“we’re through being cool” –devo

friday morning i called classic toyota honda in austin and paid for the work done to my element. my brother and his wife (that’s still an odd thing for me to type or say…my brother with a wife…and a baby on the way) went up there during an extended lunch break and picked it up. so that’s taken care of. they will be borrowing it until i retrieve it, or they may decide to purchase it from me. we’ll see what happens.
friday evening was the geek gathering. it was a pretty small turnout. after the gathering, i went over to the studio and met with jack and sue for a couple of hours. they claim i am a good mediator between them. i just like to think that even though i couldn’t make my own marriage work out, at least maybe i could help another one survive. of course, a failed marriage of my own doesn’t exactly instill confidence in my skills in regards to marital relations. plus i’d rather be dealing with a relationship of my own than that of others. i think.
saturday afternoon i met the potts clan at the dairy queen on westheimer near beltway 8. i was craving dairy queen (i grew up in a small town), so i let them know where i was going and they joined me. afterward, they were heading to an aaron brothers to purchase some picture frames, so i decided i would go ahead and buy one too. i had been meaning to pick up a frame for the poster from my brother’s wedding. i picked up that, plus a couple of other frames. i then went by a target and picked up some d-cell batteries for my many 3-cell mag-lites, then headed to the potts’ house. i ended up spending the rest of saturday there.
sunday sue came over around lunchtime and brought some food from wendy’s, and we ate outside because simcha was asleep in their van. it was a nice day. and i don’t get outside that much in the middle of the day, unless i’m on my motorcycle. sunday evening i had tentative plans to either watch a movie at home with natalie or in the theater with sue, but both plans fell through so i just stayed at home at did stuff around the house.
monday night i finished reading searching for G-d knows what by donald miller. i didn’t really like it all that much. blue like jazz was better in my opinion, and i really liked through the painted desert more than searching… or blue…. the last fourth of searching… was much better than the rest of it, i thought. but i think part of it is that the ironic and coy attitude that bugged me some in blue… was turned up a lot more through the earlier parts of this book. or maybe i just noticed it more. or maybe i agreed with the sentiments behind it less this time around, so it made it seem more noticeable and annoying. whatever the case, there are some beautiful ideas and points to be found in this book, but i didn’t enjoy having to go through most of the book to have to get to them. obviously your mileage may vary. i do agree with the general premise, which is that american xianity has attempted to turn belief into a formula or a set of steps, and it’s really not that simple at all. it’s especially funny that the very people who scream about how “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship!” are some of the worst about trying to turn it from a relationship into a set of steps to salvation, happiness, fulfillment, weight-loss, financial success, or whatever else.
tonight i headed over to crescent city beignets and had some beignet strips and cafe au lait. i had meant to bring velvet elvis, but i ended up picking up the l33t h4x0r h4ndb00k by mistake. i was already there by the time i realized it, so i went ahead and read what i had. it wasn’t the kind of material i’d been planning to read, and to be honest the …h4ndbook is not particulary l33t …or w3ll-wr1tt3n. there was a table of attractive younger women there, from various races and cultures…kind of like a benetton ad. from bits of conversation i overheard, i decided they were all mail-order brides in some kind of support group. which i doubt is true, but it made it more interesting to think that. it was also at this point that i decided the next woman i date needs to be a pale-skinned brunette russian (or at least eastern bloc) with a name like nadia or such. (nadia is a nice name though.) jennifer was a brunette but wasn’t eastern bloc (so far as i know), and tamara — though having the russian pronunciation of her name and being of polish descent (eastern bloc) — was a dirty blonde. (note how my dating options are so wide open these days i have to drastically limit them with such artificial limitations.)
i’m still waiting on some stuff so i can finish up transferring the title of the bel air into my name. i’ll be happy when all of that is taken care of. i also still need to drop it off at the shop. i should take care of that so i’ll have it in time for the holidays. speaking of the holidays…i wonder what i’m going to drive back home? both of my 4-wheel vehicles aren’t exactly friendly with gas, and my 2-wheel vehicle isn’t so fun in the cold and/or bad weather. what to do?