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Yesterday was the first day of real rain since we've moved down to Dallas. I woke up to the sounds of rain beating against the windows and realized that it probably meant I would be late for work. So I jumped out of bed, had a hurried shower (which is rare these days since we upgraded to the multiple shower heads), and inhaled some breakfast on my way out the door.

Having never commuted on I-35 in the rain, I was pretty nervous about what I would see. And when I got to the on ramp, I had to pump my brakes a few times to merge. And then the strangest thing happened. It opened up and we started going 65 mph... the entire way to Carrollton. There wasn't so much as a stalled vehicle on the side of the road to impede the flow. Everybody was cruising right along. As I listened to the traffic report, which that morning was basically a rundown of every highway in the metroplex, I really started to get proud of everyone on 35 that morning.

So now I want to start a group on Facebook or maybe a Yahoo group called "People who take I-35E north from Dallas in the mornings." That way, I could get on there and post, "Great job everybody! We all handled the rain wonderfully. High five!" Even though the high five is across town. I think that would be so fun to interact with people who share your commute. Like, "Hey, person in the green Tahoe, you totally cut me off," and then they could reply, "Sorry, my wife was in labor, had to get to the hospital," and then you'd be all, "Aww, congratulations!"

And I call my idea ... the Commutety.

Because you're all dying to know how I feel about the capital of the great Republic of Texas. At first I really liked it. I mean, it's not like I've never been here before, but this is my first experience with pseudo-living here. The first thing I noticed were the bumper stickers. Lots of 'W's with slashes through them, and you allllllll know Sidesho doesn't do 'W'. Then I went to Whole Foods and it was just full of granola. People, I mean. Granola people. Awesome.

I've even considered moving here... but that wouldn't be a decision to make lightly.

After a few days though, I'm starting to lose some of my love for the city. The traffic! Good lord, people, GET JOBS! I swear, everyone's out parking on the highways all day long. And it's bad enough that it takes forever to get anywhere, but I get lost every fucking time I go outside. Hey, Austin, pick a name for a road and stick with it. When I left my hotel on Loop 360 N/Capital of TX Highway tonight to go down Loop 1/FM 1325/Mopac Blvd to pick up Brandon, I missed the exit I was supposed to take because I thought it was 1st St., but it was also 5th St. which you can call Townelake Blvd, but the sign will say Cezar Chavez, so good fuckin' luck. I also went the wrong way on the way home from 183/Research ... g*d damnit. I mean I know roads in Dallas sometimes have a number and a name 75/Central, but it is NOT this ridonkulous.

Work has been pretty laid back -- exactly the break I needed. I have some serious decisions to make soon about how I'm going to achieve nirvana because I'm most definitely not on the correct path, but we'll see if I actually grow the balls to do it or not. Til then, Laaaaaaaaaaaaate.

What a week. What a weekend. What a time to be alive! This weekend I made the trek to College Station once again to celebrate Thanksgiving as well as Allison's graduation and bon voyage as she prepares to move to Australia. On the way down, I called Brandon to see how he was doing and he convinced me to swing through Austin and pick him up. That was a fuck load of driving in one weekend (with the traffic jams, I was in the car for 12.5 total hours this weekend). But, it was worth it to get to hang out with Brandon.

We arrived in CS on Friday around 10 and got ready to go out to Halo. Good times, good times. I had a completely empty stomach so I was trying to take it easy, which eventually didn't happen, but I did behave for an uncharacteristically long time. The next day we joined Allison as soon as the hangovers subsided and went to buy last minute supplies and a keg. I dropped even more money this weekend. Shit. Finances are in a dire situation. Dire meaning that I can't buy new jeans tomorrow if I want everyone to have a X-mas present, not dire I can't pay the rent. Even so, my lifestyle is compromised.

The party was a raging success, if I don't mind saying. We did a Trash Can Grab. This was new to me. We had a trash can full of ice and water and everyone brought a little something to throw into the trash can. Then you had to reach into the black abyss and drink whatever random alcohol you pulled out. At first, I thought our alcohol supply, which involved a plethora of wine from dinner, a keg, and the trashcan, was overkill, but we ended up drinking all of it. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Allison for being a most wonderful host, and thanks again to Dustin and Trey for putting me up for the weekend.

In other news HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY, #27!!!!1! Our little David27 is growing up, chronologically at least. This past Saturday, Dec. 11 was his 20th birthday. He's not a teenager any more. Congrats on surviving two decades. Mwah!

This week I have a Secret Santa party at Ryan S■■■'s and a ■■■■■ ■■■■■ office party with Ryan S■■■. Then I'm not doing anything. Nor am I ever going out of town again. If you ever want to see me again you'll have to come to Addison.

