Thunder of Wade

One of my favorite books – Snow Crash – has a character that gets weapons past all kinds of security by making them out of glass. His favorites are glass knives and harpoons. So, in keeping with my bad-ass image of making my own weapons, I decided to make a glass knife. I had some glass left over from a stained glass project and carefully chipped it into shape- then made a wooden holder and wrapped it with some leather code to hold it into place. Not a bit of metal in it. Now, I’m not going to try and sneak it past a metal detector, but it was an interesting exercise.

And it works too – while I was putting it together I accidentally cut my finder on the edge and got a good bleeding going. Direct pressure and a band-aid took care of it – but it was a somewhat dangerous weekend for me. The tattoo still hasn’t finished healing, I got the glass cut, and I cut my self shaving last evening. No hospital trips, so I’m doing okay.

Been playing a fun game on the computer – Divine Divinity. The title has really nothing to do with the game, it’s a standard hack and slash adventure RPG. Lots of fun though and the quests are interesting. I’ve gotten my butt kicked several times, but I’m playing a lot more methodically and working my way through the orc army. I’m also saving more frequently, which is helping with my temper when my computer crashes.

Speaking of which, I had to download another fix for Norton anti-virus. Buggiest piece of software I’ve seen in a long time. It kept shutting down with a cryptic error message – I finally tracked it down and got the fix installed.

A pretty quiet weekend otherwise, watched some DVD’s and did some reading. Oh, and I made some soap too.

later…

My room-mate and I ended up lost over the weekend – not my fault and I don’t want to go into it – but the main part of the story is that we ended up in an area with a very large number of churches. A disproportionally high number – must have been 12-15 within a mile radius. Not just a few one-room-here-drink-this-kool-aid places, there was a huge church and a good sized catholic church as well. My first thought – doubtlessly from years of too much Stephen King and Clive Barker – was “something terrible must have happened here”. Couldn’t figure why else there would be so many churches in a small area like this.

On the drive into work I saw some new graffiti – stenciled onto a support post under a bridge. Normally, I’m pretty disdainful of stenciled graffiti – if you’re going to be a vandal, at least be creative about and do your own work – but this was pretty clever. It said “Waste of Paint”.

Springtime around here means a weird mix of warmth and cold. The weekend was nice and I got a little sun. Spring also means mulch and the campus is covered in it. It looks great, but the entire campus smells like manure. At headache inducing levels. Still, the mulch will stay and the smell will fade, so I guess we can wait it out.

One of the grounds crew was doing a little sweeping up as I came in this morning. I said hello and she responded with a very cheery hello right back. I came inside and said hello to one of my colleagues – who completely ignored me. There are several in the building that do that. They don’t make eye contact and they don’t respond. I mean, I know we’re geeks and all, but at least say hello or something. sheesh.

My tattoo is not healing well. I think the return to swimming was soon and it’s still irritated and scabbing. I put some neosporin on it last night and wrapped it – I’m hoping it gets better today. I brought my gear, but I think I may skip my swim.

I played a new game over the weekend – divine divinity. Standard RPG, but only three classes. I started off with the “thief” – though they call it the “survivor”. I did okay, but only by chugging potions every time I fought a monster. Decided to start again with the warrior and I’m kicking a lot more ass – I’m also better at solving the quests and I haven’t failed any of those yet.

Watched a couple movies over the weekend – Hitman and Black Sheep. Really good stuff. Hitman was a lot of fun – pretty good, if simple, story and lots of great action and explosions. Black Sheep was scary, gross, and funny. Very funny in some parts. Genetically engineered carnivore sheep, were-sheep, mad scientists, plucky hero with a sheep-phobia – what’s not to love?

Finally, I watched 30 Days of Night last week. Really good show – one of the best vampire flicks I’ve seen in a long time.

Guess that’s it for now. I’m not really looking forward to work this week, but I’ll get through it.

later…

I took my room-mate to the doctor this morning – he was going for a colonoscopy. He was doing fine after the procedure – but we decided to call the recovery area the “snoring and farting ward”. For obvious reasons. I had taken him for an endoscopy a few weeks back – it was only fair since he had helped me when I had my weapon-grade migraine a while back.

