Last night was delightful. I got to go to Clay's house in this magical neighborhood surrounded by castlegates, drawbridges, magik and mystery. He had read my blog on having too many items in my pockets (07/24/2004: My daily inventory) and brought me a stylish euro man bag from Spain! How cool is that. Thank you, Clay, I copyright my new man bag. He also brought with him a bottle of the forbidden, therefore more desirable, Absinthe. The way we drank it was so cool. First you put some in a glass with ice. Then you take a spoonful of sugar, dip it into the alcohol, and then light the spoon on fire. As the sugar melts you let it drip back down into the glass. When it has sufficiently melted, you stir it all up until it's milky and add water. I really enjoyed my first experience. In a nutshell, it tasted exactly like liquid black licorice. Nothinkg to write home about ... but certain something to blog about.

Work today was so pointless. I know that my work ethic is a well known and often lamented fact of engineering lore, but I honestly believe I'm a hard worker. When I have something to do and it needs to get done, boy howdy, I'll get it done for you, and quick. I'll even work late or through the night or on the weekends if it needs be. What I don't do is show up early in the morning to the ghetto to sit on my hands for 5 hours pissing and moaning about the way things are run. I didn't do a fucking thing all day. Oh well, I guess things could have been worse. One thing I noticed today is that the number one goal of everyone on a jobsite is to pass the buck. It doesn't matter what hasn't been done or who was supposed to do it, "It ain't my job."

And a lot of times, people will use the phrase, "... and I told [insert name here] this ..." I heard that about 100 times today. Example: "What we were contracted to do ... and I told Andy this ... is not to run wires." As if having previously told some third party who is not present or involved suddenly adds credibility to your statement. I just think its stupid, and I told Trey this, that I had to wake my ass up at 6am every day this week, yeah I'm doin' the controls down in Oak Cliff.

Tomorrow is my father's birthday. I got him the Die Hard trilogy DVDs and a Winnie the Pooh DVD for when Kaylyn visits. They've been collecting Disney movies for years now in the event of a grandchild, but I don't think she's quite ready for an entire plot, and everybody loves Winnie the Pooh. I just wanted to get him something grandpa-ish (assuming he is going by grandpa and hasn't been renamed Paw-Paw or Pee-Pee or Poo-Poo or something). I also decorated his cake tonight after dinner. I watch Martha do it so much that I thought I would be good at it. I spun that cake around as I smoothed out the icing. Then I did a cool pattern with pecans on top and crushed up some pecans and stuck them to the side of the cake. I worked so hard on it and I was so proud of myself. When I stepped back to admire my work, it looked as though it had been done by a retarded third grader. I should just avoid entirely doing anything with my hands. Well...

Tonight should be fun. I'm ready for anything, and I told Ryan this, so we're going to go to a party. Catch you skillets on the flip side.

Fear not, faithful readers, I have returned unscathed from the depths of the Dallas ghetto. Today, I had to travel to Oakcliff to do some serious manual labor -- on rooftops and in un-air conditioned rooms -- on an air conditioning system for an elementary school that is supposed to open on Monday. I don't see how on earth it could possibly be ready since the fucking thing is severely under construction. Oh wait, I know one way they can expedite the progress ... MAKE ME WORK ALL WEEKEND! This is an unprecedented first. I have never in my life raised a finger to do an ounce of work on a weekend. But as always, before you reer back in laughter, there is an upside. I plan on tacking however much time I take off to the beginning of my August 20th venture to College Station. So I may be there sooner than you realize ... and get paid the whole time! Haha!

Some observations about my day: (1) Nobody speaks English. This is not a racial or cultural slur, as it applies to every shade of construction worker. Those I dealt with today were black, white and hispanic. None of them spoke English. The hispanic workers naturally spoke Spanish, the integrity of their grammar I am at a loss to express. The black workers spoke some true blue ebonics I could not begin to understand. And the white workers spoke with poor, broken English one can only accumulate after a lifetime of disregard for the rules of grammar. It was quite depressing. (2) Thank g*d I attended Plano schools. There were some teachers in another wing of the building getting classrooms ready and speaking amongst themselves. The fact that these fine people were the educators of young children spoke volumes for their poor test scores in the DISD. Also, there was a book in the "library" we sat in for most of the day called Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato which I could only assume was the cheaper, less culturally sensitive version of James and the Giant Peach that I used to love so much. (3) As I walked around, I casually commented to myself, "Thank jebus I went to college so I don't have to do this for a living." Then I paused, looked around, and realized ... this is what I do for a living.

