Well, it has been made known to me that the events of my life aren’t that interesting, so I’ll try to just recap some highlights, and hopefully segue into something more interesting as I’m going. The goal of this week was pretty much to play Zelda, and I was surprised at how difficult that proved to be.

Monday: So, let me tell you a little about work… Nah, this should describe it: Imagine you’re in your car, and you throw it in neutral, and begin revving the engine pretty hard. You’ve got then engine screaming, the whole thing is ready to explode, so you slam it into drive, and the car takes off. 5 feet later you’re plummeting down a steep, steep cliff. Yeah, it’s a little like that. So just keep that in mind when I say “I worked” or something to that affect. Things just aren’t clicking, and I’m feeling more retarded than usual, which is just really frustrating. I guess maybe it’s a little like being in the middle of the ocean [the ocean/water themes will likely become more common, thanks to Zelda], you might be going full tilt in one direction, but you really can’t perceive any progress being made until you can see your destination on the horizon. So I’m trying to figure out how I can get Perl, PHP, MySql, and Soap to play nicely together. I think I know how the people at the Tower of Babel felt. So after work, I headed home for a little while, then headed to the mall, and went on in to Barnes and Noble, where I read up on Soap, Object-oriented programming, and Web Services for quite some time. I had been told by Software Etc that I could come in on Monday night and pick up Zelda at 10pm, which was pretty sweet, cause it wasn’t supposed to be out until the 26th. So near 10 I left Barnes and Noble, and headed over to Software Etc, where a long line of nerds had already congregated. A guy was dressed up as an elf, and I instantly pitied him.

Standing in line was an unusual feeling. One the one hand, I could look at these people, [well, most of them] and feel pretty good about myself. My personal hygiene, choice of attire, and general mannerisms and speech habits put me [I felt] a few notches higher on the whole evolutionary ladder from most of these guys…. but at the same time, I recognized the fact that I belonged in this line, and I fit in this line. I listened to a conversation going on between a few guys ahead of me, and caught myself thinking “wow, that guy has a frightening wealth of information about Gamecube games that have been released, what a huge nerd.”… then minutes later thinking about this same guy “Idiot, Microsoft bought out Rare, so we’re not likely to see a Perfect Dark game from them on the cube…I’m a huge nerd.”

When I got near the front of the line, I got a call from Kristin, whom I had not seen in quite some time [she had, unbeknownst to me, gone off to California for Spring Break], so we met up at TGI Fridays there in the mall, and hung out there for an hour or two. Good stuff. That Tom Collins is a nice guy, and if he asks to sit at your table, just go ahead and say “sure”… So after getting the update from Kristin on her many adventures, I headed back home, and prepared a bit more for the work meeting I had Tuesday morning. I managed to look through the Zelda manual, but that was it. I realized if I started playing, I wouldn’t go to sleep.. and while that wouldn’t have been a huge deal ordinarily, you have to remember the whole car plummeting down a giant chasm, and me starting to freak out about it, and you start to see where I’m coming from.

Tuesday: Tuesday was my meeting in GR with Dave, Brian, and Alan. We met at this coffee place called “At the Grind”. Free wireless internet, good coffee, decent music.. A nice place. The girl behind the counter declared her instant but undying love for me [with her eyes] shortly after I entered. I was pleased. The meeting itself was fairly productive, and helpful. There’s still a number of things I’m uncertain about, and a few things that remained to be solved/decided on, but a batch of fairly annoying questions were answered, and the next round of things to do are now more clearly defined. So it’s a start. While I was there, my friend Tim Vroom showed up, so that was kewl.

After the meeting, I headed back home, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what exactly it was that we had figured out in the morning. Then, finally, I started up Zelda. => joy (joi) Noun: 1. To fill with ecstatic happiness, pleasure, or satisfaction,. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. I’ll devote an entire dealio to Zelda at some point, as it warrants it. So while I was playing, I got a message from Josh, so I headed off to Zeeland to play some basketball, which was also excellent. Did I mention how glad I was that it was getting warm? Yeah. Warm is joy. So I played basketball for a while, then headed home. Eventually Cathy came over, and we hung out with her for a while, then I headed off to the Pickwick.

