Today I found out that my stepbrother Jeff is having twins! He already has one daughter, who’s around 2 years old, but that didn’t stop my stepmother from getting ultra-excited. I am excited too, though I wish they’d find out their gender(s). I think if I had a child, I’d have to know which it was. I would probably expect one or the other, and undoubtedly, I’d end up with the one I didn’t see coming. In my head I’d be like, “Here comes Stanley…..oh….shit, that’s not Stanley!” And did you ever notice that people always refer to babies as “it,” even after they’re born?! I love that. They come across as these strange creatures that we’re still not sure about. So that was plenty exciting.

Tomorrow I’m going to see Ween, down in Columbus. It’s at some new venue I’ve never heard of, but I am hyper stoked. Though, as I type this, my facial expression remains completely non-indicitive of excitement. Sometimes it seems that once you reach a certain level of maturity, physically being excited about something is far less common. With the exception of the Mega Millions Ultra Ball Lotto Plus, you don’t see fiftysomethings jumping around flailing their arms over ANYTHING. When I was little, I would freak out just because I knew I was getting to go to K-Mart to buy some G.I. Joe’s! Maybe Americans would be thinner if they allowed themselves to indulge in more “horseplay”. Our parents always busted us for such activities, but if we couldn’t do it then, and we can’t do it NOW, when can we do it?

I got all the priming on my dad’s house done today. The house looks like it’s hungry for paint. I also managed to back up some more files on my hard drive, which spawned organizing my entire computer cd collection. I seperated the worthwhile discs from the worthless, organized the good ones in a case, and even made myself a poor man’s bookshelf for all the books I am dwelling over right now. Now I can finally get ready to re-format my big hard drive, and get my computer totally back in order.

Aside from listening to NPR all day while working on my dad’s house, not much has happened while I was painting. There’s an ambulence every once in a while, and I wave to the neighbors as they walk past with their dogs. There is, however, a strange saga afoot. Up in the very high part of my dad’s house, in the middle of the peak, birds always build nests. On the side facing the street, there was a pigeon nest, but they hit the road. I knocked down their nest. While I was powerwashing, my stepbro and I thought we heard baby bird chirps on the other side of the house, but when I climbed up and looked in the nest, I saw nothing. So, I knocked down the nest. Five minutes later, I went to clean it up and discovered four dying baby birds! It scared the crap out of me when I saw them, and I didn’t know if I should try to move them or what. My stepmom’s fried came by and just tossed ‘em in a garbage bag, along with the nest. I felt bad, but hey. Later that day, I saw the confused mama bird looking around for her nest. Two days later, she had built part of a nest, and I knocked it down. Another two days later (today), she built a whole nest, but I knew it was empty and I still have to paint, so I knocked that down too! More on this story as it develops.

My bandmate John came home tonight with a nice mix of one of our demo songs, You Promised. I am really excited about releasing this demo. Some of these songs we know like the back of our hands, and others we recorded while learning. All in all, I think there’s going to be 9 tracks, plus a song John and I did here at the house. The demo is far superior to our first album, so that should help when submitting to record labels, venues, etc. We also heard back from the shady manager of The Winery in Sandusky. He’s hooking us up with a show in August, opening for Lisa Marie Presley! Not exactly a great match, but we’ll definitely take advantage of the big-ass crowd.

Well well well. It looks like my blogger finally works again! Somehow, I couldn’t log in, and I was getting pretty pissed there. Not too much has transpired since I last wrote, but it’s been 5 days. I’ve been painting at my dad’s house every single day. So far, I have all of the beige color primed and ready. Next I’ll prime the blue trim, and then it’s on to regular painting. My friend Nick was in town recently, and thankfully I was around to hang with him and his girl. It’s rare to catch him in his home habitat, since his species is normally found in and around Oakland. Today is my first break from painting, although I’m going out to play 18 holes of golf in about a half hour. Of course, I’m referring to the Smitty Tour: my family’s golf tour. I’m going to put a link for the official site on the left.

