1. What time do you wake up on weekday mornings?
Depends on the day. Obviously. With nothing in particular to set an alarm for, I'd wake up on my own between 8:30 and 9:30am.
2. Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late?
Depends on the day. Of course. With nothing else to wake up for, I'd sleep as late as I could, but these days, it would take major depressants to keep me asleep past 10am or so.
And that sucks.
3. Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning?
That's none of your business!
4. How long does it take to get ready for your day?
25 minutes, probably.
5. When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast?
"My kitchen" sounds utterly boring. But I'm not a big go-out-for-breakfaster. Maybe a nice country restaurant where the waitresses all have big hair and call you "Sugar." There really is a place like that in town. Babeness and I have only gone there once, though, and in fact it WAS for breakfast.

7/31/2003 Thursday 6:13 PM
When I was out erranding, I saw this sign as I crossed a bridge across Lake Jessup:
"Possible Insect Swarms Ahead."
*sigh*
I kept driving, but didn't see the warning signs for the seas drying up or the rivers running as blood. They were probably on a different stretch of highway. Near Lakeland, Florida, most likely.

Overheard from Mariana last night, at 8:42pm:
"They put sushi on every page. It's a modern miracle."

7/31/2003 Thursday 10:22 AM
Home again, and awake again.
Yesterday was a LONG day, and I don't mean just hours.
I was late leaving to begin with, because I needed to stop at a Kinko's over here to fax something before I could get on the interstate. I didn't want to wait to fax it from Babeness's house, because I wanted it to go out as soon as possible. The person I was faxing it to was going to acknowledge receipt of it by e-mail, and I wanted to get that e-mail as soon as possible, for my own peace of mind. So I stopped at Kinko's rather than fax it from Mariana's house and only get that verification from the recipient the next chance I got to check some e-mail, which would likely have been late in the day or evening. The faxing wasn't as quick as I thought, because...*cough cough*...I wasn't using the '1' I needed to fax it long-distance. I hadn't realized it was long-distance. The first two fax attempts failed, and I used the '1' for the third. So that whole portion of my trip took about 20 minutes longer than I thought.
Then, on the first major interstate leg of the trip, about 20 miles from the exit to the second leg, I lost a tire. It had had a slow leak for a couple of days, but I had loaded it with Fix-a-Flat and it seemed to be holding its air. Well, something about driving for 45 minutes at 80mph just didn't agree with it, because it went down quickly. I could tell from the handling that something was wrong, so I pulled off onto the shoulder, with the driver-side wheels in the grass and the passenger-side wheels up on the shoulder, with interstate traffic whizzing by at 80mph just about three feet from the vehicle. By the time I got out and went behind the Jeep to check that tire, it was leaking fast, and I mostly just stood and stared as it settled onto the rapidly-flattening tire.
Oh, I was pissed.
So, I flipped up the rear seat and got the jack assembly out from under it, and removed the little donut spare tire from the rear of the vehicle. This was the first time I'd needed to use all this since I bought the thing, and I was just hoping that I had all the parts I needed and that the donut itself had enough air in it.
If you've never tried to change a tire with traffic whizzing just inches away from you at 80 mph, let me tell you, this is a rare fear that few people really think about. Trust me when I say that I was thinking about it a great deal as I crouched down outside the passenger side to wedge the jack under the Jeep. I knew that if any vehicle had just clipped me, I'd be dead. Period. I would probably have been thrown into the travel lane, and 32 vehicles would think I was a speed-table before anybody would have stopped. The impact alone would finish me, even if I didn't get thrown into the travel lane. And there would be no ambulances, no CPR, no apply-pressure-until-bleeding-stops to save me. I would have died before any of that could help.
You think considering all of this was excessively morbid and paranoid?
Try changing a tire with traffic whizzing just inches away from you at 80mph.
So, anyway, I wedged the jack under the Jeep and began cranking as fast as I could. When traffic would build up going past, I would surrender my place and retreat onto the shoulder, on the other side of the car, to wait for traffic to thin out again. When it did, I would go back around and crank some more. Then traffic would build up again, and I'd scurry back onto the shoulder again. This went on until I finally got the jack up as far as I could. That's when I discovered that it wasn't up high enough for me to remove the tire. Apparently, the way the Jeep was situated, at a bit of an angle with one side off the shoulder and the other on, shifted the car's suspension just enough so that jacking up that side from the location underneath where I had the jack, didn't lift it high enough. I would have to put the jack at another spot on the frame. Much cursing.
So, playing the same strategy of waiting and dodging traffic, I cranked the jack down and placed it at another spot, from behind, where at least I could crank in relative safey, behind the vehicle and therefore farther from the 18-wheelers thundering past me (and making the Jeep rock back and forth on the jack, and don't think I didn't visualize it crashing down off the jack). This provided a little more clearance, but still not enough to get the tire off the wheel. By now, quite a while into the ordeal, I was beginning to get the vaguely unsettling notion that I might not be able to just put the spare tire on and be on my way. I wasn't sure how I'd be able to place the jack to get enough clearance. About a quarter-mile behind me, some road-rangers had pulled off the shoulder to assist another breakdown, and I began talking to them under my breath, willing them to help her enough to be able to leave and come help me. I wasn't sure what they'd be able to do - maybe have a taller jack that would get me enough clearance, or maybe just be burly enough to physically lift the Jeep off the ground enough for me to make the chance.
So, abandoning this second placement of the jack, I realized what I'd have to do - wriggle on the ground underneath the Jeep and place the jack in a third location, on the suspension, to lift it high enough. And I'd have to do it from the side - you know, with the 18-wheelers thundering past me, the sand-blasting from every vehicle that passed, with memories of this elbowing their way into my mind.
I wondered if some truck-driver would go home and write on their blog about the adult human who got splashed across his windshield. Probably not.
So, I did the inevitable - got down on the ground and wriggled under the Jeep to situate the jack for a third time. And doing this, I knew I had to abandon even the thought of being able to watch traffic, to watch for that one driver who would sneeze at just the wrong moment, jerking his/her steering wheel just enough, easing onto the shoulder just enough, to hit me or the two-ton vehicle on top of me. Fortunately, that didn't happen. And, the jack placed once again, I wriggled back out and resumed my game of dodge-and-wait until this time, the Jeep was raised enough. So I manhandled the flat off of the wheel, and got the donut spare onto it. As I was replacing the lug nuts, the road-rangers from a quarter-mile behind me finally pulled up. I was glad to see them, even if the bulk of the labour was finally finished. But having their truck there behind me at least would serve as a bit of a buffer zone, making it much harder for somebody to clip me or the Jeep. So I finished putting the lug nuts on, and they ran interference for me from behind to allow me to ease back into the 80mph traffic. They had directed me to the next exit, where they said I'd be able to find several dealers where I'd be able to get a tire.
Well, at least I thought they said the next exit. They might have said the SECOND exit, because when I got off at the first exit, I found no tire dealers or automotive shops. I drove along fairly aimlessly, discovered through street-signs that I was in beautiful downtown Lakeland, Florida, and finally stopped at a hardware store, where I figured to find somebody who would know where the nearest tire store was. They gave me some seemingly easy directions - turn right at this light, go down there, look for 98, turn right, and then you'll see a Sears, a Firestone, a Super Wal-Mart, etc. Well, I turned right at that light, went down there, and didn't even see a street sign for 98, much less the highway itself. So there was more aimless wandering, and finally I stopped at a 7-11 to ask for directions again. And to buy a little phonecard, to call Mariana and/or my brother (to ask him to e-mail Mariana and tell her why I would be late). Called my brother first, but didn't get an answer. Decided against calling Mariana at that moment, because at that point I didn't know exactly how much longer I'd be, since I didn't yet know where I was getting a tire. So with the new, revised, much more complete directions from the good folks at 7-11, I set off again.

