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Monday: December 01, 2003 - Last Day Teaching I woke up unusually early (sans alarm clock) to work on the final chunks of my presentation. I finished it in about two hours and left for class on time (or so I thought). I walked into the type of classroom that was oddly like the first day of teaching class. Everyone is there, sitting and waiting in complete silence for whomever is in charge to tell them some sort of big secret. Usually the secret consists of your name, what the class is about and ends with the stimulating handing-out of the syllabi. Today, though, there would be no syllabi distribution. I took of my coat in front of the class dramatically and cleared my throat of my pesky midwestern accent (pronounced eaccent). As I took my first breath in, I was informed I was not first in line and sulked to my seat. I was excited to blow the class away with some unabashedly egocentric comments by Soler but lo and behold, Adam's paper was on ethos and pathos! He gave only the second presentation up to that point that didn't bore me at any point. Once finished, I got up there in my shiny garnetesque-color shirt and gave out my handouts. The handouts had about four lines of text on them all superimposed onto the crudely drawn caricature head of Antonio Soler. People laughed when they received it. I wasn't really trying to be funny with it, but I'm glad they didn't boo. Except for Trey. But he always boos. Anyway, I drew a poor picture of western Europe on the board and tried to explain why Spain was 50 years behind everyone in their writings. I then went over my sheet and gave an example and my ten minutes was up. I did manage to confuse Castilian with Catalan in my explanation of the dialect of the treatise, which confused the other Spanish speaker in the room and I had no choice but to own up to it after the class within earshot of my professor (naturally). After class Theory-Chris came over and we ordered Chinese food. I think his theory of them-taking-longer-so-you'll-be-hungrier-and-it'll-taste-better is completely accurate. I then dropped off my rent check to our ever-cheery manager (when collecting $600) and made a quick deposit at the bank before purchasing two more fish for the cichlid aquarium. I scoured online looking for pictures but I couldn't find them. They are big, well about 2.5" and one looks like a leopard. They both have big mouths. That's really all I can say about them. As of right now, we have had no deaths but one of the Electric Yellows seems to be swimming funny. He's eating, though. I don't know if fish don't eat when their sick. I heard that they only have a three second memory, so maybe he forgot he was sick and ate some grub. I rearranged the tank (as advised everywhere I looked) before adding the new fish (complete with new hollow log) and they all seem to be getting along fine now. I felt bad about leaving the 3rd one in the tank but at $11/ea I couldn't afford to bring him home with me. Chris Rix (the fish) finally showed himself to me today after hiding out for the past couple days. Tomorrow is my last real day teaching this semester and I'm excited that there's a possibility I won't get 400 emails a day asking how to do things I said the first day. And every day since. Also, if you check this site more than once every day, it only changes ONCE a day. ONCE. I'm a busy guy, you know, though I do appreciate the counter moving up 30 hits a day. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: December 02, 2003 - SUSSAI Forms Today has been a long day. And it's only 6:45pm. Class went smoothly this morning and the handing out of the SUSSAI (now called SPOT [student pounding of teachers]) went well. Of the six students from whom I expected to receive bad evaluations, only one of them showed up. Good thing vengeful students are typically lazy students. I came home between my second and third class to discover Chompy had helped herself to everything on my stove and destroyed one of those supposedly unbreakable glassesque bowls. The brand eludes me at the moment. Wait, it's Pyrex. I locked her in her crate when I left for the first time in over a year today before I went back to teach my last class. While I will miss teaching in general, I certainly will miss nothing about that godforsaken lab. This afternoon Jamie and I went to Olive Garden for a quick lunch, then I stopped to buy a couple more flannel pillowcases (gasp, might I have a matched set?) followed by my return visit to Best Buy to return some unwanted powerstrips. The last stop on the journey was to PetCo, for me to complete my pre-break fish purchases. With a week free of floaters, I decided to start to actual populating of the tank today. Fifteen new fish are now living in the tank. Although many websites advised against it, I decided to mix Cichlid breeds by adding some Central American Convicts (5), some sort of spotted Kenyan fish (similar to the ones I got yesterday, but younger) (4), some generic blue ones and some generic yellow ones. My receipt just says "Chichlid-Color". I can definitely see how that is useful, especially if you're going for the Ansel Adams' style fishtank. Whatever. They all seem to be doing well and I'm just waiting for "Bendy" one of the original Electric Yellows to die so I can bring him back to PetSmart. Bendy swam a little too close to the main filter and got sucked up next to it for (I'm guessing) about 4 hours. Now he's bent in half. He was the one that was sick anyway. I had a Bendy Sr. in the community bedroom tank but he died, duh. Tomorrow I am making my oboe debut in the oboe tech. class. That's going to be horrible, I know it. I'll feel really badly if Mike gets an F because I can't squeak out a note. I should bring my minidisc recorder, though, just in case I'm that good. Also, I have given up proofreading because I hate it. Oh, Mary has a journal now. You're such a follower Mary. Seriously. If you want to see it go here. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: December 03, 2003 - Austistic Children Today was a somewhat exciting day. I see the editor I use for this page is telling me that it takes 144 seconds to load. I can't imagine that's true. 144 seconds over 28.8. Ok, but still. Who had a 28.8 modem? Hell, who even has a modem anymore? I woke up to talk to my German professor, Dr. Stanely one last time. She's the kind of professor that I would like to be. A very pleasing mix of strict but funny. I know most of the other kids (I guess they're adults now) really hated her, but I thought she was great. I can't imagine the difficulty of teaching a graduate class when no one wanted to be there and everyone thought the topic (learning German) was too far from their field to bother with passive construction or dating clauses. And the art history kids (or 80-year old returning students) were too busy whining and talking about Degas to even hear half the stuff that was said. I thought music students complained a lot. Boy, I'll never say that again. Those A.H. brats are out of control. "I don't understand why they can't just have one conjugation of every verb. Oh, did you see that Renoir? I love him. Oh, I just don't understand how he was so underappreciated in his time. Oh! I saw that new exhibit by that one guy from NY? Yeah, he sucks because I don't get it. And I know everything about art. Which is why I don't actually create art. Because I'm too busy having to explain every artist before me to you peons." They might not all be that bad, but most of them are. There's actually one cool one in my class but the rest are the reason that artistic children are beat up. Whew, for a second I thought I typed autistic children. I didn't though, obviously. I gave the world premier of the Geek-something solo for Unaccompanied Solo Oboe this morning at around 10:30am. To view this masterpiece, click here. While I was not accepted into the DM Program at FSU after my performance (for not having contrasting pieces, oops), I did receive a call from the University of Florida later this afternoon to ask about my qualifications for a possible professorship in Oboe. Playing the oboe was not as hard as I expected. Whether this had to do with my gifted teacher or my innate talent for all things ending in the letters oe, it was very easy to make sounds and on the whole think things went really well. I hope Mike got an A, though, and he wasn't marked down too heavily for my inability to make it speak without about 40 seconds after I started blowing. It's kind of like Chompy getting picked on by other dog. Yeah it sucks at first, but once you get her going', it's all good because there's some ass-kicking goin' on. I got an A- on my HoMT presentation for being "too relaxed in front of the class". I guess I could have been nervously twitching and speaking really fast but I guess my lack of preparation kept me from being weird. I also apparently had my hand in my pocket and "need work on my cartography". That's fine. I'm not getting a degree in art. Art History, though... I also went to the dog park today and Chompy and The Ab ran around tag team abusing other dogs. It was a nice day. Something really funny happened when I was there and I wish I could remember it. Man, getting old is the worst.
