LifeBox

Man, I’m so lazy. I haven’t been doing anything. I’m even falling behind on my slacking. That’s lazy.

I finally did get out of the house for a game night at Nobody and Emerald’s house. Played a game of Senet with Nobody, a few rounds of Pit, and a good bit of Cosmic Encounter. Pretty fun. Also coveting Nobody’s theremin. Got to get me one of those. After we close.

I left my Radio Lazlow hat there. Dumbass.

Came home, Bernie made a super tasty dinner, ate it, mmmm.

All our loan stuff is in for the house, I think, so we’re just waiting to close. Sasha called; since the sellers are staying in the house for an extra week after close, they’re going to leave us a bunch of stuff - washer/dryer, some kitchen stuff, etc - in lieu of a week’s lease charge. Seems fair enough. Turns out that they’re not going to leave the piano like they said they were. Fuckers.

I’ve been sleeping like crap. Just getting back to the gym. It hurtsss us.

I’ll be back when the day is new
And I’ll have more ideas for you.
And you’ll have things you’ll want to talk about.
I will too.

Magnolia is out of carrot cake. I guess I’ll have to eat toenail clippings, instead.

Our sellers gave us their thirty day notice, so we’re good to go. Close on the 10th, start moving in on the 18th! Woot! So, giving notice to this rathole on the first, and we’re gone, baby, gone.

Phil got off to the airport safely, after stuffing him full of barbecue and pie at the Salt Lick. Good visit, and now we’re kicking back and watching some crappy movies. Tomorrow, we’ll get our fat asses back to the gym. Probably.

I had some really vivid nightmares last night about this human slaughterhouse. People had set up some operation in New Orleans or Mexico or something, where they waylaid drunk tourists and took ‘em to this place for the meat-making. People in cages, limbs cut off, hanging on hooks, the screaming, all that. Pretty nasty. I’ve been feeling really weird and edgy lately - maybe it’s the melatonin screwing with mys sleep. Or, maybe I just need to get out more.

If I was a dork, I’d say that im “blogging the roller derby”. But I’m not, so just shut the hell up. I’m sitting around, got the sidekick out, blah, blah, blah. Just taking notes, can’t really do it justice on a tiny little keyboard in the dark, but whatever.

Hm. Some of these derby girls do some pretty interesting stretches before the match. Mmmm, Barbie Crash.

The organizers have a new rule - there’s no photography except for holders of press passes. Which, you know, is sort of bullshit. They didn’t really say anything about it beforehand (although Dave managed to snag one) and, you know, I’m not sure how having fans take pictures of the derby is going to hurt anything. Free publicity, people! Plus, they’re just stickers. Kinko’s is right around the corner. Just sayin’. Anyway, Phil and I have been snapping away, and Phil’s even got his new digital video camera out, and nobody’s said anything, so I think we’re good. Keep an eye out for pictures.

Phil showed up at the airport right on time, we walked in, caught him coming down the escalator, grabbed him and his bag, and drove out. Didn’t even have to pay for parking. Woo!

On the way back to our place, we dropped in on Dave and Mel, had a few beers and snacks, chatted for a bit, then stopped home for a quick nap before the Mr. Sinus showing of Speed. Which was, by the way, so goddamn funny. Maybe the best one they’ve done so far. But, I always say that. The “stop the movie” they did got screwed up because of a problem with the projector, but they improved through it, and it was totally great - probably better than if it worked right in the first place.

Afterwards, we took the big gold caddy over to get some Amy’s ice cream (mmmm, butterfinger) and then we all headed up to the Broken Spoke to catch the Derailers and Mike Judge play some. We also met Lara and her folks and some friends there, one of whom lives across the hall from here, and gives dance lessons; I reckon we’ll be over there to learn how to two-step one of these days.

That’s it. Had fun, went home, had some tea, crashed out. The end.

So, before Phil shows up, I’ve got to take care of a thing or two. We had the bad fortune of parking under a rather… active tree on the street last night, and more or less wound up with a new coat of lumpy white paint. And the smell, whoo. So, here I am at the car wash, with not a whole lot to do but stare at the air fresheners.

Yay sidekick.

I drove all over tarnation looking for this place - Bernie told me it was up on Lamar, by a bagel shop we know, when in fact, it’s all the way down the other end on South Lamar, other side of the river. Ah, well. One of the tires has had a slow leak for a while, too, so we’ll see if I can’t get that fixed while I’m out here, too. Then a quick bite and shower, and it’s off to pick up Phil at the airport, and hit the Mr. Sinus and Speed. Woo!

Ah, there’s the car. Almost done.

Our house stuff is moving along. Finding insurance for a 50 year old woodframe is a pretty big pain, though.

Went to the Burlesque For Peace show. There were lots of Flipside-type people there that we met at the scavenger hunt, a bunch of Leri folks, the usual gang of freaks. Miss Scarlet was running the lapdance “booth” (more like a couch, really), featuring the fabulous River City Kitty - I bought Bernie a lapdance from her. She liked it. Me too.

The event was in a pretty cool, but pretty smoky club. I don’t mind, but if I’m gonna come home stinky and have a sore throat in the morning, I’d prefer to have the enjoyment of smoking myself. Ah, well. It was loads of fun, there were nekkid boobies and debauchery, and all the money went to cleaning up landmines so kids in some godforsaken land overseas don’t get their little legs blown off. I even won a free music lesson in the raffle, and they even pronounced my name correctly when they called me up for it. So, big fun.

I got an email from a long-lost uncle, Thom Majcher, out of the blue. I think he’s my dad’s cousin, so I think that’s an uncle, but dunno. My aunt Dineen is really into genealogy, so she dug it when I forwarded her his message.

