"Hate-filled, anti-government leftist propaganda is not welcome in MY in-box, unsolicited, in the guise of a departmental mailing list..

Please be more respectful of those on this mailing list.

{signed}"

And now I'm just waiting for the fallout...

1/31/2003 12:59 Friday AM
Something I found from another FFer:
"4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
hmmm, that's a tough one. There's so many things that I've always wanted to learn but haven't yet, and probably won't. If I had the chance and the time, I would love to learn about fairies and other mystical beings that exist that only show themselves to certain people. I would love to learn about it from a clairvoyant; that and everything else about the supernatural world they could teach me."

I tell ya, crazy people RULE. I've said it before, I'll say it again... Crazy people make the world SO much more fun.

1/31/2003 12:44 Friday AM
The FridayFive.

1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/heroine? Why?
I kinda liked AquaMan. Just because he was so unusual, compared to the usual assortment of flying and/or gadget-laden guys like Superman and Batman. He had the cool scales on his chest, and he was always riding that dolphin or whatever. I liked Batman, too, of course, but more, I liked the unusual ones, I guess. AquaMan, Isis (anyone remember that cartoon?), Shazaam, etc.
2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?
Parents who lived.
Oh, you want a less morbid, less depressing answer? Let's say...a swimming pool.
3. What's the furthest from home you've been?
Without looking at a map, I'd say either Vermont, or freakin' Kansas, home being Orlando, Florida.
4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
Discipline.
Oh, you want a more tangible answer? Let's say...Arabic, the language.
5.What are your plans for the weekend?
As of right now, not much. My darling will probably be very busy this weekend. I will work Friday night and then come home to crash on a couch. Saturday I will work all day. I probably won't see my darling Saturday night. If I do, that will determine what I do Sunday, and how long into Sunday we do it, and Sunday night I will crash on the couch. If I do NOT see my darling Saturday night, then Saturday night I will crash on the couch, and Sunday I will just putter around the house, maybe barbecue outside for lunch, and relax in the evening.

1/30/2003 4:31 Thursday PM
A disjointed sort of update.

Yesterday, of course, I meant that I was taking Mariana some hummous, not nummous. Hummous is much better. So we ate a little bit, and then set off. We went to the Green Gardens so I could ask the experts what to do about the trees. Bad news, though. The one person I usually deal with told me that yes, the mango crop will probably be a total loss; there's nothing I can really do to stimulate new shoots or new blossoms this season. Pooh. She said just wait until all danger of freeze is past, and prune off all the branches that had been kilt, and then fertilize the heck out of it. So that's what I'll do. Same with the carambolas and passionfruit. Interesting, though, with the passionfruit leaves starting to drop, it's revealing more fruit that I didn't know were in the vines. Oh well. I looked, and the orange and grapefruit trees are starting to put out new shoots, so that's good. The tangerine, lemon, and lime aren't yet, but will in the next couple of weeks.
If you can't tell, I'm starting to get into my usual spring excitement. I can't wait to get back out into the yard, into the garden, to get some more veggies into the ground. Green Gardens had some nice pepper plants already, though I didn't buy any. But maybe by the end of February, I'll start cleaning up the yard to I can start planting.

After that we just came home and watched the Making the Idols Search for Stars show. Same thing, basically. Lots of obnoxious people out there, I swear. I found out the winner will be decided by popular, phone-in voting. It's sad, but that also means that every contestant who's not a thin white female might as well go home right now. (Unless, as I suspect, despite Mariana's reassurance, they're going to try to manufacture a male winner this year to complement last year's female winner.) It's also clear which contestants they're giving major pushes, the ones whose appealing image compensates for their poor singing, or vice versa.
Then sleep, then off-dropping of Mariana. And now I'm about to go shower for work. My kemptness is pretty un right now, so a good hot shower will do quite nicely.

In about an hour or so, she'll be knockin' 'em dead.

A KeyWord Rankings update. Not only am I the #1 result for ""s-10 owner's manual"," I am the only result.
Take that, Rick.

1/29/2003 11:40 Wednesday AM
Got home just in time to watch the end of the American Pop Idols Who Search for Stars Who are Making the Band show. The usual. Have the rest of it recorded, and I might watch that later tonight. Then watched the State of the Union, but was distracted by several matters. I'll re-read the text sometime today, I guess.
My darling is a bit stressed out these days, with plenty of papers and auditions and such to prepare for and finish. But she'll get throught it fine, she always does. I'm just trying to fit in, to be helpful when she wants me to and quiet when she wants me to. It's a hard schedule this semester, but we knew that. So we'll get by. Today I'm bringing her some lunch: grilt chicken, couscous, and some pita and nummous.
Then I'd like to go by a nursery that I frequent. I'm still assessing freeze damage. It appears that the incoming mangos might be a total loss. The tree itself is fine, I'm sure. The tree had just put out new shoots and blossoms a week or two before the freezes, and all of them appear dead and crispy. So I need to go find out if the tree can still be coaxed into putting out new shoots and blossoms this year, or if I have to wait until next year to enjoy fresh mangos. The citrus trees are all fine, surprisingly, and in fact today I had half a pink grapefruit for breakfast. Delicious. So I'm not worried about them. And the carambolas might be a total loss, too. Hopefully that tree will survive. It puts out fruit a couple of times a year, and it was just loaded this time. But now they're all shriveled and brown. The peach tree is still blossoming, so that's fine. I've got pictures of all this, which I might post as some sort of morbid before/after kinda thing. Welcome to Florida, it'll say. It Gets Cold Here Too.
After that I think I'll have to get Mariana home so she can continue working. *sigh*

1/28/2003 10:50 Tuesday AM
Worked all day yesterday. Uneventful. Fetched the lass after work and met the guys at the Ale House for some equal helpings of dinner and mirth. Started watching Monster Garage (or whatever it's called) on one of the monitors in the corner. As far as I could tell, the guys were converting a large hearse into some evil Death Machine From Hell, with a huge screw jutting out the back and two large, hydraulically-controlled clam-diggers that emerged from the trunk to impale vehicles behind it. They were very near completion, and just starting to figure out how to overcome the engine's pesky tendency to burst into flames...when the management came by and turned all of the TVs to different channels. I never got to see the final result, or any of its glorious carnage. So we left. When we got to where we must say our good-byes, I happened to stop in a handicapped-parking space while we talked for a little while. Sure 'nuff, though, the cops came by and gave me a $129 ticket for being parked in said space. My fault, of course. The laws don't relax, even at 2am. Oh well. While sitting there waiting for the officer to write out the ticket, a former student walked by. Even before I saw her, I could hear her saying something like "yeah, there you go, give that guy a ticket for being parked like that!" Then she emerged into view and I recognized her. There was long eye contact. I don't know if she recognized me. I couldn't stop laughing.
Tolls = $4
Parking ticket = $129
Having a former student see a police officer interrupt an obvious cuddle session = priceless.

I came home and slept, and here I am.

There seem to have been some changes in the KeyWord Searches. Google might have done a new trawl or something. But my site stats shows the Hellmouth as a result for a Google search of '"Greenway Ford" poor.' But when I click on that, my site is NOT listed in the few results that show up. (Obviously, though, Google was finding my blogged entry about the visit to Greenway Ford here in Orlando.) Similarly, it lists the Hellmouth as a result for a search of "Pictures of a Hellmouth stage," but when I click on that, THAT doesn't show the Hellmouth as a result, either. So I have no idea what's going on. But I've revamped the KeyWord Results with the current rankings. Gone are a lot of the shirtless pics results; I guess I'm slipping. Ironically, Rick has usurped my position in some of the key searches. In the all-important "pierce bronson shirtless" race, he is actually #1 now. Guess who's #2. Google sucks.

1/26/2003 9:38 Sunday PM
Damn, damn Bucs.

Went to Universal CityWalk Saturday night. Yup, saw half of it (I guess, it's hard to tell where CityWalk ends and where Universal Studios begins). Regaled Mariana with stories of the last time I had been at CityWalk, Tom's birthday, when Joel was forced to go where no man had gone before, when Joel went WAY above and beyond the call of friendship. Browsed some of the shops and walked around a bit. Had dinner at the Hard Rock. The Caribbean jerk chicken sammich had good flavour, but was a little underwhelming in its size and presentation. Walked around a little bit more. She gleefully pointed out the Hulk roller coaster, and made vaguely threatening noises about us going on it someday. I grunted. We also walked by one of those huge, creepy, surreal, billowy, tube-people. Freaked me out and I walked quickly away, shielding my eyes. Mariana laughed. She always laughs. She's so adorable.
On the way home we stopped at a 24-hour Super Wal-Mart for some trifles and stuff. Saw and talked to Scott, a friend who owns a comics/sci-fi shop (that he's about to close down due to lack of business). Went home.