I hope I don't piss any one off with this next comment, but I can't help but think about everyone taking finals right now... and how stressed out they must be, and how tired, and overworked, and sick of it, and just wanting to be done. And then I kick back, stretch out, open another beer, and sigh audibly. It is so nice to not be in school. I can't believe it's been six months since graduation. Time sure flies when you're skipping work. Peace out, sluts!

Beltline is the road here in Addison/Carrollton that I live/work on. Every day I drive its length once in the morning and once in the evening ... okay ... afternoon. I am the most well tempered driver that I know, but frankly, dear viewers, the way people drive on Beltline is starting to get to me. The way I see it, there are only three kinds of drivers on this road.

Unconcerned With The Speed Limit
This person does not care what the speed limit is on the road, they are not in a hurry. Despite the 40 mph speed limit, they choose to go anywhere from 30 to 20 mph, even when no cars are in front of them. I'd say this is the majority of Beltline drivers. I admire their lackadaisical approach to the passage of time, but when you're already 40 minutes late to work, they can be a bit frustrating.

In The Wrong Lane
Despite their best efforts, these drivers simply cannot get into the correct lane. If they're turning right, they stay in the left lane as long as possible. This requires them to make evasive maneuvers to get into the lane they need to be in, often decreasing their speed well below that of Unconcerned With The Speed Limit to get behind them. I don't have to tell you that this only complicates the problem.

Wife In Labor
Whenever someone is being a jackass, going too fast, and swerving between lanes, I always try to be understanding. I generally assume that their wife is in the passenger seat going into labor and they need to get to the hospital (or sometimes the mall or movie theater) as fast as possible. Residents of Addison must be fuckin like rabbits because there are tons of people driving around with wives in labor. It's not exactly easy for them with our other two personality types, but somehow they dangerously manage.

So this is my plea to anyone who drives on Beltline. Go the fucking speed limit and stay in the lane you need to be in and we can all get where we're going faster. While I was stuck in traffic, I was composing this blog in my head, so you'll have to bear with it's length. I was only going to talk about drivers until I heard a radio ad for free booze tonight. I got so excited. Until they went "BOO! There's one free!" Fuck me, they meant free 'boo's. Give me a break. Don't joke about free booze.

Then that reminded me of when those bible thumping dumb fucks in the dorm would post signs that said, "FREE BEER! Now that we've got your attention, come to bible study." It's just not cool. The bible, I mean.

Then that reminded me of when we had a couch burning at the dorm. Somebody found a loveseat and innocuously stored it outside the dorm during the day. Then around midnight Operation Hot Pocket torched that shit. The next day Allison and I hung up signs on all the doors that said, "Has anybody seen my couch? It was a brown loveseat. I left it outside the dorm last night." It was hilarious. Then that reminded me of when Allison and I hung signs in the MSC on the doors of the locked bathrooms that said, "Door not working properly. Push HARD!!!" That was even funnier.

Today on my way into work, I found two dollar bills laying on the ground. Chalk it up to good luck, I thought to myself. Not an hour after sitting down at my desk, a guy came by and gave me a check for 20 bucks to buy a Thanksgiving turkey -- a gift from the company. Score! Like an hour later, I find out that I got a bonus check for the third quarter. Big score! I was feeling so lucky that I bought like 5 scratch off tickets trying to capitalize on my newfound diety status. I lost on all of them. Oh well, I still came out ahead.

And that concludes my predetermined blog material. Thanks for reading, you have nots!

There is nothing like Neil Diamond to make rush hour traffic an absolute joy. I am in the best mood now. I was jammin out on the way home from work to my new two disc set. I bought it because I was wearing my Neil Diamond concert T this weekend and got many comments on it, which made me start thinking about how I wanted to hear his music. One guy, as we were walking into Jason's apartment complex, accused me of not even knowing who Neil Diamond was, so I launched into a few drunken verses of Forever In Blue Jeans, Kentucky Woman, and Love on the Rocks, to name a few. Sure showed him. HA!

I bought the CD at the Borders in the West Village. Silly me, I never even knew the West Village existed, and Ryan S■■■ lives so close to there, and I used to work like right there. They have some of the best stores I've seen since I left Miami. I wanted to buy a whole bunch of stuff, but decided to save a little bit of money instead of blowing it all on clubbing clothes. I did buy one shirt for 40 bucks, though, because it's totally hot and it was half off. Half off, but I got a whole shirt. It's awesome. I can't wait to sport it this weekend when I'm in College Station, make all you bitches jealous.

