Life

General ramblings connected to my personal life and activities.

Egypt, martial arts, drugs, sex.

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Not much of an update today. Was supposed to go out with Miranda to see The Mummy Returns, unfortunately as she’s not feeling well, that’ll have to wait until later in the week. But, I’ve got a good selection of alternative entertainment available…this being a Tuesday with some good new releases, I came home with some more movies. Here’s this weeks loot….

Big Trouble in Little China: A mid-80’s John Carpenter classic that was probably way ahead of its time. Chinese mythology and fighting in the midst of San Francisco just didn’t fly when it came out…but in today’s age of wire-fighting turning up everywhere (from traditional type films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to The Matrix and Charlie’s Angels), then this one fits right in along with the rest. Besides — it’s just a kick-ass flick!

Requiem for a Dream: The sophomore effort from Darren Aronofsky, the man behind Pi, this was in no way a ‘sophmore slump.’ A masturfully done and incredibly disturbing film, this story of four people descending into the depths of various addictions is not one to expect to walk out of feeling happy with the world, but is a very powerful film. I was lucky enough to see it in the theater while I was in Seattle last November, and was just amazed by this one — Darren Aronofsky is definitely a director I’m going to keep my eye on in the future.

Sex and the City: Season 2: After Adri recommended Season 1 to me and I went through it, I was pleased to discover that this is a wonderfully entertaining show. Didn’t even realize that the Season 2 set came out today until I saw it on the shelves, then figured I might as well pick it up — pretty much just a whim purchase. Not a bad one, though, if it holds up to the quality of the first season. Here’s hoping!

So that’s it. I’m thinking this would be a good evening to watch Kurt Russel kick some butt in Chinatown….

Back to the usual

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I’m back!

You’re thrilled, right?

Oh, well.

Okay, so Friday I got off work at 4. Spent a little time running around doing some last minute errands, then hopped online to chat until my ride showed up to take me to the airport. Got to the airport just in time to catch the plane, and headed up to Fairbanks. Kirsten and Jamie picked me up at the Fairbanks airport, and we headed back to Kirsten’s dorm at UAF (as she was kind enough to put me up for the weekend), where the three of us stayed up talking and BS’ing until way too early in the morning. But then — that’s the point of vacations, right?

Saturday was spent mostly with my family. Slept in, then walked down the hill from UAF about noon for breakfast with mom, dad, and Kevin. After breakfast we headed over to Emily’s work to visit her for a bit, then mom, dad, and Kevin headed off to do some shopping while I borrowed Kevin and Emily’s van to run around on my own. I ended up just tooling around Fairbanks for a bit, enjoying the sunshine and warm weather and listening to a great show on the public radio station called Mountain Stage — lots of really nice live acoustic bluegrass and country performances. Emily got off work at 4pm, so I headed back to meet up with everyone. We all went out to check out Kevin and Emily’s cabin (cute little one room cabin out in the middle of nowhere), then came back into town for family pictures at Sears and dinner at a local pizza parlor.

After dinner, Kevin dropped me off at the Backdoor bar, where I met up with fbkscpl2play, beckythesillygirl, meneleaous, b_converse, and ak_ghost_ryder (all chatters in the Alaska Yahoo! Chat room). We hung out there for a while, then fbkscpl2play and beckythesillygirl took me out to see a drag show at the Palace Saloon (a bar/showhall in Alaskaland). This was an absolute blast — the place was incrediby wild (maybe a side effect of having so little to do in Fairbanks?)! At one point, it was a toss-up as to which was going to be more entertaining — watching the drag queen performing on stage, or turning around and watching the people dancing on the tables!

After the show they cleared about half of the floor of tables and chairs and opened the place up for dancing. We made it until about 2:45am, then decided it was time to bail. I got dropped off back at the UAF dorms, talked with Kirsten for a bit longer, then passed out.

Sunday we slept late again and just hung out in Kirsten’s room until it was time for me to head out. She took me to the airport, and I came homeward bound. Miranda and Loren picked me up and ran me home, then they ran off to do some shopping while I kicked back and watched a few more Season 3 X-Files episodes. This show just gets better and better — unfortunately, I’ve now finished off all of Season 3, and have a few months to go until Season 4 comes out. Arrrrrrghhh! I hate cliffhangers!

