last friday (april 2nd) was a work holiday. i don’t think i accomplished anything. i had a cafe au lait at coffee groundz in the early afternoon, then ate a late lunch with the potts at fu’s garden in rice village. (my fortune said “a romantic mystery will soon add interest to your life” …i wish i believed in fortunes.) afterward i went next door to half price books and picked up some cds:
- my life with the thrill kill kult – 13 above the night (interscope / atlantic / time warner)
- styrofoam – i’m what’s there to show that something’s missing (morr music)
- porter wagoner – wagonmaster (anti / epitaph)
- hank williams, jr. – high notes (curb / warner)
- dwight yoakam – hillbilly deluxe (reprise / warner)
- various – napoleon dynamite soundtrack (lakeshore / fox)
- various – pulp fiction soundtrack (mca / columbia)
in the evening that very same friday was the geek gathering. on my way there, i stopped by the half price books on westheimer near montrose and picked up a few things for wheresthatbeen.com. i managed to get 3 softcover sandman compilations (i can’t recall for sure which three…i think maybe the doll’s house, dream country, and fables and reflections). i also got a copy of aliens. barrett and amanda brought some of her dj gear to the gathering to play music, but i guess barrett didn’t have much to play. i offered to play geeky/tech music from my iphone, so i actually ended up playing dj the whole evening. i’m not sure anyone really paid attention to the music or cared that much, but i did it anyway. perhaps emboldened by my fortune earlier in the day, before my arrival i’d decided i would perhaps try talking to someone who’s been at a few geek gatherings. but once there events and my mindset persuaded me otherwise.
i don’t recall doing anything good with the daytime saturday (april 3rd). in the early evening i ate at chili’s with the potts clan. afterward, i joined jack and jackson and dietrich for a “guy’s night out” (using my belair). they were planning on seeing alice in wonderland in 3d but it wasn’t showing or something so we ended up watching clash of the titans in 3d. it was the first 3d movie i’ve seen with the new, hip 3d technology. i wasn’t that impressed by the 3d. although i’ve since read neither was the director. the movie wasn’t filmed in 3d, the studio added it later. which means it comes out looking sort of like a viewmaster. the movie itself was pretty enjoyable, although i didn’t think it was epic or anything.
easter sunday i met the potts at the martin-weber’s place. we talked and ate and drank and had an easter egg hunt, then hung out and talked more. i spent most of the day and evening there. i don’t know them that well, but they seem like really cool people. their neighbor and her son joined us on the egg hunt. i didn’t really get to talk to them much, but they seemed cool too.
one night earlier in the week i watched a 99 cent itunes rental: showtime. this isn’t a movie i would jump at seeing, but itunes has three a week at 99 cents and the trailer looked like it might be funny. it’s a cop movie with robert deniro and eddie murphy. deniro is a serious detective, murphy is a beat cop that wishes he was an actor (but doesn’t have the chops). deniro gets tagged to do a “reality” show about cops, murphy gets picked to be his partner, wacky hijinx ensue. william shatner plays a small role as himself in the movie, and his bits are pretty hilarious. deniro is also fairly funny as the straight guy. but overall it’s mostly predictable, and nothing to get excited about. still, it was okay for a laugh.
tuesday night after work i was going to see a free screening of after.life with sue. but i guess a lot of people had the same idea, because i was there about 45 minutes before showtime and there was a long line and they’d already given out all the tickets. so instead i met sue at chuy’s and we sat on the patio and had some margaritas and i ate supper. i went home and watched the henry jaglom film eating.
tuesday i got my new pair of boots. these fit better, so i’ll be keeping them. i’ll probably take a pic at some point, but they’re really just black steel toe engineer style motorcycle boots. i have learned that after the accident i don’t think i can bend my left ankle quite as much as my right, as the left boot is a little harder to get on. also, since the boots are “stovepipe” style (that’s what i’ll call it…not sure if that’s actually a used term), my left leg/calf doesn’t fit as well as my right. ever since the accident my left leg from my knee down is a little larger than my right, plus as i’m up and about the left still retains fluids and bloats/swells some. (i’m assuming that may never go away.) it doesn’t hurt, but it’s there. this makes the top of the boot not fit as well as it should. but it still works okay.
wednesday a strange thing happened on the way to the show. it’d been raining lightly some for awhile, so everything was somewhat wet. i was in my pickup on alabama and turning left onto montrose, when suddenly about one third of the way into the turn my pickup stopped turning and started going straight ahead. i let off the gas and hit the brakes, but that didn’t solve anything. as my backend started to come around, my right front tire bumped the curb and jumped it, soon followed by my right rear tire. fortunately, there is nothing but grass and then sidewalk there. i put it in first and took off. i was worried my steering had gone wonky, but after driving and playing with the steering i guess i just hit a slick spot and my front tires lost traction. it being a pickup (and one with lots of torque and a low gear ratio), i have that happen with my rear tires all the time. but i almost never have my front tires lose traction.
late in the week i had another dream in my recent thematic dream sequence. this time it was back to tamara. i was hanging out with a bunch of people i didn’t know very well, and somehow tamara ended up there and knew at least one or two of them. then she and i ended up going back to where she lived, which i was unsure about doing the whole time i was going with her, but i did.
friday night i watched the 99 cent itunes movie igby goes down. i saw it in the theaters when it came out, but it’d been awhile and i hadn’t seen it since. it’s a pretty good movie about a dysfunctional rich family on the east coast, igby being the youngest of two sons. his father went mental, his mother is overbearing, and his brother is a manipulative overachiever. igby is just sort of screwing up his life. (although with that family, it might be hard to not want to screw up your life.)
saturday around noon i finally made the call for a plumber to come by and fix the leaking (no longer dripping, as it got worse) shower fixture. he came by a couple of hours later. $316 in time/labor, $24 in parts = $340 total. time here? i’m guessing about two hours tops. plumbers make bank. but the shower is no longer leaking, and it would have taken me much longer to learn about the fixtures and find the parts i needed (if i could find them) and do the work…then hopefully it wouldn’t have leaked when i was done.
saturday i also got a shirt i ordered. what shirt? why a brand spanking new shirt for the crucified! pretty much just like my old, threadbare one. same old versions of their name and logo on the front and back. sweet!
saturday evening i dropped by a liquor store and picked up some potato vodka, then i went by luling city market and picked up some brisket and sausage links. why? meat and martini, of course! this of course is the yearly party thrown by chris and mary, where you dress nicely and drink martinis and eat lots of red meat (although bacon is temporarily deemed a red meat for the evening). i wore my green fedora with brim up all the way around, my black 50’s style dress shirt with two vertical grey stripes down the left chest and “v8” buttons, grey slacks with my wallet chain, and black and white wingtip docs. i thought i looked appropriate for a 50’s-era martini party. but that’s one of the ways i dress anyway, so it wasn’t really out of the ordinary. the party was cool, as usual. even though i don’t really expect it to happen, i still generally hope maybe i’ll meet someone there and we’ll hit it off. i guess it didn’t happen again. 🙂
i’ve still not gotten a call from the shop about my belair lifters from edelbrock. i guess if i haven’t heard anything by near the end of this week i’ll break down and call to see if i can figure out where the hold up is. this process has been insanely, stupidly long.
and tonight i did my taxes. it’s nice that i don’t have to fill out all kinds of forms related to all sorts of things. while it’s possible i may pay more in taxes than i need to, i don’t know that i really care. if i do overpay, the rest of you that pay taxes and/or receive benefit from the federal government can thank me.
“my head they tried to wreck
and i just laughed and said
guess who lost the go in the go for it”
–“the go in the go for it” by grandaddy from sumday