failure weblog

well, i never did make it by west alabama ice house thursday. i did go eat a late lunch at empire cafe though. in the afternoon chris called and asked if i wanted to borrow a carpet dryer they had. he brought it over that evening. i used it for a few hours thursday night, but unfortunately it’s continued to rain and i don’t have a garage or anything so it’s kind of hard to leave the windows down and let it air out. i’ve also noticed that my airbag and engine lights are on. i’m guessing it’s probably just sensors that got wet. i’ve been planning on taking the vehicle in for its 50k work, so i guess i can get them to check it then. i’m not too excited about the idea of it getting marked as being flood damaged though, since it wasn’t in the water that long, the water didn’t get terribly high, and i’ve been driving it since. but i guess i need to find out what’s making the lights stay on.
now i’m going to interlace parts of this and last weekend…
last friday evening i went over to blanco’s and caught the show by james hand. i don’t remember the name of the steel guitar player he had with him, but she was good. the lead guitar was also good. i think james mentioned both of them had been from the appalachians. i also spent some of the time sitting outside smoking my pipe. i had to deal with some loud and horny drunks, but i also had some decent conversations with a few people. some of the people working there seemed cool, and they actually asked me to join them at another bar when they were leaving. i decided not to join them, but i figured i’d see them again the next friday since dale watson was playing blanco’s then.
yesterday was maintenance for work, so i went in after lunch. in the morning i finally got around to ordering a few things for my pickup — inside door handles, window crank handles, an accelerator pedal, and 4 ignition and door key blanks. after the maintenance work, i headed back home and then over to blanco’s to catch dale watson. i saw one of the people who work there that i’d met the previous time and we talked for awhile. other than that, i stood or sat by myself and just watched the show. which was good. but it’d be nicer if i knew at least a couple of people who i could meet there, or wanted to go to shows with me. a date would be nice too. (i’m trying to be content being firmly single, but sometimes i’m not too excited about it.)
last saturday i pretty much spent hanging out with the potts and scott and kendra, who were visiting. they were helping jack and sue do some house repair and remodeling. i didn’t help much, but i did reconfigure the linksys wireless router and airport express systems they have so the airport express can be used as a wireless repeater.
last sunday afternoon i went with jason to top gun and spent some time putting rounds through my kimber, glock, (first) walther ppk/s, and kel-tec. i bought a wilson combat 7-round magazine at top gun, but when i tried using it the kimber jammed after a couple of rounds. i’m hoping i just need to break in the magazine. i’ll probably go ahead and buy another kimber tactical magazine anyway. i also got the kel-tec to jam on hollow points and winchester fmj. monarch round-tipped fmj bullets fed through okay. i did note it seemed to jam on the third round. the glock and kimber are both very accurate, very nice pistols.
today i got up fairly early, considering how late i was up. at top gun i’d talked with a guy there about my charles daly and he said the gunsmiths at gander mountain are really good. he said he’d sent a couple of people there after he’d had good experiences with them and everyone had been pleased. so i got up and drove up to the gander mtn at 290 and 1960/6. (that’s the one he and the other people had gone to.) i explained what was going on and they said they’d let me know. hopefully they can figure out what’s going on with it and fix it without it costing too much.
on the way back home i stopped by the men’s wearhouse and got fitted for my monkey suit for my brother’s wedding. it wasn’t raining when i got there this time, but after i was in the store it started pouring down. it didn’t last too long though, and by the time i left it was misting a bit.

