maybe next week…

well, this week pretty much blew. between monday through wednesday not one single thing i thought was going to happen actually happened. the mechanic didn’t get the part i’d ordered until wednesday, so the car wasn’t ready. which meant my choices for going home for the holidays were my motorcycle (cold, long road trip) or my pickup (horrible gas mileage, carbon monoxide for hours in the cabin due to my exhaust manifold leaks). so i didn’t go home. i’ve got a separate entry written about one of the other things, so without going into too much detail, i’ve been waiting on tamara (my ex) for over a month to take care of a financial issue at a bank. all she has to do is sign a paper. she claimed she’d have time this week. end of friday and not a peep. hell, even two online orders i’d placed earlier got messed up. with one, they only had two of the seven things i ordered, so they refunded me. the second, after a week they got in touch with me to tell me both items are back-ordered and it’ll be early to mid december before i get them.
so…crappy week, staying in houston for the holidays. what could make it worse? the only friends i regularly hang out with, the potts, went on a road trip and are gone the whole time. so before the radio show i went by a liquor store and bought some friends to keep me company: an italian, an islander, a mexican, a pol, and a russian. at the show i was whining about my situation, and jay graciously offered to let me eat thanksgiving with him and cynthia. but i didn’t crave feeling like a charity case, so i thanked him and declined. i figured i’d spend the several holiday days alone, drinking and cleaning my house (not sure how well those go together, but i must say my bathroom is probably the cleanest it’s been since i moved in).
my thanksgiving meal i ate at house of pies. a turkey, bacon, and swiss melt. i came home and drank and distracted myself by watching the aggies lose to t.u. (although they did much better than i had figured they would.)
since i didn’t go home, i thought perhaps the mechanic could get me my car friday or saturday, since he’d said it’d be ready friday on wednesday but i told him i was going out of town. i called him friday and he said he was leaving friday evening and he wouldn’t be able to finish it. so no consolation prize for staying here. in addition, tamara didn’t suddenly become responsible on friday either. (i texted sue about it saturday afternoon, so she texted tamara and tamara said she was planning on doing it monday. *fingers crossed*) friday night i drank and watched several “sons of anarchy” episodes. i’m now into the middle of the current (2nd) season. i didn’t go out to any black friday sales.
about the only good thing that happened is i got a cd i’d bought on ebay and it is in good shape. it’s ryko’s long out of print devo hardcore vol 2. i’m almost done with all the devo merch i want (and can realistically own for a decent price).
saturday i broke down as far as shopping and went to microcenter and bought a new external drive (to use as a new time capsule) and a new powered 4-port usb hub. i wanted a 7-port, but they’re all abnormally more expensive than the 4-port ones. my plan was to get the new external up and running as a time capsule device, then pull the hard drive out of my old external drive (which had been my time capsule) and put it inside my g5 power mac. i’ve got the usb hub installed, and started trying to get the new backups going…haven’t gotten that working quite right yet. i still haven’t swapped out the internal hard drive either, but i did get the 320g drive pulled out of its enclosure and it should work in my powermac. at least buying the two things got me to rewire the whole area around my desk, so things are a little more organized and streamlined.
after doing all of the computer work and cable wrangling, i settled down with my alcohol and watched a few more episodes of the second season of “sons of anarchy”. i had thought about going to the illuminated art car parade, but i didn’t feel like going out all by myself. which is one of the main reasons i don’t go out much at all these days. sometimes it’s hard to want to go to places where people go as families or groups when you’re all by yourself.
today my brother came down and joined me in using the two free tickets i got from work for the texans-colts game. the texans started off pretty great, and i was surprised by how good they looked against the colts. but then the second half the offense fell apart and the defense couldn’t as consistently stop the colts like they did in the first half. after the game, on the way back home, we stopped by the half price books in rice village. i got a few cds and one book:

• bjork – volta (atlantic / warner)
• she wants revenge – this is forever (flawless / geffen)
• tom tom club – tom tom club (sire)
• zz top – tejas (warner)

and the hardcover book:

• dostoevsky – the best short stories (the modern library)

this evening i finished out the weekend consistently — drinking and watching “sons of anarchy” episodes.