Oh, here are some pictures of my fishtank, taken by Theory-Chris. Thanks, yo. Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3 [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: December 04, 2003 - Music Theory Basketball Today was my last real day of doing anything significant. I taught my last three classes today (only one person showed up for the first one. Good thing I came 10 minutes late). I love the day after the SUSSAI forms because I can wear whatever I want. Today was a backwards Cubs hat and some torn-up jeans. Since I was essentially a lab monitor, I worked a lot more on my Finale help page, even though everyone (almost) is done with the project. The classes ran smoothly and I got my first ever round of hugs from students. Admittedly, I was unprepared for this because I never really thought of myself as a particularly likable kind of teacher. Oh well, there goes my bad-boy image. I spent the afternoon in the sub-basement archives of Strozier trying to find this long-lost dissertation. I did find it eventually but due to the lack of a working copier I only took what I needed from the original translation, which were all the parts in Latin. I've got a good start done on my paper (which is why I'm taking a break to type this) and man, is it boring. I am pleased that my Spanish skills haven't dropped off too badly since I was in Uruguay. One of the $11 fish has been swimming in a weird 0 shape for about an hour. Down past his rock, up the other side to the top and then down again. You'd think he'd get tired of it but I guess not. I had my first MIA, the female Electric Yellow Cichlid is dead I'm sure but there's no corpse to look at. All the rest seem to be doing ok. I had a fast lunch with Bryan before returning home to not-work-on-my-paper. Somehow when I adjusted my watch's date today, I must've messed up the hour hand and because of this I missed the first 20 minutes of our German test. Oops. I still passed the class but I am very relieved that I do not need to take the real test. Since I'm in a procrastinating mood, here is my rant for the day:
Lab monitors and what exactly is wrong with them
I hate lab monitors, as I'm sure most of you do. They know nothing about computers, computer software and are even lacking basic communication skills. Let's take Lab Monitor A, who I share the lab with on Thursdays. This person could not be any more disruptive to my class if "it" was able to belch the Waldstein on solfedge. Furthermore, this person listens to some loud, loud, horrible music so loudly, in fact, I can hear it with my headphones on when I'm (trying to) listen(ing) to a student's project. This "thing" insists on answering questions I ask to the class and making comments in the middle of my "lecture", not that I really lecture about anything. Onto Lab Monitor B. This one isn't nearly as annoying. However, it knows literally nothing about computers and its only reply to your problem is "reboot the f-----r". While yes, sometimes the f----r does need rebooting, sometimes you only need to plug the keyboard back into the keyboard slot or turn the volume up on the speakers. Lab Monitor C has never said a word to me and it only nods when I walk in. The problem is that it is so quiet it never kicks people out of the lab when I have to teach so I have to do it in a not-so-nice way. I don't get paid enough to tell people to get out and have them talk back to me (which is a mistake. I have lots of good one-liners). Like, Lab Monitor C, doesn't even tell people there IS a class. What's worse is that these idiot students just walk right in and sit down. Hello? How many people are standing up, wearing very nice clothes and telling everyone what to do? Are people that stupid? Yes. Yes they are. I'm not saying I'd be a good lab monitor. I don't care that your Craptica Musica file doesn't work or that there's no paper in the printer. That's not my fault (you're stupid). I don't really have a solution but I can certainly find problems. Maybe I should consider a career in politics.
That fish is still swimming that same route. What a weirdo. I talked to Dr. Shaftel today about playing basketball so it looks like we will indeed have a team put together for the spring semester. Whether it's the city league again or the FSU Intramural team is still to be decided. I don't really care as long as I get to punch another fat, old man who is trying to prove he's not fat and old in the stomach again. Hopefully, he won't inflict any damage to my teammates first this time. Yeah, Maxx Attack, I'm totally talking about you. You old, fat men. And nice knee brace. That's very becoming. Becoming like some old man becoming dead. Or senile. I think I'll stop now. Oh, we made it to 500 hits today. Neat. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: December 05, 2003 - Music Theory Review I managed to oversleep past the Meg-Shih Chen review session for the HoMT review session at 9:00am this morning. I was really mad at myself when I woke up around 10. Oh well, such is life. Our last class consisted of SUSSAI forms and some stupid questions. I did my best to leave lots of comments on my SUSSAI because I know much I like to read comments. If I didn't have the most recognizable handwriting in the world I would have just signed my name but there was no room from the comments. Mine, obviously, is the one that looks like a turtle with a piece of lead taped to his belly walked around on a sheet of paper. After class we had a quick bite at the Charcoal Grill. Afterwards, I went back to the libraries and copied all the material I didn't have yesterday. I predict my paper to be about 35 pages long. A good portion of it, though, will be pages of musical examples with a single sentence. I sent an email out about playing basketball on Sunday. If you're reading this and didn't get the email, you're free to show up at Tom Brown Park around 11am Sunday morning. Chompy, The Ab, Sally and Hannah were together again at the dog park today. I'm amazed how much bigger Sally has grown. She's not quite as timid as she a couple weeks ago but I don't think Matt will have to worry about having an overly aggressive dog. I went to PetSmart and PetCo and neither had anything I was interested in buying. I was just trying to help the economy. Matt's birthday is on Sunday, so I might go to his birthday party tomorrow night. You only turn 30 once. Or so I hear. I thought Chris Rix (the fish) died today, but he was just suctioned to the hood and looked like he was floating. My friend and former FSU graduate Brian made a very nice picture of me and put it on his webpage today. It's me with my new aquarium in a cathedral. If I was half as good at him at half the things he's good at, I'd be one hell of a guy. But since I'm not, I can only complain. I tried to make a picture of Brian whipping me in Photoshop but it looked like him training a tiger with my head on it so I used that clock instead. I also think I fixed most of my typos over the past few days. I'm probably wrong, though. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: December 06, 2003 - History of Music Theory After staying up until 5am Friday night, I finished my HoMT paper today around 6pm. All that's left is for me to copy some examples from the original treatise into my paper, since putting all 22 4-example examples would have taken a week to create. After I finished my paper I finished my Madden 2000 season instead of studying for for my final. I was able to win the Superbowl (42-3) in a blowout after a nail biter in the NFC Championship game (28-27). Jamie came over and we ate the celebratory pizza while watching the end of the OU/Kansas State game. Every year there seems to be a huge BCS controversy and every year it seems like it will be the year when all the teams do what they're supposed to do and everyone will hold parades for the BCS staff and we all laude them for their magnificent idea. Maybe next year. With OU losing, it's now a crapshoot over who is going to the Sugar Bowl. FSU isn't going, so I could really care less. I don't want to USC to go because they were mean to me when I visited them. Those elitist bastards. I have some friends who did their undergrad at LSU so I guess I'm rooting for them to go. And they have a cute mascot. After the game, we brought Chompy and The Ab to Matt's new house off Victory Garden so play with his dog, Sally, while the rest of us celebrated his 30th birthday. Happy birthday, Matt. Matt was blitzed by the time we got there but the dogs had a great time. Chompy exerted herself as the dominant one and the other dogs chased each other. Ginny's dog, Mr. Tod(d) was there too. Despite easily being the biggest (and the only male) he made no attempt to corral the other three smaller dogs and rolled onto his back if Chompy got within 5 feet of him. Sally definitely came out of her shell last night. She was no match for The Ab, though, who, despite being very nice, was so energetic all Sally could do was bark in her general direction. Tomorrow is basketball/HoMT exam-study-day. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: December 07, 2003 - Pearl Harbor Day Happy Pearl Harbor Day. My family visited Hawaii when I was a kid and we were at the memorial. I know I shouldn't be really "celebrating" today but President Bush is changing our tariff set-up with Japan, so I guess they're our friends now and we should be celebrating. I hear the power states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan are not pleased. Florida and California, though, are happy. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, get off your ass and read the news. Whatever. I woke up late to play basketball and Chris and I arrived at about 11:20 with a flat ball. We sucked something fierce. We did, however, devise a play which will be very useful regardless of which Spring League we decide to play in. After hanging up the jersey for the day, I sorted all my clothes into keep and give-away. I managed to get four garbage bags full of give-aways, which is a good half of all the clothing I own(ed). Jamie is going to take it to Refuge House so that kids can wear the timeless Ocean Pacific T-Shirts I have parted with. I hope they wash the clothes because I sure didn't. Not that they smell. Well, some of them do, but that's just icing on the clothing-cake. I found some problems with my paper and Jamie found about a billion so I redid them all between 12:20-2:30am. I bound everything together and I need to wake up at 7 tomorrow to make sure I drop it off by 8am. Chompy went to the dog park today with Jamie and The Ab (since I was studying for my test) and apparently she was picked on a lot by a pack of dogs. Jamie said they only stayed for five minutes. It's sad for me to think about my dog crying, especially since I've never heard it. Naturally, I was pissed so I demanded to go back to the park so I could either confront the owners or at least kick their dogs (or slip them some baker's chocolate [which I carry with me at all times for just such an emergency]). What really aggravates me is that at the first sign of Chompy picking on another dog I go break it up so I'm really pissed that other people wouldn't do the same thing. I remember I once brought Chompy when she was still a puppy and she was really getting f-'d up by this other dog, whose owners were just standing outside the park, undoubtedly getting high or talking about how cool they were. I got so pissed I grabbed their dog by the collar and carried it (by the collar) and dropped it outside with them. They, rightfully so, got pissed and I thought for sure it would end up in a fist fight. Thankfully it didn't, because I would have gotten my ass kicked since Chompy didn't understand the art of kicking whomever is about to kick Food Guy's ass's ass. Anyway, we went back to the dog park and all the big dogs weren't there so after a brief stop at Petco and Borders we came home and ate some potato soup. Tomorrow is entirely devoted to studying for HoTM. FSU also made it to the Orange Bowl to play Miami...again...for the 3rd time in a year. Oh well. I watched an episode of the West Wing tonight. I know I'm not supposed to agree with mainstream culture but man, that is a great show. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: December 08, 2003 - Stop Being A Slob I know what you're thinking. It's a question of that I've been asked a lot in my life. Why do I love to clean so much? Well, even though I've answered this a million times, I guess I can answer it one more. It's because I hate to study. I mean HATE to study. Really, if I had more studying to do on a daily basis I would be a much neater person. Granted, this idea did not serve me well in high school and I wound up with rats under my bed and a C- average GPA but who's counting that anyway? I was able to get all the short answer questions prepared decently but I still need to look at the essays. Some people were going to come over but they didn't. Amory and I are going to study at 1pm tomorrow to get our cram on. I dropped off my paper this morning at 8am-ish sharp. It took me about six hours to get all the short answers together and hopefully Theory-Chris is coming soon to give me the notes-goods. The picture to the left is something that will be an art project come next week when I have free time. Well, free time that I don't have to feel badly about. On Wednesday I'm going to Bluntstown to play pan with Steel-Chris. XM Radio is now installed in the Mighty Taurus and if you don't have it, you might want to think about it. I almost said to "GO GET IT" but it's really not a quintessential piece of equipment, like a lever. It is nice, though and there's no more guessing or BS'ing on name-that-tune-in-the-Taurus because it tells you both the artist and the title. It's only about $10/mo and it was Jamie's Christmas present to me. I hope she likes her cooking lessons. Shh, don't tell her. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: December 09, 2003 - Does Chicken Noodle Soup Work? I'm actually writing this the day after. I'm usually better about these things but I'm sick, so you'll have to excuse me. We took the HoMT final and I actually felt prepared for it. The problem is that I felt prepared last time and still got a B. Whatever. I spent too long studying and didn't get enough sleep. I'm definitely paying the price for it today. Jamie and I celebrated by going to Longhorn for dinner. It was delicious. We came back and I fell asleep in about two minutes while trying to watch QE. I also got a weird letter from someone I haven't seen for a long, long time yesterday. It was kind of creepy. More details tomorrow because I need to get my nap on. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: December 10, 2003 - I heart Music Theory After being sick the past two days (hence no updates) I feel a bit better today. Yesterday I went up to school to pick up my grade sheets and to talk to Dr. Clendinning about my HoMT/Thesis. She pointed out something seemingly very obvious to me: if I wanted to do a Spanish translation, at least my major professor and preferably the committee would have to speak Spanish. I don't know why that thought didn't occur to me, but it didn't. She volunteered her knowledge, so it looks like she will be my major professor. I can't decide if this is good or bad just yet. She is without question, one of the most widely respected people out there, very popular in theory circles and from what I can tell, very highly regarded. She also, though, has made people cry. And while I have a pretty thick skin ("Your music sounds like a corpse with make-up on" -Ellen Zwillich), I fear that she will assume that my lack of interest in HoMT is a lack of interest in Music Theory. Now, I'm not saying that I live for music theory. I don't think anyone will mistake me for someone who is madly in love with theory. I do respect her knowledge and her straight-forwardness, so if I'm going to screw things up, at least I'll know ahead of time. Apparently, I need to make a couple different translations of this treatise, which sucks. I understand the point but just by the sheer amount of work of translating the same material a bunch of different ways--well, it sucks because I can be lazy. Yesterday Chris and I drove up to play at a Baptist Church is Bluntstown. Some people are not meant to live out in the country and I am definitely one of them. His friend Joanna is in charge of the kids (directs the kids choir..stuff like that) and she asked us to come play Christmas duets on pan. I also hate kids. During "dinner", they were playing this game where they had to smack me on the back and run back to their table before I got up and beat the leaving Jesus out of them. I feel kind of bad for Joanna, though. She's stuck in the middle of nowhere with a phenomenal voice and very apparent skills in music education and is just going to waste them in Bluntstown, FL (pop. 7). I guess, being from the city and lacking the dream of marrying the town's pharmacist, I don't really understand how people can be so content with such an average life. ESPECIALLY, if they're not average people. I guess complacency is a-ok. When we got back, Chris, Mike and I hung out for a while and when they left I started grading all of projects. I got them all done around 3:30am last night. All that's left is to fill in the bubble sheets and write down why some people failed (I guess this is the new system). I had a reverse-bell curve...well, more like a slide at the amusement park, actually, about 75% A's, handful of B's, C's and D's and about 15% F's. Some of the people receiving F's I actually feel badly about but the numbers don't lie. And, if you make an accommodation for one person then you have to make it for all of them. Not wanting to give zero F's, I had no choice but to not be accommodating. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: December 11, 2003 - 600 Visitors Free at last. Other than to receive my grades my semesterly ties to FSU are over again. For the fifth time. Man, I've been here a long time. Today I woke up sick, stayed sick all day and took some time off to finish my grades. I turned my grades in, Chompy in tow but couldn't find Dr. Shellehammer to drop off my graduate students grade forms. They all got A's. So, if you're one of my grad students reading this, you're A is safe. I had to miss Dr. Clendinning's party tonight, although I did want to go to at least say hi to all the people I never get to see anymore. Instead, though, I had rehearsal with Matt and Jara for our stupid gig on Sunday. Drum set, lead and double seconds does not make for a particularly musical group, through no fault of our own. I personally would rather give split the money up even further and either ask Mike to play bass or move Matt to bass and get another lead player. It wouldn't be so bad if the gig wasn't three hours. I made a quick trip to the dog park and added another six fish to my tank (I said I wouldn't get any more before break but I'm a damn liar). After the DP I went to rehearsal then to Publix to get some feel-good food and now, as my potato soup cools, I am preparing to go to bed. I'm supposed to meet Bryan Richards for lunch tomorrow but I'm not feeling so hot as of right now. Today was our 600th visitor. It was me, unfortunately, because I accidentally clicked on the link. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: December 12, 2003 - Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Man, I am one sick fish. I woke up around 11 today and felt a lot better than I did when I went to bed. Bryan Richards took me out to lunch today to Marie Livingstone, a steakhouse I'd never been to before. I must say, it was better in all ways than the Longhorn except for its "salad". Don't get me wrong, mushy lettuce is great but not with steak. Bryan bought, as it was payday, so that a really generous present. This afternoon I made a small change to the Mas N' Steel webpage, while fending off angry students via email. Two of my fish died today. One of them in a grotesque sort of way, his innards sucked out and eaten by other fish with the body and skin just hanging out on the bottom. With my general sickness, I was too grossed out to scoop him, but I need to do so before they eat the rest of him so I can bring what's left for a refund. Jamie and I did some Christmas shopping but the only thing I ended up with were five new fish. One of them is dead already because the PetCo scoop-guy slammed the hell out of it while trying to scoop it into the bucket. I did, however, get a "free" fish because my last replacement they didn't take back, so tomorrow I'll be adding no less than three more newbies to the tank. The tank could use a good cleaning, so I'll give it a try tomorrow if I feel better. If you haven't see the TV show Celebrity Poker, you should watch it. It's cute. There's a ridiculous amount of good TV on that you only get to see when you're sick. Did I mention how little I want to scoop that fish out? I wish I had a digital camera. I think I'd use it every day but I know I wouldn't. But still, I want one. One of my students used a bunch of livejournals as his links. While I'd feel bad if I quoted random strangers, I feel like I could at least do this:
[current mood]: Happy but sick
[current music]: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: December 13, 2003 - Black-Eyed Peas(es of Sh*t) I think I'm done being sick now. I did, however, manage to cough up Gumby as I woke up, in case you were looking for him. Jamie and I shopped around for Chris' graduation present but I skipped his party due to my illness. I attempted to clean the aquarium but the siphon stopped working about halfway through and now the tank is absolutely disgusting while all the old crap and fish bodies settle back into the gravel. I also discovered that the Fluval filter is no longer working. I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but it's not working. Tomorrow I have a gig with Matt and Jara and then the rest of my day will be focused upon getting that filter to work. We stumbled upon a nice fish store on Pensacola Street but I need to have more $$$ and a better established tank before I want to try a 10"+ in my little tank. Hah, little. A fish committed suicide by leaping out of the tank and we only found the body yesterday. The problem is that his body ended up inside the cabinet beneath the tank. How the HELL did it get there? The leading theory is that it jumped out the back and flopped into the cabinet. The problem, of course, is that it would have had to have survived the fall, and somehow landed in the small opening into the cabinet (the opening is blocked by the filter). Anyway, we don't know how it wound up in the cabinet. I brought him with three dead friends back to PetCo. Even though I schmoozed the teenage-fish-scooper about his stupid tank, he still made me pay for a fish-upgrade. Had anyone else been working, I definitely would have gotten it for free. I managed to get four massive loads of laundry done tonight. I also saw the very first ever funny South Park episode last night. Haha, Raisins. Here's one more livejournal shout. Last one, I promise.
[current mood]: Damn Tired
[current music]: OutKast & Black-Eyed Peas(es of s t)
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Sunday: December 14, 2003 - Saddam Hussein Captured Today I woke up at around 7:30 so I could be at school by 9am to load up for the wedding gig. Matt and I got there and packed up all the stuff and hauled ass to Marie Livingstone's to play for the reception. We got there only about fifteen minutes before we were supposed to play. For better or for worse, they party was about an hour and a half late, so we extended our playing and made an extra $25 each. It was a nice reception and the bride was from the West Indies. There was no shortage of Trinie kids to laude our outstanding playing. I guess we played well, but I think that's a rant for another day. It definitely went over without too many problems and everyone was happy. This afternoon, I discovered Chompy had torn my kitchen trash apart. She's now figured out how to open cabinets with her teeth and nothing is safe. Jamie and I went to the mall today to buy some presents but I came home empty handed. I talked to my parents for a little while on the phone tonight too. The highlight of the evening was Jamie's fixing of the Fluval. We discovered the big leopard fish was dead tonight and ANOTHER jumper caked with dog hair behind the tank. I don't know where the leopard went, it was easily 4" long and...well, it's just gone. Chris and Mike had us over (with their friend Kenny) to eat the leftovers from Chris' graduation party last night. Everything looked pretty gross to me but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. I think I ate some of the most delicious cookies of my life, though, these crazy-good cocoa-flour-chocolate-chip cookies Chris' mom made for his party. I ate too many and just now (five hours later) the Tums are starting to kick in. I guess I'm not as young as I used to be. I made a few small changes to the site tonight too. I updated the open positions for next semester and cleaned up the index page. Also, Saddam Hussein was captured today, in case you live in a cave. With the internet. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: December 15, 2003 - A is for Ax Wound Today was a fun day. Tonight was the first Pot Roast Night. Earlier in the afternoon, Mike brought over his fish tank, so Jamie can do all the feedings over the break at one location (my house). It's a cute little tank, chock full of little baby neons and tetras. So far none of died, which is good of course. I think I might get Mike a belated Christmas-Pleco. I'll let him name it, because Dr. Suck and Chris Rix both suggest my prowess at fish-naming. Now, I know what you're thinking--what ever happened to that leopard fish? Well, he's dead, obviously. The good news, if there's any good news, is that I found his body. He was apparently murdered by his/her lover for not wanting to make. I found his body eventually behind one of the underground filter tubes. The tank's water now, by the way, is pristine. Anyway, Pot Roast night went off well. Kathy's pot roast was crazy good and sadly, there are no leftovers for me to eat. After dinner, Jamie and The Ab came over and we played some Texas Hold Em. Man, I suck at poker. Thank god we weren't playing for money because I was out right away. Kathy and Jamie were the big winners and Theory-Chris did considerably better than me but was also knocked out by the girls. After everyone left, Jamie and I watched the end of Silence of the Lambs. I give the movie a solid 10/10 and Anthony Hopkins is nothing short of amazing.