Two shitty things have happened in the past few days:

1. My hard drive took a shit, leaving me confused and terrified that I may have lost everything. Fortunately, I was able to use a data recovery program and get some of the things off there. I still need to back up tons of files on CD before I can format the drive.

2. I got a rejection letter from one of the jobs I interviewed for. Normally, I wouldn’t let that rattle me. However, this time, it leaves me with only one other job possibility… and that’s scary. If I don’t get a job immediately, I will be bankrupt. Hell, I already am bankrupt!

So last night my brother decides to skip town without remembering that my mother’s dog will be alone, without food or a chance to pee, for something like 18 hours. Then, on his way out of town, decides to call and ask if I can “help him out.” So not only do I have to leave my friends house (mildly intoxicated) and drive to the suburbs and back, but I have to do it again in the morning. How terribly considerate of him.

Today I have to keep going on my dad’s house, and I believe I’m supposed to powerwash the entire thing, alone. Well, I shouldn’t say I’m supposed to powerwash it alone, that’s just how it will end up, because my stepbrother won’t help.

We opened our 3rd beer last night, the Canada Day / Hong Kong Day Pilsner. It was not nearly good enough for such a celebratory moniker. I think that we’ll have to wait on making another beer until we get two things: a wort chiller (cools the hot liquid quickly after you’ve been boiling it), and a fucking refridgerator. That’s really the key. We need a way to store the beer about 20 degrees colder than we have been. If you store a beer at too warm of a temperature, you get off-flavors, like an apple cider type flavor, or an acidic tinge to it. Fortunately, the Saison I’ve talked about so much in this blog can be stored at around 68 F, so we’ll be okay there.

Today is a glorious rainy day, perfect for doing some work on my computer. My flash page (linked at the left) needed a few modifications, so I took care of that.

Actually, my computer is beginning to behave more and more strangely. I was thinking about re-installing Windows again, but not today.

Tonight, I am going to try to bottle our beer, the Saison. I am really curious to see what it will look like. I hope it’s nice and light in color.. or even orange-ish.

My roommate Kenny departed this morning for vacation, leaving behind an assorted boquet of messes in his wake. For starters, I’d like to document the last few things he ate.

1. At 2am, pasta was made. Nothing, including the strainer and the solitary chopstick he used to stir the pasta whilst it boiled, was cleaned up.

2. Sometime before 5am, an attempt at making pancakes was made. Whether or not it was a success is still a mystery, but there was evidence of batter on the counter, and the butter had been used up. Also, John informed me that a pan was left on the hot burner for an unknown amount of hours, empty.

3. At 6am, I took Kenny to the airport. He stopped for bottled water and a jelly doughnut on the way. The jelly doughnut was consumed faster than I could count to 5.

Upon returning, I fell back asleep. As soon as I got on the phone with my girlfriend, Kenny’s EX-girlfriend, who spent the night, came down and asked for a ride. I told my girl I’d be right back, and hurried down to some apartment building in Lakewood. When I returned, my girl had gone to sleep, and I could not get a hold of her!

Chauffeuring two people, cleaning up a mess in the kitchen, narrowly saving the house from burning down, missing the only chance to talk to my girl in the next 10 hours, spending money on gas, AND hunting for a stolen laundry basket…

Let’s just say, I don’t have a problem drinking the Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout he happened to leave behind in the fridge. Even at $9.09 for a 4-pack.

I’ve learned how easy it is to neglect the old blogger! Not too much has been going on though. I’ve been painting my dad’s house, which is going okay. Really I’m just scraping now.

I’ve been “tasting” lots of beers lately. After working I have a hankerin’ for a nice draft, so I’ve been trying to sample as many as possible.

