Thunder of Wade

I dreamed last night that my family had moved back into together and back into the first house we lived in while in Illinois – a big 2 story farmhouse. It was christmas time and mom was busy decorating the house – and unfortunatly woke up the ancient vampiric horde that had moved into the basement. I carved myself a couple of nice wooden stakes, hardened them in the fireplace and went hunting. My sister went the Palidin route and was in charge of the holy water. She prepped a big red bucket of the stuff and we doused the head vampire before I moved in for the staking. Crossing the two stakes held him at bay, then I staked him and used the second stake to pound it in. Worked pretty well and I didn’t have to worry about a hammer. Unfortunatly, instead of turning all the ohter vampires back to normal, killing the head vampire only pissed off the rest of them. We spent the rest of the dream on the hunt through the house and then the rest of the town. I was exausted when I woke up.

Back to work…

So, I was over at my ex-roommate’s mom’s place – putting plastic on her windows. She’d been wanting me to do it and though I usually call first, this time I just stopped by after my post halloween hair-cut.

I had the double-stick tape in place and was trying to get the plastic unfolded when my ex-roommate pulled up to deliver some fish to his mom from the resturant where he works. We talked for a bit and he helped a little with the plastic, but it was….

It was the kind of awkward of two people who were friends, but haven’t seen each other in ten years and realize that they don’t have anything in common anymore.

I could tell the converstation was struggling, so I asked “How are your boys doing?” – which should have been a fountain of topics for most parents.

His reply was “Oh, you know how they are.”

Except that I didn’t – I haven’t seen them in a year and I was asking. I realized then that it was over – if he wasn’t willing to share even the most simple of topics, we couldn’t really communicate.

I was still working on getting the plastic in place when he announced he was leaving. He said his good-byes – leaving me to finish put the plastic over his mom’s windows. I finished up my work fairly quickly – I’ve done this several years in a row – and headed out too.

I think I need to distance myself from his mom and his grandmother a bit more – until he makes an effort to seek me out again, I don’t think I want to run into him. It was just too awkward.

In other news…man, work has really sucked this week. And it was a short week for me at that. I’ve been swamped pretty much all the time and I keep getting these big projects with impossible deadlines. I guess it’s job security, but man – I’ve been hopping. And I found myself clenching my teeth in a meeting. Not good.

But, hey, it’s Friday. And I’ve got no major plans for the weekend. Maybe I’ll clean out my closets and do a little woodcarving.

For now, though, it’s back to work…

On Monday, I took the day off and made my annual campus tour – in costume. One of my favorite days of the year, I usually make my rounds and try and visit as many of my on campus friends. This year, I apparently didn’t plan as well and missed quite a few people. I was also easily distracted and ended up back-tracking a bit.

Here’s a link to more detail and pictures:

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~aws/costume.html

I had a blast – again – and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Got some good reactions from people walking on campus – and a few people that were too “cool” to react. I mean, how could you not react?

I also clanked my way through the library and apparently disturbed a girl that was studying. She took one look at me and turned back to her book with a “sniff” of disdain. I just shook my head as I went on past – wondering if she had ever been a child. It’s freaking Halloween – enjoy it!

My ankles are still pretty sore, but I’m getting better. And really, a little suffering for my art is fine by me – it’s only one day and it’s always fun.

That’s it for now – time to get back to work…

Got a few links for you:

http://video.uakron.edu:81/ramgen/zippy/attachment_disorder.rm
http://video.uakron.edu:81/ramgen/zippy/the_trash_man.rm
http://video.uakron.edu:81/ramgen/zippy/password_patty.rm

staring your’s truely. My film debut – I’ll be on imdb.com before you know it.

I’m ready to go for halloween – and no, I’m not going as a nerd. That would be too easy.

That’s it for now – back to work…

You may want to grab a soda and sit back for this one – it was a really long day yesterday and lots of stuff happened. Here we go…

Got to work early with all the stuff I needed for our CyberSecurity Awareness day. Headed out with the crew to the Student Union to help set things up – and mostly held balloons and watched eveyone’s stuff. Then I grabbed my bag and headed for the restroom – to make my transformation into Zack Geekis – computer nerd. And the hero of the three videos we did for the event. Once fully nerded up, I sat down at the Prize Wheel ™ and talked to people for about 4 hours. I gave away a lot of prizes once we got the sytem down and made a few people’s day.

When my shift was up, I headed back to the restroom to de-nerd. And, incidentally, I should have gotten some kind of hazzard pay for what was going on in the other stalls while I was in there.

Grabbed some lunch, ran into some friends from the HelpDesk, and headed back to work – only to get a call that posters and buttons were needed at another location on campus. Since I had no way to contact those at the Student Union, I put my coat back on and headed back over to pick up the items and make a delivery.

Back to the office again for some more work and a little problem solving, then out the door at my regular time. First stop, comic book shop for some reading material, then over to Burger King. This is where things started to fall apart.

