day of the "Last Hoorah" weekend. The weekend went by so quickly that I can only remember brief patches of it. On Friday night I packed up the rest of my office and got started on my bedroom, assigning most of clothes to boxes and effectively making a living-out-of-suitcase situation. On Saturday I worked on what will hopefully be my last programming project before I leave and Christine and Erick came by to snag my downstairs tank. Much to my surprise there were two living things left in there as well as a dead frog. Since I've never had frogs I'm not sure how it got in there. I went over to Matt's for a rehearsal, talking with Jamie and my new landlord(ess) about my DC apartment, went in to work, took a short nap, and then went out to the Warehouse for our gig. There weren't many people there but on the whole I think we played pretty well. After the gig I thought someone was peeing on my car but apparently he was just peeing next to it. I was distracted by the ensuing discussion and left my keyboard there; fortunately Kevin grabbed it for me. After the gig I went right to sleep and I think the stress of moving finally set in since I woke up every half-hour until 8am in a total panic that I had slept through something. I did some packing and cleaning before people starting showing up for poker in the hopes I could give away a bunch of stuff. Although Kevin took my old Playstation and a bunch of games, I didn't really get rid of any of the big stuff. Before started poker we played a couple rounds of Guitar Hero and I took Kevin to school. Chris won poker and I finished second (picture tomorrow). After the game Tim and Chris stuck around for a final night of NCAA football and we all took turns pummeling each other. The only close game was between me and Chris while the rest were complete blowouts. Alas, I will miss those games in DC because while I know I might be able to con someone into playing Guitar Hero with me I think I can safely say that the football game is going to gather dust. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 18, 2008 - 13 Days The countdown has officially begun. With 13-Days left until D(C)-Day I'm hoping that throwing a nagging blog entry to myself will help get the rest of my plans in order. I'm trying to stave off the Chris Green Anxiety (herein CGA) that comes with not only having a lot to do but being dependent upon other people to take care of things. I still need to hear back from both landlords and frankly that's causing the most stress. Once the living situation is taken care of then I can fully turn my stress over to the administrative things: yelling at FSU for losing my insurance form, changing things with my address, and doing my taxes. I feel like I'm in good shape packing--once some of the furniture goes the only room I'll really need to pack is the kitchen since my office, bedroom and living room are boxed up for the most part. Last night I went to Target to get some more boxes and finally got around to replacing all the towels Abby has destroyed in one way or another. I also picked up a tool box since I keep finding more and more random screwdrivers hidden around the house and, the piece de resistance, a battery holder. It's no secret that I like to hoard batteries and since I had found quite literally dozens of each type I decided I would just buy a battery holder so that I was always aware of my stock and not buying a 36 pack of AAA batteries each time I went to the store. Hopefully I'll hear from both my landlords on Tuesday so I can get this show on the road. [Comments: 7]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 19, 2008 - 12 Days Left Man, I'm having some crazy dreams lately. The funny thing is that even though the past three have been absolutely horrible, it seems the topic of the dream has been addressed the next day but with the complete opposite result. As an example, two nights ago I had a very realistic dream I went to see my landlord about getting out of my lease. After a long discussion he said the best he could do was having me pay "a figure no less than this" as he handed me a post-it note with $10,000 written on it. Because it was so realistic I was in a panic yesterday thinking the dream was a bad omen. Surprise, surprise--not only did I not have to pay $10,000, I didn't have to pay anything. I didn't even need to pay for March. Weirdy. I'll take it though.

In other news Florida just passed that now evolution can be taught in schools but it needs to be called "The Scientific Theory of Evolution" to appease religious conservatives. To paraphrase Chris: Really? Seriously? It's still just a theory? You mean we can't prove evolution to the same exacting standards we can prove *poof*-here-we-are? Personally, I have no problem with them teaching Intelligent Design along with evolution but come on. Ignoring science that doesn't agree with your beliefs doesn't make it theoretical or untrue. Personally, I think there's room to hold onto your beliefs while still accepting facts but hey, what do I know? [Comments: 7]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 20, 2008 - 10 Days Weird. Ten days left. Yesterday I finished up all of the lease stuff and spent the night in front of the computer finishing up a bunch of stuff despite some serious server issues. The only thing I managed to get done on the packing front was a single load of laundry--the new set of replacement towels. I bought four more of each type of towel two nights ago to make up for ones that were used as part of Chompy's nest or destroyed by Abby.