Wednesday: After work, I headed straight to Mindy’s place, ate dinner with Mindy, Julie, and Sven, then played cards til Late. Tuuk had let me borrow this book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. It’s a self help book, and I’ll admit I was skeptical. I had been reading through it bit by bit for the last few weeks, and there were parts I thought were helpful, but for the most part, I perceived the argument to be something like this: I, as a self diagnosed “Nice guy” believed that by being “nice” and seeking to constantly do “the right thing” I would achieve my desires. This thinking is flawed, and therefore ought to be altered. I should assert my own desires, and yada yada yada…” Basically, the first read through, I assumed the book was saying “In this world, only jackasses get what they want, so the trick is to be a jackass.” Anyway, when I got back home Wednesday night, I was feeling kinda bad/down about everything, so I decided to just read through the whole book again, this time with an slightly more open mind, and I think it really had some worthwhile things to say. Here’s the deal, I believe that being a “nice guy” and doing “the right thing” are still worthwhile and important, and even if I knew they would not get me the things that I desire, I know I’d still want to live that way. [though without the hope of reward, it would be far more difficult to pull off]. I don’t accept the argument that the thing that achieves your desires is the correct thing. I think it’s very rare for the end to justify the means. That having been said, the book had some good things to say. Granted, it’s easier said than done, but here’s the problems I’ve got to work on:

• Constantly seeking other people’s approval, and basing my own esteem on their approval [or lack thereof].
• Going overboard seeking to hide or cover-up perceived flaws or mistakes in myself.
• Putting other people’s needs before my own [at inappropriate times/in inappropriate ways]

Anyway, yeah, how do I fix them? Not really sure. Are they really big problems? Usually I don’t think so. Did the book provide examples that were so frighteningly similar to my own life that I started to freak out? Yes, yes it did. According to the book, my name is “Todd”.

Most evenings I stayed up way too late talking to Christa, so you can just add that to the end of each one of these.. I seem to recall Wednesday being particularly late, so that’s why I mention it.

Thursday>>: Thursday I worked from home. I had lunch with Mindy at Max and Ermas. Once work was done I played Zelda, and finally got to play for a significant amount of time. That game rules. I got a call from Kristin, and she came on over, we got some Arbys and watched the Wednesday night TV lineup. Complaint: Friends is starting to piss me off again. If they hook Rachel and Joey up again, I think I might be forced to.. eh.. who am I kidding, I’ll still watch it, I’ll just think it’s dumb. And Good Morning, Miami… I still like that show a lot… but I guess you could just stick Ashley Williams and Constance Zimmer on screen reading the phone book and I’d watch… Steve, Mindy, and I were talking Friday night about how the whole Love Triangle plot is so played out in sitcom world that such shows have become less appealing.. Well, I’m still hopelessly addicted to many of them (Ed, Good Morning, Miami, Friends, even Scrubs.. then there was Undeclared, Northern Exposure, Cheers, etc.. etc..) I just love the idea that two people were meant to be together, and you’ve got that one person, usually the guy, that’s willing to do everything and anything to win the girl over… even if it takes years, and he’s constantly set back by events, random chance, and straight out rejection. I’ve never been as captivated as I have been the last 3 years with Ed, but I’ve also never so closely identified myself with one fictional character. Some comparisons just seem to be inevitable, and some similarities are too pronounced to be cast aside as humorous [or unfortunate] coincidences. Anyway, after that, we watched Pleasantville, which I liked quite a bit [I had seen it before], then I headed off to sleep.

Friday: After work, I watched some NCAA basketball for a while [for a while there, I believed myself the future recipient of a fair number of Abe Lincolns, but Maryland, Kentucky, and Duke all suck, I guess. They all get the finger. Friday night at 9 was Ed. So Sven and Mindy came over to watch it, and it was excellent. I'll admit to loudly shouting "Yes!" near the very end of the episode. [refer back to the whole "I love the guy who constantly tries to win over the girl" speech from last paragraph.] Sigh.. There is an image that [to those who know what's going on] can fully describe exactly what I’d give just about anything for… I’ll try to get that image, and put it here soon.

After Ed, the three of us headed to Damons, watched basketball, and talked about things for a while. I got home in time to see Maryland make a comeback then lose anyway, then I went to sleep.

Saturday: Got up around noon or so, took a trip out to GR, then played some Zelda til I got a call from Kenton. Headed in to Holland and got my Tux fitted for Kenton’s wedding, then met with Kenton, Selena, and her brother at JP’s [coffee house]. Hung out with them for a few hours, and it was good stuff… Yeah, Tuuk, you were right, this is boring.

Anyway, what I (re)learned this week:

1. My mood is far too dependent on things I can not control… like girls.I also have no idea how to change this.
2. When I’m lost and frustrated at work, writing down everything I have to do, no matter how small a step, really does help.
3. When the day is long, and you get a bunch of like-minded, slightly frazzled guys in a room, it’s inevitable that they’ll [we'll] regress to 12 year olds.
4. Zelda is pure joy.
5. I am neither as good as I believe I am, nor as bad. I am not the catch I think I am, nor am I the pathetic shell of a man I think I am.
6. Gas prices will always drop at least 5 cents the day after I fill up, and rise at least 5 cents if I decide to wait until the next day to fill up.
7. The telephone is once again my friend

This will be quite quick, because I’m pissed about so very many things currently, all at a time when I ought to be at the very least content, that letting myself speak will likely just offend the majority of you, get me excommunicated from my church, get me fired from my job, and insult and anger an entire genre/ethnicity of people.