On the way home I stopped off at Best Buy and spent another 100 bucks on DVDs. I had to reaffirm to myself why it is I put up with this shit. So this weekend will blow monkey ass, but it should pay off huge dividends in the future. I have to go take a shower now and head to Carrollton to see the prodigal friend, Clay, who has recently arrived in the US from Espania where he's been studying for a year. We're going to sip absynthe and wax nostalgic with the green fairy. I'm sure I'll have plenty more stories for you come Monday. Until then, my friends, Excelsior! Carpe diem! Haha!

I've been putting off this blog because its going to be pretty long and I haven't really had the time to sit down and type it since I've been home. As you may know, I went home to Dallas this weekend. There's no need for pretense so we'll just jump right into the story. I got home on Friday evening and saw my mother briefly. My parents were going to Oktoberfest in Addison Friday evening and then leaving for my cousin's wedding in Denver, CO the next morning, so I really didn't get to see them. No bother though, it actually worked out better that way.

So Friday night I met up with Clay and we went to a housewarming party in Highland Park. It was the coolest house I've ever been in. It was three stories tall with four bathrooms, a huge backyard deck, beautifully decorated, a media room upstairs, and a room with some really expensive X-Men comics in it, which I appreciated. I got a little bit drunk, but we left early because we knew we were going to be getting up early on Saturday to go to Six Flags. And thats just what we did.

I woke up around 10 on Saturday and showered and got ready and Clay came and picked me up. We met up with 4 of his friends downtown and headed out to Six Flags. Has anybody been there recently? We got this thing called a Q-Bot which essentially allows you to wait in line electronically. It cost us like 60 bucks between the 6 of us, and you take this little thing around with you and you lock into rides. And it saves your spot and beeps you when its your turn to ride the ride. And then you just walk right up to the front and get on, while all the have-nots look on in disgust. It was SO fun! We got to ride every ride in the park without once waiting in line. Its actually genius on so many levels though, because if you're standing in a line for 2 hours, thats 2 hours that you're not spending money. The Q-Bot freed us up to walk around and buy shit all day long. I really only spent money on water the entire time, so I didn't lose too much. I did get my knife confiscated at the door though, that was pretty funny.

Anyway, then everyone was planning on going out, but I, naturally, had to go home and shower. I was exhausted by the time I was ready to head back to Dallas, but being the trooper I am, I managed somehow. I called up Ryan Short to see if he was going out and he was, so instead of going back out with the group of new friends I'd just made, I called and left them a message saying maybe I'd see them out and went to Ryan's. Good thing I didn't rely on them, too, cause apparently they went home and fell asleep for the entire night. Anyway, Ryan and I got ready and picked up his friend David Spielman and went out downtown. We started out at JR's and the beers were not really making me feel well, so by the time we went into the Village, I was ready to just sit down. I was really falling asleep. So I did just that. I have no qualms, people probably just thought I was rolling to hard anyway. But I wasn't a total drag the whole night, I got up and danced a little bit although I didn't drink anymore. By the time we ended up at a late night restaurant watching these two scarf down chinese food, I was about to fall asleep on the table. We finally got back to Ryan's around 4 and I just crashed there because I was too tired to do anything else.

The next morning Ryan made some delicious pancakes, I borrowed a shirt (it says Texas is for Lovers and I liked it so much that Ryan gave it to me -- THANKS!), and we went back downtown for the parade. It was so much fun. We were catching beads and stuff. Ryan took an assload of pictures, but he took them with film (who does that). So as soon as he gets some scanned in, I can put them up here for you to enjoy. The parade was nuts, we ate some lunch. After the parade there was like a political rally and the people for Howard Dean were there. I got a button for my bag. It looks quite striking next to my peace propaganda. After that we took a nap and then I hit the road bound for College Station.