normally i wouldn’t be home right now, but i am. the street i park my car on at work flooded this morning, and by the time i went back there the water was around the top of my rims, just at the bottom of the door frame. i walked up and peered inside and there was several inches of water in the front floorboards. fortunately, the element has stadium seating so it was only the floorboards of the front seats. the water was pretty much up to my knees where i was parked, but it was deeper in other areas i had tried to avoid to get to my car. i popped the back top and crawled in, took everything out of my pants pockets, crawled into the front and put it into neutral. then i crawled back out and commenced to pushing. i didn’t really want to start it while the tail pipe was below water. i pushed and pushed, but got stuck at some point. i was worried the water would rise more, or it would start raining again before i got it moved. just as i was starting to give up hope of pushing it, i got past whatever was blocking it. at the same time, a couple of guys from work showed up. they’d waded over to help me. i was pretty freaking tired at this point (and now have bruises on both shoulders), so i really appreciated them showing up. they helped me push it back 50 feet or so and into the middle of the road, where there was only about 8 inches of water. i got in and started it up. it blew water out of the tail pipe for awhile and smoked some, but it was okay. they hopped in and then i drove around trying to get one of them back to his apartment near reliant stadium. 288 was blocked and flooding, so we had to go through some neighborhoods for some time. the bayou was running high, which we could see because we drove along it for a few miles. the water appeared to be slowly draining from my floorboards, but it was still sloshing around whenever i made turns or changed speeds. at his apartment i took a cup and we got most of the water out. he gave me a couple of towels to dry it. but as we started moving again, water started showing up. i dropped them off back at work, then i headed home. i had realized my phone was dead before i got to work, so i had no way to call anyone or take pics. i think one of the guys took a few pics with his phone though. anyway, i’m going to clean up, put on some dry clothes, drop my flood-water-soaked clothes in the washer, and get something to eat. then maybe i’ll go sit at west alabama ice house for awhile and have a beer.

slow week. the only thing of much excitement was going to be the new apple wireless keyboard. after seeing the new imac, then seeing the new wireless keyboard on the apple website, i decided to get one. the keyboard, not the imac. unfortunately, i wasted life and energy going to the galleria for no reason. they told me hopefully by friday. friday i called them, plus two or three other local apple stores, at which point i learned it was going to be probably at least a month. eh. maybe by then i won’t be interested.
i did get a couple of zippo lighters i ordered a week or two ago. i had three before: one black chrome i bought back in 1994 or so; an antiqued brass cynthia bought for me in 1995 i think; and the brushed steel pipe lighter i bought a few months ago. the “black” of the “black chrome” had been chipping off for years, leaving more of a black chrome lighter with the mange. it was my daily carrier for the last several years. years ago i tried to clean up the antique brass lighter (with brasso or something) and stripped off the antiquing. it looked really shiny and nice when cleaned, but it pretty quickly tarnishes and looks like…well, tarnished brass. i’ve carried it at times, but not as much.
a lot of times, once people realize i carry a lighter they get a quizzical look on their faces and say “you don’t smoke. why do you carry a lighter?” (of course, i do smoke pipes and cigars on occasion, but i don’t smoke cigarettes — and have actually never even taken a puff off of one.) my generic response is: “the ability to control fire is what separates us from the animals. sometimes i need to be reminded of that.” i usually at some point also add: “plus, being able to start a fire whenever you feel like it is a really good thing too.” and add a somewhat devious smile.
anyway, i’d been looking for a new zippo on and off for a couple of years, but nothing ever really caught my eye enough. not that there were no designs i liked, but after having my previous issues i decided i didn’t really want one with something screened onto it since it would just chip off in my pocket. this year they came out with a new model, which i decided would be worth purchasing:

i’m not completely enthralled by the candy red coating, and it’ll very likely chip over time — but the skull is embossed into the metal, so even if the red starts chipping the skull should still be fine (and that’s what’s important).

[aside: skulls seem to be popping up more in my life. in addition to the lighter, i also recently picked up a couple of pair of boxers with skulls on them. (i have a couple of other ones from halloween season a couple of years ago, but the new ones are better.) last weekend i picked up a new chain wallet. while it doesn’t have skulls on it (it has a gothic-style cross), i ordered a couple of wallet chains and one of them has skulls. i’ll give more info on the chains after i get them.]

the second zippo i purchased to stay in my ’65 ford f-100 pickup. it’s a vintage series zippo with an old ford logo laser-etched into the chrome:

so it shouldn’t chip or flake or whatever. it’s also a pretty cool design, and the shape of the vintage lighter is cool (squared top, smooth bottom instead of indented). related to this, a few weeks ago at the briar shoppe i got a butane torch insert that’s designed to fit in a zippo lighter. i’d looked for something like this years ago but never could find one. since i will not be using the lighter all that often, a regular zippo would dry out and be useless when i actually wanted to use it (and i’d have to be refilling it for no reason all the time). even though i’m sure die-hard zippo-heads are feeling a disturbance in the force, it’s practical for me.
as long as i’m putting up pictures related to lighters and such, i might as well put up a picture of my barling pipe:

i realized a while back i never did put a picture up of it. note how i took the pic in front of the harvard classics, to make me look all intellectual and stuff. also note that immediately to the right are comic books and work by people related to the comic industry (dave mckean, neil gaiman, etc).

