well, tonight I went out to the bar (which was a big surprise to brian, since i'd told him about an hour earlier that i wasn't interested) with paul, neil, & lisa, and we met up with brian there and hung out for a bit. at some point, i ordered a large sampler (mmm… sampler platter) only to come back to the table and find that neil & lisa were pretty much already on their way out the door. well, not that that really matters, 'cause between a hungry brian, a semi-hungry me, and a not-really-hungry but unable-to-resist-the-sampler paul, we finished the thing off without much trouble. shortly before the last morsels were yanked by greedy hands from the platter, brad and dave came over to join us. paul offered brad a won-ton, and brad's first reaction was to ask me which of the many sauces went best with them. (of course, the answer is "honey-mustard") brad then proceeded to dub me the "king of condiments," a declaration he even repeated later when his girlfriend joined us. so, apparently, either through pure obsessive behavior or a history of good advice, i am, at least in our little circle, the King of Condiments. thank you. you may rise.

another thing i've realized though, is that i could be in the running for a totally unrelated title. i'm pretty sure i could make a strong showing in a contest for the "king of work avoidance." not that i avoid doing the work i get paid to do, that is, not my actual job job. but my god, when i get home, there are literally 10 to 15 things i could be doing at any given moment. 10 - 15 projects i've started that i really need to finish. and what do i do? well, of course, as i recently explained to paul & brax, i've only got two weekday nights that are really worth anything–personal project-wise. Tuesday is band practice night (band-practice from ~7:30 to 11:00pm). Wednesday is geek night (trip to comics store, dinner at Denny's, then Enterprise at 8:00pm, and DS9 at 10:00pm). Friday is… Friday. That's socialization day. Friday is the day matt comes down from the mountain to carouse with friends and other assorted real living people. Friday is the night (typically–unlike tonight, which was an aberration) where matt goes to the bar to look at the few hot girls and (as noted in another post) not speak to any of them. Saturday is much more open, and should be the day where i get all kinds of shit done, but it is usually the day where i sleep a whole lot, then laze around the house. Sunday's another sleep day, and then also another band practice day, which accounts for at least 14 hours. So, i'm left with Monday & Thursday after work, and whatever hours & can squeeze out of Saturday & Sunday to accommodate all those things that i need to do. Needless to say, not a whole lot is accomplished usually.

I have to say though, that this past week/weekend has been pretty decent so far. on thursday, i went out to the hardware store and picked up this neat toolbox and some other bits & bobs, and constructed (what will be) a nice guitar effects pedalboard. so, i had quite the productive day on Thursday. today, after doing the normal saturday sleeping 'til 4 after a night at the bar thing, and lazing for a couple good hours once i got up, i actually managed to do a few productive things. i got the velcro strips placed on the plywood base for the pedalboard, broke out the guitar for 30 - 45 minutes and played around, then checked email for a little bit. oh, and i also sketched out some ideas that i had for a logo for My Favorite Martyr (no, it's not just you, that site is so horribly out of date, it's almost funny again. BUT! it does have the first mention of Old Man–paul & neil's band–on the web!), and for a flyer design for Old Man (which i was going to try to mock up & post, but i haven't been able to find any appropriate imagery yet). of course, there were several other things i needed to do (as i told brian when he asked about going to the bar), but after about an hour of sitting in front of the computer avoiding them, i realized it was a bit fruitless for the time being.

y'know, perhaps i'd get more done if i spent less time avoiding work and more time doing it. but my biggest problem has always been not so much finding things to do, as deciding between the things that i need to do. so, i'm going to ask for your help on this one. (realizing wholly that the majority of my pleas for public response have brought few in the past–but now that we have the comments system in place, perhaps that'll be different now…)

here's the list:

votes   project
_1__ finish 2nd poetry book
____ finish & submit short story(/stories)
____ write new poems
_3__ write screenplay
_2__ continue working on novel
____ redesign coffeemonk.com
____ design separate myfavoritemartyr.com
____ today/tomorrow mixed 2 CD set
____ mixed cover songs CD
____ learn to play bass for Old Man
_1__ put together (personal) media server
_1__ design new bipolar theme
____ finish playing computer games i'm in the middle of
____ put unboxed comics in boxes