Felt, and feel, VERY bad about not being able to give Mariana a decent, whole weekend night out. Because of my job, we can only go out fairly late, or at least, with very little time to enjoy before places start closing up. She deserves more. I feel like I'm short-changing her. We're talking about maybe making Wednesday night our big going-out night, since we both are able to go out much earlier on Wednesday nights and neither of us have anything really early to do Thursday mornings. I also feel terrible that I'm a NonDancer. She deserves to have her boyfriend take her out for some dancing. (As is, I might allow her to lure me onto a dancefloor sometime, if only to see whatever it is she thinks would baffle me.)

Today we didn't do much at all.

Damn, DAMN Bucs.

1/24/2003 9:04 Friday PM
Our World Tour of Half the World continued today, this time with half of the Millenia Mall. First I met Mariana with the chili, which was a bit bland, but still good. Sat and ate for awhile. I also smuggled her in a rose, which was about four feet long, and therefore difficult to hide and surprise her with. But I tried, and managed, I suppose. Assessing the probable freeze damage this morning, and a few individual matters, made me about half an hour late getting out there. Thankfully she's a very forgiving person! So we ate and then left for the mall.
We didn't get a chance to browse the whole thing, obviously (this being the tour of HALF the world, remember). But it was good while it lasted. Mariana started to get just a few chocolates, a variety, but then I and the nice salesperson convinced her she'd be better off getting the large, pre-packaged variety bag, which was about twice as much as she had planned to spend on the little bag she had assembled herself, but had far more chocolates. We also gave the salesperson the Hinckley Test, which she promptly failed. (She appeared to be in her early 20s, so I was reassured.) Then we continued on to various other little shops, deliberately bypassing the high-falutin' shops where she felt way too conspicuous. We also gave the Hinckley Test to a salesguy at American Eagle, a guy who appeared to be in his late 30s or so, if not a few years older. He failed, too, but added that whoever it was who shot Reagan, hopefully he could be persuaded to shoot President Bush, too. I was appalled, and the only thing that kept me from coming over the counter at him was, basically, not wanting to ick myself by touching a little creep like him. The bastard. So that's 0-for-2 for that test, and we were both gladdened and disheartened by those preliminary results. Anyway, we continued on, browsing here and there, but ran out of time, as usual. But it was fun, as usual.

Mariana also received some rather distressing news. And as a result, she's going to have to be a bit sparse in her blogging for the foreseeable future, a bit more vague and impersonal. (Notice whose name doesn't appear in her blog entry today? *grin*) I can't say why, at least not here; I'll say only that I understand her reasoning completely. Unfortunately, though, it also probably means we won't get her unique spin on things nearly as much. And that's sad. But I'm sure this will get fixed soon.
So now I'm home, all alone. It's still bitter cold tonight, predicted again to hit or even dip a little below freezing. Not as cold as last night, but pretty damn near. I don't plan to do much more than curl up with a quilt and the remo, and eventually maybe head to bed to fall asleep to a DVD or something. Thank goodness for laptops.

1/24/2003 10:05 Friday AM
WOW, a hard freeze last night. The dogs' little wading pool was frozen over with several inches of ice. That's alarming. It'll take a few days to assess the freeze damage to my trees. I imagine I'll lose the stalks and leaves off the papaya tree; the outer fringes (at least) of the passionfruit vines; and maybe some leaves and branches from all of the citrus trees. The persian shield plants don't look too spry this morning, but they're far less important than the fruit trees. I hope it's nothing more severe than that. The papaya tree survived a freeze a couple of years ago that burnt the top couple of inches off, but it rebounded and started again from some new sub-trunks, and it was much smaller then, so I'm sure the tree itself will survive this time even if the current branches and leaves (and fruit) don't. Same with the citrus trees. The smaller fruit trees, the peach and plum and carambola and fig, etc.etc.etc., we'll just have to wait and see, I guess. This house is pretty porous to wind and cold weather (and has a couple broken panes of glass in a couple windows!), so I burrowed deep under the 'lectric blankie and a heavy quilt. Plenty cozy and warm. Slept like a baby and don't think I even moved until this morning when I finally woke up. Of course, I woke up to learn that the modem had been scrambled by some minor power outages late last night, so it took a few minutes on the phone with the RoadRunner techies to get that sorted out. And now I'm running late to meet Mariana for lunch. Bringing her some homemade chili today, chunky and thick, perfect for such cold, blustery weather. (Home-grown tomaters in it, too.) It was in the slow-cooker all night and the aroma reached me long before I reached the kitchen.
And then to work, and then home, another day.

1/24/2003 12:01 Friday AM
First, my darling's FridayFive:

1. Growing up, who did you favor more, your mother or your father?
Definitely my mother (at least until she died when I was...in second grade, however old that is/was). She was mommy! In fact, I remember when I would get mad at my father, I would think to myself, and want to scream at him, "You're nobody! You're not related to me! You're just some guy married to my mom!" He was, of course, my bio-dad, and I knew that. At least, I wasn't implying that somebody else was my bio-dad. The point was, I didn't know about the whole concept of "bio" dads. I thought mothers alone were responsible for conception. I didn't think my father had anything to do with it. I knew I came out of mommy's body, and as far as I knew at the time, that was the extent of the process of procreation.
2. Did your pareents ever use corporal punishment? Do you believe that it is/was effective?
I remember only one time when I got spanked. I don't remember why; I just remember being utterly puzzled at the whole idea. "I'm being spanked?! What the heck is this all about?!" was my reaction. I knew about spanking, but it had never been done in my house, and I was just stunned when my dad said he was going to do it. I don't know if it was effective; I don't remember what I had done to instigate it so I don't know if I ever repeated that behaviour. But I was so bemused and amused at the idea, and had so little of the necessary fear of it, that I can't imagine it had any effect on my behaviour in general. And, as far as I can recall, it was never formally repeated. My father would slap me, though, hard across the top of the head or face sometimes whenever I would do...whatever, and that would accomplish something: it embarassed the hell out of me, and made me want to cry (and did make me cry, more than once). He did it in front of people, family, grandparents, even during my own birthday party one time as we all ate cake and ice cream. I remember that clearly.
3. What was the worst punishment you ever had as a child?
I really should read ahead! I think I just explained.
Well, there was this other time I was cooking with my mother. I wanted to know if the electric stove burner was still hot, even though it was no longer glowing. So I got a paper towel, climbed back on the chair I had been standing on, and dropped the paper towel onto the burner. It was very odd: just for a moment, the paper actually looked wet where it touched the burner. And then it burst into flames. I screamed, terrified, but also too terrified to let it drop, for fear of burning my house down. My mom turned around and saw it, and screamed at me to DROP IT! So I did, I dropped it onto the hard, terazzo stone flooring in the kitchen. Then she beat the flames out with a spatula. Of course, it was a very minor fire, hardly a threat to health or home. But I couldn'tna been more than five, so it was a very big deal to me. I don't recall my mom being mad at me. But I was so deeply ashamed at what I'd done, that I went to my room, pulled my pillow off the bed, and curled up on the floor, on the other side of the bed, between the bed and the wall. And just lay there, whimpering to myself, punishing myself. A little while later my mom came in to see what I was doing. She had no idea I was so traumatized. She comforted me, and smiled, and said she wasn't mad, and that I didn't need to stay curled up on the floor in self-imposed exile. I guess eventually I did come out...because here I am, right?
4. Do kids seemed to be not disciplined enough these days?
Absodiddlylutely they are NOT disciplined enough. Too many parents are terrified of their kids, and very frequently, with good reason. Too many kids have been taught (and/or have learned) that they needn't respect parental authority, and have been taught (and or have learned) that there are plenty of lawyers out there who will agree that they've been "abused." Being a parent must suck these days. Someday, I'll find out. But I'll be good at it, naturally.
5. So, what's the weather like these days where you are?
COLD! Down into the 20sF tonight. And colder still when I have only blankies to keep me warm.

And then, the other FridayFive:

1. What is one thing you don't like about your body?
My hair. Really, that's too easy. It's too limp, fine, stringy, and shapeless. And there are a lot of non-standard hairs.
2. What are two things you love about your body?
The shape of my nose, and that it isn't too hairy. My body, I mean, not my nose. But my nose isn't hairy, either.
3. What are three things you want to change about your home?
The carpet, the paint inside, and the furniture. I guess that about covers it!
4. What are four books you want to read this year?
Wow.
Umm...
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Wife, Bharati Mukherjee
Everything's Eventual and From a Buick 8, both by Stephen King
Well, that wasn't as hard as I thought.
5. What are five promises you have kept to yourself?
Hmmm...
Well, there are several (at LEAST five!) that I kept that I can't explain, for reasons I also can't explain.
I CAN say, though, that I promised to clean up certain portions of my house, and so far I have made major progress. I promised to get off the Mountain Dew, and have, and in fact have had only one carbonated soda since mid-November. (That was the Fufu Berry soda, 12/24 entry.) Together with the promises I can't mention, this is enough.

1/23/2003 4:56 Thursday PM
*yawn*
A cold night, going to work. Something just isn't right.

