07/22/01—Just completed compulsory life jacket training. I wonder if there’s enough time for me to escape the ship and disappear into the jungles of New York for a week. We sail in 15 minutes; I’ll bet I can make it.

Life jacket training was fun; on our side it was led by an impossibly tan woman from LA. We’re talking Magda from “Something About Mary” tan…

The crowd so far has been unusual. I expected older couples, but there seems to be quite a range; families like ourselves, young couples (there was one couple at life jacket training that had more tattoos and piercings than I did), among others. I also noticed that a lot of people are really, really fat. Fat guys, with fat wives and fat kids. Emblematic of American overindulgence, I guess.

The ship next to us in New York Harbor (a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, I think) just sounded its sailing signal; a series of earth-shattering blasts. The one-man-band playing “send off” music said we should “ignore that ship with the gas problem.” I’m currently in the shade of deck 9, called “The Sun Deck.” All decks have names. My cabin, A394, is on deck 5, or the “Aloha” deck. It’s on the port side, and it’s an outer cabin, which means I have my very own porthole.

The one-man-mand is currently on his version of “Kokomo”, which is fairly poor.
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Checking in was fairly annoying… confusion as to where the bags go, etc. The whole dock situation is very strange. These huge ships in the middle of NYC. I’m looking over at the West-Side Highway, and I don’t think I could be any further from St. George, which is our first destination. We haven’t sailed yet. I could still run, leap over the side, and hit the pier running; a quick subway ride to Central Park West, and stay with my friends Aimee and Jim for a week; climb in the Gunks, go clubbing, etc.

There are quite a few men wearing Hawaiian shirts… don’t they know this is a Bahamas cruise?
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A 1.5 L bottle of spring water costs $2.95, plus a 15% gratuity. I wonder how much of a water tab I can ring up by the end of the week.
——————————————-

16:20—The throb of the ship’s engines is shifting from a slight tremor, sensed rather than felt, to a more perceptible rumbling. We must be backing out. According to the ship’s newspaper, “The Princess Patter” (gag!), we back out, turn to starboard, and head down the west side of Manhattan, past the Statue of Liberty, and out to open sea.

The OMB is trying to get a thoroughly unattentive audience to do “the chicken dance.” The poor bastard.

There’s a section of the manual that was in my cabin that deals with “Courtesy”. It states that “cover-ups must be worn over bathing suits in public areas.” I’ve already seen a handful of people that will need to be reminded of this before week’s end.

My cabin steward introduced himself pretty much the minute I got to my cabin. His name is “Manny” and I’m not sure where he is from, although I would guess someplace in Central America.
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16:50 Passing the WTC towers now. We’re getting buzzed by a lot of smaller boats; sailboats, double-hull catamarans, million-dollar fishing yachts. One thing they all have in common thou; if there are people on deck, they wave at you. I wonder if that’s for all cruise ships or maybe just because people recognize “The Love Boat.” [ed. The boat we were on was the Pacific Princess… the actual boat filmed on that show. I think our cruise was one of the last for the ship. It was sold to some Greek guy in a private sale soon afterwards.]

07/22/01

23:45—We met our head waiter for the week (Fred) and our assistant waiter (Paul). They are both Romanian, and both very nice and funny. Food was tasty, but unremarkable so far. Maybe I’m spoiled by how well I eat, or maybe most people on cruises normally eat at McDonalds and Chi Chis and Bob’s Big Boy, but since the food is such a huge selling point of the cruise experience, I have to wonder about the gastronomical standards people have.

Went to the on-board theatre to watch “13 Days” after dinner, but only made it through one hour. Something about political movies w/Kevin Costner; they put me right out. It’s playing again tomorrow at 14:30, so I’ll try and catch it then. Sleepy now.

07/23/01

12:30—No, wait, 13:30—New time zone. Woke up this morning to some rainy weather; apparently there was a storm last night. Noticed a couple of interesting things. First, there’s no alarm clock in A394; I suppose to keep that whole vacation mentality going. Second, the water out in the open ocean is much bluer than what you see at the Jersey shore, or certainly NY Harbor (my stepfather says it’s “much less chunky”). I guess the water in Bermuda is really that impossible blue-green you see in Corona commercials. I’ll see in a day, I’m sure. Third, I think I know for sure that the OMB doesn’t actually play anything. He stood up on deck 9 (sorry, “The Sun Deck”) with a Les Paul guitar, strumming along in time and singing, but the problem is that there was no sound resembling a guitar coming out of the speakers; all just MIDI sequences.

