(or, how i lost my ass)

let me start out with this: Kevin Smith is a funny motherfucker–smart, witty, insightful–but then, we knew this already.

paul & i got off work on friday and hauled ass up to Bloomington, IN for a weekend visit with our close friends. we made good time, surprisingly, considering we left during rush hour and the interstate was packed all the way to the bloomington exit, as was the two-lane highway you have to take to actually reach bloomington. we basically got out long enough to stretch our legs, visit the facilities, and greet the pets (and their owners, of course), and then we were off to see the king of the dick & fart jokes.

the plan, according to the show "program," was for Kevin to talk for about an hour, maybe two, then to go to the lobby to sign autographs. well, apparently Kevin has something of a problem with authority.

once he got on stage, he almost immediately opened the floor up for the Q&A session, explaining that he wasn't really much of a public speaker, and felt more comfortable answering questions.

as soon as the first person spoke, he started busting the poor guy's balls, as he would continue to do for the rest of the evening. one thing Kevin Smith can handle is hecklers and morons. that was almost the most fun part of the evening, listening to him berate those who just got up for attention and not because they had a decent question. it was all in good fun though–he was never really hostile, just having a good time.

frequently, when people would hit on a good subject (or even sometimes when they didn't) he'd go off on a funny story for 15 or 20 minutes. at one point, he talked for almost 45 minutes about his experiences working with Prince at some week-long Paisley Park event.

we got to hear about how he met Jason Mewes (jason originally was an acquaintance of some of kevin's friends, and when they got tired of jason, he ended up bugging kevin until he gave up and decided to hang out with him.) he related the story about the time he and his friends were working in some recreational center, and jason just walked in the room and gave blow jobs to all the even slightly phallic objects in the room (for 15 minutes, without so much as a word to those in the room) until he reached a centipede (i think) arcade game. since there wasn't anything phallic on the arcade machine, he just went down on the rollerball. (the story was much funnier when kevin told it…)

at one point, kevin's cell-phone rang, and he answered it. after a brief conversation he told the audience that the caller wanted to say hello, and held the phone speaker up to the mic. we heard the unmistakable voice of jason mewes yelling "whazzup!" after a couple seconds kevin put the phone back up and jason asked "where's all the indiana ass?!" it was a funny little interruption that again loses a little in the translation. probably the funniest part was just hearing kevin's one-sided conversation with mewes. "yeah, there's about 3200 people here." … "dude i gotta go, i'll call you when i get done."

the prince story was about the week he went to minneapolis at Prince's request, and was asked to film a documentary about the religion themed event (partly a pre-release event for Prince's new album). kevin discovered through the course of the week that Prince was now a Jehova's Witness and had become rather a freak about the whole religion thing. he did say though, that for the first time, Prince joined the visitors to the park and presided over many of the religious discussions kevin was filming for the documentary. it was an interesting story about life in the park, and about being under the direct influence of one of the most eccentric people alive today. as an aside, i love prince's music, but i'm afraid this album may be too much of a stretch for even me, mr. eclectic.

after about two hours, the people running the show were telling the people in the question lines to sit back down, that the time was up. when one of the questioners told kevin this, he mentioned how he didn't like to sign autographs, but would rather just answer questions until everyone was ready to call it a night. the union board (i think is who was "in charge") trying unsuccessfully to shut down the mics and ask kevin to please leave the stage, but kevin didn't leave, and the people who'd gotten back into the question lines wouldn't sit down. people were booing the poor ushers out of the hall (at least, until they just gave up and let kevin and the audience do what they wanted). kevin proceeded to talk for two more hours.

i'd like to relate more funny stories, but really, the funniest parts of the evening were him riffing off of the audience, and ripping into the occasional idiot with little enough self-respect to get up and ask a stupid question or make a stupid comment.

seeing kevin smith speak for four hours was more than worth the two hour drive up to bloomington, even if i hadn't been up there primarily to visit friends, and if you're in the area where he's going to be speaking, do yourself a favor and grab a ticket any way you can. you'll be glad you did. (this is all, of course, assuming you even like Kevin Smith. if you don't like him, you probably shouldn't go.)

i've just found a post by Kevin himself about some of the night's events.