So I finally managed to get the Angel episode I missed and which I tried to download on KaZaa but only got the audio of. This time, thanks to a recommendation from somebody (thanks, EKG!) from a Buffy Usenet group, I managed to get it online, from the BitTorrents site. Took about 12 hours or so, but heck, that's a lot faster than buying a videotape from someone, which is what I had offered to do in the newsgroup. I'm now in the process of downloading this week's Buffy episode, which our local affiliate pre-empted to show the lousy, good-fer-nothin', I'm-tired-of-their-shit Magic game. (At the current download speed, this episode will come in sometime tonight while I'm at work. Yay.)

So we Magenta Hearted yesterday. Visited some little shops and such, nothing spectacular. Mariana was feeling a bit sick, and muttering vague threats to no one in particular about what would happen if she gets sick just a couple of weeks before, or during, her big departmental audition. So we came home and rested a little bit before the American Pop Idols Band Search came on. I set one VCR to record Angel, and we camped out in front of another TV to watch it. It was fairly predictable, yet entertaining. Simon plays to the camera far more than the contestants do, and is clearly relishing his sudden celebrity. He came with a pre-packaged list of fill-in-the-blank insults and I swear sometimes I was sure the camera would catch him rehearsing his next one-liner. He used "dreadful" way too often and we learned that there are, in fact, not just one but several people across the country who are simultaneously the "worst singer in the world." After a while it was easy to predict who they would accept for the next round, and who they would reject; contestants were either dreadful (really, the word was appropriate even if he needs to find some synonyms) or fairly (yet interchangeably) skilled. There didn't seem to be too many people in-between. And more than a few people knew they'd have no shot but apparently just wanted to have some fun. And that's alright. You have to wonder about the wisdom of the folks who came in with an attitude, though, as though they could cajole and belittle their way into the next round - like those obnoxious twins (one of whom was freakishly about six inches taller than his twin brother). But then you remembered that the twins were 16, and suddenly you remembered why they were obnoxious.
So anyway, we watched that, and ate a light dinner, and browsed some other shows before eventually nodding off. She's feeling a bit better today, thankfully. I spent the afternoon in a bit of a funk, and napped a wee bit before getting up (yawn!) for work. And that's where we stand right now.

1/22/2003 10:56 Wednesday AM
It was with great reluctance that we finally dissembled the Holidaymas tree. Now that door is accessible (not counting the enormous piles of pine needles which we have to painstakingly sweep and pick out of the carpet, most of which I've gathered up and thrown under the tangerine tree as mulch). As I suspected, Beavis the WonderHound has finally learned that we must Go Outside through the other door on the other side of the room, the only one we could use when the tree was up. Well, now the tree is down, and we can use the normal door, the one he's been using for years. And now he has to re-learn to use that door again. This morning he stook wagging at the carport door. I had to call him over to front door and demonstrate that it was once again functional. Somewhere in the foggy recesses of his foggy doggy brain he must have put it all together, because he finally trotted over and did his traditional little back-up dance step to let me swing the door open. Oh, that Beavis.

Today is a Magenta Hearts Day. I'm meeting my sweetie for lunch at 2. Then I have to meet a former student to give her a letter of recommendation that she asked for, at 4. (Mariana did her usual magic and was able to get me a copy of the recommendation form, even though it's presented on the uni website as an Adobe Acrobat file, and Acrobat no longer works on my computer. I swear, if there's something she can't do with a keyboard, it can't be done.) Then back to the Magenta Hearting. Mariana has threatened that we will be watching the next installment of the Making the American Pop Idols Stars Band Search show tonight. I wonder if she's forgotten that 'Angel' is on tonight??? (I finally KaZaa'ed a copy of last week's 'Angel' episode, the one I missed and forgot to copy when we went to go see the 'Lord of the Rings' movie, but all that came through was the audio, with no video.) Well, there will be wrestling for the remo if she tries to switch away from 'Angel.'
And, you know, I kinda hope she does...

Oh, and I did some very minor editing to the previous two entries. Nothing spectacular, probably nothing you'd notice. Grammatical/punctuation stuff, mostly, a couple typos, and the reminiscing thing actually happened this morning, Wednesday morning, and not Tuesday morning, as I had originally tagged it. You know, obsessive/compulsive stuff that I just had to fix. Never mind.

1/22/2003 12:36 Wednesday AM
We just reminisced. It was sweet.

1/21/2003 11:25 Tuesday AM
So, anybody remember me? I used to come 'round here a lot. Then I stopped. Really, I can still fit in, can't I? Can I still play with you guys?

Let's see, where was I? Saturday morning??

Well, Saturday night I fetched Mariana just seven minutes later than I promised. Grr, arrgh, I started watching the The I in Team Buffy episode where Professor Walsh tries to kill Buffy. If not for that, I woulda been on time. Really!
So we headed out to Downtown Disney. I'm pretty sure I've been there before, but not for a very long time, and as long as it's been, it was pretty much like being there the first time. And, given the company, it was. It wasn't too violently cold at the time, but oh my dear lordy was it cold by the time we left. I won't say we made a beeline for the Virgin Megastore (which I know I'd never been to), but I'm pretty sure it was the first place we really went into. I was quite pleased. $10 DVDs! Are you serious?! Within just a few minutes I had gathered The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; and The Gauntlet. And in my head I was already reciting lines and scenes from all of them. (Like the shooting contest between Clint and Lee Van Cleef. And shooting a house until it literally collapses. And "Aim for the heart, Ramon!" And "These are our choppers, Charlie!" followed by "And this is my gun, Clyde!" And of course the final scenes of The Good....) Anyway, we continued on. Mariana made lots of growling sounds about Avril and got some Oasis and Ben Folds stuff. I finally found The Cramps' Stay Sick! album (terrible and inaccurate review, don't bother) and Big Black's Songs About Fucking CDs. I hopped up and down with happiness a lot and followed Mariana around (both of which, in general, I do a lot of anyway). It's a huge place and we could have easily spent hours in there. So by the time we left Virgin, it was already getting late. We poked around in a couple of other places and then headed for dinner. Planet Hollywood was still open, and still relatively crowded, but we got seated immediately. I got the sizzlin' fajitas; she got a huge cheeseburger 'n fries. Damned if she didn't wolf down the whole burger, and the fries, and a fajita which I had saved for her. How the girl stays so damn petite and svelte is a mystery I'd sure as hell like to learn, especially every time I look in my mirror. It's really quite irritating. If I'd ordered that burger, I mighta finished it, but I woulda gone home feeling bloated and disgusting. Anyway. While eating I noticed that one of the cardboard cutouts in the collage mural that loomed above us, was of Clint Eastwood's Gunfighter With No Name character from one of the movies I'd just bought. Funny how things kinda swirl together, eh? By the restroom I noticed a display of a yearbook from a local high school, with one of those local boy-band members in it. Purely by coincidence, on the same page was the picture of Valerie, who worked in the uni English Department last year. Apparently (obviously, Rob, obviously) they went to school together. I'm no fan of the boy-bands, but Valerie was pretty cool. Still is, I assume. (I'm not quite sure what to make of the location of this yearbook display, right outside the entrance to the men's room.) So by the time we left, it was pretty late, and things were mostly closing up. And it was COLD. So we bustled off back to the vehicle. It was covered with frost! I cranked up the heater (which, due to the mysterious vagaries of my vehicle, is actually most effective on the vent setting) and drove home. During the drive we alternated CDs - mine, hers. Oasis does a very respectable version of "My Generation," I discovered. Of course, I'm sure it took dozens of sessions to get all of the tracks recorded, what with the brothers wrestling and punching and spitting on each other in the studio every five minutes, probably. But the final product was pretty good.
I tried to show Mariana the ending to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly but her snores (err, uhh, her regular breathing) indicated she wasn't too interested.