Visited the gym this morning; crappy equipment, not worth finding.

Rented my tux for the evening. Wahoo.

07/24/01

Ow. Ow ow ow. Formal night was annoying; I’ve never worn a more ill-fitting tux. To make up for it, my sisters and I went to “karaoke night.” Started off slow, but by the end, I was drunk enough to get up and sing with Laura on “Let’s get it on”, by Marvin Gaye, that I managed to turn into a gospel hymn by the time I was through butchering it. Struck up conversation with several of the crew, who all seemed to congregate at this bar that night. Met one woman who was a nurse on the ship, and met her fiance there. She told me a little bit about what it’s like to work on a cruise ship, and how she was trained, even about labor unions in hospitals in the UK (there are 3 different nurses unions, and most all hospitals are unionized).

We landed early this morning at St. George in Bermuda. There’s only one way to get into the Bermuda islands, through a very narrow channel. We sailed right through the channel, having natives wave at us from the shore. Once we docked, I took a walk through St. George, down to the beach. Quaint town, nice beach, but of course it’s not my thing.

Went out in the evening to a bar on the island with my sisters.  Had a lovely conversation with a little goth girl who stuck out like a sore thumb in the land of the tan and blonde.  She worked on a different ship that was also docked in St. George.  She gave me all sorts of good dirt about working for the cruise lines:  how when you work there, leaving your key in your stateroom door is an open invitation to sex, how the Romanians onboard would fuck anything that moved, how most everyone who worked on a cruise ship was running from something.  Fascinating stuff.

07/25/01

Interesting day today.  Almost immediately after I got up, my mom, my sisters, and I went on a snorkel trip to a shipwreck site and a coral reef site.  I wasn’t really into the snorkeling;  didn’t want my mom to see my piercings and tattoos.  The excitement happened when we were riding in the boat to get to the wreck.  Another boat, a glass-bottom one, had anchored to the mooring that was placed there specifically for the boat we were on.  The other boat was being piloted by a guy who had previously worked for our boat’s captain, and had been let go for showing up for a charter drunk and high.  I guess this was his way of giving a not-so-subtle “fuck you” to his former boss.  Our captain, Jimmy, flew into a rage, yelling at the guy to slip his boat from the mooring.  It was the equivalent of taking someone’s reserved parking spot, but even more, in that parking in that spot was your livelihood.

If Jimmy was angry, his son Mark was livid.  He put on swim fins, jumped off the side, and swam right over to the glass-bottom boat.  He was going to until the boat himself, but then decided to just back off, and drop anchor, which is technically illegal, since it could damage the underwater coral.

While everyone was snorkeling, Jimmy gave me more dirt on the guy;  he had worked for every other major water tour company in Bermuda, and had been fired from all of them.  He had even tried to buy a boat and start his own tour company, but he did something stupid with the exhaust and the boat caught fire and sank.

When Mark got back on the boat he called his tour company secretary (his mother), and told her to draft up a letter to the other tour company, charging them $500 for the one-time use of their mooring.

I was tired at night, and didn’t go out after dinner.

07/26/01

Sailed to West End this morning.  We landed around noon.  Once we landed, I got off and walked around a little.  The West End is pretty boring.  After dinner there was some big “Tropical Festival” with a dessert buffet.  It was hellish, with people doing “The Electric Slide” and “YMCA”.

My sisters and I beat a hasty retreat out of there, and went to the one nightclub in the area, but it wasn’t really my kind of music, so I went back to the ship and to bed shortly after.

One note: I noticed one woman on this cruise who has worn a different shirt every day, but they’ve all been made with “The Bedazzler”.

• take the wet clothes from each washer and move one step right to put the clothes in the dryers, or


• take the farthest left washer and take two steps to put its clothes in the farthest right dryer, and then when you do the other washer you don’t have to move at all and just sling handfuls of clothes into the dryer right next to it?

(Miss Murder, by AFI) 

Reason #41 why I already love Jersey City, originally uploaded by feralboy.

I have some trip pictures on my camera, so I will try and get those pulled off later today, if I can happen to find the box that has the phone connector cable in it.

