Weekend, part two, in two words: Twin Arrows.

Now for something more interesting. The complete list of books that I am currently reading.

(In no particular order)
Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein.
Join Me, Danny Wallace.
Jimmy, the Smartest Kid on Earth, F.C. Ware.
Battle Royale vol. 5, Koushun Takami & Masayuki Taguchi.
Jennifer Government, Max Barry.
A Wizard Alone, Diane Duane.
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon.
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, Robert Rankin.
For Us, the Living, Robert Heinlein.

And here are some things I plan on reading soon:

Are You Dave Gorman?, Dave Gorman.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert Heinlein.
Night of Power, Spider Robinson.
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Garrison Keilor.
Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, Dave Gorman.
The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin

All of this is brought up because I went to work again yesterday, for the first time in like 2 weeks. It was pretty standard as far as work goes, except for the large number of changes that happened since I was last there. Like stuff being rearranged and getting a bunch of new staff in. but anyway I spent some of the slow time just looking around and kept finding stuff.


I'm gonna bench press Rhode Island and have a thirty inch neck
I'm gonna jump through a doughnut just like they did in Star Trek
I'm gonna go skinny dipping but I won't worry about Jaws
I'll have a neat healing factor and adamantium claws
  ¶ 2/27/2004 06:05:00 PM (0) comments

  I would really enjoy a free weekend sometime. The last three have all been busy and fun, pleasant, amusing, entertaining and engaging, (because I wanted to use my thesaurus) but I’ve had almost no veg time. There was that whole lock in/scouts/work thing, then there was Valentines Day and the snow, and this weekend was almost longer than the first. Thursday I got up at like 5:30 so my father and I could drive to Amarillo and get there before his sales call that afternoon. We ate lunch at Friday's where we met two of the guys from the Amarillo office. We then went to said office where I worked on my math homework and listened to "Smell No Evil," "Super Secret" and "Oh OK LA" the three Ookla the Mok CDs I got for Christmas but didn’t arrive until after we had left Tulsa and then took two months to make their way to Grapevine. Good CDs on the whole, but I digress. After the sales call we continued our journey and wound up in one of the semi-famous Lubbock brown outs, where the winds bring up the dirt from Mexico. When we checked into the hotel there was a pair of mother's and daughters in front of us. One of the mothers asked the woman at the desk, in reference to the open fields on the campus visible from the lobby "Why aren’t there any students out there? Shouldn’t there be more?" to which my father, in his witty manner, quipped, "Usually there are but the hurricane force winds blew them all away." Heh. We met a friend of my dad's from work and his adult son at a nearby Mexican restaurant, which had some excellent quesadillias. The Son of the friend offered my dad and I a pair of tickets for the Tech and A&M basketball game on Saturday.

Friday morning we got up early again and walked to the Tech Spirit Arena from our hotel, about a mile from our hotel despite the fact that it was on campus and our hotel was just across the street from said campus (Tech is so big, land wise, they have busses running solely to take people around the campus). At the arena there was a presentation put on by the cheerleaders, the Poms (dancers) and the Saddle Tramps (male spirit group with big bells). Then the various colleges around the arena put on presentations. We saw the engineering talk and the honors college talk, both good. The college on engineering also hosted a free barbeque for people interested in the college, but I think more students than prospectives showed up.

Saturday morning we slept in and then watch Cool Runnings before checking out. Then because we had three hours to kill before the game we visited two pawnshops and a used bookstore where I bought “Time Enough for Love” by Heinlein (incase you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m on a bit of a Heinlein kick) and “Night of Power” the only book by Spider Robinson I don’t own that’s still in print. The Game was lots of fun and A&M got kicked. (w00+) Then we got in the car and drove the five hours home stopping only for gas and Dairy Queen.

Part two of my weekend will come later.