Sunday was a good Sunday. We didn't leave the house until late in the afternoon. We continued our pattern of only seeing half of everything - Pointe Orlando, Downtown Disney, now West Oaks Mall. Once again, we'll go back. Went into Icing on the Cake (or something like that), a little accessories store. There was a pack of about six or seven young girls, ages (jeez, I dunno) 6-12 or so, who were pillaging the place, rifling through the shelves like a starving man through a pantry. One poor woman kept circulating among them saying "okay, girls, we're leaving in two min...seconds...two seconds.." And then she would disappear, another shelf would get looted, and then she'd be back: "Okay, girls, we gotta go, get a couple more things, okay? Did you see these over here?" I felt so sorry for the woman. It reaffirmed my belief that I couldn't cope teaching anybody under high school. I'd run out screaming and flailing, and very nearly did so right then and there. Finally Mariana got some baubles and waited at the register. Another girl was already there and asked us if we worked there, or who did. Nobody knew. After a very deliberate period of waiting, Mariana slammed her stuff down. She took the last item and practically threw it. It bounced off my hand and landed precisely on the stack of stuff she had just dropped. You know how time seems to slow down at weird moments? It did. I saw the item land in slow motion on the stack o' stuff...it skidded a few inches...the other items all moved under the impact...I stared, amazed...I waited for them all to slide off of whatever they were stacked on....and they didn't. Nothing. The last item came to rest perfectly atop the pile, after being launched at high speed, after careening off my hand. I was amazed. She couldn't have duplicated that feat in a thousand tries. Then time switched back into normal speed and Mariana was pulling me out of the store.
The games store is closing!! When we got there, I asked, when do y'all close? It was late on a Sunday afternoon, and I knew it would be soon. The guy said, next Sunday...oh, you mean today? Twenty minutes. I said, next Sunday? Y'all are closing down?? How could you?!! I LOVE that place! Every conceivable board game, puzzle, hand-held thingamabob, gimmick, and gizmo you can imagine, all crammed into a little alcove about 20 feet long. I guess I can imagine - it's the kinda place where it's fun to poke around, but rarely do you ever actually buy anything. Well, she bought some Hello Kittie stuff, at least. I didn't buy anything, despite the 30% going-out-of-business sale. I'm heartbroken, really. I'm sure everything in the store is also available at the Toys 'R Us which is right in front of the mall, but it's just not the same, you know? Toys, and games, are very different, and poking around in games isn't quite as fun when you have to wade through aisle after aisle of baby clothes and huge, colourful yard toys (and, you know, kids and mothers and mothers-to-be) in order to get to them. But oh well.
So we went home. I made a quick little chicken-bake and some mac 'n cheese, which we devoured. Sat down to finally watch the two Buffy episodes which we're behind on. Turns out there was only one episode to catch up on; the second week there had actually been no episode aired. But the one episode was an interesting one, and Buffy slew the prehistoric uber-vamp (which, I'm sure is no coincidence, looked eerily like the Max Schreck vamp in Nosferatu). Then we watched some other stuff, including a show with a grandmotherly old woman named Sue (wink wink, nudge nudge) and retired.
And then yesterday afternoon I oh-so-reluctantly dropped her off and hurried to work last night.
There was no socializing last night. Tom was off with his girlfriend, apparently celebrating the Bucs victory. Ooooh, those damned Bucs! I'm so sick of Warren Freakin' Sapp. Anyway, Joel dropped by last night with another dreaded bag of Taco Bell. Within a few minutes, he was coughing and hacking and yakking in my yard. Poor guy, that's twice now. I'm starting to wonder if maybe he has developed some allergy to something in Taco Bell - he really looked awful when he came back inside. His face was puffy and he looked squinty. But really, the less said about that, the better. It was a restful night, an uneventful night (Joel's gastric distress aside) and I went to bed fairly early, before midnight. Monday night isn't usually considered the end of a weekend, but this was a holiday weekend, I got to spend mucho time with my darling, so it felt like a Sunday night. In fact, I even cautioned her not to stay up too late, since Mondays are her long days. She reminded me that the next day (today) was not Monday, it was Tuesday. I scratched my head and said by golly, yer right. Oh well. So I bedded and slept well, until about 11 or so. And have I really been blogging for an hour and a half?? Where does the time go!

KeyWord Rankings update. Jason Cook is an actor in a soap.

I also got some rather heartbreaking news this weekend. Al died. Now, y'all don't know who Al is. Heck, I barely knew Al myself. I knew his first name, and you could have given me days, and I wouldn't have remembered that his last name was Brooks. In fact, my memory of him from when I was a kid was him wearing a Little League jersey that said "Al" on the back. No last name or number or anything, just "Al." And he probably never knew my name. But everybody knew Al. If you lived anywhere around here, and were a kid at some point or had kids, you knew Al. Well, Al is gone.
Al was one of the most beloved civic and community volunteers this city and area have ever had. I could re-type a lot of the sad, elegiac letters to the local paper this weekend, and I could maybe find some of them online to point you towards. But what's the point? You didn't know him, and heck, I didn't even really know him. I'm sad anyway, though, and not because of the letters. Just because Al was always around, always helping, and now he's not anymore. Al was an institution. Like I said, everybody knew who Al was. There's not a Little Leaguer or Pop Warner football player the past 25 years who didn't know who Al was. He cleaned up, he prepared the fields, he worked in concession stands, he worked in pressboxes, he ran scoreboards, he umpired, he coached, he drove, he cheered. Mostly, though, he was just Al, and he was always around. He was only 41, and looked like he was about 15. He died of bacterial meningitis. I last saw him maybe a year ago, at a local hardware store. I was there with Joel, and the three of us got to talking. He recognized me. He remembered that I played Little League a long time ago. I told him my name, and he told me his. But I already knew. He was Al.

1/18/2003 10:41 Saturday AM
Once again I am beginning this entry in odd fashion, exactly 25 hours to the minute after yesterday's. Once again, I just thought I'd mention that. Once again, carry on.

Well, last night was the big NBA showdown between Yao and Shaq. I suppose not surprisingly, Shaq had the better numbers and Yao (and his team) got the win. Mariana oohed and ahhed over Yao's translator, a skinny, bespectacled white guy who, she says, speaks better Chinese than she could ever hope to. This morning's paper has a photograph of Yao and Shaq grappling for position under the basket. In what must be either a monumental nod to political correctness, or a monumental underestimation of their readers' intelligence, the photo's caption identifies Yao as #11 (on his uniform) in the picture. That might be the most unnecessary bit to ever appear in a newspaper since the next day's retraction of "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Work all day. Play all night. (sigh) It's a lifestyle.

1/17/2003 9:41 Friday AM
This is, believe it or not, just an entry to keep the consecutive-days-of-blogging streak alive. Woohoo.

I'll be meeting Mariana for lunch pretty soon. Then to work. And that's as far ahead as I can look today.

Through the FF, I browsed through to some site whose title, up there at the top in the blue bar, said "You call me a BITCH because I speak my mind." It occurs to me that if she's being called a bitch, or has been called one, it's probably not because she spoke her mind, but rather, how she spoke her mind. A lot of people like to pretend they're "just being honest" or that they "just speak their mind" or that they are "just keeping it real," when really, they're just being rude, inconsiderate, and thoughtless. There's a difference, and a lot of people either don't recognize it, or do, but don't know how to behave any better and therefore describe themselves as "just being honest." There was a little sign-in place for guests to leave comments. So I posted something similar (only I said it in less than the 200-character maximum). I like to think I was being helpful, or at least wry. But possibly, due to only having 200 characters to work with, I came across as rude, inconsiderate, and thoughtless. Oh well. That's my excuse.

1/17/2003 12:10 Friday AM
Interesting.

1. Where do you currently work?
Since I'm not teaching, right now I'm working somewhere else. Vague enough?
2. How many other jobs have you had and where?
I worked for a couple of weeks at a hip, teens' clothing store called Merry-Go-Round. My job was selling clothes. I got fired for not selling clothes.
3. What do you like best about your job?
Of this current job, the best thing is that it's easy. And it's easy because I've been doing it (off and on, mostly on) for a long time, and because of that, I also get away with a lot, and can mostly set my own schedule.
4. What do you like least about your job?
Morons. Idiots and poohheads.
5. What is your dream job?
To be Dave Barry. Well, to be a syndicated humour columnist, writing from my home and getting paid to click 'send.'

1/16/2003 10:55 Thursday PM
I think it's my turn to do an OurFridayFive. I'll probably do the (cough, cough) "real" FF later. I haven't looked to see if it's up already, but I wonder if I already know what their #5 is...?

1. Who was your very first best friend?
The first one I remember was Timmy Adams, who lived two houses up, on the other side of Brenda. (See a recent FF about pets.) I think he was/is the same age as me, but was one year behind me in school. This was kindergarten-era, maybe a couple of years before and maybe after.
2. Are you still in contact with that person?
Not at all. I haven't even seen him, or heard anything about him, in perhaps 15 years. His family moved away years and years ago.
3. If so, have you always been, or did you rekindle the friendship at some point? If not, would you like to?
There probably wouldn't be much point to it, other than a few hours of "remember when...?" and "whatever happened to...?" discussion. Over the years we developed into very different people and if he's anything like he used to be, we wouldn't have much in common to sustain a meaningful friendship.
4. Do your current friends tend to be similar to that person, or have your tastes in friends changed?
They are very different. I don't mean to sound like he turned into an unpleasant or unlikable person. But he was what we call a "redneck," very much the good ol' boy, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I'm not, and nor are most of my current friends.
5. As a child, did you have friends of the opposite sex? or did you find them "icky?"
I did have female friends, but like a lot of little boys I considered them "girlfriends." But for the most part I stuck with the other boys to make fun of the girls.

Purely by coincidence, I began this post exactly 12 hours, to the minute, after this morning's.
Just thought I'd mention that. Carry on.