friday evening was the 12th anniversary party for the radio show. it was at dean’s downtown on main street. the turnout was pretty good, and i think overall it was good. while there, groovehouse mentioned some guys were going to be spinning old country vinyl at leon’s lounge that night. i thought that would be cool, but unfortunately i had committed to doing something for work at midnight so i wasn’t able to check it out. groove also told me someone had bought mary jane’s on washington and although they are remodeling the inside, outside on monday night someone spins old country. i might have to check into that.
saturday i slept in. as usual. after getting up i hopped in my pickup and went by the houston shoe hospital and picked up my boots, which appear to be fixed. i then stopped by goode company bbq. (i was so close…how could i not?) i was going to drop by the men’s wearhouse to get fitted for my monkey suit for my brother’s wedding, but it started dropping buckets of water from the sky so i headed back home. i field stripped and cleaned my kel-tec .380 and my new kimber, then i headed to top gun. i put about 150 rounds through my kimber. it’s a 3″ barrel and an aluminum frame, so i was a bit worried about kick — but it wasn’t bad. if you don’t recall, my kel-tec had some problems last time at the range, so i was hoping my cleaning would help. i put most of a box of remington through it no problems, but when i switched to winchester it jammed within a few shots. because of this, i’m thinking perhaps my kel-tec doesn’t like the blunt tips on winchester fmj. which makes me wonder how it’d handle hollow points. i might have to fire a box through it to see. i had my (newer) walther ppk/s so i fired the box of winchester fmj through it, no problems.
i came home, then around 10pm i headed to the continental club to see steven reynolds and the Texas two and the octanes. i don’t recall seeing steven reynolds and the Texas two before, but their myspace page made me cautiously interested. when i got there, a three-piece punk band was doing a punk rockabilly song. then they switched to just punk. it was kind of odd for the small crowd there. the funniest thing was the lead singer was the guy with the bright red mohawk i see driving around the montrose/westhheimer area all the time. turns out he’s the lead singer and guitar player for the hates, a punk band that has been around in houston since the late 70’s. weird. i know this from talking to jay, whom i happened to notice at the bar after i’d settled in. steven reynolds’ set was okay. i liked the music alright, but it generally seemed to be lacking in presence, at least to me. between reynolds’ and the octanes’ sets i headed next door to tacos-a-go-go and got a couple of tacos (one barbacoa and one chicken fajita, both on flour tortillas). i recommend either. i hopped back over to the continental club to catch the octanes and got a lone star to wash down the tacos. i left part way through the octanes set — partially because i was tired, partially because i wasn’t real into it, and partially because of the two drunk couples acting stupid and making out and blocking my view.
today i got up and went to church. the message was about being a christian at work. bill based it on the text from titus about how bond servants should behave. i generally agree with what he said, but i’m not very good about having that mindset. not that i’m a horrible employee who sows dissent or strife or whatever, but i’m not the model employee either.
and now once again i’m going to talk about not feeling like i belong. and yes, i understand it is as much up to me as anyone else to make myself a part of anything. i’m not faulting the church, or bill, or anyone in particular. i’m just saying i don’t really feel like i’m part of a community. i feel like a guy who goes to the service, might or might not talk to a few people, then goes home. but this is generally how i’ve felt about my social status throughout most of my life. i’m an introvert, i’m not an initiator, but i’m not emotionally built to be a complete loner. i need friendships and activities on my own terms and timelines (meaning i need personal space and alone time as well), but i do need them. sometimes my feeling isolated leads me to want to completely sever all ties to anyone and embrace complete isolation. even to the point of quitting my job. but i know that couldn’t end well. even if the failure of my marriage and the continuous betrayal by my best friend crushed my spirit and psyche, i have to continue trying to lead some semblance of a functional life or any hopes or dreams i have for the future will disappear, and with it me.
in that vein, today is the two year anniversary of my official, legal divorce. it’s significant only as a stamp of status though, since my marriage had been over for pretty much two years before that. at least that’s how i interpret your wife living in another state with the guy she had an affair with…but maybe that’s just me.
fortunately, the status of this day as the day of my legal divorce can be overshadowed by this being the one year anniversary of the date i legally took ownership of my 1965 ford f-100. i still need to do a lot of work to it, but it’s a very cool vehicle nevertheless. now if only anyone else cared as much as i do. 🙂