paul's just informed me that his post about the weekend is now up as well. — go read it after you finish reading mine! (that's if you can stand to read anymore, anyway)

so, there ya go. tomorrow i'll post a little more about the weekend, probably about a little less specific stuff–more about the weekend in general and some of the highlights.

tomorrow: "where's paul?"

today: "hey, is moves there?"

well, i've just gotten home from a weekend in bloomington… erm. that's not entirely accurate. i've just gotten home from band practice that i went to almost immediately upon returning home from bloomington. unfortunately, it's almost midnight and a half, so i'll just say right now that i had a great time, and i can't wait to tell you guys about it when i get a moment tomorrow. i may have four days worth of posts just from this one weekend!

tomorrow: "a visit with Kevin Smith"

tonight: i want to publicly thank Nathan and Heather for putting up with paul and i again for a weekend. you guys are the best , and i love you both!

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.

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 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, .

what a crazy week this has been. i realize that i tend to think of myself as someone with little to no "real" life, a layabout, a lazybones, an anti-social bastard. for the most part, that's probably true, but the events of this past week have hammered home to me just how active my inactive lifestyle really is… throw one wrench in the works, and i'm struggling to hold on.

my parents let me know somewhere around the 21st or 22nd that my sister would be home (their home in Princeton, KY, not mine in Louisville) that weekend and would need me to pick her up and to take her to the airport. unfortunately, her arrival and departure schedules were timed just poorly enough to potentially interfere pretty seriously with my work week. now at work i've been just busy as hell. i can barely take time out to chat with my friends, though i do try. and we've got a couple projects i'm knee deep in that have semi-unrealistic deadlines so i really can't afford to take off work for an extended period at this point. my sis was trying to get me to take off a monday & a tuesday, then a half day on thursday to take her to the airport. i managed to convince her to get in touch with some friends and make arrangements to minimize my time away from work, but of course in the process i was really just compressing three days worth of activity into 1 and a half.

on sunday (when i had been planning for and looking forward to a cookout at a friend's house) we decided to cut the day's activities down to just band practice so i could leave at a decent hour. practice ended up running a little long, but it went pretty well so it was worth it. i think i finally left town around 6:45.

another odd thing that i've noticed is that it seems like every single time i go home, it always manages to be during a storm of some point. it always rains on me either on I-65 south, or somewhere along the first half of the western kentucky parkway. this time it managed to do even better than that. it pretty much rained on me down the majority of I-65, and all of the first half of the wk parkway. it was a very impressive storm system that stretched the entire length of that parkway, from Elizabethtown to Princeton, and i really enjoyed trying to catch some good looks at the huge, breathtaking lightning that was going on. i really wished that i had a camera and more time… i would've loved to just pull off the road and try to get some pictures of the sky.

i finally managed to make it home around 9:00pm. the drive through the old hometown was pretty surreal. i go home so infrequently these days that it's just very odd to see all these familiar things from which i'm so far removed. but i did make it home, and hung out with my parents for a little bit since my little brother and big sister were out at the moment providing me what would most likely be my only opportunity to really talk to them. (my little brother tends to monopolize my time when i'm there, which i assume is just a normal little brother thing). almost the first thing out of my mom's mouth was her asking me if i'd permed my hair. i explained to her as i pointed a finger at my dad that no, unfortunately i had, in the genetic crapshoot that is human reproduction, inherited it from him. this got us started talking about other things i'd inherited and from whom, and about family and family history. as it turns out, it is generally believed that i have some melungeon blood from my mother's side, and that my… is it great-great-great grandmother?… was Native American…. there may be another great in there, i obviously don't have any native american features…

anyway, so i helped my little brother (once he got home and i had to quit talking to my parents) dismantle some pieces of his old computer in preparation for the computer parts he was expecting on Monday. another reason for me to go pick up my sister was so that i could help him put his new system together. he showed me his fish which had spawned two separate broods, so there were somewhere around 100 barely macroscopic little fishies swimming around one of his tanks. he played me some of the songs he was writing with the little band thing he's doing, and i showed him a few tricks i'd picked up recently (namely simple things like the blues scale, and how to know what key you're in…) as well as some older tidbits of guitar knowledge.