1/16/2003 10:55 Thursday AM
Lunch turned out pretty well, I think. I added tiny shrimp, clams, oysters, chunky chicken, and some beef sausage to the paella. So I met her around 2:15 or so and we had some lunch. While getting us something to drink, I saw a couple of ex-students, one of whom was the girl who mailed me the male-enhancement spam. I completely forgot about it and didn't ask her what the hell that was all about. But she did tell me that although she is currently an English major (and hating the same class that inspired me), she is instead going to pursue sex therapy as a major/graduate field/career. What could I say? I just said that I was glad she wasn't going to try to do anything English-related; it's a lousy field and I wouldn't want her to wind up like me, well-educated but spectacularly underskilled. I was fortunate that she had a class to go to and couldn't invite me to lunch or invite herself to my lunch (I had told her I was on campus "to meet somebody"). So I shivered and fled back to the relative safety of the third floor.
Then we went to a music store to rummage for some songbooks and sheet music and such for Mariana. This would be the place I could accomplish #65, of course. Seeing a Spice Girls book made me remember a fairly bizarre moment of Tuesday night's dreams. While walking by a display of bass guitars, I idly plucked a string on one of them. She said, "They're electric, they have to be plugged in so you can hear them." I said "....Yeah, I know...you do know I knew that, right??" She laughed and said she knew. Smartypants. She made cute sighing and whimpering noises at practically every keyboard in the store, from the $99 models to the extravagant $3,000 models. I made the cute first three notes of a one-handed "Jingle Bells," the only thing I know how to play on a piano. (With the middle finger of your right hand, you hit the first white key that's to the right of a black key, somewhere near the exact middle of the keyboard, three times. Ask Mariana for the technical description of what I just said.)
Then after some deliberations we went to go see the second "Lord of the Rings" movie. She saw the first one; I didn't. So of course this movie starts very nearly in media res, and don't you know I'm just patting myself on the back for remembering that term from undergrad lit classes. Anyway, the movie lasted about 17 hours, during which time I think I figured out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. I'm not too sure who the Lord is, though; Mariana said it's not the fat guy or the dwarf, which ruled out two possibilities. Surprisingly, I did not (knocking on this wood-grain particle-board desk) have surreal dreams about giant walking trees. But it's bound to happen. Anyway, the movie was visually stunning.
One complaint is a fairly common one, that has to do with the animated character, the little crawly Smeegel guy (or whatever his name is). Since he's completely computer-animation, the movie-makers as usual went overboard with the technical wizardry, and made his face far more expressive than any realistic person's or creature's. They made his face look like a roiling mass of tissues, which got a little distracting after awhile. I find that to be a frequent, common problem with computer-animated characters; it's as though movie-makers are so in awe of what they can do, that they can't stop doing it. And I think it would be too much of a copout to explain it by saying, well, he's not human, that's the way those creatures always look! I think movie-makers know they're not dealing with a live human actor, so they want to make sure the emotions that the character has, show through the animation. Movie-makers trust the viewer's ability to interpret even a mediocre live actor's emotional range, since viewers are far more familiar with human actors, but they seem to have far less faith in the viewer's ability to interpret a computer-animated character's emotional range, since computer-animation is still a relatively new movie-making technique. So they exaggerate every instance of emotional reaction on an animated character's face, to make absolutely sure the viewer knows what the character is thinking and feeling. I think it's unnecessary and usually ends up a bit comical, and I see it a lot in recent movies which use (and sometimes exploit) the potentials of computer animation. (This is all strictly my opinion, and I could be wrong. It's bound to happen sooner or later, I guess.)
Anyway, we wanted to spend more time walking around Pointe Orlando, but we didn't want to miss the movie. But it's an interesting place, and Mariana's never been there, so perhaps this weekend or sometime we'll return. And several hours after the movie ended, she made it home, where she, apparently, promptly disobeyed orders by sitting down at the computer and not immediately going to sleep. I shall have to chastise her for that. Lovingly, of course.

Monday through today makes four consecutive days I've blogged. Dare I issue early warnings about what my schedule this weekend might be?

1/15/2003 11:42 Wednesday AM
A day off. What will I do?
I've got some ideas.
Actually I'm going to take Mariana some lunch, some paella. After that, I will wisely use up all of my allotted magenta hearts.

Isn't this just getting a little bit ridiculous?? Get a life, people! (...He said, without even a trace of self-conscious irony.)

1/14/2003 3:16 Tuesday PM
So, how does this happen??

This morning on the way home I saw a big tanker truck on its side on a cloverleaf ramp off the Expressway. I was going to pull over and snap a quick picture of it, but there was a news van already maneuvering for its own film, and I didn't want to be chased away by the cops for adding to a scene that was already soon to be chaotic. So check your local news; if you see a tired driver weaving and boinging around in the background, hey! That's me!

Tonight I will be two Buffys behind schedule. After tomorrow night, I'll be two Buffys and one Angel behind schedule. I have firm hopes that this weekend I'll be able to catch up. And for the luvva Gawd, will somebody please remind me to finally write up this weekend's dreams!

1/13/2003 10:15 Monday AM
Right, so I haven't yet followed through on my threat to resume more frequent or more consistent blogging. But the weekends have been odd. A week ago was her return from Down South. This past weekend was her trip to and return from Tampa. Next weekend will be a long weekend because of the MLK holiday, so who knows what the schedule next weekend will be. As far as I know today, in two weeks, the weekend will be standard. We'll see what happens.

I notice that on the Netscape.com home page, there's an article entitled "Dating Trivia: See How You'll Score." Trivia questions. Isn't "how you'll score" the biggest question about dating? (smirk smirk, wink wink)

And in other news, Ronald McDonald was eliminated from the hit reality TV show "Celebrity Big Brother." He is seen here pounding on the door and screaming threats to Grimace, who is alleged to have cast the deciding vote that sent McDonald out of the house. The Hamburgler refused to comment on camera, but said that McDonald deserves it for making, as he termed it, derogatory remarks about Grimace's relationship with the Hamburgler. He also confirmed the widespread rumours that he and Grimace have met "informally" with the Burger King, since their contracts with McDonald's expire at the end of the year.

A KeyWord Rankings update. Will Young is, apparently, a rather ugly British pop star with a curious inability to button his shirt. And not only have I cornered the market for Pierce Bronson shirtless, I also have claimed the top spot for shirtless Pierce Brosnan. Now I don't need him to change his name.

GeoCities is running very sluggishly as I type this, and I've been unable to preview this, so hopefully it'll show up fine later. Until then I can only assume everything is in its place and that there's a place for everything.

1/10/2003 12:06 Friday PM

Have just written up some recent dreams.

1/10/2003 10:43 Friday AM

A good night's sleep is just....good. I'm sorry I didn't have anything better to do than to go to bed at 11:50 last night, but oh well. Soon.

Now, to this.

1. What was your best vacation?
Hmmm...I've never been too much of a vacationer, not as much as I'd like and not nearly as much as I deserve. Many of my "vacations" have been extended trips to stay with family, as a child or something like that, and as such lose that sense of vacation-ness after a few weeks. As an adult I've just never taken too many true vacations. There's always been houndz in the house, and it's a little bit of a burden to have to board them while I'd be gone, etc., so I just haven't done it that often. And when I do, it's for a reason, like, to go be at a relative's graduation or funeral or something. I guess I'll say the time I suddenly decided to go to the beach for a few days alone. Quite spur of the moment, really. One night I just decided to go to Daytona, so the next morning I got up a little early, packed a small bag of supplies, and took off, not entirely sure where I would be sleeping that night. I ended up finding a little dirtpile of a hotel, a real cheapie, and got a room for three nights. It met my basic requirements - a roof and walls. I wasn't even too concerned about a door, as long as there was access of some kind. So I spent three days baking in the sun, enjoying the surf, reading (Dracula and a couple other small items, this was during a spring break and Mr. Nerd here spent part of this time sitting on the beach with novel and pen and highlighter), going to a couple of the various nightclubs and restaurants around Daytona. The guys met me down there for one of the days. If there's one sublime joy in life, it's waking up early and being one of the only people on a beach.
2. Where do you like to visit but would never live?
Downtown Washington, DC. Love the place. Would never live there. At least not in the heart of the city where I'm talking about. I could easily see me living in a suburb, though, Maryland, perhaps.
3. Are you a beach person? Why or why not?
See #1! Love beaches, always have. Beaches have so much to offer, and every beach has something different, even if it's only the environment around the beach. But each beach has a different feel, a different specialty. That's why I was so amazed by the Venice beach - what it has, Daytona (for instance, which I'm most familiar with) does not, and vice versa. But I'm definitely a beach person and every time I get near a coast or near a beach, I think, now why don't I live here??
4. Road Trips. Sound off.
Love them. Like 99% of the population, I fantasize about doing the aimless, cross-country thing, not knowing where the next day will find you and not having any particular itinerary except to eventually make it home in one place. And like that same 99%, I haven't done it yet and have no idea when I ever will and probably never will actually do it. My friends and I talked about pooling our money and perhaps buying an old, used-up schoolbus and taking off. Of course, we never did, and that's probably a good thing!
5. If there is one place you would go to visit who would you take and why? One place? Only one place? You're kidding, right?
Let's say Guam. I would take Mariana (even if it would feel like she's taking me) because it's still meaningful to her, and because my mum lived there, and, well, because it's so far away.

