9:07 PM
So I'm Blogging and it's a Tuesday night. I'm hiding out because I don't particularly feel like being yelled at by one of my volunteers tonight. Things have changed where I work over the past eight months and he went from a position of power to a position where he has to report to me to get anything done. Because he's a volunteer I'm limited to what I can let him do so he's getting more and more frustrated with life in general and every little change is an endless debate or fight or whatever. I'm just frustrated with it myself because I get stuck playing they middle man and my hands are so tied.

It's a long night anyway. Blasting the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" on the Walkman right now. Couldn't find the CD so I'm listening to my old tape. Probably going to break out some of the other old tapes to follow it up because I feel like just sort of vegging and not doing anything tonight. I have mystery shops all day tomorrow and I'm not going to get a whole heck of a lot done tomorrow, but I think my sanity and taking a break is more important than anything right now.

Been a rough couple of days. Right now I'm missing my best friend a lot. I know, I know, it's one of those weird situations that you'll never understand because I won't explain it all. She's my mysterious best friend and we've spent a lot of time together over the past two years. She's the person I go to when I'm in trouble or need advice and right now I just want to yell out and tell her how much I miss her and how much I wish that our schedules weren't so whacked out. She's been my best friend for almost two years now (just days away), and it's getting harder and harder to sit around and not have her around to vent at or talk to or share goofy files with. I'm trying to be strong but, you know, it's just kind of silly. I know she knows how much I miss her and I know we still get time, but I feel so silly sitting out in IMs during our times when we used to hang out, half expecting her to show up and make things fun again.

Another big thing going on is that I'm troubled because someone I met briefly but know a lot about died and for the life of me, I can't find something nice to say. Long story. He was a wrestling promoter who had trouble with nearly everyone I know in the wrestling industry. Either intentional or unintentional he hurt nearly everyone I know who were dumb enough to make deals with him over the years. As one friend put it "I saw the bald bastard on Saturday and now he's dead." He had a bad headache on Saturday, went to the hospital and it was a brain hemorrhage. There was nothing they could do, he was dead within hours. He had heart problems last year but he was doing really really good from what I've heard in recent times. This just came totally out of the blue and there was nothing anyone could do.

I'm not one of those people who when faced with the death of someone they know they suddenly canonize the person. I'm too much of a realist to do that. I don't care if any of you do it, but for myself, I'm going to be true to what I feel and call a spade a spade, but I will try to find something, anything, nice about the person to say if presented with a family member or a friend. I'm not heartless.

So this guy is gone now. He left a wife and kids and a lot of people who aren't happy that he's dead but are happy that he won't be around to hurt again and I'm sitting here trying to figure out something, anything, good about him to say here to finally put the issue to rest. It's weird, all I can think of is that I went to one of his shows once and I had a nice time. Not a great time, but a nice time. It wasn't the greatest show I ever went to, but it drew some money and the crowd seemed happy and I didn't want my money back when it was over. I mean that's something, isn't it? One pretty good night out of a lifetime and for that I thank him.

I hope he finds peace.

k9

1:37 AM

And I couldn't sleep so I'd blog again. Was compelled to write after watching the end of American Beauty. Oh man, another movie I can't really talk about without spoiling the ending. Though if you start seeing it or read the reviews you'll know the story is about the end of a man's life. That's how the movie begins. You know he's going to die from the first minute of the movie.

I will say it ends with one of the most beautiful Beatles songs they ever was credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. "Because."

A simple song really,

Because
Lennon/McCartney

Ah, because the world is round

it turns me on

Because the world is round

Ah, because the wind is high

it blows my mind

Because the wind is high

Ah, love is old, love is new

Love is all, love is you

Because the sky is blue

it makes me cry

Because the sky is blue

Ah, ah, ah, ah

12 lines and some "ahs," but 12 lines and some "ahs" put together in a beautiful way, in this case to signify the end of a life. The end to a poor schmuck's existence as he passes on to wherever we go when we die.

I remember Doonsbury made a statement in the early 90's. A character named Andy was dying from AIDS. He was startled that he lived long enough to finally get the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album on CD. In fact, his last words were scrawled by his bedside as "Brian Wilson is God" as his final moments here were spent listening to the melodies of that album.

Pet Sounds is one of my favorites. Though I can never find my CD of it. God only knows where it went. I have the cassette here somewhere. My best memory about Pet Sounds came, again, in the early 90's. I was recruited to come along to the beach for a week with my friend Margie-girl (pronounced MAR-ghee, that's MAR like in margarine and hee as in hee haw) ... and 5 of her friends. 4 guys, three girls to one room at Ocean City Maryland for a weekend.