I watched part of the Lunar Eclipse last night and it was pretty cool here--nice and bright red.

Tonight is Lost and will be my penultimate Lostahassee. I'm also picking up Abs from Jamie's mom so between those two things I'm not sure how much real packing I'm going to get done. My upstairs is pretty much bare except for the bathroom but I've been putting off the kitchen and I'm not really forward to it. Really, I've been putting off all the things I hate the most so I really have nothing left except the things I hate. Oh well, with only ten days left I need to suck it the f* up. [Comments: 3]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 21, 2008 - Nine Days I've never been one to find song lyrics particularly compelling but with only nine days left in Tallahassee I can help but find this tidbit from the The Rover pretty appropriate:

And our time is flyin' see the candle burnin' low
Is the new world rising, from the shambles of the old

The time is in fact flying and I do feel like the new world is "rising" from--while not necessarily the shambles--the staleness (at least) of Tallahassee. I keep on chugging on my last-minute projects and they're all almost done.

Since Jamie didn't watch Lost last night you'll have to mouse-select this next paragraph so I don't accidentally give anything away. I fell for it. I thought that the baby referenced throughout the episode was going to be the lovechild of Sawyer and Kate. On the whole I thought the episode was painfully boring and the only real piece of useful information (aside from Aaron of course) was that only eight people are rescued. I really just want some answers and more than "Claire didn't make it off the island". Come on people.

Ok, well that's that. This weekend I need to tackle the kitchen which means eating out a lot. Life's rough sometimes. [Comments: 5]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 22, 2008 - Eight Days Surprise, it's a weekend update. Last night I was asleep by 10:30pm. I stayed up until 5:30am the night before working and even thought I slept "in" until 7:30 before going to work I was just too tired to do anything but really crash last night. Unfortunately by body is stuck on Corporate Work Time so I woke up at 7:06 this morning, just like every weekday morning. Bummer. I had the best intentions of hitting the diner for breakfast but I accidentally started working and before I knew it was 9am (right now).

It's always weird the last time you do something that was once normal. Liz and I went to Ted's for lunch and I probably won't be back there again. I probably won't see Liz again either for that matter. This next week is going to have all of those "lasts"--having a meal with people for the last time in a place I frequented regularly. It seems like just yesterday Chris and I were sitting at Starbucks saying "I can't believe I'm going to IU in a month!" and like ten minutes ago that Jamie was saying "I can't believe I start law school in two weeks". I guess John Lennon was right--life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

There are now eight days before the formal moving process starts. I get my truck next Friday, Steve comes into town on Saturday and we're gone on Sunday. If the reality of the move hadn't set in yet, it certainly has now. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: February 23, 2008 - 7 Days Steve comes into town a week from today and we leave the next morning. I guess technically there are eight days until we actually leave but in my mind next Saturday the truck is getting packed so that's good enough for me. Yesterday I finally finished up my last freelance project so now my focus is entirely on packing. I grudgingly went to Guitar Center not to see thousands of unsupervised children, but instead to get the last piece of storage for my trillions of instruments and a new set of guitar strings. Matt was kind enough to install these strings for my classical guitar and even though the top three drop a third if you set it down for a second it sounds a million times better than the old ones. I've already started looking for a teacher in DC because the classical guitar is just too beautiful to pass up if you have ample time to learn how to play it. Since I'm not going to escape apartment living for at least another year I'm not sure how happy my new neighbors will be about practicing pan or set so hopefully classical guitar will be a happy medium.

Abby surprised me by not having a "deliberate" (I've long-since given up calling them "accidents") all day. Score. Jara also joined Facebook and because I got the notification she's my friend I logged in to check her out. They've made a lot of modifications to that site. Wow. Makes me want to write a Facebook application. Have any ideas on what kind of application you would find useful? Let me know in the comments! [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: February 24, 2008 - Six Days Because I'm old and can't sleep in past like 7:30am anymore I managed to get a lot done on the packing front since I woke up so early. I'm getting to the odds-and-ends point which is both gratifying and incredibly irritating. Outside of the kitchen, anything that can be readily packed has been taken care of so now I'm struggling trying to figure out if it's worth moving lamps around to put in the stack or if my signed Cubs bat needs to travel in something more than six inches of bubble-wrap.

Good luck to Chris, who is about to defend his dissertation Form in the Music of U2: A,A and A,A'.