the next day i took my car to the local repair shop to get the front brake pads replaced and ended up tooling around town until the work was done. i walked up and down the courthouse square area and ended up in front of sharon's parent's business. i went in and had 15 or 20 minute conversation with sharon's mom, and found out that i'd missed seeing sharon by about an hour. i didn't even have any idea she was going to be in town, or i'd have forwent band practice on sunday… ah well. i guess that's the way things work out sometimes, but sharon, if you read this, i'm sorry i missed you.

once i finally got home from that outing, i helped my bro set up his new machine (thankfully, all the parts had arrived.) of course, we ended up having to run out to radio shack twice to pick up some extra parts that he hadn't known to buy beforehand. but we did finally get the beast up and running at around 7:30 or 8:00, and i got the windows installation started for him.

sara and i left town much later than we should have, and ended up getting into Lexington around 1 in the morning on Tuesday. she gave me some crazy directions to get back home to louisville that i ended up screwing up briefly, and i ended up getting home around 3:30. i slept a couple hours then went through most of the day at work pretty much zombiefied. then that night i had band practice again. nice little bookend to the trip home since being at work for 8 hours didn't really help me feel like the whole weekend ordeal was over.

my bandmate's wife had brought home the kittens she'd told us about, and he surprised us with them (since they hadn't told us they actually HAD them yet…). we ran out after practice and got the necessary things, litterbox, food dish, food, litter, and then took them to their new home. we'd called paul to let him know we were bringing them, so he was still up to see them and play with them a bit.

it was amazing. after climbing out of the carrier, the little things were just wandering all over the house, in full-on explore mode. of course, brax and paul were waving their toys around effectively forcing them to postpone their explorations for some play time, but it was all alright. they adjusted so well and so quickly it was just really surprising. no accidents, no complaints, not even any hiding under the bed. they were just kind of walking around like "ok, let me figure out where the hell i am and what all this stuff is, then i'll come hang out and play with you all." they went to their litter box like it'd been in this house in that location for all 12 months of their lives, and they found the food and water and ate with no hesitation. and boy are they cute.

so i ended up staying up with them until around 3:30am. another night with little sleep. yipee.

wednesday is the traditional comics/denny's day, which was good, as usual (it's nice to have those routines, sometimes). and a little later (like around 9:30pm) my sister finally showed up. she stayed with us that night so that i could take her to the airport on thursday. i think i finally got to bed around 3:00am. (keep in mind, i have to wake up at around 7:45am every day…)

i worked straight through until 2:00, left work early and picked up my sis at home. we grabbed some lunch and then headed out to the Cincinatti airport (near Florence, KY and at least 30 minutes outside of Cincinatti). after nearly falling asleep throughout most of the drive, we finally got to the airport and i helped her carry in her bags and kept her company for a while. we stopped and had drinks (coffee for me, diet coke for her) at the "cafe", and just kind of hung out and talked for a while. we said our goodbyes and she headed back to france for another good year. me, i headed back home. thankfully the coffee had done the trick and i didn't have as much of a struggle with sleep on the way back home.

once i got home, i took a little time to relax, then called up brian to see if he still wanted to hang out. he came and picked me up and we headed out to fazoli's for some italian fast food. he had to show me his new musical equipment, so i got to play around with his nice new Gibson and his crazy pedals for a while. and, as he pointed out, we hung out for a while on the back porch (the main feature of the old apartment that i really miss) drinking bourbon and just chatting. a pretty pleasant night, overall.

and that was pretty much the entirety of my week thus far. so much for not having a life, eh? now, it's friday, i've got a three day weekend, and i've been sitting here at work for an extra hour to write this blog entry… i've gotta get out of here and start the maxin' and relaxin. i feel like maybe this time, i actually deserve it.

so, like paul mentioned over on puffin-a-go-go a post or two ago, he, brax and i went to see a sneak preview (much like brian did monday night…) of "jay & silent bob strike back," double-billed with "the others." it was altogether a great four hour block of movie watching.

i'd have to say that J&SBSB isn't my favorite of the view askew movies, and at this point (prior to a second viewing) it actually comes in third. nah, wait. i don't want to commit to that, i'll have to watch the other contenders again before i can say that. i'm pretty certain that my favorite of all of them is "chasing amy," which, if you take into account my predilection for falling in love with bi-sexual (or even straight-up lesbian) girls, isn't all that surprising. and i've just got this huge thing for Joey Lauren Adams…. boy oh boy. she's incredibly cute, and her voice (which seems to turn many men off after extended exposure) just adds an extra touch of uniqueness and enhances her overall cuteness in my eyes. joey, if you're reading this, i'm a really great guy… call me!