But two things:

1. I answer some support emails as part of my job. As such, I put at least a little thought into what I say, and if I’ve ever made a mistake, I feel bad about it, and try to fix it. Well, I wrote this email to Musicians Friend [I'm not linking to them, because they're bastard people] the other day, and it said this:

I recently purchased a Fender DG-16E-12 12-String Acoustic-Electric (Product #510249) from your site, and was hoping to find a case for this guitar as well. As guitar sizes and shapes vary between products and makers, I was wondering if 1.) There was a way to find out which cases are compatible to which guitars on the site 2.) You could let me know which cases you supply would work for this new guitar.

So far so good. A day or so later I get a response (okay, so I got like 4 auto responses first):

Response (Chase) – 03/19/2003 04:59 PM Thank you for your recent inquiry. Most standard dreadnought cases will have about 4 inches left where the headstock goes, the manufacturers are aware of the need for 12 string cases, below is a list of what type of case I would recommend. Feel free to place an order online or by phone at 1-800-776-5173 24 hours a day.
540562 001 03 # MUSICIANS FRIEND DLX CLASSICAL CASE BLACK KC $59.99
541800 03 # TENNESSEE DREADNAUGHT ACOUSTIC CASE KC $129.99
543065 03 # COFFIN ACOUSTIC DREADNOUGHT CASE KC $119.99
If you have any further questions please give us a call at 1-800-776-5173. We appreciate you choosing Musician’s Friend.

Excellent. So I bought one of the cases, and a week later it arrives. I grab the guitar, and put it in there… well, I tried to. The damn thing doesn’t come close to fitting, and I am pissed. So I email back, asking what the deal was, and get this response:

Thank you for your inquiry. Based on the information we had been given. It looked to us as if the Musicians Friend Case we sold you would have fit your Fender 12 string. You were more than welcome to get a 2nd opinion by contacting Fender’s website or them directly to insure the correct information.

In other words: “We didn’t really bother to check, but it’s still your fault. Bye.” Musicians Friend gets the finger.

2. The other day, early in the morning, it sounded like my next door (read the floor below us.. the cute girls..) were playing Mario Bros. and BLASTING the sound. It was at first funny, then annoying, as it lasted quite some time. Brian informed me the other day of the true culprit. Check it out: [link]

It has begun, and I am pleased. Robb and I went out this afternoon and played some tennis, and as I was running around like a mad man on the court, I realized just how much I had missed being outside, and running around like a madman. This past week’s weather has been pretty awesome, even the rain.. hrm.. Especially the rain. I like rain, so long as it’s warm out. Rain is fun to watch, fun to walk/stand outside in. Thunderstorms are more interesting than pretty much anything on the WB. Anyway, yes, it’s finally warm, and I’m quite excited about it. Know what else is great? Baseball is starting!

There seems to be an awful lot of people out there up in arms about this war in Iraq. I guess I’ll just say I support what we’re [the USA, and coalition forces] doing over there, and I’m glad we’ve got a leader in power that’s willing to take a firm stand on something, and actually stick to his word. I appreciate the fact that the administration is doing something because they know it to be the right thing to do, and not because it’ll gain some political points. I appreciate history’s tendency to repeat itself, and respect those who seek to prevent past mistakes from happening all over agian. I don’t love war, but I understand that it’s necessary sometimes.

So Monday I headed out to see Jonathan’s band, Craic Wisely. at Founders. It was St. Patrick’s Day, being in a bar, drinking beer, and listening to traditional Irish/Celtic music just felt right. The band was excellent, sounding even tighter than they did Saturday (and I thought they were excellent Saturday.) I think it helped that I had been listening to the Cd quite a bit, and recognized most of the songs. I was there with Joel, and Alan and Junko. Later on Dave showed up (w/ Paul). The Irish dancing guy was there, but he didn’t dance near the marathon jig he did Saturday night.