"...and you have a good day today, okay?"
"Well, I just lost a tire, I'm an hour from where I started and two hours from where I need to be, and all I know is that I'm in Lakeland."
"Awww, I'm sorry...well, Lakeland's a pretty town, you'll like it."
"Well, I'm sure Lakeland is lovely, but so far, I'm not really enjoying my stay here. You have a good day too."

So, when their directions finally led me to 98, I opted for a Tires Plus store, where they got to work on my car. I had to walk a few minutes to the nearest payphone, and when I did, I called Mariana to whimper a little bit and explain the situtation. Talked to her for a bit. Walked back to the tire store. Went into their restroom. Looked in the mirror and was appalled - sweaty, sandy, and I felt just filthy. Draped my shirt over the towel-dispenser and used the sink like a bird uses a birdbath - splashing water everywhere I could, under my arms, on my back, into my hair, down my neck. Sponged myself off as best I could, and repeated the operation. Put my shirt back on and went out to wait in the lobby. About 30 minutes and $118 later, I was making my way back to the interstate. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but relatively speaking, anything short of being struck by a meteor would have been uneventful.
When I got to Mariana's house, about 1:20pm, about two and a half hours later than I had planned, she was feeling pretty icky. So we sat for awhile, and she courageously rebuffed my every offer to leave, to go get her a light lunch somewhere, to go sit and read across the street at Wal-Mart while she slept a little bit, etc. We eventually left her house and drove to a nearby restaurant to get some food in her, since she hadn't eaten much at all since Tuesday afternoon. Sat there and ate. She perked up a little bit (as I promised her she would, if she would just get some nutrients in her), and from there we went a couple cities over to visit a friend of hers (and to wrangle a free cookie from him, from where he works). As we left, I got a Cherry Coke from a machine and started gulping it.
From there, we drove around a bit, and wound up at a mall down there. Spent about five minutes debating whether we'd ever been there before. Mariana swore we had, but I wasn't sure, I didn't remember it. Walked around there, stopped to sit and rest a couple of times when she started feeling woozy again. By then the weather was looking a bit frightful, so we sat and rested some more. Actually, she zonked out completely. I alternately dozed and snapped some random pics of the weather, as I am wont to do. None of them were particularly compelling, or else I'd post one or two. Finally we both started stirring, and we went go get some Slurpee-type drinks at a nearby convenience store to really wake ourselves up. It occurred to me that all the fluids I'd drank all day (a Mountain Dew from the 7-11 where I'd bought the phone-card and gotten directions, the iced teas at lunch, the Cherry Coke, this frozen thing)...well, let's just say that I hadn't gotten rid of any of them. That's apparently how much I had sweat during That Whole Tire Episode. Wandered around a department store for awhile. Got some stuff. Didn't get some other stuff. Ran into a friend of Mariana's on the way out, an odd girl whose personality seems to run the gamut from depressed to monotone all the way to downright subdued. Talked to her for a while, then did that little thing where you deliberately linger, so the person you've just said goodbye to exits a place well ahead of you, and you don't feel compelled to resume a conversation you've just ended, just because you are once again in proximity to them. So they left, we left, and we drove back to Venice. By now it was well after 10, so we stopped at a Denny's ("A good place to sit and eat," the ad says, remember.) So we sat. A while later, we went in and ate.

