Personal

One of the PROJECTS I took care of when I was visiting home was installing a new scanner for dad that had a slide attachment on it. Apparently at some point in the past, someone decided that slides were “the thing”, so dad now has a huge number of slide carousels down in the garage.

Now that he has a scanner that can see them, he’s been going through and adding a lot of old photos to the family photo album. I love seeing these — it’s so fun to go through shots of my folks when they were around my age (or younger — as in this photo, taken at age 20 at their wedding rehearsal dinner).

I’m sure there are more coming, but right now, dad’s added pictures of mom and dad in college, dad in R.O.T.C., their wedding rehearsal dinner, and their wedding.

“Sheep” by Pink Floyd from the album Animals Trance Remixes (1995, 16:03).

I’ve made it to the end of my first week on “banking hours”, and you know…I think I just might be able to get used to this. While I’m still definitely no great morning person, it hasn’t been quite as difficult forcing myself out of bed when the alarm goes off at 6:30am as I was afraid it might, and I’m definitely enjoying both getting off work at 5pm and working this close to home. These days, I can walk out of work, hit the corner store on the way back to the apartment, and still be home by 5:15pm. Not bad at all.

The job’s been interesting this week, too. As my new position is primarily administrative and organizational — accepting jobs from the company I’m placed at, setting them up, and then sending them off to one of our main stores to be printed, after which they’re returned to me and I deliver them to the clients — I’ve been spending each day with a few hours at the new position and a few hours at one of the two stores I’ll be working most closely with, to give me some time to meet the people I’ll be working with when I send orders over for printing. Many of these people I’d spoken do on the phone at one time or another, but it’s been good to put faces to names, and to spend some time getting to know them a bit better than just over the phone.

Another benefit I’ve found to having evenings open — socialization! When I was getting off work at 9pm and not making it home until around 10:15pm on my old schedule, there just wasn’t a whole lot going on outside of the bar or club circuit (which I enjoy, but I’m not about to do every night). With real evenings free, though, there are a lot more opportunities. Wednesday evening I got together with some of the guys from work at the Elysian brewery up the street (though I’ve never been a beer drinker, the food and soda were just fine), and last night Rick came over and hung out for a while. Aside from my evenings out at the Vogue or Prairie coming in on the weekends, I’ve had something of a hermit life for the past few years since I moved down to Seattle — maybe it’s about time for that to change, huh?

All in all, while the mornings are still a little rough, I think this is definitely going to be a positive change.

“Candyman Collapse (Radio Version)” by Connelly, Chris from the album Afterburn: Wax Trax! Records ’94 and Beyond (1994, 3:55).

One definite disadvantage to switching up to the 8am-5pm schedule I’m on now.

As it’s more of a “normal” workday schedule, and there’s a lot of other people who operate at these hours, it’s a lot more difficult to get a consistent water temperature in the shower in the morning.

Aaaahhhh, the joys of apartment living!

“Airport Hell” by Rollins, Henry from the album Think Tank (1998, 14:35).

My Life by Mike Hanscom

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Just jotting some stuff down for the moment — while I’m technically not entirely cut off from the ‘net while I’m visiting, I’m not spending a ton of time online. I keep bouncing between the “it’s vacation, you don’t need to jump on the computer every minute” thought and the urge to know EVERYTHING THAT’S GOING ON EVERYWHERE RIGHT NOW urge that comes from being connected nearly 24/7 at home. ‘Net addict? Me? Naaaaaaaaahhhh…

(twitch)

Friday: Decent flight into Anchorage. Parents picked me up and ran me home, then I went out to hit VINL. Chatted with a few random people (including a group of late-teens who liked the kilt, some of whom were visiting Anchroage from Seattle and actually knew the Utilikilt brand). Home, bed.

Saturday: Realized that while I had a lot of e-mail and IM addresses, I had very few current phone numbers. Went to Title Wave to find Stacey, who gave me James’ number, which led me to James, Marc, and Laura. Hung out with them for a bit, then home. That evening, out and about to Mad Myrna’s (Anchorage’s one gay bar) and ‘Koots with James, Marc, Laura, Matthias, Wolfie, Moose, Erika, Erika’s brother, and Sue.

Sunday: Church in the morning with my folks, then going through lots of old family pictures in the afternoon. Evening spent at Royce’s apartment with Royce, Stephanie, Rod, and Brian. Much fun was had, including a few moments of sheer and utter absurdity leaving Royce and me with tears in our eyes from laughing, while everyone else kept chatting around us, waiting for us to get done. Man, I’ve missed that.

Monday: Random around-town wanderings to take pictures. Chatted with Dan “The Man” LaPan, owner of Subterranea, for a while about his difficulties making money and possible plans to close the store — which would suck. Subterranea is hands down the single best goth/punk/industrial “underground” store I’ve seen, for both price and selection, easily beating any of the places I’ve poked around in even in Seattle. Unfortunately, it’s the same old story: everybody loves it, everybody wants it to stay open forever, nobody will actually spend any money there. More ranting on this later, quite possibly. Evening at home, then coffee with Erika.

