Weekend Randomness

Well October's halfway done and another weekend's come to an end. I didn't do anything productive on Saturday; slept in and then stayed at home all day.

This afternoon I went and got my hair cut at one of those cheap strip mall places that only charges $9 a pop. I've never seen the point in spending much more than that for my haircuts since there's not a lot involved in it. "Gimme a #4 blade on the sides and back, then scissor trim the top to blend in". It doesn't take long and it's pretty hard to mess it up.

Plus with the rate my hair's thinning, the scissor portion of it is getting somewhat less time consuming to cut. The stylist today even suggested that I might want to consider shortening it to a #3 blade all over, since that's a good look for men whose hair "is thinning out a lot around the edges like yours is." Thanks for putting it like that, I'm sure I'll hear those words echoing in my dreams. I'm ok with it thinning and have no qualms about being an old bald man one day. Really. It's just hearing it said so matter of factly like that from a complete stranger seemed to make it more real somehow.

After the trim I drove around for a few hours enjoying the clear day and found my way over to the new REI store that opened this weekend. Very cool 2-story store jam packed with outdoor gear and clothing. It was crawling with customers on both floors, but strangely no one was buying anything. They were all milling about the aisles standing in front of all the stuff I wanted to look at, but no one was in the checkout lines. I signed up for some camping gear giveaway (i.e. put my name on a mailing list for snail mail spam) and spent some time ogling the attractive people who were staffing the place but ended up not buying anything either. Very cool store though, if a bit overpriced compared to what I've seen online.

I was hoping they might have some camping hammocks either on display or at least there in the store that I could look at, but all they had were a few traditional tents and accessories. Guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and get one online and hope I like it.

Treefall

The remnants of Hurricane Fay have been rolling through here for the last 2 days and they've dumped a huge load of rainfall on us. We've been in bad drought conditions for a few years now so we need all the rain we can get, but this much this fast is starting to cause a few problems.

Last night around 9:00pm I heard a loud crash from outside and knew that another tree had fallen. Sure enough, the large tree that's been leaning badly for years now came crashing down. Luckily it didn't hit any of the apartment buildings, people, or cars but it has managed to block off the lower parking lot.



Some guys were here about 30 minutes ago with a chainsaw, but they left soon afterwards without doing anything noticeable. I think they may have underestimated the size of the tree and have hopefully gone to get something bigger than the single, small chainsaw they brought.

Update:
The guys finally got the tree "cleared" around noon. They had to call in some local guys with longer, more powerful chainsaws to cut through the trunk. They got it sliced up and rolled out of the driveway so we can get in and out. 'Course they didn't clear it away or anything, this is Candler after all. I predict it'll be here for at least another month before they do anything else.

Things I've done

I don't really have much going on right now and not a lot to talk about. So here's a list of stuff I saw on another blog.

In bold are things that I've done.
In italics are things I want to do.

1. Bought everyone in the pub/bar a drink
2. Climbed a mountain
3. Held a tarantula
4. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
5. Been in love
6. Broken someone's heart
7. Had my heart broken
8. Done a striptease
9. Bungee jumped
10. Watched a lightning storm at sea
11. Stayed up all night long, and watched the sun rise
12. Seen the Northern Lights
13. Gone to a huge sports game
14. Grown and eaten my own vegetables
15. Slept under the stars
16. Changed a baby's diaper
17. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
18. Watched a meteor shower
19. Gotten drunk on champagne
20. Given money to charity
21. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
22. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
23. Had a food fight
24. Bet on a winning horse
25. Taken a sick day when I wasn't ill
26. Had a snowball fight
27. Photocopied my butt or any other intimate body part
28. Held a lamb
29. Gone skinny dipping
30. Taken an ice cold shower
31. Seen a total eclipse
32. Ridden a roller coaster
33. Hit a home run
34. Been arrested
35. Visited all 50 states
36. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
37. Stolen a street/highway sign
38. Backpacked in Europe
39. Taken a road-trip
40. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
41. Gone sky diving
42. Milked a cow
43. Alphabetized my records/CDs
44. Sung karaoke
45. Lounged around in bed all day
46. Gone scuba diving
47. Danced in the rain
48. Gone to a drive-in theater
49. Started a business
50. Gotten married
51. Been in a movie
52. Crashed a party
53. Gotten divorced
54. Had sex at the office
55. Made cookies from scratch
56. Gotten a tattoo
57. Been on television
58. Had sex a public place
59. Got so drunk I don't remember anything
60. Recorded music
61. Had a one-night stand
62. Bought a house
63. Shaved or waxed off my pubic hair
64. Been on a cruise ship
65. Spoken more than one language fluently
66. Bounced a check
67. Called or written my Congressperson
68. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
69. Sung loudly by myself in the car
70. Written articles for a large publication
71. Piloted an airplane
72. Helped an animal give birth
73. Been fired or laid off from a job
74. Won money on a TV game show
75. Broken a bone
76. Ridden a motorcycle
77. Had a body part below the neck pierced
78. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
79. Ridden a horse
80. Had major surgery
81. Had sex on a moving train
82. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
83. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
84. Visited all 7 continents
85. Eaten sushi
86. Had my picture in the newspaper
87. Parasailed
88. Changed my name
89. Dyed my hair
90. Been a DJ

Nostalgia

Came across this clip on Youtube a couple weeks ago and I keep going back and watching it every few days. I spent every Saturday morning glued to the television beside my brother and sister watching cartoons, and this was my all-time favorite. Still is.