All in all it was one of the most fun weekends of my life. I really needed that. Thanks to everyone who was influential in making it happen. In other news, I pulled some handi-capable tickets to the game on Saturday against Pittsburg. Allison and I are going to be on the front row of the second deck for a game that is going to be televised on ABC. We want to wear T-shirts that spell something out, but so far all I can think of it either "GO" or "TX" or "AM". Any ideas? I'll tell you one thing though, it'll be nice to be sitting through all of those damn TV timeouts. I predict we will win 67 to 12.

And in international news, I've decided to leave the country. I'm not sure when, but lets just say ASAP. My new dream in life is to move to Germany and get a job writing technical documentation for German companies auf Englisch. I guess in reality it would be better if I could be a straight up translator, but I'm probably at least a year away from that. I used to be almost fluent, but not so much these days. Anyway, I think that's about enough blog for now, thank you for your patience, you have-nots. Laaaaaaaaaate.

Ugh, thank you very much to my retarded brother for getting my hit count up to 1000 'single handedly' as he put it. So now it totally skews everything. He's a real doll. I'm glad they're keeping him busy up at work.

In other news: Monday morning I had my second exam in PoliSci. I didn't study a terribly long time for it, but I think I did okay. We have two text books and the majority of the questions were from the good text, that reads like a human is writing it. I knew all of those. The other text is nothing but facts and figures and inane statistics at the end of which he goes, "So we can conclude nothing." Long story short (which is pretty worthless once I've already told the long story, sigh), I think I did well.

The best part of having a test one day is not going to class the next. So Monday night I rallied up the roommates for a par-tay or Milton Bradley proportions. Earlier in the day me and Todd went to Wal-Mart and purchased Yahtzee and Pictionary. We then invited Doug and Nicole, as well as our friend Fucking Frank to play some drunken Pictionary. Frank doesn't drink anymore and Nicole wasn't drinking that night, so it wasn't completely drunken, but it was completely fun. We played for hours. Whenever somebody won, we'd just start over. Me and Frank ended up winning, technically, since we won 2/4 games, but I'd have to say there were no losers that night. We all had a very good time.

After everyone left, me and Todd sat up playing some Drinking Yahtzee. Then I decided I was hungry so I called Clay and made him come pick me up and take me Taco Cabana. I think it was around 1am and he was working on a paper or something, but that wasn't important. What was important was my two chicken soft tacos. Damn skippy. Anyway, I didn't go to class on Tuesday (or today, shhh) because its completely worthless to go, and I just sat around all day. Did nothing spectacular.

Today I went to Texadelphia for Christine's 21st birthday ... HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTINE!!! If you haven't got anything better to do, click there and send her a friendly birthday IM. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to hear from a loyal Sidesho-Viewer.

Anyway, that's all to report. Sorry for the massive amounts of paragraphs. I'm gonna go meet Justin for some coffee. Peace out, you have nots.

Today is the day that I move everything I own into a storage unit. I'm going to stay in College Station until Thursday just chillin. I'm also taking care of my friend Clay's birds and fish and he's getting back Thursday. I was thinking that I'd stay in Plano for a good while, but now Allison had a revelation and canceled her summer school to support herself in College Station. I still have some people to see and hang out with in Plano but there's a chance I won't be staying as long as I had planned. Plus, my parents are having new carpet and tile put in. I don't remember exactly when that's happening but I will definitely be gone for that.

There isn't much else to say, I have been such a waste of space this past week. But I think I deserved it. I did add the 'Song of the Day' to the left there. Click it to download and listen to whatever song I happen to be obsessing over at this very moment. The title 'of the Day' may be a big seficious since I'll be damned if I'm updating it every day. I may rig up some JavaScript to rotate it or something, but for now, just check out Strange Relationship. Its pretty cool. I think its the guy from Savage Garden. I suppose I could look up his name and see if its Darren Hayes, but it sounds like him so that's why I think it. Aight kiddos, time to load up the truck.
There is no spoon.