I only see Mariana once a week right now (BUT SHE COMES HOME IN 20 DAYS!!!), and naturally, when I do see her, we both try to come up with things to do, places to go, things to see and explore down there. But there's a lot to be said, also, for sitting quietly with your girl and relaxing, nibbling on finger foods, reading through a magazine or newspaper together, doing the crossword puzzle together, laughing at the comics together, etc. I'm not sure exactly which day I fell in love with her. But there's a good chance it involved either sitting at Chick-Fil-A, or sitting up in the 3rd floor of the SU, relaxing, nibbling, reading, crosswording, and laughing.
So, after such a long day, we were both finished before the food was, and not longer after the crossword puzzle was. Our energies dwindling, I took her home. As we stood in the street outside her house, we saw a shooting star.

I made a wish.
I'd say something completely predictable, like "...but my wish already came true." But the fact is, while some wishes have indeed come true, there are still more wishes to be made.

I kissed the coolest girl in the world goodbye, several times, and drove home.

Today I'm off for some erranding in town, including UCF and a local school board. Well, that's pretty much the extent of the erranding. After that, I'm coming home to nap a little more, and then I'm doing up the nice roast chicken dinner that I've been envisioning for several days now. A guy at work wanted to switch tonight and Sunday, so I've actually got the night off. And that's okay with me.

7/30/2003 Wednesday 6:57 AM
Wonderful Wednesday.
Don't wait up. I'll be with the coolest girl in the world all day.

7/28/2003 Monday 9:16 AM
Bob Hope is dead.

7/26/2003 Saturday 10:16 AM
For some reason I have no idea what day it is. I mean, I know it's Saturday, but this is the most unSaturdayish Saturday I've seen in a long time, and I don't know why. It feels...I dunno, like a Monday or Tuesday or something. Of course, if it was a Tuesday, it would feel better, but still. I think it might have something to do with my sleep schedule the past few days - last night I went to bed before 11:30. My darling was out with a friend, so I sat watching a Mystery Science Theater 3000 ('The Sinister Urge,' an Ed Wood flick). But I felt myself about to doze off in my chair, and it was only 11:20ish or so. And today I woke up around 8:45am, which wasn't too bad, there were some things I needed to do online before work at 11 anyway.

Memo to baseball announcers and commentators and sports talk-show hosts who fret about there being no day World Series games and how the games starting and finishing so late at night prevents kids from watching it, who preach that starting some World Series games in the afternoon would "give the game back to the kids":
Hey, morons, the kids don't want the game. The kids don't want baseball. The kids don't watch baseball, and the kids don't give a damn about baseball. And giving them the opportunity to watch baseball will NOT give them the desire to watch baseball.
Haven't you guys figured that out yet? The adults barely care about baseball anymore; the kids certainly don't. They're playing basketball across the street and at the schools at and the playgrounds. Or they're playing basketball or football PlayStation games. They're not out playing pick-up baseball anymore. Haven't you noticed? Stop pretending that baseball is still important to a lot of people. Clearly, it isn't.
This pains me to say, but it's true. I mean, I grew up playing Little League (damn good fielder; damn terrible hitter) and I grew up watching baseball. I went to Spring Training games here in Orlando as a kid and got Rod Carew's autograph one time in our little green vinyl autograph book (long since lost).
An aside: do they still make autograph books anymore? Been a long time since I've seen one anywhere. About the size and style of a diary, you know, but labelled and designed simply for autographs. We had plenty of baseball players' autographs, too, from spring training. Rod Carew is simply the most notable one that I remember. For some reason Vida Blue comes to mind, too, mighta had his as well. But that's not the point.
Or is it? Nobody is waving autograph books around in Orlando anymore. Spring training in Orlando really doesn't even exist anymore. Because nobody cared, and because other communities ponied up more money to draw the teams, under the assumption (or promise) that people in those communities did care.
I'd love to be a baseball fan, still, or again, but Major League Baseball is just making too hard for me. The thugs and gangsters in the player's union are in my opinion the worst offenders, but the ownership and management are hardly innocent.
Meanwhile, it'll be football season again in just a few weeks, and that's really all that counts.

I was gonna blog the most recent Wonderful Wednesday, Mariana looking like a goddess in that gorgeous dress, Pirates of the Caribbean, some more school stories, and some recent dreams (Mariana and I in New York City, things hanging from trees, Mariana and I repairing my back fence, me as The Slayer, etc.). They'll have to wait, I'll be late for work in nine minutes.

7/25/2003 Friday 12:07 AM
Well, you know this is my second attempt at the FridayFive. The first disappeared into some cyber-vortex.
Always save your work.

1. If your life were a movie, what would the title be?
"Some Of It's Magic, Some Of It's Tragic."
Yeah, so I blatantly copped that from the soundtrack. Got a problem?
2. What songs would be on the soundtrack?
I've got the whole list.
3. Would it be a live-action film or animated? Why?
Definitely live-action. Animation just can't adequately capture the nuances of real life. When it tries, the emphasis goes on the special-effects and not the nuance.
That was a really boring answer.
I'd want live-action, so I could kick some ass, too.
4. Casting: who would play you, members of your family, friends, etc?
My first answer is, Matthew Perry should play me. The physical resemblance is there. And I've been told more than once that his 'Friends' character, Chandler, is far too similar to me to be sheer coincidence. I've had to reassure people that I had no affiliation with the writers or directors.
My second answer is, I wanna play me. Because I could change certain things. And if I changed the right things, and if perception really is reality, and if enough people see my flick, then reality becomes that I am actually a pretty cool guy.
As for the rest of the people, I just want Babeness to play herself. It just wouldn't be as much fun with anybody else.
5. Describe the movie preview/trailer.
There once was a show on one of the pay-channels that starred Michael McKean. Don't remember what it was called, or what it was about. Anyway, one time his character said "The week is just one long day where I change clothes alot." Using that as a tag-line, it wouldn't matter much what you filmed around it for a preview.