I hit the pool today after I got in and had our weekly meeting. The pool was configured the long way again and though I did my standard equivalent of 30 laps, I was pretty tired at the end. My arm is a little sore too for some reason, but I’m still glad I could get it in.

On the way back to the office, I witnesses the following sight:

A white guy. In a light, metallic purple (let’s just call it lavender, okay?) 4 door car that wasn’t a Taurus, but might as well have been. He was blasting rap music out of his speakers and “singing” along with it a the top of his lungs.

I wanted to lure him out of his car with some snacks, tag him with a radio collar to track his movements, and get him into some kind of counseling program to help him figure out exactly how he got to this point in his life. It was disturbing and sad.

That’s it for now… time to head on out.

I went to my FRM’s youngest son’s soccer game today. It was – as I expected – a blast. The little dude scored a goal early on, then switched teams since they didn’t have enough players. On his new team – he scored another goal. I was way impressed – his mom says he likes soccer a lot and is having more fun with it than basketball since he gets to wear his “fast shoes”.

I also found out the my FRM’s oldest son is going to have a child of his own. The little soccer player’s mom was trying to convince FMR’s mom to bury the hatchet when her great-grandchild is born for a 5 gen family photo – but she wasn’t interested. Crazy people.

I got a headache yesterday evening – all the warning signs and the inevitable decline. I took some strong aspirin and went to bed early, but it came back this morning. It’s been with me off and on today, but I think another nap might get rid of it.

I sealed up my tax envelops today and apparently just missed the mail-man. Oh well, Monday is soon enough.

Last thing, funny story… When I was waiting to get my tattoo, a woman and her small son were in there in the waiting room as well – I think she was getting her nose pierced. Anyway, I was folding some paper and he can came over and said hello to me. So, I said hello back. His mother called him back over – I guess she thought he might have been bothering me or something. She said to him, “Now you know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers unless they have candy,”

Which I thought was clever and funny.

That’s it for now… nap time.

I worked a little late yesterday and hung around the area since I had two evening appointments – taxes and a tattoo. I left the office a little after 6:30 and headed over to H&R block to pick up the city taxes that they couldn’t do the day before since their “city program” was down. They had everything ready and explained a few things before I left.

I did notice later a flaw in what they’d done. One of the city taxes was missing the w-2 since they’d give me one the day before and only had 3 left – and needed four for the 2 cities, the fed and state. Easily fixed, but it could have been bad had I not caught it.

So, since the tattoo place was right next door to the tax place, I was seriously early. Which turned out to be a very good thing.

The tattoo artist – Sam (samantha) – told me that she had tried to call me. Which didn’t mean anything to me since I’d give them my home number and hadn’t been home yet. She made a quick call, then started me on the paper work while she had a cigarette and washed her hands. When we were both ready, she took me back to the studio and made the simple modifications to the wrist tattoo I have. (I’ll get photos when it’s healed up). I paid at the front counter and got the after-care instructions.

When I got home, my room-mate was surprised that I’d been able to get it done. Sam had called my apartment and spoken to my room-mate – telling him she had to leave right then and wouldn’t be able to keep the appointment. He said he would try to contact me by work phone and email – but couldn’t guarantee anything. This all happened at just after 6:00 – after I was already on my way. Everything worked out okay -but it was a much closer thing than I realized.

That’s about it for now…

I took a 1/2 day last Friday and – after my swim – got on the road to go visit my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and my grandmother for the weekend. I got there in time to have dinner at my sister’s – she makes really good soup – and we went to their church for an Easter program. Not really my cup of tea -but it was okay. The only bad parts were the fog machine – which started at the beginning and did a number on my sinuses – and the woman sitting behind us that had marinated in perfume. The fog machine also did a number on the smoke alarms – they went off during one of the songs. At first I thought the strobe lights were some kind of effect, but it was just the fog machine.