My brother got me a Superfriends t-shirt for the December Holidays, and I absolutely love it. I 'm afraid to wear it because I know I'll spill something on it within a few seconds of putting it on.

Cable

I didn't really think it was possible for me to get lazier, but this past week I've impressed myself with an almost supernatural burst of sloth. It all started last weekend when I called the cable company and added HBO/Cinemax/Starz to my TV lineup. I'd been debating doing it for a few weeks now and decided to finally take the plunge Saturday evening.

It was part of a 6-month "package deal" that gives me faster internet speeds and HBO/Cinemax/Starz for almost the exact same price I'm paying now for just cable and internet. I know it's a way for them to try to boost revenue...they're hoping I will either forget when the 6 months is over (when it reverts to normal pricing) or that I'll get hooked on the movies and be willing to pay the $60 or so extra a month by then. But by the time the offer ends in June/July, I'm hoping to be well on my way towards my next goal and won't need as much TV time in my life.

All that being said, giving myself movie channels right now is like dangling a cigarette in front of a smoker on his third day being "smoke free". I've had movie channels before, but I'd forgotten how nice it is to have large chunks of time-wasting potential like that at my fingertips 24 hours a day. I've managed to get a bit of reading in and taken care of the annoying, menial duties that have to be done (dishes, laundry, going to work, etc.), but otherwise I've been beached on the couch watching movie after movie. And if that's not bad enough, all the movies I've watched so far are ones that I've seen before (some of them twice, some thrice, and others I know well enough to follow the dialogue with the actors).

I'm not sure what I'll do if they show something I haven't seen before.

Books!

I went to the bookstore after work today. I really wanted to goto Books-A-Million, but since they're located near the Asheville Mall I decided not to attempt the traffic and shopping nightmare and went somewhere else. I ended up at the Waldenbooks located in the Biltmore Square Mall. You'd think that any mall would be hell this time of year, but for some unexplained reason the BSM is never crowded.

I went searching for the book "Into the Wild", by Jon Krakauer. I read a cursory review of the movie that came out recently about this book on another blog and thought it would be a story I might like to read. A friend had loaned me another of Mr. Krakauer's books a while back, "Into Thin Air", and I enjoyed it quite a bit, so I'm hoping "Wild" turns out to be something I'll like too.

While I was there I perused the On-Sale tables and found a couple other books as well. I lucked across one of Stephen Donaldson's books in hardback for the outrageous price of $4.99, "The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" (Book 1). I've read the other two series of books he's written on this and think I'll like this "last" set as well.

I also picked up Ted Kerasote's "Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog". I haven't heard anything about this book (I'm not really one to keep track of the Bestseller Lists) but the picture on the front and this excerpt of a review on the back was enough to make me give it a try:

"...an intense recipricoal relationship between a dog and his man, and how we and our dogs genuinely share feelings and emotions."

Now...time to lose myself in books for a few weeks.

Tired

Tired today, and not exactly feeling too well. I only got about 3 hours of sleep last night, and most of that happened after 2:30am. No real reason why I was up so late, I just wasn't sleepy enough to fall asleep before then.

Of course it made for a very bad morning when I got up, so I called in and took a day off. I missed my Lunch-n-Learn today, but hopefully someone got a brochure or toook notes on it and I can catch up on it tomorrow. If I'd gone in and had to sit through that presentation for an hour at lunchtime I probably would have nodded off anyway. Spent the day napping and watching several episodes of "Rescue Me" that I picked up through NetFlix. It's a pretty good show; I can see where all the hype for it comes from. I didn't watch it when it first premiered on FX, and if I had I doubt I would have kept up with the show. I had to watch the first 3 episodes before I got a good feel for the show and got invested in some of the characters. After the first 8, I'm hooked and will be using it as my NetFlix filler for the next month or so as I work my way through all the seasons.

I've been using shows like that from NetFlix for a while now as a big part of my TV watching through the week; especially in the summer when nothing's on. So far I've made it through all of the seasons of "Deadwood", "Weeds", "Oz", "Queer as Folk", and "Carnivale". Once I get through with "Rescue Me" I may check out "The Shield". Of course now that the Fall TV Season is about to kick off I'll have more to see during the week so my NetFlix will taper off to just weekend viewing.

TV and the Internet as hobbies and time wasters...welcome to the future.

Payback

Well the universe paid me back for yesterday's unexpected quickness. Today was almost unbearably slow. Clock-watching, surfing the net, emailing...nothing made the time pass faster. And it's only 7:00pm, so I still have quite a few hours left in the day.

Talked to the vet today and told him I'm planning on letting things just play out with Shelbe the way they are and will be passing on the surgery. He's drawing up a price quote and after-care package for the drug therapy in case I change my mind, but at this point I'm set on the decision I've made. I don't think surgery or chemo will give her a good enough quality of life considering the after care she'll need and all the side effects that accompany it. He gave me a ballpark estimate of 5-7 months for her time left if we let the Cushing's and diabetes run their course. There's always the possibility that she'll have more time (or less) than he predicted, but I'm already preparing for sometime near the beginning of 2008.

Here's hoping I can find something online/on TV/ or in a book that's a little more uplifting to occupy my time for the next 5 hours or so.