I'm far too tired to do much more than this right now.

And my darling is feeling a little feisty tonight, too, it seems. So you must go here to see us more at peace than either of us are feeling tonight. (Not so coincidentally, we were together.)

7/22/2003 Tuesday 9:59 PM
Well, since I don't really have anything to say, I'll let my images do the talking. This is what you missed earlier tonight, an exchange between me (MasterRobpie) and my beloved:

And here's a little shot of a tree I drove by, another victim of the horrendous lightning we've been having the past few days:

7/22/2003 Tuesday 4:42 PM
I do take requests (and tips):

This was taken as I stood in my front doorway, looking out into the yard and across the street, a few minutes after the worst of the rain. For those who recall the Saga of the Mailbox, the mailbox is still erect, off to the right of this view. This is likely not one of the ones that Mariana would have mojo'ed, so I don't mind posting this one.

7/22/2003 Tuesday 2:00 PM
Ok, I admit it, I'm really in a rut right now. Nothing to write about, nothing to bitch about, nothing comical to share.

Mother Nature has really been kicking the crap out of us the past week or so. Tremendous, drenching, soaking rains, and lightning like you wouldn't believe. I was telling Babeness one night that the lightning during one night's storm was really severe. And sure enough, that night when my brother got home from work, he said that the local talk-radio show he listens to was filled with calls about the lightning storm. And yesterday in a gas station, the woman ahead of me was muttering about the "humdinger" of a storm that was headed towards us (it was!) and then asked the cashier if she'd seen the lightning the other night.
So it's not just me.
I'll admit it, I don't like lightning. I don't like electricity, even. If I see a doorbell with the plastic button cracked, my finger will just hover over it, afraid to press it for fear of getting zapped right then and there. I still will just gaze out the open door at a powerful storm, amazed at the sheer awesomeness of it, even if lightning is all over the place. But it makes me a little nervous. I've lived here my whole life, but every summer, there are a few days where I say okay, this is literally the hardest rain I've ever seen here. And just a little while ago was one of those times, but of course, just a few minutes later, the rain is gone completely.
So anyway, as I was staring out at the storm a little while ago, I impulsively grabbed the camera and snapped a few pics of it. Yeah, I was bored.
I was gonna post one or two of them here, but I'm gonna give them to Babeness instead, to let her work some of her graphic mojo on them. Maybe you'll see them in a few days, maybe not.

7/17/2003 Thursday 9:54 PM
Tired.
Got home around 2:30 or so last night. Before that, of course, a lot of things happened.
Got to Babeness's house around 10:40 or so. Sat around for a few minutes. Left for Tampa to check out some things, since we hadn't wandered around there yet. While on one of the interstates, though, this happened.
I first thought it was a lubber grasshopper, one of the more charming neighbors we have down here. But according to some sites I browsed this morning, adult lubbers (which this appeared to be) can't fly. This presents us with four possibilities:
1. This was not a lubber.
2. This was not an adult lubber; it was a juvenile that had not yet lost the ability to fly. (The same online sources agree that juvenile lubbers can fly.)
3. The online references I checked were wrong, and adult lubbers can fly (which I believe anyway, since I've grown up around them).
4. Someone in another vehicle pelted us with a lubber grasshopper at 75mph.

I'm inclined to go with either #3 or #4.

So anyway, we finally went through some rain; I was able to turn on the windshield wipers and finally, the remains of the pterodactyl were flung off. So yes, somewhere in Tampa, someone else is complaining about how I pelted them with a large lubber grasshopper at 75mph. No matter.
We finally got to the mall in Tampa. (On the way, we passed Lee Roy Selmon's steakhouse.)
First we browsed some stores, including the Williams-Sonoma store, where as usual I babbled incoherently. There I netted some authentic Frrrozen Hot Chocolate from Serendipity 3 in New York. Mariana discovered a nasty gouge on her pinky finger, and couldn't imagine where she'd done it.
From there, we went to the highlight, of course, the Sanrio store. Mariana babbled incoherently as she pillaged the place. She netted a Hello Kitty bag; a little Hello Kitty crayon pencil; a Hello Kitty eraser pen; some Hello Kitty nail polish, and a single Hello Kitty bandage to cover up the gouge on her pinky. Plus, by spending some amount of money, she also got some free Hello Kitty bookcovers. She did not partake of the Hello Kitty tissues, Hello Kitty tape dispenser, Hello Kitty lollipops, Hello Kitty toothbrushes, Hello Kitty watches, Hello Kitty calculators, Hello Kitty staplers, Hello Kitty wallets, or Hello Kitty toilet-seat covers. (I am not kidding about that last item.)
After exhausting the mall and ourselves, we drove back to Venice/Sarasota. Mariana passed out on the way down, so when we arrived, we sat and rested for awhile. Later, we trusted ourselves to run into BooksAMillion for five minutes to get a couple magazines to read over dinner.
Twenty minutes later, we left BooksAMillion and went to Beef O'Brady's for some wings. It was 9:58pm. Beef O'Brady's was closed. We cursed violently, plotted our protest for next week, and went on to Chili's. We were both really tired by then, so we ate listlessly, read some magazines, and listened to the town drunks have a screaming contest in the bar.
Again, I'm not exaggerating.
Then, the night over, I drove home alone. Next week waits. There are, as of today, 34 more days until my darling comes home. Way I figure it, five of those days, I'll be with her anyway. And really, I'll be with her 10 of those days, since I typically don't leave her until after midnight anyway, when it's Thursday already. So really, she'll actually be home in 24 days, right?

