Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Made it to Seattle

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Well, I’m in Seattle. It may be a while before I am able to put another update on my page, unfortunately. I’m currently staying with some friends who have been kind enough to put my webserver and main work machine on their network, however due to their firewall, I’m not able to update my page from my own machines! Bleah. Hopefully this will be resolved fairly soon — I’m currently posting this from a machine at Kinko’s in downtown Seattle.

The trip down was fairly uneventful — a redeye flight where I didn’t want to turn on the reading light and disturb my seatmates, so — as I can’t sleep on airplanes — I spent the entire 3 hour flight zoning out to music. Oh, well. Got picked up at the airport by Dez and Chad, and have been staying with them and Casey at their apartment in the Ballard area.

My days have been spent bouncing between exploring the city (mostly in a ‘V’ from Ballard to Downtown to Capitol Hill and back), learning some of the layout and bus routes, and apartment hunting. I’ve been holding off on the job hunting a bit until I know where I’m going to be living, to avoid landing a job that I then find out is near-impossible to get to reliably.

Hopefully, the apartment situation will be resolved soon, however — I’ve put down a holding fee and submitted an application for a tiny little studio apartment just six blocks away from where I’m staying now. Now I’m just in the ‘hurry up and wait’ stage while the landlords go through my credit history, rental history, yadda yadda yadda — my least favorite part. Ugh.

So that’s the reader’s digest condensed cliffs notes version of the past week or so…I’ll try to get more up here when I can, but it may very well be sometime in July before I have my own reliable, steady, non-glitchy connection to the ‘net from my own place. Until then….

God of Ecstasy!

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My friend Aliena pointed me to Emode, a fun little site that has a ton of different personality-style tests on it. I took the “Are you a sex god?” test, and thought my results were hilarious — here’s how it rated me:

DIONYSUS, God of Ecstacy.

You are one sex-loving deity! And you sure know how to turn any bedroom into an unforgettable party for two. You are sensual and fun-loving, and you will do just about anything to get some play. You have an insatiable desire for sexual pleasure. You have a young, playful spirit that makes the bedroom your personal playground. Because you are housing a god within you who used orgies as a method of worship, you have no limits to your exploration. Your experimentation and lack of inhibition make your sex life all the more interesting. Your open-mindedness and irrepressible energy allow your sexual energy to keep going and going and going. And when the day is through, you’ve left a trail of satisfied mortals in your wake.

Hmmm…not bad, eh? Woohoo!

Catching up with old friends

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Most of the day was spent on getting some more bits ready to go. I went out (on another gorgeous day) and got my car IM’d and registered so it’s all legal to sell, as it looks like I’ve got a buyer. Kinda funny — the first time in about a year and a half that my car will be legally registered, and I’m only going to have it for probably a few more days. Ah, well…so things go in the life of a procrastinator, right? Anyway, got that done, then came home and did some more work on the room, but then got stalled when I realized I’d run out of boxes to actually put stuff in.

A while after I’d stalled on the room, James and Marc came over with their usual war cry — “We’re bored!” As always, none of us could really come up with anything amazingly interesting to do (fairly typical for Anchorage), and ended up just kicking back here at the house for a while, chatting and killing time with Rick, and then later Erika, Deven, and Don when they stopped by. As usual, I got more than my fair share of age-related cracks…somehow, being the ‘old man’ of this group of friends isn’t really all that good of a deal. Remember when kids were taught to respect their elders?

Well, okay, so neither do I, but it sure seems like a good idea sometimes. :)

Since Marc has the misfortune of needing to be up and awake at 3:30am for his job, we eventually all parted ways for the evening. Still stuck in the throes of boredom, James and I decided to head out and find something to do, and started by heading over to James and Marc’s apartment to let Marc crash out and get a change of shirt for James. When we got out of the apartment, however, I was greeted by the sight of two pranksters sitting in my car going through everything they could find — the one time I don’t lock my doors….

Luckily, it happened to be Royce and Rod. They’d stopped by the same apartment building to talk to another friend, and had noticed my car on their way out. As I’d left the door unlocked, they decided to have some fun — until I walked out and caught them red-handed. They decided to join James and I in our quest for ‘something to do,’ and the four of us ended up heading out to ‘koots, having a few drinks, and babbling for a while. Was quite nice — having known Royce since 4th grade (and yes, the rumors are true — Royce’s dad is responsible for gracing me with the nickname of “Woody”), and Rod since high school, I’d wanted to get a chance to see them both before I left. We spent a couple hours catching up, then took off.

After dropping James off back at his place and talking for a while longer there, I finally decided it was time to take myself home and fall over. So, here I am again, doing my usual late-night post before crashing out. Funny how these keep getting later and later — I knew that as soon as I wasn’t working, I’d start slipping back into my nocturnal ways. Good or bad, I’m not sure, but I’m quite definitely a night owl….

Unemployed weekends

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Well, it’s official. As of 5pm today, I am officially unemployed. Now I’ve got no solid pans for the next two weeks other than getting everything I own sorted, packed, and ready to ship to Seattle. Kinda cool — kinda scary. I haven’t been without a job in about ten years…this is a new thing for me.