anyway, back to reality. i liked the movie overall (we're back to j&sbsb now, for those of you trying to keep track). there were some places where they went a bit overboard with the going overboard, and a few places where the comedic bits seemed a bit forced. will ferrell was awesome, as usual, but then, so was everyone else. hm. i don't know what else to say, other than that. i'm at a loss… how 'bout this: "it was good."

the others was also quite good. i'd pretty much figured out what was going on (or going to happen) before the midway point i guess (not in the first five minutes, like paul claims…), and was actually able to allow myself be taken by the story. it was told well enough that it did make me doubt the conclusion i'd reached, and i happily followed the director down the path he wished the audience to go. don't worry though, whether you figure it out or not, you'll enjoy it. i didn't really think it was all that "scary," but there were a few pulse pounding seconds here and there. i do believe that at one point, the entire audience hopped about four inches out of their seats…

earlier that evening, after running to pick up brax from work in the general area of the theatre, and having to rush home to get his glasses (pretty much all the way across town, mind you) and still needing to stop for dinner before the films, we decided to stop at a new place called the "blue moon diner." we figured "hey, it's a diner. and not only that, it's a new diner we've never been to." we thought we'd be able to run into this little place, grab a quick cheap meal, and get to the theatre in plenty of time. a word of warning: the blue moon "diner" is not really a diner at all, it only looks like one. this place was fancy, or certainly fancier than we'd expected. they had cloth napkins! what the hell business do cloth napkins have being in a "diner"? the food was a bit expensive, but really really tasty. and, of course, the service was a bit slower than we'd hoped for, but we did still make it to the theatre on time. i think we definitely want to go back there at some point, so that we can appreciate it for what it really is… a restaurant.

blah. well, i was hoping all that stuff would be better than it seems to have come out, but hey, at least i posted, right?

it's late. i know i've said this a hundred times, and i'll probably say it a hundred more, but i have GOT to start getting to bed at a decent hour.

man. these past few weeks just seem like they've been crazier than hell. last week, we had two people in my department out on vacation, and i had a couple projects with some major revisions due at the end of that week. i ended up pulling several 10+ hour days last week… this week i've decided against that. i like to at least be able to pretend to have a real life.

all the various issues with the new server seem to be settling down, and puffin-a-go-go is finally back up and running along with paul himself (email-wise, anyway).

sound's like brian is up there enjoying himself in the big apple. undoubtedly he's enjoying a little radiohead action right about now and becoming the envy of the x:13 design set.

crap. i'd thought i would be able to post a little more than this, but i'm drawing a blank. i've been working. had band practice sunday and tuesday, and got to enjoy a little of paul and neil's playing tonight. we all took a little jaunt over to the caffeine shack and felt like completely lecherous old men as we ogled the cute youthful patrons. this is my life. love it.

i'll get off this subject eventually, but i had to include this little tidbit that was kindly sent to us by a reader
(Matt, i'd put a link if you'd included one in your email!)

breakdown of traffic for bipolar as reported by dbwired:

as brian pointed out, if you haven't yet read the whole story of the treatment we received from dbwired, you can read it here. (and for you bloggers who like to keep your links correct, you can use that new link, and we'll try to keep the page up as long as we are.)

we went to the palace theatre today to watch psycho. it's the first time i've been to the palace, and i was really just amazed at how beautiful the place was. i felt like i was walking into a painting. and then, there were the areas where the walls were recessed and glowing a pleasant soft blue. it was really breathtaking. brax was suggesting earlier that we need to buy that place so we can live there, and i now am in full agreement. anybody loan me a half-million dollars?

now that bipolar's back, and since it's been down for almost a month, i'm going to try to take that as the break i had apparently needed (since i wasn't posting on a very frequent basis) and actually, as the title of this post suggests, get back into the swing of things. hopefully, we'll come back even better than before. thanks for sticking out the long wait.

oh, and the themes page seems to be broken at the moment, it doesn't quite want to set the cookie. hopefully i'll get a chance to fix that in the next few days.