Yes, that's right, this is probably your final reminder. I'll be pullin' into CS on Thursday night, depending on what time I can feasibly slip out of work on Thursday. Since I'm skipping Friday, it might not be such a hot idea to leave at noon again like I did last time. I can't wait to see everyone, but there are some things on my agenda. I have to hang out with Christopher before he trucks back off to Yale. I'll be spending as much time with him as I can. I have to go out with AllieD before she trucks off to Austin for the weekend. We have much to discuss ... and by 'discuss' I mean 'drink.' I have a party to go to with Brian and James, Allison's new crew. That's on Saturday night. Anyone and everyone can go with me if you'd like, I put myself down for 20 guests. I also need to see Tommy's new apartment ... now that I know he hasn't been ignoring me for the past few weeks. He hasn't even had internet, so someone else is on all of his accounts. If it's a Sidesho-Viewer, what you're doing isn't very nice and I think you should stop. It made me think Tommy hated me, as preposterous as that sounds.

I went apartment shopping this weekend with Ryan S■■■. I really want to live in Addison Circle, but they were at like a 98% lease rate when I went. That means that there are no good apartments left, and the ones that are left, they have absolutely no incentive to cut me any specials on. I was pretty gung ho about moving out but now my spirit has been crushed. I gave the lady my email address and told her to give me a heads up on any upcoming vacancies. I know I could go live somewhere else, but you know me. Once I decide I want something, I just can't settle for something else. Instant gratification, people, it's what makes the world go 'round. Rest assured, though, loyal viewers, I am fully intending to move out of my parents' house, perhaps in the near future, as my rent budget may swell.

Work goes on. Life goes on. Beers go down. Not much else to say. I love you all, and look forward to seeing everyone in CS this weekend. MWAH!

The rest of our time in Miami was much like the first half: fucking incredible. Tuesday night we went to the bar that the clothing store girl suggested. It was like straight up velvet roped Sex and the City style club. The bouncer let us in free, which was cool, but once we got in we were like "oops." Then we had to suffer the indignity of turning around and walking back out. It was pretty obvious we were out of element, so we ran away. Everyone was in suits and it was very upscale. We're used to dead animals hanging on the walls.

So we went to a bar called Score. That was more our speed, for several reasons. I ended up getting shit canned and leaving all kinds of hilarious drunken voicemails on my friends' phones. On Josh's message I said something to the effect of, "OH shit I'm about to run into a phone poll." Good stuff. Wednesday night, we took it pretty easy, just had a nice dinner on Ocean Drive (lobster linguini - YUM) and then some wine with strange Columbian men. Thursday was a long day of traveling back to Dallas.

Friday we drove back to College Station. Traffic was HORRENDOUS. I have never seen it so bad on 45. It took us an hour and a half just to get through Corsicana where it goes down to one lane. So we made an executive decision to take Highway 14 through Mexia to try and avoid the congestion. Allison had to pee and wanted a drink so we took a tour of Mexia looking for the McDonalds or Sonic. I don't know how many of you are addicted to VH1 like I am, but surely a good lot of you have seen the biography of Anna Nichole Smith (aka Vicky Lynn). She grew up in Mexia with the most white trash family I've ever seen and worked at a fried chicken store. Well, as we were driving to Sonic we fucking found the chicken stand. I immediately pulled over, ordered a couple drumsticks and bicuits and Allison took a picture. Now that is the kind of sight seeing that I am interested in ... true American landmarks. We were laughing so hard the entire time.

That pretty much saved our 5 hour trip from Dallas to College Station and gave us something to giggle about the rest of the way. Last night was a glam Halo night with one of my new shirts that I bought. I looked awesome ... as usual. I got shit canned ... as usual. I crashed at Marshall's ... as usual. Good times had by all. I found out that Josh has internet so I'll probably be mooching off of him while I'm around. I will be sure to update you all if anything of interest happens. I will probably be back in Dallas around Tuesday or Wednesday. Or later. Who knows? Later kiddos.

Welcome, loyal Sidesho-Viewers ... and a happy Turkey Day to all of you. I hope you're all enjoying your Thanksgiving break, and I do hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving meal tomorrow. I am back in Plano right now chillin at the ol' casa de la Rentas. Today I woke up and went into lab for a while. I talked to my professor about the grade I made on the last test. If you want to know what it was, IM me and I'll tell you, since I don't want anyone in my class reading this and knowing what I made. We worked on our pcboard for the thermometer for a while. And then I ate and packed and got in the car with Allison to make the trek back to Plano. We actually made pretty good time thanks to a daring (albeit illegal) off-road maneuver by Allison to avert about an hours worth of traffic thru Corsicana. It was good stuff.

I went out to eat with my parents at Mac's Grill, which we all assumed was like a burger joint. But in reality it was this fancy-schmancy restaurant where I ordered one of the best filet mignon's I've ever had. Then I went to the mall with Colleen for a little bit, and then to Starbucks. Then I rushed home because my sister was supposed to be reporting live on the Dallas NBC news about a plane crash in Oklahoma, but they never cut to her, so I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

In other news, THE COMMENTS ARE FIXED ... SO LEAVE ONE. Thanks, and again, happy holidays.