It was a nightmare. I mean a serious nightmare. I'm strange by nature. I have my own problems and I can barely be around myself for long periods of time. 7 people in one room was enough to drive me nuts. I was also the only sober person there. That probably had a lot to do with it. The first night there we had the couple who was with us get in a massive fight and almost break up, one of the guys vanished with my headphones and fell asleep on the beach, Margie-girl drug me to some party where everyone was drunk and watching cartoons because she wanted to see some guy who didn't remember her when we got there (he was almost passed out in the backroom), and by the time we got back to the hotel all the spots were taken in the beds and all the pillows and blankets were taken so I had to curl up by the door on the floor and make the best I could of things.

So by 5 am I got pissed and took a walk. On the beach armed with only the Beach Boys Pet sounds and Berlin's Love Life (another great cd if you find it discounted). I walked the beach for the early morning hours just listening to the music and enjoying myself on a deserted beach. No squabbles, no fighting, no noisy angry people, just me, the waves, the sunrise, and music. It was cool.

My appreciation for music really came from the later Beatles albums back in the days when I was a full time Beatles freak. A lifetime ago, literally. Abby Road was my favorite. Just for the sounds and the harmonies and for the weird ass songs. I mean you go from love songs to a song about an Octopus, to a transsexual drag queen, to complaints about long lost loves and the realities of relationships ("I never give you my number, I only give you my situation, and in the middle of investigation I break down ..."), to finally psychotic killers in the courtroom and lonely loners who have no place else to go.

The song was the Beatles' maturity and if you accept the debate, it was their last album *as a group* (Let it Be was a collection of songs but the group had already fallen apart by then), and their best one. Forget Sgt. Peppers and forget Revolver, Abby Road was where it's at.

On the downside, it gave us "Come Together," the worst cover song in the history of music.

Come together, right now, Pepsi Free.

End of story.

On that note, I'm going to go off to bed now.

k9

12:17 AM

So it's late again, I'm watching "American Beauty" on Cinemax and kicking myself for not buying more video tape. It's the second half of a Mena Suvari double header on Cinemax. The first half was "loser" and that turned out to be a pretty good movie. I mean it wasn't the greatest thing on earth, but for goodness sake it was better than the new "Planet of the Apes." Oh don't ask, please don't ask. I won't give spoilers but I'll say a couple of things.

I was a fan of the movie until I met my friend Kevin. Kevin is the superfan of apes. For the past 10 months we've heard nothing from him other than apes this and apes that. URLs to web sites, articles, day in and day out you name it. Secretly, I was hoping that it was going to be a good movie. I wanted it to be a good movie. I wanted nothing more than that. But the day came and Tim Burton's twisted, warped, idiotic mind ... destroyed the franchise with a tacked on ending that ruined any chances of that.

No spoiler warnings. If you read a review you'll learn more about it than what I've said. Maybe you'll go and read and figure something out about it that I haven't seen. Mind you, I liked the original movie. I thought it was a thoughtful social commentary. I thought the apes were so much like humans that it was exploring the human condition and the inhuman nature we create by using the apes of caricatures of humanity. The whole idea of god creating man in his image and man creating ape in ours fascinated me.

So what if Charlton Heston's over the top acting didn't help the plot, the rest of the debates in the movie were a reflection of the times. The apes were more than guys in ape outfits and the horror we felt at thinking of an ape dominated society wasn't saying how bad things were if apes ruled the world, it was saying how bad things were with US ruling the world. Our failings, our injustices, our dark and dirty little secrets were reflected by the apes for all to see. They could get away with biting social commentary because it was just guys in suits and no one would take it seriously.

The new movie ... well the new movie goes to great pains to be a summer blockbuster. Tim Burton sold out to Pepsi or Coke or whatever was sponsoring the summer blockbuster tour. It did big numbers at the blockbuster and since I hated it, I'm sure it's going to be the #1 move of all time.

But it was horrible. In fact it was so bad that it became a statement, a satire even, of what big summer movies have become and how much filmmakers are willing to sacrifice for lure of a big summer blockbuster. If this was Tim Burton's opus as a movie maker, then let him take "sponsored by coca cola" to his final resting place in movie history.

Oh well, a day later and still smelling "stinkaroonie" from apes ...

k9

12:16 AM
Just got out of Everquest after seeing my best friend for a while. Our schedules are such that right now we're not seeing a lot of each other lately. It's weird, she's my best friend but suddenly BLAM our schedules change and when she's coming I'm going and vice versa. We only get time to talk when we're in EQ and that's not as much since I'm busy with everything and Everquest tends to just drain my brain away.

