Journals : 2005 : August

Previously...

2 August 2005 | Link this

As of last Thursday, we have a couch. This is a particularly good thing since random bouts of insomnia have caused both me and my hubby to sleep on it at least one each of the past five nights...

 

Also by way of update, we made a quick road trip to Columbia on Saturday. I've always liked Columbia, although I'm not sure I'd ever live there. Moving to South Carolina is a mistake an individual should only make one time in his life, and my time was in 1986...

All the same, though, it's a picturesque sort of place, what with the 1920s neighborhoods around Five Points and the magical place known as Knox Abbott Drive across the river in Cayce, with its long-forgotten fast food and motel prototypes. Note the picture above, which was a Hardee's design from the mid-1960s. There weren't very many of them, but my hometown had one which has since been demolished. Columbia's still exists. And I'm apparently still one of only two or three people in the world who remember when Hardee's outlets looked like this...

Or maybe not. I just checked, and there's finally a picture of one of the damned things on the history page of the Hardee's website...

It was extra fun, though, that we managed to schedule our trip to coincide with the most intense thunderstorm in recent history, one which even managed to shut down the local paper. We got trapped in a Kroger store watching as some brave souls actually tried to enter their cars despite the fact that the water level in their parking spaces was above the floor board of their cars...

Fun Saturday, all in all, and I enjoyed test driving the new Oldsmobile...

2 August 2005 Later | Link this

In case you're bored today: try this or this or even this. Sorry about slipping in that last one, but there are only eight shopping days left...

2 August 2005 Even Later | Link this

Congrats to Sister Betty and all your stairways, by the way. As a fellow Best of the Bay winner (1998), I welcome you to the club, and note with amusement that you don't live there anymore either...

3 August 2005 | Link this

I'm rather proud of my new rant on the really bad writing in Charlotte's "Uptown" Magazine...

4 August 2005 | Link this

Two signs that there may be something very wrong in the universe:

7 August 2005 | Link this

 

I've wandered the entire country eating lasagna. I've enjoyed a lot of variations and suffered many unfortunate interpretations over the years, but for my favorite of all time, I didn't even need to go one step past the first place I ever tasted the stuff: Anton's in Greensboro. Even without the cellar (it's being "renovated"), it's still my preferred place for an occasion dinner, like my pre-birthday visit to Mom and Dad last night...

Unrelated: I'm seriously considering dumping the Message Board because no one really uses it much anymore and because I'm tired of deleting all the poker and casino spam. Just an advisory...

8 August 2005 | Link this

Dang. As much as I never really liked the SF Chronicle, my mention in it last week has already landed me one freelance writing gig and has inspired PR representatives at two major supermarket chains to contact me about it. That's a considerably bigger response than I got from any of the earlier newspaper articles in which I figured even more prominently. I guess the Chronicle is slightly more authoritative than the Oregonian or the Bee or the News & Record...

The timing is very good because this whole job quest was starting to send my self-confidence level straight into the crapper over the past few days...

9 August 2005 | Link this

Ah, that wacky Fred Phelps. As I've said before, I really appreciate all the work he's done to advance The Homosexual Agenda since we put him on the payroll. Discrediting all the fundamentalist nutjobs by having him pose as one and then go completely off the deep end was a stroke of pure genius...

10 August 2005 | Link this

10 August 1965 (one year old):

10 August 1970 (six years old):

10 August 1975 (eleven years old):

10 August 1980 (sixteen years old):

10 August 1985 (twenty-one years old):

10 August 2000 (thirty-six years old):

10 August 2005 (forty-one years old):

Rather makes you wonder what happened to the lost birthdays of 1990 and 1995, doesn't it? Actually, I don't remember either, which is not surprising given the time period...

16 August 2005 | Link this

It's comforting to know that some things never change. The fried squash at Gus' Sir Beef is the best you or I will probably ever eat. Independence Boulevard at 5:30 PM is still a raging nightmare. And Representative Sue Myrick is still the same simple-minded reactionary (and crass political opportunist) she was twenty years ago when she was still just plain Mayor Sue Myrick...

Her new "10K Run for the Border Act" (I'm not making that up, I swear...) would dig down to the root cause of a Gastonia teacher's recent death at the hands of a drunk driver: illegal immigration. Not lax DWI enforcement within her home state, mind you, but illegal immigration. Thus, Scott Gardner was killed not so much by a drunk driver, but by a filthy, illegal Mexican immigrant...

Per the Charlotte Observer: "No more excuses," she said at a news conference. "You're drunk. You're driving. You're illegal. You're deported. Period."

