riding out the day's events...

Since I'm awake a six o'clock in the fucking morning on a Saturday, I thought I might come here and write in my weblog, but now that I'm here I can't really think about anything to write about other than the fact that I'd rather NOT be awake at six o'clock in the fucking morning on a Saturday.

Today we get to go to a birthday party for the 3-year-old granddaughter of my Boss. (His daughter and son-in-law are about our age, with kids about our kids' ages. Instant friends!) It's at this place called "Pumped Up!" which is NOT a macho-Gold's-Gym kind of weight-lifting place, which is what we thought when we saw the sign... it's a place that sells and rents giant inflatable bouncy-things... you know... those "Moon Bounce" things or big bouncy castles or whatever. Well they apparenly also host birthday parties. And as much as I think my wife goes completely insane with planning our kids' parties, I really hate it when people have parties at those Chuckie-Cheezy kind of places. I'd much rather go to someone's HOUSE, y'know? Expend a little effort, people... huh?

Anyway.

Tomorrow I'm driving to Atlanta to go see a Rush concert with my friend Sam. (geeks!) The whole family was going to go, but we changed our plans... partly because of the party, partly because my daughter's summer-day-camp starts on Monday, and partly because we haven't quite recovered enough from The Move yet to face spending 5 hours in the car with the kids twice in one weekend. So instead... I get to go BY MYSELF!! Which means 5 hours in the car BY MYSELF twice in one weekend!! Most likely listening to geeky progressive rock at maximum volume. Rock on, Dave...

And I get to miss work on Monday.

Who knows when I will post between now and then. The iBook will be along for the ride just-in-case, though.

kids these days...

Who'd have thought children could be sarcastic and mouthy before they even learn to talk?

In our new house, we have nice big arched windows in the front rooms. The sills are only about a foot off the floor. In my wife's office, there is a sofa pushed up against the big window - and the cats like to get behind there and sit on the window sill and look outside. It's a cozy little spot. Well today I was sitting on said sofa and my Son climbed over me... over the back of the couch, and proceeded to stand on the window sill. Then the following conversation took place.

Me: "Sweetie - that's a nice place for kitties, but I don't think it's a good place for little boys."

The Boy: (pause) "Meow."

A smartassed 18-month-old.... just what I need.

it'll soon be here...

A revelation from tonight's Democratic Convention. If you listened closely after Kerry's speech, you might have heard the arena speakers blasting "Dreams" by Van Halen. (The Sammy Hagar Years) And if Van Halen songs are now fair game for political events, I think that offically means I'm now just as old as the Dems who rocked out to Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow" in 1992 - and whom I no doubt mocked for doing so.

Damn, I hate it when shit like that happens.

let's play - "nudge around the soggy vegetables"...

Now that I'm a regular nine-to-fiver, there is the issue of lunch to confront. It's not like when I worked at a school and could just eat in the (gourmet) cafeteria. It's not like when I worked in Manhattan and could walk to 20 different ethnic restaurants within a 2-block radius and get a $5.99 lunch special. It's more like when I worked as a computer programmer and just drove to Arby's every day for lunch. And that's good for neither my wallet nor my waist - especially at my advanced age. So... what to do?

Today I drove over to the grocery store and loaded up on lunchmeat and fruit, and also a bunch of microwavable "Healthy Cuisine", "Smart Choice", "Lean Whateverthefuck", "Microwavable Frozen Crap That Won't Make You Fat" stuff from the freezer section. Now, I've never eaten this stuff before, so I didn't know what to expect. And after having some sort of Sesame Chicken concoction today, I can say this - it's not exactly "lunch", but afterwards I had a vague sort of feeling that I may have just eaten something.

new secret identity...

For whatever reason, I can't get AOL or ICQ instant messenging to work from Work. (Firewall issues, no doubt.) But Yahoo does. And since my old account has gotten just too polluted, I set up a new identity - science_director. It's mostly to chat with the students in my online courses this fall, but any Yahoo IM users out there can feel free to say "hi".

dave's first thought this morning...

"God damn... if I feel like this NOW... what is getting out of bed going to feel like when I'm forty-five?"