Eventually I decided to get out of the house for a bit, and headed out to Century 16 to catch Shrek. This movie is just hilarious — it takes all the familiar fairytales we’ve grown up with, gives them a really wonderfully bizarre take, and has an absolute blast poking fun at Disney throughout the flick (especially the classic “princess singing with the birds” routine — I was laughing so hard after this that I almost missed the next few lines of dialogue!). Much as kids are going to enjoy watching it, I think it’s really the adults who are really going to get a kick out of all the jokes in the film — much of the dialogue is aimed squarely at the adults rather than children, and it makes for one of the funniest films I’ve seen in the theater in a very long time.

Then, not long after I got home, who should call but my friend Stacye — she was kinda bored and wanted to head out, so we met up at the Village Inn by my house, then headed out to ‘koots for a couple drinks. We sat there and talked until about 1:30am, when we realized how late it had gotten and each bailed for home to get some sleep before we got too far into Monday.

Today was a pretty normal day, just dead slow at work. Let a lady who works at GCI that’s expressed interest in buying my car take it for a test drive, though, so hopefully I may have found a buyer. Then came home, watched the extras on the X-Files set, and sold off a few more items from my online garage sale — the PowerMac 6500, SoundDesign stereo, and my old DJ equipment is now gone.

So, that was my weekend…now, back to the day to day drudge…fun fun 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!

I can’t chicken out now…

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…I’ve got a serious inquiry on the car, and I just turned in my two-week notice at GCI and CNTS. So, June 1st will be my last day employed with GCI. I’ll probably turn in my notice at Suncoast fairly soon too, so that my last week there is either that first weekend in June or soon thereafter (if I sell my car early in June, getting around is going to be somewhat problematic). More and more it looks like my target date for leaving really is going to be June 15th — I’m (quite intentionally) making sure I’ve got all my loose ends tied up here, and that it’s difficult for me to back out, just in case I get a last minute case of the heebie-jeebies.

Getting things ready

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I realize I haven’t been updating all that frequently lately. Most of my time when I’m not at work has been caught up in two pursuits: sorting through everything I own and determining what to keep, what to get rid of, and what to try to sell; and kicking back for an evening of watching DVD’s when I can’t deal with my room. Going through six years of collected stuff is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

Anyway, the moving sale continues to progress — things are appearing and disappearing at a fairly decent rate. I’ve also added a bit more information on the Ford Escort I’m selling.

It’ll probably be a couple days before I update again — I’m heading to Fairbanks this weekend to visit with my brother Kevin, his fiancee Emily, and a few friends (definitely Kirsten and Jaime, and we’ll see who all else I can find while I’m up there). Hoping for a fun weekend…I’ll be back in town Sunday afternoon.

Until then….

No more home theater

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Yikes…the sacrifices we make in order to do something that’s important to us. For years I’ve had three ‘boy toy’ areas that were important to me — my music and DJ’ing equipment, my computers, and my home theater. It may not have been much of a home theater, but I was pretty proud of it, and considering the budget I’d put it together on, it was pretty decent.

Well, to further my goal of getting down to Seattle next month, I put pieces of the theater up for sale — and one of my two receivers, the DVD player, and the 46″ rear-projection TV just drove away from me. (sigh) Very wierd feeling, in a way, but at the same time, it’s getting me out of here, and I’ve got the DVD player in my computer, so I’m at least not cutting myself off from my movies. Sure, a 17″ monitor isn’t a 46″ TV…but it works for now.

Ugh…now what?

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Dammit — no matter how well things are going, something always seems to come along to trip things up.

Got word from my boss at GCI today that the temporary position I’m in is ending as of early June. I can either apply for the permanent spot, or let CNTS (the temp agency I’m with) know and hope that they can find something for me.

It’s tempting to try and stay with GCI — I’m enjoying it, and the fact that I’m getting props on how I’m doing there makes me think I’ve got a fair chance of landing the permanent spot. On the other hand, I’m certainly not gauranteed the spot — there’s always a chance that someone from one of the other call centers with a few years experience will want to take it. The pay would be slightly less, but that’s because I’d actually be getting benefits, so that’s not too big of a hassle.