and here's the plea: help! help me figure out which of these things i should attempt to do first. if you wanna go crazy, put the whole list in order of "importance." but at least tell me the one thing you think i should focus on until it's done. this is the struggle i'm presented with every time i enter the door to my house from work or being out on the town or whatever. and i've yet to reach a decision on my own. so, give me a hand. there are no prizes to be awarded, but if it's something that either exists or can be translated to the web-medium, i'll be sure to post it here first.

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it's been a slow week. not much going on. but, happily, it appears that a couple members of the old murray crew will be coming into town this weekend to hang out. it'll be the first time we've had quite this many together since jim's wedding. it should certainly be interesting.

on Saturday, we're planning a little get-together at Jim's house… the band will probably play, possibly even Old Man if they're up to it (we haven't really asked them yet, so Paul, this is me asking).

Valentine's day came and went without much difficulty, i mainly just did my best to ignore it. i'm not going to whine and bitch about not having anyone to share this "special" day with, because really, the fault lies mainly with myself. i need to get up off my lazy ass, go do some things that make me happy, and yank my balls out from where they've crawled up inside my abdomen long enough to talk to a girl (or four) that i might be interested in. one 'o these days, that'll happen. this is the year for it.

last night i finally made my first batch of turkish coffee, though i found out (did a little online research) that i really probably picked up the wrong kind of pot. i guess the one i've got is adequate, but the real ibriks depend on the wide bottom and narrow top to help "cook" the coffee (the coffee grounds sitting on top of the water form a lid of sorts that helps raise the temperature… or something like that), but the pot i picked up is only marginally narrower at the top. really though, it turned out pretty good for a first attempt. only thing i didn't have was a froth on top of the coffee… the froth got all boiled away. and i drank three of the little fuckers, so needless to say, i was pretty wired for a while last night.

well, now i've got something to fix next friday when we get back from the bar… assuming i'm lucid enough to prepare it… drip coffee is quite a bit easier to make.

ah well. that's it. that's all i got.

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i seem to have returned to a semi-regular practice of actually turning on my webcam, turning on the chat client, and maybe… if you're all really lucky (or not, depending on your point-of-view) of posting to ye olde bipolar.

had a fairly fun weekend (except for the Sunday that wasn't) hanging out and being social. paul and i chilled most of Friday night watching various incarnations of Trek until it was time to go get our drink on. we did the normal friday thing at the bar, meeting up with neil and BRIAN and SCOTT and their friend chris. we did have quite a bit of fun, as usual, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… completely ignoring them. woo-hoo!
at the end of the eve, BRIAN and SCOTT and neil came over to the house so i could play that "jive" delta airlines sound clip for SCOTT, and so we could all laugh our asses off for a while. i think at this point, i was on coffee, but neil & paul were still drinking. by the end of the night, we nearly had to bury poor neil.

saturday was a lazy day, woke up and got some "kefk" (that's KFC to you phonics impaired people), and did some more chillin at the house. we (that is, my roommates and i) briefly toyed with the idea of going out for a fun night of bowling, but instead opted for a somewhat-less-fun-but-still-enjoyable evening out at the rud watching two bands we'd never heard of, looking at pretty girls, screwing up our courage, and… (you guessed it) completely ignoring them. well, except for Rachel, but she doesn't really count since we already know her and she's just really friendly anyway.

i stayed up way too late Sat. night/Sun. morn doing god knows what tinkering around on the computer, ended up slinking off to bed about 6:30 or 7 AM, and ended up sleeping until the sun was down again. boy what a waste of a perfectly good day. but nevertheless, two hours after i woke up, we had our normal 8:00pm sunday band practice, and though it got off to a slow start, we did make some progress, making the day not end up a total waste.