I spent a lot of the day playing guitar (not the one that plugs into the playstation) and let's face it, I rule. I'm sure private lessons will go a long way but I think I could safely fill in as the rhythm guitar of just about any band right now.

For your readers of the Urizone, Kathy and I are going to take you to school on Brian's Name That Tune challenge. You probably shouldn't even bother entering. You're going down. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 25, 2008 - Five Days and Ph.D Congratulations to Chris who successfully defended his dissertation today! After I dropped off Abby for her last week with Jamie's mom I met up with him and the usual cohorts for fun and festivities at Gil's. Before going over to Jamie's mom's house I packed up all the hidden clothes that had been attempting to avoid the trip to DC and discovered what can only be described as a medical and financial cache from the top of my armoire. I've shifted from salary to hourly at work for my last week so I only spent four hours there--I took "lunch" from 10:30 to 3pm (or the regular workday of a State Employee). I've assembled of Chompy's vet records and got most of her stuff packed up too. If she hadn't figured out that we were moving yet, she did today. I went by Publix to buy some stuff I didn't think I was going to be able find in DC, including an extra four boxes of Japanese Chicken Mix (bringing the total up to six). I canceled my cable and utilities and transfered everything except my postal address to be in DC. Because I won't have any internets from Friday forward I started working on something new to keep you, the swarming masses, entertained for a week while I'm in transition. It should be...something. Tomorrow I need to go to FSU on my five hour lunch and deal with all that crap.

All hail Dr. Chris Endrinal! [Comments: 6]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 26, 2008 - 4 Days Four days. Last night I started taking apart my kitchen, did the remaining two loads of laundry, and packed up all of the dog-related accessories that filled my house. I waited until Chompy was asleep before I snuck into the secret "dog cabinet" of my kitchen and unloaded approximately 200 new steggies, along with an array of treats and toys. I'm running out of room in my living room to put things but I still have a bunch of electronics that need to be packed in large, safe containers so I'm not sure where they're going to go. I still have to pack up Ab's crate and wait for Steve to help me carry The Heaviest Box In The World down from my office.

I put in a request to have my power turned on with PEPCO, who I imagine to look something like Mr. Met but with a Pepsi symbol for the head and a large outlet on his back. Although I have no experience with them, the fact they're only one letter away from PETCO leads me to believe it will be an unfortunate experience.

Not much news to report today. [Comments: 10]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 27, 2008 - Three Days And we're down to three days. Kathy and I snagged a tie for first-place in Brian's Name That Tune contest and now we're $5 richer in Amazon dollars.

Last night after work there was an impromptu-to-me party at Finnegan's and frankly, I got demolished. After getting a ride home Chris picked me up for our last night of fun. We went to Longhorn and went all out there before settling in for a game of football (he graciously let me win in a defensive struggle) and the plugged into Guitar Hero. We came perilously close to beating it but between some Lamb of God song and Free Bird that just was not going to happen. On the bright side, it'll will give us something to do when fate brings him to DC along with everyone else I have ever met.

Ricky took me out to lunch for the last time at Paradigm and we bickered about politics like we usually do. I'll miss Ricky a lot since he was my first "corporate" friend and I still stand by the fact I would have never made the transition from office-assistant type jobs to programming had he not been so blindly encouraging.

I've now had my "lasts" with the three friends I see the most--Chris, Ricky and Matt so now I really have no excuse not to get everything else done. And with only three days left, things need to get done. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 28, 2008 - 2 Days With only two days left before DC I decided to take a break from packing to watch Lost. Since, like last week, Jamie has not seen it yet I won't divulge anything until right here...Holy crap. That was the best episode I have seen in a LONG time. I like the whole concept of Desmond's character and the episode confirmed the long-held notion that while you couldn't travel in time, your consciousness kind of could move around between various parallel universes. Awesome. I was wondering how they were going to do Desmond's future stuff and they did it exactly how I wanted it. Thanks writers! We haven't had a good science-y episode in a while so last night's was doubly welcomed in my book. I did find it weird that Dr. Physics looked older than Dr. Physics-On-The-Island but who cares. I'm also glad Desmond didn't die since to me his story is the most interesting. I'm curious to know how his future-flashes play into all of this. I would have to think that his "going back in time" and having whatever crap done to him caused it but who knows. My only complaint with the episode was that ending was lame and predictable. They should have just cut it off with Desmond recognizing Sayid. All in all, though, I'd give it an A.

