ok. so it was a moderately interesting weekend. er, well, saturday wasn't much to write home about, but sunday was a lot of fun. i got up (gasp!) early and ran out to the grocery to pick up a few things. then, after waiting about an hour and a half for the dishes to wash, i began preparing a breakfast (lunch, at this point, really) that would have made Shamu cry. oh, it was a bountiful feast… homemade venison sausage (thanks dad!), omelets with ham & cheese, crispy strips of bacon, and biscuits (thanks Pillsbury!). why do i think you will find this interesting? i dunno. but i was really proud of myself for pulling all of this off, and wanted to toot my own horn a bit. it's funny, i don't do it very often, but i really enjoy cooking. paul's dubbed me Iron Chef Kentucky for my skill on the grill (though i'm sure 90% of the grillmasters out there could put me to shame…), and i think everbody just enjoys watching me work the grill because i enjoy it so much. likewise with the breakfast thing. i had a blast getting everything together, and was thrilled that it all turned out so good (granted, i forgot the biscuits in the oven and they got a bit too brown and crispy on the outside…).

then, of course, last night me & the boys picked up a boxed thanksgiving dinner from K-Roger, heated that sucker up, and went to town. it was actually really damned good. of course, we were all expecting pre-cooked, piping hot from the box dinner, so the hour & a half we had to wait while the food was (re)cooking really stoked our appetites. now, of course, we've got probably 3 or 4 pounds of turkey meat in the fridge that we'll have to finish off in the next few days.

basically the past two days were the "days of gluttony" for us, but do you hear me complaining? hells no.

now, i'm getting ready to head to virginia tomorrow on an alteration of the traditional family thanksgiving. normally, my folks stay in their hometown and have a big breakfast social party thing they throw every year. then we usually have thanksgiving dinner there at home. this year, they've decided to go spend the week at my grandma's house. normally, we go to grandma's for christmas, so this year it'll be a bonus to get to visit her twice.

on to another topic… if you guys have been by today or yesterday during the day… you may or may not have noticed a slight difference up there where the pics of brian & i are… i made a neat little tweak to the site over the weekend that provides a webcam activity indicator of sorts. i've been wanting to implement this for a while now, and finally got around to it. basically, if one of the webcams is active, the picture changes color a bit, and the rollover tooltip changes to "webcam active!" it really was a little simple tweak with the help of php, but since i'm in a my-own-horn-tooting mood, i figured i'd tell ya about it. of course, since brian's home computer is kaput, his cam won't be on much until he gets a new one, and since i'm heading out of town, mine won't be on again until next week. not that anyone would really want to see my silly ass sitting and staring at a computer for 8 hours, looking bored. but it's there anyway.

well, happy thanksgiving, folks.

well, i took a couple days off work last week (thurs. and fri.) for a little post-birthday mini-vacation at the ol' homestead. had a nice visit with my parents, and managed to not do a damned thing for two days straight. never even got dressed. i happily wandered about the house in my ratty robe, watched a little (ok, a lot of) TV, helped my little bro get his computer back in working order, and also taught him some guitar exercises to help hone his skills. of course, this is not to say that my skills are anything to write home about at this point, but i have picked up a few things here & there. altogether it was a very nice, fairly mentally healthy visit… my parents and i didn't get into a single argument. of course, we didn't talk about any "controversial" subjects either, but that's beside the point.

we (that is, the band and i, that is, lucifigous prick) attempted on sunday to get a recording by just mic'ing the practice room using a single mic and jim's crappy tascam 4-track cassette recorder. needless to say, the setup was sub-optimal. right now, we're hoping to copy-cat Old Man (that would be our dear blog-departed paul's musical concern with family funny-man neil) and rent a multi-track digital recorder so we can… i was about to say "do our songs justice," but i hardly think that applies… i'll just say "get a decent recording," and leave it at that.

but, at the very least, we do seem to be happy with the songs we've got so far, and everyone we've played them in front of has enjoyed them (at least, they've told us that…). we're thinking it's time we got out there to strut our stuff a little bit. we're also very seriously considering duping out whatever eventual "good" recording we can hack together, with the intent of supplying our friends with copies, sending them off to a bazillion independent labels, and possibly sneaking them onto the racks at the local record stores. perhaps i'll upload some tracks here for your listening pleasure as well.