today at lunch i finally broke down and bought a turkish coffee set (sort of) from a Russian grocery near a place my work crew frequents, so hopefully, once i get off my ass and down to the "real" grocery store to buy some sugar (note to self: add sugar to grocery list, you moron.), which we've not had since we moved in back in May of last year…. well, then i'll be able to have some real turkish coffee, just the way Arslan used to make. now if i could only make Baklava and kebabs (A.K.A. gyros), i'd be set (and fat) for life. I do have a recipe for Sarma, which i hope to break out here sometime soon… perhaps that'll be turkish coffee & sugar night as well.

oh, anyway, i've got shit i want to do tonight, and at this point, i think i'm using this blog as a crutch to avoid "work." hep me jeebus. i thank i just self-revelated.

g'night.

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well, this past weekend was actually pretty fun altogether. friday was the usual getting off work and chilling out, then heading up to the backdoor for drinks and hanging out. nothing really crazy happened, but that's just as well as far as i'm concerned.

on saturday, me, the boys, and our friends pat, nicole, and neil, and brax's gf amanda all met up at ZA's for dinner. we hung out, chatted, laughed, and generally had a good time… and, of course, a good meal (except paul, who'd spoiled his appetite by eating about three hours prior… he just had a salad). after that, we all headed up to the rud to see quasi-local (ok, Richmond, KY) band South 75 and non-local band Gaza Strippers. Local band the Glasspack closed the show, but we didn't bother hanging around. all in all, it was a good show, with South 75 pumping out some good classic-rock sounding tunes and pointing at the ceiling a lot. Gaza Strippers came out and put on an exceptional show as usual, their frontman as dynamic and expressive as any you could ever wish for. the Gaza Strippers play unapologetic full-on rock-n-roll, with no fruity twists or hypnotically repetitious stoner-rock "grooves." if you were to ask for the Gaza Strippers at a bar, all you'd have to say is "rock-n-roll, neat." and there ya go.

sunday found me being rudely (… well, ok… politely… ) awakened by my car-less roommate two or three hours before i had any intention of getting up (i.e. around 11:30am) to give him a ride to work all the way across town. since i was already up and about, i figured i'd take the time to get some christmas shopping done, and y'know what i came back with… ? zilch, nothing, nada. at least as far as real presents are concerned… i ended up spending a veritable ass-load of money on silly little stocking stuffers and other little "token" gifts for various people. but… not a damn thing of real value gift-giving wise. am i just unimaginative, am i just looking in the wrong places, or has our culture become so… insubstantial… that no one is making things that i can look at and say… "now that! that would make a great gift!" unfortunately, even i'm leaning toward the "i'm unimaginative" side of that one.

well, hopefully, i'll get a brilliant flash of inspiration in about 5 days and will make a mad dash to all the stores that have just what i'm looking for. i hate, HATE living in the midst of this consumer culture of ours. giving i've got no problem with, it's the damned shopping i can't stand. shopping malls? havens of vanity and vapidity. strip malls? same thing, only with no shoes and more of a backwoodsman's gleam in the eye. mom & pop shops? … right.

damn them all and their little green strips of paper. i want my replicator and i want it now!

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(or, the playa strikes again.)

continuing the story of our trip to bloomington, let me first explain yesterday's "hey, is moves there" thing. it's a kevin smith reference. basically, when kevin and jason mewes were first hanging out, jason was still a 15 year old virgin, whereas kevin had had some "exploits." when kevin told jason that he had, in fact, kissed a girl, jason from then on called him "moves."

anyway, after the thoroughly enjoyable visit with Kevin "moves" Smith, paul, nathan, and i grabbed some grub at the Bell, some refreshments at Marsh, then headed home for a relaxing rest of the evening (it was already close to, or later than midnight) of playstation 2 and some Batman Beyond on DVD. Since i'd never gotten to see the first few episodes (or any episodes, really) of batman beyond, i enjoyed the pilot movie and first episode quite a bit.

we did crash before too long, since we'd all had full work days, a moderately long drive, and a four hour sit in a crowded auditorium.