In other news, I fell asleep before I could pack up all my electronics so that's just another thing I have to take care of today. I thought the moving company would have called me by now to confirm the truck but apparently they were up too late watching Lost. I better have that truck <:o [Comments: 4]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 29, 2008 - Goodbye Florida And thus ends another chapter in my life. Although I was never fond of the city itself, I do have a lot of great memories of the people and activities here. Since I already had my old hard drive packed I was only able to get my hands on about 1/8 of all my pictures so if you don't see any/many of yourself try not to be offended. I will not have internet access for about a week so...yeah, I'll see a bunch of you in DC. In the meantime, enjoy this 12 of 12 style trip down memory lane. Some of the pictures are out of order but hey, that's how it goes. See you in a week!


Circa 2002: Me and Kathy, sitting off the coast of Brisland. Chompy's around somewhere too, probably having explosive diarrhea after drinking so much seawater. This, friends, was before iPods and we'd have to call Gulf 104 and ask them to play whatever song we wanted. Although the beach was called Marsh Sands it could have been more appropriately called "Jellyfish Bay" or "Horseshoe Crab Whorehouse".


Circa 2002: Man my old place was a dump. Maybe it's just the fact I'm Adult-Mike now but I really can't fathom ever having to go back and not have real household items. I can't believe there was a time when I'd eat those $2 steaks from Publix with a family-sized helping of instant mashed potatoes. Ah, how the times change.


There was a time when Chompy actually liked going to the park and we'd go a lot. She was particular fond of both the swimming pools and the water buckets and she'd cram herself into the bucket only getting out to chase other dogs away that thought they too might be able to squeeze in with her.


Kathy, Brian and I used to take Chompy to the beach a lot, each time convinced THIS would be the time she wouldn't go running off without a leash. Hah! At least she was a good sport about being buried in the sand. I think I used up all that goodwill about a year into having her and she decided that she was generally tired of being nice about things. I love her anyway.


To paraphrase Ricky--"yeah buddy". Just look at that mullet. Although I had originally grown it as a joke it's not funny that I still have one. On the bright side, no one will ever doubt I did finish graduate school because who else would voluntarily wear a pink sash around their neck?


Jamie and I on one of our many trips during the "carefree days". This was in St. Augustine at the fort. Look how big my hair was! We stayed a nice bed and breakfast there and I adamantly refused to go on a ghost tour. Little did I know what I was missing.


This was the only Ab-as-a-pup picture I had on the computer and it's a digital image I took of the original olde tyme photo. Jamie was do-gooding in Africa while Chris and I built puzzles all day and intermittently cleaned up Abby's running pees.


I remember when Jamie had this picture made into playing cards that she brought to poker. It's the famous "Aquaman" photo from my first time snorkeling. If I didn't enjoy Jamie agreed to play a day's worth of video games with me. Fortunately for her I had a really fun time.


Ah, the poker years. I could go on at length about it but when I turned corporate all I really had to look forward to was poker night. If nothing else it was a good excuse to everyone once a week. Thanks, by the way, for all of your money over the past five years.


I was really excited about moving into my "new" place. I hadn't yet outgrown clever college furniture like cinderblock-everything and futons (the AIDS futon specifically) but it was a nice transition. It's kind of weird to think back to that since Barb's armoire replaced the cinderblock nightmare and as of tomorrow there were will be nothing in that spot at all. Weird.


Oh fishtanks, how did I love thee. For all of the stupid things I've sunk money into the fishtanks had to be the worst because rather than just cleaning the tanks once a month I'd just buy new fish. Hopefully that tank will have a nice, happy life with Christine and Erick.


Chompy and The Ab; two best friends. Chompy still hates just about every other dog so I'm glad they'll still get to hang out in DC. Abby used to love to get under the AIDS futon and hide out there. It didn't take Chompy long to figure out how this particular game of hide-and-seek worked though.


Who is that homeless guy with Jamie, Chris and Marty? Oh no, it's me. This was apparently before Chris Green and Jamie persuaded me to wear clothes that were my size. Fortunately the enormous guns of Marty and Chris probably kept all the eyes off me. FSU won that day too. Go State!


I think as couples Jamie and I spent almost all our time with Chris and Miker. I certainly spent most of my friend time with Chris. Chris got me a job at RD and I got him to like drinking beer. I think that's a pretty even trade, no?


