LifeBox

Being a slacker. Working some, and working on my new GameFly queue. Beyond Good and Evil is a damn fine game.

We had thanksgiving over at the Mollberg’s place, Aunt Kathleen, Uncle Bernard, Cousins Nick and Alex and Laura… and about 50 other relatives, all of whom got along remarkably well. I saw my Aunt Patty for the first time in about 25 years, met Grandma Majcher’s twin sister. I also got to meet the infamous Grimes boys, who I’ve heard a few crazy stories about from dad. A few of the younger cousins were in Alex’s room playing Fusion Frenzy on the Xbox, so I had to sit down and kick their asses a bit. Damn kids these days, where’d they learn to play video games?

We ate way too much turkey and ham and fixin’s and dessert, and then went out to the shootin’ pit with Nick and Alex and Bernard with a mess of shotguns and pistols, and shot at the dirt some. Alex got us some incendiary rounds for the shotguns, and we made some fire go boom, followed by the running and the stomping out the dry grass.

Well, I should do some work tonight, but I’ve got XIII sitting here, waiting to be checked out. I guess I’ll have me some lemon bars and think it over.

“Cat in the Hat” opened to forty million dollars, making it the number one piece of soulless crap to be vomited out on the American public this weekend. In celebration, I am making a special promotional offer available: send me your Cat in the Hat ticket stubs and your mailing address, and for a small handling fee, I will perform a quick - but painful - sterilization procedure on you and your family members, insuring that your degenerate crappy-movie-loving genes do not pollute the human race any further than they have already.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go attach some magnets to Dr. Seuss’s rapidly spinning corpse, and see if I can’t use that to power the CastratoMatic3000.

Just to make it a little easier to take.

This empty space will be filled up Real Soon Now, for real.

Dinner with Willow and Cesar last night, at the Hyde Park Bar & Grill. Holy moly, that’s some tasty stuff. They have the best double-battered french fries that I’ve ever had. Afterward, we headed next door to get some super tasty gelato. I had double chocolate, and I think I almost died.

(It seems like I mostly write about food lately. Well, we’ve had a lot of good food. So there.)

Tonight is game night, at our house, and I busted out the RoboRally for Dave and Mel. These people need to learn that lasers are for FIRING, not for sitting on, dammit. I won - yay, treachery - and then we played a quick game of Chrononauts, which I didn’t win.

We also got a chimnea today. Fire!

Gave a presentation on the Flash MX Drawing API at the local Flash users group tonight. (I should put up more notes. Real Soon Now.) I presented second, and time was a little tight, but I ran through stuff pretty quickly, so it all worked out just fine. It’s been a good long time since I gave a talk in front of a group like that, and it was good fun. I should do that more often. But enough of that - back to paying work.

Bernie tells me that it’s inappropriate to use an empty birth control pill container for a business card holder. I maintain that she is dead wrong.

Also, it appears that, in my photo exhibition section, I have the only genuine pie porn pictures on the internet. Yay, me.

I got myself one of those big nasty hook/saw/clipper things from Home Depot, and took down a big dead branch that was threatening to take out our phone line in the next big storm. The DSL is safe, once again.

Procrastinating, bad brain chemicals, morale low. Got some animation work to do, and get a presentation ready for tomorrow. The sadness is exacerbated by my keyboard tray completely falling out of my shitty Studio RTA desk, so, the computer life is the suck. Got to replace this piece of ass thing.

The “Switched” derby bout was today. Lots of fun - since I didn’t have to help Dave out with the scoreboard, Whiskey Lamour recruited me for the SWAT team, which I’d never done before. Good time, all around.

Afterwards, we packed Curro’s with rollergirls for brunch, and had some tasty breakfast tacos with Dave, Mel, Kitty Kitty Bang Band and Nathan, Lucille Brawl, and Vendetta Von Dutch and her man. After a bit of recovering and a nap, our pal Billy Steve came over, and used his mad locksmith skillz to bust the lock off my shotgun, which I had lost the key to. Zombies, beware.

And now, I do.. uh, research. For my secret project. Yep.

Woke up late, futzed around some, did a bit of work. Bleh.

Went to see the last showing of Lost Boys with Mr. Sinus at the Drafthouse. The gaggle of super annoying club girls behind us didn’t hamper our enjoyment of a great show, although the “stop the movie” bit was pretty scary. John got all oiled up, Owen was dressed up like Kiefer Sutherland and got hoisted up on a makeshift flying harness directly above us, and we saw Jerm’s nekkis ass crack twice. But, I reckon that’s what we pay for, so that’s what we get. Plus, way too much burger-pizza-beer. Mmmm, fat.

Started work on a new contract today. Got some tasking stuff straightened out, to discover that the bulk of the work is just animation in Flash, instead of programming, which I was looking forward to doing. Eh, it pays the same, I guess.

Tonight we went to Stubb’s with a bunch of the rollergirls, for some pre-bar grub. After the good food, it was over to Room 710, where we caught the Rockland Eagles - who fucking rule. I’m going out to buy their CD, like, tomorrow. But the real reason we were there was to take part in this “Switched” reality show thing. One of the rollergirls, Rolletta Lynn switched places with a drum major from the Grambling State Marching Band. (Who you may have seen in Drumline) So, picture this. A cute little white girl leading a marching band at a football game in Louisiana, and a skinny black college kid getting out on the derby track with the Honkytonk Heartbreakers. I reckon this should all be on TV sometime soon, so keep an eye out. Should be a fun time - I didn’t catch his name, but the guy seems really nice, and I think he’s going to have a blast with the girls.

So, we hung out at the bar afterwards for a while, and jabbered with some drunk ass rollergirls. When the band changed, and started sucking really hard, we moved into the other room to hang out with Mel some, and then headed home. Time to sleep it off, and get ready for the full schedule of stuff coming up. Yay, Austin.

We watched pretty much every damn episode of Fawlty Towers today. Also, I’m starting a new (short) contract. Also, I got my bug tracker pretty much working, at least to the point where I can start entering bugs about what needs to be done to it. Also, I’ve got a bunch of draft versions of stuff I haven’t posted yet, so be cool. Also, I still haven’t gotten my damn tailstock handle from Amazon. Also, I still need to get Billy Steve over here to get the lock off my shotgun. (Also, I have two other guns that are operable, so don’t get any funny ideas.) Also, I need to rent a truck to get stuff that won’t fit in the car from Home Depot, then pick up a piano thinger from Mel, then haul a bunch of big crap out of our yard to the dump or somewhere. Also, I haven’t finished writing the Flash presentation I’m giving next week. Also, we skipped tai chi yesterday, but I’ve been practicing in the yard, and have the 24 pretty much down. Also, it’s time to get java hooked up to this database and start cranking on this here thing. Also, I got a cool ultraviolet spy pen. Also, I’ve been really tired lately, and not feeling like I’m getting a lot done. Also, I think I’m going to start in on Quicksilver, which looks like it’s going to take a good bit of time, considering my retarded rate of reading, recently. Also, it’s time to sleep.