Part 2

Con: I have had this damn Madonna/Abba song playing over and over again, and yet I still can’t get it out of my head. Damn you, 15-minute club remix!

Yesterday I nearly blew all my accumulated efficient-flying karma. I had an afternoon flight to catch, but didn’t want to leave work sooner than I needed to, so I sort of waited until the last minute, and left my house with about 55 minutes to go. No problem, 20 minutes to the airport, tops, and then breeze through security and get to the gate just as the last boarding group is being called.

On the last bit of road before the airport I was faced with a decision; turn left and go to the long-term lot and catch the bus to the terminal (which I usually do), or hang a right and do daily parking at the airport (for a whopping $8 a day instead of $4). Some nagging voice was telling me to go right, but I ignored it like I most often do. Big mistake. I got on the shuttle bus right after I parked, which was great! Then we drove around for another 10 minutes picking up all those smarmy assholes who got to the airport 2 hours ahead of time like they’re supposed to. Not so great! Get to the terminal, run to the checkpoint, breeze through security, grab the bags and take off at a run/jog/trot for my gate, which of course is the one at the very end of the terminal. My shoes aren’t even all the way on, and I’m scrunching up my toes inside to keep them from flying off. The woman at the gate is looking right at me and yelling “Passenger Comroe?” as I approach. “That’s me, I made it!” She scans my boarding pass, gives me “the eyebrows”, and on the plane I go, high-fiving the other gate agent walking up the jetway on my way.

Sweaty but triumphant I grab my seat and buckle up, assuming that we must be ready to push back. After all, they were holding the flight for me, right? Hah! Not so. We waited for another twenty minutes before the cabin door was closed, apparently because we were missing an ashtray in the aft lavatory. Huh? The pilot got on to explain that it was an FAA regulation that all the ashtrays had to be there, even though you couldn’t smoke on flights since at least 1998. Stupid red tape.

My brief layover was at Houston’s G. H. W. Bush airport, and it’s the worst airport ever. I had to walk clear from one side of the airport to the other to make my flight. Where’s the nice tram like at DFW? Or Newark? I also forgot that I was supposed to get a “meal” (i.e. a lame-looking turkey sandwich) on my 2nd flight, so instead a spent $8 on some gross chicken and rice at Panda Express.

One nice part of the 2nd flight was that soon after takeoff we were skirting an electrical storm. I have never seen one from the air, and it’s completely fascinating and beautiful. The lightning is constant, with ripples flowing from one side of the clouds to the other. Most of it was obscured by the clouds, so it just looked like flashbulbs going off at a red carpet event, but occasionally you could see clear bolts of lightning arcing across the sky. At that distance they looked like small bony fingers reaching out for something just out of their grasp. I thought about trying to take some pictures, but the cabin lights were on, and I don’t think they would have come out very well. I’m lame.

While my skim milk was steaming I headed over to the bakery section of the store itself, with nothing but a Boston Creme donut on my mind. At first I didn’t see them. Then I saw what I could have sworn was a Boston, but it was a Danish cleverly hidden under a layer of chocolate frosting. Grrr. No Boston Cremes to be had. Ok, no problem. They have éclairs. I grabbed one, swung by to get my drink, paid my $.45 for my baked good and left.

Back at my desk, database update script chugging along, and time to take a bite out of my breakfast. First bite, no creme. Ok, fine. They must have injected it in the other end. Second bite. Hmm… something is wrong here. Perhaps I should have noticed then how decidedly light my éclair was. I get about halfway in and come to the sad realization that this morning, there will be no creme. Now, what sick bastard would go around making a donut-like pastry that looks like an elongated Boston Creme but is only a hollow shell of what a real donut should be?

Here’s the conversation I immediately had with the Feral Marketing Department:

[08:03:08] FMD: who makes an éclair without cream?
[08:03:12] FMD: commies, that’s who.
[08:03:22] Matt: filthy reds
[08:03:29] FMD: ferreals
[08:03:34] Matt: of course there were no boston creme donuts
[08:03:39] Matt: those were the first choice
[08:03:59] FMD: fucking donut nazis.
[08:04:08] Matt: “no creme for you!”
[08:04:21] Matt: i’m not gonna even eat the last third
[08:04:25] Matt: that’s my political protest
[08:04:30] Matt: in fact, i just may blog about it.
[08:04:38] FMD: you should
[08:04:45] FMD: that’s why you have a blog, after all.