Tuesday was Pickwick. Wednesday was no Ed, so Robb, Josh, Dusty, and I headed off to Max and Ermas for dinner. Back home, the 4 of us [and Swac and Mandace] played Hand and Foot. I rule at cards. Thursday, Joel, Tuuk, and I had dinner at Max and Ermas, and I received some wolf whistles from one of the lovely hostesses. [I was pleased]. We headed back, played some Set, then they took off. Friday night Robb and I headed off to Damons to watch some of the ncaa tournament, and I got myself a giant steak. It was excellent. Saturday I played Metroid Prime much of the afternoon. Tim Vroom came on over in the evening, and we hung out for a while, then He, Robb, Swac, and I headed off to Max and Ermas for dinner. I got a call from Mindy while I was there, and so she headed on over after we got home. After Duke had proved they were going to win, we watched The Bourne Identity. It was excellent. I’m not a big Matt Damon fan, but I thought he was quite good. It also featured Julia Stiles, who is drop dead gorgeous. I’ll admit, I was rather reluctant to agree that it was in fact Julia Stiles, as other’s mistakes have made me wary of making my own. But yeah, it’s her. After the movie, it was late, so I played Metroid Prime for a few more hours, as I’m determined to beat it this weekend [I get Zelda Monday night, so I've got precious little time.]

Spent much of Sunday afternoon playing Metroid Prime. It is now 10pm, and I’ve gotten to the final guy. (I’m assuming that if the game is named after you, you’re the final guy.) I’ve acquired 100% of the items, so the game says I’m at 100% completion… which is misleading, because the final guy has repeatedly handed me my ass. There are apparently [at least.. please please let it be "only"] 2 phases to the final guy. 1 Giant Spider dude, and one floating evil head type dude. I’ve just killed the spider dude, but I didn’t save it afterwards, thinking that I had beaten the game [he was pretty tough.]. But anyway, at least I know how do do that. (The trick is to shoot him, a lot, with every single one of your weapons, and don’t let him hit you with his weapons, or run over you repeatedly.. though apparently you can still kill him if he does that to you… a lot. There, I just saved you $15 on the Strategy Guide.) The evil head dude is more tricky. Apparently, the way NOT to kill him is to stand around dumbfounded as he disappears, reappears, kicks your ass, then disappears again. So, if I just don’t do that, I ought to do better next time. I’ve still got about 2 hours to beat it.. though I think so long as that thing is dead by the time I go to sleep, I’ll call it good. A prediction: I’ll be getting no sleep tonight. So anyway, I’m taking a quick break to settle myself before going after him again.

Update: it’s 10:45. My ass is currently sitting nicely in the living room, handed to me on a silver platter by Evil head dude. I can take down Spider dude no problem now (No problem means I only lose half of my health to him.).

Update : It’s 12:05, and I just finished watching the ending cinema, etc.. from Metroid Prime. Turns out if you attack that evil Head dude, you have a good chance of hurting him. Either way, I reckon I beat the game before midnight, and I’m awfully proud of myself. It just goes to show, if I set my mind to something, there’s no telling how many tasks that have no bearing on the world at large or my love life I can accomplish.

So, I’ll just jump right in, cause I think I’ve got plenty to say, but I can’t really remember what all it was. I’ll do a recap of the past week, I guess, and see where that takes me.

Saturday : As I predicted, much of Saturday ended up being devoted to Metroid Prime and Deep Space Nine. Later on in the evening, Kristin called, and came on over. So we had some dinner, and started watching Gosford Park. About an hour into it [and admittedly, neither of us was all that into the movie] Sven and Julie came on over. So the 4 of us hung around for a little while, then headed off to Max and Ermas for some desserts. Then I headed home, and did some planning for my Sunday School class.

Sunday : Sunday was church, then Sunday School. We’re nearing the end of the year for Sunday School, and I’m kinda glad. My kids rule and all, but there’s a lot of stress involved in taking a lesson written in the mid-1970′s, and apparently written for children with learning disabilities. The average lesson is supposed to last 50 – 60 minutes. The average lesson plan lasts about 15 minutes, including a long prayer, and 11 minutes of reading.. and that’s assuming they’ve not chosen to include a page of wretched “example stories” that go a little something like this:

Boy, Ben really stuck his neck out tonight. He got quite a reaction when he said, “I think the music most kids our age listen to is pretty stupid; the lyrics are always about death or sex. I hate it.” I wonder how many of the kids agreed with him — the ones who did probably didn’t dare say so.

The book pounces on any change it gets to explain that this newfangled “Rock – N – Roll” music that “the kids” are listening to these days is straight from hell. I tend to just skip stuff like that for 2 reasons: 1.) I strive not to be a hypocrite, so I’m not gonna tell my kids that the music I listen to everyday is evil, and they shouldn’t listen to it. 2.) I don’t believe the music is evil, nor do I appreciate a book telling kids that you can make big blanket statements about something. Invalid generalizations are a pet peeve of mine, and this book is full of them. In a nutshell: Music is bad for you, your friends just want you to have sex and drink, and every major life issue can be completely explained with a Christian Contemporary song. Music is not bad for you.. Some music they ought not to listen to, but mainly because it just plain sucks, and no one should listen to it, ever… and I’ve yet to meet a friend that wants to have sex with me, so I don’t know where they’re getting that one from. I’ll just leave the Christian Contemporary song thing alone.