but enough self-promotion and acting like i'm some silly rock star.

i've been attempting to motivate myself today (having nada to do at work) with getting a new (non-amazon-specific) wishlist together for the upcoming holiday season, but i can't think of a damned thing that i want and that anyone would be willing to purchase for me. not only that, but i can't think of any damned online stores to go to to even find the stuff i might want. i'm drawing a total blank. i'm never good a this sort of thing. but, i have installed the wishcentral.com bookmarklet in my browser, so now, whenever i find something i want, i can just click a little button and add it to my wishlist… wherever i am. ooh! i just thought of something! TDK Mojo MP3-CD Player. there's one thing.

anybody got any suggestions? what cool cheap stuff do i need?

ah well.

the puffin's gone now, it was fun while it lasted. if you do as brian says and , perhaps we can convince him to at least keep the a-go-go going as a record review repository. the man's got a taste and a knack for music, and his reviews to date have always been enjoyable reading in themselves. anyway, sad to see paul hang up the blogging hat, but sacrifices must be made sometimes in the interest of things you're more… uh… interested in. yeah.

fortunately, immediately after he wrote his last post, and shortly before i read the damned thing, i spent 15 or 20 minutes getting his archives fixed up real nice so they're accessible again. so, (and since i'm the proprietor of coffeemonk.com) we'll probably keep puffin-a-go-go up as long as we can, so you can all continue to visit and seek its wisdom.

anyway, i've given my assurances to the concerned mr. hall that i have no intention of turning bipolar into an unbalanced "unipolar" (his words, folks… well, i added the "unbalanced" part). i won't lie. i may be sporadic as fuck, as i have been in the recent past, but i'll keep doing it until my stalkers finally corner me and chain me up in their basement (or, y'know, i really get sick of the whole thing).

boy. what the hell kind of post was that?

to finally conclude the bloomington story series here on bipolar, i invite you to join me on a trip back in time… imagine it's a mere four days ago, a saturday, and you've been having a great time so far all weekend. you're at a party, and since it is halloween there are many strange things happening. stay with me as we imagine that throughout this night, many beers have been consumed by these freakish apparitions who have in fact grown ever more freakish as the night progressed. now, imagine that one of these strange creatures is dressed as Space Ghost, while his companion is dressed as blossom the power puff girl… strange strange. late in the night, as you unsuspectingly enter a room, you are forced to witness this horrible scene…

for those of you who didn't scream at the sight of that, you have more resolve than i.

(sorry nate, couldn't resist throwing that little gem in there for the world to see!)

and please, forgive the strange, probably half-assed "b" horror movie/twilight zone feel of that first bit… it is halloween, after all.

in other news, i had to rush to the bookstore straight from work tonight in order to catch the inimitable Bruce Campbell at a speaking/signing event for his new book "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a "B" Movie Actor." it was a pretty good event, though horribly crowded since they held it in the bardstown road Hawley-Cooke–a tiny little store unsuitable for such a well-known (well, well known for a self-proclaimed "b-list" actor) personality. Bruce started out with a brief chat, and threw out some one-liners and current-events jokes to liven up the crowd ( i have to assume). one thing's for certain, Bruce Campbell is a ham. 90% of his responses to questions were sarcastic half-answers, and he tended to interrupt the questioners often enough for me to take notice. he did stay up there for a good amount of time answering the questions, and was fairly witty the whole time.

after the Q&A session the line up for the autograph table was organized. being in the third group called (i think there were around 11 groups, total), it took us probably about an hour to an hour and a half to get up to the table. the autograph table was set up in a little cordoned off section of the store, and the fans were let into the section one at a time. there were actually chairs sitting to Bruce's right where you could (were expected to) sit as he signed your book(s). the lady who would walk you to the table asked you your name before you went up so she could tell Bruce so he could greet you by name. "very… fancy." (read that in a Sean Connery voice to get the intended effect.)

