Sunny San Diego

My weekend plans were dashed, and all my friends were busy, so I decided to go down to San Diego for the weekend.

I notified a few friends and family members that I'd be down here and could pick up a few things for them at Trader Joes, a yuppie-ish health food store with some great stuff. The shopping list I've received is getting pretty hefty...

- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Merlot
- Lime cashews
- Roasted almonds
- Pink lemonade
- Orange soda
- Dark chocolate truffles

Hopefully somebody at Trader Joes reads this and decides to open one in our humble town. But without the alcohol sales, I don't see it happening...

Crunk!

Last night, after a frusterating day at work, my boss invited me over for a few drinks. He managed to acquire some absinth, which is a vile horrible substance that is actually illegal to sell in the US. Thanks to some questionable law skirting, a seedy liquor store in Wendover sells it (at least for now), and my boss picked up a bottle with his winnings at the penny slots.

After being egged on by his wife (who loves getting me drunk for some reason), I found myself quite unable to drive and so I stumbled my way home.

When I'm drunk, I usually do a pretty good job of sobering myself up with lots of water and various drunk snacks. I did none of that tonight.

I slept about three hours with some of the most bizarre dreams I've ever had. I woke up at 3:30 am, still quite drunk and knew I had to start downing water if I didn't want a painful morning.

However, now I can't fall asleep again and it's approaching 5:30 am, almost time to start the day. At least I can call in sick I guess.

There really wasn't any point to this entry. I guess I just wanted to say that it's way early in the morning and I'm still of questionable driving ability.

Some cheese taquitos from Betos would really hit the spot right now.

Let's do lunch.

Happiness is having employees from another office working with you this week, and them offering to buy you lunch for their entire stay.

A better random.

When I drive, I often times like to put my iPod on random and just listen to whatever comes up. I rarely want to hear a specific genre when driving ... if I'm looking for specifics, it'll be a specific song (or a specific artist at the very most).

The downside of just hitting 'random' is that half my collection is classical music, and I don't like that to interrupt my popular music listening time. When I want classical, I'll seek it out.

I haven't gotten around to setting a custom playlist to filter out the clsasical, but I found a very neat way to "shuffle" the songs and keep the classical mostly seperated: Just play the songs in order of song title!

It sounds silly, but check out the eclecticness (is that a word) of what has come up in the last two days when I started it at a random point:

Some Like It Hot - Power Station
Something About You - Level 42
Something I Can Never Have - Nine Inch Nails
Something Wicked - Herbaliser
Somewhat Damaged - Nine Inch Nails
Song for Junior - Beastie Boys
Song for the Man - Beastie Boys
Sonne - Rammstein
Soul Free - George Michael
Sour Times - Portishead
Southern Man - Neil Young
Sowing the Seeds of Love - Tears for Fears
Space Oddity - David Bowie
Spanish Castle Magic - Jimi Hendrix
Speak English or Die - Stormtroopers of Death
Speak to Me; Breathe - Pink Floyd
Special - Garbage
Speechless - Cibo Matto
Spiders - Space

I could keep going, but I won't. But future artists included Zero 7, The Police, KMFDM, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Donald Fagen, Tool, N.W.A., Paula, Depeche Mode, Huey Lewis and the News, Rush, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Stevie Wonder. How's that for eclectic?

One of my father's bypasses collapsed last night. I've been in the hospital for the last day and a half with him and my stepmother.

His doctor tells him he needs to lose weight, but instead he's been gaining weight. A lot of weight. He's up 30 lbs since the heart attack six months ago. I worry about him, yet I don't know how to get him to change his eating habits.

I'm definitely at risk for the same stuff he's going through. Whenever I eat with any of you reading, make sure I eat healthy stuff. I mean it! You're allowed to yell at me.

Phoots!

I've been taking a photography class, and I'm two days into it. My homework for the second day was to take a picture with interesting lines.

I had started by taking silohette pictures of a power pole and power lines in my neighborhood. I took a bazillion of these pictures. Straight on, cropped, shots with the moon and stars in them, shots of the power lines going down the street. None of them turned out particularly interesting. The photo itself looked fine, it was just ... boring.

Undaunted, I moved indoors where I tried taking pictures of the mouths of wine glasses. I tried all sorts of possibilities ... eye-level, crazy angles, straight down, etc. They still weren't doing anything for me.

I was about to call it a night when it occured to me that the mouth of the wine glass may not be the most interesting part. Lo and behold, by moving down a few inches, I got a picture with great lines. It's still not great (not enough depth-of-field, and it could use some colored lighting), but I think it will suffice for tonight's homework.




Also, I just wanted to post this because it really did make me laugh out loud:

I'm gonna start rappin' when the horn blows.

Over the last few years, I've started to like rap.

This has been very hard for me to admit. For the longest time, I was the typical person who liked "everything but rap and country".

I'm not sure exactly how it started. It may have been hearing some rap songs that were popular when I was in school. I didn't like them then, but now they seem kind of catchy. A great example of this is California Love by Dr. Dre. It was annoying at the time, but now I think it's a fun song with some semi-witty lyrics.

It's slowly evolved into a large handful of songs I like. I tend to like the songs that aren't about slapping bitches and pimping hoes, and such songs seem to be few and far between, especially these days. Child of the Night by Ludacris fits the bill quite nicely.

Of course, I do have a slight soft spot for N.W.A. and the post-breakup solo artists, even if they have such lines as "Guess who's back in the muthafuckin' house; with a fat dick for yo muthafuckin' mouth". The G-funk sound fascinates me for some odd reason.

Tonight I went to a concert by my favorite rap group, Ugly Duckling. I'd place them halfway between the Beastie Boys and Pharcyde. Almost all of their songs are fun and bouncy anthems that you could play to your bishop/pastor/grandparents and not be embarassed. Their rhymes are witty and clever, and quite funny to boot. I mean, how many rap songs do you hear with the line "It's kind of like the food a pregnant woman gives her fetus."?

I've always wanted to play with a set of turntables, but they're quite pricey and I'm not really sure how to work them. I've been curious to see if I could mix classical beats together. If anything, it'd turn out really bizarre, just like most stuff I tend to produce. One of these days...

My first post is going to be a bit of complaining. I don't like to complain, but I'm grumpy tonight.

I went on a date tonight. My date lives about 60 miles (100 km) away, so it's kind of a pain-in-the-ass to get up there. The massive road construction going on right now doesn't help either.

So I head up there today, and due to traffic, it takes me two and a half hours to get there.

I finally arrive, and find out that her babysitter (she has a three-year old kid) can only stay until 9:00 pm, three hours from then.

So we have a quick dinner, go to a movie, and it's already time to head back.

The construction traffic on the way home wasn't quite as bad; it only took an hour and a half to get home.

So we're talking four hours roundtrip for a three hour date.

She's fun, but I probably wouldn't have gone if I knew we could only spend three hours together. What a waste of an evening.

A fresh start.

Welcome to my new escape on the web.

I apologize for the poor quality joke embeded in my blog title. I thought of it while stuck in traffic and I thought it was pretty damn funny, and the description only adds to that. If you don't like it, tough shit.