So yeah, this book provides me a crappy 15 minutes worth of a hour long lesson, so I’m pretty much on my own for the rest of it. It worked out pretty well the first few times. Having them come up with questions about anything even mildly religion related trying to stump me worked really well, and was actually interesting for all people involved. But that’s pretty much done and gone [they've run out of questions], so now it’s a week by week struggle to find something new to keep these kids occupied for another half hour or so. So the lesson Sunday was on Peer Pressure… I managed to make the thing last 35 minutes, and I was pretty proud of myself.

After Sunday School, I headed off to the Bartels’ house. Nicole had done a church website for one of her classes, and now we [Nicole, her father Hugh, (He and I share teaching responsibilities for 7th and 8th grade Sunday School), and I. Nicole and Hugh were both on my co-ed Softball team last summer (and hopefully this summer as well) Hugh is on my church softball team too. He's quite a good pitcher] are officially “the church website team” or something like that. Anyway, i was invited over for dinner, and then we had a meeting about the website. The design is already quite nice, so now it’s just a matter of PHPing some stuff up, then setting up some database stuff. Then undoubtedly setting up a ton of perl interface things so everyone who has no clue what they’re doing can quickly add content to the site. My sophomore year geometry teacher once began a class by saying the following: “Never admit you know something, because people will insist that you use this knowledge all the time.” At the time, I thought this was fairly sound advice, but didn’t take it to heart until later in the class period, when he used the word “phallic” and only I laughed… and so he looked around and asked “who knows what ‘Phallic’ means?”. I raised my hand, and he turned and said “Alright, explain it to the class.” Lesson learned.

So after a fine meal and meeting, I headed on home, and took a bit of a nap. In the evening, Robb, Swac, and I played some Settlers of Catan. Yeah, I rule at that game. I then spent much of the late evening/early morning watching more Deep Space Nine episodes. That show is every bit as grand as I remembered. There’s been a healthy mix of episodes I didn’t remember, and episodes I have been looking forward to seeing. The only problem I have is that I’m slightly impatient. The first season has to set a lot of things up, and characters are still not quite set as they eventually turned out. Friendships have not yet been established, and people are still constantly surprised by seemingly mysterious things that become old hat in later seasons. I’m anxious for certain characters to show up, or for their main storylines — the ones that last the entire run of the series — to begin. Even so, this first season is amazing. I’m currently watching an episode I remember watching way back in the day, and just being blown away by it. It’s pure joy in disc form.

Monday : Monday was work. How is work going, you ask? Work is going well. Some days, work is going quite well. Then again, some days, I feel like driving a stake through my temples and just letting it all fade away. Anyway, the last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve been trying to take all the loose ideas we’ve come up with for the last year or so, and putting them together into one coherent plan of action that’ll define my work for the next .. umm.. infinity? So that’s a pretty exciting thing. At least it can be… There were still a fair amount I didn’t understand, and I nagged Alan a lot this past week. Well, there’s still a bit I don’t understand, but I guess that’s to be expected. Either way, I’ve got my plan set up. And starting tomorrow, I begin coding, and that is a very exciting prospect.

After work, Swac and I headed off to GR to go to Wizards of the Coast. Ever played Apples to Apples? Turns out that game is fun. You have a bunch of [Red] cards with nouns (bubble gum) and proper nouns (The Olsen Twins), and some events (driving off a cliff) or situations (In a coma). Then one person [dealer] flips over a card from the other [Green] deck, that has things like “sadness”, “pathetic”, “American”, etc.. So everyone else chooses one card from their [Red] cards that they feel most accurately describes or conveys that [Green] card. The dealer chooses which card of all the submitted Red cards is the best, and the person that submitted that card gets the green card. You play to a set number of green cards. It’s a good game. Anyway, Swac picked up that game while we were there. I did some looking at the Friends Trivia Game. Turns out I know a lot of random Friends trivia.

Tuesday : More work. Tuesday night was the Pickwick, and we had quite the crew all sitting around one table. It was another good Tuesday night, though I felt kinda out of it some of the time. But yeah, Tuesday night was quite good.