To my credit, Everquest is the only game in my life that I've stuck with after a year, let alone two years of playing. Usually I go a month or two then forget about things. This time though, I've stuck with it for the friends I have in there and for the fact that if I want to spend time with a lot of them it's going to happen in game.

Tonight though, got out quickly when a voice from the past sent me a tell (like an instant message). The best friend of someone I was involved with long long ago. Doggie-Sense tingling. I haven't talked to this person in over a year and a half and frankly, it that time she's got herself quite a rep. in game as being trouble. I also had old bad memories of her friend and my former friend and let's just say no no no no no no no to anything to do with the thought of getting involved with anything even remotely to do with that person again.

Feel a little bad though. I mean I didn't stick around to see what she wanted. Just got the heck out of there when she got my class wrong. Just all this bad bad bad tingling in that Doggie-sense. My best friend said it was the right thing to do, and I'm sure it was, just wishy washy and I'm not normally that rude unless it's someone who ticks me off or it's someone who is bugging me on my quiet time name.

Yup, I have a quiet time screen name. Not to hard to figure out but I only give it to people I trust. It's the name I go to when I want peace and quiet or when I'm not working. If you IM me out of the blue there and I have not given you that name by either directly IM'ing you or e-mailing you from it, then I'll block you from buddies. Not to offend anyone, but I need my peace and quiet and that's the primary reason why I have that name.

Another reason is that due to my on-line work I need to keep my identity veiled. I mean it's easy enough to figure out who I am and for goodness sake, for the first month or so of chat I didn't catch on and used my real name in chat only to get burned by it. I quickly changed my name and how I log into chat before it caused a problem or before I was forever associated with that name.

Yet here I go pouring my life out in a blog. Yes, it's all true, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. These are my thoughts, my moments and my gems of well, stupidity? Can you have a gem of stupidity? Or is it a flawed idea. Well certainly not a 24 carat one in any case. Oh that was bad and my brain is going so I'll just head to bed.

Goodnight everyone,

k9

PS. H is for Hootenanny.

12:09 AM
Making it to the end of the 2nd day without the need for Dayquil. Still feeling kind of crappy but I'm determined to beat this thing by the weekend. It's the big Planet of the Apes weekend that my friend Kevin has been dreaming of since last November and I'm hoping to get myself back to at least half awake status for the movie.

Hearing's coming back and that's good, nose still is raw and my throat is killing me but that general "I'm going to die, leave me alone" feeling is gone for now.

My sister, My mom, My niece & Nephew are up in Connecticut visiting my grandpa for the day. We had some bad news this weekend as my mom's mother's last remaining sister lost her husband this weekend. My Uncle Joe. Nice guy, always good to me in the times we spoke. Quiet guy but you always got the feeling of goodness from him. He and my Aunt Peggy were the perfect little match. Nice people and while I can't say I knew him as much as I could have, I wish more people out there were like him.

Put another strip up. I was really stuck on this one. I had it all planned out for what I wanted but what I remembered from the last couple of panels didn't have the guys in it from my memory. So somehow I had to fit the bar folks into the strip. I know we're not as good as the first couple of series of strips but come on, how do you follow up Leo taking over the world and Jessica talking the same language as George W? It's hard, it grows harder all the time, but we'll go get through and hey, if not, go to the site that Patrick called the funniest comic strip on the net ... it sure wasn't us!

Someone claiming to be Tilde signed the guest book, which was really nice and really appreciated it if it was her or him or whomever Tilde is. The chat girls used to try to present Tilde as this big mystery as to who does the voice. I don't think it went over as well as they wanted it to. Though it's late at night and I'm eliminating suspects one by one and getting ready to pick someone in the cloak room with the 2X4. I'm probably wrong but I always wanted to use that line.

Last thoughts as I fade away. I really hate the new format of techlive in the morning. It just isn't worth watching. Yes, I'm biased, but Bill Tucker looks so uncomfortable at the new "techtv New York" set and the set seems abandoned. Yes, I know it's 6 am on the west coast, but come on folks, there used to be life there even if poor Robyn was propping herself up at the chat desk with whatever she could find to keep her chin from falling into her coffee cup again.

It's also kind of disjointed to pick up "hosted chat" at 11 PM eastern. It's easier to be funny at 9 am Eastern when hardly anyone is awake. The 11 am crowd leads to the Nooner crowds of kids and kids and more kids. A recent age/sex in the room had a lot of minors in there and it's going to be interesting to see their numbers once the summer is over and the kids go back to school.