I don’t know if the fog was the trigger, but I was pretty miserable on Saturday. Bad enough that I took some Alka-Seltzer plus – despite the horrible taste. We just kinda hung out for the rest of the weekend – though Mom did take me to a scrapbooking store for some cool paper.

I was sick enough on Monday to take the day off and slept most of the time. When I was awake, I did a whole lot of nothing.

This afternoon I took my tax stuff over to H&R Block. My main goal was to get the city stuff done since that was the most confusing. Their city program was down and it looks like I’ll have to stop back tomorrow. I also stopped to make an appointment to get a little work done on a tattoo – just want to add a little to it. I think they were disappointed that I wasn’t having a back-piece done, but that’s I want. I’ll do that tomorrow.

I used the elliptical last night for the first time since the latest fix. It made some weird and unsettling noises, but it held up for the 15 minutes I used it. We’ll see how that goes.

That’s it for now…

Went out to dinner last night at Macaroni Grill. Normally, one of my favorite restaurants – but this visit was less than stellar. For one, the bread. The bread at the Grill is awesome – that’s the only word to describe it. Say it with me: Awesome. This time? Not so awesome. A little overbaked and bland.

Next, the Simple Salmon. I’m going to quote right from the menu on this one:

“Simple Salmon: Seasoned grilled salmon fillet served with grilled tender-crisp asparagus and broccoli.”

Now, do you see the words “Covered in uncooked chunks of tomato” anywhere in that description?

Neither did I, but that was the reality I faced. I was able to scrap them off onto my bread plate (since I didn’t need that, clearly) and work past them. Still “tainted” my fish, but a bunch of lemon juice squeezed from the lemon in my tea helped a bit.

The server kept breezing past us, asking if everything was okay – but leaving before we could give an answer.

Will I go back? Most likely. The asparagus and the broccoli were good and the fish was okay. But I’m going to be more particular and insist on a really Simple Salmon.

I’ve got a busy and hopefully short day ahead of me – better get back to it.

I bought some new shoes yesterday. There were on sale at Target. That’s pretty much it for that topic

I had a memory ‘brown-out’ on Monday as I was getting ready for my swim. I took my hair/body wash out of my back and set it in my locker – then looked in the bag and was puzzled for a moment as to where I’d put the bottle – even going so far as to think I’d left it at home. Then I turned back to the locker and saw it. Then I started looking in the locker for my towel and wondered how I was going to dry off without a towel, already dreading having to use the air dryers. Then I turned and looked on the bench to see the towel I had set there. My memory is usually pretty good – it was disconcerting to have it display the small failures.

I swam a mile yesterday. Wasn’t really planning on going that far, but I was feeling pretty good and decided to go for it.

Finished up a book last night – and was very disappointed. The storyline was charging along, really a fun read and then the book just sort of stopped with huge amounts of plot unresolved. On the last page – “Book One of The Fourth Realm”. It’s a series? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Now I’ve got to wait for the next one.

That’s it for now… later…

I had a fragment of a dream this morning where the instant a person woke up would anchor them into a particular alternate reality. For example, waking up at 6:16 every morning meant you were always in the same reality. If you woke up a little early or a little late – say 6:14 or 6:17 – you’d be in a slightly different version of the universe, but close enough to your own that most things were familiar. If you over slept until 8 or 9 o’clock, you’d be very lost and confused – same as if you woke up early. And you’d be stuck until your next sleep cycle.

Might make for a good story.

I also had an idea for a story about a coin that controlled probability. If you made a statement – like ‘If heads, then the sky is green’ and flipped the coin – and if it came up heads, the sky would turn green. Seems really dangerous – which is always good for a story.

back to work…

I just when to the vending machine and tried to purchase a delicious Twix bar. I must have hit the wrong numbers or the machine is hosed, but I got a Nature Valley Oats ‘N Honey bar instead.

I’m going to eat it anyway since I’m hungry, but I’m still cranky about it.