People always ask me, "When you gonna grow up
And when you do what will you be?"
That's when I always tell that if I'm gonna grow up
I'll do it on my own sweet time and what I become is still up to me

  ¶ 2/22/2004 09:59:00 PM (0) comments

  For the last three years I’ve been volunteering at GRACE (the local food pantry among other things) on Tuesday afternoons for most of that time it's been me and two or three "elderly" women, (I say elderly because I cant think of anything better, but they really are great people who are only old in one sense of the word) and Rusty the head of the pantry, as well as the occasional person or persons who are in for school, National Charity League, or community service. About three months ago we had a new person, Kelly, join us who began volunteering with us on a semi-regular basis (I say semi-regular because it's usually a toss up as to weather or not she's going to show up on any given week. this week Suzi had to take her husband to the doctor and Janice always leaves at four. This would normally leave me alone for the last hour of the day, but today Kelly decided to grace us with her presence as well as bring along her boyfriend. I’m not opposed to an extra hand around the pantry and both of them really helped when we got a food order, but the rest of the time they were all over each other, to such an extent that I went to the other side of the pantry and read my book (still the Moon is a Harsh Mistress). Honestly folks! There’s a time and a place for certain things. The downtime at a food bank is neither the right time nor place to sit on your boyfriends lap.

One of these days I'm gonna stop saying one of these days I'm gonna stop saying one of these days I'm gonna stop saying one of these days.
  ¶ 2/17/2004 07:27:00 PM (0) comments

  What to say about today?

Woke up this morning to the sound of an alarm watch ringing in my ear, hopped out of bead and called work to see if they needed me (I hate on-call shifts), they didn't. My sister was playing out in the snow with our neighbors, and my parents and I were invited over too. My director called to tell us that the cheaper rehearsal was postponed until tomorrow at one. Of course nobody took the time to notice that there was no ice on the road, and that it was more than likely that after the snow melted today that it would probably freeze tonight, making it worse than it was today. Logic is truly beyond a lot of people. On the other had it allowed to postpone my making of a valentine for Liz. This is good not because I don’t like Liz but I’m just lazy. I went to work to pick up my check and check my schedule for the next few weeks. Attempted to get a couple shifts changed and already had people lined up to cover them for me but apparently we have a new policy that says all changes have to be verified by both parties involved with the change. I’m not opposed to the policy but it makes things more difficult than they were. Anyway I told my manager about the changes and he told me that he would try and get in touch with the other people. I certainly hope he does because I’ll be in Lubbock visiting Texas tech. had lunch at Cici's with my dad and we both read our books while we ate, I was reading "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein. Which is filling in some holes left by "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" which was the only Heinlein book I was ever disappointed with. I’ve also been reading "for us, the living" Heinlein's supposedly "Lost Book," he typed with an almost complete subject change. It’s interesting, when I bought the book one of the guys I work with mentioned that there was some controversy about weather r not the book was actually written by him. As I read the book I can see some similarities in the writing but there's enough differences to make me wonder if it was genuine but just written before Heinlein found his voice, of just an imitation. Continuing on with my day, after lunch my father and I came home and I watched TV and played Prince of Persia while he defragmenter my sisters hard drive. Then my sis and mom came home from their knitting group (or was it cropping?) and we watched last night’s episodes of Monk and Joan of Arcadia. All in all, not the worst valentines day in history even though it didn’t go as I expected it to.


Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to do.
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why.
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time.  ¶ 2/14/2004 08:50:00 PM (0) comments

  In other news....

My job is just un-sucky enough that I keep coming back. Today I had a customer who attempted to use his wife's teacher discount card. He was buying a book and a magazine both about bodybuilding. I says to him "I’m sorry sir (always use sir or ma'am) but the educators discount card is only for books to be used in the classroom. He says that he's a coach (just fyi coaches and I are instinctive enemies) and that the book is for his classroom. I said that the discount wasn’t good on magazines either, but didn’t mention that the book he had selected would be difficult to use with highschoolers. Now cause I ain't blind I also notice that the name on the card is Emily. This guy don’t look like any Emily that I ever met, and when I bring this up he says it's his wife's card. I inform him that I need to see the driver’s license that has the same name as the card. He promptly shows me his ID and by this time I’m too fed up with trying not to hit him to argue about it any further, so I gave him the discount. As I’m ringing up the discount he tells me that he doesn’t see why both he and his wife need cards because they're both teachers. I contain myself enough so that I don’t tell him that being a coach is hardly being a teacher. And to top it all off as he's walking out he turns to me and says "don’t be angry" which is of course the equivalent of everything that every other coach in my life has told me. I hate idiots.