"A is for ax wound." -Marty
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Tuesday: December 16, 2003 - Christmas Shopping Today was dedicated almost exclusively to buying Christmas presents. My power went out this morning, much to my dismay. I survived, though and so did all the sweet fish. Chris and I went shopping today for six hours. That is a lot of shopping. Too much shopping. I got everything done except for three things, which I should be able to get easily tomorrow. I gave Jamie her presents today and she gave me the other half of mine, a boxed set of David Sedaris books on tape (CD). It won't arrive until after I leave so now my return back to Florida will be that much more exciting. I'll have to try extra hard not to listen to all 14 hours in a row but my god, I love David Sedaris. Right now I'm watching a new show on Comedy Central called Kid Notorious. It's pretty funny. It's no Family Guy or even The Simpsons but it's cute in its own little way. Ok, it just got weird. Real weird. And now even weirder. My plan tomorrow is to relax something fierce. Crazy fierce. I bought Chompy a Christmas toy today. It's a porcupine that makes a noise like The Ab when you squeeze it, so hopefully Chompy won't miss her too much while we're in Chicago. Although, Chompy did try to kill her tonight when The Ab startled her awake. Oh, the dogs. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: December 17, 2003 - Silence of the Lambs Man. Doing nothing feels nice. Real nice! I think I woke up around 11am. I don't really remember because I did so much today that I can't be bothered with such petty details. I spent most of my afternoon playing SimCity 4. I last played it a few days this summer when I got bored of watching Oz episodes. Not that I ever really got bored watching the episodes, but since I was watching six or seven episodes a day, I had to curtail it a bit with SimCity or else I would have watched all fives seasons in a week. I took Chris to the airport at 4pm and believe it or not, I was not pulled over this time. (The last time I took him to the airport [at like, 5:30am] I got pulled over for not pulling over. The police officer behind me was obviously trying to get somewhere and put his lights on. Since I am such an anal driver, I knew I was not speeding. We were on a bridge, though, and there was no place for me to pull over. After a couple seconds he got on his loudspeaker and demanded I pull over. There was nowhere to pull over, though. Once we got off the bridge, I pulled into the ditch and he zoomed past me. A couple minutes later, when I made it up to where he was going, he waved me down. With Chompy growling at him from the backseat, he said something like this: "Red lights, blue lights, green lights, yellow lights, purple lights, orange lights, pink lights, fuchsia lights, cyan lights, burnt sienna lights, algae green lights, brown lights, garnet lights, mauve lights, it doesn't matter. You need to pull over as soon as you see them. Now, I'm not going to cite you for anything this time but the next time you see red lights, blue lights, green lights, yellow lights, purple lights, orange lights, pink lights, fuchsia lights, cyan lights, burnt sienna lights, algae green lights, brown lights, garnet lights, mauve lights, etc. you'd better pull over." He didn't have a good reason for me to drive off the bridge, though.) With Chris safely at the airport and awaiting his trip back to NY, I cruised home to take a shower before going over to Jamie's parents' house to eat brisket. I didn't know what brisket was, so I figured I'd eat a ton of chocolate chip cookies to ensure I wouldn't be hungry, so I'd have an out to refuse the gruel. What I didn't know, obviously, was that brisket was nothing short of amazingly delicious. It's just meat! Like a pot roast! And, with some mashed potatoes, the crap in my stomach quickly subsided and I ate probably double what I should have. After dinner, we exchanged our presents, with me receiving some fancy BBQ sauce and a Cubs book, chronically their epic loss in the playoffs. There are lots of great pictures, though and I'm sure that if anyone can empathize with crappy baseball teams, it's Reds fans. I reciprocated with an Emeril sauce pan and some of his Bam! Tomato Sauce. I know it wasn't the greatest thing in the world but I'm not the best present buyer in the world. My cough has almost completely gone away. Another fish died and we flushed him. Tonight we watched the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon. It was pretty good but not as good as Silence. Edward Norton is a great actor and I'm glad he was able to make it in Hollywood with such a nerdy name. The only disappointing part was some of the predictability and the fact it was a little long, but other than that, it was a pretty good flick. A solid 7/10. Tomorrow I need to get my oil changed and my tires rotated. I'd also like to clean out my car and work on some scores. So, looks like another day full of SimCity 4. Awesome! On a final note, why do all design shows used baskets instead of drawers? If I got some wicker baskets in my domain, I'd be all up in the pissed. Only two more days until I leave for the Chi-town! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: December 18, 2003 - Basic Web Design Well, here's some picture of some music. It just happened to be in my web folder so there it is. I'm too lazy to download something new. I played a lot of SimCity 4 today. I also took Chompy to the dog park. She tried to escape when I went back to the car to get Jamie a coat. And by tried to escape, I mean escaped successfully. I figured if she WAS going to follow me, she'd try to jump the fence as she had done when I first got her. She didn't, though. She, like her precious Food Guy, is getting old. She wasn't old enough, however, to let a petty fence stop her. She burrowed underneath the doors of the fence and ran to catch up to me. She made such a big hole, The Ab followed her and they both were running around loose. I just opened the car door and they both ran to me and jumped in. Quick thinking, I know. Not that either of the dogs would have run away but it's scary to see your killer pit bull on the loose. And by killer, I mean very sweet. And by pit bull, I mean pit bull mix. For dinner, I made some chicken pesto but it was somewhat lacking. Lacking flavor, moisture and decent pasta (Al Dente anyone?). Tomorrow I need to clean out the car and clean up the pad and pack before 'pa comes into town. I also had a fun little conversation with Marty online today. He has a great screen name and throughout the conversation I kept thinking about how long ago he had to register that one. As I re-read what I wrote, my grammar is the worst. I especially like my sentence: Lacking flavor, moisture and decent pasta. Will this be my last journal until January 5th? I hope not. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: December 19, 2003 - Last Entry of the Year Today will be my last real entry until the first week of next year. I remember checking Brian's page 5-10 times a day last year (and probably the year before) because I was so bored even though the updates were weekly at best. I remember being pissed at him for not doing them daily, since his online journal was the only think reminding me that I would be able to return back to Florida, where Chompy did not have to sleep in a crate and I could go to bed at 2am without waking anyone up. Speaking of Chompy not being in her crate, she made it up on the pool table tonight while I was picking up my dad from the airport and opened her presents AND got into her travel bag and ate some of her food AND her leash. That bitch. I spent the day cleaning up and finishing my Christmas shopping. I was not entirely successful, though. I did finish my mom and Chompy, though. I still need to find my brother something small to go with his other present. I just flat out forgot to buy something for my grandparents. Oops. I looked for a Euchre deck with a Euchre stick but I couldn't find one at Toys R' Us so I gave up. I got some new fish today with Jamie. I don't know why black guys are so much nicer to use than the white guys but they are. Maybe I just have a grudge against that kid who didn't give me free fish even though I keep that place in business. There are six new fish in the tank now. After the apartment was cleaned, I picked up my dad from the airport tonight at around 11:30pm and we came home where I folded my laundry and put him to bed. It's now 1:09am in the morning and I'm not very tired. I'm sad about writing my last entry because it's very rare that I actually do something consistently for over a month. I usually am good for about three weeks before I give up on New-Thing-X. I'm going to try to send entries to Jamie (I have nothing else to in Chicago) and she's going to try to put them online for me while I'm gone so people like me doing get pissed at me. Chicago-ho. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: December 21, 2003 - Guest Entry: Jamie Hello everyone. Today marks the first guest entry into Mike's precious live journal. This is Jamie, and seeing as the readers would revolt if Mike didn't update this page over break, he will email me his entries and I will upload them regularly. Yes, he's that obsessed with keeping up with this thing. Since he's never been this devoted and consistent with anything in his life, I've decided to help him out. In case you were wondering how I'm doing, I have the flu, and it really sucks. The Ab and I are over here at Mike's right now to feed his fish. I'm also making some of his delicious chicken soup. I could make it at my house, but the only ingredients I actually own are salt and pepper, so I figured I'd steal Mike's. Yesterday I found a dead fish floating in the big tank--it was gruesome. I think it had been dead for about a week; I'll let you use your imagination as to how he looked. I flushed him. Today I found two more dead guys. I flushed one. The other decided to die in the most inconvenient spot ever, so I didn't scoop him yet. I'm putting it off because I'm going to have to move like 5 heavy rocks to reach him...damn fish. Okay, well here's Mike's email (exceptional grammar and all) about his eventful two-day drive to the exciting town of Naperville, IL. Enjoy. On Saturday, we left around 10am. We were somehwat delayed because Chompy ate her leash while I was picking my dad up at the airport. She also ate about half her trip food and pooped like a mofo later that night. Anyway, on the way out of town we stopped at PetCo. and I bought a new leash and some more treats. I didn't recognize any of the PetCo people. Well, that crazy lady with the tattoos that look like fourth graders pictures of their field trip to the morgue was there. She was nice, though she didn't give me anything free. We drove to Paducah, KY last night. The ride was uneventful for the most part. The only semi-stressful part was when Chompy's waterjug was discovered empty; it's contents soaking the entire backseat floor of the car. My dad insisted the best way to clean it up was with a single towel, ringing it when it was full of water. My idea was to just use all the dog towels and dry them out when we got to the hotel. Not wanting to be responsible for the first fight of the trip, I rang out the towels and did my best to pretend that did anything. We ate some Pizza Hut for dinner in Clarksville, TN. Mmm. There were seven Pizza Huts in Clarksville, despite a population barely half of Tallahassee's. We finally pulled into Paducah at around 10:30pm CST. My dad crashed and I stayed up to read more of this trashy John Grisham book. I read The Testament for about two hours and put down about 400 pages of it. It didn't strike me as a very good book but I guess if I'm going through it that quickly it can't be all that bad. Chompy was up and about during the night (my dad didn't make me crate her) and he took her out at 4am because apparently she was pacing. We left Paducah at around 10am this morning and I slept until about two hours short of Champaign. We ate a bite at Subway in the middle of nowhere and I took over the driving for the rest of the trip back. It was very monotonous but I only thought I was about to be pulled over once. The SatRadio worked well, even though my dad insisted on the CarRadio so he could get a mix of oldies not separated by decade. I discovered in my time driving (while he was asleep) that Hey Ya! is on the radio 24/7 on some station. We pulled into the driveway after 1038 miles around 4:30pm. Steve immediately commented on my balding and I, lacking anything witty, punched him (with my bald head!). After a home-cooked pot roast (c'est delicious!), Steve and I went to see LoTR 3. He paid for my ticket since he has a job and I don't. The movie was ok. The ending was about a half hour too long and I don't remember half the things from the movie being in the book. I give the movie a solid 7/10 , though and of course, a 10/10 for effects. Afterwards, we went to the new Baker's Square for a little grubbie-grub and I tried to convince Steve there is more to life than being mature. He was more mature when he was 12 than I am now and he pointed that out. I told him that I had a lot more stories than he ever would, which is also true. I have a feeling he tells my stories with him as the main character. How funny. Tonight, I'm going to pet Chompy and maybe, just maybe install some SimCity 4 up in he'a. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: December 22, 2003 - Guest Entry II: Jamie Hello. Here's Mike's reply to what I wrote yesterday--it's quite mean. Send him hate mail (coming up with witty replies will give him something to do). Oh Jamie, I didn't realize you were going to take over my journal! Your days are not full of the excitment that turns my world. Your dog, while sweet, lacks basic chomping noises. You don't even have two fishtanks! Hence, I do not think you should be allowed to have a journal. You can't even excite people by telling them which new fish you have purchased or about witty or insightful things your students said to you. Really, the only thing you have going for you is that you can talk about me, which is (obviously) the focus as well as most interesting subject matter in my journal. My day today. I went to bed at 5am after playing some serious SimCity 4. I awoke around 11am and played a little more. I then talked to Jamie and Mark online. Dial-up sucks. It's all up in the suckage. Mega-suckage to the max. To the max X-treme. Mad Maxxxtreme. Maxtreme. Soun ds like a tampon. I ate some freshly baked cookies for lunch and then played a little more SimCity. The game crashed and I didn't save it. I was pissed. I then went out to lunch and shopping with Mark and I forced him to go into all of the elitest stores in which I now shop. I tried to buy Steve (my brother) something but I kept getting sidetracked by me! I talked to the youngest gay man in the world today at the store where I bought Steve's present. He was the type of gay guy that they would put on TV; full of wrist twitching, eye batting and speaking mostly incoherently but spewing very, very complimentary things. He was nice enough once he finished his choreography to pull the sweater off the store mannequin for me since they were out of stock. He then went to talk to this girl and apparently he turned his gayness off and his voice dropped a couple of octaves and on the way out I overheard him mention his girlfriend. Whatever, I know nothing. We came bac k from the mall and I pet Chompy for a good long time. We also went to this place called Petland and MY GOD did they have a lot of fish that I want. Obviously, they wouldn't survive two weeks in any sort of bowl I had here so I guess I'm S.O.L (Fuego). I let my brother beat my ass at some video games, since our regular plans were cancelled. Here is a little rant (or two...or more!). I found out today my aunt is not invited to Christmas at our house this year. Apparently she got in a fight with my grandma and my dad took her Christmas-Day-Party priviledges away. Not that I blame him. My aunt is really irritating and I can't fathom what she could possibly argue with my grandmother about. I don't think I've ever heard her disagree with anything. I remember when I was about 12 and Steve about 8, we decided to type up a letter from the Neo-Nazi Party and ask her to renew her membership. Steve went out to get the mail at her house and stuck the letter in with her normal mail. When she opened it, she read it quickly and just tore it up with an eye roll. Admittedly, we were hoping for something crazy to happen. I don't know if my 12 year writing was near-enough to that of a Neo-Nazis' to make it believable (but I would imagine it was close.) Anyway, she was laughed it off and I ho pe she's one of the 99,99999999992% of American that doesn't read my online journal to know that we did that. I'm sure she figured it out, though. Whatever. Back to my aunt. I just don't understand how this fight happened. If she DOES come to Christmas and a fight is inevitable, do I say something? Do I let my dad handle it? I don't think either of us are really good in such situations. He raises his voice and I'm so sarcastic whomever I yell at usually cries. But who else would do it? Of course, I hope this doesn't happen and we can have a nice Christmas. I must say, so far my immediately family and I have all gotten along really well. There haven't even been any close calls. It's somewhat pleasant (*shock*gasp*). I discovered today that I left my charger to my cell phone in Tallahassee. I brought the one to my old phone so I'm not going to be making any calls until I get either a car charger or...I...get...back...to Tallahassee. Finally, could there be anything more annoying than Fran Drescher in that Old Navy commercial when she says, "My shizzle's gone bizizzle!." I think not. Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and maybe I won't write as much but man, I'm bored. Seriously. So if I'm this bored, there are probably other people out there reading this because THEY'RE that bored. So, you just go off and have a great night! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: December 23, 2003 - Guest Entry III: Jamie You didn't break my finger Mike...liar! Today is one of my favorite days of the year. Christmas Eve Day's Eve. In my family, it is the day that my mother schedules any sort of Illinois-only appointments. Today was the dentist. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. I woke up at 8am to Chompy breathing in my face. I rolled over but she kept breathing that "take me out breath" until my dad finally took her out (I was up late playing SimCity again and was way too tired to take her out so early). I woke up for keeps around 11am, where I played a little SimCity and chatted to Jamie, Brian and Marty online. Jamie told me that she was going to play tennis with some guy she played with in high school. If myself, an only semi-star tennis player could break her finger, who knows what this guy will do. Boy, I've broken a lot of people's fingers. I'm sorry: Jamie, Dr. Shaftel, Beth and whomever else I'm forgetting r ight now. Oh, but Old Fat Guy, I'm not sorry at all about punching you. Go on a diet Fatty McChunk. So I managed to do absolutely nothing until 3pm, when I went to the dentist. Some teenage girl made eyes at me in the waiting room and she was pretty cute (for a high school senior). Sadly, she was there WITH HER KID and undoubtedly just on the prowl for some handsome, rich, benevolent man to wed her and to play Candyland with her young daughter. Alas, I do not like Candyland. Apparently, flossing like a fiend really does help your teeth. I was in and out in about 20 minutes instead of the usual three hours while Dr. Joanna hacks away at the plaque with some sort of antique chisel and hammer. There was no blood or guts this time, a nice change of pace. I had yet another cavity-less trip. Hooray. After the dentist I went to visit with my grandma Doris since she only lives a couple blocks away in Montegomery (eek), IL. Montegomery is not the kind of place that you want to live. As far as I know, she is the only person in the city that admits to living there. Not that it's horribly crime ridden or has houses made from old ritz cracker boxes, but it's just kind of got that generic small-city/medium-size-town feel. If you're not from the midwest, you can't really understand what this is like. There are no places like this in Florida. And if you're from Florida and you think you know what I'm talking about ("Yeah, dude, like Quincy) you're just totally wrong and stupid. Anyway, I spent a good four hours there just sitting and talking. My grandma is the best. It snowed on the way home, so I got to refresh my ice-driving skills. After I ate my Burger King dinner, I played some Pictionary with Steve and the family. We only played two games, the first of which my parents didn't even get a turn to play. The second game, Steve and I came back from about 25 spaces to eek out a win and continue our life-long winning streak over my artistically retarded parents. Although they are not talented in the art of drawing (my dad in particular), they are always good for at least one hysterical drawing. If I had a scanner, I'd scan his picture for the word "crack" tonight. I guess you'll just have to take my word for how funny it was. Picture a stickman encased in some sort of rubber-band sarcophagus and you might get the basic idea. After our stunning wins, Chompy and I played her favorite game "I've Got Steggy and Since You Don't, You Should Want To Chase Me All Over the F'ing House To Get It Back And If You So Much As Look Disinterested I'll Severe A Toe With One Bite." After that, two of Steve's friends came over and we played Euchre. My partner had never played before and made some of the following calls:
1) Ordered Hearts on: 9C,10C, QH, 9D, KS
2) Ordered Nothing on: JH, JD, AH, JS, JC ("I was four suited....")
3) Ordered Clubs on: all 9's and a 10 of clubs
We still won the first game and would have won the second game except for the fact my brother's partner cheated. He didn't follow suit to preserve trump twice AND dealt two times in a row after he passed (It's called STICK THE DEALER for a reason, dumbass) on a call the first time. I won a lot of tricks tonight by just calling my best hand. Even if I had next to nothing I still called it and won. I need to remember all my strategies for tomorrow, so I can beat my cousin and my grandma. Sometime before now and then I need to get Steve to learn when to lead trump. If he plays like he did tonight I don't see any victories in my near future, though. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: December 24, 2003 - Letter to Dr. Clendinning In my family, Christmas Eve Day is the day we go to my Grandparents' farm house in Coal City and act like brats for a full day. The day was more quiet than it usually has been in the past for a couple reasons. First, there were no fights. Secondly, Chompy was the only dog there. My parents dog, Ginger, died a little after Christmas last year and my cousin Julie's dog, Barney, stinks too bad (due to chronic ear infections allegedly) to bring anymore. All the families were there as well as my cousin Julie's new husband, Kevin and Julie's brother's (Ryan's) girlfriend, Ellen. I really like my cousin Ryan and I know he and Ellen have been together a long time, but she is way too good for him. They're both freakin' weird, though. They're both into that fantasy type stuff (like Jamie, Chris and Marty) and Ryan made some sort of fantasy-themed character. I wish I could remember what he titled it , but I can't. Something freakin' weird. He did a nice job with the photography, though, and I guess I could look for it and give the link, so you could see how freakin' weird it is for yourself...Well, Chompy is asleep on the top stair so I'm not going to wake her up to go find it. It's got pictures of his friends dressed up as elves and giants and other weird things. I respect the amount of work and time he put into it; it's really done professionally, but I don't know of anyone that will pay $12 for a calendar (regardless of how glossy the paper) of people dressed up as things that weird. Maybe if they were, like, nude elves or something. Well, whatever. If I didn't know any better, I would have said Ellen was making eyes at me. Steve and I both had a good laugh at that. Not that we're shallow, but..well, you know. We went to mass tonight at around 5:30 and they let us out after only 40 minutes. Chris tmas score! Afterwards, we went back and opened our presents. All of my presents were somehow related to the kitchen. A new blender...a cookbook....some new utensils....a very, very nice new knife set....a huge pan to fry more than two strips of bacon...things of that nature. The gifts were very thoughtful but I hope this kitchen stuff does not continue for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy getting new things and I like to cook but if next Christmas is like this Christmas, I'm going to have about forty sets of measuring cups. Oh well, it's better than coal. Steve got a TON of DVD's. I can't help but wonder if someone was sellilng them en masse out of a trunk somewhere. Tomorrow, my immediate family will exchange gifts, which is my favorite part because I actually have purchased gifts for all of them. Later in the day, my dad's side of the family come over and we all eat ham and other delicious treats prepared by my mom. The only part of the day I don't like is that Chompy has to stay in her crate the whole time in the laundry room. The last time we were there she killed a bird by jumping up and grabbing it mid-air. That's my Chompy. I can't wait for school to start and have things to do so that I only write a couple lines. I feel like I'm writing sections of my thesis. Hmm...little sections of my thesis....
Dr. Clendinning,
I was thinking instead of doing that translation for my thesis, you could just read my journal. Dr. Mathes said it was fine if it was okay with you. So, just let me know.
Your friend and student with the best hair,
Mike C.