Friday night I went out to the Last Frontier bar out in Muldoon and met up with some of the people I talk with online in the chatrooms. Aurorawhisper and her husband are being shipped off to Germany in about a month — and I’m incredibly jealous, by the way — so a few of us had gathered to have a small going away celebration. Was a fun night, with some very amusing moments. At one point I’d stepped outside for a smoke (as the bar was just way too hot for most of the night), when the DJ came out and we chatted for a few moments, and he complimented me both on my dancing, and the fact that I had no fear when it came to dancing — I’ll just head out into the middle of an empty floor and have fun. As I turned to head back in, though, one of the bouncers stopped me to ask how much I’d had to drink — apparently he wasn’t as convinced my dancing style was natural. Too funny…especially as all I’d had was one Smirnoff Ice, and was nowhere near even buzzed. All in all, a fun night.

Today I had my last day of work, and came home afterwards to a pleasant surprise — my friend Andrea had stopped by with Kyle, her brand new (one month old) son. She’d wanted to make sure to see me before I left, and came into town tonight to visit for a bit. We sat around and talked for a while, but eventually I started wearing down, and decided it was time for bed.

So, I’m updating the page, and then it’ll be bedtime for me. Tomorrow begins two projects — the quicker being the finalizing of the sale of my car (yuppers — looks like I’ve got a definite buyer), and the major one being the packing project. Wish me luck — I might need it!

The point of no return…

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Given the direction my life has been heading lately, and the relevancy of everything I babble about here on the site, the above headline refers to the fact that I…

  1. ….am about to undergo radical plastic surgery and a sex-change operation in order to compete in the first Bridget Fonda lookalike contest.
  2. …just spent $209.75 on a one-way ticket to Seattle leaving Sat. June 16th at 12:45am and arriving at 5:02am.
  3. …live on a one-way dead-end street and can’t figure out how to go anywhere.
  4. …have just discovered and officially named a previously unknown area of land at the far end of the Homer Spit.
  5. …am desperately attempting to come up with more interesting and amusing options for this survey.

Update: The voting has been disabled for the above poll, as changes in the website have ended up borking up the poll and results. However, if I remember correctly, the majority of the tallied votes were for the Bridget Fonda lookalike contest.

I love my friends.

Microsuck

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The day Microsoft makes something that doesn’t suck will be the same day they start making vacuum cleaners.

— Anonymous

Memorial Day weekend

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This has been a really nice weekend so far. I actually ended up with a couple days off — worked Saturday at Suncoast, but that was it, so had Sunday and Monday off. Quite nice.

Took Miranda out to see The Mummy Returns on Saturday night, making my second time seeing that one in the theaters. It pretty much stays the same in my opinion — a fun flick that I enjoy, and almost as good as the first one, but a definite roller coaster ride. There are parts that are so much better than the first that I was really impressed — and parts that were so much worse that it was depressing. Ah, well…overall, pretty damn enjoyable. Unfortunately, Miranda wasn’t feeling well, and so she had to go straight home after the movie.

Jones Lake, Anchorage, AKSunday was a great day. Absolutely gorgeous weather, so I decided to go out and enjoy the sun and get some pictures of Alaska before I leave. I just picked up a nice little Kodak DX3500 digital camera earlier in the week (finally — it’s been about 8 years since I’ve had a camera), and wanted to get some shots of my home for the last 26 years before I bailed. I started by heading out to Earthquake ParkEarthquake Park, Anchorage, AK, as it’s just about a minute away from my house. There were a bunch of other families and tourists out enjoying the weekend, too, so I ended up spending a couple minutes there watching some kids play as their parents took in the displays scattered around the area. The view of Mt. Susitna Mt. Susitna, Anchorage, AK was just gorgeous, Sleeping Lady was out in full splendor, with just a scattering of light fluffy clouds up in the sky.

After Earthquake Park, I headed downtown, and discovered somewhat to my dismay that while downtown Anchorage looks gorgeous from afar, it’s still a bit too early in the year to get any really nice shots of it. None of the flowers have started poking up from the various planters, and the grass is still just coming in, so it’s still got a lot of brown mixed in with the green. No huge biggie, though — another couple weeks should take care of that pretty nicely. After a while I ran down to Village Inn to get some grub, then went home to rest for a bit.

That evening I went out to the valley to hit a bonfire party that Danielle was throwing. I met up with Danielle, Christina, and some of their friends from the valley (Sparky, Victor, Carlos, Dorothy, Earl, Dave, and a couple others who’s names I can’t remember right now) at Danielle’s house, then we all caravaned Heading out, Mat-Su Valley, AK out to the Palmer Hay Flats refuge for the bonfire. The evening was just beautiful, and the area was absolutely gorgeous — a valley down at the base of some hills, with the sunset reflecting off the mountains in the distance. I took some shots to try and put together a panorama of the view, if I can get them stitched together decently in Photoshop I’ll see if I can get the final result posted here.