the next day, nate and his wonderful girlfriend heather took us out to lunch, then to the comic shop and little kids toy store (heather had to buy some gifts for her little nieces.) in the toy store, nate and i had a great time playing with magnets for more than a half-hour. i think i'm way too easily amused. i also ended up buying one of those little balsa wood wind-up rubber band planes.

after all this fun stuff, we went back to Marsh to gather groceries for dinner, then back to the house to chill for a while. nate and i (primarily) played quite a few rounds of Gran Turismo 3, with paul jumping in occasionally. we watched the rest of the batman beyond episodes (four in all, i think) and "Mask of the Phantasm" (yet another batman animated movie…) while we were all in the living room, doing our guy things heather was working up a storm preparing some delicious chicken enchiladas and (makeshift, but very tasty) spanish rice. we also spent quite a bit of time outside in their huge yard winding up and tossing around the little airplane. it as actually a lot more fun, and lasted a lot longer than i expected it to.

all the while dinner was cooking, heather was putting the finishing touches on her and nathan's costumes (blossom and space ghost, respectively). finally after dinner had been eaten and all the preparations had been made, we hopped in the car and headed for the party.

now, the people who's party we were going to, were (pretty much) all grad students and all psych majors. fortunately, the party wasn't nearly as weird as i thought it would be. despite the fact that i was pretty much in neanderthal non-talking matt mode most of the night, i had a good time. the crew had gone to great lengths to decorate for halloween, and pretty much every room or available space was decked out in gory halloween fright-fare. zombies in the front yard, a mad scientist in the living room, pitchforks mounted on the drum kit, and all sorts of other things, including a (motion-sensitive) skeleton hanging in the bathroom that sang "bad to the bone" every time you went to take a leak. they'd even built a maze in the back yard by hanging black plastic tarps or garbage bags or something and putting scary things in the nooks and crannies of the maze. it was, needless to say, a big to-do.

later in the evening, paul, nathan, and one of the house residents picked up the musical instruments and jammed a little. at one point, paul took off and handed me the guitar. we jammed for a little bit and kind of hit our stride on a song or two despite the fact that i was feeling uncomfortable about my lack of really rockin guitar playing ability, paul eventually came back, picked up the mic, and started to sing.

if you notice in the first paul pic, his little cowgirl's right there in the background… which leads to the next part of the story (of which, paul would have more to say than me…). apparently, paul was feeling a bit frisky that night (way friskier than me, anyhow) and after talking to several girls, got invited to go run around town with them. they were headed to a different party, then to a bar. from the story heather told, paul was uncertain at first, but heather insisted… "go. go! we'll find you." so, at heather's prompting, paul took off to parts unknown with girls unknown. go puffin go, indeed. i, for one, enjoyed living vicariously through paul's ability to throw caution to the wind and take off with strange, beautiful (drunk) women.

we were still jamming when paul left, so i got a great kick out of heather whispering in my ear "paul took off with a girl!"

myself, i stayed right there, sat for a couple hours (in between warm-up visits to the indoors) out on the front porch listening to psych majors talk about bloomington or Indiana things, smoking cigarettes, and freezing my ass off.

we went back home late late late and nathan made the "concerned fatherly" call to his friend who'd run off with paul, to make sure our boy was being taken care of. in the morning, through a series of phone calls, heather located him and brought him back while i drifted in and out of sleep.

most of sunday was another lazy day, punctuated by a good lunch and the eventual necessity of saying goodbyes.

all in all, as i've said before, i had a great time, and i look forward to the next time i get to visit. even if there won't be Kevin Smith or a hottie psych major halloween party.