My little Flash job fell through, and my little perl job won’t happen until sometime this summer, if at all, so, bah. Need to scrounge for work, this whole house thing. Unless someone just wants to send me money, that is.

I’ve been playing around in There lately. I worked there for a while last summer, and it was a pretty cool place to work. If I somehow found myself living in Silicon Valley again, and I had to pick a place to work full-time at, that’d be the place. The beta of their game, or virtual world, or whatever you want to call it, it’s pretty neat. The environments are extensive and amazing, and the art direction and animation are very well put together, too. I’ve made a few objects through their developer program, and constructed a little scavenger hunt through their world, but I’m losing interest pretty fast. It’s one of those things that you have to dedicate a lot of time to, if you really want to get a lot out of it, and I’m just not that committed to a 3D chat world right now. Still, worth checking out if you’re into that sort of thing.

Speaking of getting stuff done, I need to find a big project to avoid doing to get myself motivated to do all the smaller things I should be doing. That’s always a good motivator. I erased all my potential project off the Big Board, and put ‘em in the ever-growing “to do” text file I have sitting around, thus guaranteeing that they’ll never actually get done. Fah. Mostly, I need to focus on using the rendering engine that I built last year to render out a redesign of majcher.com, but that’s like work and stuff. But, I can’t really expect to attract clients if I don’t have the science on my own site, right?

Phil is showing up here in a couple of hours! Woo! Let the visiting commence!

I bought a big box of floppies today. 40 translucent, multi-colored 3.5″, 1.44 MB, 2HD, DOS-formatted disks, with a convenient reusable plastic storage case. Ten bucks. I reckon that this is probably the last time I’ll ever buy floppy disks, ever, barring some unforseen strangeness. See, in the interest of weight and volume, I weeded out several shoeboxes full of old floppies before moving - backed up some of the recoverable data, trashed most of them, and kept a handful of essential disks that could not be discarded for either practical or *snif* sentimental reasons. Now I find myself in this position: I want to take some really good pictures of something, the camera that I use all the time doesn’t really cut it, and my only other working camera uses obsolete storage media. That’s right. Okay. You can stop laughing now. Enough!

On the upside, I also got myself a really quiet (theoretically) case fan, so my PC will sound more like a computer and less like a hovercraft, and a tiny little pocket-sized multi-tool, which I seem to have misplaced…

House update: Dropped off most of the required paperwork at the broker’s office tonight. Still waiting on the student loan information. Trying to get insurance for the house, but having some difficulty finding someone who wants to give us a replacement cost policy on a 50-year-old wood frame. Stress level is still pretty low, but chronic. Only one minor freak-out this morning.

Health update: Abdominal pain has returned, only now it’s sharper, a little throbby, and in two places, and nowhere near where it was before. So, I’m almost positive it’s not appendicitis, but it doesn’t really feel like gas any more, and it’s kind of annoying. But, the personal medical insurance application is underway, so hopefully I’ll have a professional poking at my insides in no time. Or, you know, three or four weeks, anyway.

I also did something really bad to the knuckle joints in my right middle and ring fingers. I think I bashed them slightly, but repeatedly, while chopping the chicken for tonight’s super tasty dinner. Totally suffering for my art, baby.

I can’t wait until I have a permanent address again, so I can start subscribing to worthy publications again. Oh, and build shelves. Totally need more shelves.

I hope this whole mortgage loan thing goes okay. I’m not really working right now; although I am still theoretically doing consulting, no money is coming in, which is bringing a little bit of stress at this financially delicate juncture. I’ve still got a good bit saved up, but the down payment is going to wipe out most of that, so my slack cushion is pretty much gone now. J. O. B.

The other funky thing is this: last year or so, I helped out my cousin, and became a co-signer on his student loans. He’s had a rough go of things in the last several years - in and out of jail for drug stuff (harmless hippie drugs, not nasty gang drugs) and all that. But he’s pretty much the closest thing I’ve ever had to a little brother, so when he decided to go back to school and get everything up and up, you know, gotta help the guy out. So, he’s all finished, and his loans are deferred while he’s getting set up in northern California. Unfortunately, the lenders see “co-signer on student loans” as “you’ve got loans out, and we have to assume the worst”, which means, they figure the cost of the loans into my money situation as if they were defaulted, and I got stuck with them. I think everything is going to come out cool, but it’s just one more thing.

I’m not sure if it’s the house stress, or something, but I’ve been having some pretty unpleasant abdominal distress in the last day or two. Feels sort of like gas, moving around in the right lower side, only, it doesn’t go away. A couple friends of mine have had their appendixes out recently, so I’m sort of paranoid that it might be that. The situation is complicated, of course, by the fact that I don’t have any health insurance right now. Since I work for myself, I had individual insurance through Blue Cross of California, and I haven’t gotten an official “you don’t have insurance any more” letter form them yet, but I haven’t gotten any bills since I’ve moved to Texas, either, so I’m just going to assume that they figured I skipped town, and shut me down. It looks like the soonest I can get Texas individual insurance to kick in is the first of next month, so if something bad happens, I reckon I’ll be paying for it myself. Bah. So, I got myself some herbal tea and stuff to sort out the various unfortunate digestive symptoms that come along; I’ll give it another couple of days to settle down before I start worrying too too much.

Other than that, I’m feeling sort of antsy here. Stuff coming up, and stuff to do, but I’m in that “gotta do something, but don’t want to do anything” set. And the video game thing isn’t cutting it. Reading a lot, though. I’ve still got another half dozen books on the stack that I’ve picked up in the last couple of months, so that should keep me out of trouble for a while…