Wednesday : More work. Got home and got my workout done quickly. Then Sven and Julie and Mindy headed on over, we ordered up some pizza, and then watched Ed. I’m now willing to admit that for a small stretch this season, I wasn’t quite as jazzed about Ed. The show seemed to no longer really match up with my life the way it had so eerily for the last year and a half. But in the last 2 months or so, it’s snapped back into that spooky “that’s exactly what is happening in my life” kinda thing. And it’s fun to watch again. The entire 2nd season was hard to watch, in reality. It was good, and I liked the show, but it was hard, and sometimes painful to watch. There was just too much people behaving poorly, horribly irritating assholes succeeding far too much [and for no apparent reason], and good guys getting dicked over far too much [again for no reason]. So again, it matched up to my life pretty well, but I wasn’t a huge fan of how a lot of things in my life were going, so watching it replayed on screen was both reassuring and aggravating. As evidence, I can’t watch season 2 episodes currently, and when I tried before, it just pissed me off, so I had to stop. I hate that Dennis Martino. Anyway, currently on Ed, we’ve got Ed hooked up with Frankie, his assistant. But it has been made clear, especially in the last 2 episodes, that he’s still very much taken with Carol, and Carol with him. So why don’t Ed and Carol hook up, when it seems like it’d be so perfect if they did? I’ve been asking myself that same questions for well over a year now.

After Ed, the group of us played Apples to Apples for quite a while. Later on in the evening, Cathy made a 5 second appearance. Long enough to say that she couldn’t stay, and that was about it. So yeah, a shame. But the game was fun, and after everyone took off, I worked out a bit more, then watched some more Deep Space Nine, then headed off to sleep.

Thursday : More work. I took a break in the afternoon and headed off to Max and Ermas with Mindy for lunch, then we headed off to get me set up for a passport. Why do I need a passport, you ask? I’ll tell ya. If all goes well, this summer I’m headed overseas. The idea is we [Mindy, Becky, Mindy's friend, Rosemary, and myself.] will fly off to Paris, check that out for a while, then take the train to Venice, and from there bike all the way to Rome, then check out Rome for a while, then I’ll train it back to Paris, then take a plane back to the US, while the rest of them head off to Greece for a while. Needless to say, I’m quite excited. It’s kinda weird. I had this belief for as long as I could remember that I’d go to Paris for the first time with my wife for our two year anniversary. My mind is kinda weird, don’t question it. I get these ideas randomly, and for one reason or another, it gets stuck in there, and I come to believe it is just law. Anyway, I’m going to see Paris. And it’ll be neat.

So I got back home, and worked for a few more hours, then watched my shows (Good Morning, Miami was a new one, and Dylan is still a hottie.) Afterwards, Robb and I headed off to Fridays for dinner.

Friday : More work. I spent Friday feverishly trying to finish the Architecture document… which I did, in fact “finish”. (it’s in quotes, cause it’s a document that’s going to be forever altered until the thing is done. Once that was done, we took off, and I headed over to my good friend Kenton’s new house. Kenton is getting married next month, and I hadn’t seen him or his fiance` in a while, so it was really good hanging out with them for the night. I didn’t get back til late Friday night, and I fell asleep fairly quickly, cause I was just wiped out.

Saturday : Like I said, I was wiped out, so I didn’t wake up til around 3ish Saturday afternoon. I had voice-mail from Tressa, so I called her up and talked to her for a while, so that was good stuff. I did some shopping at Meijer and dropped about $150 on groceries that better last me for a good long time. Then I got some quality Metroid Prime time in, and then Josh, Dusty, and Mike showed up for a while. I know they’re all quite excited to be mentioned here, so I didn’t dare omit it. Later on, BDF showed up, Josh and company jetted, and eventually BDF and I headed off to Founders.

We went to Founders for the cd release party of Craic Wisely, a fine classic Irish band featuring my co-worker, Jonathan. It was excellent! So the place was packed, and there were no chairs free. BDF up and stole one, but I wasn’t quite that .. bold? no that’s not the word.. oh yeah, I’m not a jerk. Zing! Okay, so after quite some time, Joel let me sit, and I was thankful. So eventually the band started to play, and they were excellent. I really liked the traditional Irish tavern sound they had going. So I got myself their cd, and have it playing in my car now. The cd is excellent. I just wish I could get a soundboard copy of them from Founders, cause there were a few songs that weren’t on the album that I really want to hear again.. there was one that included something like “I eat when I’m hungry, I drink when I drive.” that I really liked. Anyway, a big crew, both work and Pickwick people. I had my fair share of beer, and our table (and some surrounding tables) became engulfed in a war of flying peanut shells. It was excellent. All in all, a grand evening at Founders.