As for me, I'll be around, if I can ever get over this @#$#@ sinus infection ...

k9

12:23 AM
Blogging again, feeling not as much like death as yesterday. Still kind of out of it. Getting ready to take actual nyquill to knock my butt out and get some sleep. Busy day in the morning.

My sister is coming for a visit with my niece and nephew. My brother in law couldn't get the weekend off so it's just her and the kids coming in from Indianapolis. I'm excited. I haven't seen the kids since January and I miss them a bunch. I may be a grouch but I really do like kids and we have a lot of fun.

My niece is getting to the age where she's figuring out some of the games we play and getting wise to Uncle's sneaky tricks. I can't con her out of her cookies any more and I can't get her to play the endless games of "You know what?" "What?" (repeat until the other one starts to laugh), that we used to play. Just not happening. Worse yet, if I try to play it with her brother she teaches him not to fall for the gag and there's no fun to have. Silly beans, I'll figure out a new routine this time to make them laugh.

I do like kids. I've always had this rapport with them. Kids and animals. Sure I'm a grouch and I wear a frown half the time, or a scowl as one chatter called it, but for some reason I've always had this knack with little things. Maybe they see through me, I don't know, but whether I like it or not I'm the one they go to when they need someone to talk to or if they need someone to get them out of a jam.

My sister used to hate it. I think I've written about it before. She'd always bring animals home and for some reason they'd always end up gravitating towards me. Probably because I would take care of them. Feed them, make sure they'd have water, play with them, you know, stuff she didn't have time to do. By the time we moved to Maryland in 1986 we had 3 dogs and two cats, 4 out of 5 of which were all her doing.

I remember Little Cat. Little Cat was a weird cat. She was a calico but she looked like someone drew her with a magic marker. Her colors had thick black lines around them in spots and it was if someone used a magic marker to draw a calico cat. She was a nut. My sister got her for all the time she baby sat in 1983 while I was away visiting my grandparents in Connecticut for the summer. I remember she timed it so that she got the cat right after I left so she'd have a bond with the cat by the time I got back. Didn't work. As soon as I got home the cat immediately bonded with me and ... well ... it was ugly around the house for a while.

I remember Little Cat because she had this knack for convincing someone in the house to put her out right before it rained. Mine you we were in Washington State and it did rain a lot, but this cat KNEW when it was going to rain. She also knew that I was a light sleeper. So anytime it rained I knew that I'd hear a scratching at my window at 2 am and she'd be trying to knock the screen down to get me to open the window.

This led to, of course, the mandatory drying ritual. Yes, you had to then follow up the wake up call by getting a towel and drying her off. She wouldn't let you sleep until you did this step. Finally, once she was dry and had some food, she'd come right back to the bed dive under the covers and find the most uncomfortable spot for me to have her if I wanted to get any sleep. Did I mention she also had a tendency to bite if you moved while you slept? LOL. People tell me I don't move a lot now when I sleep. Now you know why, she's been gone a good 10 years now but I remember the paranoia of nights not knowing if I was going to get bit or not for moving.

One other story of little cat. By the time we moved from Maryland to PA, my sister had brought home another two cats. So we had 4 cats, two dogs. By then Wonder Dog (another story for another time), had passed on. We didn't have enough cat carriers to go around. So my mom bought some cardboard cat carriers to transport all the cats in. I remember it was the last trip up the river and we had Ophelia and Little Cat in these cardboard carriers in the back seat. About half way through the two hour drive I heard a meow, and an angry meow at that. I knew something was wrong.

I looked in the back seat and I literally saw claws appear through the thin cardboard. They ripped a hole just wide enough for her to get her head out and she spent the rest of the journey with her head out of the box just watching and waiting and plotting revenge for this transgression.

Folding clothes now. If there's one thing I don't like doing, it's folding clothes.

I've done my own laundry since I was 8 years old. I just got tired of my mom doing it and even more tired of all my whites coming out pink or blue or whatever color she decided to mix in the batch. I'm pretty good at laundry but I have a hard time actually getting time to fold it. Not sure why. I mean I have the time, but I always forget or something comes up or I don't feel like it and it sits on my floor until I either use up all the clean clothes and repeat the pattern or I finally sit down and fold whatever needs folding.

I can be a slob at times. Mainly when I'm busy. When I have extra time I can be a clean freak. It's so odd. It's either one extreme or the other, no middle ground, and tonight I'm folding clothes and making myself put stuff away.

