i had to knock this out before xmas…

wow. almost two weeks since an entry. i think this has been the longest gap in a number of months. i’ll try to rattle off some of the interesting goings on i can think of…
back on the 16th i heard from the missouri owner of the bel air. he had one question for me, then he was dropping the s.a.s.e. i sent to him into the mail for me. unfortunately, it didn’t arrive at my house until friday, so i couldn’t go and get the title and plates taken care of. my temp tag expired on the 23rd, so my choice of which vehicle to take to brady for the xmas holidays was limited. i took the pickup.
i rolled 64k on my pickup odometer at the san saba river bridge on 87 on my way to brady.
i’ve seen a few movies over the last couple of weeks. i watched knocked up over at the potts’ house. it was pretty good. not great, but enjoyable to watch. i rented and watched hot rod a few days ago, and watched it at my house with emily. it’s kind of stupid, but fortunately it’s the kind of stupid humor i enjoy. it’s not like a lot of dumb comedy films of the last number of years, that tend to be based on crude sex and gross bodily function humor. i watched most of elf on tv while at my parents’ place. it seemed to be pretty funny as well. this past thursday i went to a free screening of juno with sue. it was good, with quirky humor. the only thing i kind of didn’t like was that it seemed utterly self-aware most of the time — almost every line was some kind of clever and/or sarcastic quip. but the main female character was played really well i thought, and the storyline kept it interesting and not completely predictable.
on the 14th i took the bel air to a mechanic. he looked at it and told me what he thought about things. he talked to me for a long time. he seemed most worried about the brakes, so i suppose i’ll get them done first. of course, i hadn’t driven it for a week or two, and when i got in it and drove it over there the clutch or whatever didn’t ever make a sound. he also discussed the fact that the back end was dropped, so it wasn’t just bad shocks or leaf springs. when i talked with the previous owner on the phone i asked him about it and he said that yes, his dad had done that. he claimed it shouldn’t be anything that would be difficult to switch back. so hopefully they just put the axle above the leaf springs or something simple like that.
so i drove the bel air to work from the mechanic after that (on the 14th). it was a maintenance friday, so after work a few of us went to the volcano (or something like that…it’s in rice village) and had a break before we went to do downtime work.
on the 21st i drove the bel air to work as well. i and five other coworkers went in the car to the cleburne cafeteria. we got out early for the holidays, and i met a number of coworkers at vietopia for happy hour. it was an enjoyable time.
saturday i drove to brady for the holidays. i didn’t hit any animals. i did stop where i’d hit the antelope, just to see if perhaps its body would still be there. it wasn’t, of course. i stopped in austin and did most of my xmas shopping. that was nice, since i hadn’t really planned to do it. i hadn’t really been in any kind of holiday spirit, so i was originally just planning to go home and skip doing any holiday shopping and do it later. but i managed to knock out almost everything within about two hours in austin. i did a little bit more online the next day once i got to brady.
this last week i spent a lot of time with emily. i’ll have to write more about that at some point. i’ve had several people get in touch with me i haven’t seen in various amounts of time. a couple were through facebook, one was through myspace, and the last was via my blog due to a google vanity search. interesting times.
on the 15th i went to miller’s hats and ended up buying a couple of fedoras. that was kind of an interesting experience. the fear with fedoras is that instead of looking like a guy from the 50’s or a cool ska/swing guy, you end up invoking memories of michael jackson, corey feldman (?), or the one zany character in the fedora from all teen 80’s films. we’ll see how i feel about the look for me. i bought one nicer one — dark grey with a thick black band, and a cheaper second one — a brownish tweed or twill kind of pattern.
i picked up a 5-pack of alamo sweet cigars on friday (21st). they’re made by the finck cigar company in san antonio. i smoked one friday after work. they tasted similar to swisher sweets to me. i just like the fact it is a Texas company and they name their cigars after Texas people and/or places.
i’m sure i’ve forgotten some stuff, but i can fill in gaps as they come to me. i just need to get something up here before everyone decides my blog is officially dead. it’s not dead, it’s just resting.