Sunday : Sunday again. Today. Church, then Sunday School. It was about fear of the future, and it lasted about 35 minutes. Afterwards it was off to the Veldhof’s for dinner. Excellent as always. Made it back home, and played Metroid Prime for about an hour, before dying, and losing everything I had done. Not pleased. Then I watched Edward Scissorhand, which I had never seen before. Turns out it’s really good, and I like Winona Ryder. Afterwards, I watched 4 or 5 episodes of Deep Space Nine, completing the 1st season… sigh, now I have to wait til April 1 for season 2. I just finished watching all the bonus material, and yeah, I like that show a lot.

They’ve started showing Swimfan DVD ads, and I gotta say, that girl looks nothing like Julia Stiles. Here’s the test: Drop dead gorgeous? That’d be Julia Stiles. Not? then not.

ExplodingDog has once again created something excellent:

Thanks to Tuuk for bringing it to my attention.

Spring has to hurry on up and arrive soon. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

• I’m tired of waking up to the cold and gray every single day. I’m tired of life being completely monochrome
• I’m tired of freezing all the way to work, feeling tired and drained already. The cold and dismal days just suck any energy you might have tried to hide for such an occasion before you even have a chance to use it.
• I’m tired of seeing the sun only on TV.
• I’m tired of driving always being a chore. I like driving in the summer, it’s relaxing, even with all the morons out there. [yeah, it should be noted that during the winter, I'd have to consider myself in the "moron" category... at least this winter.]
• I’m tired of having nothing to look forward to in the evening. Everything that I used to look forward to has just been overdone, overused, and it feels stale. TV shows, dinner, games… They just seem like ways to pass the time until we’re supposed to go back to work now, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
• I’m tired of being inside all the time. I need to be outside. I need to run around for a while and feel like an actual living creature for a while.
• I’m tired of saying and thinking “I can’t wait until it’s warmer out so I can..” I’ve been saying that for too long.
• I’m tired of it feeling like midnight by 9:30. The evening should be just beginning.
• I’m tired of 8 layers of T-shirts, sweaters, and hoodies every day. I’m tired of wearing gloves the first few hours of every morning.
• I’m tired of cleaning an inch worth of salt off my shoes every time I come home. And I’m tired of scrubbing the front entryway until my whole body smells like salt, just to have it become covered in salt by the next day.
• I’m tired of my room… and I’m tired of not feeling like going anywhere.

I’m just tired… I’m tired of a lot of things. I just want it to be warm, and sunny. I want life to begin again. I’m sick of sitting around, waiting for things to start, or for things to be good. I’m sick of life feeling like so much work. I want to be able to just unwind.. play some golf, or tennis, or softball, or volleyball.. or just sit outside for a while…walk outside.. I’m tired of being tired of things.

I think I’m a fairly good judge of people. Odds are, early on, I’ll know if I’m going to get along with you or not. And if I think I will get along with you, then sweet, we’re golden. But if I know I’m not going to get along with you, and then come to find that not only was I right in assuming I’d dislike you, but realize that I’d underestimated the degree to which I would dislike you by exponential numbers, then we’ve got problems. I’m not saying I’m always right in either case.. there are a few girls I thought I’d really like, only to find that I didn’t, and I can think of a few people I wrote off only to find out they were pretty kewl people. But when I’m right.. when I’m really right….. Urge to kill rising…

When I started working in Holland, I wrote a prgram that let me easily save song quotes I found good, interesting, inspirational, etc.. You know… kewl song quotes. Anyway, I had a function I wrote when I started this site that grabbed random quotes from a file, but I never really used it. At first, the tagline up top and the title were going to use it, but the first time I loaded the page, it randomly picked “Put me out of my misery”, and that seemed to sum things up quite well, so I just kept it as that. Anyway, here’s a random song quotes dealie. I’ve noticed I’ve added quite a few Nine Inch Nails’ quotes the past month or so.. yeah. Something worthwhile later..

I’m sitting here in my living room. It’s Friday night, about 10:30. I’ve just started watching A River Runs Through It. (So far, it’s about fishing. If you’ve not done so already, quick go and read Andy’s Blog, because it’s excellent.

Okay, so a little “here’s what I’ve been up to” stuff. I said I was going to talk about the lan party, so I’ll do that first. So I got the house all set up (well, vacuumed and picked up, anyway), then around 10ish Alan showed up, followed by Joel and Adam. Adam had brought a table, so we got that situated in the living room, then started trying to figure out how we would get everyone to fit. Joel kindly pointed out on more than one occasion that I hadn’t planned very well. Anyway, there was the possibility of 8 people showing up (Alan, Andy, Adam, Jay, Joel, BDF, Jho, and Dave), so the quest was to find enough spots to fit them all. After some doing, we did indeed have enough spots… we just didn’t have enough chairs. A few phone calls later we were all set, and the gaming began. The games were quite good, with some actual teamwork and strategy developing in time. There were some truly epic battles, including one overtime match that much have lasted nearly a half an hour, and featured the outstanding, game-saving efforts of a lowly bot: Lockdown. Zooming instagib is pure joy, and much fun was had by all. As the day wound down, it was down to Jho, Dave, Joel, and myself. We continued to play for a few hours, then Jho and Dave jetted, and I got the house back to normal, and then Joel and I went of to Max and Ermas for dinner, which was good. The rest of Saturday is a blur, mainly because my memory sucks.