thursday after work i headed over to see a free screening of superbad. from the previews, it looked like it could be really funny or pretty bad. i got to the theater about an hour early and paid $3 to park in their garage, but when i got to the ticket takers they weren’t letting people in because it was full. i was kind of miffed about paying them $3 i almost certainly wouldn’t be getting back, so i just sort of stood around in the foyer. after five or ten minutes, a guy came out and was asking people what movie they were there for. a couple said superbad and he said he was letting a few more people in, but only had a few seats. i went up and asked him and he let me in. i had a pass for two, and as i was walking through the new line, a guy asked if i could let him in with me. so i did. then they stopped us and wanded us. they wouldn’t let anyone in with a cell phone that had a camera on it. so i had to go back out to my car and drop it off. by the time i got back in, the only obviously open seating was in the very front row. so i slouched through the movie, which pretty much consumed my entire field of vision. as for the movie…i’m not sure it was worth the hassle. i’m sure a lot of people will love it, because it was rather funny. unfortunately, most of the humor was related to sex, pr0n, body parts, etc. the same people did 40-year-old virgin and it was on the edge for me personally, but this one pulled out the stops. i’m afraid it was just too much for me. even though i thought some parts were hilarious, i left the theater feeling kind of emotionally soiled. and perhaps a few iq points dumber. so if you’re the kind of person who thinks the american pie movies were awesome, you’ll probably dig superbad.
shifting gears entirely, i recently listened to 2 3-part podcasts from dallas theological seminary about the emergent/emerging church movement. i thought the “key points” podcast was better than the (what is the) “emerging church movement” one. the dts folk are seminary professors, scholars, etc — i.e. intelligent, thinking, analytical individuals. they’re also part of what would generally be considered the elite that drives the theology that trickles down to the masses over time. (at least for certain segments of christianity.) so i was curious what their take would be. as scholars, and establishment scholars at that, it’s not surprising to find them having positive things to say, but finding faults as well, and making somewhat negative comments about it being a “reactionary” movement.
having been involved with scenes and cultures in the church before the movement really existed, but having a background and mindset to identify with it (quite strongly in areas), it’s interesting to me to watch it grow and build and see where it’s headed. i’m not a fan of some aspects of the movement, but some of the reaction against current church culture i totally understand. i was also involved in ecclesia here in houston (1999-2000 or so), which was/is connected to the movement. (which was a horrible experience, mostly due to leadership in the church…or the lack thereof. chris seay, the pastor/creator of ecclesia, has been a minor player in the emergent movement.) and i’m currently going to kaleo, which is also related to the movement.
having been involved as a mostly passive participant in the movement, but not looking at it or analyzing it from a removed enough perspective to label it a movement, it was interesting to learn about the divisions that are now being drawn between the terms “emergent” and “emerging”. “emergent” tends to be specific people and churches, with more specific beliefs — whereas “emerging” tends to be a broader term that refers to churches that have at least some of certain core views or beliefs. (thus i would label kaleo as part of the emerging church.)
now getting back to what seemed to be one of the dts podcasts’ main issues…that the emerging/emergent movement is reactionary — i personally think there is nothing inherently wrong with reactionary movements. the status quo has inertia, and many times it takes something strong to force it to shift. the protestant movement, which dts is descended from, was reactionary. many aspects of christianity were (at the least conceived as) reactionary in jesus’ time. many christian movements since then have been reactionary. populist movements are reactionary. but even if reactionary movements flourish and die instead of gain permanence, they generally can at least make the status quo analyze itself a bit — if not actually get it to shift and deal with the deficiencies the reactionary movement saw. look at the history of the william jennings bryan era populist movement — it withered and died, but mostly because most of the issues it was raising were eventually accepted and absorbed into the political system. the catholic church didn’t deal with the points nailed on the wittenburg door. from their handling of that, we now have entire systems of churches courtesy of the protestant movement. (notice the word in the word “protestant”?) so i think their slights on it being “reactionary” are weaker points than perhaps they do.
but overall, if you’re interested in the movement, and are interested in the perspective of some intelligent establishment folk toward it, check out the podcasts. learning generally isn’t a bad thing.