Tuesday: Still in progress. Took mom to work, and got more family history documents. Figuring plans out for the rest of the day. More to come…[and here it is.]{.underline} Ended up heading out to Wasilla to meet with Christina for lunch, then back into town. Bummed around the house for a bit…and, y’know, while I’m sure I did something later on that evening, I’ll be damned if I can remember just what it was. I’m sure it’ll come back to me eventually.

Wednesday: My dad’s 58th birthday. Spent most of the day here at home, doing various projects that mom had lined up for me — moving things around, emptying out storage containers, and consolidating a lot of old family pictures that had been collected from mom’s parents when they moved to a smaller apartment in their retirement home. Also dug up a ton of old photos of me, and — most frighteningly — a whole stack of letters and notes that had been passed back and forth between my friends and I back in high school. Eeep! Birthday dinner for dad at Lone Star, then off to VI to chat with Richard. Ran into Crystal (of the White Truck) there, gave her a ride home after she got off work, and then home.

Thursday: Took mom to work, then bummed around home again for a bit. Met up with Mary for a while and caught up on her life after she got home from work. Picked mom up from work, home for dinner and attempting to help dad install a new mouse and a slide scanner on his ‘puter (mouse worked fine, slide scanner seems to be junk). Off to VI to kill a little time, and ran into Jimmy, who let me know that Kayt is back in town &dmash; will try to hook up with her tomorrow. Then down to meet Laura at Myrna’s, where Adri usually shows up for karaeoke…and, of course, she never showed, though I did get her phone numbers, so I can try her tomorrow too. Watched people slaughter songs fora while, and now I’m home again. Two more days to go…

[Last update…]{.underline}

Friday: Another mostly-at-home day, listening to a good portion of the family vinyl collection. One of my major PROJECTS at some point will be shipping a veritable ton of this stuff down to Seattle, getting a turntable, and encoding it all. For now, though, sitting at home and listening to it made for a very pleasant afternoon. Evening with Erika, Deven, Luann and Ethan, first with dinner at VI, then just hanging out and chatting at Erika’s house.

Saturday: Finished up some of mom’s PROJECTS here. Got things packed up and ready to go, then over to Marc and Laura’s to meet up with them, Richard, James, Chris, and Mercedes for general hangout time, complete with games of Cranium and Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit. Again, much hilarity. Headed home, made sure I really had everything packed (doing things in two sweeps is the only way I have any chance of remembering it all, and even then I’m likely to leave something behind), and now I’m just waiting for Laura to come pick me up and run me out to the airport.

It’s been a great vacation…but I’ve got to admit, I’m definitely ready to head home and have a quiet day before heading back to work on Monday. I may sleep through most of it — my flight leaves Anchorage at 1am AK time, arrives in Seattle at about 5am Seattle time, and I generally can’t sleep on airplanes — but at least I don’t have to go straight to work directly upon landing!

So, that about wraps that up!

(Oh, and on the off chance that someone reads this in the next few hours and has nothing better to do, I’ll be coming into Seattle on Continental flight 1548, arriving at 5:09 AM, and wouldn’t refuse a ride home…)

In just a few short hours, i’ll be winging my way northward. I’ll be in Anchorage for the next week, from this evening until early next Sunday morning. As such, posting will likely be light, as ‘net access will likely be spotty. I won’t have access to my @michaelhanscom.com e-mail, but I do have web-based access to my @mac.com, @speakeasy.net, and @gmail.com accounts, and will be checking them when I can.

On the off chance there’s anyone in Anchorage who might have nothing better to do tonight than hang out at the airport, I’ll be arriving on Continental flight 1587, scheduled to show up at 11:40pm Ak time tonight.

Try not to mess this place up too much while I’m gone. ;)

Some days, the depths of my own stupidity really amazes me.

Last night, as part of my preparations for going on vacation for a week, I worked on straightening up the apartment a bit, primarily by utilizing the time-honored method of picking up stacks of old mail and papers, dumping them in garbage bags, and taking them out to the dumpster (it’s not as bad as it might sound — lots of clutter, very little actual filth — but my family has a long tradition of never letting any flat space go uncovered for more than about ten minutes, and the piles tend to build up after a while).

This morning, while in the shower, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t set my AdSense profit check from Google aside into a separate pile when I got it.

Oh.

Crap.

Finished my shower in record time, took a look around my apartment, and confirmed my fear — the check wasn’t anywhere around.

Let me tell you, crawling into your apartment’s dumpster to retrieve your trashbags from the night before — after other tenants had added their trash bags, not all of which were closed properly, if at all — and then standing next to the dumpster, ripping them open, and pawing through them trying to find one particular envelope is not an enjoyable way to start a day.

Luckily, though, not only had the trash not been picked up yet, but I was able to find the check (at the bottom of the second bag, naturally).

Man, that was icky, though.

Today’s just a two-shower morning, I guess.

[![iTunes]] “I Melt With You” by Modern English from the album Pillow Lips (1990, 3:55).

[iTunes]: http://images.apple.com/itunesaffiliates/logos/iTunes_sm_bdg61x15.png {width=”61″ height=”15″}