Have this feeling the my sister and the kids will be taking my bedroom and I'll be sleeping on the floor of my office for the next week. So I'm making sure my room is spotless right now just in case. My office, on the other hand, is in need of a major spring cleaning. Too bad it's summer. I can see that tomorrow will be spent sorting the this and that's that I don't want to sort right now. I'm dreading it, but hey, did I mention I get to see my niece and nephew again? LOL.

Sunday we're having a party for my sister's 32nd birthday. I'll do my usual thing and hide out from all my mom and my sister's weird friends by using work as an excuse to get out of the party. They scare me a bit too much to be totally social. Oh sure I'll make an appearance, but I'm not the life of the party, I hate big crowds, and if there's work to do around here I'm saving it for Sunday. Always been this way, always will be this way, I just am who I am and that's not a big party guy.

Working on strips as I feel better. So watch out, Godzilla will be back this weekend. You will believe ...

k9

12:07 AM
Winding down from another long day. Still sick as a mutt and walking sideways. My balance is way off and I'm sitting here wishing this was over so I could get some sleep.

Today's big news from TechTV was that they were eliminating the first shift of chat from the morning schedule. I was pretty bummed because I really did get used to waking up, taking a shower, getting breakfast, then spending the next two hours trying to get Robyn on TV by participating in chat when everyone else is half awake. I got used to it and it's going to be different come Monday when I wake up early and find ... well, I guess I'll do a lot of work in the mornings now.

No offense to the chat hosts, but a "moderated chat" for the first two hours isn't going to work IMODO. I know, I know, everyone's saying this is is a "good thing" and that they'll "focus more on chat" during the remaining hours. To that I just smile and nod and say "all things will pass."

I'm going to hold my tongue. I haven't seen it yet and I'm sure it will be great. However, I will say that I'm dreading it because if they screw this up and they lose chatters they will never get them back. 8 years of community work on-line tells me that. Their base chatting community is just too small to support too many changes and the loss of a few key players in afternoon chats could mean disaster. Then again, I'm sure they're smarter than I, so I'm sure it'll be a rousing sucess.

Me? Again, no offense but I'm passing on the "moderated chat" and I'll probably stop watching the early hours of TechTV. I'm fearful that it's going to go to ::gag:: market coverage for the first two hours. The last thing we need is another channel going on and on about market coverage. As much as I like Bill Tucker and as much as I think Jean Lee is a cutie pie, if I want to see market coverage, I'll watch CNN/FN, or MSNBC, or regular CNN, or the local stations or ...

Read up on Fantatics about the Call for Help suggestions session. All I can say is the three things listed there as things they're going to do are exactly what I would have suggested -- get rid of the ticker (it's after the bell anyway), get rid of the news (not that I want Stacey T. gone -- but it does interrupt the flow of the show), and get the show on it's own set. Right now having it on the TechLive set after the majority of the TechLive people leave just seems weird. It needs it's own set and it needs it's own focus since it is not TechLive.

On that note, I'm fading fast. Be back tomorrow with probably more stories and blogs.

k9

10:37 PM
So it's like a week or so later and I'm blogging again. Right now I'm sick. I hate being sick. I have a sinus infection in the middle of the summer and there's nothing worse that this.

I'm suffed up and my ears are messed up and all I want to do is lie down and chill for a while.

The trouble with an on-line job is that you have to work a lot more than a "normal" job. Since I'm essentially on-call 24/7, I end up working something like 5 or 6 hours a day 7 days a week. Any time I sign on, I'm expected to do whatever work is waiting for me. No matter the time, no matter the day, no matter if I'm half dead and really just want to go die ... it's work.

Part of me hates it and part of me loves it. I mean the plus is that in this economy on-line work from home jobs with benefits from a fairly stable company are rare. The bad parts are that hey, the pay sucks and for all the stability, the fact remains that nearly everyone I work with actually works two jobs just to make ends meet. Such is the life of working on-line.

Right now I'm looking through my cds and sort of wishing that I hadn't spent all my money on tapes over the years. I have a billion tapes. Tapes used to be a lot cheaper than cds and frankly, I liked tapes better because they were smaller and I could actually use them on a walkman and mix my own tapes during college. CD walkmen were around but they were expensive and dang, if you couldn't mix your own line up, I just wasn't interested even if the quality was better.

My first CD came with the family's 486 dx2 66 in the early 90's. I did the whol "join the music club and get 12 cds for a penny" deal but never really followed up on it because they weren't portable enough for me and the price was too much to bug with when compared to tapes. I didn't really get into cds until, believe it or not, I started downloading MP3 files off of napster. Yes, I was the one person the RIAA feared -- a guy who downloaded to sample musicians off of Napster then actually went out and BOUGHT THE ALBUMS.

