guitars, girls, and guns (and coffee)

friday of last week after work i headed over to the potts house for supper. then i went to blanco’s to see dale watson. i like blanco’s, but sometimes they have the sound for the bands down too low. it’s almost like the sound level of a jukebox. but other than that, i like the place. it has a good mix of people, they’re all pretty friendly, lots of people dance (except me), and that one bartender has a really cool haircut and a cool look. i took my pipe with me and smoked it during a set break. while sitting outside smoking, i struck up a conversation about pipes with one of the guys who works there.
saturday i finally started going through some of the 3+ year old boxes of random crap tamara left behind in her haste to have selective life amnesia and start a new path. as i expected, it was difficult for me to go through at times because of the memories or thoughts tied to certain items i found. i only managed to get through one and a half or so boxes. i have a lot left to go through, unfortunately. it’s very possible i’ll be posting some bits and pieces about things i’ve found. on the good side, i found at least $6 in change that was never claimed in the divorce papers, which means i got at least $3 over on the system. yea, me! i left the house to meet up with jack at empire and eat a late lunch/early supper, then we headed to the new inversion coffeehouse on montrose. (on montrose a few blocks north of westheimer, where the art league’s inversion house was.) it seemed like a fairly cool space. i thought it was kind of lame they used a cup size naming convention very similar to starbucks. why is it so uncool to have small, medium, and large? because people want you to feel like they’re having some kind of esoteric experience that helps justify the price? seems kind of stupid to me. good coffee and well-prepared coffee drinks shouldn’t need to hide behind “sophisticated” names for the sizes. (or for the names of the drinks for that matter). i’m not saying that’s why they chose to do it — i don’t know why.
since i already brought up that huge coffee chain, i’ll make a confession that i finished reading pour your heart into it: how starbucks built a company one cup at a time by howard schultz a few weeks ago. someone at work let me borrow it, as i had gotten interested in the origin of the starbuck’s logo and i knew this book mentioned stuff about it. the book wasn’t really an exciting read, but i liked the first 2/3 or 3/4 of it. it was interesting reading about the growing and changing of the company, and how much they evidently worked to keep it focused on a company culture that shows more interest in the employees than most companies. the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the book was after they got big and became publicly traded, and in my opinion the tone of the book changes. howard starts to get defensive and sound kind of agitated because people start to become anti-starbucks, and he can’t seem to understand why. but i felt like he gave contradictory positions late in the book, trying to appease both the employees and the stockholders. i think it’s a good show of how something basic changes at some point when a company is trying to get bigger and starts working toward growth and investors/stockholders.
sunday i went to kaleo. i’d missed the last two weeks. i ate lunch with the potts, then went home. while at the potts’, brad and kelli showed up. they’d been down to galveston with jack shooting engagement pictures. once home, i decided to give up on finding the keys to my firebox — the box they were in must have been stolen. so i took a hammer and broke into the firebox to see if my stuff was still in it. it was. i called the police and told them someone had broken into my house and stolen a gun. humorously, the cop that came out was the same one that came out when i reported my license plate being stolen. he got out of the car and said “aww, man. you again! what is it this time?” when he was entering the gun into the computer in his car, there was no “walther” entry in the drop-down list. odd. he entered it as a smith & wesson, because i told him they are the ones who market the gun in the u.s. now. *shrug* later, i went by border’s and placed an order for a somewhat expensive cd box set. more info in an upcoming post.
monday i went by home depot and bought a new firesafe, since i’d destoryed my last one.
tuesday i dropped by a carter’s country and bought a new pistol. i was trying to decide between picking up a .40 s&w or a 9mm, neither of which i’ve ever fired (in a pistol) as far as i remember. i ended up going with a .40. i’m planning on going out to a range soon and putting a few boxes of ammo through it so i can see how it feels and to get used to it. then i’ll be taking the conceal carry class.