Happy Birthday to and !

The Friday Five

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
   
   Science Fiction/Fantasy, Adventure Non-fiction, Technical History, Gambling (both technique and folklore), and Comic Books.
   
   
2. What is your favorite novel?
   
   I think I've read too many novels to pick a particular favorite. Were the question "what is your favorite book?" I'd definitely list Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer as one of the top ones.
   
   
3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
   
   

   Not Mine: Eyes that last I saw in tears
   
   Eyes that last I saw in tears
   Through division
   Here in death's dream kingdom
   The golden vision reappears
   I see the eyes but not the tears
   This is my affliction
   
   This is my affliction
   Eyes I shall not see again
   Eyes of decision
   Eyes I shall not see unless
   At the door of death's other kingdom
   Where, as in this,
   The eyes outlast a little while
   A little while outlast the tears
   And hold us in derision.
   
   Thomas Stearns Eliot
   
   Mine: Abraham
   For Rose Marie
   
   I couldn't find our son today.
   I recall when you gave him to me,
   warm and small,
   his tags still attached to his ears
   like adornments, jewelry.
   
   Yet it's been so long since I've seen him,
   like you, and I wonder
   perhaps he weeps, forgotten and dusty,
   smelling of pipe tobacco and cigarettes.
   
   Perhaps he sits,
   covered, waiting, amongst all the other paltry remembrances
   you once gave to me--
   notes, cards, gifts.
   
   Perhaps he has lost an eye
   or his tags or his tie
   or his stuffing,
   with his legs open and bleeding
   foam and hair.
   
   Perhaps he rises,
   silently crawling in the darkness
   over my sleeping body
   to find you,
   and upon seeing that empty space,
   ventures, his one eye downcast,
   back to his secret hiding place,
   to wish and weep for mother.

   
   
   
4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
   
   Let's see: Heller's Catch-22, Cringley's Accidental Empires, Asimov's various series, Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa, and Super-System by Brunson.
   
   
5. What are you currently reading?
   
   The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.

This Monster Cheeto can be yours for a mere five hundred dollars.

Did my taxes yesterday. I have to wait until my Roth IRA contribution makes it into my Roth account, but I'll file as soon as it's in there. I was and still am a bit uneasy about using TurboTax for the Web. Aside from the 45 dollars or so that I need to pay for filing, I'm quite used to TurboTax, but since their product activation controversy, I'm a bit wary of doing anything with Intuit. They say they're going to use a different product activation system next year. Hrmm... How about we stop assuming all of our customers are potential criminals?

The good news, however, is that I'll be getting some money back, which should offset the funds I used to refinance.

I'm almost done.

I spent about 30 MuVo's yesterday. Now all I have to do is tell Chase Manhattan to stop the auto-debit of my bank account. Here's hoping the new place has automatic funds transfers...

/me looking forward to paying about 300 dollars less a month for my mortgage...

1. What is your most prized material possession?
   
   Duh. TiVo
   
   
2. What item, that you currently own, have you had the longest?
   
   It's likely the red pillowcase depicting Snoopy and Woodstock.
   
   
3. Are you a packrat?
   
   Hell, yes.
   
   I have notes from a girl I was enamored with in my junior year of high school. I have just about every issue of Maxim from the first year of its publishing sitting in boxes in my closet. I have laminated flyers for eleven year old punk rock shows. I still have the balloons that Keely duct-taped to me for each alcoholic beverage I imbibed on my first birthday in Atlanta.
   
   And I found my son, today.
   
   
4. Do you prefer a spic-and-span clean house? Or is some clutter necessary to avoid the appearance of a museum?
   
   I prefer a clean house. Being a packrat, however, clutter just tends to accumulate everywhere.
   
   
5. Do the rooms in your house have a theme? Or is it a mixture of knick- knacks here and there?
   
   There's no particular theme, other than computer shit goes in the computer room.
   

Three days to recise...

Well, I just signed about 40 pages worth of paperwork, reducing my monthly payments down to 880 something dollars instead of 1170 or so. Of course, I need to get a cashier's check for around three and a half large.

One added bonus: payments on the new loan begin April 1. So March's 1170 can go to paying a third of that cashier's check.

That and buying my frickin' dinner tonight...

People suck.

I'm never going in on group meals again.

Inevitably, someone wants to split the tab evenly when one of them has ordered fifteen gazillion beers when all you drank was water. Or you end up short because someone can't count, and you feel rotten for leaving the overly-generous server a 0.002 percent tip.

What happened tonight, however, is the cake-taker.

Someone ate my dinner.