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.

well. i never did manage to write anything about that dream that i had… or anything else for that matter. another week has slipped by with me, once again, thinking about writing a post every day, but never quite managing to pull up blogger and actually do it. and what a strange week it's been as well. right now it's friday night, but it feels like a tuesday or thursday except that my belly is full of Denny's and there's a bag full of comics sitting on my bed in my room downstairs, so it kind of feels like a wednesday too. i'm just all messed up. the past couple of days have been fairly depressing.

now, don't get me wrong, first off my sister did come into town (from FRANCE, no less) and spent the first few days of her American vacation here at the house. i love my sister to death, and i'm really glad that i got to see her. unfortunately, visiting with her was probably the happiest part of the past few days. we all had a grand time hanging out on Tuesday night; me, my sis, paul, brax, and mr. norman (not sure how he feels about us using his name on these blog things, so i'll just leave it at that). we all sat around (as described in paul's blog) and played a game of drunken trivial pursuit until the attack of the evil succubus. after that, the party kind of devolved into bitching, whining, pissing, moaning, laughing, chatting, and generally haphazardly carrying on. of course, brax and his cancerous growth were arguing on the front porch (which is my only smoking area) so i had to interrupt them and then walk around the block while i smoked. nothing like not being able to enjoy your only refuge to really twist your spine.

then, of course, came the 4th of july. big plans for a big party with a bunch of our friends, some good food, drinks galore, and fireworks spectacularrr. so i got up around noonish figured i'd have a lazy kind of day until around 3 or 4, y'know, relax and enjoy my day off, which i did. of course, this entire time, brax is locked in his room having his soul ripped away. around 4 my sis started complaining about being terribly hungry, but i was hoping she could hold off until we got the grill fired up at jim's house around 6. i mentioned to paul (who'd already gone out and gotten some grub himself) that we should probably start gathering up the troops for the trip to jim's. his response was that it was "too late." so, seeing my big plans effectively dashed against the rocks by brax's disappearance and paul's bad mood (we could have done the cookout without brax, and perhaps that would have served to point out the stupidity he was subjecting himself to…), i got dressed and my sis and i went out for dinner. we didn't get to go to several of our first choice restaurants because they were closed for the 4th, but finally settled in at Mark's Feed Store for some good Barbecue. after getting back home i called up jim to tell him about the failure of my plans, and to suggest we might have a more intimate little gathering to watch movies or something. i also tried to call my former roommate jess to be sure she was aware of what was(n't) going on, but didn't actually get to talk to her. a few hours later, jim called back and said that she and her beau were already over there. i woke my sis from her food and jet-lag induced slumber, grabbed some movies, and hit the door. we stopped at the grocery and picked up some ice cream, then got to jim's.

after we got there, we chit-chatted with jim, jess, and john, the polite conversation eventually turning into an enjoyably heated discussion about stereotypes, homosexuality, religion and religious fundamentalists, theology, and philosophy. lori (jim's wife) got home and jess and john left shortly thereafter to go to another friend's party. so the four of us hung out and chatted a bit longer before settling on "Heathers" and plopping ourselves in the living room to watch it. after the movie we just came home and called it a night. not quite the fun, enjoyable time i'd been looking forward to, but at least it wasn't a total bust. at least i was still able to get sara out to socialize a little bit. the day had pretty much pissed me off, because my sister had decided to spend her time with me on the 4th of july rather than with her friends who were also planning (and probably actually did) some exciting things for the holiday. i'm glad i got to see her and hang out with her, but i think she'd have had a better time with her friends.

and of course, the other reason i was in an ill mood wednesday and thursday, is the conversation that my father & i had had on the phone on wednesday. i know i've talked about it before, but a bad familial relationship isn't something you can just sweep under the rug and forget about, it just keeps coming up, each and every time you interact with that person. as i said, i've already talked about it in this forum, so i'll not drown you with the details. if you're a glutton for this type of thing, you can freely search through the archives for it. but i did eventually take off from work an hour early on thursday so i could be home when dad got there to see him and so i could tell my sis bye. hanging out with my dad was worse than the phone conversation. we hung out, we talked, he made jokes, i made jokes, but when he left i was just completely depressed. i almost just shut myself in my room to read a book, but instead i immersed myself in a game of bridgebuilder.

anyway, i'm not so depressed today, it's actually been a decent day. i'm a little tired. i'm very broke. i'm going out for a smoke.