Amen, brother. Amen.

My pictures (which are pretty much the same as Ryan’s, just more of them) are here.

It’s just a temporary fix for now, as I try and figure out what to do next. Kim is pushing really hard for a Jason Lee/My Name is Earl moustache kind of thing, but I can’t see myself going that route. Perhaps the more devilish moustache and goatee? Just the goatee? Help!

Update: Pat sent along some good ideas.

Update 2: Through the magic of photoshop, we can see what I would look like with all of these looks. Many thanks to Pat for yet more stellar image mashups.

When I signed up for the card, I gave a bunch of bogus info. Being a homeowner means that you get plenty of crap mail as it is, and I didn’t want to add to that pile. Last week when picking up a couple of things, I was cursing myself for not remembering to bring the card in, when the woman in front of me just gave her phone number because she had forgotten hers, too. Curious, and remembering my lovely step-auntie Margot saying that the stores’ databases were so huge that pretty much any phone number would have a hit, I stepped up and typed in my real cell phone number. The cashier finished ringing up my total, handed me my reciept and said “Ok, you saved $2.32 today. Thank you, Mr. um… Garcia?” With as Hispanic of a look I could muster on my ultra-whiteboy face I grabbed the reciept and strode off, trailing clouds of glory behind me.

I don’t know where all these kids came from, but they popped out of the woodwork in full force when there was FREE CANDY at stake. The only children I had seen in my neighborhood before were the two slightly unwashed-looking tykes from next door who like to play in our yard from time to time. Monday night they were everywhere. I was working late trying to catch up after a travelling mishap that had me starting work late, and every 5 minutes was interrupted by the doorbell.

Even with all the interruptions, all the kids were pretty cute. Lots of princess/Barbie costumes for the girls (furthering my theory on why so many couples go for lavish marriages), some Grim Reaper/Incredibles costumes for the boys. One girl came as Morticia Addams, and was thrilled and a little shocked when I knew what she was dressed as. C’mon kid, I used to be goth!

There was only one group of older lazy kids. You know, mid-teens with no costume. They had a token mask or two, but I pointed out they were a little old to be doing this. Hell, they were probably driving themselves from house to house. Rest assured those kids got to pick from my bag of weird Japanese candy. Hah hah hah, suckers.

My stepmom is in town this week; “Evil”, we like to call her. She’s actually wonderful and I love her to pieces. Her sister lives not too far from me, and Evil likes to come out about once a month during the fall/winter/spring, when the weather is much nicer here than in New Jersey.

I hadn’t seen her in quite awhile, so we’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible while she’s here. Yesterday we went to Sabino Canyon and took the last tram up to the top of the 3.8 mile road and hiked down. It was absolutely perfect weather; warm and breezy, and cooling off nicely as the sun went down. Right as we were getting back to the parking lot, the sun was slipping down behind the horizon. Fantastic timing, really. On the way back to dropping her off at her sister’s we had some delicious sushi grub, and I have to say it was a pretty great afternoon.

my dad and laura, originally uploaded by feralboy.

This is my dad with my older sister. Looks a little familiar, huh? Thanks to Laura for scanning and posting it.

Can’t sleep because your dog is restless?

Then you must get DogzPaws™!

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I mean, it’s not like I wrapped spaghetti around his snout, but it’s still pretty funny.

To try and take my mind off of things, and get back more into my biking/climbing groove I tried to go for a club ride Saturday morning. I’ve never done anything like that before, but it seemed like a good way to get out there and get a little more motivated to put on some miles. I checked around on a bunch of websites, and found a club that left from a nearby park at 7 a.m. There were lots of cyclists there, but nobody seemed to be there for the club ride. I did see one group of riders that might have been them, but they all had matching jerseys and super-fancy-ass Treks, so I didn’t think that my grubby fixie and nut-hugger-shorts-under-regular-shorts-so-I-don’t-look-like-a-dork would fit in too well, so I just let them ride on and decided to do my own club ride. I took a nice long loop through some of the hillier sections around town, so it wound up being a really good ride in the end.

Now more than ever I’m looking forward to my Vegas trip. It’s going to be nice and theraputic for me.