Finally, I don't know if Chris, Jamie and Marty like fantasy but I rationalize is by picturing them all playing Dungeons and Dragons and wearing, like, vampire capes and stuff and arguing over which Misfit's song is the best. Oh and I picture them all with those weird Elfin ears like in LoTR. Man, they've got some big ears. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: December 25, 2003 - Merry Christmas Merry Christmas! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: December 26, 2003 - Christmas Wishes My sleep was interrupted this morning by my uncle, who was in the process of deleting everything off his computer to clear up some memory to put a new game on for his kids. Fortunately, he called me (on accident, he wanted my mom) and I was able to spare Norton and MS Office before they got the axe. I tried to explain the difference between RAM-Memory and Hard Drive Space-Memory. I think I've discovered a helpful teaching tool for next semester. I tried to find a dog park after that, by calling the Naperville Humane Society. Not only do they have the least helpful message (please enter your AKC number followed by the pound sign [get it? ha!]) but (and I just made that pound-sign thing up) the woman on the phone knew nothing about dogs. She said that she owned a dog, yet had never heard of a dog park. I tried explaining this abstract concept to her, but unable to send her any 3D graphs or shoebox dio ramas complete with pasta-Chompy, I was mostly unsuccessful. Steve and I were going to go to Baker's Square but he decided he didn't want to go at the last minute. I was pissed. Not that I NEEDED to have Baker's Square's delicious honey mustard sauce-caked chicken tenders and oreo pie, but because I hadn't eaten all day because I had anticipated us going there. Oh well. This evening Steve and I went shopping and I bought a car charger for my new cell phone. It seems to work alright, although my parents insisted that none of the cars will charge things when the car isn't running. Oh well. Steve bought a bunch of video games. We went to PetSmart up here and MY GOD, CHOMPY. They have so many fish I want. Why can't the stink-hole of Tallahassee produce a PetSmart this good? Not only did they have a wide variety of fish, but they had big ones. Like, ones that actually have a chance of survival. ; We went to Meier (I think that's the correct spelling), which is like a northern-only version of Wal-Mart but without the good prices. The store was nice enough but they needed to sell less random things. We came home, played some Euchre (with Steve and I dismantling our parents 10/8, 10/5, 10/0) and then played some more MarioKart. MarioKart, the newest fun-device for Steve's GameCube is actually fun. I usually hate games on that thing but I think it's only because Steve devotes 20 hours a day to playing whatever-game for five months until the point no one will play with him. With us both starting from square one, though, it was considerably more fun. And it's a racing game. And no one beats me at racing games. Ever. Well, not Steve anyway. It's now 2:13am and time for some sleeping. Steve, Chompy and I are going to drive out to West Chicago tomorrow and try to find some mysterious dog park.&nbs p; Here are some confidential notices to some loyal readers:
Jamie: I hope you feel better.
Kathy: Have fun with Brian and please talk him into helping me take my pool table apart
Brian: Have fun with Kathy and let her talk you into helping me talking my pool table apart
Marty: Your popularity rises every day. Keep on it!
Mike: I had a weird sex dream with you in it. Well, you were coming with me to a strip club and you were none too pleased about it.
Ashl(e)y [Steve's love interest]: Steve is way better than that Dan guy. And Steve has a way cooler brother. I mean, how many nerds do you know that keep online journals? [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: December 27, 2003 - Rest and Relaxation Today was a very relaxing day. (Aren't they all when you have nothing to do?) Steve and I took Chompy to the Springbrook Dog Training Facility. It was a large enough area, but the lack of a fence made me nervous. I put my inhibitions, aside though, and took her off her leash anyway. She was off-leash for about five minutes with Steve and I constantly running behind her before I just gave up and put her leash back on. It was a lot like the first time she and I ever went to the dog park and I would call her back to me (hah) every (literally) 20 seconds. She didn't even have a chance to run away. Once we put her leash back on, we trudged through the forest preserve for a couple of miles. Chompy did her best to hunt but I was able to stop her before anything died the two times she tried it. Last night, my dad, my brother and I picked up my grandma for dinner at Portillo's (the greatest rib place in history) . There was a family full of rednecks there, all sporting matching NASCAR jackets. My favorite part was where the 10 year old and his dad got into a mock fight when they made it to the front of the line. The ribs weren't as good as I remembered, sadly, but I ate them all anyway. After dinner we went to the PetCo by my grandma's house and they had some great fish too! I hate you, Tallahassee. We arrived at home and Steve and I played a couple games of MarioKart. Around midnight I started to feel a small cold coming on... [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: December 28, 2003 - Led Zeppelin: Sick Again ...I woke up around 6am completely unable to breath out my mouth or swallow. Obviously, I was in a panic, so I tried to call Chompy (who knows why, but it seemed like a great idea at the time). Since I could produce no sound, I stumbled to the bathroom and poured some water into my mouth. The sting of it was so bad tears came to my eyes but at least I had the basic function of swallowing back. Chompy decided she wanted to go out a half hour later so I did my best to ignore her. I was already freezing and shaking, not to mention a host of other not-so-pleasant symptoms. My dad came to take her out around 8am and I oozed upstairs to ask if he had a thermometer. 100.7. I tried to drink some water with my chewable vitamin but it didn't really work. I went back to sleep. I woke up again around noon. I know I played some online canasta and talked to some people on IM but I can't remember when. I went back to sleep after that and just woke up now, around 6:30pm. And hooray, I'm still tired. At least I can swallow. If only my left nostril would allow air to pass through it I'd be doing a lot better. I can swallow better, as my tonsils have finally reduced to about 3x their normal size from the 300x of this morning (they were hanging out of my mouth...onto the floor). I'm going back to sleep. I was just sick the week before school ended. What did I do to deserve a back-to-back?! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: December 29, 2003 - Sick Again: Part II Today. Well, today I was rudely awakened around 9am to go to my multiple doctors' appointments. My ailment was diagnosed as some sort of viral infection and my eyesight is possibly improving but if nothing else, it's not worsening. I did nothing other than go to the doctors and sleep today. I made some of my world-class chicken soup tonight. Much like everything else I make in this house, it was mediocre. Maybe it was that I tried to double-batch it or that none of the stores have decent noodles up here. Whatever.
Since my doctor was almost an hour late getting me in, I had plenty of time to think about evolution. Thank god, I do not have manic depression or I would have been in big trouble. First of all, I am blind without my glasses on. If I had been born even 100 years ago, I'd most likely be dead because I can't see anything. And I mean anything. Blur your eyes as hard as you can and it's most likely better than I can see. Also, I'm not exactly built for survival--as a caveman who couldn't gain weight I don't think I would have survived my first winter. You get the idea--I can't help but wonder if I'm not one of the people who is supposed to pass my genes along. At the same time, though, I see plenty of people passing their genes along who probably are not doing anything for mankind.
Hopefully, tomorrow I will continue to improve and be able to talk again. If not, though, I'm going to start leaning mime. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: December 30, 2003 - Engineer Monitor I am still sick and that sucks. Apparently the internet is down in my apartment in Tallahassee. Tomorrow is my last real day being at home and I will most likely spend most of it with my friend Mark before heading out to my Grandma's house for New Year's. How exciting. Today my mom and I watched Finding Nemo. It was a solid 4/10. The Pixar people did a great job with the actual visual effects but the plot was less than interesting. As a fish tank owner, though, I like the idea of my fish plotting to make the tank dirty to get back at me. That would suggest it wasn't my own apathy causing it. I'm certain less likely to buy some clown fish now, though. Not that I could just dump them into my tanks but I think that movie really made me think down of my $3-5k investment for an 120 gallon salt-water reef tank.
In other news, Steve brought me home a 21" monitor that was due for disposal at work. It has a couple cracks in the front but it seemed to work fine. Well, you also have to turn it off and turn it back on again every hour because it gets blurry. I figure I'll take it and if it sucks, it sucks and I still have my old monitor. However, think of actually being able to work on more than one staff in Finale! My pointing and clicking entry would be so much improved!
Finally, Chompy has informed me that she is ready to return to Tallahassee, stink-hole for fish but sweet-hole for dog parks. ok. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: December 31, 2003 - Nothing To Report ...Uh, nothing to report. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·