Don't let them BS you. They were more worried about guys like me than they were about anyone else. They wanted Napster gone and if there were even a handful of guys who actually bought CDS left after sampling off of Napster, they couldn't go after them the way they did.

So to get rid of me they actually turned me off of CD buying by raising the price of cds to $18 to $20 in the mall stores. So to get rid of them I turned back to Napster until it died and then to whatever I can find music on these days. I also switched to finding used cds where I can. I don't know if the RIAA is making any money off of the used cds, but I sure as heck feel a lot better about paying $10 compared to $20 for a cd.

My best friend yells at me for buying them, but you know, they're the same cds. So what if someone else has already listened to them? $8-$10 off is two cds instead of one. To me, that's a bargin.

And that's my rant for the evening,

k9

12:25 AM

Someone asked if I did anything other than just humorous stuff. Since my brain is gone I don't feel like blogging that much, I'll dig out some old really bad poems from years gone by. They're absolutely horrible and read on at your own risk. Most were written in character for a role playing game I was involved with years ago, so don't take too much from them. They are from a character's point of view and not my own.

All Poems (c) various years to me, James Knine under my real name. Previously published under various pen and character names over the years. Enjoy.

k9

Rage
I saw hatred
I tasted it on my own breath
there was nothing more to my world
than seeing you dead
I hate you with all that I am
my life forfeit for the price of your blood

You took what I had
You took what made me whole
You took what I needed to survive
You took my life, my sanity and my dreams
for that you must die

With my dagger and my rage
I shall see you in the Grave.

Slavery
Caught in her eyes
I see myself standing
a dim witted loon
looking back at me.

If she needs I take care of her wishes
If she points I go
If she wants I give myself  
If she smiles I die.

Goodbyes
I was here when you opened
three or four people in the world
fighting rogues and earning chairs and whales
in battles out of time

I was here for the training grounds
the fun that was the town square
filled with names that are only memories
having good times for all

I was here for the first dragons
spreading their wings
and taking to the air
and flying with their bonds

I was here for the first marriages
for the affairs for the gossip
printed daily in the DFC
for all to read and share

I was here for the battles
for the joy for the laughter
for the hard work
for the times that are in memory

I left you when things went sour
when it was forgotten
that the world was fun
and all was just a game

In the time away I've found
other diversions in my life
In the time away I've known
what it is to keep a promise

I return to say good-bye
as the city lights go out one by one
I return with great sadness
to watch you close the gate.

Good Luck and Go Forward.

-- ARRRG IAMDRAGON

Lingering Melody
I saw a ghost in a midnight dream
a girl with straw colored hair and ice in her eyes
she warmed my spirit with her beauty.

I saw a ghost in my heart
of a special girl that I do so desire
remembering her causes it such pain.

I saw a ghost in the mirror
reflections on what could, should, may have been
times so precious yet so far gone.

"I love you," I said with a silent tear.
She looked into my eyes and nodded.
With that she was gone.

Distance
I looked into her ice blue eyes
and knew that she was the one
in longing in loving and in my heart
there was room for no one else

She's so close but I can not hold her
I can only imagine and dream
of a time that we are together again
but I don't know if that will ever be

In distance I start to have my doubts
With distance I must have faith in my dreams
From distance I keep those long lasting hopes
as distance is never as far as it seems

She truly is my heart
that I do believe
and if her spirit is with mine
then Distance means nothing to me

Questions or Deceptions
Watching you sleep
I see your dreams
colorful and mystical
I see your heart.

You don't think I got that far
you don't know that I see
that you're not sure that  
what's in your heart is me.

I can live without love
I can live being here
spending the time with you
but can you?

Honestly, can you keep living
with me without love?
Without my heart matching
yours and me being in there?

I worry all that time
that this will be over
but I keep in my fears
because I don't want to lose you.

My heart says we're meant to be
but you dodge the issue  
going silent again. It's not the  
way lovers are meant to act.

When I sleep, when I dream
I wonder what you see.
My heart so colorful and so mystical
or don't you know?

So it's a little after six on a Sunday night. I'm going to finally go get a shower in. It's been an eventful weekend.

Did two 12 hour days to make up for time lost this week by a combination of allergies and not feeling like working. It's nice to set your own hours, but at the end of the week if you don't have 40 in you get in a lot of trouble. Catch up days are killer.