My sister and I would play outside a lot. We were on a nice chunk of land, with big rocks and trees and all sorts of other fun things; a veritable treasure trove of places to play for kids our age. We were out playing in the street, climbing up the roadway cut and goofing around. I was standing on a battered old piece of plywood laying on the ground, when I started to feel little hot jabs everywhere. Looking down I saw a swarm of insects around me, and I took off down the street yelling and screaming like Dick Cheney himself was after me. Burst into the house, tore up the stairs into the kitchen, where luckily both my mom and dad were there to assist. I very clearly remember standing in the middle of the kitchen lineoleum in my Underoos, with my parents and me holding ice cubes on every part of my body that we could all reach. I don’t remember if it was yellowjackets or hornets, but I was stung about 13 times. I’ve given stinging insects a wide berth since then, and probably have only gotten stung once or twice more since then. I guess I save all my painful outdoor encounters for cacti now.

The other time was less painful and more funny. I was out playing in the dirt, as I was often wont to do. It got to be about dinner time, so I went inside to the 2nd floor bathroom, which was right next to my bedroom, to pee and wash up. As I stood there with my pants down I saw an ant crawling on my junk. I guess I had been playing near an ant nest, and a few had crawled up my pants leg. I was already mid-urination, and I couldn’t quite stop it, so I was sort of trying to pause the flow, let the ant crawl down right to the tip, then start it back up again to blast him off the end. Of course I was wiggling all over the place as anyone with an ant on their penis would do, so all I really wound up doing was peeing on the toilet and the floor while doing the truffle shuffle. Good times.

Chances are you are scared of fictions. Chances are you are only fleetingly happy. Chances are you know much less than you think you do. Chances are you feel a little guilty. Chances are you want people to lie to you. Perhaps the answer lies on the side of a coffee cup. You are lost.
—David Cross

It’s great to see these blogs; Ryan’s especially. He just made a dramatic move from Philly to Providence (well, maybe it wasn’t dramatic, but people in his life made it that way. I

I get about 50 feet out of the driveway, when I realize that the car is pulling to the right, hard. I hop out and look… oh joy! my tire is flat! Run the car back into the driveway, and start sorting out my wrench/jack/spare situation. I’m just cracking the bolts when the pool guy shows up with one of those cigarette lighter compressors. Slap some air into the tire, and I’m off to the local tire shop to have them patch what should have been just a minor screw hole. Drop the car off, ride back on the fixie (whoops, forgot my shoes, so I did it in sandals, which was suprisingly un-sucky). Call comes about an hour and a half later, heat-ring something something, riding around while flat something something, and it can’t be patched. Deep sigh.

“Ok, I guess you’ll have to replace it then.”
“See, that’s the thing of it. When you have all-wheel drive they all have to have roughly the same amount of wear, otherwise one tire spins more and you mess up your transmission and void the warranty.”
“Oh. Well, that’s fucked up.”

So now I am the owner of 4 brand-new tires instead of 3 tires with 18,000 miles and one patched one. Difference of about $350, as near as I can tell. I wish I would have known; I could have done autocross this weekend on the old tires to really shred them.

“Clean. Clean. Pistol. Uzi. Two kids posing as an adult. No almond. Oh, hey Homer!”

After I had started getting into piercings after I turned 18, I had gone in to the now-defunct Gauntlet to get my septum pierced and get my navel pierced properly once and for all. I had attacked myself on at least 2 occasions with an ear gun trying to get a ring to stay in there, and small wonder, it wouldn’t.

I was still a fairly poor college student at the time, so when they offered me a cheaper rate to have an apprentice piercer take care of me, I said “Sure!” Turns out that apprentice was Keith. He had just started recently, and was clearly a little bit nervous about making sure he didn’t forget anything going over all the questions and precursor stuff with me. He was being helped by a beautiful blonde master piercer, and once we started marking dots and everything he slipped into his rhythm like he had been piercing people for 20 years.

It took him a little while to get the septum piercing lined up, so he had the needle inside my nostril, just tiiiickling me a tiny bit, and I was worried that I was going to sneeze and drive the needle through my brain. I was tempted to just yell “c’mon, just jam it through already”, but I restrained, and finally was rewarded with the familiar pinch and slow spreading warmth.

Keith seemed to genuinely enjoy helping people with body modifications; clearly it was a passion of his, and he just wanted to share with the world. I was suprised and pleased to see a big post about his massive koi tattoo a few years ago, and pleased to find him blogging and very much in touch with the communities that he was interested in.