Time for some FridayFive:

1. When was the last time you cheated?
Kinda vague.
2. When was the last time you stole?
Don't remember. Probably it was Monday, when I got lunch from work without paying for it, as I do every time I work all day.
3. When was the last time you lied?
About fifteen seconds ago.
4. When was the last time you broke or vandalized another's property?
Don't know. Probably was a kid. Not sure what qualifies, anyway.
5. When was the last time you hurt a loved one?
Ask them. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have done it.

7/16/2003 Wednesday 7:58 AM
Wednesday of Wonderfulousity. Don't wait up.

7/15/2003 Tuesday 12:06 PM
Yike. Has it really been over three days since we last talked? I'm sorry.

Did you hear about the guy who woke up from a coma after 19 years? Unbelievable. Reading into the story a bit, it's not quite as miraculous as it sounds. Yes, it's wonderful that he's awake now. But the word "coma" apparently has a wider range of medical meaning than I thought. I pictured the guy being absolutely unresponsive for 19 years, and that's apparently not the case. And when we say that he "awoke" from it, that too was apparently a gradual process that it still developing. And, as a result of the injury that put him into the coma 19 years ago, he's still paralyzed from the neck down, and probably always will be. So it's not as though a day after waking up, he was shaking his doctor's hand and skipping out into the parking lot to go home.
What, am I insane? Must I always be the nay-sayer? Sorry. Yes, it is a wonderful story, but for the angle I'm looking at, those are the caveats.
My point, though, is how you'd even go about re-introducing such a person into the world today. Let's make it a storybook ending where he is fully mobile and with full, unfettered cognitive abilities. How do you hold that person by the hand and take him back into this world?
You're looking at a computer screen right now. How would you describe it? Bear in mind that the person you're talking to has absolutely no basic knowledge of the internet to build on. When he went down, in 1984, Apple was just getting going, and the idea of "computers" was such a niche that he probably had no conception of it. So how do you explain computers and the internet? Some sort of cross between television and every encyclopedia in the world? The word 'database' can't enter your description, since he probably doesn't know what a 'database' is. How do you go about talking about computer memory?
Then there's music. You'd probably be okay talking about compact-disks. They're just another physical medium, after all, just like the cassettes and records this guy remembers. But...what about MP3s? How do you go about explaining music that doesn't really exist in any physical format? How do you explain that it's all just a computer file, when he doesn't know what a 'file' is, and how do you explain that it's all encoded in the computer's memory, when he doesn't know what computer memory is? I guess all you can do is reduce it completely, to the idea of magnetic materials on a computer hard-drive, which are similar to magnetic materials on cassette tape. But then you have colour televisions that can be worn on a watch! Telephones that are inside watches! We were talking at work about MP3 players. This guy can probably remember Sony Walkmans, having a radio strapped to your hip, or a cassette player strapped to your hip. Now, having a CD player strapped to your hip is obsolete, and we have miniature music players that can hold more hours of music than a stack of CDs. And they're smaller than the CD itself.
Okay, now politics. This guy was, in fact, from Arkansas. He'd probably remember Bill Clinton. But can you imagine learning that the guy you remember from your state's politics, has gone on to win the presidency not just once, but twice!
There's just so much you'd want to tell him. The Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union. Technology. Even as I'm sitting here, I'm a little bit at a loss about what to tell him, and how, and in what order.

I've thought about this before, actually, and I'm sure we all have in one form or another. Not to get too sentimental, but I've had dreams where my bio-dad was alive again. Not still alive, mind you, but alive again, back to life, with all of us conscious that he had been dead for many years. And, in fact, he died just a year or two before this fellow went into this coma. I've thought from time to time how I'd go about talking to him about the world today. I imagine he'd be on the internet all day, since I can barely remember him without a book in his hand, or a paperback or two or three folded open next to the chair he'd sit in out in the living room. I'd love to be able to unleash him on the internet. And hey, my bio-mum died in 1978, and she worked in computer-programming for NASA and in the private sector; I remember bundles of punch-cards in the back seat of her car. Punch-cards! Even someone educated in the field as of 1978, how would I explain what her field developed into? The mammoth wall of hardware that I vaguely remember her sitting in front of - how fun would it be to tell her that it's all been replaced, and then some, by a little laptop smaller than a telephone book?

However I'd do it, I'd just like to be able to try.

Oh, and I did find out about Luis. It was a suicide. Apparently he jumped from a six-story building (or window). The police found no note, but they did find some journals he'd been keeping, wherein he apparently sounded very depressed and suicidal.

And you have to go see my love's new PhotoLog. That's my girl.