The clerk atBK was friendly enough, but very difficult to understand as she tended to slur her words together. The portions were smaller than I expected for my afternoon snack, which worried me a bit as I usually need some food in my stomach to keep from getting sick when giving blood.

Food in my belly, I headed out again to the public library where the blood drive was being held. I got there at about 5:10 pm and went in the front door where the signs were. Unfortuantly, that was the end of the signs. Once inside the library there was no indication that a blood drive was going on. I searched the first floor, then headed to the basement – which was distressingly under construction. Back up to the first floor, then outside to see if they were having a blood mobile instead. No luck. Back inside and to the information desk – where people cut in front of me and generally ignored my existance. Then over to the check out desk where I waited in line for a couple of minutes before I finally was able to ask someone – and they had to look it up. I was told it was downstairs and that I should just follow the yellow footprints on the floor.

Yes, that was my sole navigational aid.

Guided by the footprints, I made my way back downstairs and went past the “under construction – do not enter” signs to the meeting room – and the blood mobile.

It was now 5:25 and I sat down to wait. They had a line of people 7 deep waiting to give histories, one person taking the histories, and one person actually taking the donations. Not a good sign. Fortunatly, I had plenty of paper with me and proceeded to fold.

And then I noticed that it was taking longer to go through the history than it was to actually give the blood. Never seen that before and clearly the person in that area was the bottleneck. So, we waited. A few people left to get magazines and come back. One guy simply lefft.

At 6:30, I was finally called to do my history thing. And it took forever, even though they got some more people working. They also had trouble with my new vs. old card as the system wasn’t reading my double red donations.

Finally, over to the donation area. Being an old hat at this, I didn’t expect any trouble. I’m apparently a fool.

The needle hurt going in and kept hurting. I kept my mouth shut since the only resolution is to move the needle – and that usually just makes it worse. I did my squeezing and focused on the task at hand – going through at my usual pace. Finished up when I expected and the tech went to fill the little tubes. And that was a problem. The little clamp/spout/needle they use to put the blood in the tubes wasn’t working – even after she fiddled around with it for a few minutes. She called in the other guy that was working there to help out when he was done with his people. He fiddled around with it too and couldn’t get them to go.

So, he gave up and she started to do the wrap up procedures. She seemed disappointed – and then told me that it since they couldn’t get the tubes filled, they couldn’t use the blood.

Well, there was no freaking way I was going to let that happen. Not after all that. So, I suggested that they use the other arm and get the tubes done. She seemed plesantly surprised that I volunteered for that and then had me switch sides so the other guy could do the tubes – we was apparently better at than she was. Well, no duh.

I think we freaked the people in the room out a little since it looked like I was set to give yet another pint. The guy started to work on getting the tubes filled and the needle he used hurt far worse than the regular one. Finally done – two arms, two bandages. I got out of there with a small can of pineapple juice and a sigh of relief. I’m still going to give blood next time around, but I can’t say this was a good experience.

But, there’s more. A friend of mine and I went out to grab a late dinner and on the way back to my place he looked in the rearview mirror and swore. The car behind us was dangerously close. While we watched, it slammed on the brakes, then accelerated. Then it weaved from one curb to the other and finally slammed into a parked car on the side of the street. We were half a block away when we saw this, and quickly pulled over and when to check on the driver.

The woman that got out of the car, dusty from the airbags and dazed from the impact, was also totally wasted. When we asked if she was okay, she said “no, I’m really drunk”. The car was totaled and the noise alerted the damaged car’s owner – who came out while someone else called the police. My friend shut off her car – since she’d gotten out and left it running – then tried to get her out of the street. She wandered around despite our best efforts – and kept asking for us to give her back her keys so she could call her boyfriend. We gave them back to her, since it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere. Even with her keys in hand, she kept insisting that we give them back so she could make a call.

The police arrived a few minutes later and my friend gave me his keys to drive his car out of the way and back to my place – only a couple of blocks down the road. He stayed to give a report to the police and I played video games until he got back.

So, over the course of one day I:

1. was a movie star and game show host
2. gave blood from both arms
3. witnessed a car accident

Heck, I’m tired again just writing about it. Better get back to work so I can rest up.

later…

So, I went for a walk last night to get some contact solution at the drug store – and then I decided to stop at McDonald’s for dinner. Which is nearly always a mistake, but I figured that I could get a quick bite to eat and escape with minimal damage. While I was ordering, I accidentally caught my laundry wound on the edge of my pocket and started bleeding again. I was still waiting for my food when I realized the blood was running down my finger. I grabbed some napkins and managed not to bleed on the floor. The fries weren’t ready, but they said they would bring them over to me.

So, I sat down with my book and started eating. The sandwichs were, to my surprise, prepared correctly. To my further surprise, they actually tasted good. Amazing.