This morning I was exhausted. Slept in until 9 am and woke up to find a note on the chair in my office. My mom had taken my dad in to the emergency room for "breathing problems" at 6:30 am. I wasn't too worried because he was acting weird and I knew that his trip to the hospital was coming one of these days. A couple hours of waiting later a friend instant messaged me and asks how my dad is doing. I do the math on where they'd be at the emergency room (starting at 6:30/am and ending at around 11), and tell him that he should be walking in the door with a soda at between 11 am and 11:10 am.

11:06 am. My dad walks in with a coke from McDonalds and my friend's jaw drops and says it's spooky how I can predict that. My dad is fine, of course. He had a rash on his arm that was an allergic reaction to some antibiotics they put him on on Friday. So instead of waiting to see the doctor on tomorrow, he suddenly had "breathing problems" and had to be rushed to the hospital. He got his coke and was all happy about seeing all of his friends at the emergency room again.

Moved on to work and did what had to do for six hours before having a nap and finally getting out of there. Now I'm playing catch up on the rest of the day and getting a quick shower in because I feel funky.

k9

8:34 PM
Sadly, 1776 is not out on DVD yet. If I get a release date I'll share it here. Though I'll share a line or two before moving on (thanks to IMDB.com):

Ben Franklin: Treason is a charge used by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers.
John Adams: I have better things to do than stand here listening to you quote yourself.
Ben Franklin: Aw, that was a new one.

John Dickinson: Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Lee, Mr. Hopkins, Dr. Franklin, why have you joined this... incendiary little man, this BOSTON radical? This demagouge, this MADMAN?
John Adams: Are you calling me a madman, you, you... you FRIBBLE!
Ben Franklin: Easy John.
John Adams: You cool, cosiderate men. You hang to the rear on every issue so that if we should go under, you'll still remain afloat!
John Dickinson: Are you calling me a coward?
John Adams: Yes... coward!
John Dickinson: Madman!
John Adams: Landlord!
John Dickinson: LAWYER!

Spent the day, well, not doing much. Raided the $9.99 videos at wal-mart to stock up before they do away with them again. Also bought "Driver" for PC since it was $9 as well. It is so much a Robyn H. game. I have this feeling she's out there somewhere and driving much like the video game. H. is for "Huggie Bear" after all.

Our AOL group is up to possibly 7 or 8 people now. We have a lot of great stuff going up in the galleries -- from Scott Herriott to weird TechTV pictures to Evil Jim's little sister's collection of angels and crosses -- we're working on a pretty diverse library of pictures to share from readers here. To get involved, just e-mail me and I'll send you an invite (not to sound like a broken record). All you need is an AIM, AOL or Compuserve name. Just like the current status of TechTV chat.

Working on the next three strips to end our season so stay tuned ...

k9

9:37 AM
Woke up to more computer problems. I'm locking up on start up every so often and I'm afraid that the motherboard is going now. We'll ride this thing out and put up with it for now. It's still under warranty.

Flipped on Encore True stories to find "1776" on. For years and years I've had it preached to me by every oldster on the planet how good this movie was. How funny, how dramatic, how just out there that this movie was.

For years I sat there thinking "1776, Congressional Congress ... I don't think so."

Well, I was wrong and I was wrong in a big way.

I must have come in half way through the movie (which is long but great so far), but I quickly picked up the quips and the characters and was able to follow along with the subtle, yet over the top, humor.

Favorite scene so far had the delegate from New York abstaining from every vote. When the president of the congress finally put his foot down and asked why he was abstaining so much he replied that he was never given anything from his state legislature. When the other states asked how could this be he replied simply with (thanks to imdb.com):

Lewis Morris: Have you ever been to a meeting of the New York Legislature? Everyone speaks very loud, and very fast, and nobody listens to anybody else, with the result that nothing ever gets done. I beg the Congress's pardon.

Oh dear god, how that rings so true to this day!

Second most favorite part. John Adams forces Thomas Jefferson to write the declaration of independence, but Jefferson hasn't seen his wife in six months and has patriotic needs of his own. After a week of seclusion Jefferson has nothing worthwhile on paper so Adams sends for Jefferson's wife stating that once his needs are met, all of our needs will be met ...

This movie is great so far. It was just released on DVD with an hour of restored footage. There's a legend of how President Nixon saw the stage production of the musical, didn't like how the conservatives came off as the bad guys and "suggested" cuts to the film before it was released. Previous releases have restored a lot of the footage but this latest release restores it to the original cut.

It's a shame that that was done to this movie so if you can get a copy make sure you get the most recent version. It's longer and by no means are you going to catch all the lines in one sitting but if you're bored and in a mood for the subtly zany on such a patriotic day -- go to blockbuster and get you copy.