of course, since i used to work at Hawley-Cooke as their webmaster (their current site is NOT MY FAULT. i swear. i haven't had anything to do with it in over a year!!!), and i knew the name lady from my tenure there, she introduced me as "matthew the webmaster." boy did that spark some interesting conversation from old brucie, neh. "the webmaster, eh? master of the web?" … it's nice to see that even he in that high-pressure situation where you're talking to a few hundred different people in the space of a couple hours and are expected to be witty… was not. to bruce's credit though, he did know enough about the internet development world to infer the word "design," and to work it into the comment he wrote with his signature.

all in all, it was an enjoyable time. luckily, a friend we met there had a camera, and allowed us to use it to take pictures. perhaps when i get a copy i'll link it in (as i seem fond of doing lately… oh, if only i had my own digital camera…). and, joy of joys, the one night when it counted, our local UPN station decided to air the first UofL basketball exhibition game, and in so doing, to delay Enterprise by the length of the game. of course, if they ever do it again, i'll be pissed.

(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.

(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!

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.

the good: tomorrow is the day the puffin and i go up to st. louis for my much anticipated Amiga convention… amazingly enough, the first i'll ever have attended. i've always wanted to go to the st. louis con, but never seemed to be able to afford it. well, now i'm in a little better place financially, though i still seem to have a non-paying roommate on my hands. so anyway, big announcements are expected, but mainly i'm going up there to have a little fun and maybe get some new computer equipment to finally fix up that Amiga 1200 i was bragging about a few months ago. i'm not sure if we'll have net access up in the hotel up there, but if we do, we'll try to keep you posted on our blood/alcohol level.

oh, and as paul mentioned in his blog, he's burned an MP3 cd for our trip, so i've basically got a 10 hour puffin mixed tape to look forward to hearing. i've never known him to build a bad mix tape.

the bad: well, it's official. she's moved in. we got home from dinner tonight and lo and behold there's a moving van out front of the house of the formerly ugly orange doors. we had the pleasure of seeing "idiot jerk" walk out of the house to the moving van… er, well, brian and paul had that pleasure. i was trying to just kind of ignore the whole thing, lest i do something rash. brian however, took great pleasure in glaring menacingly at "idiot jerk" until we got the front door open. i'm pretty certain that without any of us doing anything outright, the guy will certainly know that he's not welcome in my neighborhood.

but, as i said, i'm trying not to think about it, and though i did feel that little pang of… i don't know… maybe jealousy… or something, and though i do know that at some point, i am most certainly going to freak out about this, i'm doing fine right now.

ok, here's a reduced calorie version of the post i attempted to make the other day.

( or, the story of the year 2000 )

other things that happened pre-bipolar:

started the year in the arms of a beautiful woman, who i ended up falling in love with, and who ended up leaving me a couple months later.
lost my job of two years at the local bookstore, because of my own negligence.
spent two months off work, before breaking down and taking the Kinko's job (around the time of bipolar's first month).

so, now it's a new year, i've got the perfect job, and i'm making good money. hopefully this year will be a little better than the last.

well, for lack of something better–more meaningful–to post, i'll post some news items that're probably only of interest to me.

Amiga's about to release version 3.9 of their classic OS, and there's a petition to attempt to convince Amiga to give the nod to the development of a PowerPC native version 4.0.

in other Amiga classic news, Cloanto has released Amiga Forever 4.0–a classic Amiga emulation suite, complete with everything you need to emulate a classic Amiga from the workbench 1.0 days to workbench 3.1. for those of you now toiling away on your PC, Mac, or Linux boxes who long for the days when an OS didn't require over 200MB just to install, and when computers were actually fun to use, get yourself a piece of computing history.

in modern Amiga news, Amiga has released version 1.01 of their new SDK for linux and windows systems, as well as specifications for official AmigaOne systems.

there. now that that's all off my chest, on to other things.

yes. i failed to meet brian's challenge to post every day while he was gone. but i did get our home network setup, complete with that blazin' DSL connection that he's been gushing about since getting home.
it's good to have him back though. i'm relieved that his plane didn't fall out of the sky on his very first flight ever.

can't wait for paul to bring that dune tape over for a marathon viewing. i loved the Lynch version, and paul seems to like this one, so i'm sure it's gonna be great. (or was great, depending on your point of view)

i'm tapped.