sunday afternoon i saw the simpsons with the potts at the alamo draft house in katy. it was good, but it was pretty much just a longer, bigger viewing of the tv show. not too surprising i guess. the animation work seemed to be higher quality overall, which should be expected i guess. but i didn’t go because i was super-excited about seeing the movie — it was just the best of the choices that were showing.
i had a “good idea” [tm] recently, and on tuesday i went about bringing it to fruition. i have this nice enclosed front porch where i’m currently staying, and when the temperature is agreeable it’s nice to go sit out there. (there’s a ceiling fan, so that helps widen the definition of “agreeable” to include times during the houston summers.) i have a recliner out there, plus a chair and sofa that came with the house. so anyway, i realized my sony str-da2000es receiver has a 2nd zone, which allows you to run an output line to another area. the 2nd zone is controlled separately from the rest of the receiver: you can choose a different source than the one currently playing on the receiver…it’ll even stay on when you turn off the “primary” portion of the receiver. so i went and bought some cheaper but still decent sounding logitech z-4i 2+1 speakers, then picked up a 20 foot 1/8″ stereo extension cord and an rca to 1/8″ stereo adapter. i hooked it all up and commenced to configuring.
unfortunately, upon reading the manual for my sony receiver, i learned the 2nd zone will only play analog audio sources. that knocks out my dvd player, since i currently only use digital co-ax for it — but that’s not too big of a loss. the bad one it knocks out is the itunes audio coming from my airport express, as i have that feeding from an digital optical audio line. on other devices i could possibly feed digital and analog signals at the same time, but the airport express uses the same plug for either analog or digital. one of the cool things was going to be playing itunes and hearing it in my computer room, the living room, *and* the front porch. i had hoped maybe i could trick it into feeding some out line into an analog in line and cheating the system, but some tinkering with it never produced good results. oh well. i can listen to my cd player on the front porch, as well as the tv audio. and since my tv is dish, it has a number of music channels — including sirius satellite. so it’s not all bad.

the friday before last after work i came home, and in trying to figure out what to do, ended up going through some of the many containers of papers tamara left behind. i know i should probably just toss or burn the stuff, but i still feel like it’s not my right or position to throw away this stuff that is in no way mine. would she care about any of it now? maybe. i don’t know. but i don’t feel like it’s my call. and on some level i still find myself having some kind of sick curiosity to see if i can come across things she wrote that can help me understand what was going on in her mind and why she did what she did.
i have to be in the right mindset to be able to go through any of it, and i have to have a lot of emotional energy. if i don’t, going through it will still break me down too easily. even though there are plenty of things she did unfairly as her affair and our divorce progressed — and thus plenty of things i can be rightfully furious and upset about — there was a lot of deep emotion invested in my relationship with her. that stuff doesn’t just disappear (at least not for me). so though time lessens the freshness of the memories and the immediate and overwhelming pain of what happened, it’s still in there. it’s not that i haven’t tried to move on, tried to process it, tried to face it head on, tried to put it aside, tried to distract myself, tried to find new things — i guess it’s just that all those things have failed, at least overall. time has diluted the intensity, but time does not fix things. and the fact is, my life and personality and activities have not helped to move me on nearly as much as i would like. but then some of the things i would like to move onto are not just up to me, and the failings of my own personality work against me very strongly.
so, what was the result of my foray into old papers? i found some drawings related to her wedding dress and the ceremony, a practice vow and ring statement she’d written, some lines of her practicing variations on her name with my last name — tamara susan leifeste, tamara tabo leifeste, etc. — (which she never actually took or used), and a bunch of old papers and stuff she’d written while in high school. it was odd going through those things and seeing how fresh and on-fire she was about her new-found christianity. i also found a “letter to santa” she wrote (for a class she was taking) from sept 5, 1997 (which would be around the time we started dating) where she wrote:

For Terry, I hope for a rather abstract present, Santa. He is so full of brilliance, but yet he is paralyzed by his fear of failure. If you could help Terry trust himself more and to believe in the validity of his ideas, you would be doing him, and potentially the rest of the world, a great service.

i guess we can see that didn’t happen, in any number of ways.
with all of this stuff left behind for me to deal with, it really is like she died. but there’s more to that perspective than just the stuff. from the time it happened, it was like the person i knew was gone and some other spirit came and inhabited her body. the tamara i knew ceased to exist, and something else — something much less than tamara — took her place. i wish she could have held on to our vows, held on to G-d. but she didn’t. someone suggested our life together had become very difficult, and we each returned to our methods of coping we’d used in the past (in years past). obviously the things in her life since (that i’ve known about)…well, it’s not my business, not my responsibility, and not my concern — especially after all that happened — but the bonds of marriage were strong and deep and they still tug at my heart and soul from time to time.