With that, happy 4th and I'm so out of here.

k9

1:44 AM
Quickly, up to 6. Evil Jim, Summer, Katie, Antony, Brit & Laura.

Love knowing my readers by name. :)

k9

12:50 AM
Winding down on another long day. Spent the night on look out for ambulances as my dad is in another phase where he thinks he's having chest pains. He's 56 or 57 now and his life essentially ended in his 30s when he gave up drinking. It's a dumb sad story of how he got to the point where he is now. A lot of it is his own doing and frankly, the entire family is paying for the legacy he's left.

Every summer around this time he starts thinking he's having a heart attack. Anytime he's stressed or anytime something gets him down it's another trip to the emergency room with chest pains. I think our record was 10 times one summer. The scenario goes like this -- he gets angry or depressed about something -- takes a nitro. Another nitro doesn't work so he gets more upset. His other pills don't work and he gets on the phone. Usually it's in the afternoons or evenings when he knows his doctors aren't around. That results in him getting someone at the ER who doesn't remember him and if he does he uses the line "It's different this time" to get them to listen to him.

By then he's worked himself up into a frenzy. He honestly thinks he's having a heart attack and begins to show the signs that he knows of a heart attack. At this point you can describe ANY situation to him and he'll swear that's what's happening. He just wants to go to the hospital. I actually proved this once by describing labor pains and he swore like mad he was having them. Sad but true.

If I'm not downstairs he'll call the ER again at this point to get an ambulance here because "he doesn't want to be a bother" (like 5 people from the ER bursting through the front door and kicking open my office door isn't a bother), and to add to things he'll work himself up to the point where he'll fall out of his chair or take a header so when the workers get here he's "near death." They'll take him to the hospital. I'll follow in the car.

In either case we get to the ER and everyone knows him. He knows them, they know him, smiles all around. The first hour there's always a problem getting his blood out of him. I think he knows a trick to make taking blood especially hard. Sometimes they'll call in a specialist to get the blood. That usually adds an hour to it. But they can't do anything until they get the blood out of him.

After that they'll ask him what the pain is on a level of 1 to 10. He'll say 8 to 10 and they'll give him a drip of some sort (pretty sure it's nitro), that makes him happy. He'll relax, his readings will be normal, and after an hour or so they'll send him for an x-ray. X-rays come back negative and his vital signs will be normal on the EKG. Every now and then they find something worth admitting him for, but it's usually only overnight since it will clear itself up after a good night's sleep in the hospital bed.

First two to three hours in the ER are my shift. I bring a book. I usually can get halfway through a star trek or star wars novel in that time. My mom gets off of work and she takes over so I can go home after that. If they don't admit him he gets a soda from McDonalds on the way home and is fine.

Repeat a week later.

I used to do tae-bo. Actually got pretty good at working out with it every day. Gave it up last year because any time he heard me jumping around upstairs he'd get upset for some reason and have to go to the hospital. Three times in a week was enough to make me give up exercising.

Tonight he's worried because he wants the tube in his throat out. He had a tracheal tube put in last year because he has a sleep disorder that may stop his breathing at night while he sleeps. He had to do treatments at night and sleep with head gear on. When that proved to be too much of a bother he ignored everyone's advice and had them put a tracheal tube in. He thought this was going to solve all the problems and be easy to take care of. It wasn't. He surprised me by going nearly a year with it in without demanding it out. He doesn't need it at all but he had it put in so he wouldn't have to sleep with headgear on at night. So now he wants it out ...

He's all worried about that so he's getting in the mood again for some attention. He was having chest pains again tonight. ER procedures have changed, however, and he couldn't do the pattern he was used to. They wouldn't let him talk to a doctor at the ER unless he was going to come in. He swore he wasn't going to come in. So I find him in the kitchen. He's complaining that he's so weak and couldn't do the laundry. I ask him why he came up the big flight of stairs if he was so weak. He says because the coffee is up here (he has a coffee pot downstairs, but there's no making sense out of this by now).

An hour later I hear a crash. I thought it was one of the cats. Then the doorbell goes off and I say to myself "oh @#$@." Find him downstairs in his laz-e-boy. He says he fell down the stairs. He doesn't want to be a bother, he doesn't want to go to the hospital. He's fine, he's fine. I clean up what he knocked over and spend the rest of the night on the look out for ambulances.

Oh I love the summertime.

In other news, we're up to 5 readers of the blog. It's not Evil Jim, Summer, Katie, Antony & Brit. Whoo Hoo! Three more outed readers and we'll have more readers than there are known users of Microsoft "Bob."

I'm so going to bed now.

k9