From five.one on, my blog entries will be located at strikeslip.org: ask for it by name.
I decided to skip the Supertanker show in lieu of some quality time with Amy up in Manassas (priorities). So I had my traditional 5:30-9:00 drive through the Virginia countryside this morning. Hopefully I’ll get the pictures from this weekend up soon. We’ll see.
I expanded my music collection once again, with a trinity of trinities: three albums, three singles (including the “Yellow” single from Coldplay, in honor of the weekend as much as anything else [hook us up, Mays]), and three promos. (None of the CDs are represented in the [finally] updated aural fiations section over there.) § “”
I went to the optometrist this afternoon. I’ve know the past few years that I’m slightly myopic from all the work I do in front of computers. Focal distance of 33 cm, that’s me!
So I go in and they do the lovely glaucoma test. And who doesn’t love a puff of air in the eye? Then she tests my visual acuity: distance vision != good.
The optometrist has me go and pick out frames for my glasses (no problem) and then tells me she’ll dilate my eyes to check on them when I come and pick up the glasses in a week and a half. A week and a half?! When I got glasses before, they ground the lenses and all then and there. Complete weak sauce.
If you see me at The Concert this Saturday, I’ll be the guy with the binoculars. § “”
Maybe I should rephrase that and say there’re snowflakes falling.
Luckily the forecast for this weekend is lookin’ good. § “”
I’ve heard him do either 1 or 0 work; either really good or WTF? music. I’ll find out which digit soon enough. : ) § “”
He’s back up (with some help—and server space—from Bobo).
{This just in: my zero-kelvin mailbox has arisen like someone else today. Thank you easter bunny.
I have never seen so many ugly ass clothes in my life.
Green/red/blue bigass paisley pants…in the guys’ section. Frayed and pre-wrinkled cargo pants. Shiiit. When I buy something I don't want it to look like it’s been laying on my bedroom floor for six months (that’s a rite of passage). It was like going into an expensive Goodwill or something.
There was absolutely no one in the store that even closely resembled those people in that ad. § “”
Disappointed about it? Yes. Devastated? Hell no. I won’t have to drag myself into work on a few-to-no hours’ worth of sleep.. That, and I have plenty on my plate the next while.
In other news, I met up with Mays Saturday evening. We caught Along Came a Spider with Morgan Freeman. Decent movie, a few parts were predictable based on the genre of the film.
For example: at one point the kidnapped girl escapes and swims out for help to a local fisherman on the shore. Meanwhile the villain (who sounded like he could be the brother of Andrew Winn) was still on the boat with his loaded gun. Any ideas on what might happen, anyone? Needless to say after a few seconds the fisherman wasn’t of any help to the girl. Big surprise there.
By the way Mays, Fair Oaks is so not a ghetto mall. Eddie Bauer, Hechts, Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, A&F, and Henry & David stores do not qualify as ghetto stores. They may be for Fairfax, but it is a far, far cry from a real ghetto mall. If you want to see the real thing, come on down to Lynchburg.
Pittman Plaza here in town recentered the shopping out of Downtown Lynchburg in the late ‘50s. Then they built River Ridge Mall at the other end of town in the ‘80s. Most of the store spaces at the Plaza are “available for rent”, and the only stores remaining are a SunTrust bank (I’m surprised it’s still there), a super-sketchy Food Land store (food stamps + welfare checks > cash transactions), Heironimous, Roses, a Heilig-Meyers, and the only eight-screen theater in town.
The Carmike 8 is the only reason anyone who isn’t carrying a pocketful of WIC checks goes there anymore. § “”
"When my wife was about six months pregnant, I was sitting on the couch watching a game on ESPN, and my sister and I were talking about baby names," Jason said. "She just kind of laughed and said, 'Hey, you watch so much ESPN, you should name the baby after it.' My sister was just joking, but I brought it up to my wife. § “”
I, in true Lazy American fashion, took my car to Jiffy Lube to get the oil changed on Wednesday. When I drove it back from work, I noticed a cloud of something creeping out from under the hood. Lotsa fun. Luckily this was when I just parked at my place.
So I pop the hood and figured they'd gotten sloppy with the antifreeze, and it was being heated on the engine. No problem. It’ll be burned off by tomorrow.
I left yesterday morning with my cell phone unlocked and ready, lest I was wrong about the fluid and would need to use it. At a stoplight about half a mile from work, smoke/steam starts to trickle from the hood. So I call my coworker and have him meet me out in the parking lot at work. We take a look at it, and see a distinctly fluorescent-hued puddle of antifreeze and water on the ground.
So I took the car back to Jiffy Lube to make sure it wasn’t anything they fucked up while topping the fluids off, and they say I have a leak in my water pump. (Bridge, we have a coolant leak down here!)
On a recommendation, I then call up Marvin’s Auto Repair and bring the car in around one o’clock. By 4:30 the car’s done. In addition, two of the serpentine belts (A/C and related) were looking cracked/worn and he replaced them at no additional labour (spelled .sara-like) cost since he had to take the belts off anyhow to get to the coolant reservoir.
The whole point of this is, yesterday morning my trip up to Manassas this weekend wasn’t looking too promising. But by the end of the day, I was green for go, and the price wasn’t outrageous. That is why Marvin rocks. He didn’t pull a “wayell, we’ll need to look at eet for a couple days tuh make sure thayat’s the reeel problum”, and then pillage my bank account. He straight-out did his job, did it quickly, and as far as I can tell competently. If not, I’ll find out this evening on my way up 29 and you guys’ll be hearing about it soon enough § “”
What are we going to do now? Expel their dignitaries, too?
Let’s take stock here. We bomb the Chinese embassy in Sarajevo, accuse them of acquiring top secret nuclear technology from the Department of Energy, and then land a crippled spy plane on one of their islands and say “Stay out! ‘Cause we said so.” Not even taking in to account their “One China” policy with Taiwan or the state of human rights within China and their entry into the WTO.
We’re so in for it.
Somehow this administration thinks that they can just swagger around and not care about the implications of their stance on international matters (unless, it concerns free trade or energy resources, then they’re all ears).
To put it politely, we more or less ignored the outrage in Europe on the Kyoto Accords, then get all defensive and demand to have our plane and servicemen back from China, dismissing the shouts from the E.U., while shouting just as loudly at China. That’s what I like to call a Dubya-standard. § “”
But the Gingrich Republicans overinterpreted their mandate of 1994, and look at the ditch they landed in. The George W. Bush Republicans have no mandate to overinterpret. They are proceeding now by the metaphysics of Wile E. Coyote, who ventures bravely into midair, until he notices that he is standing on thin air above the deep canyon, into which, presently, he begins a long, whistling plummet that ends in a distant "poof!" on the canyon floor.
…Bush is repeating the Clinton administration's early errors of symbolism and priority. As Clinton stupidly allowed gays in the military to become an opening issue of his administration, so Bush has given early prominence to carbon dioxide emissions, arsenic in the water, rejection of the Kyoto treaty, and oil drilling in Arctic Alaska.
I completely forgot it was April Fool’s Day until it was almost half over. Oh well.
Made some good progress on my fiveone project, watched Return of the Jedi (letterbox). When I bought the Star Wars box set a while back, the clerk at the counter saw it was letterbox and proceeded to say “I don’t know why they put those black stripes on the screen like that.” I just picked up my bag and walked on out, and haven’t been back since. (Of course it helps that I bought them in Oregon.)
On a separate note, BlogVoices is going to go local due to the taxing demand on the server(s?). Get ready to change your code, kids, and say goodbye to the number of comments. That feature dies with the switchover. § “”