And now, the lamest FF I've even seen, so lame it doesn't even deserve a link this time:

1. Where are you right now?
Physically, I'm sitting in a black leather desk chair, in the den/office/computer room, in my home, in the relatively small city of Winter Garden, just west of Orlando, Florida. Psychologically, I'm in a far different place.
2. What time is it?
It is 11:05am.
3. What are you wearing?
Loose, floppy, black, sweat-style boxers, so loose that...well, let's just say they would be unacceptable in public. That's why I wear them to bed.
4. Any people or animals around you? Describe them.
My brother is asleep in his room elsewhere in the house. As for describing him, what's to say? He's male, he's asleep, and I don't get too descriptive of sleeping males.
The two houndz are outside in the back yard, and if I had a guess, I'd say that Maddux is just off the patio, to the left in front of the shed, and Beavis is on the patio, to the right by the picnic table.
Well, I was 100% right about Maddux, but when I went to go check, I saw Beavis lying in the living room floor. Oh well.
And I've described them both elsewhere.
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Bliss, pure bliss. My darling is coming home! Again!
Actually, I'm not too sure. Tonight I'm going to work, coming home, and puttering around the house until I go to bed around midnight or 1am. Mariana isn't sure when she's getting home from Tampa on Saturday. If it's early enough, I'll go see her Saturday night. If I do, that will determine what I do Sunday somehow. If I don't see her Saturday, then I will definitely see her Sunday, probably for most of the day beginning late morning or early afternoon or so. I have no idea what, specifically, we would/will do Saturday night and/or Sunday. Does it matter?
And this question is definitely getting a little bit repetitive.

1/9/2003 9:37 Thursday PM
Oh, I forgot one portion of the shopping 'n stuff yesterday. After the sci-fi shop and before the Oriental market, we went to the Infinite Mushroom. Now, honesty and integrity indicate that I describe this place only as what it is - a good ol' fashioned head shop. So you know what they sell there - small pipes for, uh, "tobacco use only," black-light posters and such, bead curtains, incense and burners...Also a small variety of crude t-shirts, candles, novelties, rock/pop posters and t-shirts, etc. There's also the specially-restricted "adult section," with plenty of utensils, implements, creams, oils, devices, games, etc. (Despite the laughs and leers, we didn't buy anything.) I used to go to this place years ago, in the darker, angrier times of my life, despite me never using drugs. The Infinite Mushroom was just part of the lifestyle, and I'm stunned that the place is still open. So we left stinking of incense and stale counterculture.

The place next door, in the same parking lot, used to be the place for records, tapes, and CDs. It still has some of the decorative plaques all over the exterior, so I thought it was still open. We peeked inside, though, and saw that it's "Closed for Business" (as the hand-written sign on the front door said). There were still some posters and signs on the front counter inside that advertised local concerts...from mid-2001. I'm guessing that's about when the place shut down. (In defence of my ignorance, however, I should point out that I rarely venture down this section of highway anymore. I'm frequently on either end of it, but rarely on this middle section.) I was surprised, though, to see that there's still a great deal of, well, stuff inside the store: no merchandise, obviously, but still some display racks, advertisements, stacks of boxes, shelving, counters, even some insignificant decorations. It's as though whoever closed the place down never even bothered to come back and actually finish the job of cleaning the place out. You'd think somebody, in the year and a half or whatever since it went out of business, would have gotten inside long enough to at least make the place look desirable to anyone who might want to buy or lease the building, which is in a fairly prime location, right on a major highway and next door to a major shopping mall. So from there we went to the Oriental market, and from here you can get back into the narrative as I originally typed it earlier this afternoon.

Plenty more Pierce Bronson traffic the past few days.

1/9/2003 1:50 Thursday PM

Over the past several days I've shoveled more trash, clutter, filth, and memories out of this house than I have in the past several years. Bags full of it. A large Dumpster garbage can full of it. Two pink lungs full of it, or at least of the smallest (cough! hack!) particles of it. I'm really quite impressed. There's plenty more to go. So the end result surely isn't anything to brag about, but the effort might be. Yes, I'm bragging about cleaning up. I'm not entirely sure what that says about me, but I am pretty sure I won't like whatever it says. But I had good motivation, so I did.

Yesterday we went a-shopping for a little bit. First we went to one of the sci-fi/comics/gaming stores I shop at. Browsed around a bit, poked through the large board-games section. I was overwhelmed by the overwhelming lack of Buffiness in the place, but I'm hoping I can attribute that to the inventory process the employee said they were doing. Perhaps when that's settled, they'll restock on all the Buffyish goodness I've come to depend on them for.

Then we went to one of the Oriental/Asian markets in the Asian community in Orlando. Browsed there awhile. Mariana pointed out the good things, the not-so-good things, the potentially good things, and the interesting things. It was hard not to buy some of everything. But the total take was three bags of candy (chocolate caramel, orange, and strawberry (which of course reigns supreme over all the fruits)); a package of curry sauce; a large bag of wasabi peas (whose yumness was the main inspiration for the excursion in the first place); a bag of something that I think is some kind of crackers or chips or crisps or something; a large bottle of Japanese mayonnaise; and a bottle of a honey garlic sauce. The Japanese mayonnaise comes in a rather anonymous-looking plastic bottle with no labelling or anything, just some faint design of a kewpie-doll on the plastic bottle itself and a few symbols which may or may not be some stylized Japanese script. But it comes out of the squeeze-bottle in a star-shaped ooze! So pretty, I almost don't want to eat it. It's not drastically different than American mayonnaises and in fact tastes pretty much like Miracle Whip. But Miracle Whip doesn't have a kewpie doll on it. The honey garlic sauce was something I accidentaly bounced off the floor; it didn't break, but an odd sense of integrity prompted me to buy it anyway. Besides, a good sauce is, well, good, and that's why I had pulled it off the shelf anyway.
They sold pig hearts, too. Right there, in the display case. Now, even though this is Florida, parts of Florida are still in the Deep South, and I'm pretty much used to seeing odd, seemingly random, seemingly inedible animal parts on grocery shelves. But rarely do I see a large, iced display case full of whole, fresh pig hearts. And rarely seeing it is a good thing. The big half-inch valves, the arteries, the glistening. I couldn't help but think how structurally and medically similar pig hearts are to human hearts. I don't very often feel oversome by a good, Muslim sense of pork ickiness. But, I mean, pig hearts! Right there! A case full of them, piled together. I asked Mariana if her mum ever prepared pig hearts, and dear God, she had to think! And she could answer only that she's pretty sure she hasn't. I didn't know whether to kiss her for being pretty sure she's never had any, or vow to never kiss her again for being only pretty sure. Well. We took our handful o' goodies and left, while I sat and prayed silent thanks for the non-pig-heartness of what I had bought.
We'll go there much more often, I hope, steering wide of that particular refridgeration case.

Then we went to Cheap Charlie's, a large, cluttered (is there any other kind?) antique store. It was only a few minutes before closing, though, so we didn't get to browse that much. We rudely interrupted the snooze of Sweetie, the shop cat, who lay drowsing under a lamp on the counter. There was an old Apple Macintosh for sale there, with the six-inch monitor built-in, for sale in...an antique sale.
I remember wanting a Lisa when they were new. My Apple IIe, state of the art when I bought it, was getting old, and I really wanted one of the new-fangled Macintosh or Lisa Apples. (Extra credit for anybody that remembers the Apple Lisa.)
(A sidenote: here's what you need to know about the Lisa, to put the above into some kind of context. I did a quick Google search for "Apple Lisa computer." I picked the first result, which was this. On the "For More Information" section, of the 12 links listed, only three were still active links. Note, though, that this is separate from the "Dead links" section.)

From there we went home and rested. Ordered pizza, which we didn't eat. Tried to watch Tuesday's Buffy episode, but the connection between cable box, VCR, and TV were lousy. So we ended up watching a Season 3 episode from the DVD Season 3 set I bought Tuesday (first day of availability, of course!). It was "The Wish," notable for being Anya's first episode. It's brilliantly rendered, especially the final scenes where everybody dies in that hellish alternate reality, including Buffy, who gets her neck snapped by The Master in heart-breakingly slow motion.

So now she's in Tampa, at the FMEA conference. She'll be back Saturday, and has promised to make up her FF homework like the good gal she is. I will do mine tonight like the good boy I am. And then I'll go to bed, sadly early.

Oh, and I found an interesting Buffy survey, which I've linked to the right ("How do you measure...").

1/7/2003 9:12 Tuesday PM

KeyWork Rankings Update:
"Is fudge a kind of ritual sacrifice tradition like pie?" produces the Hellmouth as the #1 result on AOLSearch and on Google and Yahoo, as well.
I'll be honest. I'm simply at a loss, I haven't a thing to say about this one.

1/7/2003 10:55 Tuesday AM

Okay, well, I think I can be a little bit more consistent with the blogging (and probably more frequent, too) now. Things are calming down a bit from the weekend's frenetic reunioning. Let's see, where were we?