7/12/2003 Saturday 12:01 AM
One night some years ago, I got very drunk with my friends Steve, Luis, and Micah. Round about 2am or so, we decided to go to Denny's for some late-night eats. Well, Steve, Micah, and I decided to go; Luis was tired and didn't feel like going, but we dragged him along anyway. He passed out dead asleep in the car on the way from Steve's apartment to Denny's. When we arrived, we tried to wake him up, but never got much more than some slurred, mumbled curses. So we left him in the car, stumbled into the restaurant, and sat and ate for an hour or so. When we got back out to Steve's car, we managed to wake Luis up. Still drunk, still groggy, he saw that we were at Denny's, and started to get out to go inside. We laughed and said no, it's okay, we're done, we're leaving. He was still pissed off, and thought we had changed our minds about eating at Denny's just to appease him, and that we had essentially wasted time by going and then not eating. And that pissed him off even more. So he kept trying to get out to go inside, saying, c'mon, you wanted to go to Denny's, fine, we're fuckin' at Denny's, let's fuckin' go eat. We tried hard to tell him that we'd already eaten, that we'd been at Denny's for over an hour, and that he'd been passed out in the car the whole time and had slept through it. I'm not sure he ever did really believe us and realize that he had in fact been passed out. But eventually we dragged him back into the car and screeched out of the parking lot back to Steve's apartment.

Mark told me tonight that he had learned from his friend in Atlanta that Luis had been found found dead in his apartment a few days ago, and it was still unclear whether he had been murdered or if it was a suicide. I'm still hoping to find out; Mark said his friend would be calling him back with more information.
If it's true...RIP, Luis, RIP.

7/11/2003 Friday 12:00 AM
Some FridayFive to tide you over until I have something of interest to say:

These questions sound familiar, too.
1. Do you remember your first best friend? Who was it?
Timmy Adams, two houses up.
2. Are you still in touch with this person?
Nope. Haven't been in probably 20 years, at least.
3. Do you have a current close friend?
Yes.
4. How did you become friends with this person?
We had always gone to the same school(s), even though he was (and still is) a year older than me. But we weren't friends and barely knew each other at all. After 7th or 8th grade, however, I moved down the street from him, and we became acquainted through proximity if nothing else. It developed into the real friendship it's been for many years.
5. Is there a friend from your past that you wish you were still in contact with? Why?
Probably. Maybe Richard. Other than Tom, who I've known since kindergarten, I've known Richard probably longer than anyone else, since first or second grade. He was another one of those guys (like Nate, below), who didn't think it was uncool to be smart. Haven't seen or talked to him in several years.

7/08/2003 Wednesday 7:35 AM
Wonderful Wednesday.
Don't wait up.

7/08/2003 Tuesday 11:34 PM
Overheard from Mariana:
"If I were one of the ducks, I'd be set."

7/08/2003 Tuesday 10:32 AM
Alligators? I don't need no steenkin' alligators. Jason came roaring back with a vengeance into my dreams last night. I don't really remember it coherently. But it was Jason. And I was terrified.

7/06/2003 Sunday 11:28 AM
Anyway, I finally inserted the little pic of the smiley-face firework from the city's fireworks display Friday night out over the lake. Enjoy it - it's very possible that this one picture cost me an ounce or two of my precious blood, lost to the mosquitos in the back yard. For that matter, each of the several dozen pics I took (with varying degrees of success) probably cost me an ounce or so of blood, and I went back inside light-headed.
But the pic's down there, in yesterday's entry.

The Fourth of July is probably my second-favourite holiday, behind Thanksgiving (and probably Eid, which I somehow classify differently). I'm really not even sure why anymore. In previous years I thought it was mostly because the Fourth is probably the most wholesome of holidays, the one event that nobody could possibly disagree with or protest. I mean, you have all the Christian wackos protesting Halloween. You have the non-Christian wackos protesting Christmas. You have the uber-PC anti-American wackos protesting Thanksgiving. You have the animal-rights wackos protesting Easter (and the associated rise in chicken and rabbit sales). But how could you possibly protest the Fourth of July, aside from warning people not to blow their fingers onto their neighbours' roof? And yet this year, what with the sheer evil of the anti-war protestors, it occurs to me that Indendence Day is probably a sore spot with many of them, the ones who are so humbled and so overcome with guilt about being a resident of the greatest nation on earth, that the guilt has mutated into loathing OF America. There are people out there - in this nation, who call themselves Americans - who probably see Independence Day the way they see Thanksgiving: as the ultimate celebration of the triumph of arrogance.

This thought does not taint the Fourth of July for me. It's still my second-favourite holiday.
It was my bio-dad's favourite holiday, too. Again, I'm not sure why. He was a history buff, so there's probably some notion of patriotism and history in there. But I remember the nights of sparklers in the back yard - both the small hand-held size, and the large, three-foot size that you plunge upright into the ground. Somewhere in this house are some old reels of Super8 film, that my parents shot over the years. I vaguely remember some of them. I think one (or more) of them might have been shot on a Fourth of July when I was perhaps three or four years old. I know somewhere there are still photographs of this, with my brother and I waving around sparklers, with the large ones sticking in the ground. I'm not positive the film exists, but I know the pictures do. Someday I must have those old Super8 reels transferred to video (or, these days, to DVD). I've always thought about it, but never have.
In recent years I developed a little tradition of my own. I would smoke a single cigar - doesn't matter what size or brand, no inhaling - while sitting in the front yard, sipping some Mountain Dew or iced tea, watching the neighbourhood pour out of their homes and converge towards the lake. Then, I would retire to the back yard to watch the fireworks out over the lake. Some years I watched the movie Sid and Nancy. I've forgotten how or why that became a Fourth of July mini-tradition. I think for maybe two years in a row it was merely coincidence that I watched that movie, or maybe the second year, I watched it merely because I remembered watching it the previous Fourth. Whatever the reason, that mini-tradition lasted perhaps four or five years. But I don't think I've watched it the past several. Heck, this year I didn't even smoke the cigar (though I did indulge in some Coke over ice) and I paid only minor attention to the folks walking down to the lake. I did retire to the back yard to watch the fireworks, though.