It’s a sad day to lose someone who had such an interest in the world around them, and such a gift for making other people share that same interest.

I have to say, however, that when I was out east a week ago I realized what an oppressive force heat plus humidity can be. I don’t miss that at all, and I was happy to escape back to my new hot, dry home state.

ouch, originally uploaded by feralboy.

These are two cactus spikes that I just pulled out of my leg with tweezers. Note to self: always pay attention in the driveway, because you have cacti there, ninny.

Flying on a holiday weekend is just an extremely bad idea. Even Tucson’s airport was busy, and it’s never busy. I’m excited about my weekend, but the travelling is just going to kill me. I’m en route pretty much all day today, and then I’ll be driving from Pittsburgh to Wilkes Barre to Baltimore to Philly to Byram to Bridgewater to Pittsburgh, all starting Sunday morning. Whew! At least my next couple of days are going to be mellow… just seeing some friends, having a nice meat-fest BBQ tomorrow, and catching my breath.

Last night and this morning were surreal; all sorts of emotions flowing through me all at once. It’s going to be nice to be 2000+ miles away for a few days, even at the expense of sleep and unreasonable driving time.

Update: Oh, joy! 2 hour weather delay, so now instead of getting in at 11, I’ll be getting in at 1 in the morning. At least it’ll only feel like 10 p.m. to me.

I took him to the one pet clinic I took Poe when he had his puncture wound a while back, and they took him in and gave him an x-ray. He had a good sized puncture wound along his right side, and another one on his back. His one rib was bent, and he was having trouble breathing due to shock, so likely something picked him up and shook him (by “something” I mean a canine, either a dog or a coyote), but he still managed to get away. The clinic wanted him to be observed overnight, but they don’t staff overnight, so I had to drive him to an animal hospital on the other side of town.

They admitted him, kept him overnight and gave him an IV with antibiotics and painkillers, as well as fluids. I called twice to check up on him overnight, and he rested comfortably throughout the night, and ate and drank on his own the next morning. That morning I went back and picked him up, armed with more oral antibiotics and painkillers (some sort of morphine-based thing, so let’s hope he doesn’t start selling his body in South Tucson to support his habit), and brought him home. (BTW, that little trip to the clinic with the x-ray plus the overnight stay with drugs/IV/nursing care cost about $600 total. You should really look into pet insurance. I mean it.)

He’s been back for 2 days now, and seems to be doing much better. He’s graduated from hiding under the bed to resting all day and night on a chair, he’s had a little bit of food as well as used the litter box, and so far his puncture doesn’t seem to be infected at all. He looks pretty awful tho, shaved where he was bitten and on his front paw where they put the IV. I’m going to pick him up some wet cat food this afternoon, because I can pretty much guarantee he’ll eat it if I do that.

It was a bit of a scare, but he’s home and safe and getting better, so that’s A Good Thing™.

However, there were a couple of nice nods along the way. One was using the original BBC radio show theme music when introducing the Guide. The other, of course, was showing Douglas Adams’ face right at the very end. Oh, and the Lightsaber reference was pretty funny too.

Zooey Deschanel = best eyes ever
Sam Rockwell = a good choice for Zaphod
Alan Rickman = pwn3d the movie

Also, the whole evening was free, courtesy of the bad players at the Desert Diamond, where I made a brief stop while waiting for Kim to get off of work. Thank you, set of 4s vs agressive player with top pair!

• Bauhaus
• New Order
• Coldplay
• The homefries at a Palm Springs breakfast place

• Winning $50 very quickly at a super-loose California cardroom Saturday

  Lowlights:

• The fucker from craigslist who never got back in touch about camping tickets
• Selling one too many extra Sunday tickets on Saturday, and having to buy another one Sunday
• Forgetting my ticket at the condo Saturday and having to go back for it
• Chemical Brothers
• Losing $150 not as quickly at a super-loose California cardroom Sunday
• The 5 hour drive back last night, and getting in at 3 a.m.

• The realization that I am now officially old and un-hip

Everything’s rinsed off and drying, but my mouse left-click button seems to be dead. I ran it under a bunch of hot water and hung it outside to dry, and am using my other mouse as a backup in the meantime. Frickin’ cats.