Went to Florida Mall Sunday. Unfortunately, the mall still closes at 6:30 on Sundays, and we got there late, so we couldn't linger and browse and drift from store to store the way I would have liked. It's been some years since I'd been there and it's a little bit humbling to have Mariana telling me how to get there, etc. Like, I grew up here, okay? This is where I used to go, it was the place. And now you know it better than I do? What's that all about? It's okay, though, I'm getting used to it.
And if I spend $71 on virtually anything, I somehow expect to get something with more volume than a deck of cards. Doesn't always work that way, but to peek down in that enormous shopping bag and see only seven small items rolling around, knowing they cost $71, shows me just how out of touch I really am these days. Like I needed any more evidence. But that icky little sales guy, boy, did that dude ever need a good swift drop-kick, just for the helluvit.
From there we went to the Peabody Hotel. Ducks, I told her. You have to see the ducks. We wandered around a bit, but couldn't find the ducks. Wherefore wert thou, ducks? I asked the concierge, who said that, yes, there were still ducks, but they left about 5pm on their duckmarch, and were now up there (directional nod of the head). Are they seeable, I asked? Oh, yes, he said, they're up in their palace on the Recreation Floor, outside, by the tennis courts. (He used the word palace. Insert snicker here.) So we went up to the Recreation Flooor, outside, by the tennis courts. And we saw ducks. The Peabody Ducks. There's a brass plaque that, no lie, tells The Legend of the Ducks. What, you don't believe me? Extra, extra, read all about it!. Be sure to click the little thumbnail pic, too. So we saw ducks. They were sleepy ducks, though, and didn't perform for us. Some of them slept in fine duck form, head tucked into wing and balancing on one leg, with the other leg also tucked under wing. Mariana quacked at them, and one of them kept waking up and darting his ducky head around with a "Now who the hell was that??" look on his little duckface. Then he would re-tuck, Mariana would re-quack, and he would re-wake and re-dart. Believe it or not, though, the novelty of quacking* at ducks while shivering on a cold night on the Recreation Floor, outside, by the tennis courts, of the Peabody Hotel wore off after a few minutes. With a solemn vow to one day see the Duck Parade, we went back inside. Found a nice place to sit and rest (long weekend, you know, little sleep), and we sitted and rested for a long while. We watched an intermittent parade of Peabody guests (you thought I was gonna say ducks, admit it!) coming and going in white Peabody robes, apparently to and from a pool or something. I mulled over the chances of capering, of she-naniganing, and liberating a Peabody robe from the limited confines of the Peabody hotel property. I mean, you've got to get thrown out of the Peabody hotel at least once per decade, right? And I'm behind by a couple of yers. But no, I chose not to caper or she-nanigan, and the robes were on their own. Finally we left, making the Long Drive back home (her home, I mean, *sigh*).
So yesterday after school I fetched her for some Monday night socializing. It was fun, but of course a bit awkward, with the meeting and trying-to-get-to-knowing, etc. Gorged myself on iced tea and as a result ate only a few of the wonderful grilt Caribbean jerk wings. She did battle with a Buffalo chicken sandwich. Made several trips to the restroom in quick succession; it's with great pleasure that I announce that my kidneys do, in fact, work with impressive efficiency. But alas, this night, like all other nights, ended. We sat and talked, etc., doing the prairie-dog thing every time we heard voices or car engines or whatever. The nerve, I mean, it's 2am and butt-freezing cold, why weren't people home in bed?? Don't they have any sense at all?? Then something happened and all of a sudden I was rolling around in bed, looking down at my alarm clock, and it's about 10:30 this morning. Soon it will be 2pm tomorrow afternoon, you know, and all will be well once more. I had odd dreams last night. As you know, good sleep after a period of no sleep means fascinating things up here (tapping my temple). I'll write them up shortly, I hope. I'm sure I've missed a lot over the past few days, that deserves some more attention, but hell, this is enough for now.

There's been a great deal of Pierce Bronson traffic the past couple of days. Saturday night I got a Yahoo search for "Pierce Bronson." Sunday afternoon a search for "pierce bronson," no capital letters. Monday morning, another search for the capitalized version. Monday afternoon, a Google search for the capitalized version. Monday evening, a Yahoo search, again for the uncapitalized version. Later Monday evening, a Yahoo search, this time for "pics of Pierce Bronson." (The Hellmouth finished #1, again, and the KeyWord rankings have been proudly updated.) So either there's been a coincidental surge of interest in Pierce Bronson, or people are just having a hard time fathoming the Hellmouth's virtual clean sweep of the Pierce Bronson sweepstakes, and keep checking to see if it's still true. Oh, my people, oh ye of little faith, it's true. It's all true.

* I fancy myself a writer, or at least, a writer-to-be, a frustrated writer. As such, I specialize in identifying really good titles - words and phrases that sound really swell but need only a novel or story to complete them. I'll start compiling them, finally, and they will show up to the right, somewhere near the Dream Journal or something. Yeah, "The Novelty of Quacking" would make a good title. So would "The Legend of the Ducks," for that matter, but that's been done, you know?

1/5/2003 12:03 Sunday PM

Man, this feels good.
No more countdowns. No more clock-watching. (Still a little watchingness over the shoulder, etc., but that's a different matter.)
I'm still trying to decide where to begin, whether to begin, or whether to try that cool, obscure, vague hinting thing I'm so (famous/irritating) for. Maybe something in between. (Although, since I listed three possibilities, I'm not sure how "something in between" would work.)

Yeah, she got back Friday. I'm glad. I made it over there Friday after work. Then I went to work Saturday afternoon. Then I went to go see her. Now I'm typing this today, Sunday afternoon. And then I'll go see her. That's the short version.

She gave me some gravel, and we were hungry, so we ate some of that.
I got some takeout from Pizzaria Uno. Some "spaghetti with giant meatball;" some chicken stuffed with cheese, broccoli, and some other goodies over penne pasta; a Tuscan bread appetizer of bread slices baked with cheeze, tomato, pesto, some other goodies; and a basic salad. The "giant meatball" component of the spaghetti turned out to be a positively giant meatball, and in less culinary environments might be better termed a meatloaf in the middle of the pasta. The stuffed chicken was unimpressive.
We watched some key, older 'Buffy' episodes that she knows from reading and from my own blatherings - "Passion," and "Becoming, Part One" and "Part Two." I wept at the places I always weep, and she gracefully didn't notice or didn't care.
In short, it's been a really happy couple of days, I can breathe again, and I'm bone-achingly tired. In other words, things are finally the way they're supposed to be again. Well, mostly, but we're not sure about that schedule. Maybe by summer.

The computer is behaving very sluggishly right now. I've run all the Norton Systemworks diagnostics and saw nothing untoward, ran AdAware and saw little suspicious new activity (which I dumped anyway). I've been gone so much the past few days that I fear that perhaps my brother (who is only slightly less tech-savvy than I am) did something catastrophic - or even insidious - that I'm having trouble tracking down.

A former student e-mailed me something. The subject header was "finally something that works!!!" It was an attachment that had been forwarded to her. The attachment was a spam for, um, male enhancement. I am so not sure how to react. I must emphasize that this is a former student who was never, ever anything more than just a student and then just a former student and never, ever, ever will be anything more. (I really have to clarify and emphasize that.) That's why I'm so creeped out. I thought perhaps there was a joke to it, or that it was a joke or something that came disguised as a normal spam. But no, it's a normal spam for, ehh, anatomical improvements to the male body. The attachment traces back to something called SeriousLove.com. That page is essentially a sign-up for a mailing list for "Tricks for supercharging your Sex Life" or something like that. And I so do not want to know if she signed up for that, or why, or why she mailed this to me.

A full re-boot, and the system is behaving more properly now. Good.

What an extraordinary weekend of football! I have no particular allegiance to Ohio State - I'm not a big Big10er, but all things considered I'd rather see Meechigan beat them every year - but as an FSU fan I am a devout Miami hater. Was lovely to see them lose. The game was ending (fourth quarter and overtime) just as I was arriving to see Mariana Friday night. Trust me, the game got turned off when I got there. That's why they have newspapers, you know. As is, I turned on to the game a few minutes later and when I checked for an update, I saw the score. I fell to the floor writhing in ecstasy. Mariana saw that and said she really needs to start understanding football better.
And then - oh, those Falcons! Again, no allegiances, but what a stunner. I'm a big believer in Michael Vick. Yeah, thunderclap announcement, right? Like I've noticed something nobody else has. And of course, J-E-T-S JetsJetsJets. Nice to see them do something. And, oh, a 41-0 (bleep)walk over the Colts is certainly something. My brother is so happy.
But when that egomaniacal-but-damned-good-coach Bill Parcells takes over in Big D next year, it will all be over for the rest of the league. Can you say sixth Super Bowl title next year? I can.

A KeyWord update. Someone is still looking for Pierce Bronson, only this person didn't seem concerned about whether or not he was half-nekkid. Or maybe someone is investigating the extent of the Hellmouth's obsession with Pierce Bronson. As you can see, I am only the #3 search result for plain ol' Pierce Bronson. But if you want Pierce Bronson shirtless, I'm still your top-ranked supplier. When it comes to Pierce Bronson beefcake, I'm tops. Numero uno, baby. That's right.