My computer has been going crazy lately. I think it’s because I tried to install Kenny’s copy of Star Wars Galaxies, only to find out that not only do you have to PAY to play the game online, but it only works for one character. So, I had to uninstall that program, but it left behind what appears to be the devil himself: DirectX 9. This little microsoft beauty has single-handedly ruined my audio and video performance. I now have crazy flashing lights and lines in any game I play. Also, my sound card keeps producing this noise that I can only describe as “a perfect sound to use in a labratory for making humans go mad.”

My band finished recording our demo today. Mind you, I did not say “finished,” just finished RECORDING. It’s still feels good to have that done. It’s 9 songs, and it has taken a while to get it all done with our conflicting schedules.

Had a mint Oreo DQ Blizzard just now. Mm.

Last night I had a really strange dream. The premise is actually quite common in my dreams, for some reason. I’m back in high school, and there’s a big party. Only this time, the reason for the party was a riot. At the end of the school day, everybody just flipped out and started smashing up the school. After a couple of hours, the school was a fully functional rave palace. Not only was there a complete lack of a police presence, but there were bars, dance rooms, “chillin’ rooms”, and probably much more that I didn’t encounter. When I have a dream like this, it always features people I haven’t seen in years. This time there was a genuinely fat Leslie, a shy Donna, and many, many more.

That’s what makes dreams really strange. One minute your in high school, and the next, you’re at your current age, and everything is relevant. For one, my girlfriend was there with me. We started off hanging out together.. then some girl that was in my high school was trying to flirt with me, and her boyfriend (someone who didn’t go to my school) was giving me crap. I was just sitting there, and this girl was laying it on ultra-thick. I told him his girl was a slut, and walked away. The next thing I knew I was searching for my girl. There were thousands of people in this place, and it was very dark in places, as well as being extremely loud. At one point I checked my cell phone. I had my current cell phone of course, and there were 2 voicemails. One was something to the effect of a “missing persons message” that you’d get from the police if you lost someone. At the end of the message, it spoke of what was done with unidentified bodies that turned up. They were plunked into tubes and sank in the lake. Now, yesterday I was watching Diamonds are Forever (Bond) and 007 finds himself trapped underground in a tube and left to die, so that one is easy to figure out now… but when I was dreaming, it scared the SHIT out of me. I was in the large dance hall; a two-story gym-like room with a balcony upstairs and a huge open floor. There were people from floor to ceiling, and there was a giant clock on the wall because it had become New Year’s all of a sudden. I had to find my girl! Suddenly, the music stopped because someone “important” had to yell to their drugged, confused friend that it was now PAST New Year’s. While the music was off, I ran to the center of the gym and pleaded to about a thousand people. I said “Has anyone seen my girlfriend? Her name’s Catherine, she’s asian, and she’s about [held up my hand] THIS high.” Someone behind me was like, “Yeah, Larry, you were talking to her earlier,” and Larry came up to me. The music quickly popped back on and we headed back up to the bar where the girl was flirting with me before. I found my girl with 3 strangers, playing a game similar to a drinking game, but instead of drinking, you “huffed fireworks.” What the FUCK?! Well anyway, not long after I found her and snapped her out of her firework-induced haze, I woke up.

There are so many reasons why this dream could never happen that I wouldn’t even want to make a list. But why do people say dreams come true? If my dreams came true, the world would be so confusing and crazy that nobody could stand it.

Anyway, back to reality. Last night John and I watched the first Star Trek movie. It’s pretty far out really. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out. The beer we made is now working properly, but as it’s fermenting, it’s stinking up the whole house. It smells like yeast (of course) mixed with streetside hot dogs, and amplified 2000 times. If you hold your head over the fermenter, you might just pass out.
Oh, and I passed my test for that job, so I have an interview next week. That math test WAS worthless, but somehow I passed. The other parts were so easy it was sad. The “browser proficiency” test consisted of clicking on 3 links, and saving 3 pages as favorites. Yet the job would entail networking, hardware and software troubleshooting and repair. Well, I’m glad they narrowed their search down to only the most proficient network engineers! Ha.

Got some more porch to paint, so I’m off.