Update: Ok, just to clarify I didn’t hurt him or throw him INTO anything… I just yanked on my headphones while tossing him, which pulled off my glasses too. He landed about 4 feet away, on his feet. A half hour later he was in my lap cuddling, and my mouse dried off and worked fine, so we’re all cool.

It’s a lot of bands, and there’s quite a few that I would like to see, but it sounds like it’s going to be a really, REALLY big crowd, which always makes me a little nervous. I wish there was going to be WiFi there, but there ain’t… so all my pictures will have to wait until I get home to get uploaded.

Update: Well, I didn’t win the auction for the tickets, but only because some fucking asshole bid me out of them, thinking they were tickets to the event! Um, $100 to get 4 tickets that cost $175 each? “If it seems to good to be true…” Fucker. Now the original seller is trying to sell them to me for a Buy It Now of $100. No way, not when individual camping passes are going for less than $20 each.

1. No Asians in front of the counter

DSC_1549, originally uploaded by DaveEC.

My dad finally got his Flickr account set up, and started uploading pictures over the weekend. So far he has his photos from a recent trip to Portugal up; check them out.

Poe and his hematoma, originally uploaded by feralboy.

So, yesterday early afternoon Poe came back from his usual rounds through the yard with his one eye closed. I couldn’t really get a good look to see if he had something in it or what, but his hair around his eye was a bit sticky, so I though maybe he got bitten. Sure enough, a big bubble of blood started to form right above his eye while I looked at him.

Took him over to the vet and dropped him off. They called back later to tell me that he had a nice puncture wound above his eye, and nearly lost it. I don’t know who he scrapped with, but I think it actually might have been his brother, who was sniffing around while I was looking at Poe and getting growled and hissed at by Poe the whole time.

The vet cleaned him up reasonably well, got him up to date on his booster shots, and gave him a feline lukemia test (it was negative). All in all, very happy to have my boy home and safe.

The rest of my numbers looked really good… i have fantastic cholesterol levels, both LDL and HDL, and everything else falls in the normal range. I go back in 6 months to get my CRP checked again, and hopefully I’ll have a normal number by then.

In other news this afternoon is my followup appointment to find out what’s going on with my poor belly. I’m sure it’s not going to be anything bad, but of course I’m completely nervewracked about it.

Update as of 6:15 p.m.: Contract signed. Earnest money check being dropped off tomorrow. Loan application being filled out tonight.

Update as of 11 a.m. next day: After some careful consideration, the house is too expensive per sq foot for what you actually get, so we’re bailing. Onwards and upwards!

Laura is in town for her spring break this week; got in late last night and is still napping now while I’m working. She’ll have my car and a map to get to toole around Arizona this week while I’m working, and we can try and do something fun this weekend too. Desert Museum is always a popular spot for the out-of-towners.

Yesterday I went to a new physician that came recommended from April, because they do lots of “alternative” medicine as well as the regular M.D. stuff; things like acupuncture, sports massage, herbal therapies, etc. While I didn’t get to meet with April’s doctor, I did see Sunny, the nurse practicioner. She was completely awesome. She had recently moved from Seattle, where she even moonlighted as a piercer at night because so many of her patients were coming in with infected piercings that she decided to start doing them herself. She’s also very anti-drug (except when necessary), which is refreshing, especially in this age of antibiotic over-prescription and resistant bugs. She was a model for living well… she has a 27-year old son, and she didn’t look like she could be much older than 40 herself.

We talked about possible factors in my feeling, well, poopy. One of the things we discusses was my recent home shopping, which in a hot market like Tucson is a very stressful situation. “Hey, here’s a decent house. Would you like to put money on it right NOW NOW NOW?!?!?” Um, sorry if I can’t make a snap decision for the most amount of money I’ll ever spend on anything. Damn me for being such a comparison shopper. Sunny is also in the midst of home-buying, and felt my pain. She was unsure based on the initial exam what was going on… could be IBS, could be H Pylori. I’m going to a testing lab later this week to get all sorts of bloodwork done, which will show if I’ve got an infection going on or not. If it is H Pylori I’ll actually need to take an antibiotics cycle, no way around that. I’m sort of hoping that’s it, because then I can just get it treated and be done. If it’s IBS, then treatment path is not as clear.

Oh, I’m also getting other baseline stuff done, checking cholesterol, etc. About time I started checking those things on a yearly basis. My followup appointment with Sunny to discuss my labs is in about 2 weeks. I’ll keep ya posted.