And then the timer on the fryer went off. The strident beeping could be heard throughout the resturant. And it was unending. Not like a microwave that will eventually shut itself up – these just keep beeping and beeping. It was bad enough that I couldn’t read. And you know it’s got to be bad if I can’t read.

My sister has complained about this in the past – she has very sensitive hearing. My hearing isn’t as good as hers, but I’m more easily annoyed now that I’m a little older.

I ate more quickly than I would I have liked and pretty much gave up on the book. Could have been a good experience, but the assault on my ears was too much. I’m really glad I don’t work there.

Back to work…

I worked on my halloween costume over the weekend – well, mostly Sunday since that was the only day with nice weather and I had to work outside. No hints on this one – you’ll just have to wait. It’s going pretty well, but it’s more work than I expected – and a bit more expensive.

In other news – I had a laundry related injury last night. I was getting my clothes out of the washer and saw something shiny at the bottom. I lunged for the quarter that must have fallen out of a pocket during the wash and slammed my knuckle into the washer hub – hard enough to break the skin. I got the money anyway – then had to hurry and get it cleaned up and bandaged before I bled all over my clean laundry.

It was sad and pathetic.

Back to work…

When I started my blog it was a small kinda thing, just me and a journal of sorts that I linked from my site. After a while I decided to turn on comments, and later still I decided to let my blog be refernced by blogger – meanings that it would show up on their lists and people all over the world could randomly visit and read what I had to say.

Unfortuntly, this also attracted comment spam – people that set up programs to automatically dump bogus comments into blogs with link so they get a higher page rank. Wankers. So, I had to take some time yesterday to clean those up and set the blog to send me email if someone adds a comment – valid or otherwise.

I guess my little blog and I have finally arrived if the spambots have found us. I’ll try to keep it clear of the spam and keep on writing weird stuff that happens.

In other news… you know, I don’t think I really think I have much in the way of news. So, I think I’ll stop right here.

Back to work…

I was headed up campus yesterday to reboot a server (hey, I’m all about pushing buttons) and I saw a protest/demonstration was going on along the commons. There were several college age student looking people holding signs and flags. I was in a hurry so I didn’t stop to get the full drift of the protest – but I think it was something about “Obey Jesus – Start War!”

Which, clearly, makes no sense. I think they were trying to be ironic – which is fine in casual conversation and bumper stickers – but in a protest if a person has to stop and figure out what you’re talking about, well, they most likely won’t stop.

The bigger problem is that even if they had been straight-forward in their message, it wouldn’t have mattered. I think I agree with their convoluted message so far as I believe that war itself doesn’t really ever solve anything – but I feel no more strongly about it now that I know I have the support of a few loud college students that can make signs. And if I thought war was a good idea – would they have been able to sway my thinking?

Not likely.

If they had made the local news, had the story picked up nationally, been in a report that sat on the president’s desk, would it have mattered?

Besides the point that we’re not really sure he knows how to read – I don’t think it would have mattered there either. A college campus protest does not set national policy.

Maybe it mattered to the students with the signs. Maybe it gave them a sense of community and helped them hold onto their ideals. And maybe they’ll end up in a position of power at some point in their lives and will be able to make a differnce.

As for me, well, I had to go push a button and get some lunch.

I guess that’s all I’ve got to say on that particular subject – so, time to get back to work…

It takes quite a bit to get me really angry – but I’m very frequently annoyed. Very. Frequently.
And I’ve found myself, well, growling at people. Well, not actually at them. Just in the back of my throat. I don’t think anyone has heard me do this and I’m not sure how I’d react or what I’d say. Case in point… yesteday, in the student union (and this happens more freqently in a crowd) I was trying to accomplish what should have been the simple task of going up the stairs to get some lunch. While trying to navigate the crowds – which were formidable – I also had to contend with this guy moving slowly and aimlessly in the middle of the hallway. I saw him from a distance and tried to plan a route past him – but his random wanderings were aligned with my path despite my best efforts and I pretty much had to stop and wait for him to move past before I could proceed. As soon as I got an opening, I took it – growling low in my throat as I went past him.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m all for quiet comtemplation and a slow pace – where it’s appropiate. Museum, park, forrest trail – all valid. Crowded building with uninspired arcitecture? Nope, let’s hustle, people. Nothing to see here. Move it along. Hence the growling.

In other news – I’ve been doing a little running the past couple of days. It’s been too long and I’m out of shape, but at least I’m out there trying. It’s about 15 minutes of running and walking – which is not very much. Still, gotta start somewhere. If I can get in the habit of doing this – then I’m more likely to get a treadmill and use it when the weather turns cold and I can’t run outside. Well, I guess I could run outside in the winter, but that’s a little more insane than I’m willing to be.

I also did a little cleaning/organizing/ de-crappifing my apartment. Tomorrow will be a year to the day when I kicked out my former room-mate – I think a little clearing out is in order.

Work has kinda sucked the past few days, but I’m getting through it. And that’s about it. So, I should get back to the grind…