Good morning everybody. What you say? Its 2pm? Ah well, my bad. I just woke up. Actually, I woke up at 10 and decided that I really needed the day off so after snoozing a couple of times I just turned the fucker off. I'm not sorry either. Why was I so tired? Well, allow me to tell you about yesterday.

My friend Justin had introduced me to a singer named Howie Day. And Howie Day was playing yesterday in Austin, once at 5 at a record store, and then a small venue concert at 8. He wanted to attend both, so I said I was down, and we left for the land of t-sips around 1:30. Though it was raining pretty much the whole way, we got there without a hitch in time to grab some lunch, a spot of tea (hey, when in Rome), and head over to the record store. We hit some serious Austin traffic and didn't get to the place until ike 5:30 and walked in to hear the very end of his last song, which sucked. But Justin got his CD autographed and I got to meet him. I lied and said I really enjoyed the show, even though I hadn't seen any of it.

So we bummed around town for a little while longer, took a look at the campus, and then decided to get in line to buy tickets around 7:00. We got to the Cactus Cafe and there was already a huge line, composed mostly of people we recognized from the record store earlier. They were true to their word and didn't start selling tickets until they openned their doors. It got down to like 8 people before us and they announced that they were letting in anyone who had prepurchased their tickets online go first to make sure they all fit and we would just have to wait and see. We were very lucky because they took the next 10 paying customers ... making us the last two. Although, they eventually let in a few more to standing-room-only, we still felt lucky to be among the first let through. Standing the whole time sucked and I did have to take a few small sitting breaks, but it was totally worth it.

This man can do things that I had never imagined possible. He's a great singer, he's pretty good at guitar, but that isn't the half of it. I never really for sure figured out how he did it, something with pedals at his feet, but he was sampling himself live and managed to loop it. I don't know how many tracks he could get going at once, but at times there were at least 8. He would bang on his guitar in different spots and it would sound like a base drum and some bongos and he'd loop that. Then he'd rake on his strings and it would sound remotely like a snare drum. He would crank up the base on his acoustic/electric and start slapping out a baseline, all the while adding to what he'd already gotten going. Then he'd strum something, pick out a solo, and quite often be singing 3 and 4 part harmonies ... with himself! Live! Oh it was incredible. If I had one of those machines, whatever they are, I would be so incredibly popular. I've never seen or heard of anything like this, thus I was completely mesmerized and totally impressed. If you hear of Howie Day playing anywhere near you, GO! That is my advice.

On a side note, my AOL still seems to be working today even though its a day past when they said they were going to shut it off. Maybe that was a bluff to get me to start paying and their really not going to do anything about it. I dunno. I still need to get a new email address regardless so I don't have to deal with this shit again. Earthlink's help center sucks my left nut though and its hard to get any info out of them unless you call, and I'm not in the mood to call them. We'll keep you updated on that situation. Until then, I hope everyone had as lazy a day as I did. If you want to bump into me tonight, you best be at Shadow Canyon for Karaoke Night. Whoop!

Hello everyone. So good to see you again. As I type this, I am sitting in my parents' room on their computer. I made it home alive. I ended up leaving College Station around 1pm because me and Allison (that makes 6) stayed up late drinking wine and watching Sex and the City season 2. It was a fabulous time. I made one stop in Fairfield to grab something to eat at the Jack in the Box there. Traffic thru Dallas was fucking awful, but I finally made it. I think my mother is ordering in pizza ... so much for that homecooked meal.

I haven't decided what I want to do first whilst in Plano. My brother is coming in tonight with his wife. I could hang out and wait for them, but I think instead I'll call some peeps and see whats goin down in P-town. I'm sure I'll be ultra bored soon, but for now I need to unload my car. Adios, you have nots I will catch you on the flip side.

I am finally back in College Station. I woke up this morning around 4:30am (California time) to leave for the airport in San Francisco. I think we got into Dallas around 4:00 CST. Then I hopped in the car and set out for Aggieland. Being stuck in traffic for over an hour extended my car trip to 4 and a half hours. I am so sick of travelling. And I have a migraine now, but anyway...

My week was fun. I went to San Francisco with my parents. We spent 2 days there doing the whole tourist thing. We went to Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, Coit Tower, rode the trolley car, drove over the Golden Gate, etc, etc. Then we went to Sacramento to visit my brother. There we went to one of his softball and one of his soccer games. We also went wine tasting, but I was the DD.

All in all the week was a little more hectic than I prefer. But it was really fun. If you need more detail than this, you can always IM me. Now let's play a little game. Everyone who cares to share, Post a Comment on this blog and give us a little soundbite about how your Spring Break went.