Damn mosquitos.

KeyWord Rankings update.
I am very disturbed to see that I am only #3 for "babeness." Like I have any competition at all?? What's funny, though, is that #4 is a Googlism for "babeness."
There aren't many results. They are:
babeness is when you reach mid
babeness is being overlooked
babeness is just a plus
babeness is still in france and could change her mind or the weather go bad
babeness is captured here in this photo gallery
babeness is the ability to

I'll have to do some more, updated Googlisms pretty soon. Not right now, though.

7/05/2003 Saturday 10:13 AM
Yes, indeed, happy birthday to Uncle Sam.

So, yes, I said I'd never tell what happened in between picking Mariana up Wednesday and the concert. I never said I wouldn't tell what happened after the concert. And in fact, that's what I'm supposed to do anyway, isn't it?

So anyway, after the show, we just came home. Babeness puttered on the computer for awhile. I watched poker on TV. We all have our obsessions.
Sooner or later we slept.
Thursday morning I awoke, as usual, a couple of hours before Mariana, and it was my turn to putter on the computer. (But she was NOT watching poker.) We then lounged around the house for a few hours, resting and not resting. We finally left around 3, having to make it to Sarasota by 6 for her voice lesson. I wanted to get a fill-up of gas, though, so we first went to a Hess station. Now, normally, Hess stations are pretty good about turning on the pumps and not demanding a pre-pay. So I stood there and waited, and the little screen on the pump just said "Please wait...". So I pleased waited for a couple of minutes, and finally just stomped into the store to pay. Got an iced tea and waited in line. When I got the the register, I waved at the tea and said that I needed twelve bucks' (which I calculated would about fill the tank) on pump five. The cashier hesitated, then performed some entry on the register and told me it would be 74 cents - the price of the tea. I hesitated, looked at the tea, and said, okay, can I get twelve bucks' on pump five? That just completely threw the cashier off. His fingers hovered over the register for a few seconds, and I heard him murmur something like "But it's on...", presumably referring to the pump outside. He waited. I waited. He hesitated. His fingers hovered. My fingers crushed the bills in my hand. He stared blankly at the register, not sure what to do. Finally I broke down and went into Angry Consumer mode, something I rarely do. I told him never mind, how much was the tea? He said 74 cents, so I threw a dollar bill down on the counter and stormed off. He said something about the change, and I just waved disgustedly over my head and walked out.
7-11 has better gas anyway, I told Mariana, as we drove across the street. So I waited for the cashier in 7-11 to turn on the pump, which they also freely do. I waited. And waited. Finally went inside. I was not fated to buy gasoline in Winter Garden, it seemed. That cashier said that the day had turned into "drive-off day," and so they had turned the pumps off to prevent more people from driving off without paying. So I got my 12 bucks' worth of gas, and finally we were on our way...about 15 minutes later than we should have been.
Babeness dozed off a little while later. I almost did.
When we got to Sarasota, I stopped at a Friendly's ice-cream shop to relieve myself of the iced tea, which had roared through my empty stomach straight into my bladder. The restroom has a most curious item in it - a vending machine that didn't say what it was selling! Whatever it was, it cost one dollar (four quarters only, please). I swear, if I had had four quarters in my pocket at the time, I woulda put them in, just to see what would come out of the machine. I was dying with curiousity. And I almost fetched the four quarters out of my car anyway. What would they be selling for a dollar in the restroom of a family-oriented ice-cream shop?? Bizarre. When we got to her voice lesson, I decided to stay in the car and doze, since the lesson was supposed to be at least half an hour or so. The neighbor across the street (the voice teacher works out of her home) got some good news in the mail, or at least finally received what he was expecting, since I heard a hearty "Well, it's about fucking time, they finally sent it..!" to no one in particular when he fetched his mail. So I was glad for him. Mariana later mentioned that he was creepy and had looked at her. Well, I can't blame him, I guess. Men are men, and a cute gal is a cute gal.
Mariana woke me up after the lesson, finding me splayed out in my seat in the Jeep, clutching a picture of us to my chest, the picture that is normally tucked into the passenger-side visor.
At that point we were both ravenously hungry, so we went to find some food. Mariana earlier had expressed a craving for some chili-cheese fries, so we naturally went to McDonald's, which doesn't sell them. But we got some cheap burgers and normal fries, and then went to Checkers to get the chili-cheese fries. A plump sea-bird (don't ask me to get much more specific than that!) camped outside my door, waiting patiently (and then impatiently) for a french fry to come flying out the window. Finally he was rewarded, and when his friends stopped by to visit, he chased them all off. He was a squatter, I think, having claimed us.
So, after eating, we drove the final 30 minutes or so back to Venice. We didn't have any particular goal, and not much time to do it in anyway, since I needed to leave by 11 or 12 anyway (I had to work Friday morning). And we were both kinda tired. So after some aimless driving, I started looking for a place to sit and rest and nibble on more food.
First, though, we stopped to get some magazines and newspapers to read while we rested. I also stopped by a gas station for another refill for the trip back. And of course, by then, I was completely spooked about the whole gas-buying experience anyway, having had lousy luck the first two times that afternoon. The actual transaction went pretty smoothly. But as I walked out of the store after paying, all of the lights suddenly went out in the parking lot and the pump area. I tried hard not to attach any cosmological, religious significance to it (am I fated to walk in darkness all of my days??). I was just the final customer of the night, apparently, so I missed a third traumatic gas-buying experience by scant seconds. And of course I wondered which seconds in the day had made me so close to being denied gas there - was it the time I spend staring quizzically at the mysterious, unlabelled vending machine in the Friendly's restaurant bathroom? Was it something else?
Anyway, we next stopped at a Denny's. After all, as the commercial says, it's "a good place to sit and eat." When we walked in, though, there were about four employees all huddled around the register, and the distinctive (and overwhelming) stench of spray-paint in the air. No idea what that was all about. But after about 30 seconds of the employees avoiding us and not greeting us, Mariana went into Angry Consumer mode, grabbed my arm, and said 'let's talk outside.' Turns out she meant, let's get the hell outta here. So we did, and we got the hell to Perkins down the street.
By now, it was about 9 or 9:30, and we were both wilting fast. Neither of us had really gotten enough sleep or enough food, although Mariana really wasn't that hungry. So she went to get cleaned up and told me she'd nibble on whatever I ended up ordering. I had heard her say something about the hash browns with cheese sauce, so I ordered that, and a slice of some Heath bar pie, something ridiculously decadent-sounding. After it arrived, I mentioned to Mariana at one point that the Heath bar pie wasn't exactly the way I ordered it. She said why, what's missing? I said, well...the Heath bar pie was missing. I had actually received a slice of chocolate-silk pie. Still ridiculously decadent, and you don't have to pay me to eat anything chocolaty. And the waiter didn't return for another 30 minutes, so I just ate it anyway.
When we went to pay our check and leave, there was some fiasco on the cash registers, and neither of them appeared to be working. Something about a credit card on one register, and an employee tried to ring up our bill on that register and then on the other one. But having begun it on the first register meant she couldn't begin it on the second one (or something liket that). So after a few minutes of waiting and pacing, I just gestured to Mariana and we left. The bill was about 7 bucks and change, and I had given the cashier a ten, so I wasn't too concerned about getting all the change back.
From there we just went to Mariana's house, to drop her off, to end a marvelous couple of days.
I have more to say about the concert itself, and some other items, but they'll have to wait, since I'm going to be late for work in 8 minutes as it is.