More stuff to do today. Going a couple places I haven't been in years, literally. But that's not what's important, is it? Happy Plus One, my love.

1/3/2003 5:06 Friday PM

She's home!!!

1/3/2003 10:02 Friday AM

The eleventh day.
The last day, and not even a full day.
She'll be home TONIGHT.
Travel safe, dear, travel safe.

It's gotten quite windy and even a bit cool overnight; the high temperature forecast for today is only 61, and for tomorrow only 59. It had been in the 70s yesterday. That's okay, you know. I'll be able to stay warm.

And, sigh, but the yard is just such a mess right now. There's still some standing water in the far corners around the gate and under the orange and mango trees, from the New Year's storms. Entire portions of the yard are just muck and torn up grass, from the dogs slogging through it as they run up and down the fence. The passionfruit vines have taken over half the swinging gate and have usurped more of the fence down towards the mango, so that needs to be put back into its place. The strip on the other side of the fence is, I'm quite sure, where the wild things actually are. There are weeds all over the grass; the grass has the good sense not to grow during the "winter," but the weeds are just plain arrogant. I need to pull some tall grass that's growing in and between the pineapples. I'll need to pull out a stepladder to reach the papaya when they're ripe. (Ok, so that's not really part of a "mess," but it's still inconvenient.) And the eggplants and pepper plants have finally gone to the great produce market in the sky, due to the weather. Next spring I'll definitely have to do something better to either plant them away from the hounds' track up and down the fence, or route the hounds away from them.

1/3/2003 12:35 Friday AM

Rick was a hero.

1. Have you ever had a really great pet? Tell us about him/her/it.
Every one has been really great - the dogs, at least. For that reason I can rank them only in terms of how long they were with us, and that means, the late, great, Scruff Dog. A terrier mutt, black body, tan and white legs. I got him in...late elementary school sometime. Truth be told, I stole him from the girl next door. (Sorry, Brenda!....No, I'm not.) She fed the dog one day as a stray and announced that they were keeping it. He was so cute! That same day, or possibly the next, the dog wandered over to our house. So we fed it for a day or two. Then Brenda reclaimed it for a day or two. But I snuck into their back yard and lifted the dog over the fence into our yard, and innocently told Brenda the next day that he had apparently wandered back over to our house sometime during the night. Brenda didn't seem too upset, and didn't assert any claims, and Scruff was one of my best friends for the next dozen years or so (until my best human friend struck and killed him one afternoon in my driveway, in his car).
Scruff was a good dog. He had an incredible vocabulary, too. He knew all the "let's go (insert destination or activity)" commands, and all the food-related commands. Tell him, "let's go to bed.." and he'd hop off the couch and start trotting towards a bedroom; you would't even have to lead him. When it was cold, he had to be under a blanket. He'd come up by your chin, start shoving his snout under the edge of the blanket, and burrow his way down to your feet. Sometimes he'd just put his head down, miming the action, and wait for you to politely lift the blanket for him. (Sometimes, actually, he'd curl up in a perfect sphere exactly in the middle of your pillow.) A great dog, really.
I should clarify that Scruff was actually female. As a matter of habit, I usually refer to all animals as 'he/him,' and have to consciously make an effort (as I do below) to say if an animal is female.
2. Do you have any pets at present?
Two hounds, mother and daughter, Beavis and Maddux. Beavis is mostly Border Collie with some spaniel in her, and Maddux is...half of that and half of something else. Maddux (named after Greg, my brother's favourite baseball player) is almost pure white, with tan ears and some slight tan dappling throughout her fur. Both have distinct personalities, too. I think all dogs do, unless they've been beaten out of them.
3. Have other people's pets ever given you problems?
See the twisted method by which I came to cement ownership of Scruff! No, other than that, I don't think so. The only thing I could name would be a neighbour's cat or something, for having the nerve to strut through the property and drive my dog(s) crazy.
4. Are you more of a cat person or dog person?
I love them both, but I'm definitely a dog person. I've had cats before, and would love to have more, though.
5. If you could have any pet where you live now, what would it be?.
With a relatively large, fenced-in yard, and plenty of vegetation, there's practically no pet I couldn't handle, and few that I wouldn't want. I really liked the little pot-bellied pigs during that craze a few years ago. A friend had one and it was quite playful and quite clean. Maybe one of those. Something exotic like that. I always thought it would be cool to have one of those huge Galapagos turtles, too! In fact, I had a couple of box turtles, but they both died in the past couple of months. And they were smaller. Or maybe...maybe a turkey. Or maybe some huge variety of monitor lizard just crawling loose, if I knew it wouldn't eventually dig its way out.

1/3/2003 12:24 Friday AM

Surprise! It's actually here!

1. Do you wear any jewelry? What kind?
Not really. I'd wear a watch, but don't currently own a nice watch worth wearing. Same with rings. I'm a bit of a fidgeter, and strangely neurotic about stuff like that being on or around my hands (so I tend to twist rings around and around, obsessively check a watch to make sure it's exactly in the center of my wrist, etc.). So that's mostly why I don't currently wear any, because I tend to drive myself (and possibly others) crazy when I do. But I'd like to start again, and as I said, right now the main reason I don't is because I no longer own any.
2. How often do you wear it?
Can you tell I answered #1 without reading ahead to this question? I did it deliberately, too, to make sure my answers were 'pure.' This is what it's like to be neurotic, alright.
3. Do you have any piercings? If so, where?
Two on my left ear, in the lobe. Four in my right ear - two in the lobe, two about halfway up the ear. Haven't worn anything in them in years, but I'm sure I still could. Did them all myself.
4. Do you have any tattoos? If so, where?
Nope. Some scars that I etched into myself with various sharp instruments, most of which vaguely resemble what they were supposed to resemble (peace signs, anarchy signs, ankhs, etc.).
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
Bliss. Pure bliss.
My darling is coming home!

C'mon, Rick, be a hero. We can do better than this.

1/2/2003 10:47 Thursday AM
The tenth day.
The last day before TOMORROW!
36 more hours.

I have this mass of cables littering my desktop like a giant pile of electronic spaghetti between the monitor and tower. They're not tucked discreetly behind the desk the way they should be. There's the mouse cable; a small webcam cable (yes, I AM wearing clothes...for the moment); another small webcam cable which I don't think ever gets used anymore and which I don't know why it's still hooked up and which I am therefore dismantling, yea, even as we speak; the keyboard cable; the networking cable which loops across the desk; the power supply of the network node; the digital camera hookup cable; and the respective wiring and cables for two cheap sets of PC speakers (the second of which was brought out of retirement several days ago in an aborted attempt to solve a sound problem which turned out to be solved by changing only a simple soundcard setting). So I can remove those, too. And just did. So the very act of blogging just contributed to the cleanup of about 40% of the cable buildup on this desk. That's empowerment. And to think, you were witness to it. Makes that bookmark all worthwhile, eh?

Two dreams of note that I have to write up soon - this is only a reminder to myself. The first, Tuesday night, I visited Mariana down south and waited for her in a bookstore. Then, on my way back home from that visit, I saw that there was some sort of community garage sale going on near my house. And when I got home, I discovered, or remembered, that I was actually married to a large, obese black woman who was at least five inches taller than me. Very weird. Don't know what the hell that was all about. I told Mariana about the Venice part, but only remembered the garage sale/marriage part this morning. Can't wait to hear her reaction. The second, I was on campus exchanging a series of intricate handshakes with students, and then, helping some people try to recover a ship that had sunk in a deep lake or well which was perhaps three feet in diameter. The lake was either in my front yard, or somewhere on campus, or both. Very weird, too.

1/1/2003 11:48 Wednesday AM
My best friend Joel just called. He said he might stop by tonight for some macho bonding and, well, maybe some relationship advice. How to extricate himself from a relationship, to be specific. Doing my best Brando Godfather voice, I told him, yes, my son, see me tonight, we'll see if we can't come up with something.
I mean, between the two of us, we know just about everything there is to know about alienating women and making them not want to be around us. So this should be fun.

1/1/2003 11:03 Wednesday AM
The ninth day.
New Year's Day.
Last night's rather curt blog entry really didn't reflect my mood. Yeah, I certainly didn't want to spend New Year's Eve alone, but I wasn't really alone, you know. I think I was just tired. I hadn't slept much the night before. All things considered, a rainy, windy night is the perfect night to be snuggled up at home sipping sparkling white grape juice, watching football or whatever, and watching the lights twinkle. I was glad to not be out in that weather. (And I think I saw alligators cruising in my back yard this morning.) I was actually in a fairly good mood overall, except for the lone-ness. I felt obligated to blog something, though, and that's what came out. Enough disclaimers? Good. Then let's move on.

1/1/2003 12:26 Wednesday AM
Happy New Year's!
I'd manage more, but I really can't right now. Let's just say that at 12:00am, I was on the phone. It has been pouring down raining all night, I'm sitting here alone, and 163 miles is a damned long ways. Sorry, I have nothing poignant or meaningful to say right now. At least, not here. The things I do have to say, I won't say here.