Poor Ricky, having to watch football games with us. I owe most of my professional development to Ricky. Whenever I think of my personal growth over the past few years, it pales in comparison to his. He's like a full-fledged adult now. Way to go, sport!


Yeah, most 26 year olds have had Fun Dip but I hadn't. This picture looks a lot better smaller. I didn't realize quite how wacky it looked until right now. This was taken at a poker party at Chris' house.


I have a lot of fond steel drum-related memories and most involve Matt. Look how young we all look! Hard to believe that around this time Matt was sneaking pictures of his genitals onto my camera and now, a mere four years later he's a real adult too. I remember the first time I went to the gym with him and him spotting me as I bench pressed the bar. Matt is a model of healthy living although he's back to eating meat. I hope I can establish those kinds of habits in a new environment.


Ok, now we're really out of order because this was a gig we played right before Jamie left for AU. I have a lot of funny gig stories and what makes them funny is how serious of problems they were at the time. I think the one I remember most vividly is playing at Doak Campbell and everyone hating everyone else for a different reason. It didn't help that the stadium itself was leaking onto the instruments. Pretty funny in retrospect though. Wait a minute--I don't think Jara was ever mad at anyone. Everyone else was though and that made it pretty funny. It was the first and last time I ever got to walk out onto Bobby Bowden field.


My parents, Steve, and my grandma all came down to visit me. There was nothing to do (welcome to Tallahassee) so we just sat in the living room (on the AIDS futon) and watched TV. Exciting stuff.


Ugh, some people photograph better than others and I am one of the "others" who do not. Jamie got us tickets for a Cubs/Braves game in Atlanta. Hmm, I guess this didn't really take place in Tallahassee but it's a good picture of Jamie. Notice her Cubs hat? Oh yeah.


Although Abby is definitely Jamie's dog I love her just a fraction less than Chompy. Seriously, she is TOO CUTE. Abby can brighten your day like nothing else on this planet.


Miker won our last big poker game right before he and Chris moved to Indiana. It was fun moving them up there and Jamie and I had a good cry on the way to Ohio to pick up stuff from her uncle's house to bring back to Tallahassee (see, there's the Tallahassee reference).


Chompy has been, is, and always will be terrified of thunder storms. She is very inventive when it comes to finding new places to hide. I spent a good half-hour looking for her on this particular night because who would think to look on a shelf in the towel closet for your fifty-pound dog? Notice my Music Theory Basketball jersey at the bottom of the stack. Sadly, #23 is now retired and was donated to RH.


I think my fondest memories of Tallahassee are generally sitting around my house with Jamie, Chris, and Mike and doing nothing. Sometimes nothing involved a game and that made it even more fun but really we'd just sit around and talk. It's weird that as you get older you don't really do that because you "don't have time" when in reality I think that's where the strongest bonds are formed. I miss those guys.


In retrospect it's weird to think how the many groups of people I knew started to hang out. Obviously Jamie was from the steel band, Ricky was from work, Tim was a friend of Chris and Elena--who were also semi-work-related but because Elena knew try, who I knew at FSU kind of not, and T-Chris was from FSU and Chris and Mike were sort of from steel band and...well, you get the idea. I wish I had taken a longer pause at the time to say "Wow. All of my friends are here and I'm really generally happy with everything". Too bad you never do that at the time.


Wild dogs in their natural state--in my bed. Sometimes I'd like to sing "Ab in my spot" to the music of the introduction to "Dus in Deh Face". I never understood why steel drum music always had such stupid titles. Then again the second movement of my thesis was "Chompy, My Dog" so maybe I don't have a lot of room to talk.


It's the Habitat House that was built to honor Jamie's dad. I had a bunch of pictures where Jamie and I were actually "working" but they're on the packed hard drive. The house, while still being framed, was vandalized and I can only hope there's a special place in hell for someone who would vandalize a Habitat house. The house they're building in his honor this year is slated to begin building in a few months--all the money was raised again. Awesome.


Jamie and I on a fishing boat in Key West. I fear that now that I'm leaving Florida I'm not going to have the opportunity to catch any more sharks. Oh well.


The current state of my living room. It will all be packed up by 3pm tomorrow. Exciting stuff.

Wish me luck and I'll see you in a week. [Comments: 8]· permalink · · ·