After starting the fire Sparky, Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AK in the time-honored bonfire tradition of piling up a bunch of wood and dousing it with lighter fluid, we all just spent a nice evening standing around, talking, munching on some grub, and attempting to prevent Earl from blowing anything up. As few of us were much into drinking at all — I brought a few Smirnoff Ice‘s to drink, but only had two over the course of the evening, and few of the others brought anything — Victor, Sparky, Dorothy, Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AK it was a very nice mellow evening. We even had the troopers stop by a couple times to check on us, and they basically told us just to make sure we got the fire put out when we left — one of them even said that this was the kind of party they like to see. It was pretty cool — for all the harassment the police get just because they’re in a position of authority, it’s been very rare that I’ve had any sour dealings with them at all.

Eventually Bonfire, Mat-Su Valley, AKit got to be about two in the morning, and we all decided it was time to head out — a couple of us had to make it back into Anchorage before we crashed out, and everyone was starting to get tired. So, after a good few minutes trying to put out the bonfire (quite a chore in itself), we all headed home. The drive back in was wonderful, too — I just set the cruise control for the speed limit, and cruised on in. As most people out for the weekend were going to be coming back into town today at the end of the three day weekend, I didn’t have much traffic to deal with, and only saw a couple cops on the way in. Made it home a little after 3am and crashed out.

So now it’s Monday, the last day of the weekend, and I’m pretty much just spending the day relaxing here at home. I’ve got four more days of work at GCI, then the next two weeks will be the final push to get everything packed up and ready to go before I leave state…that countdown just keeps going….

Mars needs a facelift!

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Cydonian faceThis just in — It seems that our nearest neighbor in the Solar System, and most possible target for future colonization, is in dire need of a facelift!

NASA has recently released photographs of the famous Cydonian face on Mars that show that one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have yet of alien intelligence is in danger of being eradicated from our Solar System. While NASA’s scientists have always been quick to deny that the face is actually a face (how foolish — what else could it be?), scientists worldwide not under the thumb of the U.S. Government have spend untold hours debunking the “theory” that NASA and the US Government want us to believe — that the Face does not exist, and is merely a product of poor photography combined with human imagination.

Well, I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t take much imagination at all for me to see that the above picture quite clearly shows a face. And do they really expect that the American public is so stupid as to believe that after sending countless satellites into space, the Voyager probe to the stars, and who knows what else (I would list placing men on the Moon, but that has long since been uncovered as a hoax), that the Viking 1 and 2 landers had such poor equipment on board that they would mangle a random collection of peaks and valleys into looking like we know the Face to look?

Lately, however, some more disturbing news has leaked out of NASA. As can be plainly seen in the images below, the Face is being destroyed!

Three faces

The only question now is how is this happening? The three pictures were taken within the space of less than 30 years — from the Viking missions in 1975 and 1976 to the most recent flyover by the Mars Global Surveyor in 2001 — and show a frightening amount of destruction. While we know that Mars has an atmosphere inhospitable to human life (or, at least, so we’ve been told all these years), it isn’t so horrid as to account for that much degradation in such a short span of time. So what could be responsible for this?

The only answer I can come up with is that the Face is being deliberately destroyed to hide its existence from us! This single image — released by NASA itself — does more to prove that the Government has been hiding information from us (either about its own capabilities, or about its involvement with extraterrestrial intelligence) for years than anything previously found! I don’t know who is destroying the Face — or how (though it could either be through their own means, if you assume that NASA’s claims about the moon landing are true, and we can travel between the planets; or through the assistance of alien intelligences in collaboration with our government) — but the why can be easily guessed.

To keep us ignorant.

The face has been a thorn in the side of those in control ever since the pictures leaked out to the world after the Viking landers took them — incontrovertible proof of alien intelligence — and they must have been working since its discovery to destroy it so that they could ‘debunk’ it as just another jumble of rocks.

I feel that it is imperative that we refuse to let this continue. Contact your representatives, senators, whomever, but let it be known that we will no longer allow ourselves to be led, that we are not the pawns that our so-called ‘leaders’ want us to be!

Let the truth come out!

 

Okay, okay. So I’ve been watching too much X-Files recently. The picture of the three faces actually comes from a fascinating article on NASA’s website about the formation in question, and how the increased resolution of today’s cameras (and not erosion, alien conspiracies, or the like) are giving a clearer picture of the ‘face’ on Mars. Neat stuff, but it triggered my brain, and I had to get this out. Hey, it was fun!

Off to Fairbanks!

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Well, my rides on the way. Don’t know if I’ll be updating at all while I’m in Fairbanks, so this may be my last post for a few days. If so — see y’all (whoever you may be) when I get back!

How Hollywood sees us

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…all of you are just simple-minded dumbasses with tiny brains and limited exposure who are so used to ‘checking your brains at the door’ that your gray matter has devolved into a state of gummy disuse. You are no longer even capable of appreciating anything a notch above ‘stupid’.

— Al Brown, on the Home Theater Forum, hypothesizing on how Hollywood sees the American public