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my weekend so far has been surprisingly eventfully non-eventful. on thursday (technically not the weekend, i suppose) paul, brax, & i went to the wonderful if somewhat uncomfortable baxter avenue theatre to see "apocalypse now: redux." having only seen the original maybe once before, many many years ago, it was like seeing it for the first time. i've gotta say that movie is very long. most of my friends don't agree with me that they could have cut probably at least 30 minutes (aside from the 40 minutes of added "redux" footage) from the movie. i just feel that there were several places in the movie that could have been made quite a bit more succinct and which probably would have increased the emotional/psychological impact of the film as a whole. i liked it, don't get me wrong. i just think i could have liked it more.

friday i finally got to hang out with brian some, as planned. we went and did a little bit of the coffeeshop hopping that we had planned, but brian didn't seem to be quite as into it as when we'd discussed it earlier. we mainly walked up and down bardstown road for a while. we did run into the infamous MC Seth-yo (of the much appreciated wraith computer systems, our benevolent site hosts) at one of our stops, but i didn't get to speak to him much as the barristas inside took about 30 minutes to deal with the two customers in front of me. ah well.

after grabbing some grub, brian and i went back to chill and digest at my place, where we ran into paul and (brian's roomie, my former roomie) jess. jess begged and pleaded with me to go with her and paul to see the 10:'ish showing of "from hell," but i bowed out because i'd promised to hang with brian (and he was planning to go to a later showing with some other friends). well, as it turned out, the later showing didn't actually exist, so we tried to call guy & scott and see if they wanted to go to the 10 o'clock. unable to get hold of them, we jumped in the car and raced to the baxter to meet up with jess & paul. after finding them (actually, we beat them there) we settled in.

i thought the movie was great. really quite good. well acted, well directed. good visuals. gruesome in all the right places. paul wasn't as impressed with it, ostensibly because he "already knew the story." ah well. you can't please everyone. which is, i'm sure, what he'd say regarding my opinions on "star wars episode 1: the phantom menace."

saturday found me sleeping in after a longish night of carousing at the backdoor (where we met an old friend from back in the murray days, alan who's finally graduated with a double major and is planning on going for his doctorate… who'da thunk it?!). i think i finally got up around 6:00 pm, not having gone to bed until about 6:00 am. shortly after getting up, brian called and we ran out to fazoli's to get some grub. met up with guy there, went to the unfortunately closed compusa, then to target, then home. after that, the night was entirely low-key, sitting around, watching paul's new "phantom menace" dvd, which, unfortunately didn't increase my appreciation for the movie at all.

today… another low-key day. went to BK for lunch, probably going out with jess in a little bit for ice cream, then later, the sunday band practice.

i'd have to say, it's actually been a pretty eventful, fun-filled weekend. still haven't gotten shit done, but that's the way it goes.

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i really needed this. it's been an incredibly relaxing weekend so far, and there's one more whole day to go! hell, maybe i should call in on Tuesday and just make this a mini-vacation… nah. i got too much work to do.

anyway, friday after i (finally) got home from work, i spent a couple hours hanging out on the couch watching t.v. with our kitties. i hardly ever actually just veg. out in front of the tv anymore, and usually only if someone's already watching something interesting that draws me in. i've generally just gotten so fed up with the amount of total crap the networks attempt to pass off as entertainment, that i've just given up on watching tv altogether. but you know, at times it's just like watching a train wreck. you're sitting there, half zoned-out, flipping through channels trying to see if the next channel could even possibly be worse. usually, it is.

what i would love to see would be a group of really good, really challenging directors and writers join forces with a talented group of actors and start their own cable tv network. can you imagine scorcese, david lynch, david fincher, and others of their ilk creating all the programming for a network? sitcoms, drama, soaps, news programs… man, i would pay $50 a month just for that one channel. "screw digital cable, just hook me up with that one channel please. in fact, here's an extra $40 a month if i can get the 'no commercials' version of the channel."

of course, then you'd never get me away from the tv, i'd gain about 300 pounds in two weeks, and i would die from a massive brain hemmorhage from trying to figure out what the fuck was going on in each show.

but anyway, it's been a nice weekend. had our normal sunday band practice, which was interrupted by jim's in-laws coming in with his wife's grandmother in tow. we felt like we had to turn down the volume quite a bit lest we severely offend not only her elderly ears, but her elderly moral sensibilities as well. playing our songs just isn't quite as fun when we can't crank it up. but it was a good evening anyway, paul & neil showed up shortly after jim's in-laws, and we continued to drink and play music until we just couldn't play (or drink, since the beer was all gone) any more. we then moved the mob back to our house, where neil soundly whipped all our asses in a drunken game of trivial pursuit.