The one that’s actually getting to me, though, is that if I do go for the permanent spot — and get it — I’d just be turning in my two week notice a month and a half later for the move down to Seattle. This really bugs me — I’ve inherited something of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility to my job from my mother, and doing something like that just seems kind of underhanded, even if it’s in my own best interests. Yuck…I hate situations like this.

Besides, if I let CNTS know that I need a new position, who knows how soon they’ll find one, what they’ll find, or how much it will pay? Makes me very nervous…admittedly, this is the kind of situation that can crop up when you’re doing temp work, and I knew that when I signed up — this is just the first time I’ve had to face it, and I can’t honestly say it makes me too comfortable. I’m so determined to get myself out of state at the end of the summer, that I hate seeing anything pop up that might jeopardize that — and losing this paycheck is really high on the list of things that can jeapordize the move.

So…I’ve got some pondering to do, along with a lot of finger crossing. Should be interesting.

Told ya I’d get more in here

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I just didn’t figure I’d wait until this late to do it. Ah, well, at least I’m here, right?

Friday was fairly uneventful for the most part. Had a good evening dj’ing for the spring formal for the UAA Greek organizations, though, which was fun. Not much more than that for Friday night.

Saturday I ended up having a blast. After I got off work at Suncoast I headed out to Studio 99 — and funny, there was no one there. Hung out for a bit, then headed home, to find a message letting me know that they weren’t going to be opening that night, as they didn’t want to try and compete both with a rave out in Eagle River and the various Cinco De Mayo celebrations around town. Understandable enough, so instead I headed out to the Last Frontier to meet up with a bunch of the chatters that I talk to in the Yahoo! Chat Alaska room. One of the other regular chatters has her birthday on the 1st of May, and mine was the 3rd, so we had a pretty good sized birthday party going on there. Got myself fairly nicely buzzed, and only had to pay for one of the four drinks I had! I bought one, one of the chatters bought me one…then a couple girls I met (Barbie and Barb, believe it or not) bought me two because they liked the way I danced. Rock on…sat and talked with them for a while. Unfortunately, they disappeared before I was able to get any numbers from them…(sigh)…just my luck. Maybe next time. Anyway, switched from alcohol to soda and water in time to be sure that I was safe to drive home, gave one of the chatters a lift home, and came home and crashed — all in all, quite a nice night.

The last couple days have been pretty uneventful — pretty much just work and day-to-day life. Have had some good conversations with my friend Erika, who’s thinking it might be worthwhile to hook me up with her friend LouAnne before I leave state…I’ve only met LouAnne a few times, but she seems like a very nice girl, and she’s certainly attractive enough…who knows?

Had a meeting at Studio 99 tonight to discuss the future of the club…looks like things are going to be going through some changes there. I’m not sure I want to say much more than that just now, but hopefully things will be looking up there pretty soon.

Anyway, so that’s it for the past few days. Nothing too earth shattering, but there’s very little of that in my life these days anyway. Right now it’s mostly a matter of counting the days until I visit Fairbanks in a couple weeks (weekend of May 18th), and until I finally leave this state to see how things are living in the lower 48 (sometime in mid-August). Can’t happen soon enough for me.

Happy birthday, Kev!

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Can’t believe I almost forgot to say anything about this — my little brother turns 25 today! Wow…that’s kind of frightening. But cool, too.

Happy b-day, bro.

Well, hrmpf.

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Well…as far as birthdays go, yesterday wasn’t the worst — but I can’t honestly say it was the best, either. Outside of my parents, all of three people have remembered it without obvious prompting on my part, and only two of those were actually on the day. Ah, well, more reasons for me not to worry about missing living up here too much when I bail.

Not that I’m cynical or anything like that.

So, that was about it for yesterday. I’m off to DJ a dance for UAA tonight, then will be working at Suncoast tomorrow during the day and Studio 99 in the evening, so am looking pretty busy. Will babble more when I get the chance…and I’m sure you’re all anxiously awaiting that, too — right?