Prior to our disastrous pool league match today, I asked Ollie if he was hungry at all. After some hashing back and forth about where to go, we finally settled on Pizza. I ordered two medium pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, and I picked up the tab on my credit card, totaling about 32 dollars.

Courtney, Ollie, and I sat down and had about a pie's worth of slices. Nandu said he might be interested in some, so I pooled the boxes and entrusted the leftovers to Heidi in the kitchen. I figured that Nandu would eat his share, and I could eat the rest for dinner Wednesday after work.

At some point during the match, I see Rob coming down with two slices of the pizza. He offers to pay for his share, so I don't mind so much.

At the end of the night, however, I ask Ollie for the box, and he says there's just one slice left. Apparently when Rob found the pizza, others helped themselves to the rest of the pie.

What the fuck? Ollie gave me ten dollars for his share, and I felt bad about asking Courtney for five additional. I gave Rob's two dollars back to Ollie--he and Courtney didn't eat half the fucking tab's worth of pizza; at most they ate a quarter of it, and they're still paying for almost half.

Which just leaves me to pay the other half.

So whoever the hell you are that ate my dinner for tonight, I hope to hell it gives you anal seepage.

Babies are a lot of work...

So this weekend, Zuaelie and Stephanie came up with Zuaelie's daughter, Alexis. They got in Friday evening about 6:00 pm or so. From there we went to eat at Diem and then went on to Phipps Plaza because months ago, I told Stephanie about the store formerly known as The Elephant Tea Co.

If you've been reading this journal for a while (and why in the hell would you be doing that?), you'll remember that Alexis was born in November. Remarkably sedate and good-natured for a three-month old, Alexis for the most part watched everything pass her by, and only got fussy when she was hungry or tired.

According to Zuaelie, Alexis has some reflux problems, however, and so she tends to either spit up or vomit up a lot of formula after eating. I don't know how common this is, but it's not a huge deal (I've never been one to be squeamish about bodily fluids). Most every time she did it, we'd need to change her out of the vomit-contaminated clothes, and into fresh clean ones--sometimes, the mere act of changing into new clothes, however, induced more vomiting.

Amidst all of the feeding and changing, we managed to go to Lenox mall on Saturday to meet with Alison, Zu's former Statistics professor, and Benjamin, her eight-month-old son. Alison teaches at Auburn, so she drove up planning to meet at Mick's in the mall at 12:30 or so. I figured we could hit Diem for brunch at 11:00 or so, but at about 10:30, Alison calls and says she's just driven past the Airport. Uh...Oh well, no brunch.

We spent most of the day at the mall, running from store to store, with the occasional stop to change diapers and/or clothes. I managed to snag a new pair of jeans at Macy's going-out-of-business sale. Otherwise the ladies trucked around the mall getting various things: two $75 rocking horses for $17 dollars each at FAO Schwarz, various candles at Illuminations, two pairs of boots and a matching purse at the Macy's sale.

At one point I had to break away from everything and geek out, downloading trailers for Hulk and Kill Bill at the Apple store.


After the mall, we took a short walk through Piedmont Park, and then went to Willy's for dinner. That night, exhausted from the long day, we sat at home and watched The Good Girl on video.

The girls had to leave in the morning, so I watched a bunch of TiVo, and then went to brunch at Diem. Following brunch, , , and I went up to Andretti's for some real geeking out--we just played video games for at least three hours. Video Games rule.

And I know you're all wondering. Yes, I had a euphemistically good weekend. That's all I got to say about that.

In honor of some old, dead guy...

Do you know what's a good day to break up with somebody? Any day but Valentine's Day! I mean, what, were you running low on dramatic irony?
Xander Harris, "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" Buffy The Vampire Slayer

About five years and four days ago, I watched the "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" episode from Season 2 of Buffy, and thought it really quite funny. Back when I vehemently enjoyed the show, I would show BBB to people (mostly guys...) to try to get them to start watching it regularly.

Three days and about four hours later, I would be sitting in a booth at the Gainesville Ale House, talking with Lee about her day. She was recounting some story about an old roommate or someone asking about me. When Lee was asked if we were still dating, to my surprise, she answered, "No."

I would glance at my watch about that time. The clockface read near vertical, perhaps a few minutes after midnight. Maybe it's some kind of bitterness pride, or perhaps some gothy hubris, but I like to think that I was the first person to get dumped (at least in Eastern Standard Time) on Valentine's Day, 1998.

In retrospect, however, it was a good thing--aside from not being particularly attached at the moment (which can be a good or a bad thing--in light of this weekend, I'd say "good" for now), it leaves me with a funny story to tell.