In other nocturnal news - I had a dream last night that I was teaching a huge astronomy lecture. (I think I may be going through withdrawal.) We were supposed to be reviewing for the final exam, but instead we got off on a weird tangent about Star Wars, and the maneuverability of X-Wing fighters.

Which is not much different from the way my classes usually go, actually!

nothing...

Not a whole lot to write about really. Things are settling own and life is becoming boring again. Things are almost all unpacked, and now our house is just a run-of-the-mill shithole instead of a cardboard-box-filled shithole. Make that a quarter of a million dollar shithole. So nice to have a brand new beautiful home into which to transfer all our bad habits.

Work is no better. I’m already procrastinating just like I’ve been working here for years. Why write about science when I can play with a synthesizer and write irritating electronic music all day? Today I decorated. I bought six identical frames ($10/each) and printed out pages of Copernicus’s handwritten manuscript of ”De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” to hang in my office. Very classy looking… scientific, yet artsy and antiquey.

I am so out of shape it’s not even funny. I bought a new bike at Target last weekend and took it out last night for a test drive. I was fucking exhausted after like 5 minutes of riding. Sad. I’ve also gained back 5 pounds of the weight I’d lost, so I’m back up to 200. Just when I was thinking of dusting off some old pants. I blame my wife and her PMS cookies. A tiny bright spot is the fact that yoga seems to be leading to some shoulder/arm definition already. Yay for yoga.

I spent $30 today on tea. Two kinds of fancy tea and a nice mug. Insane.

The first draft of our play is finished. We’re going to submit it so that we can get paid another $500, but there are a lot of changes I want to make. Still… it’s pretty good.

That’s it for now. I’m going to go pretend to work and drink some expensive tea.

dave screams at his tv...

I was watching the Convention last night, and this local commercial comes on. It starts with a dark screen and then pans across a view of the Earth from space at night... dark blue oceans... the dark black voids of the Western US... as the Earth rotates, larger cities of the midwest come into view... Dallas... Minneapolis... Chicago... then Alabama comes into view... the whole state artificially lit up as bright as New York City... the voiceover begins...

"With energy prices 15% below the natural average... Why not? (A message from Alabama Power.)"

I actually screamed at the television... "Noooooo!!!"

I have never been more appalled.

Why NOT? Why NOT burn as much electricity as humanly fucking possible? Well... let's see... there's global atmospheric CO2 levels leading to global warming and killing off marine life... there's the the fact that most of the oil in the world belongs to people who want to kill us... there's the fact that fossil fuels are a fucking FINITE and nonrenewable source of energy that is going to fucking RUN OUT some day... there's the fact that even if it IS cheaper to burn your lights all day or drive your stupid fucking HUMMER in Alabama than it is in New Jersey, it's CHEAPER STILL to turn the fucking lights OFF or to drive a vehicle that gets double-digit mileage at the very fucking least. I have never been more disgusted by a sentiment in my life.

I'm so irritated that I sent an email message to the "Environmental Outreach" section of the power company. (Essentially the same thing I wrote here, but with fewer "fucks")

Idiots.

for the readers who didn't get it...

I got a few crabby notes from some female readers about my PMS post the other day - as if it was a complaint about how crabby my wife is when she gets her period. That was not the complaint. That was only the SET-UP to the complaint. Yes I'm a man and I'll never understand how bad it can be and blah, blah, blah... ok... fine. I don't begrudge my wife, or any of you, your monthly crabbiness. Crab away. That is not the point. The point was her persistent, stubborn, complete and utter lack of self-awareness regarding the issue. The point was that she can bark at me for three days, and live on M&M's for two days, and then all of a sudden go..."Oh! Look! I just got my period! Who'd have known THAT was going to happen?"

Ummm... well... me, the kids, the grocery-store clerk, anyone with a fucking CALENDAR...

THAT was the complaint.

So there.

can't...stop...watching...giant... television....

So, our big widescreen projection TV came yesterday from Sears. And boy is it...ummm... big. And wide. And bright! When the kids are watching it, you can see the light flicker on their faces like in a movie theatre.

I set up our new progressive-scan DVD player and watched the following as "test clips"

1) The first 10 minutes of "Koyaanisqatsi"
2) The graveyard scene from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"
3) The first half of "The Fellowship of the Ring"

God damn... everything sure did look... ummm...

Big.