I, Tamara, commit myself before G-d and Man to a lifetime of love for, fidelity to, and care of Terry. I promise to regard him always with the respect, admiration, and affection that he deserves.

I offer you this ring, white as our souls with the purifying Christ, as a symbol of the eternity of my love and devotion.

beautiful words. words she wrote. if only they were true.

i was in training tuesday through thursday for a new product my work is looking at deploying. it was nice to have a chance of pace for a few days, although the training center was in houston (over by the galleria area) and wasn’t anything special.
wednesday night or thursday evening i watched deliverance. i’ve heard plenty of references to it, but i’d never actually seen the movie. it was kind of unpolished, as most older seem to be, but it was good. i was surprised to some degree, because the only cultural references you hear are crazy hillbillies, the song “dueling banjos” and “squeal like a pig!” while those all exist in the movie, and even play important parts, the movie is really more about suburban guys going into the wilderness and having to overcome nature and find out what has or has not been buried within them under the layers of suburban life. the dvd had a “making of…” in the extras, and it was cool to hear the director and writer talk about how they shot it isolated, on the river, with only the four actors and three or four other people. they’d drive a couple of hours into the wilderness to get to the river and get dropped off, then they’d pick them up a couple of hours downstream. the actors did all their own stunts and such, and the insurance companies wouldn’t cover the filming or anything. it was also interesting seeing a young burt reynolds, jon voight, etc. (the movie was done in 1972.)
last night i watched harold and maude. it was also filmed in the very early 70’s. it wasn’t really what i’d thought it was going to be, but it was pretty good. i felt like it fit in well with a lot of the late 60’s and early 70’s movies i’ve seen, where i guess the culture in america and cinema was to create weird things mixing up morals and ideas and just kind of flipping the finger at societal standards. i guess the hippie and folk music scenes sort of fit in there too. a lot of the things harold did bordered on absurdism (or maybe it was well within that land), and maude seemed completely oblivious to society around her (call her a “free spirit”). i can see how this movie might have influenced a lot of the style and techniques of some of the later indie and off-the-beaten-path films (although there were other movies at the same time doing similar things of course).
today i went by a shoe repair store and dropped off my chocolate brown tony lama’s to get the heel repaired on one of them and get them cleaned and conditioned. i put a big scuff on the upper toe of one of my sha-sha’s not long after i got it, so i may have them refinish them when i go to pick up the boots. the only thing is they said it probably wouldn’t come out the same color exactly. so i’ll be thinking about it. from there i headed to goode company for some delicious Texas bbq and some good music.
afterward i headed over to a carter’s country to look for another holster for my walther ppk/s.
okay, since i’m talking about that, i have to relate something. if you recall, back in january someone stole the license plate from my motorcycle (entry), then later i noticed a box of stuff, along with my walther ppk/s, were missing (entry). i remembered thinking before that i shouldn’t leave the walther box laying out in the open, so i’d tried to put it into a locking fire-safe filing box but it wouldn’t fit. when i noticed it missing, i spent several hours over a couple of days going from room to room looking for boxes, opening boxes, etc. because i knew it was possible i’d moved it and misplaced it. finally i had to admit it had been stolen (and i didn’t want the cops busting down my door because it’d been used in some crime and traced back to me), so i called the police and reported it (entry). well, when i put the new gun safe in a couple of weeks ago i moved a number of boxes around to make room for it. friday evening i was doing some cleaning and rearranging and i went to move a box that was on top of some stuff and it was really heavy. i wasn’t sure where the box came from, or what would make it that heavy. i opened the lid and guess what i found? 3 boxes of winchester .45 ammo, 1 box of federal .45 personal protection ammo, 3 boxes of .380 ammo, and my walther ppk/s. plus the stuff that had been in the box i thought was stolen/missing. evidently i moved it all into a different box than any of it had been in, and i must have placed it under some other boxes or something in a different room, hidden even to me. egads. oh well, it’s nice knowing all that stuff wasn’t out in the world somewhere. so i now have a pair of matching walther ppk/s pistols. and a new, bigger fire-safe. and a gun safe. but i did call the police department and tell them to cancel the incident/report.
anyway, back to carter’s country. i went there to try and find an inside-the-pants (or maybe inside-the-belt) holster for my walther(s!) that would fit in the small of my back and rest the gun at an angle so i could pull it with my right hand. i didn’t find one. i also asked them about doing repair work on my charles daly 1911, but i hadn’t brought it with me. …so i went ahead and bought a new pistol. i bought a kimber tactical ultra ii. it’s an ultra compact (3″ barrel) 1911 .45 acp. this model is based on an aluminum frame for lightweight carry and comes with a mag well, etched front and rear handle and lower trigger guard, dark checkered grips, and tritium night sights. (kimber’s page for it.) so whether i get the daly fixed or get rid of it, i’m hoping this kimber will give me plenty of ability to shoot up all of the .45 ammo i have.