tomorrow, i think i'm going to pick up the new printer i've been wanting, buy a laser pointer to drive the cats absolutely insane, and do some more serious relaxing.

in other news… in case you hadn't noticed, something that our man at wraithsys did to the servers appears to have fixed the cookies issue and allowed the themes to work properly once again… so, if you already had a themes cookie set, you should now be seeing your chosen theme again (and, would have noticed this like… a week ago), and if you hadn't set a themes cookie, or didn't know about our different themes, you should check out the themes page to see what it's all about.
and, finally, it would seem that my webcam is cooperating again. i was having some weird issues before, but have had it running now for about a day & a half without it breaking, crashing, or otherwise not working. so, check out the cam page to get a glimpse of either my (and brian's as well) lovely visage, or the wall behind my chair.

oh, hey, i've been finding it difficult to think of things to write about considering the general banality of my existence, so if anyone would like to send me a topic to discuss, .

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is there even a point to this post? i'm sitting here attempting to sober up before bedtime, and have been reminded of an anecdote from earlier today:

we (or, perhaps i) decided that my humor is like a piece of wood. it just sort of lays there until someone picks it up and smacks you over the head with it.

why you needed to know this, i'm not entirely sure.

but, you did.

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boo. bipolar is officially back, at this point, i'd say. assuming we can actually get a post up, which brian seems to be having trouble doing at this point. we'll see if this goes any better.

i'd write more, but after a long long night with way way too much whiskey (i've unfortunately discovered that mountain dew & whiskey really really taste good together…) i have GOT to get some food and coffee and a cigarette. my body needs. i must sate it.

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it's been a very busy few weeks at work with a few big projects landing on my desk, or threatening to land on my desk simultaneously. in fact, i went the entire workday today not logged onto AIM or jabber, not chatting with friends, as i am prone to doing throughout the day. i've developed this bad habit where i come into work and take the first hour or so catching up on news sites, or getting sucked into really involved IM conversations with paul and nathan. my work ethic has seriously suffered from these several months (since around February) with very little to do while at work.

right now, i'm actually having trouble trying to remember all the things that have gone on in my life recently. it seems like i've just been going pretty steadily since my last post. we've had several band practices (we're actually managing to get together not just once, but twice a week now!), several nights spent drinking at bars and hanging out with friends.

i actually had enough presence of mind to write last-minute emails to some friends of ours that we'd sort-of lost contact with, and they ended up hanging out with us over the weekend at the big 30th birthday party we threw for brax. so, it was really cool to get to hang out with our friends again, and it really helped to elevate the birthday party above our usual run-of-the-mill cookout get-togethers we've been having infrequently. and, of course, it also helped that payday fell on that week just before the big party weekend, so i could afford to have as good a time as i could handle.

and my sister ended up swinging through town on her way to language camp in (or near) minneapolis. so we were able to have lunch together before she went off to spend a couple months with a bunch of american kids speaking bad french.

oh, and another fun thing was going to see Final Fantasy on Friday night when wug came up. the movie really was pretty good, if you (as paul mentioned) can deal with the cliche'd plot, story, and characterization. but really, the animation was amazing. i mean, it's still obvious that it's computer generated, so flesh and blood actors needn't be afraid quite yet. in fact, probably the best part of the whole movie was getting to see the spider-man teaser on the big screen. i tell you, that helicopter scene just sends shivers of joy up my spine everytime i see it. the shots of spidey swinging through the city still look a bit too CGI, but i think that the effects in the movie are going to be excellent. now, cross your fingers and hope for a decently written story.

well, i think that's done me in for tonight. i'm looking forward to taking a half-day tomorrow, and taking monday off, making this a nice extended weekend. hopefully i'll be able to motivate myself and get some stuff done. wish me luck.

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