Sunday was church. Afterwards I ended up talking to Christy for quite some time, then heading off to the Veldhof’s for another fine Sunday dinner. Afterwards, it was home, then a nap, then I tried to reteach myself Java for a while. So far, that hasn’t been going so good. We’ll see if that project ever gets completed. Monday was work, then Cathy came over in the evening,and so Robb, Swac, and I hung out with her that evening. Near midnight, she decided she desired pancakes, so Robb and I joined her at Steak and Shake for pancakes, and shakes, and cheesy fries. It was good. Tuesday night the roads sucked, big time. The drive to the Pick took 45 minutes, and the drive back took a full hour. But it was worth it, as I had a good time with Alan, Joel, and Adam that evening. I’ve discovered that I drive better in the snow if I’m on the phone. (less overcompensation). Wednesday I got to work from home on account of the snow [and there was much rejoicing]. In the evening I hopped over to Steve and Julie’s place for Ed, then we played 9-5-2 for more than an hour. Thursday evening my parents were in town to celebrate my nephew, Steven’s 2nd birthday. So the whole family (Mom, Dad, Jeff, Rebecca, Steven, Amy, Kristin, and myself) got together, and went out to Ruby Tuesdays for Supper, then headed back to Jeff and Rebecca’s place for a while. When I got back home, Swac, Mandace, and I watched Friday. Quality. Then today was work, then I returned home, and played Metroid Prime for a few hours. A River Runs Through It is now over, and the verdict is in: It was about fishing.

So I fell asleep. Not exactly sure how, but I just woke up, and it’s tomorrow, so I’m pretty positive that I did, in fact, fall asleep. That’s becoming more common these days. A lesser man would likely say it’s a sign that I’m not getting enough sleep at night, and ought to do something about it, but I’ve decided it’s just low grade narcolepsy, and must be fought with caffeine and late night movie viewings.

My friend, Jeff Bandstra, is getting married in a couple of months. So are my friends Brad and Heather. And my good friend Kenton is getting married quite soon. [While searching thehollandsentinel.net for their engagement announcement, I found out every other guy from my old youth group, and the majority of my high school class (and the year below me) is also getting married, so I stopped looking.] So a lot of people are getting married, and as the spring and summer start up, it’ll start the whole “marriage season” up again, where weekend plans revolve around if you do or do not have a wedding to go to, and that’s all fine and good. It’ll be good to hang out with my friends in Illinois/Indiana at Jeff’s wedding, and I’ve been waiting for Kenton to get married for a while now, as his relationship has seemed like match made in heaven since the start. What makes these weddings different from most of the other weddings I’ve been to is this: I was right there when the relationship started. The only other wedding like that that I can recall being at was my cousin Steve’s. And it’s both kinda nice (you’ve got that memory of the person before the relationship, and now get to see them go full circle), and kinda strange (well, what the hell have I been doing the past 2,3,4,5, years then?!) The entire Illiana crew is engaged or married now, and when I met them, Steve was engaged, but everyone else pretty much had nothing going. and we’d sit around talking about how we wanted to meet someone, and trying to figure out what we could do. Guess they figured it out.

My friend, Christa, sent me some music by Gary Jules, and it is just plain excellent. Some of you will recall that Gary Jules is the guy that did the cover of Mad World at the end of Donnie Darko. I’ve been listening to him nonstop since getting the cds yesterday. Just another example of why Christa rules, I guess. Besides my little sister, and possibly my cousin, Sven [both of whom have a bloodline connection to me that makes ditching me more difficult], I think Christa is the person I’ve talked to the most in my entire life.. which is kinda funny considering I’ve never heard her voice. Anyway, the fact that after 8+ years of experiencing my insanity she doesn’t run and hide when I show up online is both amazing and very much appreciated. The CDs are excellent, Christa :) Thanks

Today was going to be my nephew’s birthday party, but I just got a call from Jeff saying they are all sick again, and it’s been canceled. So now’s my chance to make some big plans… but as the phone has not been kind of me, I’m feeling a day of cleaning, Metroid Prime, and Deep Space Nine coming on. We’ll see.