i finally got off my butt and returned the 3 netflix movies that had been collecting dust in my possession for about 6 months. geez. but i’m sure netflix was more than happy to have me pay $20/month for 6 months for no reason at all.
sunday i got up and went to church. after that i met the potts and rich murphy at chuy’s. it turned out that matt kenenske and jerry and rick (?) were also there. they had come down from the northeast for cliff’s wedding (mentioned a couple of entries back). in fact, matt was performing the wedding ceremony. he’s the pastor of the crossroads church up in the maryland/delaware area. lunch was pleasant. i think at least half of the table had been at my wedding, although most of them didn’t really know me. (they were all friends of tamara.) so i spent some time talking with jerry (who i was sitting by) about why my mentioning of tamara and my marriage was in past tense. hopefully it wasn’t too dominating, as i tend to be paranoid that i’m talking way too much when i talk for very long.
trying to decide what to afterward, the visitors (minus rick (?), who left to catch a plane) wanted to do something “Texan.” so i offered to take them to the gun range. after mulling it over, they decided that would be a pretty appropriate “Texan” thing to do. i brought a few of my pistols, and we spent about two hours knocking holes in paper. they seemed to have a good time. i enjoyed it, hopefully they did too. matt and jerry headed back to their hotel in la porte, then rich and i went over to jack and sue’s house. we ended up ordering pizza and watching idiocracy.
monday after work i met rich and the potts at a chinese/vietnamese buffet over near their house. after eating, we went back to their house and hung out and talked. rich was flying out tuesday afternoon. i’d met him a couple of times (once i think at cornerstone), and i think tamara and i hung out with him and scott hatch when they came down to visit jack and sue years ago. anyway, it was cool to have some time to get to know him a little better.
last night i watched wal-mart: the high cost of low price. it was okay, but i really didn’t think it was great or anything. i freely admit, i am no fan of wal-mart. i try to avoid shopping at them (and almost always succeed). on the good side for the movie, they had lots of different people on camera. but some of it i felt like was nitpicky, or a technicality, or not the fault of wal-mart. whenever they stuck to facts and presented numbers and information, or really went into some detail about wal-mart’s poor practices, then it was okay. when you’re just hearing one person’s opinion pulling on your heart strings, or listening to them sit around and talk bad about things that happened at work, the force just isn’t there.

saturday i got up fairly early (for me, on a weekend…around 9am) and eventually drove down to league city and retrieved my charles daly 1911 from the arms room. he said they were returning it to me in the condition they got it, so i guess if any work was done it was undone before the gun was returned to me. he did say they’d tried to do some stuff but it wouldn’t fit without mods, and they were trying to keep the costs down. all i know is they had it for 3+ months and they never called me once. even after i’d called them after waiting a few weeks, and had driven down there a few weeks after that. so it’s possible they did try things, or did some work of some kind, but at the very least the communication was nonexistent. now i’ll have to find somewhere else to take it, or trade it for something else.
before i went to the arms room, i stopped at village pizza and seafood and had a cheeseburger sub. mmm. this is just for ash:

(yes, it’s the one on 518 in league city. the one ash and i used to eat at sometimes.)
afterward i drove by a couple of places i used to live. first i made a stop by 216 maple leaf in league city:

i lived there for one year, from (i think) december 1996 through december 1997. amazingly (at least to me), it looks pretty much exactly the same. i lived there with kirk heuiser and ash. we (being three nasa engineers) set up stadium seating in the living room. we collectively had two couches so we built a platform out of plywood, 2×4’s, and 4×4’s for one couch to rest on top of, then took the back legs off the one on the floor so it had a slight recline. that way, the 36″ tv on the 3 feet riser was in direct line of sight for both couches. the sub was placed under the platform, so the couches felt explosions and rumbling. we also made a walkway on the platform leaving space between the two couches, and in the middle we left a hole just the right size for a big rectangular igloo chest. just add some ice and your beverages of choice, bring over some bags of chips or whatever, and you were ready for a movie marathon. yeah, as everyone suggested, it was completely designed as a bachelor pad. the living room wasn’t for talking — it was for watching movies.
this became somewhat of a problem when we went to move, as we learned the igloo had leaked, getting in the carpet and the padding, and sitting for a long time on the metal of the lower couch that had had its back legs removed. a very nice, deep, 6+ feet long rust stain was left in the carpet, right in the middle of the living room. (did i mention we were all a&m engineers?) a couple of hours of scrubbing and work with various chemicals eventually got mostly rid of the stain. i guess it was decent enough because we got our deposit back.
what else…i had lots of blue christmas lights around the perimeter of the ceiling in my bedroom. i liked to use them as lighting instead of the regular light. we had an absentee landlord. we never saw him once. we were given 12 envelopes with deposit slips by the realtor, and we mailed our rent off to his bank every month. the rumor was that he’d gotten divorced because his wife had left him for a nasa engineer. we always nervously joked that we were going to wake up one night and find a crazed guy wielding some frightening weapon and raging about how he was going to get revenge on those d4mn nasa engineers.
i started dating tamara while living here (august 1997). we got engaged while i was living here also (october 1997…halloween, actually). (wonder what made me think of that?)
after going by maple leaf i headed over to the other side of league city to get a shot of the crow’s nest on davis road:

i moved there when i left maple leaf. it was f-204 — a 2 bedroom apartment on the second floor (right in the center of the picture). i can’t remember the timeline with ash…i think he left the country before we left maple leaf. but then i seem to remember him helping me move stuff into this place. maybe he left, but ended up coming back before the lease was over at maple leaf. i think that’s it. ash lived with me for a number of months, then he moved before my wedding. after the wedding in june of 1998, tamara moved in with me. moving her stuff up the stairs with just me and her wasn’t much fun. but my time in this apartment was good. we moved out of it when we bought 9023 in alief, august/september 1998.
i also stopped by where coffee oasis used to be. (the original one, on el camino real.) it’s been gone for years. that’s the place ash and i used to always hang out. it’s where i met tamara. it’s one of the only places i’ve ever really felt like a regular at (which i think is a cool feeling). everyone who worked there knew us, and most all of us regulars knew each other. that was a good time. lots of quoting of reservoir dogs (as well as bottle rocket, pulp fiction, etc.) the place is now a japanese fusion restaurant. since i was thinking of coffee, i decided to stop by diedrich’s for some coffee on bay area blvd., but they evidently closed. here they both are, in their current glory:

 

so instead i stopped by the dairy queen on el dorado and got a snickers blizzard.
saturday afternoon i hung out with jamie. we went to soundwaves, where i ended up buying three cds:

• van lear rose – loretta lynn (interscope)
• sliver: the best of the box – nirvana (geffen)
• ill communication – beastie boys (capitol)

saturday evening i went to pueblito for natalie‘s birthday dinner. there were a few people i knew there and a lot i didn’t, but i managed to have a good time talking with the people sitting around me. i determined i’d had enough social interaction after that and decided to not head over for the night of karaoke. i spent some time talking to jamie under a streetlight about my shortcomings as far as male/female friendships and relationships go. then jamie and i decided to go to empire, but they’re stupid and close at 11pm on saturday night. so instead we went back to my place and i forced her to watch little miss sunshine. she’s a believer now.