Sigh... all this for a lower interest rate...

The woman handling my refinancing called me earlier today, and told me that the underwriting department wanted page three of my bank statement. I bank at Wachovia (formerly First Union), and they basically send two sheets of paper with pages numbered "Page 1 of 3" and so on.

Now if you don't know, Page 3 is that total waste of paper that they include so people have some sort of example to balance their checkbook. I, being horrendously lazy, don't really balance my checkbook, and even if I did, I wouldn't need an extra sheet of paper to do so. I generally shred these things, despite their utter wastage of paper, because I, in my paranoia of identity theft, don't really want my checking account number getting out to the phantom strangers who could be dumpster diving in the Tuscany dumpster.

So at 2:00 or so today, I drove home and found my most recent checking account statement, drove back to work, and made copies to fax the useless shit to the underwriter.

Fast forward three hours. I just got off the phone with the fellow I thought was my condo contents insurance agent. Checking my cellphone voicemail, I discovered that a rep from the company which is doing my refinancing called and told me that this guy says that he's not providing me with insurance. I called him up and he told me that he sent me a letter a few months ago stating why my insurance was rejected.

Ok, does this seem odd to you? I never got a letter, my check cleared on October 29, 2002, and I haven't heard a peep from them.

Why the hell can't things ever be simple anymore?

Edit: my "agent" just called again, and he says that he's mistaken, and that I do have coverage under Farmers' Insurance, despite what he told the people who are doing my refinancing. WTF?

A good weekend...

I had a pretty fun weekend. Starting out Friday night, I met for dinner and then we headed up to Dupree's to play some Spades with and Patty.

Saturday, I met the gang at Aprés Diem around noon for brunch. From there, Nandu picked me up at home, and we headed for Black Mountain, NC. On the drive up, I managed to finish Bringing Down the House, finally, although I didn't get to work on my bronze2lj script--the glare off of the already dim lcd screen prevented any serious work.

Some interesting snippets of conversation on the way up:

Me: Hey, you know what I'm doing?
Du: You're totally freaking out on me.

Me: Was that a deer or a pony?
Du: Where? I didn't see it.
Me: Back there. It looked like it had too much
mass to be a deer. I couldn't really tell--
MOOOOO! [upon seeing a cow on the side of the road]

So yeah, we had a fun time driving up, being punchy. We stopped at a gas station at one point to pick up some snacks. We got: a Gatorade Ice, a Bottled Water, a Starbucks Bottled Mocha, one bag of Funyuns, one bag of Bugles, one pack of Devil Cakes, one pack of Nutty Bars, and one Caramel Crunch. The lady looks at me and says, "Looks like you're good for the rest of the trip."

I look at what we have, and reply, "That's good for about ten miles..."

When we got to Black Mountain, after stopping to check in at the Super-8, we continued on the Asheville. In Asheville, Nandu's Sifu was going to be participating in a Chinese New Year's Kung Fu demonstration. We got there right in time for the demo to begin.

After the initial lion dance, it was interesting seeing everyone doing forms and katas (there was a single Japanese dojo participating). We saw some forms ranging from the simple to the moderately difficult with nunchaku, tonfa, staff, straight sword, broadsword, plus one with this big large polearm which looked like a cross between a thin oar and the large paddle that principals beat students with...

The most compelling demonstration, however, was the weaponless Tai Chi form that Nandu's Sifu presented. Nandu would later tell me that this particular form is original, composed by Sifu. I forgot to tell Nandu that watching his teacher perform reminded me a great deal of the scene in Tai Chi Master with Jet Li working out with a clustered ball of leaves gathered from the sheer strength of his will.

Following the demonstration, we ended up joining a few of Sifu's other students and going to eat at Doc Chey's Noodle House.

Yes. There's one in Asheville.

The following morning, we drove from the hotel to the Mountain Sanctuary on Gateway Mountain. I've never been to the mountain before, but dusted with a few inches of snow, it's quite a sight. The sanctuary is even more magnificent. Built from a wood imbued with a rich yellow-orange hue, the sanctuary's ceilings are high and open, and the large windows allow a healthy amount of natural light in, while revealing a spectacular view of the mountains.

When we got to the sanctuary, Sifu asked if I would like to participate in the morning's training. Having previously learned a bit of Chi Kung from Nandu, I agreed. We went through the Reeling Silk exercises, as well as some more exercises of Sifu's own devising. Since there was such a wide variance of experience (from my own complete neophyte status to Nandu's sixteen year study), Sifu separated the group into two, with the more experienced students working outside.