7/04/2003 Friday 8:28 PM
Circumstances being what they were, I never got 'round to doing some FridayFive last night. Here they are:

1. What were your favorite childhood stories?
Actually, they were the original Hardy Boys books. My father had a small set when he was a kid, and they wound up belonging to my brother and I. It was really cool to see scribblings and stuff that my father and aunt (his sister) had made in them, years earlier, when they were my age, and to know they had held them and read them on rainy days just like I did. I'm pretty sentimental and nostalgic about things like that, and always was, even as a kid. So they had a particular set that my brother and I ended up with, and I added to it over the years, finding other editions from that same set at garage sales and flea markets; they're really old, printed in the '20s and '30s and '40s. (And, of course, I have some new(er) versions of the Hardy Boys books.) I have no illusions that they're worth a tremendous amount of money, but hey, what things are worth sometimes isn't what you could sell them for.
2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children?
Hardy Boys - see above.
3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything?
I first read Hardy Boys books when I was under 10 years old. And to read them then, they seemed perfectly realistic. Then, when I reached my mid-teens, and read them again, I kinda laughed when the stories had Frank and Joe flying all over the country, driving along in their jalopy, holding their own in fistfights with grown men, exploring Barnett Bay in their motorboat the "Sleuth," and doing all of it when they were supposedly younger than I was! I certainly wasn't doing any of that when I was 15 and 16, as the brothers were in the first books in the series!
4. How old were you when you first learned to read?
No clue. Not even a hint. I'd say fairly young.
5. Do you remember the first 'grown-up' book you read? How old were you?
I always read "grown-up" books. I remember the excitement when my parents bought our set of encylopaedias (World Book, and I was sold for life. Hmmph to the folks who prefer Britannica). I read every volume at some point or another. But even before then, my family went to the library, and it was the family joke that my dad would disappear to the history section; my brother would disappear to the sports books or the chess books; and I would disappear to the science books. It was my good fortune to be born into an intellectual family with intelligent parents.

7/04/2003 Friday 11:04 AM
Happy 7, my Beloved.

7/02/2003 Wednesday 7:37 AM
Wonderful Wednesday (albeit in a slightly modified form).
Off to see my darling. Then tonight is the Matchbox20 concert. What happens between now and then...I'll never tell.

7/01/2003 Tuesday 11:31 AM
July already. Jeez.

Tomorrow's the day. I get to see Babeness, and we get to see Matchbox 20.
Mental note: Clean house. Today.

I woke up this morning about 5:30am, freezing my bleeps off. I'm not sure, but I think my brother had the air-conditioner down to about 40 degrees. There were snowdrifts in the hallway. I went back to bed and huddled deep down under my sheet, holding my pillow tightly.

A KeyWord Rankings update. Lots of good stuff recently.
Got hits for "hot sweet pics christina porn hardcore" and ""John Mayer"; shirtless" but the Hellmouth didn't show up in the listings when I clicked on them. I guess that's okay. If I knew who was searching for the first one, I'd sent them over to Macker, I hear he's got a lot of Kristeena Agwalera porn over there. But he doesn't share; I've asked repeatedly.