Representative Myrick offered no suggestions as to what we might do with repeat DWI offenders who AREN'T illegal immigrants. Presumably, I guess we should consider electing them vice-president or something like that. But it's ultimately of little consequence; DWI is not really the issue. Any moron can see that. Sue Myrick certainly does...

16 August 2005 Later | Link this

Another hiker has fallen off the side of another mountain where he probably shouldn't have been to begin with. And thousands of dollars being spent (and several lives are being risked) so that some other idiot can feel safe taking up the same hobby...

And, of course, there's continuous live coverage on the news since absolutely nothing else happened anywhere in the world today...

18 August 2005 | Link this

I slept horribly, first having trouble getting to sleep at all and then repeatedly waking up, but finally I dozed for a good long stretch...

About 7:15, I woke up. In my grogginess, it took me a few seconds to realize I'd spent the night with friends in Fourth Ward. And that I wasn't sure I'd parked my car legally the night before. And that it had probably been ticketed or towed...

So I went outside to check on it. Alas, I couldn't remember where I'd parked the damned thing. I walked for blocks and blocks up Graham Street and never found my car. I was almost a mile from my friends' apartment...

And then I realized I was buck naked, so I had to run all the way home to avoid getting arrested...

I hate dreams that make me wake up exhausted...

18 August 2005 Later | Link this

My dad's 80th birthday was yesterday, and he came down with my mom for lunch. I'm glad that my octogenarian father is still willing and able to do road trips. I think he looks pretty damned good for his age, too. I've decided that means I have really good genes...

21 August 2005 | Link this

We didn't already have enough records. Oh no, not by a long shot. So we had to claim an extra couple hundred that my friend and ex-roomie Dan was clearing out of a storage shed while visiting his family at Lake Norman this weekend. And we ended up not only taking his stuff, but his dad's as well...

We'll be digitizing 'til 2008, but there was definitely some good stuff...

23 August 2005 | Link this

While my keyboard gently weeps...

26 August 2005 | Link this

It's almost the weekend, for alll that really matters in my unemployed state. If I sound a little down, it's because I probably am. Not about being in Charlotte, which still makes me quite happy, but about the fact that things aren't quite taking off as I'd expected...

Finiding a job hasn't been as easy as I might have hoped, and that's affecting me in other ways as well. We're not destitute or anything; Mark has landed a full-time gig and we both have a bit of freelance work, so for now, I'm something of a kept boy. Or a housewife. But my self-esteem has taken a bit of a battering from the fact that no one really seems to want me. This, in turn, is making me feel a little useless all the way 'round...

Then there's the fact that I don't really feel like I ought to be going out and doing anything, mainly because it would cost money, but also because I should be home trying to convince someone to give me a job. So the house sort of feels like it's closing in on me. At the same time, though, I feel quite comfortable here, working on my little video projects, keeping the laundry caught up, etc. I just don't feel like I have any business enjoying it...

None of which makes for very interesting copy -- nor very exciting phone or email conversations -- so I apologize for the lack of a spark on the site lately, and for my lack of attention to my social obligations. I haven't been too pleasant to be around lately, I fear. But I imagine this self-pity party will be over relatively soon. I try to limit them as much as possible. I'll keep you informed...

26 August 2005 Later | Link this

Today on Inside Edition:

They call It Gas And Dash-- High gas grices are driving some people to fill up and take off! But wait- some gas stations are taking extraordinary steps to stop them!

What "extraordinary steps" are necessary other than the one most gas stations in most civilized parts of the US took fifteen or twenty years ago: make people pay before pumping their gas. What could be more fucking simple?

I'm sorry, but I'm really sick of hearing about this big "controversy". This whole issue was being argued in Charlotte even when I lived here before, almost two decades ago. Local police announced in the late 1980s that they would no longer pursue "drive offs" beacuse it was such a waste of resources given that this particular crime is so totally preventable...

I didn't even know there were stations left which let you pump before paying. Those that do pretty much deserve what they get just for rank stupidity. Gas station owners whining about "drive offs" are worthy of about the same level of sympathy as fat people who complain that McDonald's "made us this way"...

29 August 2005 | Link this

Another downside of being unemployed and home all day: I just can't stop watching the damned hurricane on CNN...

I'm also thinking about how I made my first visit to the area less than three months ago, and just happened to be editing my video of it this weekend. I'm glad I sw it while it was mostly still there...

29 August 2005 Later | Link this

CNN just mentioned that they were able to have some reports filed from within the storm area using a "new" and incredible technology called "FTP". Wow. I didn't realize I'd been such a trailblazer; I've been posting this site using the same technology for almost a decade, and using it to download dirty pictures even longer than that...

31 August 2005 | Link this

 

Three years ago today, I stopped living alone. I couldn't be happier with that decision...

I love you, baby...

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