Laura, Sifu's wife, continued to train me and two other students. We worked on the stances, for a while, and then I actually got to do some Tai Chi, which I had never done. After running through the first few steps of the Chen form, we continued with Bagua Circle Walking, learning inside and outside changes. All in all, despite a relatively slow pace, a good workout--at times, my heart would beat heavily while my thighs burned.

When we were done with Cirle Walking, we watched the others from the window. I went outside for a bit and watched Nandu train in the configuration of tall posts that Sifu had set up. Nandu would tell me later that this, too, was a training technique which was unique to his Sifu, where the subject doesn't just try to battle through the posts, but work within them.

I think the thing which struck me the most, however, was not any part of the physical training, but the brief dialogue Sifu had with his students about the previous evening's demonstrations. A consummate teacher, Sifu would talk about various subjects--the nature of the soft vs. hard styles, the differences between training without an opponent and fighting against one. At the time, it didn't really seem like a lesson, but in retrospect, even in the really short time that I spent with him, I think Sifu can make anything into a lesson.

I left the sanctuary feeling much like I do when I leave Newnan, I felt a desire to stay longer. I wanted to learn more.

The road home was largely quiet and uneventful. We did try to stop at a South Carolina sports bar near Traveler's Rest called Gators, complete with a similar Orange-and-Blue logo. It was, hoever, closed, and we suspect that South Carolina's bars run dry on the day when most have dressed in their Sunday best.

When I got home, Nandu hung out for a while and we caught up on Angel and Smallville episodes, as well as eps of Invader Zim and Penn and Teller's Bullshit.

So that's my weekend.

Tell me a story about a giant pig!

This is for xopherg....I defy you.


It may be a MegaDoomer, but you still think its
legs resemble that of a tasty chicken! Mmm...
chicken...


What random GIR quote are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


And I want two balls of glue...to be my friends!

...and a chair made of cheese and a table made of cheese...

With Great Power...

Stefan Reinhardt called me today, as I was driving back from lunch. Stefan is the captain for Fox & Hounds' Nice and EZ team. Because of various drop-outs from the Buckhead south division, our respective schedules which had Byes the second week of the session now require us to play a make-up match. Thus the need to call and schedule and arrange and everything.

I was talking to Blake the other day about how I'm not extremely enthused about being team captain. When he asked me why not, I replied, "It requires too much responsibility, and I'm not really good with responsibility."

He replied, "James, you're one of the most responsible people I know..."

I realized, then, that there's an enormous difference between Active Responsibility and Passive Responsibility. Active is when you're responsible because of the things that you do., like balancing your checkbook, or calling your mother regularly. Passive responsibility is when you're responsible because of the things that you don't do. I don't drink very much, I try not to spend too much money; I don't stay out too late on school nights.

Do people who have one kind of responsibility generally have the other? Do people who see passive responsibility in others also see active?

Poker Journal time

Not much to say about Ghetto Poker tonight, other than I'm up about 27 dollars.

Earnie brought a newbie into the fold--Sam. Being someone who can't really tell one group of Asians from another, I'm not quite sure what his ethnicity was, but since he arrived with Earnie, I don't think I'd be too off in assuming he was Korean. All in all, a amiable fellow, with a fair mind for cards. He did try to chase a lot of hands which our regular group wouldn't, and lost a lot of money in the process. His first experience with Screwy Louie treated him quite poorly, with his going up against Jason high, and myself the solitary low. I likely made around 65 dollars in total winnings (i.e. including what I put in...) from that single hand.

Otherwise, Screwy Louie was rather off tonight--with only five or six people playing, a good four out of five hands would just came down to , , and myself, playing out a hand, usually with someone (read: me) folding on first or second street.

Reminder to self: never play 727 again.

I always react this way

I don't remember Challenger that well. I was in the seventh grade--I vaguely recall walking into Science class, and someone told me that Challenger had exploded, and I indignantly denied it, not believing their joke. Challenger didn't really affect me, despite my affection for the Space program. My remembrances of childhood are most often sterile and emotionless.

When the towers fell, I remember significantly more emotion. I was working for a news portal at the time, so I spent much of the day making sure our news feeds were up and running correctly. That night, I would go to sleep fitful yet exhausted, and I would wake up with the pleading and fallen optimism that maybe the last day was all a dream.

That's how I felt today, reading the various headlines on Slashdot. Clicking on the links, I quickly read the stories. Then, out of a strange place in my mind, I put the computer away and read a book, hoping that which I had just read was a dream, trying to exert the sheer force of my will to turn time backwards so everyone can somehow escape this tragedy.