Holly (the computer running Red Dwarf): I have an I.Q of 6000, the same I.Q as 6000 highschool gym teachers.

Here she comes again with another boyfriend,
Introduces me and says
"This is the sweetest guy I’ve ever known"
  ¶ 2/11/2004 11:47:00 PM (0) comments

  You know what I hate? Black history month. It’s the epitome of everything that it pretends to be against. We're supposed to be celebrating all the equality in America brought about by the civil rights movement. But instead we're showcasing all sorts of "We like African American People" stuff in our newspapers and on TV. All we've done is changed from one kind of racism to another. Racism is, and I quote from dictionary.com, "The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others." Black history month or as it used to be called, February is a prime example of putting one "race" before another. One of the arguments is that we are making up for all those years of oppression that the black people had to suffer. By the same logic all of the white people should be enslaved for a couple hundred years and we can just call it even. The past is the past and it should stay there. Of course I could also bring up the fact that there were black people in early colonial times who came over as indentured servants, paid their debts and went on to own black slaves, but that would be using reason, something that cant be done in discussions of political correctness.

It's cold outside
There's no kind of atmosphere
I’m all alone
More or less
Fun fun fun
In the sun sun sun
  ¶ 2/11/2004 11:29:00 AM (0) comments

  Well this day certainly was interesting. And by interesting I mean boring.

I slept late because I could then my mom, sis and I went to Quizno's where I had an excellent sub. I went to school and did stuff after school I went to GRACE as usual and then I came home and did nothing until about 9 when Kaci started a drama couch chat room. Boring.

And he never eats pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise.  ¶ 2/10/2004 10:36:00 PM (0) comments

  Well the cool points are heading toward the window and it's very likely that I’m mixed up in the game.

As I begin one of these things for the third or fourth time. I’m starting it as usual by talking about my relationships, or lack thereof. I'm currently in two plays, the sound of music at faith where I play the captain, and cheaper by the dozen at the runway theatre in which I play Larry the boyfriend of Anne gilberts the oldest daughter in the family. My story is concerned with the latter of these two productions. A few years ago through my connections at the theatre I met Kelsey who is a very fun person who I enjoy spending time with. My parents joked for a while about her having a crush on me, which seemed possible but I didn’t want to entertain the idea because I didn’t know her very well, and I’m a panzy. Since meeting her we have become friends through theatre over the last few years and from working together on shows. She recently went with my youth group and me on our annual ski trip, where some things could have happened but I’m not convinced that they did. There were moments that I just dismissed as over thinking and a subconscious reaction to everybody hooking up at long youth events. We had a good time either way and I invited her to a climbing lock-in with the same youth group about a month later. Between the ski trip and the lock-in I was cast in Cheaper opposite Liz who I connected with instantly. Once again I didn’t do anything because I had spent actually very little time with her (only one rehearsal), accused myself of making things up, and as stated previously I’m a panzy. After that one rehearsal the lock-in came around where Kelsey and I spent most of the night together on an indoor ropes course, there were also other people that we spent time with but those came and went. Then I receive third hand information from my mother that her friend's daughter who is also in the play said that there was something between us (Liz and I) and that I just hadn’t tuned in yet. (follow all that?)

Now that you have the back story...

Tonight was the second rehearsal of cheaper and Kelsey, who is also stage-managing the show, showed up, and of course Liz was there and in the words of dashboard confessional please send me anything but signals that are mixed. I think that I should ask Kelsey out but I want to see what could happen with Liz.

Oh yeah Kelsey also gave me a rose when she came to see little women. I was too dense to pick up on anything until the makeup girl asked "who's the girl?" am I really that blind? And the fact that Saturday is both a rehearsal and Valentines Day doesn’t help. Plus the cast drew names to make a valentine card for one person in the cast to help build cast togetherness, and I drew Liz. I hate irony.


The ice cream truck in my neighborhood plays helter skelter.  ¶ 2/09/2004 11:33:00 AM (0) comments